Month: April 2014

Posted on

Straight Friends Who Love Me by Ricky

Sadly, except for my siblings, my children, and my grandchild, I cannot think of any other straight people who love me. Not even my surviving aunts and uncles fall into that category. There is one straight person who tolerates me now. He once told me years ago that he loved me, but he has never said it again.

He was a school friend of my then 13-year old daughter. At one point my daughter told me he actually told his mother to divorce his dad and marry me. His dad is deaf, refuses to learn sign language, and is a drug addict. All his son wanted, was to have the same kind of relationship that my daughter had with me. The quirky thing about this is that my daughter asked me, if I married his mother, could my daughter marry him. I said no, unless they married before I married his mother. I find the mind of 13-year old’s to be very strange. It must be the raging hormones. I never figured out if it was their hormones or mine.

On the other hand, I have a few happy friends, who are very cheerful when around me, and probably even more joyful when not around me. Nevertheless, not to confuse anyone with these multiple designations, I will just call them my gay friends. To me they are as straight as my non-gay family members are, because to me, they do not appear to be bent or crooked.

It is rather depressing not to have straight friends, so I will end this story session with a happy little anecdote sent to me by a friend.

It was a dark and stormy night. Bob Hill and his new wife, Betty, were vacationing in Europe…as it happens, near Transylvania. They were driving in a rental car along a rather deserted highway. It was late and raining very hard. Bob could barely see the road in front of the car. Suddenly, the car skids out of control! Bob attempts to regain control of the car but to no avail! The car swerves and smashes into a tree.

Moments later, Bob shakes his head to clear the fog. Dazed, he looks over at the passenger seat and sees his wife unconscious, with her head bleeding! Despite the rain and unfamiliar countryside, Bob knows he has to get her medical assistance.

Bob carefully picks his wife up and begins trudging down the road. After a short while, he sees a light. He heads towards the light, which is coming from a large old house. He approaches the door and knocks. A minute passes. A small, hunched man opens the door. Bob immediately blurts, “Hello, my name is Bob Hill, and this is my wife Betty. We’ve been in a terrible accident, and my wife is seriously hurt. Can I please use your phone?”

“I’m sorry,” replied the hunchback, “but we don’t have a phone. My master is a doctor; come in, and I will get him!” Bob brings his wife in.

An older man comes down the stairs. “I’m afraid my assistant may have misled you. I am not a medical doctor; I am a scientist. However, it is many miles to the nearest clinic, and I have had a basic medical training. I will see what I can do. Igor, bring them down to the laboratory.”

With that, Igor picks up Betty and carries her downstairs, with Bob following closely. Igor places Betty on a table in the lab. Bob collapses from exhaustion and his own injuries, so Igor places Bob on an adjoining table.

After a brief examination, Igor’s master looks worried. “Things are serious, Igor. Prepare a transfusion.” Igor and his master work feverishly, but to no avail. Bob and Betty Hill are no more.

The Hill’s deaths upset Igor’s master greatly. Wearily, he climbs the steps to his conservatory, which houses his grand piano. For it is here that he has always found solace. He begins to play, and a stirring, almost haunting melody fills the house.

Meanwhile, Igor is still in the lab tidying up. His eyes catch movement, and he notices the fingers on Betty’s hand twitch, keeping time to the haunting piano music. Stunned, he watches as Bob’s arm begins to rise, marking the beat! He is further amazed as Betty and Bob both sit up straight!

Unable to contain himself, he dashes up the stairs to the conservatory. He bursts in and shouts to his master.

“Master! Master! The Hills are alive with the sound of music.”

© 28 October 2012

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.

Posted on

Camping: With Apologies to Certain HOMOPHOBIC Boys Organizations by Ray S

The stair treads creaked and groaned when I took another step up to the attic storeroom of my grandma’s old Victorian house.

When I was a kid my folks, my brother, and I lived with Gram for about three or four years. Dad had been transferred from his post at Rocky Mountain National Park, back to the Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was supposed to be a temporary posting, so Gram’s house in an Annapolis suburb was where we all lived. My brother and I joined the Boy Scouts of America having already completed the prerequisite Cub and Webelos servitude back in Estes Park, Colorado.

