Month: June 2016

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Sorry, I’m Allergic, by Phillip Hoyle

I’m
allergic to several fine particles such as house dust, essential oils, and some
burning incense. They sometimes provoke histamine reactions such as itchy eyes,
tears, sneezes, or a runny nose.
In
my late 30’s I became allergic to MSG when it is used in high proportions in
the food it seeks to enhance. I started getting hives when ingesting this food
additive. Originally the itchy red spots showed up just in the hair on my head,
then later in my ears, then on my cheeks, eventually on my neck, and finally on
my shoulders as well as all the other places. The hives tend to itch for about
20 minutes and then subside. A doctor friend gave me Benadryl when I got hives
at a meal. When the medicine went to work some twenty minutes later, I wasn’t
itching but was so sleepy I yawned until our friend left. I decided the
treatment wasn’t really effective for me. I gave up eating anything marked MSG.
In
spring and fall I tend to have congestion in my sinuses. I usually blame
pollens or other things in the air. I abide them and their attending
discomforts, usually without treatment. My relationship with allergies seems
pretty mild and way too lame to provide fodder for stories, a fact I’m actually
happy to report.
But
who wants to hear such good news except the person receiving it or their
partner who may have to suffer with them sneezing, wheezing, blowing, and
complaining? Oh I do snore and wonder if my partner will develop an allergic
reaction to this condition. He rarely complains, and for some reason I almost
never am aware of my snoring.
My
sister Holly was allergic to Tommy Shane, the boy next door. She’d get
congested and develop hives anytime he came around much the same as she would
get when eating fresh strawberries. Fortunately she eventually found a guy she
was not allergic to and they have been married for decades.
No
one in our family was allergic to work.
Sometimes
when fresh cut flowers are on display in the living room I find I have to move
to another room. I blame it on the strong aromas of some of them but suppose
more realistically my reaction is to the pollen they bring into the house, but
to say so seems as lame as telling my history professor my paper was late
because one of the children was ill. Oh well. I just don’t talk much about my
tiny allergies that seem like almost nothing compared with the skin allergies
my mother and my next younger sister endured. They seemed especially reactive
to springtime elm pollen. Mom also was allergic to some household cleaners. She
wore gloves and smeared lots of petroleum jelly on her hands at certain times
of the year.
I
feel fortunate that I am not allergic to any of the art materials I choose to
work with.
 That’s about it. Really boring…
I
can’t even think of a personal story to treat allergies as a metaphor so broad
is my acceptance of people. So you can probably conclude that if I were to make
the excuse, “Sorry, I’m allergic,” I’d probably be lying or at least
exaggerating a non-condition in order to get out of some situation I didn’t
want to cope with or some activity I just cannot abide.
© 15 Sep 2013
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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Queer — A Defining Word, by Pat Gourley

