Month: November 2016

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Hunting, by Ricky

I am always hunting. Usually it is for my next meal. Often, it is for ice cream. Sometimes, it is for a cheap gas station. Occasionally, I’ll hunt for a traveling companion. Once I hunted squirrels, but gave it up after the time I shot a squirrel high in a tree. The squirrel fell down landing “spread eagle” practically at my feet followed two seconds later by the branch he had been sitting on. Whereupon, the squirrel jumped up, looked at me with those big squirrel eyes as if to say, “How could you?”, and ran away. I decided I wasn’t much of a mighty squirrel hunter, if all I could bag was the branch he was sitting on.

I gave up all animal hunting for good on the night some friends and I were “spot lighting” jack rabbits in the Nevada desert. I had shot one but not a clean kill and it lay on the ground squealing. I tried to put it out of its misery from a short distance away but kept missing. I finally had to walk up to it, look into its eyes while I pulled the trigger. My heart broke and I gave up the thrill of killing animals. Spiders and snakes are another matter.

I even have an on-again-off-again passion to hunt for my ancestors to keep my genealogy moving backwards. I frequently have to hunt for a public or private place where I can be naked soaking in hot water alone or with a friend. The soaking is not always required as I often just contemplate nature’s eye candy.

My absolute favorite hunting activity is to locate a really good pun or good clean jokes like: 

Why do sharks swim in salt-water? Because they sneeze too much in pepper water. 
What did the chicken write in her diary? “Dear Diary, today I crossed the road, yet I have no idea why.”

Don’t you wish we lived in a society where a chicken can cross the road and no one questions her motives?

© 26 September 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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Movies, by Ray S

Last week, well for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and finally Thursday nights I went to the movies. It was one of the longest horror stories I’ve ever witnessed. It all took place on my TV screen rather than the screen at the Mayan or Esquire Theatres.

What I watched made watching the horrors of Atlanta burning during “Gone with the Wind” or the horror of Marlon Brando chewing the scenery in “Apocalypse Now” seem comparable to Judy Garland’s rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” There was no comparison.

In other words the apotheosis of Emperor Trump at the Republican National Convention was scarier than hell and totally demoralizing. What was even more terrifying was to see and hear all of the great unwashed reaching orgasmic nirvana in the middle of Cleveland, Ohio, and with the world watching. “Have they no shame?”

To some it may be reassuring that our nation will be elevated to its rightful place in the world on January 20, 2017. No longer will the USA remain the weak, second-class rubbish heap of corrupt Democrat despots that have destroyed everything our country stood for. Quote: “Leave it to me, I’ll take care of everything MYSELF or maybe one of my very photogenic progeny;” even that lost lamb on Thursday who couldn’t seem to find a place to stand. A nice touch at the end through was when the child received a light nudge from our soon-to-be king. The royal family stood together along with Mr. and Mrs. Pence. Makes one wonder if the government will have to outdo Harry Truman and add a bedroom wing to the White House.

This may not be popcorn in theater # 2, or the main floor seating with your own recliner, but it promises to be one hell of a Movie.

Remember to paraphrase Margo Channing in “All About Eve”. “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride tonight”!

© 23 July 2016

About the Author

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Lavender University, by Pat Gourley

My involvement in the Gay Community Center began back in 1976. My first volunteer duties started very shortly after it opened at its first location in the 1400 block of Lafayette. This was an old brick two story duplex that I think was owned at the time by the Unitarian Church on the corner and the Center was renting the space from them. My main duties initially involved phone volunteering and coordinating other phone volunteers along with building our database of referrals, which we kept on a single Rolodex! A majority of our calls were for social referrals to local bars and bathes and the emerging number of local LGBT organizations, and also not a few requests for gay-sensitive therapists and health care providers. We referred men frequently to the Men’s Coming Out Group still in existence today, which met early on in the Unitarian Church itself, their library I think.

1976 was the year I started nursing school and eventually did my Community Health rotation at the Center. One of my nursing student activities was participating, as a tester, in a weekly STD clinic at the Center on Friday evenings. I am not sure why it wasn’t on a Monday rather than a Friday since the business would have probably been more brisk after a busy weekend in the late seventies, the age of thriving bathhouses. These clinics involved a fair amount of counseling on STD’s and how you got them and how to possibly avoid getting them. Unfortunately, though, we gay men rather cavalierly thought of STD’s as just the cost of doing business and not something to particularly strive to avoid. We drew blood for syphilis and did throat, penis and rectal cultures for gonorrhea. HIV was still several years away.