Now, some twenty-two years later I return to Londontowne, MD to help with the disposal of the house’s furnishings in preparation for the sale of the house. Gram had decided to check up on our grandpa and see what shenanigans he might have gotten into since he had died some seventeen years earlier.

I reach the room that had always been set aside for storing old steamer trunks and miscellaneous luggage, out-of-style clothes and furniture, baby diapers (just in case one of the grand children produced another leaf on the family tree), old school books, high school and college yearbooks. There even is Gramp’s Army Air Corps uniform.

Digging around in a far corner I find my old camping stuff—the mess kit, canteen, and a number of merit badges that were never sewn onto our uniforms. Gram used to say: “Never know when these things will be needed again” or “Waste not, want not.

There it is—my official BSA pup tent! My search was over. My mission to the attic jungle room was to find the little tent to give to my neophyte Boy Scout nephew just in time for the upcoming Jamboree this summer.

Boy, does this bring back memories. I learned a lot more than knot tying and lanyard weaving in the clandestine shelter of that two-boy tent. Scouting covered a lot more territory than hikes, campfires, and all the pages in the manual. Adolescent boys came to Scouts but left Scouts—for better or for worse—as budding young men. Any vague acknowledgement in the manual, relative to sex education was unheard of and besides what hadn’t you already picked up in the boys’ room at middle school?

There was stuff you knew, you were warned about or outright threatened over and forbidden to do. Of course, that said, the warnings made it all the more tempting, even if some of us were just following the leader. The high point occurred when four or five of our troop hung out in the dark of a vacant garage was what is poetically named a “circle jerk.” Curiosity always spurred you on to pursue the forbidden fruits or in future years of the joys of hetero-, homo-, or bi- or just plain fooling-around sex.

Scouting camping is such fun, character building, healthful, teaches you how to get along with your fellows. Hopefully discouraging bullying and taking the Lord’s name in vain. Scouts Honor! And so many more virtues, and believe it or not, some of these do rub off (or in) to keep the spirit of “Love thy neighbor” alive in you all your life.

Of course there is a hidden disclaimer, just like the TV ads for miracle drugs, for all of the above; Parents, do you know where your little Boy Scout is or was?

Any volunteers for a sleep-over in a two-person pup tent on a camping outing?

© 17 March 2014

About the Author  


Posted on

It’s A Drag by Phillip Hoyle

I go to see Jeff at the bar that has drag shows and meet Twyla Westheimer. Across the room she sits dressed in midi skirt and patterned blouse, with large breasts, big hair, thick makeup, and looking slightly nervous. She’s primly perched on a bar stool sipping a drink through a straw. Although she looks familiar, I don’t know who she is. She stands and approaches me. Jeff, a new massage client of mine, laughs, tickled that I don’t recognize him in drag.

But Jeff isn’t the only reason I’m here. I like drag shows. I see the Denver drag queen who cracks me up the most, Brandi Roberts, a long-time friend of Jeff’s. Taking the stage, Brandi warms up the crowd, makes announcements, and provides one of the most bizarre performances I’ve seen from her or anyone else. If her opening minutes are any indication, tonight’s show will be a winner.

I find myself intrigued by drag queens. This interest began years ago when I first saw a drag show and increased when, in a seminary course about contemporary contexts of ministry, I started asking questions about them. I’m entertained by a good performance, but mostly I’m intrigued by the men who do the impersonations—their psychology, personalities, motivations, and lives.

Brandi always gives a good drag performance, but off stage she lives an even more complicated full-time gender-bending life complete with female hormones and the $5000 breast job she’s telling us about on stage. I feel so rich since I get to be around Brandi on a regular basis. She now styles hair in the same shop where I give massages. In fact, she arranged Jeff’s first massage with me. She appreciates my interest in her life and my attendance at her shows. I welcome her openness and great humor. Brandi may be as complicated a personality as I have ever known; certainly she is exotic in some sense of the word, plus candid, creative, and casual. With her it seems that anything can be said, anything can be done, and anything can be accepted.