It is quite amazing to me
really how little of my childhood years I remember beyond vague, though some
significant, generalities. I suppose I could view this as suppression of lots
of terrible stuff but I really think it is more a matter of not much out of the
ordinary or worthy of sublimation ever happening. Lord knows my rather intense
at times Catholic upbringing and schooling might have been a source of great
consternation and resulting psychopathology, but for whatever reason I think I
sailed through those years queer as a three dollar bill and largely unscathed.
As I have written before
(my apologies for the repetition) one episode though that has stuck with me was
when I asked my mother what the word “queer” meant.  I think I was about 12 years old when I first
heard it used. She said it was a bad word and I should never use it. I then
went straight to the dictionary but the only definition provided that stuck
with me was that it meant “odd”. I went back to her with this piece of
information but she persisted that it was not a word to incorporate into my
vocabulary. I suspect that I or someone near me had been called a “queer” and
being totally oblivious to any homosexual connection with the word thought this
to be a weird choice especially delivered in less than loving fashion.
Queer
to this day remains a loaded and offensive word by some LBGT folks, despised as
much as the “F” word. The “F” word being “faggot” of course and not “fuck”. I
could have written about “Faggot” as a defining word but thought I had enough
to tackle on my plate with “Queer”. And I actually thought for a fleeting
minute of writing on the word “fuck” one of my favorites but decided to keep it
closer to home. And besides other than this little phrase I ran into on Facebook
the other day I don’t have much more to say about “fuck”: “I have been told I
am going to hell for my excessive use of the word FUCK. I have rented a bus if
any of you fuckers need a ride.” From Fsensitivity Web Site
Back to Queer. Certain
words used to describe us are ones that we have simply and innocently appropriated
like “gay”.  Others are words that have
been used to denigrate and belittle us, some of which we have reclaimed and
others not so much. The use of language to offensively describe some folks as ‘other’
has often been used as a means of control. Though for a minority struggling for
self-definition and empowerment the re-appropriation of often-derogatory words
is I think a legitimate exercise that can enhance identity and liberation. And
such is the case I believe with the word “Queer”.
In looking for the
origins of the word I kind of fell down an Internet rabbit hole. The use of it
as a derogatory term aimed at homosexual folks may well date back to 16th
century Scotland. The actual roots of the word seem perhaps lost to time.
However, my go to person, for meaning of the Queen’s English if you will, remains Judy Grahn and her seminal
work from 1984 Another Mother Tongue. Grahn
states that the original word was “cwer” (c-w-e-r) without directly attributing
any tribal or national origin to that word. After an hour or so of floundering
around the ether a possible source for “cwer” I stumbled on is that it was old
Welsh in origin. However, don’t take that to the bank.
Let me quote Grahn’s take
on the possible meaning of this descriptive moniker:
“
‘Sinful,’ ‘of the devil’ and ‘evil’ are all expressions that have been used
very effectively against gay culture, as has ‘queer’, which derives from cwer,
crooked not straight, kinked. Perhaps the difference between queer and straight
originated very simply with the difference between the straight-line dance of
male/female couples and the Fairy round dance”. From Another Mother Tongue. Page 276.
So perhaps it was a word
used originally to acknowledge that we were different from straight folks in a
rather kinked or crooked sense and that the evil or sinful associations were
added later. Maybe we were the ones who preferred to dance in circles rather
than in straight lines and this bit of nonconformity was one thing I hope,
among many, that set us apart. And of course anyone set apart from the norm was
often then fair game for ostracism that could become nasty.
I suspect there is a rich
history to this word “Queer” that is lost to the mists of time. I am choosing
to reclaim it as a defining word, one that helps set us apart from the
hetero-hordes. A word that hints at our uniqueness and the valuable
contributions we bring to the human tapestry by way of our otherness.
© 19 Feb 2016 
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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Cool – Barak Obama, by Louis

Cool as a cucumber, means
people with a calm, unflappable demeanor. Recently, “cool” has been a
colloquial adjective used to describe President Barack Obama. “Cool” can also
mean, “aware of issues and problems that most people are not aware of.” Again
President Obama has been described as having all these “cool” qualities. At one
time, Mr. Obama had these qualities, but he has caved in to the corporatist democratic
tendencies of his party so that he has slowly but surely turned into yet
another unsuccessful president.
It was good he was
against the War in Iraq. But recently he has sent U. S. troops back in and is
renewing a battle the American public is against. Mr. Obama seems perfectly
comfortable with perpetual pointless war in the Middle East despite the
widespread opposition by the American public. He happily continues a pointless
endless war in Afghanistan. Another war the American people are against. I
think that is one reason Senator Rand Paul became rather popular in Colorado.
He spoke out against our unthinking interventionist foreign policy that does
not benefit the American public in the slightest. Somebody is benefitting, who?
 Mr. Obama has supported trade deals that are
designed to disenfranchise American labor unions, to disenfranchise working
people. Many of his liberal allies have told him his disastrous trade policies
such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will result in millions of Americans
losing their jobs. After a while, Mr. Obama answered that the trade deal will
create many new jobs in the U. S. NAFTA and CAFTA have already decimated
thousands and thousands of towns and small cities in the U. S. TPP will be even
worse.
Mr. Obama does not seem
to care. When the public service employees unions were trying to recall Scott
Walker in Wisconsin, Mr. Obama’s silence was deafening. Somehow, despite some
liberal happy talk, Mr. Obama has turned into a hostile bellicose, pro-Wall
Street, corporatist Democrat indistinguishable from the most obnoxious
Republican right-wingers.
Historically Barack Obama
will be counted as another failure as a U. S. President.
© 9 May 2016 
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.
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You’ll Never Know, by Gillian

No, I probably won’t, but I suspect that expression might soon need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. It surely must be close to extinction. Extremely popular as recently as our younger days, attitudes have changed so much that people rarely say, or even think, these days, you’ll never know … whatever.

Not only people, but computer systems, know more about us than we do ourselves. King Soopers knows what I eat, Argonaut knows what I drink, Amazon knows what I read. A part of us seems to resent and fear this, yet we relentlessly feed the world endless information.

We shout everything from the rooftops. We tell everyone everything, from inane trivia to what would once have been deep dark secrets.