My Center volunteer activities drifted from phone work and coordination to milking penises and swabbing buttholes to the much more highbrow efforts involved with a program of the Center called Lavender University. Where or from whom the name came has been lost in the mist but it was a queer take off at the time on the very successful Denver Free University. I was a member of the Center’s University Staff from its inception until probably early 1984 when The Center kind of imploded around a variety of issues including extreme tension between some community-based organizations, the tumultuous resignation of Carol Lease and the demands and urgency of the emerging AIDS epidemic. I do believe much of this tumult was fueled in no small part at the time by often-blatant sexism and an at times over the top focus on the perceived supremacy of the penis within the gay male community but that is a topic for another time.

Our quasi mission statement read as follows: “Lavender University of the Rockies is a free school by and for the lesbian and gay communities of Colorado. It is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, to the examination of diverse points of view and to free speech without censorship.” In addition to being on the University staff I was an occasional instructor offering often erudite classes including one called: Evolving Queer Spirituality or The Potential Significance of Paganism For Gay Men further subtitled “might Christianity just be paganism with the gayness taken out.” In only three of the course catalogs I managed to keep I also see I offered a class on the Tarot and one year a November 1st celebration of the Harvest Sabbat. Yeah, what can I say this was certainly my “witch-phase?”

The most fulfilling repeated offering I made though was one for gay men and involved a series of writings we would read and dissect by gay visionaries including Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard, Harry Hay, Mitch Walker, and Don Kilhefner among others. These offerings were usually weekly and involved spirited group discussion around that week’s selected piece and food. Most of the sessions were held at the Center or my house up in Five Points. Many of the attendees were budding radical fairies and some friendships were made that last until this day.

These were probably the peak years of what I will rather presumptuously and ostentatiously call my Queer-Radical-Phase. These years of my life involved hours and hours of community work and play with many other often very receptive comrades in arms. It was a very exciting and challenging time for me personally and I think for the larger LGBT community, the world was truly becoming our oyster. It was constantly being reinforced for me on a daily basis that Harry Hay was right-on that we were a distinct people and a real cultural minority.

It is my belief that it was the slowing emerging AIDS nightmare that derailed this truly grassroots revolution and really forced a refocusing of our energies into survival. The tensions created by that little retrovirus locally nearly led to the end of The Gay and Lesbian Community Center and certainly to lots of soul searching and critique of the rich expressions of much of the gay male world we had come to know and love in the 1970’s.

I like to fantasize that if AIDS had not come along we would have seen a much more radical queer community and force for seminal social change than we are today. The community might have led a nationwide revolt that would have tossed Ronald Reagan out of office in 1984 and reversed the countries unfortunate slide into oligarchy. Perhaps igniting a re-election of Jimmy Carter and a return of the solar panels to the roof of the White House. We might well have been in the vanguard of the dissolution of traditional marriage, replacing it with a much more polymorphous and rich arrangement of human interaction and loving support.

A severe curtailing and redefinition of the American military into a force truly devoted to peace on earth would have been another goal. Instead of the race to the local recruiters office for those with no other economic choice everyone would do two years or more of service to the community that would have been of great benefit to the entire world and health of the planet. But perhaps I am putting way too much on our plate or …. hmm … maybe I did do too much LSD in the 70’s.

© April 2014

[Editor’s note: This story was published previously in this blog.]

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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Consequence, by Terry Dart

What is of consequence? That is, what is important? I picked up a baseball today. It has red seams. The seams are raised to provide a better grip for the pitcher. My hand covers the ball. It is small and hard with a smooth white leather surface. Its core is a sphere of black rubber wound tight with string. I know this well, the details are everyday to me. Baseball is of the greatest consequence in my life. Baseballs and memories they and I created still emit the sounds of laughter, the gritting of teeth, the rapture of looking to the sky to see a ball you hit turn tiny and disappear into the wall of weeds that hedge the back of left, right, and center field. Where we played had opened meadows and endless blue sky filled with meadowlarks, butterflies, and thousands of smaller creatures. At sundown the crickets would fill the air with their sound. Bats barely visible streaked the sky black with their flight to hunt mosquitoes.

In those days—the late fifties—our opponents were generally our neighbors and friends. They came from The Foresberg Addition, or from the modest homes beyond the hills of rich black dirt where new homes were soon to be built.

