Month: September 2017

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Birthdays, by Betsy

The following is an imaginary voice from the Universe heard inside a woman’s uterus by a viable life preparing for its day of birth.

“Now is the time for you to make your choice. You may choose from these two options: gay or straight. In other terms—homosexual or heterosexual. Before you decide let me explain the consequences of your choice.

“If you select the gay option you will have many obstacles in your life that you otherwise would not have. You will be considered abnormal by many people from the start, you could very easily find yourself being discriminated against by employers, landlords, merchants, and service providers. The law may possibly not offer any recourse for you if and when you are discovered depending on how the movement goes and the state of civil rights. You could actually be put in jail if you are found out.

“You may feel constrained to stay in the closet for a long, long time, maybe forever. That means denying your truth to yourself and to others. This could have a serious impact on your emotional and mental health—possibly on your physical health as well.

“If you try to express your sexuality and live as the person you are; i.e. live as an openly gay person, you risk your safety, security, and well being. You will keep your self esteem and self respect however. But there may be a price to pay for that.

“If you select the straight option life should be easier for you. You will derive benefits from marrying a person of the opposite sex. As a woman you will be safe if you serve him well. You will be secure if you do his bidding. You will have no difficult choices to make because they will all be made for you and to your advantage if you stay in line. The only risk for you is that you might screw up because you don’t realize that you have all the advantages.

“As I said, it’s your choice.”

The above scenario is, of course, absurd. None of this would happen because this choice is not available to us. This choice is never given to any of us before birth. We are born LGBTQ or heterosexual or gender fluid or whatever else yet to be defined—whatever else exists on the sexuality spectrum.

The choice is made when we become aware, conscious, of ourselves—our feelings, what drives us, with whom we fall in love. We make the choices later in life when we understand that there IS a choice— and that choice, as we all know, is not who we ARE by birth, but whether or not we choose to LIVE as an expression of who we are.

Personally, I understand very well the consequences of denying who I am and living as someone I am not. Once I became aware of my sexual orientation I was able to make that choice, respect myself, and be happy and fulfilled.

Those who wish to change us LGBTQ’s, punish us, put us away, or whatever, seem to imagine that we all experience the above in-utero scenario and we should be punished or, at least, forced to change because we made the wrong choice. We made the choice in-utero and were born gay yes on our first birthday, because we chose to. REALLY! Or, if they do not accept that absurdity, they want to punish us for expressing our real selves—for living as gay people.

I choose to live in a world which accepts every newborn baby for exactly what it is—everything that it is. I choose to welcome every life into this world as perfect as I did one week ago my first great grand child.

You know, I’m convinced he’s gay because of the way he waved when he was born. Then when he started primping his bald head his mother and grandmother and Auntie Gill were convinced too. He’s lucky. He knows he is loved by us all—gay or straight.

© 14 November 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.

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The Opera House, by Ricky

With apologies to Dr. Seuss and Ogden Nash I submit for your reading pleasure (or whatever it turns out to be):

The Opera House

Come inside, Mr. Bird said the mouse
And I will show you what’s inside an opera house.
An opera house has things like stairs,
Elevators and soft cushy chairs,
But don’t sit too long or ushers will stare.

Around the pillars and down the halls
There is more to see behind these walls.
On the stage, there is much to do
Before the productions are finally through.

There are ropes, ladders, and scaffolding galore,
And canvas and cloth and curtains that reach the floor.
With pits for music and trap-doors for exits
Performers must avoid blows to the solar plexus.

In the dressing rooms beyond the stage
Many a Prima Donna hath raged.
Stagehands are waiting in the wings
For the final time the “Fat Lady” sings.

Come on, come on there’s more to see
Let us make haste I have to pee.
From gilded washrooms to golden arches
Patrons patiently check their bejeweled watches
For the time when the curtain will rise
And they can finally sit down and close their eyes.

Talking and snoring are both frowned upon
But then, so is “shushing” someone looked down upon.
An opera house is seldom austere
Many have a large chandelier
Which refracts the light with a tinkling sound,
But gives no warning before crashing to the ground.

Keep moving right along you see
Before that thing comes down on me.
Opera houses oft feel alive,
Where life and death both do thrive.
Some will house a persistent ghost
But only one is more famous than most.

Composers recollected from times long past
Now drift through air where they do bask
In the glow of the product of their life’s task.
No more than this do they ever ask,
That we the living appreciate them so,
Not one is forgotten though dead long ago.