Of course, I remind myself that my observations are very limited. I wonder if I find her so intriguing because in her I see none of the defenses that define my personality. I have run into very few of the challenges she experiences and endures daily. But around her I feel like I’m with a combination of several friends from my past: Susie, a very free and funny professional horn player; Dianne, a massage therapist who introduced me to wild life in Denver; Andy, a young artist of great wit and humor; Ronnie, who years ago entertained me with his sexual openness; and Ted, who told me that in San Francisco he was exploring his feminine side. With Brandi I encounter talent, individualism, comedy, good humor, and a passionate engagement with life. I like Brandi. Her life seems the banquet that Auntie Mame was sure most people were missing. The show proceeds.

Crystal Tower, a six-foot-six-inch tall African-American drag queen, enters down the hallway since with her big hair she is too tall for the small stage. I chuckle when her hair piece of huge curls is jarred loose by the door lintel. She keeps her poise and strikes a pose as the musical introduction continues. I’m wowed by her presence: tall, imposing, and important as she stands there in a long-sleeve, ankle length gold lamé dress. Crystal Tower has the stage presence of Nina Simone and delivers a soul piece I’ve heard that segues into a driving R&B piece I’ve not heard. She’s convincing whomever she may be impersonating; I’m impressed. She takes the dollar I wave to get her attention. At the end of her act, she acknowledges the applause with a gracious curtsy.

Scotty Carlisle now enters on stage in a short dress covered with red sequins. Her earrings and large necklace of rhinestones reflect the lights wildly. At age seventy-two, this drag queen shows the legs of a twenty-year-old beauty queen. Scotty looks great and wins the crowd with two torch song impersonations. Red is her color; no doubt about it. My partner Jim and I both approach the stage to give her our dollars. Jim has known her for years. Her saucy, sexy, and scintillating performance pushes along the show.

I sit in a terribly worn-out chair drinking too much beer, and as a result get up to go to the restroom. I’ve already done it too many times and self-consciously wonder what others may think of my many trips down the short hall. But I have to do it anyway. My bladder doesn’t hold all that much. I surely will pay for it tomorrow morning. Oh well, at least I haven’t run out of dollar bills to give the performers.

Finally Twyla comes onstage. I’m pretty sure now I recall her character from some eleven years ago when I met her at a party, a Sunday afternoon ‘I’m-running-for-royalty’ announcement affair. At the gathering Jazz Ann was announcing her candidacy, but Twila, her competition, was there. Jeff asked me if I had voted for Twila. I admitted I did not that year but assured him the following year when he became the great empress of something cosmic I did vote for him. Drag queens have long memories; at least this one does. Whether I actually voted that next year I don’t really remember; my little white lie was probably worthwhile. On stage now Twila wears a different tight-fitting stretchy blouse, extreme miniskirt, blue stockings, high platform heels, and a blue wig (I thought it was going to be chartreuse). Sexy, pouty, and sometimes coy, she’s quite a presence and a great contrast to the man I see in Jeff. Still, he seems sure of himself, and he must be a great planner given his successful career and entertainment hobby. I applaud and whoop and holler enthusiastically as he lip synchs one of his favorite songs that I don’t really know. I am happy to be here; and Jeff is wearing one of Brandi’s blue wigs he tells me as I hand him the rest of my dollars. Jim and I are on our way out to return home. On the short walk, I think of the drag queens and realize that their world despite its name is never a drag.


© 23 November 2012

 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

Posted on

Gay Music by Pat Gourley

Well where to start with this one? I am gay and I do listen to music but I don’t think that imparts any element of queerness to the music I listen to or that any of that music is making me into any bigger queen than I am already. Other than many Furthur CD’s from the past year’s shows that I listen too sort of endlessly in my car I am a frequent user of Pandora.

My current favorite artists on Pandora are anyone Motown connected, Warren Zevon, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan, despite his recent obnoxious commercial during the Super Bowl for Chrysler. Dylan has always admonished his listeners not to ascribe any beliefs or agenda he may or may not have in regards to his music so I take this as license to attach whatever meaning I want to his tunes and I do.

Jerry Garcia was once asked why the Dead did so many covers of other people’s music, often Dylan songs, and his response was “because we are lazy.” I also am basically pretty lazy and Dylan’s music has always provided me over the years with a cheap high to get my politically correct righteousness up and running.

I have said on many occasions that I am missing the gay gene that one needs to appreciate Opera for example or even much of classical music though I do listen to a modest amount of classical music on Pandora. Listening to Opera however requires coercion and medication to happen, my apologies to all the Opera fans around this table.

