Terror by Ray S

Seems like there is almost too much TERROR to even write about. Come to think about it this subject, terror is what even you or we choose to make of it.

It is sort of like what FDR said long ago on a cold February day at our Capitol: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Well, likewise, we have our very own terrors---it comes with the territory.

Like suddenly waking up from a nightmare where the demon is right on your back, and your feet refuse to pull up out of the quagmire keeping you from escaping an unforeseen terror, or being secured to a torture rack and a mad doctor is poised with scalpel to attack and ultimately emasculate you--now that’s a really personal terror.  My apologies to the ladies, they have a whole laundry list of terrors which again come with the territory.  Another bad dream.

Personally my little terror recently has been clearing out the residue of family memorabilia, another name for trash depending on how you look at it.  But the (you would think benign) terror that I’ve been facing is not being able in clear conscious to discard all of those family photo albums with pictures of people I have no recollection of, the yellow newspapers someone saved marking the end of WWII, letters saved from birth to deaths.  My terror has been facing the necessity of this sorting out of family life so that I might save my survivors from this same fate.

Not too important on a world wide scale, but I dare say, it might be to you very deep down and personal someday.

Good luck and sleep sans terror.

© 17 November 2014

About the Author

  

Endless Joy by Phillip Hoyle

The minister’s wife from the church my wife and I attended one year while going to college was a joy addict. By that I mean that she emphasized joy all the time. Her gifts featured the word joy. Her correspondence addressed the topic. Her conversation seemed always to include some idea or experience concerning her take on joy. Joy seemed to be in her every thought.

My wife loved it and took up the theme for herself. It suited her perfectly: the positive, energetic, loving Myrna. She embodied joy; still does! To this day any card she sends to the minister’s home shows up announcing JOY. The word also became for Myrna an emphasis in gifts to others, letters to anyone, even messages on her answering machine, a usage that has persisted for decades. With both women, the minister’s wife and mine (now ex-), you can assume they are talking about joy, about endless joy, and that they are living endlessly joyful.

The lovely three-letter word almost requires a smile to pronounce it. Something about the shape of the lips to make the initial sound, to form the “o,” and to end with the “e” just looks joyful, especially if one’s eyes twinkle at the same time as the utterance. JOY, like in the Noel “While by their sheep” that says of the shepherds in Luke’s nativity story, “How great their joy!” and then in an ascending scale and increasing volume repeats it three times: “Joy, joy, joy.” Just can’t get enough of this word or of the feeling it represents. While I’ve never attended sheep on a winter’s night or encountered a troop of angels who were singing “Glory to God in the highest,” I do know something of the emotion, and in my imagination it far surpasses the feelings experienced while, say, opening a surprise package from under the Christmas tree or a small box that proffers an engagement ring or even the realization that one didn’t die from the last dread disease! Joy is just plain good in my book.

I like Joy’s feeling of excitement, elevated heart rate, infectious smiles, sense of well being, and its general love of life. I hope to experience it endlessly although I may not quite have enough strength for that. Oh, do I need to define my words? I don’t believe so, but I am aware that my life has provided many, many joyful occasions. This new year I celebrate these:

Being in junior and senior plays,
Singing a solo atop the singing Christmas tree,
Going to college,
Being married to Myrna,
Rearing children in our home,
Going on choir tour,
Conducting my own choirs,
Directing a musical play,
Writing curriculum resources,
Having intense relationships with several men,
Showing and selling quite a few of my paintings,
Completing thirty years of ministry in religious education and music,
Completing fifteen years of giving massage therapy to people in pain,
Reading hundreds of books as well as writing several myself, and
Telling my story to grandkids and sages.

My life has provided almost endless joy when I take time to think about it. May these experiences continue giving me more such emotional riches like the Noel’s, “Joy, joy, joy” in ascending, crescendoing repetition.

© 6 January 2014

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Being Gay is ... by Pat Gourley

I thought for a short while I might just copout on this one and simply write a long string of single words to complete the phrase. The first that came to mind was: Being Gay is fabulous. That of course is true but there is so much more to be said on the topic that I thought this the lazy queer’s way out. I’ll close out the piece with what I think is the best word to complete this phrase.

Before I get to that conclusion though I want to wade briefly into the thicket that is ‘essentialism verses social construction’ as the two most prominent theories for trying to explain what ‘Being Gay Is’. Very basically and crudely put ‘essentialism’ is a theory that purports that gayness is inborn, an unchangeable reality or essence if you will.

“Constructionist theory” implies that we are a cultural creation that has come about in large part because we have been so stigmatized. The constructionists believe that if it weren’t for this stigmatization that everyone would have queer thoughts and feelings perhaps actualized and that exclusive heterosexuality would fade away and I assume exclusive homosexuality would too. There would therefore be no more Kinsey 6’s or Kinsey 1’s and we would all drift to being 3’s or 4’s. This sounds like a disturbing ‘homogenized’ version of human identity to me. I can’t speak from a hetero perspective but from a queer one it would take a gun to my head to even try to perform sexually with a woman these days.

I am, being a disciple of Harry Hay, very clearly planted in the essentialist camp historically but if I were to apply the rather rigorous intellectual examination of these two theories that is required I would most likely today come out as some sort of hybrid. Though I must say in my day-to-day life it all seems pretty simply essential to me – I am queer through and through and always have been.

