Month: September 2016

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Greens, by Will Stanton

This topic “greens” leaves itself open to a variety of interpretations, although I’m not sure that it lends itself to extensive discussion of any single one. So, I will refer to a variety of greens.

The word “greens” immediately suggests to me the common question, “Are you eating your greens?” Well, of course; I regularly eat vegetables and salads as part of a healthful diet. Also green, I am very fond of Limeade, and if you never have tasted the rarely offered lime ice-cream, you don’t know what you are missing, especially during the summertime. I try to avoid green meat; I have a very sensitive stomach. I might be able to handle green chili if it is not too spicy. The same goes with tasty guacamole. I am, after all, just a gringo.

“Greens” next brings to mind green grass and leaves, especially in springtime, a delightful time of year I often have written about. Over my lifetime, I have become so enamored with nature that I can not imagine grass and leaves in any other color. If I were transported to some other planet where grass and leaves were red or purple, I would find it rather disturbing.
Mother Nature certainly has proliferated Earth with a wide variety of green birds ranging from the common pet parakeets (or, as the Brits call them, “Budgerigars” or “Budgies”) to large parrots and tiny humming birds. When I was a kid, my family had a green parakeet named “Tippy.” I felt rather sorry for it because it was alone, but it became very fond of me instead.
Speaking of nature, I am aware that there is the political Green Party that promotes environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice, participatory grassroots-democracy, gender equality, LGBT rights, and anti-racism. These goals seem admirable to me, although many people believe that, had the Green Party and Ralph Nader not participated in the 2000 Presidential election, the Republicans may not have been able to steal the election, even with their stealing the Florida vote.
Of course, we all have heard that people, feeling ill, supposedly can look “green.” I have seen some people looking awfully peaked, but I don’t recall anyone actually looking green. I do recall that Khruschev claimed that, after Stalin died and most of the remaining Soviet cabal were terrified that State Security Administrator Lavrentiy Beria would kill his two co-leaders and take over the government, Khruschev staged a coup, invited him late to a meeting, and announced to him upon his arrival that he was being arrested for “treason.” Khruschev swears that Beria’s face turned a sickly-green, If anyone was justified in turning sickly-green it was Beria. He was shot.
Then, there is the hackneyed phrase, “Green with envy.” Envy is not regarded as an enviable trait, and I know that has been consistent throughout history. For example, envy is a major theme in the highly successful Baroque opera “L’Olimpiade,” which, perhaps, is timely to mention because of this year’s international Olympics. The “L’Olimpiade” opera, of which more than sixty versions were composed and performed, is set during the ancient, Greek Olympics. Lycidas loves Aristaea, who is promised to be betrothed to however wins the race, although she loves Megacles, a great athlete. Lycidas envies Megacles and persuades the unknowing Megacles to win the race using Lycidas’ name. But, you already know all about this. The Furies, including the Fury of Envy, attack and harass Lycidas for his transgression. If you never have been attacked by Furies, you have no idea how terrifying that can be. I also found that an artist created a bronze Greek-like bust and tinted the face an appropriate green.
Finally, one very odd place where I have seen the color green is at the swimming pool. There is a child-size, older man who somewhat resembles a small chunk of dried-out beef-jerky. He is invariably upbeat and cheerful but also noticeably eccentric. He has the habit of shaving his whole head except for a round, three-inch patch on top which he dyes green and brushes straight up. I have no inclination to do that. Everyone to his own. 
© 20 June 2016


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Choices by Ricky

So many choices there are. 

Where should I begin? 

Should I begin with my good choices? 
My poor choices? 
My bad choices?
My disastrous choices?
My clothing or fashion choices? 
My food choices? 
Or should I begin with my choice of automobiles? 
My choice of friends? 
My choice of spouse? 
My choice of homes? 
My choice of profession?

Too many choices there are. So I choose to write nothing.

© 11 Jul 2016

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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Slippery Sexualities by Ray S

This could be a chapter heading in a seventh grade sex education textbook. You can take it from there.