I have been influenced greatly over the years though by several Opera lovers. This includes Harry Hay who is described in part by Will Roscoe in the introduction to Radically Gay as “an opera queen who has mastered Marxist dialectics…” More than his apparent love for opera I was aware of Harry’s research and genuine fondness for European Folk Music and his numerous attempts over the years to get me to try and introduce the singing of folk rounds into our Denver Radical Fairie activities. He was certainly aware of my fondness for the Grateful Dead but I think he assumed this was just a phase I would eventually outgrow. Or perhaps he had at some point heard my extreme inability to carry a tune of any sort and he thought best to leave well enough alone in this regard.

An interesting queer historical tidbit I will share is that Roscoe, in Radically Gay again, attributes Hay’s research into folk music as a direct contributor to the development of his ‘gay folks are a cultural minority thesis’ that helped launch the Mattachine society. Hay believed that a folk song could convey information beyond just the lyrics. The songs could also serve as vehicles for communicating about repression when the cultures and people involved were under someone’s heel.

Pat Gourley & Will Roscoe
Photo by Alan M. in October 2009

Harry’s favorite example of this was a folk tune used in 1622 by Dutch freedom fighters to help recruit and organize disparate villagers who did not speak the same language. The name of this tune was “Bergen op Zoom.” The Dutch resistance in World War II used the same song also. Harry brought this folk tune to the fledgling Mattachine [Society] in 1950 and the group adapted it in their membership initiation ceremony. I have not had much luck in finding an English translation but have brought a copy in Dutch I believe and perhaps someone here can help. For those who might have more interest in this connection Hay made between folk music and queer identity I would refer you to Radically Gay (Will Roscoe, editor: 1996) specifically the chapter titled “Music…man’s oldest science of organization”.

Harry never gave up though on the potential power of music, folk in particular, as a form of dialectics in action. A way to facilitate communication between Fairies that could lead to further exploration and discovery as to our true natures. In fact he was sending me copies of Rounds for gay men to use when getting together socially well into the 1990’s as I recall. I will refrain from launching into the many discussions I had over the years with Harry and his partner John that addressed the dialectic method of discourse as a means of eventually reaching consensus. Harry was always about consensus and shunned the rule of the majority. He thought queer folk and fairies in particular were potentially very adept at consensus and that one way to set the stage for such communication was to gayly sing Rounds, something I think he felt was an intrinsic form of gay music.

© February 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.

Posted on

Time by Michael King

As we all know time is the measured sequential relationship of the movement of objects in relation to one another or as we experience time it is the experiential intensity of intellectual and/or emotional focus. In actuality there is only the present but at this stage of our experience we exist in the universes of time and space. When we do experience being in the present, our abilities to more fully grasps our beingness increases.

I never was a fan of George Burns, however his comment that “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old,” is perhaps one of the better statements about our choosing to experience time.

One of my ideas of how I might relate to time is to recognize that each generation has a different socio-political environment. The various stages of the industrial developmental era has transitioned into the technological- communications era which is especially challenging to my age group. Time is experienced in the influence of technological nanoseconds, slow computers, texting, on line bill paying, rush hour, TV dinners or impersonal fast food consumption and when to take our high blood pressure pills. The social environment changes and along with it changes how we perceive time.

Many like me prefer to avoid the latest gadgets that hit the market, being glued to our cell phones, texting worthless messages and paying high prices to be up to the minute with the latest fad. I don’t want to take the time to keep up. I’m retired and want to sit back and relax, do something old fashioned and read or write with a pencil in a notebook.

But no, I now spend hours on a computer when it was only a short time ago I was glad not to have one.

Time, time consuming, no time to contemplate, no time just to do nothing, the telephone rings and it’s another recorded message that got through the no call list. Try being with a group of people having a supposedly intelligent conversation and two cellphones ring, the people at the next table are each texting, at the other tale we are listening to a loud one-sided conversation that doesn’t seem to make since. Is it time for me to make adjustments to the changes in society? How do I adjust so I am living in the present? How much time do I have to be more integrated into the changing society? Why should waste my time doing so? Is it time to withdraw in isolation and escape the pressing demands of the technological and micro communication era? What about the information age?