Baseball and its cousins, softball and slow pitch softball, led me many places. When I began to learn to throw and catch and field and hit I was six years old, not yet in first grade. My Dad taught me. He is now 86 and suffers from dementia. But then he would sidearm a toss and I would return it until there formed a soothing rhythm, one movement flowing smoothly into the next like a steady heartbeat.

This ball is a Wilson. My first glove might have been a Wilson too. It was a caramel colored brown. My second glove I used at thirteen. I left it in the restroom of the Mobil Station on a stop on the way back home from a game in Sturgis, South Dakota. My first lesson in focus and mindfulness. That had been my best glove. It appeared in a photograph of The Minot Daily News, titled, “Young player, Terry Kurtz fields a fly ball.” I don’t know what became of that news clipping. It used to be in Mom’s old photograph album. She has stage-four cancer now. I am her eldest.

Just yesterday Sandy, the fastest pitcher in our fast pitch league, showed up among my other Rapid City friends on Facebook. Forty-five years since, the past and present certainly do collide. During a tournament in 1972 in Pierre, South Dakota I was benched. The only explanation given for that was that I didn’t have lunch with the team. I had not ever been benched in fifteen years of playing. I was benched for the rest of the year. It was a painful time when I questioned myself and what had I done wrong to deserve this. That was the last year I played with that team.

Nearly two years later I got a phone call from Kathy, the Scotties team captain. She explained why I was benched, and she apologized. The captain had been angry at a love interest. The bitterness between those players led her to bench me as a way to get back at her apparently lost love. The intended victim of this revenge had been the second string first baseman. The captain benched me in order to snub the second string first baseman by not filling her into my starting spot at the same base. The captain was not a drinker. She did have convoluted logic. In this I experienced how the moral chaos of one individual can hurt another, how bewildering a lie can be, and how destructive to an innocent person. Baseball, not a utopia, was no exception.

That ended baseball for me. For the next four decades I kept to watching my cousin Tommy and my brother Brad hit their homeruns. Brad’s team made the Junior League World’s Series. And I followed the Minnesota Twins of The Major League.

Those years that followed were at times extremely difficult; my mental illness rose up again. I had to quit the job of my dreams. As my marriage continued to unravel I entered a dark suicidal depression. I was hospitalized after one of my attempts at suicide. My network of friends and family and former colleagues failed to stop the decline.

Years after my mental health improved I began to slow down. Arthritis, a gain in weight, and general inactivity severely affected my overall health and fitness. I was on the pathway to cane and walker and wheelchair. Pain in my knee was telling me I would never run again.

A couple years ago I joined this story group. I found the nurturing group of fellow sages, men and women of Denver’s GLBT community. You guys. Then Gail Klock joined us for a trial run. We liked her from the get-go. And she liked us. And softball showed up again like a guardian angel. Gail read her story, how from childhood she was an athlete and later a highly successful professional coach. She invited me to practice slow pitch softball with The Colorado Peaches. After a few missed opportunities I made a leap of faith and joined them along with our Jessie to practice. I discovered I could indeed manage to run. Practices brought frustration and later joy as my body remembered how to throw and to slug the ball. I learned to hit off a tee. The team graciously declared Jessie and me to be honorary Peaches.

When I asked to accompany the team to a tournament in Utah, the team arranged for me to go. Gail had me coach third base. We won a bronze medal. For me the team joined me at the heart. Now as my hand holds this baseball, past and present converge, and what I feel is love.

Denver, Colorado © 17 October 2016

About the Author

I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.

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LGBT Spirit, by Phillip Hoyle

I had read and thought a lot about LGBT life (I’ll call it gay in this story), observed it close at hand, knew aspects of traditions that I didn’t easily relate to. Then at age fifty-one I moved to Denver to start living the gay life in a truly gay spirit. I had initiated changing relationships with my wife and with a long career in religious leadership and moved west to secure some kind of employment. I hoped to dedicate most of my time to writing and painting. I needed work I could do for fourteen or fifteen years. I was quite excited. I ended up entering massage school figuring I could work in this therapeutic field part time to afford the rest of my life.

I did not choose massage out of an illegal motivation—meaning I did not choose it in order to have easy access to male bodies. I had given massages for years to my family and knew I could learn to do it well. I already knew how massage can help manage pain. In school I learned much more about the therapeutic effects and the techniques that made them possible. In the ensuing years I also dedicated a lot of time and effort to make massage affordable to persons living with AIDS as a kind of memorial to the life of a deceased friend.