While wondering what on God’s green earth the author of today’s title had in mind, the thought transferred to what all of this group will conjure up! Do you recall the biology class that introduced you to a slide with a single amoeba slipping about in some medium creating a duplicate self—sort of like Narcissus if he could have had his way with his reflected image?

The single word slippery brings to mind all sorts of accidents wherever there is water or ice concerned; or perhaps the perpetrator who slips away with his/her criminal act, whether heinous or simply stupid. I suppose you could recall some sexual acts too, but I don’t want to open Pandora’s Box (no pun intended). I assume someone of this august literary meeting will have attempted to address “sexuality” with the birds and the bees, while others will have dived headfirst into the more prurient aspects of this title. I plan to pay rapt attention to your offerings and surely take notes for future application.

As I reach to the bottom of this page, I am aware that I can stop all of this pointless rambling and simply stop searching my imagination for something intelligent or just amusing about “Slippery Sexuality.”

Oh, an afterthought, picture a large vinyl sheet, eight to ten garmentless gay and merry celebrants, an ample supply of baby oil or chocolate sauce or whipped cream. Now that would fill the bill for today’s assignment. Have fun; don’t slip!

© 11 April 2016

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When I Get Old by Phillip Hoyle

I don’t know why people freak out over getting old. I suspect they may be worshipping at the Shrine of Madison Avenue, a power so great that in the span of a couple of hours of TV watching promises the worshipper a plan to get over the fear of running out of money in retirement, others for long life, clear skin, non-wrinkly skin, beauty, medicines to counter every ill, all for dedication to the eternal worship of youthfulness. This menu doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t believe a bit of it! Deceitful is the god that promises eternal youth. The TV shrine can never deliver its promise since Chronos keeps ticking away at the same rate for everyone: for young, middle aged, and elders, even those of great old age. Crisis over old age seems most likely if one doesn’t look into the promises and judge the reality of eternal youth. Talk about a religious scam. We hear, “Just buy our product.” That’s like, “Send us your money and we’ll pray for you,” the line of too many TV evangelists. Or was that “…and we’ll prey on you”?

I’m old. When I was turning 25 I realized I would be old someday. I also knew that 30 would not be the end of the world and my life, and so I decided then that at 50 would be old, the time I would enter the final third of my expected survival to age 75. I announced that on my 25th birthday to my surprised co-workers. We laughed together, but I was serious.

So when I get old… Oh, Chronos just reminded me; that happened 17 ½ years ago according to my standard.

And I wonder: what have I learned since that time? Here’s a partial list: 

I can live well on very little money. 
I can thrive in a very small space. 
I can feed myself—meaning shop for, cook, and still lift the spoon to my mouth. 
I learned I can retire, to cut back on my productivity (even though that productivity in my adulthood occurred in the service arena). 
I learned I can still lead a group, still write a story, still paint a picture, still love my friends, still support my family, still help out folk I don’t even know by contributing to their welfare, and still maintain my own vital life.

I’m going to have to say something here about “when I get old, old.” That will take imagination because if I last beyond 75, I’ll be getting closer that that categorization and will have to think out a plan!

I’ll do the things I’ve discussed above. Plus I’ll hope to find someone to listen to my stories of the good ol’ days. I’ll hope someone will accompany me to my favorite museums—you know push the wheelchair. I’ll hope not to become a terrible burden on my family or society. If I can’t walk, I’ll still hope to be able to think!

Of course, I don’t know. So right now I’m saying through my writing and painting what I want to say. I do it with a sense of purpose and hope for the world my kids, grand kids, and great grand kids will live in. I express my ideas in ways I hope others will find helpful—at least pleasing or entertaining. I think that’s enough; I sure do hope so. Life goes on even if it is not my life. Eventually may I be caught up in the great mystical one however it may be described or may actually occur.