I am hooked on Google. I can find out about practically anything I want to know if I just put in the right search terminology. I can’t imagine how my life would have been if I’d had Wikipedia when I was I college. But then the times were different.

Now for the clincher, time is a concept. It may be a measure. It may seem like a reality. I may look at my watch or my cellphone. I may attend an event at a particular time. I have experienced transcending time. I have lost time. I have had plenty of time and then been late.

In traveling around the world I have seen many different kinds of sun dials or contraptions to measure time. Some watches and clocks are responsive to a totally accurate measure of time within micro moments of an accepted absolute. It’s still just a concept that measures relative relationships of an infinitesimal fraction of the universe of universes and still seems to have way too much control over our lives.

Perhaps we should take time to smell the roses.

© 20 March 2013



About
the Author

  

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

Posted on

Male Dancing — Same Sex Dancing by Louis

CNN International presented a news report on developing new trends in ballet.

They asserted that there is a “masculine ballet.” The viewer gets a sample.

Another new genre is androgynous ballet. Viewer gets a sample. The sample ballet skits are performed by members of the Royal Ballet in Covent Gardens in London.

I agree with the wholesome experimental side of the Royal Ballet, but, in my opinion, ballet itself is basically feminine. The beloved spot-lighted ballerina is surrounded by masculine subordinate helpers. Ballet is fine for what it is.

However, I have seen other genres of artistic dancing in which the male anatomy, especially the muscular system, are sort of “analyzed” by a vigorous athletic dance routine accompanied by an intense loud rhythmic music. One of the few examples of “masculine dancing” I have seen in the past is the Russian sabre dance.

Many years ago I saw a dance presentation on a VHS tape put out by a gay male porn film company. The dance routines themselves were not porno-graphic although they were certainly erotic. There were two dance routines, both performed by a solo male dancer. One wore a G-string. He strutted and stretched and stomped and showed off his muscles. For me it suggested a completely new genre of artistic dancing. The accompanying music was pounding and pulsating.

The other dancer wore nothing but cowboy chaps and a Stetson hat. Both dancers were quite erotic but tasteful enough that they could have been presented to the general adult public as artistic dancing.

The CNN report on expanding the boundaries of the ballet also reminded me that until recently almost all kinds of art presented to the public are based on an exclusively heterosexual model. Boy falls in love with girl, girl plays hard to get, boy proves himself worthy perhaps by becoming a military hero. Boy wins girl. There is perhaps an epilogue, boy becomes a man, marries woman, they have children (make babies) and live happily ever after. This is how it is in literature (novels, poetry, short stories), in painting, sculpture, decorative arts, music, cinema. There is nothing else.

Of course, we know this leaves out tens of millions of people. This general presentation of art to the public from the powers that be was a dishonest, skewed presentation of what it means to be human. Fake-art.

The androgynous ballet routine as presented by the CNN report is a giant step forward. It acknowledges there are millions of androgynous people in the world, the intersexes. Effeminate men (and yet to be considered masculine women).

The scenario that would appeal to me is a hairy macho man, falls in love with another hairy macho man, and, after a proper courting ritual, they become a couple and live happily ever after. They are successful personally. If somehow they wind up taking care of a bunch of kids, that would be another big plus. Up to now we have been virtually invisible, non-existent.

There should be an honest artistic expression acknowledging us, who we are, what we are and what we really feel.

© 8 March 2014

About
the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

Posted on

A Visit to the Doctor/Nurse by Lewis

This story is not just about one visit to a doctor or nurse. It involves multiple visits to several doctors. But it is all just one story. It does not have a happy ending. Nor does it paint a particularly flattering picture of the state of the health care industry in the U.S. today. The names of the medical professionals have been abbreviated to obscure their true identities. The source material was not my personal recollection primarily, though I was present for each of the events, but was taken from my late husband’s personal journal, written at the time of the events in question.

In the summer and fall of 2003, Laurin’s PSA level began to rise. He was 77 years old. At one point, his PSA level was measured at 19–almost double what was considered to be on the high side of normal. His doctor, Dr. S, recommended a biopsy of his prostate. On this particular visit, Dr. S. was accompanied by a young female intern, who was “shadowing” him. Dr. S. asked if it was OK if she was present for the visit. Laurin consented.