An opera house cannot become a tomb
When so many of us come to fill the room
And keep alive the majestic tradition
Of all the castrati operatic renditions.
Farinelli, Senesino, and others all knew their position;
Was to sing beautiful arias in their unusual condition.

Do you see? Do you see? The pit fills with musicians
And the gilded boxes house the patricians.
So now, Mr. Bird, said the mouse.
You know what there is in an opera house.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s about time you knew,
An opera house presents operas too.
Now we must leave this beautiful place
To buy a ticket lest we lose face.
What! All sold out. Don’t fly into a rage.
Remember poor Custard is crying for a nice safe cage.

© 30 October 2011

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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The Eyes of Love, by Ray

She was standing nearby, and I couldn’t stop looking at her beautiful cornflower blue eyes. Having said this to you all, it could have been the conclusion of this Story Time offering, but there was no need to apologize for my surreal intrusion because a good ‘LGBTQ’ friend greeted me with a happy ‘L’ squeeze saying, “I want you to meet my partner.” Guess Who? The pretty young thing with those beautiful blue eyes! Serendipity maybe. The two of them are to be married next winter.

That afternoon at Denver Pridefest 2017 I found four eyes of love at the AIDS Quilt exhibit. Two beautiful or should I say handsome men arrived at the desk as volunteer docents. As we talked and got acquainted it wasn’t difficult to sense they were partners, it was so evident in the way they looked at each other. To me, it said not only love but also respect for each other. What a beautiful thing to experience; and how wonderful to know and witness and enjoy these testimonies of lesbian and gay love.

Sincerely,

“None But The Lonely Heart”

© 19 June 2017

About the Author

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Evil, by Phillip Hoyle

I hate capitalized words in philosophy and theology. It’s okay if those words stand at the beginning of a sentence, but even then, if it’s a word like evil or truth, I get the jitters. The problem for me goes way back to the days I was paying attention to philosophical matters related to religion. In my early twenties I came to appreciate my childhood and teen years because in church we never said what was called “The Lord’s Prayer.” We knew it because it was in the Bible, but that prayer was not said in unison as an element of weekly liturgy. I grew up in a “free church” tradition congregation. There were no liturgical prayers except a benediction song, “God be with you ’til we meet again.” Our prayers were spontaneous improvisations related to the moment.

At age 22 I took a job in an urban church that met in a modified Gothic building with medieval-looking art glass windows and aped liturgical tradition although it taught the same Free Church approach as the church of my upbringing. Because of my studies I was especially sensitive over the weekly repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, knowing it was archaic and a bad translation. In short, I did not grow up saying weekly what most Christians said, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I knew evil should be translated the evil one, that mythological ascription to the devil or Satan. I was not interested in such myths and fears. I had never dreamed of such a being and have still not done so. I knew there were enough real moral challenges that dwelt in me as well as in social life. I wasn’t attracted to reifying ancient language as if it were scientific. I felt I was lucky while at the same time I worked to examine the educational effects of weekly saying something one didn’t believe. No wonder people who grew up in those old-fashioned liturgical churches often rejected them. No wonder some of them claimed that religion was itself the origin of all evil in the world.

I knew unhealthy activities made up a part of my life. I knew that I was much less than perfect. I also knew perfection wasn’t my goal in life. I simply wanted to live in relationship with many people from all walks of life (to the extent that I understood life at such an early age). I wasn’t judgmental about their decisions and was more interested in my goals than in my disappointments. Also I was not interested to blame my foibles on some external power in the universe. I accepted that all persons, all organizations, all best intentions were also subject to being imperfect, that all visions of perfection were imperfect and ultimately unattainable. I focused on the ethical tradition “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That seemed enough to me. And it still seems adequate. I do sometimes say a quiet prayer silently. Deliver me from mistaken images of evil that will invite me to pound a wedge between me and the vast world of difference such as difference of race, nationality, values, hopes, dreams, commitments, and so much more. I have too much fun meeting life as it presents itself and too little time to fret over my own or another’s evil. I do hope to love my enemies, to serve my communities in hopes of building better opportunities for all people. I do hope for a better world. But deliver me from evil? Too metaphysical for me.

© 26 June 2017

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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September 11, 2001, by Gillian

I had signed up with Denver Museum of Nature and Science for a daylong tour of the Lakewood Brick Company on September 11th of 2001. We lived in East Denver at that time, so I left the house early for what I anticipated to be about a forty-five minute drive during the morning rush hour. I was astonished to find myself driving unimpeded along almost empty streets. Was this a holiday I had forgotten? One of those newer ones, perhaps? No. Many people were not excused work on those holidays; not enough to make for this absence of traffic. And anyway the museum would not have scheduled a tour on a holiday. I was driving my old pickup without a functioning radio, so could not get any news. I had not turned on the TV before leaving home. I was puzzled. Puzzled, but not worried. Arriving early due to this lack of traffic, I popped into King Soopers to get a snack for lunch. There was something strange about the store, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. The few customers were standing about in small groups, talking. So, I realized, were the employees. I felt a little shiver of apprehension.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked three women huddled together in the deli. ‘Has something happened?’