Take Facebook for instance. (Please, take it! I don’t want it.) So many people telling me so much more than I could ever need, or want, to know. Am I supposed to be enthralled by the final success of some friend of a friend’s grandchild’s potty training? Or someone whose name means nothing to me proclaiming that he, without fail, flosses his teeth six times every day? Or the myriad of lunatic responses to this claim from people I don’t know and don’t want to know?

I’d like to say that I hate Facebook, but in all honesty I simply stay away from it so I’m not involved enough to hate it. I do, however, regret the way in which it has created impersonal communication from the personal.

Once upon a time – and not so very long ago – cousin Fred would send a postcard when he visited New York. It would have the same tired photo of the Empire State Building on the front, and some version of wish you were here on the back. Nevertheless, how nice of him, you would say, to think of me. It was personal. It made you feel good.

Now, you look at Fred’s photo-journal on Facebook, detailing his trip to Bangkok. He recounts every event of every day, down to what he ate for dinner. You can imagine his trip much more vividly then you did from the old postcards, but what happened to that warm fuzzy you used to get from them? What happened to the personal touch? What happened to that oh how nice of you to think of me feeling? I haven’t a clue whether he ever gave me a thought or not. He sent this report out into the ether to be read by anyone who cared to do so. I would really get more out of a boring photo and a banal message; at least it was for ME.

A while back I heard via a mutual friend that a good friend of mine had just returned from New Zealand.

‘I didn’t even know she’d gone to New Zealand!’ I wailed.

‘It’s all been on Facebook,’ she replied, looking pitying and puzzled as if I’d just told her I couldn’t read.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of old lesbians Betsy and I belong to were joined for lunch by a few teenagers who shared with us their experiences with being …. um …. and here I shall begin to flounder because I am not too sure what they would consider the politically correct terminology. My apologies to any of you wonderful young people who happen ever to read this, which I think highly unlikely. I think their version of the alphabet soup was LGBTQIA+, the QIA being questioning, intersex, and asexual. What an education these kids are. They talk with assurance about identifying as gender-queer, gender-fluid, non-binary, and half the time I’m not sure even what they’re saying. It’s another language. And here we were, many of us in this room, when we were that age, ignorant of even one word to describe what we knew, at some level, ourselves to be. I recall that huge hurdle, as it appeared at the time, we had to leap in order simply to inform others that we were attracted to those of the same sex, or that we were trapped in the wrong body. Can you even begin to imagine trying to explain to your parents that you are never sure, at any given moment, whether you will feel that you are female or male, or to which sex you may feel attracted. Or that you chose not to identify as any gender. You just are.

For some of them, their preferred pronoun is ‘they’ rather than he or she, which is vaguely possible in the English language but when I try it I find it very confusing.

It was all starting to make my head hurt.

Don’t get me wrong though, I have every admiration for these young people: out to the world, apologizing for nothing, completely proactive on their own behalf. I’m not foolish enough to think it’s easy for them, but none of them is ever going to think, in some secret, inner, self, you’ll never know ….

Everyone knows, and I bet they’re all out, loud and proud, on Facebook.

Perhaps, if I used Facebook, I would be more familiar with the the language of today’s LGBTQIA etc. youth, though I am not ashamed to admit my deplorable ignorance face to face.

Maybe I just have to accept that if I am to keep up with what is happening in the world in general, and with those nearest and dearest, I shall have to resort to Facebook. But I’d still rather receive a postcard.

© November 2015

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Slippery Sexualities, by Will Stanton

