Month: May 2016

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Acceptance, by Ricky

While I was under 6-years old, I enjoyed playing with both boys and girls whenever they were around. I was not particular as to the items we played with either. If I was at my house, we played with my toys and if at another’s home, we played with their toys, which would include dolls if the playmate was a girl.

Somewhere between 3 and 4-years old, one of the girl playmates and I played doctor and we both learned the difference between girls and boys. Of course we got caught, but the visual images could not be erased.

As I aged to 6-years old and above, I gravitated to playing with boys only as the girls suddenly had cooties. I gave up playing with dolls and chose to play more active games like cowboys and Indians or war in an obvious imitation of the movies on television. For some reason, I never wanted to play Peter Pan after I saw the Disney animated feature. Perhaps I did want too, but my other playmates thought playing it was too sissy like.

At age 9 ¾ (not to be confused with platform 9 ¾ in the Kings Cross station), another boy and I fondled each other two nights in a row. Up until then, I never desired to see another person naked, but from those two days forward, I wanted to see other boys’ genitals. I had no desire to see girls’ private areas because I had learned playing doctor that girls have nothing to play with down there whereas, all boys have a built-in toy.

I experienced both oral and anal sex at age 10, learned about masturbation and had my first orgasm at age 11. At 11 I also noticed that I was attracted to some boys but not others. Since, I was still in the girls-have-cooties frame of mind, I thought nothing of it. However, as I continued to age, I became increasingly aware that my schoolmates no longer believed in females having cooties. That is when I began to feel different because I was not attracted to girls, only boys. I didn’t dislike girls and had several classmates that I got along with really well. If the opportunity had presented itself, I would have willingly gone to bed with them. But no such opportunity occurred and I became more and more confused and worried. I kept telling myself that I would probably “grow out of” my interest in males and I accepted that and internalized it for years.

I remained hopeful until 2010, when I finally accepted that I was never going to change and I was, in fact, gay. But now I am confused again.

Based upon my life experience growing up, I believe that children about 5 or 6 began to prefer being around members of their own gender. It is just my opinion as I have never read anything about child development in that context. It is just a self-declared fact I “made up” based upon my observations. So, why am I confused now?

I have recently watched several “coming out” stories that pre-teen and young teens have posted on YouTube. Most of them parallel my experience at that age except for one major difference. In most cases the boys state that they knew they were different at young ages. I didn’t know at that age, so how can they know? Is my so called natural-preference-for-one’s-own-gender-when-young theory real or is it just a desire to play active “boy games” and not passive doll games? Is it really a sexual attraction these video coming out story boys feel or just a non-sexual desire to be with and do boy things that they are misinterpreting as evidence or proof they are gay? Are they, in fact, in the early stages of puberty (as I was) at ever increasingly younger ages and these desires really are “sexual” in nature or just curiosity?

I just don’t know the answer to my questions. Until some straight boys of the same ages tell their stories on how they came out as heterosexual, there is nothing to compare the experiences of the two groups. So, I’ll just accept that I am going to be confused about these questions and probably something else as well for the foreseeable future.

© 21 December 2015

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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Alice’s Adventure in Purple Passionland, by Ray S

The question had been looming in my frustrated mind for at least forty-five minutes. Where the hell am I, and what can I do? In my haste to leave for this dinner date I neglected to confirm the specifics like apartment number. When I had confirmed that I was at the right building, I was unable to find their names on the directory much less their apartment number. This occurred after mindless wandering between a couple of other similar high-rise buildings. In case you wonder why I failed simply to use my cell phone to let them come rescue me from the street people, I couldn’t remember their number. Would the papers announce: “Little old man found comatose under a loading dock; Doctors suspect senior molestation.”

At that moment I looked up to see two men approaching. Who else but Marty and Bob, one of my hosts and the other dinner guest whom I hadn’t seen for at least a year. I dropped my bag and almost floored them as I threw my arms around them and kissed my saviors. “We thought you had forgotten about tonight,” was all they could say in disbelief, probably thinking, “He really must be slipping.”

As dinner was about ready friend Bob produced a small box of hors d’oeuvres and invited all to sample freshly made brownies. They were made by him and Betty Crocker with the addition of Bob’s own prepared formula of something with the unfamiliar name “Lower List” and “Purple Mist.”

Then Marty’s husband Tucker inquired, “Haven’t you ever smoked pot?” He was incredulously amazed that it was possible that pot wasn’t a part of everyone’s life.

Bob allowed as how just a crumb of the “edible” would be okay. “Go ahead; take this chocolately bit. It won’t hurt.” I later learned that all three of the boys were tripping along nicely. I am reminded of Alice and the bottle with the inscription: DRINK ME.

Sometime between the soup and salad courses I began to wonder at Marty’s mastering the kitchen activities, but the plated dinners made it to the table perfectly. About part way into the salad course and then to entrée, I became aware of a soft haze dropping down over the dinner guests. Having my trained eye for color I can describe for you that it was soft and transparent and in shadings of lavender edged in the finest corona of deep purple no more than a thirty-second of an inch wide. I had been told that that little crumb MIGHT start to react but not to worry.