The best critique of these two theories I have ever run across for me remains Will Roscoe’s Afterword in his biography of Harry Hay: Radically Gay. Let me quote briefly from that Afterword: “ The fact is, for most Lesbians and Gay men homosexuality is not a construction, not something acquired, not an accident of childrearing, but an ongoing profound motivation. Perhaps they were born that way; in any case, it is not something that can be changed at will, as some constructionists and Queer theorists imply”.

I suppose it is possible that the phrase Being Gay Is…can be completed in as many different ways as there are gay people on earth. The responses would of course run the gamut from describing the worst possible fate to befall one to the absolute best thing that ever happened. As promised my word for completing the phrase would be “Being Gay Is an Opportunity”.

In my more grandiose moments I like to think that we as a people have been given the opportunity to be in the vanguard of great social change, perhaps revolutionary enough to save the whole planet and the human race. This view I have is based in part again on teachings I gleaned from the years I was hanging out with Harry Hay. Harry was fond of talking about the “gay window”. Being gay allows us to look at the world from a different perspective that our straight brothers and sisters. It is the same world they are looking out at but a distinctly different view of it.

This different view potentially provides the opportunity to problem solve in unique and often very queer ways. I do not believe this potential is best facilitated when we engage in the current major efforts of assimilation and those would be marriage equality and equal participation in the military. We need to spend much more time exploring and actualizing our difference and not constantly harping on our similarities. Let’s face it the current way of doing things has brought the human race to the brink of catastrophe in the form of climate disaster and strong arguments can be made that marriage and the military are pathetically failed human institutions.

Hay on many occasions talked about subject-subject vs. subject-object consciousness. He believed that we were as queers were given a leg up in viewing others, and I would expand that to all of Gaia, as subjects on an equal footing and not as objects. We are able, though we don’t always actualize it, to view one another of the same sex as equals. We get a pass on the unequal power dynamic that seems to be the intrinsically heterosexual paradigm of the sexes. We are given the opportunity to view relating to other humans in a profoundly different way from the existing imbalanced heterosexual dynamic.

This Story Telling Group is a great example of the intrinsic opportunity we so often avail ourselves to as a unique people to explore who the hell we really are. Here is to lots more stories giving form, shape and completion to the phrase: Being Gay Is…

(A few words for this piece were lifted from the following web site: www.queerbychoice.com/essentialism.html)

© 29 September 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

From God to Santa Claus by Gillian

If you grew up when most of us here did, in the nineteen-thirties or 'forties, practically every figure of influence and power, from God to Santa Claus, was male. Oh sure there was Mom, and maybe some other female family members; even possibly a teacher, nurse, or some kind of social worker in the traditionally female nurturing/caring roles. But the police, firemen, ministers, lawyers, doctors, drivers, sports figures, business owners, politicians, bankers, musicians and artists, etc etc, were almost exclusively male, with one or two rare exceptions.

When today's topic of The Women in My Life came up, I expected to bore you all some more with ravings about My Beautiful Betsy - and not that she is not deserving of it - but a couple of weeks ago the topic Sports brought me to a different approach. Many women talked about the bond they had developed with their fathers over sports. Or maybe it was the bond they had developed with sports through their fathers! And not to denigrate father-daughter relationships, but I was struck by the lack of mothers or even grandmothers. They simply did not figure. They were not there. So I am going to talk about the leitmotif which seems to have followed me - Women (not) in My Life.

I have written before about my mother, but in case anyone has been woefully remiss and not memorized every word I've ever written, I'll repeat it briefly as she was the first woman who was not in my life; not in the way I wanted and needed her to be, at least. There was some unidentifiable something that came between us. It left a gap; a space. She wasn't with me. Children intuit things but cannot possibly explain them, even to themselves. Much later in my life, a psychiatrist interpreted this all for me and I think she had got it right. It feels right to me.

In my teens my aunt told me my parents had had two children who died before I was born. At ages I think two and three, they died of meningitis in 1940. My mother, the therapist postulated, could not bare the prospect of a repeat of such pain, so she didn't allow herself to be as close to me as she doubtless would have been otherwise. That explained so much. I loved my mother and she loved me. I was never in doubt of that, but nevertheless she was, in some sense, not in my life.

As far back as I can remember, decades before I came out even to myself, I have always been in love with some female figure in my life. Only one at a time. Even in my fantasy world I was seriously, if serially, monogamous. They were wonderful friends but were never in my life the way I wished they were; needed them to be. Of course I only recognized this at some deeply buried subliminal level, so I didn't even give them the chance to be what I only dreamed of. Those with whom I am still in contact were, when I told them of my long-ago love, flattered rather than horrified. I seem to have chosen wisely, these women who were not in my life!

I don't think I have ever met a lesbian who was not at some stage in love with her gym teacher. I am no exception. But I was a pudgy un-athletic child who did not impress her at all.

I played on the high school field hockey and tennis teams only because it was a very small school requiring all hands to the wheel. I enjoyed both, probably mostly due to my infatuation, lapping up her gentle criticism as I would have praise from my other teachers. When she married the geography teacher I was broken hearted, but then she never was really in my life.