My wife from whom I was separated but with whom I was friendly came to visit me accompanied by a woman friend we had known in another city. I wanted to introduce them to some aspects of my new life: a solo show of my art at a coffee shop, some of my new friends, the place I lived, the clubs in which I danced on weekends, the clinic where I volunteered, and so forth. On Friday night we started out to go dancing. I wanted to begin at a disco with techno music I enjoyed and to end up at a bar with Country Western music I knew they’d enjoy. On the way to the disco our friend Nancy said, “I’d really like to meet some drag queens.” I responded, “We’re headed the right direction and will make it our first stop.” We drove south on Broadway past the disco and arrived at BJ’s Carousel where I knew we could catch a drag show. I introduced Myrna and Nancy to a guy I knew who was in street clothes but who often performed there. He was funny as usual and questioned Nancy about her colors—hair, skin, and makeup. Nancy asked, “Why do you ask?” “Because your colors aren’t right,” he said without a blink. She asked for details and when the guy concluded, she said, “That’s exactly what my cosmetologist said.” My acquaintance Eric turned away from the table and with a flick of his head said back over his shoulder to her, “Come with me.” He led her to the dressing room where he and a bevy of his cronies did a simple change over.

Nancy told us later that when they entered the room everything went silent and everyone stared ice at her. “It’s okay,” Eric retorted to them, “She’s real.” Meaning “She’s no competition.” So they shared their ideas and makeup, and she emerged perfectly colored.

Eric stayed at our table for a drink and chatted on a bit about his life. He then said to Myrna, “You know, Phillip is not really gay.” She and Nancy looked just a little surprised. “I know,” he continued, “because he had beautiful me naked on his massage table and didn’t have sex!” We all laughed. I did have him on my table. He came to me because of back pain, probably related to wearing stiletto heels on weekend nights and sometimes even when he sang in the church choir on Sunday mornings. I worked my darndest to address his discomfort, and the work helped him. I was not interested to have sex not because he was unattractive or unavailable. I just didn’t operate that way. I wasn’t interested to mix sex with my practice or to play the role of an older gay prostitute. I wasn’t interested in gay sex by volume but rather I wanted it accompanied with feelings I thought of as love. Old fashioned? Whatever.

Perhaps I wasn’t gay by his standard. On the other hand he really may have been complimenting me in the presence of my wife. But probably he was just, like usual, blabbing out whatever he thought.

Still, I thought about the exchange. Was I not REALLY gay like he supposed? I knew I was—but in my own way. Not as a caricature of sexuality gone amok but rather as a thoughtful homosexual who had finally decided to simplify his life and open himself to a full measure of gay loving that reached far beyond its hormone-driven component. I knew my own gay vision would at best necessitate more than one partner, but I wasn’t interested in just any partner no matter how eager or open he might be.

When we left the drag bar, we went to the Compound to dance, then to BoyZ’s Town to see the strippers—another Nancy request. And finally we arrived at Charlie’s to dance with each other and with more gay and lesbian, trans-gender and probably bisexual folk. And I thought, what a way to celebrate: my way to celebrate my gay spirit. I knew the rightness of it for any encounter with any spirit will surprise and always resist being boxed in by definition and quantification.

© 23 January 2015, Denver

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Confessions of an Agoraphobe, by Louis

Since I come from an urban environment, I really cannot comment on rural mostly men going out into the woods and shooting animals. In bygone years, the hunter would kill the animal, decapitate it, take the head to a taxidermist who would stuff the head with cotton or Styrofoam, and the hunter would hang the animal head on his living room wall as a trophy or decoration. How sick is that?

Hunting means to me gay men cruising. The most extreme adventure I had with cruising was getting arrested for public lewdness in a public bathroom in Pennsylvania Railroad Station on 34th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. This was about 35 years ago. I have noticed Penn Station is on the news almost 7 days a week. Now with the bombing on nearby West 23 Street, we see even more of Penn Station. For years I worked in a social services office on nearby west 28 Street and 8th Avenue.

Nevertheless, I found getting on my Long Island Railroad car every evening to return home a somewhat traumatic experience. Ordinarily, I am a timid civilized person who would not dream of carrying on in a public bathroom. But one evening, I had an attack of agoraphobia, which the dictionary defines as a fear of public spaces. What it really is is a fear of crowds.