When it comes to sexuality, both Mother Nature and
many humans have a peculiar way of dealing with it.  Starting with non-human animals, there are
several creatures that display surprising characteristics.
For example, male mourning-cuttlefish actually display
male or female physical characteristics depending upon which cuttlefish are
beside them.  Males can appear to be male
on one side and female on the other when next to another male.  The other male thinks he’s seeing two females
but no rival male.  Clown anemonefish all
start out life as male.  If the female
dies, the dominant male can change sex and become female.  Another male will become the dominant
male.  Parrotfish start out as male or
female but have sex organs of both sexes. 
They are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning they can change from female
to male.
Human beings’ screwing with the environment is causing
some unexpected and potentially serious problems among the animal kingdom.  A common pesticide called atrazine has been
found to induce sexual changes in frogs. The pesticide affects the frogs’
production of estrogen, transforming males into successfully reproductive
females. Scientists are working to find exactly how atrazine causes this change,
since it could become an issue with other animals as well.  Maybe that accounts for, when I am attending
adult swim, my seeing so many man-boobs.
Complete hermaphroditic humans are very rare, although
perhaps one baby in 2000 is born with some degree of intersex
characteristics.  Sometimes the organs of
one gender are visible on the outside of the body, whereas the opposite gender
organs are inside.  Some medical
researchers believe that the famous Joan of Arc was, in fact, an intersex male.
By now, most people are fairly familiar with gender
reassignment for those individuals whose psychological and emotional nature are
at odds with their physical forms. 
Currently, a surprising number of people choose surgery to approximate
the opposite gender.
What is hard to explain, however, is that there are a
small number of males, including here in America, who have a psycho-sexual
compulsion to have themselves castrated. 
If any behavior can fit into the category of “slippery sexuality,” I
think this might be.
Of course, that is the perfect segue to the
Far-Eastern tradition of Hijra, sometimes known as “the third sex,” and
otherwise recognized as eunuchs.  India,
with its ancient culture and religions, is so complex that one would have to be
a scholar to even begin to understand that part of the world.  In India, the hermaphrodite, the homosexual,
and the transvestite have a symbolic value and are considered privileged
beings.  Ample examples of this are found
in Indian religion, mythology, and folklore, which are replete with traditional
religious narratives such as in the Mahabharata, and the Vedas in the Puranas.
For example, Ardhanarishvara, “The Lord whose half
is a woman,” is said to have been created by the merging of the god Shiva
and his consort Parvati.  This form of Shiva is said to
represent the “totality that lies beyond duality.”  A similar merger occurs between the
beauty-and-prosperity goddess Lakshmi and her husband Vishnu,
forming the hermaphrotitic or androgynous Lakshmi-Narayana.
Consequently, and for hundreds of years, literally
millions of young boys and men have chosen to totally emasculate themselves in
rather lengthy, traditional ceremonies in order to dress and to live as the
opposite gender – – an extremely bizarre phenomenon to us here in the West but
quite common in India, Pakistan, Thailand, and, to some extent, Singapore.

Real Hijra
Hijra Illustration
Mid-Eastern cultures have had similar polysexual
myths.  And of course, Greek culture
includes the god Hermaphroditus.  Actual
intersex individuals were considered to be special.
Hermaphroditus
Mr. Horsley’s first girlfriend.
Apparently, sexual
compulsion is so irresistible in some people that they sometimes engage in
peculiar sexual aberrations that might be described as “slippery
sexuality.”    Bestiality, having sex
with animals, is one example.  I spoke
once about Republican Congressman Neal Horsley. 
He is the man who, among other things, called for the arrest and imprisonment
of all homosexuals.  I assume that he
felt that sex among same-gender persons is disgusting.  He admitted, however, in an interview with
Alan Colmes on the Fox News Radio, to having engaged in sex with a mule.  He tried to excuse his behavior by stating,
“When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”  In an attempt to prove to his constituents,
however, that he really is a decent man, he quickly went on to say that Jesus
had forgiven him and cleansed him of his “sin.”   How convenient.
Then there was
that young Georgia redneck who became
so drunk one night that he pulled his car
over at a pumpkin patch and was arrested
for copulating with a pumpkin.  That sounds pretty slippery.  He was taken to court, but most of the charges were
dropped because the judge and whole
courtroom broke out laughing when the
arresting officer related the incident.  She testified that she had approached the defendant
and asked, “What are you
doing with that pumpkin?” whereupon he
responded, “Oh shit!  Is it midnight already?”  This story was not made up.  It actually happened!
Well, I’ve arrived at this point only to realize that I
have barely begun to mention human urges that may be regarded by some as
“slippery sexualities,” such as sadomasochism, bondage, necrophilia, compulsive
onanism, hebephelia, ephebephilia, and even the opposite of the desire to have
sex, genophobia, the fear of having sexual relations.  Maybe I will write about these later.  As it is, I already am becoming confused by
all of this.
© 9 January 2016 
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.
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Any Writing Is Experimental (Attack of the Giant Cootie), by Ricky

