Month: December 2014

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All My Exes Live in Texas by Ricky

        After graduating college in May of 1978, I was commissioned a
Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force (Security Police) and stationed at
Malmstrom AFB, in Great Falls, Montana.  During
that summer, I attended Camp Bullis near San Antonio, Texas for training in
security police officer duties, policies, procedures, and combat field
skills.  The first four weeks were
devoted to classroom activities and physical fitness.  The next six weeks were taught under field
conditions to hone the skills we read about in the classroom.
        One of those skills was map reading and orienteering (not to
be confused with sexual orientationeering). 
The highlight of that portion of our training involved day and night
navigation using a map and compass to follow printed directions from one point
to another.  The first set of
instructions was given us at our starting point.  We had to follow that instruction to find the
next leg of our course and so forth for a total of ten legs.  The destination of each leg was a “soup can”
mounted on top of a 3-foot post.  There
were 75 such posts scattered around the 3 square miles of our training area so
it was vital that we used the map and compass accurately or we would not arrive
at the correct final destination.
        I had done this type of compass course in the Boy Scouts so I
was not intimidated by the task and found it to be rather fun.  We had to follow the course in teams of
three.  I don’t know what the others did,
but my team drew our course out on the map and marked the desired destination
with an “X” and then walked the route. 
As we completed each leg, we drew out the next leg and added another
“X”.  No one was shooting at us since
this was training and not combat, so we had an easy time following the course
as drawn on the map except for the oppressive heat.  Due to the rolling hills, gullies, and
scattered light and dense vegetation, we would take a compass sighting and send
two of us ahead a convenient number of yards to establish a straight line.
        The legs were of varying lengths with some as long as a mile
from one point to another.  A one-degree
error over a mile distance could cause one to miss the destination by several
yards.  The target posts with the “soup
cans” containing our next set of co-ordinates were not all easily seen.  Many were placed such that one could not see
it until you passed it and looked back. 
Several were deliberately placed inside thickets of scrub brush that had
grown several feet high.  And there was
the constant watchfulness for Texas sized spiders, scorpions, tarantulas, and
snakes all while counting our steps and detouring around thickets too wide to
push through.  As I said, the day light
course was easy, but the night course was a different matter.
        The night course was the same event obviously without the
benefit of sunlight and in our case, without moonlight either.  With only flashlights, it was difficult to
send two teammates ahead to establish a straight line for walking.  We still had to deal with the local
“critters” and also the smelly night prowling ones too.  After completing the first leg with all its
difficulties, I decided to cheat a little. 
Well, it wasn’t really cheating because we were doing a compass course
and orienteering after all, and in a combat situation, it’s the result that
counts not the method.  And besides, I
really did not want to be walking around Texas all night dodging spiders,
snakes, and skunks looking for some elusive “soup can” on a post.
        Therefore, I had my team switch to nighttime orienteering using
a method not taught in our classroom experience, but taught in my Boy Scout
troop night games—celestial navigation using the stars as a guide.  After we took our compass heading and placed
the “X” on the map, we picked out a star on the horizon that was in-line with
the desired course and just walked towards that star counting our steps.  Once we switched to that method, the course
went very fast indeed.  In fact, my team
was the first one done not only for the night course, but also for the daylight
course.
        I imagine that all my “Xs” on those maps are still somewhere
in Texas, most likely in a landfill somewhere on Camp Bullis or possibly their
ashes from an incinerator are blowing around Texas on the wind.
        My only other “exes” are in Texas for sure.  My ex-president, LBJ, is buried there and the
“ex-decider” is apparently on his ranch attempting to create excellent works of
art and beauty.
© 13 January 2014
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.
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The Sweetest Touch by Phillip Hoyle

Given my sweet tooth I certainly would recognize and appreciate anyone who personified sweetness, but for some reason I have no recollection of ever meeting such a person. Although I cannot recall anyone, I have experienced sweet moments with special people. I recall what follows ever so clearly.