Dessert was a luscious apple strudel a la mode. I looked down at it on its dessert plate, and it looked up at me as if to say: TRY ME, you’ll like it.” I’d heard that before.

I was enveloped in that Purple Mist when I heard the other three discussing:

What can we do with his car?

It’s parked on the street.

Well, he certainly can’t drive it.

They decided to see if I was able to walk. So Tucker decided to see if I could walk twenty feet. Success! So I could accompany Bob to show him if I could find my car, and then he would drive it into the garage. Then what are we going to do with him besides an anti-climax of strong coffee—as if it made any difference.

What fun I was having wallowing in all of this attention. Yes it was another time and place.

Dear Bob had done wonderfully guiding the old sedan to the garage, after which he took leave of our jolly band. For the next three hours some sort of trigger activated my talking machine. Marty and Tucker kept an eye on their errant guest by sitting up and encouraging other-worldly philosophies on how love prevails.

About 3:30 AM Marty pointed me to the guest bedroom with the firm suggestion I fall into the bed. Tucker said “Good night or morning.” and the two of them offed to their own bed, with the assurance I’d be wakened for breakfast.

After some coffee and fruit I found a good degree of sobriety and lots of sleepiness. No more ethereal lavender-purple mist. As I set about the trip back home, I reviewed this most recent TRIP and what gratitude I had for my two Fairy God Fathers.

Pulling out of the garage, I stopped at the gate and looked up to their balcony and there the two of them were waiving their magic wands in a farewell gesture with one hand while holding onto their diamond tiaras with the other.

“Adieu, my two Fairy queens, with love and appreciation for the finer joie d’vie.”

Alice

Denver, © 7 March 2016

About the Author

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Forgiveness, by Phillip Hoyle

I grew up in a religious community that preached forgiveness of sin, that awful impediment to right relationship with the divine. One sought salvation or, more exactly, reconciliation with God and sought baptism as a symbol of the washing away of sin. Our church taught that baptism was not magically cleansing but symbolically so. Magic and miracles belonged to the pre-Enlightenment past. The religion was modern, rational, and even democratic. Still, the religious life and congregational experience were not without feeling. As members tried to live what was often called the Christian life some folk felt forgiveness, others did not.

Forgiveness was tied in with a moral insistence that if we were to be forgiven, we must be forgiving. For me, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to capture the relationship. It ends with these words:

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

To my way of thinking, that sixth line could easily and logically read, “It is in forgiving that we are forgiven.” The religious and moral sentiment was: if we wanted “in” we had to invite others in, if we wanted love we had to love, if we wanted hope we had to offer hope to others.

When I was around twenty-five I talked on the phone to a woman who could not forgive herself for an abortion she had sought years before. From my naïve and inexperienced perspective I suggested that God had already forgiven her. I guess I was kind of pep talking her into a theological affirmation that somehow didn’t address the forgiveness issues in her life. In the ensuing years I replayed that conversation and eventually heard in her voice evidence that she was drunk. (As I said, I was naïve.) I suspect that she probably called a different church every time she took up the bottle. There was something in her behavior that harkened back to experiences, teachings, accusations, probably preaching, and perhaps emotional instability. The only thing I could say about my end of the conversation is that I was open, positive, caring, and long-suffering. Eventually I came to understand how difficult forgiveness could be for some folk, especially in being able to forgive themselves or, in a religious sense, to accept that God has forgiven them. My twenties-something world was so simple. I was not plagued with guilt feelings; I was preoccupied with the challenges of career and family-building, enjoying life in a city church where I wasn’t expected to pray for rain. (I had left small churches in farm towns.)

Over the years of ministerial practice I learned to be more compassionate to and tolerant of other people whose beliefs sometimes seemed pathetic to me. I learned to listen with greater complication and to move myself into work most appropriate to my gifts. I felt good in my ministry. Still I knew more and more that I was living in a strange and probably unhealthy environment. My homosexual proclivity placed me in a precarious position, especially as the conservative powers of the 1980s and 90s focused more and more on a concept of otherness, opposed the gay and lesbian search for freedom as legalizing the unpardonable sin. I knew better. I knew the great humanity of homosexual love, its enriching effects in my own life. I valued my homosexuality as well as my heterosexuality and realized that for this to become generally known would relegate me to outer darkness in the view of many parishioners and even many of my colleagues. They would see me as sinful—you know: he desires the wrong sex and he is not monogamous—sins that even if tolerated in distant relatives certainly could not be countenanced in clergy. Quite often I had to forgive people their ignorance and hate while promoting a strategy and spirit of tolerance, service, and love.

At the family core of my life I knew that whatever happened between my wife and me would be forgiven. I already knew that and trusted the two of us to weather the storms of our relationship. It has been so. She forgave; I forgave. She forgave my needs and the pain I brought to her; I forgave her chosen unawareness and temporary anger. We forgave but still separated, and at age 50 I did not want to spend any time trying to represent my complicated self to the churches of my denomination. I chose to continue my St. Francis perspective and prayer outside that organization although I remain connected with my family and some long-time friends. I presume their forgiveness just as I do the forgiveness of the profligately loving God. And I live in open acceptance of others even when they are not particularly open to me.

Denver, © March 9, 2015


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