As
one of our group members stated in his writing to this topic, “all writing is
experimental.”  The Muse finally struck
me upside my head and so, what follows is her experimental writing.  She hopes you will find this, amuseing as this story is based on an
actual event I witnessed while my family was visiting a close friend in Tucson
a few years back.
Attack of the Giant Cootie
“Daaaad!
Someone just drove into our driveway.”[I wonder who that could
be.]
“That’s
my friend Rick and his family.  They’re
from South Dakota.”    [He doesn’t like to meet strangers so I
didn’t tell him to forestall any whining.]  “Didn’t I tell you they were coming for
dinner?”
“No you
didn’t.”  [I don’t like to meet strangers.  That’s probably why he didn’t tell me.]
“Don’t
worry son.  This fact is
interesting.  We have two boys, a girl,
and another boy in our family.  They have
two girls, a boy, and another girl in their family.  The oldest girl is your age—10.”  [Hmmmmm. 
Wouldn’t it be interesting if their girls married our boys and their boy
married our girl?]
“Yuck!  Girls! 
I’ll get cooties and they only play with dolls and dress up.  I hate that stuff.”[I
am going to be sooooo bored.  I need to
find a hiding place until they’re gone — even if I miss dinner!”]
“You’ll
be fine.  Don’t make a fuss, and make them
feel welcome.”  [Just
don’t embarrass me in front of Rick.]
“Will
they be staying the night? 
[I’m not sleeping on the couch or floor so THEY can use MY bed.]
[Silly question.  We don’t have room for 8 kids and 4 adults.] “No.  Just for a
visit and for dinner.”
“Ok
Dad.  I’ll be good.  Wait! 
Is that their oldest daughter? 
She’s huge!”  [A
giant cootie.]
“Yes.  That’s her.  She is rather tall for a 10-year old.  Her mother told me that she is as far above
the normal growth curve for girls as a girl’s normal growth curve is above a
boy’s normal growth curve.  Since you’re
short for your age she will appear quite large next to you.  But, she is also a tomboy, so she’ll probably
like the same things you do.” 
[I hope they get along.  I can’t
stand it when he whines about anything.]
“Yeah,
but her size bothers me and she still has cooties.”  [What’s a tomboy?]
“Now
listen!  These are my friends and I
expect you to be nice.” 
[I hope he obeys me this once.]
“Okay,
I’ll do my best.”  [Dad
can’t see that I have my fingers crossed behind my back].
“Uncross
your fingers and let’s go meet our guests.”
…..
“Glad to
meet you too, Mr. Dawson.”  [What
happened?  He shook my hand then my tummy
feels funny and it’s harder to breath.  Why
do I feel this way?]
“Nice to
meet you, Mrs. Dawson.”  [I like her smile.  She seems friendly enough.]
“Hi.”  [Ugh!  I’m shaking hands with a giant cootie.  If she were any taller my neck would break
from looking up at her.  I gotta get away
from her and wash my hands.  I think I
might pass out.]
“Are you
okay?”
 [He looks pale like he’s going to
faint.]
“Excuse
me; I need to use the bathroom.”  [She
sounds sincere, but…]
“Are you
okay, son?”  [I
hope he’s not getting sick.  He looks
pale like he might pass out.]
“Yeah
Dad.  I’m okay.”  [Just a few more feet to safety. Okay. I’m
locked in the bathroom.  I’m safe.  Just splash a little cold water on my
face.  Ahhhh that feels good.  I’m breathing easier.  A bit more water should do it.  Oh yeah. 
Now I can breathe okay.  Even my
tummy is feeling better but is a bit tingly. 
I wonder what happened.  It
started when I shook hands with Mr. Dawson. 
Why did that make me feel funny and not be able to breathe easy?  Did the giant cootie have anything to do with
it?  Did she make it worse?  Uh oh. 
It’s all starting again.  Maybe
more water in my face…Yeah.  That’s
better.  Mr. Dawson is a good looking
man.  Oh no.  Here it comes again.  I need more water.  Ahhhhh.  That did it. 
I’m alright again.  I guess I
should not think about Mr. Dawson.  Oops.  More water. 
Who’s that knocking on the door?]
“Are you
okay in there, son?”  [I
wonder what’s taking so long.  Maybe I
should have THAT talk with him after our guests have gone.]
‘Yeah,
Dad.  I’ll be out in a minute.”  [Out,
but hiding somewhere else in the house.]
…..
[Ahhhh.  They’re all in the livingroom.  I promised dad to be good and make them feel
welcome so I can’t hide in my bedroom they’ll find me and dad will be
angry.  Where can I hide?  Hmmmmm. 
The kitchen? No, it’s too open. 
The hallway?  No, that’s even more
open dummy.  The closet?  No, I’m already in there.  The attic? 
That’s dumb.  We’ve been told to
stay out of there because of the spiders. 
I hate spiders worse than cooties. 
I know!  I’ll hide under the
dining room table.  That way I can hear
the conversation in the livingroom but not be seen so if I’m questioned later I
will know what was said.  Yeah, that’s a
great plan.  I’ll just crawl under the
end nearest the window and they won’t be able to see me from the livingroom or
the kitchen.  Owww!  Gotta remember not to raise my head too much
or I’ll hit the table again.  Now, I’ll
just relax and wait.]
“Hi
whatcha doing under there?”  [Is he
playing at being a spy?]
“Owww!  Just looking for a nickel I dropped.”  [How did she find me?]
“Oh.  Sorry I startled you.  Do you want me to help look for it?”
“No.  I just found it.”  [Lucky for me there really is a nickel
under here.]  “Owww!” [Dang it!]
“Did you
bump your head again?”  [What
a klutz]  “Your name is Jason, right?”
[Why is she standing so
close to me?  I’ll get big cooties.]  “Yes.  And your name is Suzie.”  [’ll just backup a step to get more
space between us.]
 “No, my name is Susan. 
No one calls me ‘Suzie’ except my grandmother.”  [Why is he backing up?  Is he going somewhere?  I’ll just follow him.] 
  “Oh, sorry.  Are you
really only 10 years old?”  [She’s
coming closer.  Danger! Danger, Will
Robinson!    I’m being attacked by a giant cootie.  I’m going to backup two steps this time.]
“Yes just
turned ten last November.  I’m very tall
for my age.”  [There he goes again.  I’ll just follow his lead.  My dad said not to make fun of his size but
I want him to say it before I believe it.]  “Are you really 10,
because you look younger?”
[She’s closing in for the
kill.]  “Yes I’m 10 and I can’t help that I’m short for my age
right now.  Dad says that I’ll grow like
a weed in a year or two.  I can’t wait
for it to happen.”  [Okay
this time back up THREE steps.]
[Wow.  He sounded irritated by my question.]  “Do you get picked on
by bigger boys?”
 “Yes I do.”  [I
move back THREE steps and she follows keeping one foot between us.  She is scaring me.  I’ll back around the table this time.]
[He’s backing away again
like he’s afraid of me.]  “Well, in my class, I don’t let any of the bigger
boys pick on anyone.  When they tried, I
made them back down.  If you were in my
class, I would protect you from them.”  [I
like this little guy.]
[I like her attitude but…] “If you did that, it would be worse for me after
school.  The bullies would pick on me
even more whenever you were not around.”  [Ooops.  The wall is at my back.  I can’t back up any further.  What can I do?  Wait. 
There’s a chair.  I’ll drag it
over here and stand on it.]
[Now what’s he up too?  Standing on a chair so he becomes taller than
me?  Because I’m so tall does he think I am
going to pick on him?]  “At recess at my school, I play baseball, football, and
basketball.  Do you play any of those?”
[She likes sports?  Weird.]  “I’m too small to be much good at any of them but I do like
to play them.  Do you want to go into the
backyard and play catch?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll go
get my glove and ball and another glove for you too.”
…..
“Well son
they’re all gone now.  What did you think
of them?”
“I liked
the family.”
“The whole
family or just Susan?”
“All of
them.  You were right, Dad.  Susan was okay and does like the things I
like.  We played catch and other games.”
“And what
about the cooties?”
“Well.  Susan is okay, but all other girls have
cooties.”
“Even
your sister?”
“No.  She is okay too.  But all the others DO have cooties.”
“Hold
that thought, son; at least until you are 18.”
© 7
September 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 was sent to live 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 9-11-2001
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