That opened the floodgates. They tumbled over each other to tell me all they knew, which really was not very much. Or at least not very much for sure. Amongst all the utterances of I heard and they think and a lot of maybe this and maybe that, I gathered that a plane had been highjacked and flown into a building in New York.

‘And now they think,’ said one woman in a breathless whisper, ‘there’s another plane been highjacked, too.’

For all the lack of hard facts, clearly something really bad had happened; was happening. What to do? Should I just go back home? Were they still going to have the tour? I decided at least to check in at the Brick Company, where less than half of the scheduled number actually turned up, but we decided to go ahead with the tour as scheduled.

It simply did not work. This was before the days of everyone having a smartphone, but some had cel phones. There were constant calls home and relayings of the latest updates to the rest of us. We were all distracted, to say the least. It was the one day in our lives that we could muster absolutely no interest in the making of bricks. It took little discussion to cancel the rest of the tour and just go home.

Now we live not far from Lakewood Brick Company and pass it quite frequently. But no matter how much time passes between that terrible day and this, I never see it without feeling a lurch of my stomach. I return instantly, if only for an instant, to that feeling of nausea and fear and dread and overwhelming sadness. And if, on a very rare occasion, I find the streets unusually quiet, panic starts to grow. What’s wrong? What’s happened? And that’s OK. I should not forget. But to me, the real tragedy of that day is what we made of it. It fills me with a despair beyond sadness. Rather than it bringing us understanding of, and even empathy for, the innocents of the world dying in their numbers everywhere every day, we used it to justify the ever-increased use of our own killing machine; to murder those same innocents. That is a tragedy truly worthy of the name.

© February 2017

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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Connections, by Pat Gourley

Once again in writing on the early years of Harry Hay’s queer activism, the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, I am relying heavily on the wonderful collection of Hay’s writings edited by Will Roscoe from 1996 and aptly called Radically Gay. Do check out Will’s web site for further info on Radically Gay and Will’s many other books and writings: http://willsworld.org

In thinking about the topic “connections” I pulled Radically Gay off my bookshelf this morning to re-explore Hay’s concept of subject-Subject Consciousness, a profound and co-equal form of human connection, as opposed to subject-to-object. In scanning the book I came across the story of Hay’s first attempt at a call-to-arms to try and get homosexuals to begin organizing themselves. This manifesto from 1948 was rather awkwardly titled: Bachelors Anonymous (Radically Gay. Page 3.). Now that is a name describing gay men I think we can all be glad did not catch on. Two years later, with his then lover Rudi Gernreich and several others, the Mattachine movement was launched and the rest as they say “is history”. According to Roscoe within a few short years there were an estimated 5,000 homosexuals in California involved in one form or the other with the Mattachine movement. Remember this would have been in the early 1950’s in the era of McCarthyism.

Many would say that Hay’s greatest contribution to the LGBTQI movement was his insistence that we are a cultural minority. To quote Hay from Radically Gay:

“We are a Separate People with, in several measurable respects, a rather different window on the world, a different consciousness which may be triggered into being by our lovely sexuality” (Radically Gay. Page 6.)

I would contend that one of the “measureable respects” in how we differ from heterosexuals is a mode of communication, a form of connection, Hay called subject-to-Subject. In a position paper he wrote in 1976, while living in New Mexico entitled, Gay Liberation: Chapter Two- Serving Social and Political Change through our Gay Window, Hay lays out his vision of subject-Subject Consciousness (Radically Gay. Pages 201-216). I encourage all Queers to get the book and read especially this chapter.

Right out of the box he owns that this essay puts forth a Gay Masculine point of view while acknowledging that Feminine Consciousness also exists but is something quite different. I will go way out a limb here and suggest that the lesbian-feminist movement of the 1960’s and 1970’ was all over this non-objectifying form of connecting woman-to-woman.

The essence of subject-to-Subject is that of equal to equal. My very simplistic interpretation of this form of consciousness is that we gay men have a leg up on the hetero world in that we as men relating to men and women relating to women are better able to approach one another as equals without the burden of centuries of institutionalized objectification and sexism i.e. crudely put “Me Tarzan you Jane’.