All the busses with their crisscross routes in my Capitol Hill neighborhood and the fact that I knew schedules well enough to judge which one to catch fascinated my nine-year-old grandson Kalo. We’d be ready to go downtown and I’d wonder aloud if we should wait for the Number Ten—an every 20 minute bus along East 12th Avenue—or catch the Number 12—an every 30 minute bus along Downing that in those days, some eleven years ago, turned toward downtown on 16th Avenue—or walk three blocks to catch the ever-interesting Number 15—an every 15 minute bus on East Colfax with both local and limited busses that stopped at Downing. Kalo thought his granddad quite intelligent and looked longingly at every bus that sped by.

When Kalo was ten years old he told his parents he wanted to go to Denver to paint with his grandpa Phillip instead of attending summer church camp. Calls were exchanged and a date agreed upon. For years I had programmed summer educational experiences for children, but now I faced a new challenge: to plan a weeklong art experience for one child with one ageing granddad as the solitary staff. I called my one-week plan the “Young Artist’s Urban Survival Camp” and looked forward to the week. I knew the time would require many and varied art projects and for my grandson travel around the city by bus! Finally the day dawned and Kalo arrived. I met him at the airport gate. We rode the Skyride from DIA, took the Shuttle to Civic Center Plaza, and transferred to another bus to go up Capitol Hill. Our week was off to a great start; he loved the transportation!

That week the two of us did a heap of artwork. We visited museums, galleries, an outdoor arts festival, and the annual PrideFest. Probably just as important for Kalo, we rode busses. On one of our outings we transferred to the Light Rail. Also we walked. Since Kalo was from a small city and had lived most of his life in the country, I was a bit cautious when we were crossing streets. I’d give instructions and sometimes take his hand until I was sure he was alert to what could happen. Then one afternoon on an outing to the Denver Art Museum, when we rode the Number 10 down to Lincoln and were getting ready to cross the busy intersection at 12th Avenue, Kalo grabbing my arm cautioned me about the traffic. “Grandpa, be careful.”

I thought how sweet this changing of responsibilities was—one of the sweetest interactions of our ten year relationship. I who had long cared for people in a thirty-year ministerial career, who in my five years in Denver had watched over two partners during their deaths, who had given countless therapeutic massages—many to very ill persons—was in Kalo’s simple, thoughtful act being taken care of by a precocious ten-year-old grandchild. I received his act of kindness and thoughtfulness as a sweet moment. Of course, I also saw the act as a portent of what happens between generations: someday he and others would take care of me.

We had a great week on public transit, a mountain hike, and watching the PrideFest parade; and did artwork that had us painting, constructing collages, and making rubbings. But my favorite experience was receiving Kalo’s sweet and practical gesture for the safety of his grandpa.

Yesterday a young-adult Kalo with his younger sister Ulzii, their dad, and two friends, came to Denver. We have begun lots of talk. Perhaps I’ll remind him of this sweetest moment!