True Colors, by Ray S.

Long ago in the days of
Tin Pan Alley—that was when popular music lovers were still buying sheet music
and the latest 78 RPM records. Our subject “True Colors” reminded me of a song
titled “The Night that You Told Me Those
Little White Lies.”
Here, today we have been
able to hear your thoughts (and/or maybe confessions) about True Colors.
Certainly there may be a
liberal (no pun intended) number of patriotic red, white, and blue references
as well as our tribe’s Rainbow flag palette.
Shame and guilt-ridden as
I am, my dominant thoughts promptly unearthed a lifetime of lots of little white
lies and a few under the heading shady black. So many that it is very difficult
to recall when and if any true colors of virtue stand out. I can’t recall when
I had occasion to show those True Colors. I don’t believe I am alone in this
category.
Think which were the true
colors when you were confirmed in a faith and didn’t really know what all of
that stuff was about, but maybe you were cleansed of everyone else’s sins, or
swore secret allegiance to some quasi lodge, fraternity, sorority, high school
clique. Mind you, I do not disrespect the various Orders’ goals; it is just the
way we obey. True Colors where are you when needed?
Of course true colors are
always subject to slight adjustments or reinterpretations as the times and
circumstances demand.
Did you have your fingers
crossed way down deep at your wedding? True colors prevailed with pride
(depending if it was unintended) and love upon the arrival of the baby girl or
boy. Color me pink or color me blue—lavender came later.
Final reason for the
showing of true colors, one of celebration and liberation, after a long
struggle finding our way out of the blackness of many closets, the Coming Out
we all rejoice in, with the True Colors of the beautiful rainbow.
© 29 February 2016 
About
the Author 