However, even we as gay men, as opposed to straight men, approach relating to one another with a fair amount of objectifying cultural baggage. It may not involve the competition that comes with landing a mate for procreative purposes but we do often indulge in only hooking up with someone of the ‘right age, skin color, cock size, class background’ etc. This is an area where we need to go back in our lives to that first almost always non-sexual attraction to another boy that was so electrifying. That realization that even though I am ‘other’ so is he. A genuine sense of “equal to equal, sharer to sharer”, we are truly kindred spirits. What an exhilarating form of connecting that was for so many of us.

Gay men in particular still have as much work to do in this area of personal subject-to-Subject relating as we ever have especially once the roiling hormones of sexual attraction bubble to the surface. I am not sure that Grindr could not aptly be renamed “Bachelors Anonymous”. Though that first impulse for out of the box subject-to-Subject connecting still remains and hopefully is the essence of gay liberation. It remains our real gift to the world in this age of Trump regression and insanity.

© April 2017

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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Eyes of Love, by Nicholas

The eyes of my love are blue. A pale blue. The soft blue of a summer morning sky gently waking.

They are sleepy eyes saying good morning.

Sometimes, they are smiling eyes greeting me after I’ve been away.

Sometimes, they are eyes focused on a crossword puzzle, brow furrowed. What’s a three-letter word for love, he calls out. You, I say.

Sometimes, those eyes are more gray with frustration, especially with a computer connection that just won’t work.

Other times, those eyes glare with annoyance or anger at something I did or said. We have a rule in our house: it’s OK to get mad but it is not OK to stay mad. Then we look into each other’s eyes and say I’m sorry.

There have been times when those eyes were dull and downcast and in pain while recovering from illness or a difficult surgery. Gradually, I watched the sparkle come back to those eyes.

A few times, tears have swollen up out of those eyes like the day we both blubbered through our wedding vows.

Sometimes, those eyes look up in surprise catching me just looking at him. What, he says. Oh, nothing, I say.

My favorite, of course, is when those eyes flash with desire and we tumble into one another’s arms and hold on to each other.

The eyes of my love are a pale blue. The eyes I hope to always be in.

© 18 June 2017

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Don’t! by Lewis Brown

When I was in a Methodist Church last September 2016, many people in the congregation were becoming overly excited by the American election events. One of the lady parishioners, Kim, stood up and said “We go to church to worship God, that is we do not [Don’t] put our trust and hope in the princes of this world but in God only.” On one level, I agree with her. Donald Trump, as hostile as he is, is only a paper tiger as Mao Tse-Tung would have said.


Last Sunday I attended the Congregational Meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies (MCCR). The pastor, Rev. Dr. Gail Atchison said they were having severe financial problems. I learned for instance that the large commercial gas oven in the kitchen had “blown up,” so that they did not even have a functioning kitchen for catering and hosting events.

To be realistic, looking around, the only gay businesses that actually have any big bucks is the gay porno industry. And they would love to contribute to gay social agencies but cannot since they are considered, fairly or unfairly, to be moral if not legal criminals. The answer is a clever business man takes the contributions and launders the money legally of course and makes the cash available to our worthy causes. In the past the gay porno industry has contributed generously to AIDS related service and health agencies. Why not a new commercial gas stove for MCCR?

Some of the gay porno companies are Titan Men, Falcon Video, Raging Stallions and Hot House Videos. They have become big businesses.

At the MCCR Congregational Meeting we also discussed the currently proposed Mission Statement which, unlike the previous more militant Mission Statement, did not say “to develop a sense of community and the building up of the gay and Lesbian community.” It did speak of advocating for poor people and the homeless but was not much different from what a Congregational Church would have in its Mission Statement.

The pastor Gail Atkinson also stated that she was trying (I think heroically) to get more parishioners by scouring local community organizations one of which was the Denver Gay and Lesbian Community Center. She said that when she went there, no one had ever heard of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies or of the denomination Metropolitan Community Church. Imagine, the Gay and Lesbian Center’s staff members did not even know that the gay and Lesbian Church was located about 10 blocks away from the Center building. The right hand did not know what the left had was doing. Mind-boggling. The Center staff members were also quite hesitant to promise to refer any young gay and Lesbian people to a “church” or to any church, given the assumed hostility of most churches to gay people.