Denver, © 9 February 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

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Hail to the Watch Queen, by Pat Gourley

Just when I think I can’t stumble on anything new in the queer world I discover an old name for a sub-genre of gay men I was not aware of. This occurred last week when I happened on the phenomenon of the “watch queen.” Richard Black posting in the Urban Dictionary back in 2005 offered three common definitions for the Watch Queen: 1st somebody who just gets off watching others have sex, which I assume could now apply to any Internet porn watcher, 2nd the lookout who watches for security or the vice squad while others are having sex in Public Spaces and 3rd the gay men too old (his words not mine) to engage in sex but still enjoy watching.

I am certainly familiar with the voyeuristic joys of watching other men have sex but I had never associated the descriptive phrase, “watch queen” as someone who is a lookout while others have at it. Watch Queen I think could be another archetypical gay male role that should be enshrined in out pantheon of identities – The Noble Protector has a nice ring to it.

As it turns out being a Watch Queen was something that Laud Humphries was accused of being when doing extensive research for his groundbreaking 1970 observational work on gay men having sex in public restrooms called The Tearoom Trade. His work is considered seminal in many ways about the sub-group of homosexually inclined men who cruise specifically public restrooms. This work has also been severely criticized as unethical since he never revealed his true purpose to those he was observing and subsequent publication of his findings was done without participant consent though no one’s identity was ever compromised near as I can tell. The role he would often take when in the field doing his research apparently was as the Watch Queen. Now he was a gay man himself, married and a former Episcopal clergyman who came out only after the publication of Tearoom Trade. Humphries died in 1988 in his late 50’s.

Though I do think public restroom cruising is no longer as widespread as it once was it is still alive and well. A form of almost totally non-verbal communication through a series of subtle and sometimes not so subtle gestures, postures and eye contact leading to sex, if not on the spot then onto a nearby hookup in a car or bushes, so much for the necessity of the spoken word.

In one of the better pieces I found describing and providing an analysis of Humphries work was by Tristen Bridges titled Laud Humphries’ Discussion of Space in “Tearoom Trade”. Quoting from Tristen’s article: “He {Humphries} found that a large percentage of the men participating were married {to women}, many were religious (mostly Catholic), a large percentage were either in the military or veterans, and perhaps most interestingly of all – a large majority of the men who did not identify as gay were socially and politically conservative. In fact, Humphries found that only 14% of the men in this study could be said to be a “typical” gay man.” https://inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/laud-humphreys-discussion-of-space-in-tearoom-trade/

An extremely sophomoric interpretation of Humphries’ work would be to conflate his findings with the current unbelievable flap around transgender bathroom access. Such use of his work for justifying this form of blatant discrimination misses the mark on so many levels it really does not deserve to be addressed at all. In no way is gay male use of public space for sex predatory. The vast majority of predation happens in secret, non-public space, offices of congressmen and churches come to mind.

If anything, taking Humphries work to heart it should be a clarion call for gay liberation. Let me say though that the fine art of the silent, public cruise for mutual sex can be engaged in by the truly liberated if that is their cup of tea so to speak. It could be viewed as preserving a uniquely queer and time-honored form of human interaction and communication.

I would venture to say if you really want to protect kids in public restrooms we should hire a Watch Queen for every public restroom. These are gay men who truly know how to keep public spaces safe not only for mutual consenting hookups but for peeing and pooping unmolested.

© June 2016

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Pets, by Lewis

After initially thinking I would describe a litany of the pets I have owned over my lifetime–from a dog to a hog-nosed snake to a squirrel to a parakeet–I soon became aware that I had tapped into a very deep well of sadness. More than a moment of grief, it felt as if I had broken the seal on a bottle of “despair Drambuie” that had been corked for sixty years.

Of all my pets, my most dear was the only dog I have ever owned, a mixed fox terrier puppy named Skippy. He was a gift from my maternal grandfather–the only grandparent I have ever known–on a day in May of 1955 that was totally unremarkable. There was no “occasion”. I simply arrived home from another day in the 3rd grade at Morgan Elementary to find a puppy running around the kitchen. I was told by my mother that the puppy was a gift from Granddad Homer, who was living with us but at the time nowhere to be seen.