In the corner of the doctor’s office was an unusual type of lamp. It rested on the floor with a long neck that curved from vertical to horizontal and had a small, elongated but high-powered lamp on the end. I asked Dr. S. what the lamp was for. He said, “I’ll show you”. He asked Laurin to lie back on the examination table and pull down his underwear. He placed the light at the end of the lamp under Laurin’s scrotum and turned it on. With the light behind it, the scrotum became translucent. Dr. S. said, “See that? That’s water.” I could not begin to imagine what his point was.

Our next appointment was even more bizarre. It was a Monday. Apparently, Dr. S. was intending to perform the biopsy on Laurin’s prostate. However, Laurin and I were both confused on that point. Consequently, we had not done the necessary prep. In addition, Laurin (and I) had a number of concerns about possible adverse effects of the biopsy. (Biopsy of the prostate involves inserting an instrument through the anus. Triggering the device causes a hollow needle-like device to penetrate the wall of the rectum and snatch a bit of tissue from the prostate gland. If any procedure is likely to invoke queasiness in a male patient, including me, it is this one.)

Dr. S.’s response was to basically go ballistic. After assuring us that complications have arisen from less than 0.1% of such tests he added, “If you (meaning Laurin) were a 5-year-old, I would simply tell you to lie down and take it.”

Well, that was the end of our doctor-patient relationship with Dr. S. We started seeing another urologist, Dr. H. He informed us that Laurin’s PSA was at 9. No explanation was given for the apparent sudden drop. In addition, Laurin’s Gleason Score–a measure of the aggressiveness of the cancer–was 7. These numbers are borderline-positive for Stage IIa prostate cancer.

The recommended therapy for Laurin was radioactive seed implants, also known as internal radiation therapy. This involves inserting a large number of tiny pellets of a radioactive isotope, such as plutonium, into the prostate gland. In Laurin’s case, approximately 70 of these tiny pellets were placed, one-at-a-time, into his prostate by a radiological oncologist, Dr. T. The patient is given a local anesthetic and the process takes less than an hour. The after-effects are mild and short-lived. I was in the waiting room of the doctors’ clinic the entire time. Eventually, the prostate dries up–I won’t say is fried–so that it looks like a date…or raisin, I’m not sure which.

On one of the follow up visits with Dr. H., Laurin was in the examining room waiting for more than a few minutes. When Dr. H. came in, he couldn’t find some instrument that he needed and in a pique of righteous rage at the negligent nurse, with his arm swept everything on the counter onto the floor. I could hear the commotion in the waiting room. Time to look for urologist number three. (Some time later, I asked Dr. T, the radiological oncologist, who was really quite civil and was himself suffering from a rare form of bone cancer, “What is the deal with urologists, anyway?” He answered to the effect that urologists are notoriously emotional creatures, which I interpreted as, “When it comes to your dick, don’t get sick.”

Recently, medical researchers have been telling men that they should stop getting routine PSA tests if over a certain age. They tell us that a very high percentage of us will develop prostate cancer–somewhat like Alzheimer’s Disease–but that it is very slow growing and we could very well die of some other cause first. Laurin was given similar counseling by Dr. H. early on. Yet, doctors don’t put croissants on the table by not treating disease. I don’t know what Laurin’s life would have been like had he not had the internal radiation therapy. I do know what his life was like for years after the treatment, however.

Fecal incontinence, according to Dr. T., affects only about 5% of men who have had the seed implants. Just another seemingly inconsequential factor in balancing prostate cancer treatment against letting it run its course. Other friends of mine who have had surgery to remove the prostate ended up with a perforated rectum or lifelong impotence. In terms of the impact upon a man’s quality of life after age 75, I would have to say that fecal incontinence must be the worst of the three side effects. The horrors Laurin and I went through are too embarrassing and humiliating to attempt to describe here. Let me just say that they led to him having to put severe restrictions on his social life, undergoing a colostomy, and suffering the complete loss of his self esteem.

Let me end this diatribe with this caveat: the medical profession will never say “No” to a decision to fight cancer with everything you’ve got. Medical costs during the last year of life account for an enormous chunk of Medicare dollars expended. In America, we tend to believe in “fight to the last ounce of your strength” or, as Dylan Thomas wrote:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,


Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

However, if the light has faded to a dung brown, perhaps it’s dying be a blessing.