Growing up in England, I had certain female role models absent in the U.S. When I was nine, the king died and Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne. She's been there ever since and seems, as I'm sure it must to Prince Charles, destined to live forever. Previous queens, Elizabeth the First and Victoria, lived long and reigned well. Women in power were nothing new. But they had been born to it. That's the only way you get there! You don't think, as a "commoner" in Britain, maybe I should work towards being queen when I grow up!

Maggie Thatcher, of  course, did spring from common stock. I could admire the position she had; the power she had taken. But her politics were not mine. The family I had still remaining in Britain despised her. She was a role model in some sense, perhaps, but she was not in my life: nor would I want her to be.

Even the musicians and artists of the day were overwhelmingly male. Come on, I know you can rattle off half a dozen world-famous male landscape or portrait painters. How many women can you name?

Ah, but the times they are a-changing!

In 1970 only 10% of doctors in the U.S. were women. Now the number is over 30%, with women making up half of the students in Medical School. The percentage of women in the legal profession these days is much the same. After the recent mid-term election, there will be more women in Congress than ever before. (One of the few good things to come from that election, sadly) There is no longer any shortage of women athletes. When I grew up, we would have considered it a joke if anyone had prophesied that within our lifetimes we would watch women's teams competing in soccer, and all the way up to the Olympics. Coaching is rather a different story. Many women, in teams or in individual sports, employ male rather than female coaches, something I find hard to understand. Many in individual sports are coached by their fathers, but only occasionally by mothers. And as for women coaching men, well....... But there are a few examples even of that, one very notable. Brit. tennis champion Andy Murray, winner of Wimbledon and an Olympic gold medal, was originally coached by his mother and is currently coached by Amelie Mauresmo, an openly lesbian French tennis champion. Some changes are slow in coming. Women currently hold only 5% of Fortune 500 companies' CEO positions. But it will come. Hard as the Republicans might try to push women's rights back into the Dark Ages, I cannot believe they will succeed. We have come too far and fought too long to go back now.

I feel the loss of the many women (not) in my life, but they are in fact still with me, if in some cases only in memory, and the relationship I have with them now is genuine, real, in a way it never could be before. One of the women I was madly in love with for years, remains my closest friend as she has been for almost fifty years. We love each other like sisters and there are no longer all those confused emotions on my part to complicate our love. My mother is still with me. She always will be. I hear her chuckle at some silliness - she had a great sense of humor. And now at least I have a little understanding of the flaw in our relationship, and the reason for it, I accept that it was not about me, so I am free of the many negative, confused, emotions it once visited upon me.

My latest loss of a female is that of Brunhilda! She, as most of you know, was our VW camper van which we drove over 100,000 miles around this country. She, Betsy, and I, had a little menage a trois for 15 years. Sadly the old girl got battered and worn out and way too expensive to maintain so it was time to say goodbye. But the story ends happily. She went to live with a man who restores these beasts. So after a while, with new hips and knees and a heart transplant, she'll be in better shape than any of us. And perhaps, as she remains with us only in memory, we will learn in fact to love her more. Because in real time there were more than a few occasions when I came close to wishing she was one of those women (not) join my life. It was something of a stormy relationship, to say the least! Now we can just gaze fondly at our photographs and see her through those rose-colored glasses we all tend to favor as the years go by. And all those women once (not) in my life slide quietly into their correct, comfortable, and comforting, places, whether in my life or only in my memory.

© 27 November 2014

About the Author

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Trust, by EyM

Who can we trust these days? I don't like hearing that question very much whether it's out of someone’s mouth or in my own head. We have enormous nationwide organizations that have filled their rapid and powerful information streams with so much debris that we could fear that our trusted bridges of decency may well smash into their polluted rage.

Constant personal vigilance is vital to avoid compromising our health by eating from the once trust worthy American food industry. A slew of companies now make billions from selling products of horrible quality. Our landfills bulge with much of this unusable merchandise. The challenge of buying products that have provided American people with jobs discourages even the tenacious seeker. Is the label declaration “Made in the USA “ still true?

Labels on bottles and boxes very often give addresses on USA soil as though thousands work here to make and handle these items and pay taxes to our country. But sadly in truth these addresses have only a small mail processing team.

Well paid CEO's often wave the flag and claim a good guy image while taking their huge pay checks in a foreign bank to avoid paying the taxes they owe the USA. On our soil customers pay taxes and keep money going into executive pockets atop their dirty swill. Yes they may hire to sell their products in retail and service markets but they continuously maneuver to keep their payrolls lower and lower. This means lower and lower pay checks. This means lower and lower standard of living. This also means extreme performance pressure amid a fearful climate were long standing, high quality workers get fired. Upper management flings well seasoned integrity and loyalty to the curb for lesser paid inexperienced beginners.

Someone has said that when money becomes the morality, there is no morality. To keep our honor, we must resist the decay of our American morals as best we can. Yet bread winners of every ilk often face a necessity to settle for these substandard employers.

Of course in this neurotic competition, ugly personalities rear their maladjusted heads. How do we manage our resentment? How do we forgive? How do we continue to serve one another?

Really, I know we each have different needs. At times or in some ways we each need more from the people who surround us. I know that I do. To compensate, I try to give a lot.