This was not unusual for my grandfather. Although extremely generous with his money, he was a five-star miser when it came to communication. I do not remember a time when we shared a conversation, laugh, or tender touch. When he gave gifts, he always did it through a surrogate– our first TV magically appeared in our living room, my first bike was delivered by a Sears van as I sat on the front lawn, my first gun–a .410 gauge shotgun–was handed down from him through the hands of my father. When he died, approximately six months after bringing Skippy into my life, I was not allowed to attend his funeral. Since when does a 9-year-old need closure?

At first, I resented the duties that came with owning a dog. When still a puppy, I attached a leash to his halter and swung him around in the back yard as if he were on a merry-go-round. But soon, Skippy became my trusted and loyal buddy.

On Columbus Day, 1961, I was sitting at my desk doing homework after school in my bedroom. I was 15 and a high school sophomore. Mom was the TV Editor for the Hutchinson [KS] News and hadn’t yet come home. I heard Dad come in the front door and could tell something was wrong. Dad had found Skippy lying in the street dead, apparently hit by a car. His body was unmarked except for a tiny tear in his skin.

I could tell Dad was sorry for my pain. I asked him what we should do. He said we should find a spot to bury Skippy in the back yard.

Dad grabbed a shovel and I carried my dog as gently as my shaking arms would allow. We looked around for an appropriate place of internment. Somewhat baffled, Dad–who could have been the prototype for Jimmy Olsen of Superman fame–said, “Where can we bury that damn dog, anyway?” I had already steeled myself against showing one whit of emotion and his comment only steadied my resolve. We did agree on a final resting place and I placed Skippy into it, along with a piece of my heart.

I never owned another dog as long as I have lived. The pets I have had have not been of the type that one would describe as “cuddly”. They were either reptiles or amphibians, except for one brief turn with a wounded baby squirrel.

Lately, as I have been giving more thought to the notion of once again being “in relationship”, I ask myself, “What kind of person would I be happiest with?” It seems to me that the process is a lot more like selecting a breed of dog to purchase as a pet that some people might think. Am I looking for a guard dog, a lap dog, or a dog to play “fetch” with? Why, I ask myself, are most of my friends women? Why do the men I know mostly seem to be narcissists who talk only about themselves and NEVER ask a question about my life?

At the suggestion of a newly-acquired male friend, I took the online Enneagram Personality Test. I found out that I am a Type 2–The Helper. I am told “people of this type essentially feel that they are worthy insofar as they are helpful to others. Love is their highest ideal. Selflessness is their duty. Giving to others is their reason for being. Involved, socially aware, usually extroverted, Twos are the type of people who…go the extra mile to help out a co-worker, spouse or friend in need.”

Not too bad an assessment, I would say. The description of a Type 2 goes on to say, “Two’s often develop a sense of entitlement when it comes to the people closest to them. Because they have extended themselves for others, they begin to feel that gratitude is owed to them. They can become intrusive and demanding if their often unacknowledged emotional needs go unmet.”

I recoiled from this accusation upon first reading. The idea that I could become “intrusive and demanding” seemed like a ridiculous fantasy. But upon further contemplation, I had to admit that I do have “unmet emotional needs which go largely unacknowledged”. The suddenness of this realization flooded over me like a loss every bit as painful as the death of a beloved pet.

Still, some men I know do engender a powerful resentment in me. These are the ones I labeled a bit ago as “narcissistic”. The conversation is all about them with never a thought about me. This trait among the men I know is so pervasive as to explain why it is that I much prefer the company of women. It’s not that I feel that “gratitude is owed to me” as much as I feel that I am an interesting person who deserves equal time. I don’t think that is too much to ask of a friendship. If all I cared about was caring for and pampering the other, I would go out and buy a cat. Alternatively, I’ll just have to learn how to extend myself less or be more open about verbalizing my own need for caring. Anybody know any Type 2’s out there?