© 22 June 2013 




About the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Posted on

What’s Your Sign? by Gillian


I’m a sign of the times.

I am a woman with more freedom than any previous generation in the history of humankind.

I have freedom of expression, and self-determination of my life, which women of the past could scarcely dream of.

I vote, a privilege not extended to all women in the U.S. until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although in Colorado, women gained the right to vote in 1893.

I have complete control over my own property, a privilege not extended to American women until 1900.

I can even purchase my own property, a privilege I was astonished to find not extended to me in 1966. I had a good job and determined to buy a house; a very modest, two-bedroom frame house, the likes of which have mostly become “scrape-offs” in recent years. However, I found that although I could qualify with my income, I could not get a loan. This refusal certainly had nothing to do with my being a lesbian; it would take another 20 years for ME to figure that one out! It was because …. What would happen if I became pregnant? As an unmarried woman I had no one to pick up my debts when I had to quit work. (Hey, perhaps being a lesbian might actually have been an advantage!) Poor innocent little ol’ me. I had no idea that only one in a thousand women (0.1%) owned homes in 1960, but, WOW, by 1970 we zoomed all the way up to a shaky two in a thousand (0.2%). Currently, single women are around 20% of homebuyers while single men account for only 10%.

Just in my lifetime, how things have changed. I own my home, I own and drive my car, I manage my own money. I haven’t worn a skirt since I retired; I am free to follow fashion or ignore it. I am free to follow social mores or ignore them.

I talk about religion and politics, very much verboten in my youth, and, still worse, about sex!

I have lived with my beautiful Betsy for over 25 years. Far from causing us to live in fear, this fact does not seem to faze anyone among our acquaintances, friends, and families. And now, in July 2013, neither does it, according to the Supreme Court, threaten all those straight marriages out there. Which, by the way, are failing at a rate exceeding 50%.

Like many older people, I get a bit curmudgeonly at times, bemoaning today’s world and muttering on about how things are not what they used to be.

How happy I should be that they are not!

I have lived, and am living, in the best possible time.

I am indeed, and delighted to be, a sign of the times.

© 6 July 1913 

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.

Posted on

May They Rest In Pieces by Betsy

I started smoking cigarettes in high school along with most of my classmates. It was, after all, the thing to do–the cool thing to do. Seventeen years old or so, we were old enough, cigarettes were relatively inexpensive at the time, and it was a way to feel more grown up thanks to the magazine ads. Smoking at home or in the presence of my parents was not an option for me, but that was not so important. What was important was us kids smoking in the presence of each other. The same was true in college only by then smoking with my parents was acceptable and absolutely everyone smoked it seemed. Makes sense. The tobacco industry was in its hay day at the time making more profits than ever and more than most industries.

That was the 1950s. Fast forward about eight years. Now a mother with young children cigarette smoking was not so fashionable and smoking’s hazards to human health were beginning to be realized and made known to the public. So my husband and I gave up the habit and became nonsmokers or rather ex-smokers.

Quitting then was not easy. But it was do-able and we successfully went cold turkey one day.

In the early 1980s my life started to change. My children were grown up, I started the coming out process, I knew my marriage would end as a result, and I felt the need of a crutch other than my support group. So without even thinking (big mistake!) I turned to my old friend, cigarettes. I could always quit later. No problem. I had done it before.

One week of the addictive behavior and one week of inhaling the addictive substance and I was back to where I had left off all those years ago–smoking at least a pack a day. Only this time I knew that it was hazardous to my health.

I must have felt some shame in my behavior because I didn’t want my husband or children to know I was smoking. So I did it in private. Never mind. I needed it now and I could quit later. I had done it before.

By 1990 my life had calmed down. I had gone through an amicable divorce, I still had the stable job I loved, and I had been through two stormy short term relationships, and I had met Gill, the love of my life and we were now in a committed relationship. I hated the fact that I smoked cigarettes, but I was truly hooked. I tried and tried but I couldn’t stop. I read books and articles on the subject, I took classes, I went to support groups, and there were a multitude of groups to choose from. Many people were trying to quit smoking in those days. In fact “how to quit smoking” was becoming a profitable industry. Advertisements for quitting smoking aides were abundant. I often wondered about the ad that declared that you could “quit smoking in less than two weeks” using their technique. Please. It takes at least ten years of not smoking to know that you are finally unhooked.