Posted on

True Colors, by Pat Gourley

“You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
Its hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside of
you
Can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let
them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow.”
Lyrics from True Colors
by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.
Once you read the lyrics
to the song True Colors made a famous
hit by Cyndi Lauper back in 1986 you can see why it has been adapted as a Queer
anthem and especially by certain LGBT youth groups. A great coming out song if
there ever was one.
Steinberg originally
wrote the song about his mother. Later modified by Tom Kelly and picked up,
when offered, by Cyndi Lauper. At the time she apparently felt drawn to it
because of the recent death of a friend from AIDS.
All the gains made by
Queer people in the past 50+ years or so can be laid squarely at the feet of
our being willing to let our true colors shine through. As has been mentioned
many times in this group and then powerfully validated by our personal stories
it is the individual coming out process that is such a very powerful
change-creating phenomenon.
It is this act of true
self-expression that sets us apart from all other minorities and gives us such
power. Also the fact that we are part of and transcend all economic, class and
racial groups gives us a leg up. We are everywhere.
The AIDS connection to
the song brought to it by Lauper has made me wonder about the reason and
implications for recent data on new HIV infections just released last week. In a
story from the Boston Globe published on February 23rd, 2016 they
broke down recent CDC data on projected lifetime risk of HIV among gay men by
race.
The data was sobering to
say the least. Overall risk for HIV infection among Americans as a whole has
decreased. The risk of infection was 1 in 78. It has now decreased to 1 in 99
for the U.S. population. However, per the CDC report the lifetime risk for
queer men is 1 in 6, overwhelmingly greater than for the population as a whole.
That is amazing enough but where it gets truly shocking is in the racial
disparity for gay men. The lifetime risk for black gay men is 1 in 2, for
Latinos it is 1 in 4 and for white gay men 1 in 11.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/23/sobering-findings-hiv-half-black-gay-men-will-infected-during-their-lifetimes-cdc-finds/hT0lGsMsJqqn8OMsXRMZMJ/story.html
WTF! I guess not
surprising the greatest risk for black gay men is in southern states but the
highest risk is in the District of Columbia. As depressing as this news is it
actually reflects an improvement over the past but still unacceptably bad.
In the actual CDC report
certain prevention challenges for the gay African American community were
identified. These were: socioeconomic factors, smaller and more exclusive
sexual networks, sexual relations with older men, lack of awareness of HIV
status and stigma, homophobia and discrimination.  I would hope that these “prevention
challenges” are ones that have been identified by community-based black gay men
themselves and not pronouncements that have come down from on high by CDC AIDS
specialists.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/bmsm.html
So I’d ask what we as the
broader queer community can do to help reverse these dismal statistics? A first
step might be taking a hard look at how significant racism is still a reality
within the queer community particularly and what am I doing personally to
address any latent racism I may harbor.
Does the safe space exist
in a non-threatening manner for the queer black community to develop and thrive
and what is needed from the broader queer community to facilitate this happening?
Perhaps this just involves our ongoing participation in the struggle for peace
and social justice.
We must guard against a
cop-out response to these stats by saying well it is the homophobia within the
broader African American community that is responsible for this. Most of us
have come out of families and communities less that welcoming of our queerness
if not out right hostile. Something else has to be going on here. At the very
least these extremely sobering AIDS statistics need to be a reason for pause
and sincere soul searching certainly by gay white men looking sincerely at how we
might be part of the problem too.
The best HIV prevention strategy
is the creation of a society where everyone’s true colors can shine
through from cradle to grave.
© 25 Feb 2016 
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