© 30 March 2014 – Denver

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

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Clothes by Pat Gourley

I really was never much of a clothes person. Growing up on a
farm did not lend itself to high fashion and certainly not in rural Indiana in
the 1950’s. My family could certainly be considered lower middle class even in
the heady economic postwar years and clothing budgets were always tight. Also
attending Catholic grade school and continuing on with the Holy Cross nuns
through high school dress codes if not uniforms were required. I wonder in
hindsight if perhaps my parent’s real motive for insisting on Catholic
education wasn’t that the dress codes really cut down on clothing expenses?
I often did farm chores in the morning before catching the
school bus and the most important thing on my mind was not my regimented
clothes for the day but making sure I did not smell like pig shit going out the
door. As soon as I got to college my hippie days started in earnest and we know
what fashion mavens’ hippies can be.
Thanks to some rather ironic and unfortunate body changes due
to HIV medicines where one wastes extremity fat but seems to pile it on in
one’s mid section viscerally I have become a total fan of scrub pants, which
often come with an elastic waste band. The elastic waistband is one of the
great inventions of modern civilization. 
And nurses bless their hearts have made this the primary mode of work
dress. That has meant for years now that I can live almost 24/7 in relative
comfort. I have in fact incorporated wearing black scrub or chef’s pants to
nearly any social outing I participate in. I do own a few sport jackets but
these most often get paired with a tasteful t-shirt and the subtlest black
scrub pants I can find. T-shirts are of course another modern clothing
invention worthy of praise.
As far as shopping for clothes go I would really rather watch
paint dry. They just need to be baggy and loose fitting and of course comfort
rules always over fashion. This is a fashion statement that also endeared me to
the Radical Fairies. Especially when Harry Hay put out with the first call for
a large national gathering and in that call said something to the effect that
if clothing was to be worn at all it needed to be and I quote “flowing
non-hetero garb”. Since this first Radical Fairie gathering was in southern
Arizona in late summer the nudity won out over even the flowing non-hetero garb.
The opposite option to clothes I suppose is no clothes or
that wonderful word ‘nudity’. This option was truly reinforced for me in my
bathhouse days primarily in the 1970’s. The bathes were such a great gay male
creation. I mean lets all get together in place where clothing is truly frowned
on and actually considered rude. Nudity even if a bit of towel is involved
really does throw all pretexts for why we are here out the window. The lack of
clothes in the bathes really was a great facilitator for the main course if you
will, a great time saver.
The bathes though took a real hit in the mid-1980’s with the
AIDS epidemic beginning to really pick up steam and for me personally they were
no longer a legitimate avenue of play. I did miss the communal nudity with many
other gay men and perhaps that is why I was briefly attracted to a group called
the DAN-D’s, an acronym for “Denver Area Nude Dudes” that described itself as a
“nonsexual, social naturist club” in the early 1990’s. I did though only attend
a couple of their events the most memorable being a nude bowling outing
somewhere up in Northwest metro Denver. Trust me even the most buff individual
can look a bit strange pitching a bowling ball down the alley and jumping for
joy at a strike.

I was though delighted to find the DAN-D’s current web site
and that they seem to be thriving almost 25 years after being founded in 1990.
They actually have an event this evening if anyone might be interested. It is a
nude shopping spree at a local men’s underwear store on Broadway. Clothing
apparently not optional but a purchase does not seem to be required. It is
between 5 and 8 PM and I assume the store will be closed for this “private
event”. There is a modest membership fee to join the DAN-D’s but if you hang
out in front of the store you might be able to tag along in as someone’s guest
for the evening.
© 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.
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When I Decided by Gillian