I trust that if we listen in our true hearts, we give as we are intended to. On rare moments we get to see it happen. In those moments we get to see that we do makes a difference. Those are deep beautiful, even humbling moments. I trust in this worldwide mysterious truth, because it builds, touches, heals, wider than any ONE of us could design. Having a sense of this intangible reality inspires me. What a relief to be on that worldwide, even sacred, team.

~
The Possible Healing of a Lonely Place
by Eydie McDaniel

Some times lonely places press inside, out of sight. Some generate a more observable picture.

Once in the middle of a dark night the squeal of a straining voice awakened me. The much softer voice of the neighbor lady next door attempted to reply telling him to go to the police station to ask about his stolen items. My heart ached for this shivering desperate man, alone outdoors, without his bedroll, and without his food. How harsh, how unfair! My household snuggled safe and warm. Even our animals had it better than a homeless person.

Some hearts hide in fear. Even today, some hearts feel they must hide their precious love. The heritage of old judgmental cruelty still lingers. Some seniors where I live at Windsor Gardens have struggled decades with a hidden, lonely place inside. I wonder how many people have carried the secret of their attractions all alone to their grave. I wonder how much greatness we have all missed because hiding who you are robs so much of the energy it takes to ever become your very best.

Windsor Gardens of Denver happens to be one of very few senior housing organizations noble enough to sanction a club that could help heal this pain. An ad listed as LGBT Club now appears in 'Windsor Life'. It promotes monthly meetings right here where an unknown number of seniors with diverse intimate identities make their home. Since it formally began in February, now 9 months ago, some 55 individuals have participated with an average attendance of 28.

The abbreviation LGBT, one of the common markings, stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered. Choices of abbreviations vary and may include: GLBT, LGBTIQ, etc. Here at WG we simply call ourselves PRIDE Windsor Gardens.”

PRIDE Windsor Gardens has no agenda to change anything or anyone. Just as in any group here, it feels good to find meaningful affinity with our neighbors. Its programs have included an array of community leaders as guest speakers. It seeks to build ongoing positive strength as a member of the Windsor Gardens community, the wider gay community of Denver, and as its own social community.

We are PRIDE Windsor Gardens, Alive and Welcome. So diverse residents of Windsor Gardens, “ALL ABOARD” Come in out of your cold dark night. All you have to lose is your loneliness.

© October 2014

About the Author

A native of Colorado, she followed her Dad to the work bench to develop a love of using tools, building things and solving problems. Her Mother supported her talents in the arts. She sang her first solo at age 8. Childhood memories include playing cowboy with a real horse in the great outdoors. Professional involvements have included music, teaching, human services, and being a helper and handy woman. Her writing reflects her sixties identity and a noted fascination with nature, people and human causes. For Eydie, life is deep and joyous, ever challenging and so much fun.

Hallowe'en Dinner by Betsy

I was only trying to be a good mother.  Back in the 1960‘and 70’s liver was considered to be the best, most nutritious food available.  No other food had all the goodness of beef or calves’ liver.  That is, nutritionally it was the best, aesthetically, well, pretty awful, in my opinion.

During that time I was very conscientious about giving my young children the best in nutrition.  The only question about liver was how to get them to eat it.  I, myself, had a hard time, indeed, getting the slightest morsel down.  The texture and the taste, I thought and still think, are rather repulsive. But a good mother feeds her children well.   So I determined that once a year, at least, liver would be served at the dinner table and consumed by all--even if it were to be a very small amount.  But how to get them to eat it.  What was a mother to do.

Hallowe’en offered the perfect situation.  The children typically would do their trick or treating as soon as they had finished their dinner.  Well, you know the rest.  “You may go trick or treating after you have finished your liver.”  said I to the three sweet, little, adorable faces with blinking eyes looking at me in anticipation of the excitement of going out with their friends for Hallowe’en fun. Ooow!! That was hard.  Was that cruel, or what.  Oh well, I wouldn’t make them eat much.  Even just a couple of bites!  After all, it’s for their own good.  That’s why I’m doing this, isn’t it.  Isn’t that what any good mother would do?

Interesting that when my daughters, now old enough to be young grandmothers, recently reminded me of these hallowe’en dinners of many years ago, I replied innocently, “I don’t remember any of that!.  Are you sure that really happened?  You know, I wouldn’t touch the stuff even if I wanted to.  It’s full of cholesterol and toxins!”

The reality is that I do remember, now that my memory has been tweaked.  And, yes, this did happen, but I think only once or maybe twice at most, not the many, many hallowe’en dinners that they remember. 

At the time those liver dinners on Hallowe’en were not so funny to any of us.  Eating liver was serious business.  Now we know better.   Now 45 years later, every Hallowe’en, we get lots of laughs remembering the liver dinner--or was it dinners?  I get teased a lot about this.  I guess my kids grew up and came to understand what it’s like to be a parent wanting to do the right thing for their kids.

But as I look back on it now, I realize I have mellowed a lot.  I don’t think I would make my kids do that now, especially on Hallowe’en.  Every once in a while, in spite of the laughs, a vague, nagging feeling from deep inside emerges and suggests that maybe that was kind of mean--making them eat liver.  But, then, didn’t someone say that Hallowe’en has its dark side. 

© 31 Oct 2011

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change).  She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren.  Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards. 