Consider the Hassidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. They are well organized. Their business leaders have cornered the market on the local photograph apparatus business, including the new digital cameras, and are well established in the diamond trade business, both of these businesses have become profitable. The typical Hassidic family therefore has an income from one of these businesses and lives in an apartment building owned by a Hassidic Jew so that the landlord – tenant hostility is avoided. The landlord wants the tenant to survive and thrive – for religious reasons.

So, when I hear phrases like “organize and empower the Lesbian and gay community,” I think this is what I mean. Organize like the Hassidic community in Brooklyn. They have successfully organized and the whole community has found a way to survive and thrive despite the hostility of our current politicians and hostile politicians of the past.

© 22 May 2017

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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Family, by Lewis

My family of origin was a hybrid between Blondie and Sleeping Beauty—a marriage of a passive but caring father and a resentful, frustrated mother. I, as the only child, quickly learned that the combination meant that I could have a great deal of freedom to do as I pleased but that the consequences would be severe should I ever be caught crossing “the line”. It taught me to be out-of-sight so as to be out-of-mind, how to be a “people-pleaser”, and, later, how to hide my sexual identity.

My father was the oldest of four brothers growing up on a farm in south-central Kansas. I never knew either of his parents as I came along when he was thirty-five and both had passed away. How he came to be such a gentle, quiet man I can only guess. It may have been that he very early learned how to hide his pain as he quietly watched unseen his mom and pop hold each other and cry as they said “Goodbye” to the farm that was to be their legacy but lost during the Depression. It may have been the polio that he contracted as a senior basketball player in high school. For whatever the reason, he was, as a father, ill-equipped to coach a bright but shy son through the trials and tribulations of growing up gay in mid-20th Century America with a mother who was plainly—in retrospect—unable or unwilling to empathize.

© 5 September 2016

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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Anxious Moments, by Betsy

Anxiety: A feeling of unease about an imminent event with an uncertain outcome.

Below is a list of situations which have produced anxious moments for me.

1. The first time Gill and I came to the Storytelling group was one that came to mind. I was very anxious about reading my piece to that room full of men that day when the topic was “porn.”

2. Presentations I have had to give for work or any kind of public speaking can certainly produce an anxious moment.

3. I well remember anxious moments climbing and hiking on a particular narrow trail on the side of a cliff in the Canyon Lands NP wilderness on an Outward Bound challenge. The kind of trail where you are aware that one mis-step means certain death. Just thinking about it makes my palms sweat.

I could come up with a number of other anxious moments. That is just a sample.

I’m sure athletes experience many anxious moments waiting to compete. I imagine almost any tennis, football, or baseball player, or racers— any individual or team sport player who takes his competition seriously might give this description of his/her anxious moment. Let’s say a case of pre tennis tournament nerves might sound something like this:

“I was experiencing the extremely uncomfortable feelings of anxiety early this morning. Around 5 AM I was unable to sleep for the unease and by 7 I was doing specific exercises to relieve the agonizing stress—deep breathing, listening to music, trying to relax, etc.

“Finally relief came at 8 o’clock as I knew it would. My doubles partner and I met our opponents and walked out onto the tennis court and started to warm up for our first match. I don’t know about the others, but my most anxious moment started to dissipate the instant I began swinging my racket. I don’t know why just getting started relieves the tension, but I know it does. I have been there before.

“I may have another anxious moment if we have a close match and we see any chance of winning.”

You might think these are the words of the Brian brothers or the Williams sisters or any other doubles tennis team playing in a world class competition at Roland Garros or Wimbledon or the US Tennis Center. But no, these are my very own thoughts and feelings before this morning’s match in the Denver City Open Tournament in—now get this— in the over 80’s women’s doubles category! Super anxiety in spite of the fact that barely anyone even enters this category. Last year there were just two doubles teams so we got to the finals. Only one other team entered the competition and they beat us. We gave them a run for their money ‘though, but they did beat us.

However this is not a puny tournament. There are over 550 entries from all over the region this year in this 10 day competition held at the Denver Tennis Club. Anyone can simply drop by any time during the event to see some excellent tennis live.

This year in the over 80’s women’s there are three doubles teams. (No women ever compete in singles in the over 80’s category which demonstrates how much smarter women are than men.) So we will at least get to play two matches. We are not guaranteed to make the finals, however.

I do keep asking myself, “Why should this cause anxious moments for me?” Another good question is: “Since it does cause anxiety, why do I do it?” I guess it’s because my partner from last year asked me to. And, well, I’m doing it. So I guess I want to. Also, we just might win.

It occurs to me as well that the reason I set myself up for these anxious moments is the same idea expressed in the old adage: “Why do I keep beating my head against the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop.”

© 9 June 2017

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.