Well, y’know what? If I’m
perfectly honest with myself, (if that is even a possibility for me or for
anyone, but I do my best,) I fear that there are few, if any statements, at
least with reference to my earlier years, that I could make beginning with those
words. At least if I did, they would all end up like this; “When I decided ….
whatever …. I didn’t
really decide at all but just drifted along due to inertia.  Or, was swept away by emotion.  Or, Let someone else decide for me.”
Really! And this came as a surprise to me! I
always thought I made decisions, but looking back I’m not so sure. Much of the time they certainly
did not add up to what I truly consider to be active decision-making; weighing
the odds, listing the choices, analyzing the figures. At best they were passive
decisions, if decisions at all. In my own defense I must say that I never
simply tossed a coin, but maybe even that would have been more pro-active. At
least the coin toss acknowledges that there is in fact a decision to be made. With
me it was often as if I spaced out the necessary decision completely, and, as
if sleepwalking suddenly woke up in a new situation. And to top off this sad
tale of inadequate thinking, it appears to me that sometimes when I did
actually decide something; it was for the wrong reasons. I have been mighty
lucky, then, that most changes I have drifted or been dragged into, have been
very positive.
Take, for example, my decision to go to
college. A good decision made, admittedly subliminally, in order to fix this
queerness I did not even acknowledge having. The men there would be different
from the farm boys at home. I would fall madly in love and live happily forever
after without this unidentified thing eating away at me. A great
decision, my college days were among the happiest in my life, but made for
completely the wrong reason. I hadn’t
been there a week before I fell madly in love with a woman in my class.
After college I fell into deep infatuation
with another woman, who one day casually tossed out the suggestion that we go
to the United States for a year. “OK,” I shrugged, and that was the extent of my
decision-making. Had she suggested an excursion to the South Pole I would have
responded in the same way. Talk about decisions for the wrong reasons! And
letting someone else make them for you.
My “decision” to come to Denver was mighty
casual, as well. I had trailed my ineffectual self around the U.S. in my
inamorata’s
wake, ending up in Houston where she married a very rich and mighty cute Texan,
which put an end to me as her shadow. I might as well start saving the money to
return to England, I thought, gloomily. The new unwanted man in my life had a
friends in Denver and said I should see Colorado before leaving the U.S.
“O.K.”
Another shrug decision. “Why not?”
I cannot even remember really deciding
to go to work for IBM, where I remained for 30 mostly very happy years. I
was working at Shwayder Brothers, later to become Samsonite, when the guy
working next to me said that if I wanted some quick bucks to get myself home, I
should apply at IBM, which at that time was rapidly filling it’s new plant in Boulder with just about anyone
walking in off the street. What an opportunity. It’s difficult in this day and age even to
imagine such a thing, never mind remember the actuality of it. But I don’t recall finding the prospect exciting at all.
“Yeah, O.K.” I responded, “Thanks. Why not”
I never did return to England
permanently, but again I have little recollection of actually making a
conscious decision to stay in Colorado, for all that I recognized I had found
God’s country. It was more a case of
drifting: allowing nothing to happen. In the absence of decisions, the status
quo remains.
My marriage was most definitely a
product of non-decision. (Which is, by the way, nothing like indecision,
which implies at least some attempt to make a decision.) I simply
drifted effortlessly into the vacuum created by my future husband’s needs.
As for coming out, to myself, that
is, there was no decision involved at all. I was picked up by the cowcatcher of
a runaway train and away I went. I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t
get off.
When that train arrived and dumped
me firmly on the ground at it’s
destination, I of course had to leave my marriage. And it was as a result of a
very conscious decision that I left. Not long after that, I came out to
everyone else in my life; another conscious decision. When I asked Betsy if she
would consider actually, really, legally, marrying me last year, that again was
a serious decision.
You see, before I came out at least
to myself, in my early 40’s,
I wasn’t myself. I was an actor plugging
along on the stage of life, playing me. But I was not me. At some
deeply-buried intuitional level, I always knew this. So what did I care what
that person playing me did; where she went or how she lived? Why bother making
decisions about what moves this person, in some ways almost a stranger to me,
makes?
Then I came out and I was me. The
real me. The actor was gone. From then on, of course it mattered what happened
to me. ME. MYSELF. The original. The one and only. You talk about being born
again! Suddenly, in middle age, the real me was born. And I am important to me.
I care for me. I make decisions very carefully for me. I most emphatically do
care what I do and where I go and how I live. Finally and forever, I am me.
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one
alive who is Youer than You.”
―
Dr. Seuss
© 15 August 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.
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Summer Camp by Betsy