The Gayest Person I Have Ever Known by Will Stanton

I know the world is full of gay people (using the currently popular definition of the term), and they dress and behave in many different ways.  If, however, the person who chose this topic was thinking of the stereotypical gay guy with distinctive apparel or mannerisms who often draws attention to himself, I really have not hung around very many gays like that.  If I use that frame of reference, however, then I would have to think of young Peter whom I met in college.

Peter did, in fact, draw attention to himself; but he seemed to be able to do it in a way that fascinated people, never repelled them.  I suppose that he had the advantage of being remarkably good looking, as well as intelligent and charismatic.  I  observed  people's body-language that supported this fact.  Sometimes, I'd see straight guys encounter a gay guy and then immediately draw away in distaste; whereas, with Peter, they involuntarily would lean forward, eyes wide-open, fascinated.  Other gays on campus did not fare so well as he did.  I know of at least one gay who was beaten up, but even the homophobes just stared at Peter, and that is no exaggeration.  Straight guys seemed to be far too taken with Peter to ever consider being unkind to him.

Peter's heritage was an unlikely pairing of Polish and Sicilian ancestry.  He had the fine, classic facial features of a Polish aristocrat, and I could imagine that his mother resembled Tadzio's mother in the film “Death in Venice.”   He also flaunted a mane of golden locks, much like Tadzio's.  His skin was a smooth, honey-tan.  Apparently, the only obvious inheritance from his Sicilian father was the ability to tan without burning.

Peter obviously was very aware of his good looks and their effect upon people.  He enjoyed being noticed.  He did confide in me, however, one concern about his physical self.  His body appeared to be rather soft and smooth, even slightly androgynous; and he wondered if he innately was less masculine than most college-age guys.

Peter chose clothes that straight guys would be embarrassed to wear.  Between Peter's physical appearance, his cute clothes, and his confident way of talking and walking, he never failed to draw attention.

Peter had a large group of gay friends, plus an endless string of guys persistently trying to get Peter into bed, and a series of trailing hangers-on that people unkindly referred to as “fag-hags.”  It was nothing to see Peter cheerfully making his way somewhere, trailed by several enamored acquaintances, much like moths to a flame.

Peter was an unabashed flirt. He knew when people were staring at him.  If he was in a teasing mood, he could embarrass his admirers by sensuously displaying himself. He might smile at them and not leave until the observers turned red with embarrassment. 

 

From what Peter told me, I think that he enjoyed flirting with straight guys.  He once answered an ad to share expenses with two straight guys in a van going to Florida for spring break. When they drove up to Peter's house, he appeared wearing tiny, baby-blue shorts and a little pink sweater.  And, when he came flouncing down the front steps to the van, his gay house-mate called out, “Have a good time, and don’t get any nice boys into trouble!”  The two guys' jaws dropped.  Apparently, the straight guys overcame their initial surprise, for by the time they pulled over into a rest stop for the night, Peter ended up being, as he later described it, “the meat in the sandwich.”  Once Peter arrived in Florida, he donned a diaphanous caftan, strutted upon the beach, and immediately found housing and entertainment during his stay because he was picked up by a member of one of America's most wealthy and prominent families.  I have chosen not to mention the name.  Then he had the ride home with the two straight guys to enjoy.

No one could mistake Peter as being anything other than gay, but he had no interest in drag.  Some of his friends; however, thought that he was too pretty not to try it, at least on one occasion.  They decided to dress Peter up for a big party that would have lots of straight guys there with their dates.  At first, he resisted, but eventually he agreed to do it.  As it turned out, his appearance was so stunning that a lot of the guys abandoned their dates, went over to Peter, and were trying to chat him up. Their abandoned dates were furious. Peter was so convincing that they never discovered that he was a guy in drag.  He could be flamboyant, but he did not care for drag. He never did that again.

On a few occasions, I paled around with Peter, but we never did anything particularly gay or titillating.  We took a hike around the state park, went to see the film “Death in Venice” together, and sometimes just hung out talking.  Even though I admired his good looks, I never asked to go to bed with Peter.  I liked him just for who he was.  He wondered why I had not asked.  I replied that, apparently, everyone else continually asked him, and my asking him simply would place my friendship on their same level.  My friendship could be misinterpreted, implying that having sex was all that I really was interested in.  That impressed him, for when he graduated and left college, he gave me some gifts including three photos of himself.  The color one is included with this story.  I have one very large, glass-framed composite-portrait in silver that was part of his final commercial-art portfolio.  He wrote on the back of the picture, “Love ya always, Peter.”

The last time that I talked with Peter, he expressed, for the first time that I observed, some loss of confidence.  Here he had graduated and was going out into the real world.  He was afraid of how people would treat him, his being so obviously gay.  He imagined that he might have to limit himself to living on the East Coast or West Coast where there might be a greater percentage of tolerant people.  I hope that he chose well.

I often have wondered what became of Peter.  Out of curiosity, I did a couple of searches on the web.  All that I found were listings for several people with the same name, but none appeared to be “The Peter.”  Perhaps it is it is just as well that I do not have a current photo of him.  We all have aged, and even he was not immortal.  I'll just remember him as he was, the golden, cheerful, charismatic Peter.  And just maybe, he might discover our blog and read this story.                                     