© 18 August 2014

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Jealousy by Gillian

The first part of this story will be a boring repeat for those who have been in this group for a while, in fact I am just pulling small parts from other writings, so I’ll try to keep it short. It returns – no surprise – to my childhood and the subsequent angst of my inner child.

My mother taught the younger children in one room of the local two-room school. Over time my dad and I heard every struggle, every humorous incident, every cute utterance involving every child passing through my mother’s classroom. When she wasn’t talking about them, she was studying new methods to teach them, or devising educational games for them to play.

They were her life.

She taught me, too, for the first few years of my school life.

Slowly it came to me, though, that I was never one of those she told my father about with such gusto, or pathos, or humor. Why? Wasn’t I as interesting or funny or sad as all the rest of them? Why wasn’t I her most important child?

The ugly green-eyed monster began to raise it’s ugly head.

In 1955, I had Asian flu. I stayed home in bed and my mother promised to check up on me at lunchtime, her school being just a five-minute walk from our house.

My day proceeded through an elevated-temperature induced haze, but I was sufficiently conscious to look forward to my mother’s arrival; a cool loving hand on my sweating brow. Lunchtime came and went and I knew she had forgotten me. Me. Her own daughter. Her own sick-in-bed daughter. All those other bloody kids had come between us. They were all she had room for in her mind or her heart. But it should have been me. I should be the one who filled her heart. Not them. I sobbed in emptiness and anger.

The green-eyed monster proudly puffed himself up.

A few years later, my aunt told me that my parents had had two children who lived and died before I was born. They died of meningitis at the ages of two and three. Slowly, as I came to grips with this new knowledge, it began to throw a little murky light on my parents’ emotions, especially my mother’s.

However, understanding intellectually that my mother could not afford to be as close to me as I wanted, needed, her to be, for fear of leaving herself vulnerable to more unbearable pain, was one thing. Watching her showering other, safer, children with that love I craved, was quite another. Why, why, why? screamed inside my head.

Still more subliminally, always craving to be number one, I lived in constant competition with two dead children; not a competition I was ever going to win.

Over the years, the emptiness, receded but never disappeared. The green-eyed monster dozed with one eye open so as not to miss an opportunity.

After my mother died I found a few old faded black and white photos at the bottom of a drawer; two smiling happy children, two smiling happy parents. I stared at my grinning father wheeling the two toddlers in his wheelbarrow. Why had I never seen him with a broad grin like that? Why had I never managed to bring him such joy? Why them and not me? Why was I never number one?

In 1987, I entered into a seriously committed relationship with my Beautiful Betsy, who was, as a mother should be, already in a seriously committed relationship with her children. The green eyes opened wide. The monster stirred and smiled a sly smile. Time to wake up! He bided his time and at first all was fine. But slowly those old crazy feelings began to take shape. She loves them more than me began the whispers, eventually becoming screams, in my head. Oh, intellectually I knew, of course, that the love for a child is completely different from the love of a partner, and in any case love is not a finite commodity, there is enough and more to go round, but that did nothing to still the screams. If we are married, which we always considered ourselves to be, regardless of laws, then I am supposed to be number one. Aren’t I? Aren’t I?

Betsy has what I believe to be a closer than average relationship with her daughters, and of course I wouldn’t wish it any other way. However, it made for a bad juxtaposition of energies; the yin and the yang. But the last thing I wanted was to cause pain to Betsy and those she loved, and most of all, I freely admit, I did not want to create further pain for myself. I had to kill the monster. Thus began a quest for spiritual enlightenment which still continues today. Through it I have discovered a level of deep peace which I never knew before. If I ever knew such peace of the soul existed, it somehow seemed reserved for a lone monk sitting cross-legged on a mountain top, not for me. I never dreamed it could and would exist for me. And if I sound rather like a born-again, that is because I am. Not through religion: not through sudden belief in another being, but a new belief in myself and my world and everyone and everything in it. I am at peace with the messy past, the glorious present, and the future, whatever it may bring.