Unlike their counterpart the Boy
Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of the USA have historically been accepting
of their lesbian members–girls and adult leaders and professional staff
members.   The policy regarding sexual
orientation is and always has been not to condemn or condone any sexual
behavior, and that displays of or promotion of any lifestyle over another is
inappropriate and has no place in the conduct of adult leaders or girl
members.  Inappropriate conduct sexual or
otherwise is subject to evaluation and condemnation by the administrative
authorities of the organization.
I had a 25 year career as a
professional staff member and about 40 years as a girl member and a volunteer
leader and administrator.  In those 65
years I have known many women both gay and straight who have been dedicated to
the Girl Scout program and ideals.
The Girl Scout program and the
places where it is carried out offer girls something unique; namely, a place
for girls only, a place where girls can carry out their activities and projects
without the presence of boys.  In a
girls-only environment, the dynamics are different from an environment where
boys are present.  Expectations of the
girls are higher and their performance is often higher.  The stereotypes assigned by society to
females usually disappear in an all-girl setting.  Stereotypes of acceptable female roles simply
do not apply in such circumstances. 
Studies have shown clearly that students in an all girl setting
consistently out perform those in co-ed settings.  Girl Scouting offers this all-girl setting
where recreational activities can be carried out.
It seems that homophobia has never
been an issue in my experience in girl scouting with one exception.  Summer camp. 
One can certainly understand how a
college aged lesbian seeking summer employment would be attracted to the Girl
Scout summer camp counsellor job.  How
many times have I heard these words from many of my lesbian acquaintances: “Oh,
you worked for the Girl Scouts?  I was a
summer camp counsellor when I was in college.”
There are very few times the
homophobia monster reared its ugly head in the 25 years I was with Mile Hi
Council staff.   Both were very ugly
indeed. 
I was not involved in the camp
program so I heard this story second hand but I am sure it’s accurate.  During one two-week session of camp somehow
word got out that there were two lesbians on the camp staff–maybe more.  The word got to some of the campers’
parents–parents who did not want their children exposed to homosexuality.  In the middle of the session two of the
parents appeared one day at camp and publicly and loudly demanded that their
children be removed immediately from whatever they were doing.  The mothers were there to take there darlings
home lest they fall under the damaging 
influence of the lesbian counsellors.
The second appearance of the
monster occurred when an acquaintance, the administrator of a camping program
told me that she had been directed by her CEO to be sure not to recruit camp
staff from the lesbian community.  How do
we know an applicant is a lesbian,” she asked.  
“We can’t ask.”  “They all have
short hair,” was the reply from the CEO, who, by the way, herself had never
been known to have anything but short hair.
Ahh! Summer camp.  No wonder I loved it so much myself.  Crawling with lesbians.  How is it that I ended up with a life-long
partner who doesn’t even know what summer camp is!
© 25 August 2014
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.
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Magic by Will Stanton