Patriotism, by Phillip Hoyle

Last
weekend while travelling south along I-25, we approached the Broadway exit. A
large American flag held aloft on a sturdy pole sunk in concrete and sitting at
the top of a rampart flapped in the breeze. “I’ve never noticed that before,”
my friend commented.
“Nor
I. Must be new,” I responded.
Her
next comment was about how good it is to live in America. I agreed with my
rather minimal statement that I, too, was happy to live here. I believe for her
the sentiment is rather standard fare formed from listening to too much
conservative talk radio. We don’t talk about that. For me the issue of being
“proud to be an American” is something quite different. She seems some kind of
absolutist while I am surely a relativist. So are we philosophers? Since we
spotted the flag on I-25 I’ve been thinking about patriotism—perhaps that does make
me a philosopher of sorts.
I
believe patriotism most dramatically relates to an image of heroes who put
their very lives on the line for their identity as part of a particular people.
The history of any Fatherland or Motherland obviously has its origins in the
LAND. For me the land is always the Flint Hills of Kansas. I grew up in wide
open spaces with a broad river valley and low bluffs nearby. The landscape was
further defined by creeks: so grassy highlands and wooded valleys with stretches
of plowed fields in the bottomlands of waterways are all a part of my
fatherland. Agriculture abounded there.
In
my particular patria a military
presence with a long history lent gravity and opened me to a larger society and
world. I grew up around the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry; Custer was once
stationed at Fort Riley just across the river from our town. The presence of historic
stone buildings that housed both the officers and the fine horse stock of the
cavalry, of wooden barracks for the enlisted men, of parade grounds, of rifle
ranges, of helicopters coming and going in the air around the base’s heliport,
of convoys made up of personnel carriers and artillery, jeeps and guns, trucks
and heavy machinery often impeding traffic on highways, and of our lively
community that entertained GIs provided endless variety for a Kansas town me.
Then there were the children of Army families in our school population, and for
me, the family-owned IGA store providing groceries for families of GIs, Civil
Service employees, as well as the townies like me.
Thus
my patria was racially mixed, with
multiple languages, mixed-race families, and people who had lived all over the
world—especially Germany and Japan as I recall it. Soldiers marched in local
parades and cannons and other Army equipment impressed the youngsters and brought
tears to the eyes of elders.
My
fatherland was rather new by world standards yet as a youngster I felt
connected to the antiquity of the place by the presence of an old log cabin church
and by stories of my ancestors who had long lived in the area. Still the Hoyle
and Schmedemann families arrived only three generations before my advent. My
great grandparents came to Kansas to homestead. Some may have come to help
assure that Kansas would be a free state in the political heat up that
eventuated in the US Civil War. Yet in my family there were no ultimate
patriots—those who made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ for their country—in any of
the stories I heard.
Growing
up I heard lots of talk of such sacrifices of life, but most of them were in sermons
not about the country but quoting a “no greater love” value as applied to the
ultimate vicarious death of Jesus as the Christ. Religion figured heavily in my
fatherland.
I
became aware of the country as something much larger than my state when I heard
my parents talk about the differences between Ike Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, then when I met men who had served in the Korean conflict, when I
further realized just what the US Army did besides entertain us with wild
stories and exotic tattoos, when I became aware of missile crises, the Cold
War, the building of the interstate road system, the anti-communist diatribe,
the deaths of national leaders, the threat of the draft, the Vietnam non-war,
the peace movement, and the growing realization that our USA motivations
idealized in myth and PR announcements didn’t well match my own vision of reality
or basic values.
Welcome
to thoughtful adulthood, Hoyle.
AND
EVEN MORE THAN THAT, THERE WAS ALWAYS THAT NAGGING REALIZATION THAT IF ANYONE
REALLY KNEW ME, THEY CERTAINLY WOULDN’T LET ME BE A PATRIOT IN ANY SENSE OF THE
WORD.
But
I am a patriot who feels a deep sense of meaning in being American. I love it
but not in an exclusivist, better-than-any-other identity or country.
© 25 Sep 2013 

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

The First Person I Came Out to, by Louis

A couple of years ago, I
did a story on my unsuccessful transgender friend. He/She had his male organ
removed in a premature sex change operation; he missed his organ so much that
he committed suicide. This was in the 1960’s. His name was “Romain”; well his
given name was Richard. I met him in the 7th grade. Romain was the
first person I was truly honest with. But it was more like he read me – what
they call nowadays “gaydar”.
Romain had an IQ of 160,
he was technically a genius. Geniuses see things, relationships that ordinary
people cannot. He was a year younger than I, but he had developed a significant
number of friends in West Greenwich Village, in poetry clubs and art studios,
that sort of thing. Sometimes I would tag along to meet them. So even in the 7th
grade I had a sort of reasonably gay-positive social life.
For a while I even lived
in an apartment on West 14 Street. In those days, gay men were so “unspeakable”
in the early 1960’s that we sort of did not exist. It was a kind of repression
I guess. But the positive side of not existing is that we had a certain kind of
freedom. We could cruise in Washington Square Park, and no one would notice.
Mostly if cops saw us, they would not put two and two together if two guys
winked at each other. If two men held hands, which happened occasionally, the
public would assume they were cousins from a Hispanic country.
In a word, at an early
age, I learned about the dangers transsexuals face when it comes to the
question of deciding yes or no to the surgery; I appreciated the nascent gay
culture coming alive in Greenwich Village, New York.
© 27 Apr 2016 
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.