© 04 April 2014 

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories.  I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

Thanksgiving 2013 by Ricky

            Another Thanksgiving holiday is upon us and I always take time to ponder the things I am thankful for but this year I am also thinking about the changes that have taken place over my lifetime.  Back-in-the-day (I am old enough to use that expression and it actually has meaning) as a young lad I really enjoyed the holiday season.  First, Halloween followed by Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve managed to offset the after Labor Day plague of school homework with visions of “tons” of candy, turkey and pumpkin pie, and presents, and the ever popular 1 ½ to 2 weeks of time off from school.

          Thanksgiving was marked by comments like “stay out of my way” or “stay out of the kitchen while I’m fixing the turkey” or “you can help best by going outside and play while I get this meal done.”  It was hard (read that as impossible) for a young boy to stay away from the kitchen when all those marvelous aromas kept wafting (to me at the time “pouring”) out of the kitchen.  Naturally, mother had to “remind” me to “Stay out!” and “Keep away from that pie!” all with an elevated voice (to be polite about her emphasis).  However, at last, all the waiting was done and the most excellent of all meals was consumed (for several days after also) only to be repeated at Christmas dinner.

          I can remember that Thanksgiving was “promoted” not only on school bulletin boards in the classrooms where each teacher and students would try to have the best Thanksgiving displays in the entire school.  My class’s was clearly the best each and every time but, those biased judges never managed to pick my class as the winner.

          The community also decorated for Thanksgiving.  Mostly it was done by the various businesses by putting up window decorations.  The department stores fancied up their window displays with Thanksgiving themes surrounding the mannequins on display.  Sadly, this “custom” did not last as the movement to purchase gifts for Christmas began to gain momentum in the business community moved the Christmas displays ever earlier in the year finally eclipsing Thanksgiving in favor of making the “almighty dollar” sooner rather than later.  Once again, greed conquered gratefulness in our society.  Now only the truly dedicated believers in a “higher power” take time to remember why the Thanksgiving Day holiday was created.  It saddens me.

          Fortunately, I remember the purpose of the holiday so here is my list of things I am thankful and grateful for this season.

I am thankful for: being alive at 65; having good health; my deceased wife; all my children; the opportunity to be educated; living in The United States; learning to read via phonics in Minnesota schools; living with my grandparent’s and uncle on a farm for two years; being lonely enough to join the Boy Scouts; my brother and sister; my father and all he has done for and to me; my mother and step-father; all my mistakes whether or not I learned from them; as they were the catalyst for my coming out; all my acquaintances at SAGE’s Telling Your Story group, and Prime Timers; and finally that I was not aborted but allowed to live and have all the adventures and experiences I had and will have in the future.

© 25 November 2013 

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.

Me & Amadeus by Ray S

It has been a long time that Verizon & I have been in my pocket either alerting me to a caller or trying to take a picture in my pocket.  However, it was determined by powers beyond my control that it was time for a replacement cell phone.

The ensuing trip to the local Verizon emporium, where all the earnest busy-bee workers seemed to swarm all about a vast selection of electronic necessities, resulted in the appearance of a little new black virginal cell phone waiting to become my lifeline to the outside world.  But before it could spring into service or my pocket, it required programing with the information from its predecessor.

Then the super-efficient automaton busy-bee informed us that would not be possible as the two instruments were not compatible. …… A really strange thing to us inasmuch both little tykes issued forth from the same source.  One thing we were assured of though, was that if accidently the right little button was activated I could still take pocket pictures.

All previous knowledge had been lost, including the delightful signal-melody that always announced to anyone in earshot that this cell phone owner was extremely couth & cultured (artistic to say the least).  No bells or horns, ribald hip-hop, imitation old fashioned telephone “Ringy ding ding”, but the melodious sounds of what was ultimately identified as a bit of Amadeus. 

Unable to track Amadeus down we substituted a snippet of Figaro’s rather pretentious Wedding March.  As you have probably gathered circumstances do become tedious and tiresome for us dilettantes.  You know, the artistic types.  But something had to be done to get on with electronic progress.  So Figaro took over as programed.  After a couple of marches down the aisle with Figaro, something had to be done to relocate the purloined original melody, but not being an educated musician, just a music nerd who favored the classics (and of course, show tunes) I could do no better than whistle an off key version of the tune.

This called for drastic measures to find Amadeus.  The search was begun to find the wizard of lost melodies, the shaman of the ivories, the creator of crescendos, the ultimate music authority (at least in my little world), Herr Doktor Bösendorfer!  I was successful in being granted audience of such short notice, but this was an emergency and the doktor acquiesced.

After appropriate vetting to decipher the off-key hummed melody as best as I could muster, my faith in the master was affirmed when after research of the entire cabinet where Herr Mozart was closeted.  Eureka!  The Sonata in C Major, K-545, came to light.  And lest this Philistine/dilettante remain forever ignorant of the complete sonata, the good doktor gave the big black shiny Bösendorfer a run for its money by playing the total selection.  My subsequent joy was so great I threw my arms about Herr Doktor’s ample waist & almost burst into tears.  Amadeus had come back to me, as I planted a big kiss of gratitude on the maestro’s rosy cheek.

With my new found knowledge I was off to meet the enemy, the Verizon automatons.  Thanks to the Herr Doktor & Herr Bösendorfer there is renewed life for this music lover.  So ends this sincere “artistic” tale.  Cant you hear that sweet köchel right now?

Do I hear cries of “Author”, “Author”?