My rational civilized self told me that it is logical and normal that very large numbers of people are racing about to catch their trains, to board them before the scheduled moment of departure. But evidently I had another creature inside me that said these were not people going about their business, this was a life-threatening mob engaged in a riot. Walking about in these mobs, I became very confused, I felt threatened. I felt blood rise into my neck and head. In a daze I went to the Men’s room and did some unmentionable things. I sort of reverted to what Rousseau would have called the state of nature.

You smile at a guy you like, he smiles at you. You do what you have to get him excited and interested. And vice versa. And if it weren’t the public bathroom, you would then go at it and have a roll in the hay. Unfortunately for me, a police undercover cop caught me being naughty and arrested me, even putting handcuffs on and taking me to the nearby police office in the station. The handcuffs were metal (not the soft plastic), and my hands were behind my back.

When the rather good-looking cop interviewed me, I told him I got confused and I asked him if he did not ever get confused walking in the midst of the crowds at Pennsylvania Station. He said no. As time passed, the cop noticed I was amused at my situation and was even enjoying what could be seen as skin flick fantasy. The cop told me originally I would have to go to court in about two weeks and answer the charge of public lewdness.

About an hour later, the cop told me that his superior decided to drop the charges, and the record of the charges would be expunged. I was free to go. Informally, he told me that, when the police captain perused the contents of my wallet, he noticed I had several church membership cards (they were gay churches in my case), and so he concluded I was a solid citizen. So he decided in my favor.

The moral of this story is that, though we like to think our civilized personas are in control, and usually they are, if threatened, we all have a more animalistic self inside of ourselves that will act like an animal if going by the rules becomes too constraining or threatening.

© 20 September 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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Coming Out to the Cat, by Gillian

The first person I came out to was my cat; came out to out loud, in words, I mean. Of course, inevitably, the very first person I came out to was myself. You cannot tell someone something you don’t know yourself, can you? As I remember it, after more than thirty years, this bolt of lightning hit me out of the blue and all the bright lights suddenly blazed; my world became crystal clear. I know it was not really so very sudden. I had been mulling it over subliminally in the depths of my confused soul for as long as I can remember. It was the total recognition, the acceptance, of the reality which was sudden.

But, back to the cat. (And anyone here who does not consider a cat to be a person, clearly has never been owned by one.) My cat was female and liked to cuddle up to me on my bed at night, so I felt she ought to know. Besides, I had never said the actual words out loud and I thought I should probably practice. She jumped up on my lap and gazed curiously into my eyes as she so often did. I always wondered what she saw there.

‘So, Smokey,’ I said, looking back straight into her eyes, ‘Your human is a lesbian. Gay. Queer. What do you think about that?’

The words did not sound at all frightening to me, I discovered. But then I was addressing the cat.

She continued her unblinking gaze, then slowly narrowed her eyes to nothing more than little yellow slits. I could swear I heard a contemplative, hmmmmmmmm. The eyes sprang open and a little furry paw patted very gently at my cheek. She butted her head affectionately under my chin, then curled up on my lap and went into full-throttle purr mode.

Well! I thought. This coming out business is not so bad; not bad at all!

The next people I came out to were, of course, my husband and step-children. It was not easy, but the response from the kids was all of the as long as you’re happy that’s all that matters variety, as it was from my husband after a while when he had time to get over the shock.

I have no siblings, so next should have been my parents. I agonized over that one for some time, eventually deciding against it. They were in England, far from my day-to-day life. They were old. It seemed nothing other than selfishness to tell them something which I knew would cause them to worry. They would love me just the same, I knew that without the slightest doubt, but they would be unable to grasp what my new world looked like. At this stage, I scarcely new!

Had they still been alive later, when I found a happiness I had never dreamed of with my Beautiful Betsy, I would have shared it with them, but they were dead by then. I have no regrets. I believe I made the right decision.

I did come out to cousins and several childhood friends, who responded unanimously with the basic message that it must have made life difficult and I’m so glad you are happy now. I have some very good people in my life.

In fact, I have very many wonderful people in my life. Over the years I have come out to countless people, I have no idea how many. Very rarely the result was negative, occasionally a little tepid, but the overwhelming majority of people responded positively, with complete acceptance and support.