For some of you, please bear with me for just a moment. Today’s
topic is Magic, and what easier way to start the conversation than with some
references, using them simply as a preface to my main thoughts, references to
the currently very popular books and movies about Harry Potter. We can’t be
more magical than that. Anyone who knows him is well aware of his great magical
powers. After my preface, I’ll then tell you about a few of the things I would do if I possessed such great
powers.
Harry’s special powers came about by, first, his having been
born a wizard, not a mere mortal (or “muggle,” if you will.) Then he
honed his skills and learned many more by attending Hogwarts School. During
those several years, he also gained from practical experience utilizing his
magical powers. Then finally, author J.K. Rowling writes that Harry had
acquired the three instruments of great power: the Elder Wand (the most
powerful wand in the world), the Resurrection Stone (with which one can bring
people back to life), and the Invisibility Cloak (which hides the person
possessing it from Death.) Harry could be the most powerful wizard in the whole
world.
Rowling then writes that Harry, admirably demonstrating his
modesty and his wariness of any one person possessing such vast powers, tosses
aside the Resurrection Stone and then breaks and discards the Elder Wand. Good
old Harry, modest and of good character right to the end. Logically, however,
there was a precedent of someone possessing all three instruments of power
without having abused such powers, Harry’s own friend and headmaster Professor
Dumbledore. He had those great
powers but apparently did not abuse them.
Harry might not have been able to bring back all those good
people who died at the hands of the evil wizard, Lord Voldemort and his
minions, but at least he could have helped to heal the many injured and
traumatized. With a mere flick or two of his wand, he could have rebuilt
Hogwarts that had been left in shambles after the last confrontation with the
evil hordes. I can think of so many additional, magnanimous uses of such
powers.
Yes I admit, if I were Harry, I would have done a few minor
things for myself, too. Why not? For example, why not fix his eyesight so that
he would not have to go around with those eye glasses that always seemed to
become broken? Then, now that Voldemort is gone, he might get rid of the
lightning-scar on his forehead. There was no need to go around the rest of his
life with that mark of evil. And, how about unobtrusively growing an inch or
three, considering that Harry was so short? (I’m talking about his height.)
Now getting on with the supposed reality, this poor world seems
always to have been plagued with hordes of evil Lord Voldemort, those persons who
have caused death, trauma, and great destruction. Some start wars or otherwise
engage in various levels of violence. Crime is rampant. Lack of empathy and
civility permeate humankind. So many people seem to be prone to continually
creating toxic levels of fear, suspicion, intolerance, and hate merely by their
words, words that seem to drip with acid. One such character in Tolkien’s
“Lord of the Rings” was known as “Wormtongue,” a singularly
appropriate name. I guess that such evil is why Canada has outlawed one
American television network from opening an affiliate in Canada. Canada
actually has a law against networks lying. Amazing! I wish that the U.S. had
such a law and it were enforced. The world and our own nation suffer from such
people on a daily basis. Oh, how I would like to do something about that if
only I had great magical powers!
How I also would like to eliminate illiteracy, ignorance,
economic hardship, the sad decline of culture and society, including the
lamentable failure to raise a huge portion of our children so that they become
well prepared, happy, and productive members of society. There is so much that
needs attending to among humankind.
Even without the deficiencies and destructiveness of humankind,
the world itself has plenty of troubles: global warming, natural disasters,
disease, and possibly an asteroid or meteor crashing into the earth. The powers
of nature and the universe appear to be overwhelming; however, some good, solid
magic might be able to tone down the impact of such troubles, even if just a
little.
I know that we all are supposed to accept reality, to not engage
excessively in fantasy; yet it is easy to understand how many of us do see what is and wish how things could be, and then possibly become frustrated. There
are some people who do have sufficient abilities and truly influential
positions where they might make some positive differences. Unfortunately, such
positive people are few and far between. For the rest of us poor souls,
however, slipping into fantastic thoughts and wishes can become rather
attractive. Oh, Harry! Where are your powers when we need them?

© 22 August 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.
Posted on

Favorite Places by Ricky

I
have many “favorite places” depending upon which part of my life I am
remembering.  Only a few can be called
absolute favorites throughout my life. 
What follows is only a listing of those places which are withstanding
the ravages of time upon my memories.

These places are listed in no particular “favorite” order.

1.   Disneyland
– Peter Pan Ride (I first rode this in 1955)
2.   Disneyland
– Alice in Wonderland Ride (I first rode this in 1955)
3.   Lake
Tahoe – Emerald Bay (My first summer home at Lake Tahoe – 1958)
4.   LDS
Manti Temple (Deborah and I married here in 1973)
5.   Mt.
Rushmore, South Dakota (I recharge my patriotism here)
6.   Epcot
Center – Journey Into Imagination with Figment (My family LOVED this ride.  We rode it three times in a row without
getting off the ride to reenter.  This
link is for the newest version not the one we saw years ago.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPr7G-uBmM
  
7.   BSA
Camp Winton (I was a boy camper 2 years and on the “Staph” in 1966.  The “staph” spelling was my idea.  My name is recorded around the “XX” brand
left of center.)
8.   Disneyland
Paris – Space Mountain (My youngest daughter, her friend boy, and I rode this
twice.) 
  
9.   Step-father’s
Tour Boat (I was his deckhand all summer in 1958)
10.   The
California Redwood forest at Trees of
Mystery.  Specifically, the
“Cathedral Trees.”
Cathedral Tree video 1:48
minutes.
The Redwoods

Joseph B. Strauss

Here,
sown by the Creator’s hand.
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand:
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth’s living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now-their splendor gone:
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our days,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials’ span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here, we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awestruck soul;
For here we sense life’s proper goal:

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
to make our world like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, Oh, traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.

© 7 July 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 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.
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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
  

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.