Thank you, Wolfgang A. Sylvester

© 8 Sep 2014 

About the Author

Favorite Literary Character by Phillip Hoyle

For me to choose my favorite literary character seems as impossible as to choose my favorite activity from a three-week road trip. I’ve never been able to select just one because I usually prize too many memories. So when I consider that in first grade I began reading about Dick and Jane, in the fifth grade was introduced to the novel when Mrs. Schaffer read us of Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver in Treasure Island, in eighth grade read my first novel which I checked out from the school library, James Fennimore Cooper’s The Spy with its Betty Flanagan and Harvey Birch, and after that never quit reading book after book to the point that in my mid-thirties I was reading five books a week—most of them novels—I’m hard pressed to choose any single character as my favorite. There have been so many!

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. I began analyzing short stories; then turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big tasks is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I recall a voice teacher who seemed friends with a woman character Natasha Rostova in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace while I couldn’t even recall or pronounce the name of any character from my reading of that monstrously long novel. I recall in December my daughter-in-law reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the umpteenth time. She said “It’s like a new story,” and she just loves Jane Eyre, probably her favorite literary character. Now I read Bronte and enjoyed the characters but never developed such a relationship with any of them. I just don’t get into character friendships, at least not easily.

Still I really have like some characters. First, Natty Bumpo in James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales although I don’t recall if I respected him; second, Johnny in The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter although I may really have been more interested in his Shawnee Indian cousin; third, the first-person narrator in Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children by Felice Picano although I didn’t really like him so much as I recognized in him a character who as a child was bisexual like I was; fourth, Bud in Ethan Mordden’s stories, again another first person narrator who as a writer seemed as much the author of the story as its protagonist; and finally, Will in City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer although very much like in the cases of Picano and Mordden I may have liked the author as much as the character. Still Will became my literary friend because he came from an uncertain past, made creative adaptations to his surroundings, felt enamored of Native Americans, accepted into his life persons whose values widely differed from his own, worked hard, and introduced me to more exotic worlds of gay America, meaning in many important ways, more realistic descriptions of gay life.

But since I ended my list with Will from the Spanbauer book, I’ll say a few things about him who certainly has become an important character in my life if not a favorite (and be warned I’m speaking as much or more about Spanbuaer as I am about his great character Will). Will trusts people. Will does not try to fool himself. Will reveals his faults as well as his ideals and dreams. Will eats with sinners. He survives in the city, thrives there, values important aspects of his life, idealizes some individuals and loves them when they are too real to be idealized. He ekes out a living, is taken advantage of, finds friendship, and in general, builds a meaningful life in a hard and rough city.

And I thrill when Will says:

“Only your body can know another body.

“Because you see it, you think you know it. Your eyes think they know. Seeing Fiona’s body for so long, I thought I knew her body.

“I’ll tell you something, so you’ll know: It’s not the truth. Only your body can know another body.

“My hand on her back, my hand in her hand, her toes up against my toes, Fiona’s body wasn’t sections of a body my eyes had pieced together. In my arms was one long uninterrupted muscle, a body breathing life, strong and real.” (In the City of Shy Hunters, p. 184) Will is really real; his friends are real. I am his friend.

© Denver, 22 June 2014

About the Author  

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Reputation by Pat Gourley

It has been some months at least since I have quoted Grateful Dead lyrics in one of my written pieces here so I think it’s about time. A line from one of their classic songs, Uncle John’s Band – a tune by the way covered by the Indigo Girls, states “all I really want to know is are you kind”. If I address “reputation” from a personal perspective I would most want to be known and remembered for being kind.

While watching a 60 Minutes piece last night that featured a few of the Dallas nurses who cared for Mr. Duncan the first Ebola patient in the U.S. I was actually moved to tears by their genuine empathy and kindness toward this man who was dying a horrifying death while at the same time at considerable risk of infection themselves. As a nurse myself I can attest to the fact that while we are not necessarily immune to the sight of human suffering we are not often easily shocked either. This disease apparently is an exception to that rule. Large amounts of human secretions are often part of the game with nursing in certain settings. Ebola though seems to take that to a whole new level most often in the form of voluminous amounts of vomit and diarrhea. In the end stages of the disease even small droplets of these secretions are teaming with literally millions and millions of viral particles and it only takes one to pass it on.

They interviewed four nurses and all four seemed to exude genuine kindness but I was most impressed with an African American woman and a portly man with a definite and beautiful fey-air about him. Though not the case anymore gay men were at one time a preponderance of the male nursing population and we are still quite well represented. I will remember these nurses not so much for their bravery but their dignified and uncompromising acts of human kindness, wiping his tears and holding his hand albeit through multiple layers of protective gear among many such acts in his last days. I would like to have the epithet “he was a kind queen” attached to my tombstone or rather an urn full of my ashes before they get scattered in San Francisco bay.

I suppose there was a time in my distant past when I did not want the rather large “queer’ part of my being to be sullying my reputation in anyway. I do think though I was lucky and got over that one quickly. One sort of throws caution to the wind in that regard when you enter certain health care professions and nursing in particular as a male in the 1970’s. I was probably at my most flamboyant professionally in the 1970’s and I am sure had the “reputation” as being the flaming homo nurse. Only once though in 40 years of nursing, when working ICU, did a patient openly verbalize that he didn’t want the “queer” touching him. My co-workers were much more upset about this than I was at the time and it’s probably safe to say that the amount of kindness directed this man’s way may have been severely curtailed during his intensive care stay. Efficient and appropriate medical care does not necessitate kindness but it sure goes down a lot easier with that in the mix.