I will never forget one of the groups that I attended for only one trial session. The leader was ruthless. She was paid well, I am sure, because the cost of the class was considerable (if one chose to join it after trying one session). That leader, in the course of performing her job, humiliated a man who confessed that he had given in to temptation and had lit a cigarette but had not inhaled. She literally kicked him out of the group in front of everyone for the sin of backsliding. This action, I am sure, was supposed to be a deterrent to back sliding for the others. Well, it deterred me from paying the considerable fee and going back to that group.

A couple of years of this back and forth in and out of smoking behavior was becoming tiring and trying. My main problem was not so much the addiction to the behavior and the substance, rather I hated being dependent on something, especially something that was not good for me in any way. How many packs of cigarettes did I buy, smoke one and then throw the rest away somewhere like in a dumpster where I could not get to them later when the craving started. It was making Gill crazy too. “Either quit smoking or quit quitting, she said one day.”

Of the many words of advice I read on the subject, two in particular stuck with me. “Realize and accept that you will fail and back slide maybe many times even after you have made a strong commitment to quitting,” I read. Do not beat yourself up for this; do not view yourself as a failure. When it comes, wait the craving out. It WILL go away. Just keep trying and keep up the commitment.

The second piece of advice I found helpful for some strange reason I do not understand, was this. Make it a ritual. Take cigarettes outside and bury them deep in the ground, say goodbye, and grieve for them. One of my last cigarette purchases succumbed to this act of finality, this memorial service. For some reason it worked for me. Maybe I was just fed up and ready. Whatever the reason all I can say is “may they rest in pieces.”

© 28 January 2013 

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.

Posted on

What’s Your Sign? by Will Stanton

I am hoping that my sign does not become the humorous road-crossing sign that I downloaded from the web. Someone made and planted next to a street a road sign stating, “Warning. Geezer Crossing.”

On the sign, there was an image of a bent, old man with a cane. And in the background of the photo, was an actual bent, old man with a cane with an identical profile, slowly crossing the road. Funny, but a little sad, too.

When it comes to astrological signs, I cannot say that I “believe” in the art. My parents drummed into me to be, in their way of thinking, always “realistic.” So, I do not look at the daily horoscopes, nor do I ask to have astrological charts made for me. I have to say, however, that way back in college, a girl expressed a desire to do my chart; and the results were surprisingly accurate, even in small details. I found it to be somewhat interesting, but I stuck it away in a cupboard and never have referred to it in order to make decisions in life. I regarded it with the same mild curiosity as I have with the revelations of people who have read the lines in my palms or looked at Tarot cards. Those, too, seemed to be accurate. But again, I never felt that there was a practical use for that information. Maybe I missed out on something. Maybe I might have made better decisions in life.

I suppose that I could claim that various other signs, other than astrological, represent me, at least to some degree. The treble and bass clefs found on musical scores might be considered to be representative of my nature, music being a major interest of mine. Unfortunately, retardando might be my current sign, because I appear to be slowing down. Allegro, or more so, prestissimo, as I felt in my youth, no longer are my signs, although I wish that they were.

I am aware that, especially during rush-hour, many drivers utilize various signs. Those are not my signs; I don’t use them. I prefer not to be run off the road or shot. I use my fingers trying to play piano.

I do not know sign language. Perhaps more of us should. That would be considerate, should we encounter a hearing-impaired person. In addition, I certainly wish that, when my friends and I hope for a pleasant dinner in a restaurant, that far more people would use sign language as opposed to having too many drinks and then speaking extremely loudly and shrieking with laughter. In one restaurant, the noise was so intense that a couple and I gave up trying to carry on a conversation. They always carry ear plugs with them for loud movies, and they stuck in their ear plugs. I don’t blame them. The food was good, but we are not going back to that restaurant unless it is on an off-time.

There are signs that I prefer to use a lot. These are non-verbal signs that I use to communicate with others my affection and approval, my caring and empathy. A genuine smile has become one of my most naturally employed signs. Especially in today’s world, there is too little of that.

© 5
February 2013

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.