A few years ago, I was chatting with a group of people at the Senior Center. I mentioned my partner, and went on to talk of something, I forget what, that she was doing. Oh! I realized in surprise that I had just outed myself without any thought; without first shoving it through my internal filtering system of shoulds and whens and whys. Oh the freedom of it. I felt so liberated, and ever since then have really given little thought to coming out, or even of thinking of it in those terms.

It’s strange how things morph over time. In my early coming-out days, the word lesbian seemed a bit intimidating; a word to be whispered while glancing furtively over the shoulder to see who else might hear. From there I went into my out, loud, and proud years when I didn’t give a damn who heard, and now I see little need for the word at all. I am quite simply a woman very deeply in love with a woman. If you feel the need to put a label on that, feel free. I don’t.

In fact, rather to my own surprise, I find myself to be vaguely offended by those little boxes I am asked to check.

Do you consider yourself to be –

straight

gay

lesbian

bisexual

transgender

etc. etc. 

I want to add another box for me to check; None of the above. Or better still, All of the above. It’s nothing to do with you. Which, I suppose, is what the current queer direction is all about; not wanting to label yourself or to be labeled by others.

(And while we’re on the topic, stop asking me to check the box which tells you if I am single, married, widowed, or divorced. That is nothing to do with you, either. Except, possibly, if you are the IRS, which seems to be the possible exception to anything and everything.)

But, back to the cat. In all my coming-outs over thirty-something years, no response has ever come close to the lofty heights set by Smokey. No-one I came out to ever lovingly patted my cheek. Nobody nuzzled their head on my neck, and most assuredly no-one ever curled up on my lap. As with many of life’s experiences, the first was definitely the best.

© May 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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Dreams, by Gail Klock

As she strolled confidently past our car on that warm summer day I was struck by her beauty, inside and out. It’s been at least twenty years since our eyes met as she graced me with her heartwarming smile. I still think of her…I dream of having her spirit.


Twenty years ago having the self-assurance of this transvestite was beyond my being, but not beyond my dreams. I had some major internalized homophobia to overcome. Let me digress a little, well maybe more than a little, to my nascent years as a lesbian. Growing up in the fifties and sixties, and yes, in the seventies and eighties meant dealing with many negative thoughts about who I was as a sexual person, as a person who chose a lifelong mate of the same gender.

As a high school student the closest term to homosexual I ever heard was fairy. In the deprecating way it was used in hallway talk, “if you wear green and yellow on Thursdays everyone will know you are a fairy,” told me this conversation was not about wee little sprites of the enchanted forests. Out of some undisclosed shame I knew to wear orange, blue, lavender, anything but green and yellow on Thursdays.
In my freshman year of college I had my first sexual/emotional encounter with another woman. She was older and much more experienced in such matters. I can still vividly recall the warmth and excitement I felt when we secretly held hands in her car. I also remember when I spontaneously exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, when she demonstrated her sexuality by reaching out and touching my breast. My fear of identifying myself as a lesbian ended this relationship quickly but not those insistent feelings of attraction to women.

Innocent back massages, which slowly and delightfully crept to more erotic areas, began my sophomore year with my second girlfriend. A self-awareness was also beginning to surface that I had never felt this way with the nice, good looking men I was dating. Through-out the three years of this relationship I began internalizing homophobia. All of my available resources to help me figure out who I was were creating a sense of self-loathing. The books and movies of the time, when they dared create a theme of homosexuality, either ended with the woman leaving her female lover as soon as a man entered the picture or contained characters who were so miserable they said lines I could relate to all too easily such as, ‘I’m tired of living and scared of dying”. At the same time many of the conversations I had with my girlfriend were about the men we would meet and marry and the children we would have. This was the only pathway to have lasting love and having a family we knew about, totally betraying our love for one another.

These feelings of being involved in an inappropriate relationship were so overpowering and controlling that I never even discussed them with my roommates my junior and senior years, whom I suspected at the time and later confirmed to be true, were also gay. I even shared a small bedroom with one of these roommates, some nights each of us sleeping in our own little twin bed with our respective girlfriends. I knew what was happening in my bed; I didn’t know if my roommate was likewise engaged and was too ashamed to discuss it. Maybe there would have been some strength in numbers if these conversations had taken place and some of my shame would have been reduced.