But I did not succeed in cutting off that monster’s head; I merely shot a tranquilizer dart.

I know that I must always remain alert for the re-emergence of those evil green eyes.

© April 2016

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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Away from Home by Gail Klock

Home to me is not a place so much as a state of being. It is a place deep within me, where I am loved unconditionally, where I’m accepted and understood. It is that place where my thoughts come to my defense when under attack, like a mother lion defending her cubs. It is that place where I am allowed to make mistakes, and take ownership for my actions and make amends to others if those actions cause them pain.

I am going to be okay no matter the circumstances, are the feelings which reside in that place called home. They are the indescribably good feelings deep within me, like the ones which come coursing through my body when listening to a beautiful piece of music, or when I laugh from the depth of my soul, or cry in empathy for another’s pain. It is the beauty, grace, and power of a hawk soaring through the sky, treating me to the joys of nature.

It has taken me a long time to find home… I was away from home most of my life. I found it difficult to find peace within myself, due at least in part to my homosexuality. It was, and on rare occasions still is, hard to find serenity within, especially when being viewed by others as a deviant person.

I was a pioneer in the gay movement back in the 80’s when I chose to have children through artificial insemination and to be out, knowing to not do so would place my daughters in the position of having shame about the family they came from. But as I was traversing this unknown world I carried abashment within me. My inner world was still not a place of self-acceptance and tranquility. I look back on those times now with admiration for my courage, but I would rather have realized my inner strength at the time. I was still away from home. I was looking at a young lesbian the other day and admiring her hair cut with one half of her head shaved and the other side cascading across her head like a waterfall. I would not have had the courage to wear my hair like that when I was young. But then I kind of chuckled inwardly as I realized I now sometimes wear my hair in an equally brazen fashion.

As long as I remind myself where home is, I can get there. It reminds me of the last time I parked at the Pikes Peak parking lot out at DIA. I dutifully told myself to remember I had parked in the F section. That was all good and fine until I exited the shuttle bus at FF after only 3 hours of sleep the night before. I reminded myself of this lack of sleep as I fought off the notion that someone had stolen my car, after all no one else had my keys. Wandering back and forth several times along rows EE, FF, and GG …dragging my luggage, I knew I had to develop a strategy to find it. I then thought okay, I’ll just go up to section A and walk up and down every lane until I’m successful. As I reached section YY it occurred to me I had parked in F, but I had been searching in FF. I found my car where I had parked it. Of course it was there all along just waiting to be found, which is true for my inner sense of home as well. My serenity was always available to be, I just had to find the correct strategy to get to it. I get there with less angst now, especially when I remember to delete the old tapes which play within my head about the perversion of being gay.

© 2 August 2015

About the Author

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents. Upon completion of high school I attended Colorado State University majoring in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and Colorado School of Mines.
While coaching at Mines my long term partner and I had two daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by coaching I resigned from this position and got my elementary education certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County Schools for ten years. As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.


As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.

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The Invisible Line of Cigar Store Wooden Indian, by Carlos Castillo

The Plaza Theater in El Paso is one of those 1930’s iconic theaters built to immortalize cinematography. Entering into the Spanish colonial building festooned with ornate furnishings, red velvet curtains and ornate plasterwork propelled me to a world I could only imagine. After all, I lived in a 3-room adobe with no indoor plumbing. As I sat marveling at the ornate proscenium arch before me and the overhead ceiling with astronomically correct twinkling stars and projected gauzy clouds, I felt the awe of peasants in the Middle Ages when they walked into Gothic cathedrals radiating light through stained glass rose windows. I was on a school-sponsored trip to watch John Wayne’s rendition of Texas’ war of independence at the Alamo. When the camera panned the battlefield depicting Mexican soldiers falling in a barrage of bullets, my peers applauded and yelled enthusiastically at the carnage. After all, we were fellow Texans, disdainful of the Mexican hoard. It did not matter that the Mexicans spoke our language and looked like most of us. During the climactic scene when the small band of Texas insurgents were overwhelmed by the formidable Mexican army of Santa Ana, I felt strangely uncomfortable although I did not really understand why. Later, when I asked mi papá who at that time had not yet become a naturalized citizen to explain, he replied that films do not always depict history accurately, thereby challenging my vision of truth.