As I alluded to I was quite out of the closet during both nursing school and on the job in the 1970’s. I think my ‘homosexual-reputation’ if you will was solidly cemented one night in the ICU at University Hospital when I had just returned from recovering from a bout of hepatitis. Hepatitis was being discussed by a group of us including some docs and folks were speculating whether or not I may have gotten the hepatitis on the job, something not uncommon for nurses in those days before the advent of “universal precautions” and good hepatitis vaccines. As I recall without missing a beat I quite flippantly said that it was much more likely I was infected at the Empire Bathes with my legs in the air. That was the end of that discussion.

As Andy Warhol so famously said everyone gets at least 15 minutes of fame, which I suppose you could say, then becomes a significant part of his or her reputation. For me personally though I certainly hope that is not the case. In early 2000 a writer with Westword came to Denver Health wanting to do a piece on the current state of the AIDS epidemic. I had always shunned the press wanting to do AIDS pieces because they so seldom got it right and what could be worse for one’s ‘reputation” than to be grossly misquoted. The reporter, a fellow named Steve Jackson, was a frequent freelance contributor to the paper often doing long feature pieces. He apparently became bored with the usual AIDS talking heads, mostly docs, at Public Health and was steered in my direction by someone in the building.  He and I actually hit it off having some sort of Grateful Dead connection as I seem to recall and I spent quite a few hours telling him my story.

A long story short I became the entire focus of the piece and wound up on the cover of the next issue. My own fifteen minutes of fame if you will. The piece was insufferably long as it appeared in print and I was still the case after the editor, Patty Calhoun, had cut a full third of it before publication. I have never posted it to my web site in part because I found it to be embarrassing, not because it affected my reputation at all but it really seemed to focus on my own personal drama in a very over the top fashion. If any good came out of it though I hoped it might have persuaded some folks at risk to finally get tested and get on meds. I was, as was graphically laid out in the piece, probably twenty years into my own HIV infection and still walking, talking, working full-time and posing for Westword cover stories.

One might think, and I suppose I did too, that such exposure would have major repercussions but it actually had virtually none. For one thing it was too long for most folks to get through and secondly I attribute this lack of fallout to the strength of coming out. If all your secrets are already out their in your personal and work circles and most folks are already bored with the old queen’s story and simply adding a few thousand more Westword readers to that mix doesn’t much effect one’s life or reputation and it did not.

In fact the response at least that blew back to me was quite muted. Oh a few mostly gay positive men came up to me in person and were very supportive but most responses ranged from “oh is he still alive” to my personal favorite “I thought they only put convicted felons on the cover of Westword”.

The lesson for me seems quite obvious. One’s reputation hopefully is not in anyway significantly influenced by any particular 15 minutes of fame but rather by a lifetime of being kind or at least trying to be to all you encounter. In that respect I am great believer in Karma and what goes around eventually, despite frequent bumps in the road, comes around.

© October 2014 

About the Author 

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Drifting, Not Adrift by Nicholas

Drifting calls to me. It is one of my all-time favorite images. I picture easy summer days, though this can occur in any season, of floating along with the tide or the current. No resistance though there is movement. Drifting along on an inner tube in a stream. Drifting snowflakes. Drifting into day dreams. Drifting conjures up images of movement, movement in a fluid environment, like floating in water. It appeals to me perhaps because floating is the only thing I actually can do in water.

          Drifting is not like being adrift. Being adrift is to be aimless and not necessarily moving at all. Being adrift is akin to being lost whereas drifting is a more imaginative state of seeking.

Sometimes I think I have been drifting through most of my life since unlike a lot of other people I never adopted a certain, single career path that I pursued devotedly--or slavishly--but have pursued a number of careers. And I never tied myself down with raising children, seeing the little ones grow because I helped make them grow, following a course until they went out on their own. I guess I attach a lot of freedom to drifting. I’ve always had a lot of freedom in my life—freedom to move on to another place, start or stop a job or a career, make or end relationships—without being constrained by too many responsibilities.

          Of course, my life hasn’t been completely unmoored, untethered, without anchor. Being with Jamie for the last 27 years has certainly brought me out of my self-indulgent freedom now that I plan life changes with him and not just on my own whims. And that change has been good as well.

          Now, that in some ways, my drifting days are over, drifting is even more a state of mind with my imagination conjuring up memories of wandering. I used to spend days wandering or drifting around the Northern California coast on Point Reyes or on the slopes of Mt. Tamaulipas. I used to drift about the fascinations and splendors of San Francisco. I once spent a summer drifting through the Sierra Nevada mountains. How nice it was to just drift along, letting the stream carry me, sometimes literally, to whatever lay around the next bend. Drifting is a form of exploring.

          Not many people these days or at my age seem to think of life as an act of exploring. But that is sometimes the only way I seem to be able to see it. We are all, after all, just drifting from somewhere to somewhere else or maybe nowhere at all.

          Later this afternoon you might find me at home, drifting off to sleep

© July 2014

About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.