Psychology 101, oh I was looking forward to this class, I thought it would be really interesting and I might learn more about myself, what it meant to love someone of the same gender. Well, I learned and it stung, “Homosexuality is a mental illness…”

Six years later the field of psychology was still more of a prison than a tool to help set me free of my unjust self-determined ideas of what it meant to be gay. A psychiatrist I was seeing to help me overcome my feelings of unrest and depression, which were due only in a small part to my sexuality, suggested I use shockwave treatments to cure me of my unnatural feelings of attraction to women. I did not need these treatments, but perhaps he did!

Gradually, as I followed my own proclivities, they became more normal in the eyes of society. The best decision I ever made was in the eighties. I chose to have a child through artificial insemination. My partner of seven years was very honest and told me she might leave me if I got pregnant. I really loved her and didn’t want to lose her but I had dreamed of having a child since I was in elementary school. Fortunately, by the time my oldest child turned three, my partner- yes the same one, and I were arguing about who was going to be the birth mother for our desired second child. Wisely, we followed the advice of a wonderful psychologist and I was not the birth mother. By making this decision we experienced both roles (birth mom and non-birth mom). At this time many people thought of the birth mother as the only “real” parent…the same as a relationship with a person of the opposite gender was the only “real” relationship. To this day some insensitive/ignorant people still ask me which of these young ladies is my “real” child.

I also, in solidarity with my partner, made a decision to be open with all of our children’s teachers about our relationship. At an unconscious level I sensed if we were open about who we were, our children would not take on the guilt and shame which homosexual closets spurned. As a result we received support from a lot of good people. Neighborhood children would sometimes ask their mothers why they didn’t get two mommies. Many people in Golden became a little more educated and liberal due to our family and at the same time my internalized homophobia began to dissipate. Coming out of the closet for my girls was an integral step of becoming what I had dreamed of so many years before.

Yesterday my oldest daughter and I enjoyed seeing “Kinky Boots”. One of my favorite lines was, “When you change your mind, you change the world”. Slowly my mind changed and slowly my world changed along with it. I have almost captured the essence of that beautiful transvestite I briefly encountered twenty or so years ago…she gave me a smile and a dream.

© 9 March 2015

[Editor’s note: This story was published previously in this blog.]

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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A Friendship, by Cecil Bethea

Keith Kirchner lived on the next block down from ours. He must have been five years older than me because he finished school in 1940. He was drafted in the spring ‘41. After basic he went into the Army Air Corps. Knowing the army like I do, I’d say he was pushed into the Air Corps–bombers, a machine gunner. My mother and his used to talk on the phone several times a week; this way we kept in touch with him and his training.

First the telegram came telling that he was wounded. For anybody with a star hanging in the window, any telegram was almost as bad as a death notice. Not knowing anything except he was alive and wounded must have been mighty bad. Slowly the news slipped across the ocean that he was badly burnt and couldn’t write. I wondered if his arms had been burnt off, A month or two later we found out that he’d been awarded a Medal of Honor. Talk about a splash! The paper printed on the front page the whole citation about how an incendiary bomb had exploded in his plane. He’d picked it up and thrown it out the window saving the other men but burning himself just about to a crisp. I was taking chemistry then and had just learned what a bitch phosphorus is. Now I know he was wearing one of those heavy leather flight suits which would have protected him somewhat. I see how he picked the bomb up in the first place. What I can’t understand is how he continued to hold on to the thing.

When he finally came home, we didn’t see him without his long sleeved shirt buttoned all the way up. Of course most of the time he had a tie on. His face and neck were scared something awful and his hands too. Couldn’t hide those parts. I’d wonder what his body looked like naked especially down there, you know.

I have been cogitating about this ever since. I did my time in Korea, All I got was a Purple Heart for being stupid and a Good Conduct Badge for not getting caught. Keith and I’d have a beer ever so often. While we were talking and drinking I noticed that his hands weren’t the color of mother-of pearl but more like unpolished opal. Another time I remember regretting to him not doing something brave and famous like him. He just said, “You didn’t have the chance.”

Class 2154 © 3 September 2008

About the Author

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.

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Smoking, by Betsy

I started smoking in my last year of high school. It was presented to me not as an option, but rather as “of course your going to smoke, adults do it and now that you are an adult there is no reason not to be a smoker.” This was early 1950’s and there was nothing in my conscious mind that told me I shouldn’t. I knew my parents would disapprove. They would think I wasn’t old enough. But what did they know? And in a year or so they would realize I was old enough to smoke.