Throughout the years, being a child of immigrant parents had thrust me into a spiral of doubt. Although I ate beans and tortillas at every meal and considered La Virgen de Guadalupe my spiritual benefactress, the last thing I wanted to be labeled as was Mexican. Being accused of being one invariable resulted in angry words and school yard brawls. After all, the Hollywood stock character of Mexicans as poor and uneducated at best, corrupt and violent at worst, nettled my consciousness. I did not question this perception until years later when mis padres took me back to their native Jalisco in an effort to show me another facet of my identity. They, the Mexican people I encountered, did not fit the cartoonish stereotypes of sarape-draped men leading donkeys by the halter nor rebozo-cocooned women selling calla lilies at the marketplace. The relatives and human beings I met were poetic, cosmopolitan, and generous in their affection for me. My Tía Concha slaughter a hen from her garden and prepared a mole redolent with spices that left me lapping up the bowl with delight that evening. Noting my gustatory seduction, she again prepared the same complex dish the following day. Years later, I would recall a similar awe when after being legally deaf for years, I again heard after the advancement of deaf technology. Thus, I returned back home with a new-found appreciation for being Latino. Endlessly I played the rancheros/ bolero recordings of Javier Solís with his liquid brown eyes, bronze face, and moustache draping his pouting lips. I sat at the edge of my seat watching movies of Cantinflas, internalizing his typical we-live-to-laugh Mexican philosophy. I immersed myself in the national consciousness of my parents’ homeland while simultaneously remaining firmly rooted in my pride of the red, white and blue. I became a scion of two cultures, recognizing that my soul was forged of the silver of Taxco as well as in the coal of West Virginia. Thus, I started to reject the stereotypes that had calcified in me over a lifetime, to reject the scurrilous labels and images I had internalized, as a Mexican, as an American, and as an American of Mexican descent, and to drink water made sweet in earthenware cantaros even as I indulged in Oscar Mayer hotdogs.

Because The Alamo became a lesson for me about illusions, ultimately I recognized that even darkness can lead to vision. However, to see, it was important that I first embrace my blindness. Indigenous peoples have consistently been stereotyped. The oversimplified and inaccurate stereotypical depictions of identities run the gamut from noble savage to ignoble barbarian and from Indian princess and squaw pejorative to wise sage. The stereotypical influences are so pervasive many Native peoples today are actively pursuing a more accurate understanding of themselves and their cultures in an attempt to reject the internalized effects of these misconceptions and labels. Many are reclaiming their native identities, recognizing they are the people; they are human beings, not cigar store wooden Indian caricatures. Likewise, we gay and lesbian people struggle to define who we are as we confront the insidious stereotypes foisted about us by media even in this era of social progress. We struggle to reject the offensive humor and defamatory stereotypes. I weary of the sociopathic, effeminate and butch, dangerous and predatory, immortal, suicidal labels queer folk are subjected to. These stereotypes only foster hatred and prejudice. Like Native peoples, we too have become caricatures, metaphoric cigar store gays and lesbians. Of course, I understand that the media stigmatizes many groups from repressed Brits to evil Mexicans, and from racist white Southerners to doddering elders. After all, stereotypes are invaluable because audiences have been conditioned to expect certain behaviors from stock characters. The point is that audiences willingly accept established archetypes in place of genuine character development, thus freeing up remaining frames to more interesting and adrenaline-pumping scenes. Thus, unfortunately the cigar store wooden Indian, in its many manifestations, persists.