In college most of us smoked. Between classes, before classes, and after classes, mornings, evenings, and weekends. At parties and in our rooms. The father of one of my classmates was the CEO of Reynolds tobacco. The tobacco companies were “in high cotton” in those days.

All our heroes and heroines smoked. In the movies the doctor consulting with his patient was sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette. The advertisements led you to believe that if you smoked, your image would improve and you would become much more sophisticated and successful. Everyone smoked from the Marlboro man to the savvy housewife. Everyone smoked everywhere from the workplace to any public place including public transportation vehicles, eating places, drinking places, shopping places, the doctor’s office, and, of course, at home.

I don’t actually remember how I got started. Probably someone gave me a cigarette. I do remember how it felt the first time I took a drag and inhaled. It made me dizzy and made me cough. It didn’t particularly taste good either, but I persisted and after a couple of tries I was hooked.

I’ve never done any drugs other than tobacco and I do drink alcohol, but rather sparingly.

Cigarettes were my addiction of choice. I smoked about one pack a day until the early sixties.

I smoked through 3 pregnancies, by the grace of God with no apparent consequences to the babies. Then the revelation that it was hazardous to one’s health started to trickle out into the public consciousness. I remember we started calling cigarettes “coffin nails. I think I’ll have a coffin nail. Ha, ha,” We would say to our friends, not realizing this was no joke.

I read now that the link between tobacco and health problems was suspected in the 1930’s. The link to lung cancer was discovered and confirmed in Britain in the early 1950’s. Apparently the American cigarette companies did a really good job of keeping the information regarding the health effects of smoking to themselves and away from the public. Finally some surgeon general came out with the pronouncement in 1964 that cigarette smoking could cause lung cancer. Finally, our government took steps to make it much harder to be a smoker. But 10 years had passed since the British doctors had linked smoking with cancer and other deceases.

Quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I did quit by 1964 or so. But when I came out in the 80’s I wanted the comfort of an old “friend” so I resurrected my old friend, cigarettes, and in no time at all was hooked again after two decades of not smoking. After a couple of cigarettes it was as if I had never stopped smoking for those 20 years.

Quitting smoking a second time was at least 2X harder than the first. In fact, it took several years of trying to stop before I was successful in staying quit—as they say.

I tried several different programs designed to help boost one’s resolve or scare one into quitting by relating all the horrors caused by habitual smoking. After struggling many times to quit I realized that what I hated most about smoking was my being dependent on something. Those darn things were controlling my life. My daily activities revolved around when I would have my next cigarette. I hated being controlled enough finally to say goodbye to the horrible things. How many packs of cigarettes did I buy, smoke one, destroy the rest of the pack in my resolve to quit, only to return to the store the next day or so to do it again. In those days a pack cost bout $1.25. That’s a lot of money for one cigarette.

I have seen friends of my age group with the same smoking history quit for a year or so, declare they can quit if they want to, and then return to smoking confident they can quit if they have to.

For one thing one year of no smoking is no where near long enough to be able to say you are free of the habit.

It is not only the drug nicotine that is addictive. Smoking quickly becomes a behavior addiction.

I think this is why it takes years and years to be free of the habit—long after all traces of the drug have left the body.

In my experience after five tobacco free years, I could say I was more or less safe from the danger of slipping back into the habit. As to the damage done to my body is concerned, I have no idea whether or not having smoked cigarettes for one quarter of my life will take a significant toll. But I have no doubt there must be some price to pay, hopefully insignificant. Did I benefit in any way from taking up the habit? That’s a no brainer. NO! Some say it’s pleasant to smoke. What that really means is that when the withdrawal from the drug begins to make you feel uncomfortable it feels pleasant to ward off the encroaching discomfort by lighting up once again.

Today the proven detrimental effects of smoking are known to almost everyone. Tobacco companies are held responsible for the harm their product causes in the U.S. Cigarette sales have plummeted in the U.S. in recent decades and young people do not seem to be taking up the slack and are choosing not to smoke.

Despite what is happening here big tobacco is thriving globally. Smoking rates in developing countries far exceed those here. Population growth and growing incomes contribute largely to the increasing rates of tobacco use in those countries. So cigarettes will continue to be produced and sold in growing amounts.

Because of my love affair with cigarettes I learned something very important about myself.

I learned to stay away from addictive substances of any kind. Once I had quit smoking I never ever wanted to go through quitting anything addictive again. For that lesson I am grateful.

© 15 August 2016

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.