Over time, I have learned to savor the diversity and complexity of the human experience. Yet, false depictions continue to drift through the air like the stench of something unspeakable. Most recently, the vitriolic venom being spewed like explosive diarrhea by a “You’re fired” candidate and his followers about people who are like you and me angers me, but in my anger I find the courage to speak up and pull back the fog of blindness, the silence of deafness. I will not sanction cigar store wooden icons of any of God’s creations. I will not be a cigar store Latino or gay wooden icon.

The adage a picture is worth a thousand words is heartening. One balmy fall day in l960, I walked into a theater intent on immersing myself into a world I little understood. Several hours later, I emerged transfixed and transformed, pondering the implications of what I had witnessed. Although we have all been invited to attend a banquet in which all forms of delights, both sweet and savory, are ladled unto our bowls, unfortunately too often we pull back from the table because we fear the unknown. And in fearing, in withdrawing, and in condemning, we deny ourselves the wonders of an elaborately prepared spicy mole, made rich by old world and new world hands. Life is a journey in which we need not behold others nor ourselves reflected on the prism of cigar store wooden misrepresentations.

© August 19, 2016, Denver

Cervantes wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.”  In spite of my constant quest to live up to this proposition, I often falter.  I am a man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic.  Something I know to be true. I am a survivor, a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite charming.  Nevertheless, I often ask Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth.  My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the Tuscan Sun.  I am a pragmatic romantic and a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time.  My beloved husband and our three rambunctious cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under coconut palms on tropical sands.  I believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty.  I am always on the look-out for friends, people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread together and finding humor in the world around us.
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Blue Skies by Will Stanton

We all know that, traditionally, blue skies normally are equated with happiness and things in our lives going right. This notion frequently has been expressed in poetry, art, photography, and in songs, such as Irving Berlin’s famous “Blue Skies.” As his song suggests, being in love brings about happiness, symbolically expressed by blue skies.

People’s very real relief in finally seeing blue skies after months of winter’s dreariness has been a known phenomenon as long as human beings have been on Earth. My having grown up in a state where, each year, there were three hundred days of overcast, I recall people around me often became depressed and irritable around the month of February. Some people are so badly affected that they are required to subject themselves to daily light-therapy to lessen depression. Fortunately, I apparently have not been vulnerable to such ill effects.

I know that I am especially sensitive to beauty in nature, and that beauty can include blue skies. My favorite season is springtime when, very often, the temperature is moderately warm, perhaps with a cool breeze, few clouds are in the sky, and all of nature is turning colorful with green grass and multicolored blossoms. I experienced that feeling deeply during my recent walk through Commons Park here in Denver.

Ironically, however, there are three exceptions to my enjoyment of only blue skies. First of all, I have grown less tolerant of summer heat along with its blazing-blue skies. During such times, I crave shade and, perhaps, rainy skies. There also is my own, personal quirk that, if the skies outside my house are blight blue, I often have the uncomfortable feeling that I must be out and about, doing important things and accomplishing a lot. If outside is rainy or snowy, I don’t feel that way.

The third personal feeling is that I frequently do enjoy rainy skies, especially gentle springtime rain and subdued skies – – – that is, as long as I have shelter, especially my own home. At such times, I feel calm, more relaxed, even perhaps a little dreamy, which helps me with any creative endeavors I may be engaged in, such as writing these stories. After all, I have mentioned before that I have on my computer both a ripped sound-recording and also an audio-video recording of gentle rain, which I usually play while I am writing or engaged in other creative work.

I don’t know for sure whether my special enjoyment of overcast skies and rain is particular to me or whether people in general respond in the same way. If less common, perhaps my enjoyment of quiet skies is in-born. Maybe those feelings are from genetic memory, some of my early ancestors having come from the rainier climes of Britain.

After all, I have inherited, from that side of my family, genes from Normans, Welsh, Saxons, and the early indigenous inhabitants of those isles, called by the Saxons, “Elves” because of their short stature. As a matter of fact, I have come to think, over the years, that my Elvin heritage explains a lot about me. And, now you know.

© 03 June 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.