Month: April 2018

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Quirky Domestic Situations, by Ricky

Me? Quirky? I don’t think so. I’m perfectly normal in every way even for a gay guy. Very nondescript, average looking, wonderful personality (so I’ve been told and I choose to believe it) and nothing quirky about me. So, I felt very secure in asking my oldest daughter if she thought there was anything quirky about me; knowing all along that she couldn’t think of anything even if she thought more than her 30-second attention span for caring about anything I say.

Apparently, it was a case of me not seeing the forest because the trees were in the way; or (as the Bible puts it in Matthew, Chapter 7) a case of “mote” “beam” sickness. Let’s see if I can remember accurately. My daughter thought for all of 3 seconds and came up with “The Lord of the Rings”.

Apparently, every time we have guests over I always ask them at some point if they like to read books and if so what type. (My daughter keeps track of these things somehow; I don’t keep count.) Not long after the topic of books and movies turns up, someone, not always me, will bring up “The Lord of the Rings”; at which time a 15 to 30 minute discussion of the book and movie will follow. My daughter has grown very tired of hearing it over and over.

The last time it happened was two weeks ago. She had invited the church missionaries over for dinner. I was on my way home from somewhere and called to let her know. She informed me that the missionaries were there for dinner so I asked if I was invited or should I eat before I came home. She told me to come on home. She told us all later, that at this point she wanted to add that I could come home to eat, if I did not talk about “The Lord of the Rings” but she did not say it. I came home. We all sat down to eat and during the small talk, my daughter asked one of the missionaries where he lived and went to school. He replied, “Sacramento.” My daughter thought to herself, “Oh no.” I said, “I went to college in Sacramento.” When asked where I replied, “Sacramento State College” and I flunked out after two semesters. (My daughter is now screaming in her head, “No. No. Nooooo.) When asked why did I flunk out, I couldn’t lie so I said because my English 101 teacher made us read “The Lord of the Rings.” After the ensuing 20 minute discussion, my daughter told us what she did not tell me when I called and then she said, “and I ended up giving the lead-in question to the topic I hate.” I think my daughter is the quirky one.

I’m sure I’m not quirky, but quirky things seem to go on around me. For example, my daughter’s mother-in-law, Maria, was raised on a collective farm in the old Soviet Union. As a result, she has worked all her life. When she came to live with us no one asked her to help around the house but she doesn’t know how to be “retired”. So, she is constantly cleaning, cooking, doing laundry (until the washer broke), and generally being every man’s ideal housewife. When she does want a private time, she goes to our old tool and garden shed where she has made herself what I call a “nest”; goes in and hides. It’s rather cozy actually, but she is the quirky one.

Maria’s husband, Gari, who also lives with us, is a bit quirky or maybe just eccentric. He walks ¾ of a mile to the grocery store and back and generally ignores the traffic signs for walk and don’t walk; at least until last month when he did it in front of Lakewood’s “finest” and received a $79 ticket for walking across the street at an intersection against the don’t walk sign. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting what is essentially a jay-walking type citation. I don’t know if he is quirky or if it’s just the situation that’s quirky.

My daughter’s husband and Maria’s son, Artur, is rather quirky. Today when I told him that our Himalayan cat was pregnant he became his quirky self. At first anger stating that he would throw her out and then a few seconds later he demanded we get the cat an abortion. When my daughter pointed out that he always had said he wanted the cat to have kittens, he responded that it was true but not by an alley cat (paraphrased). Once it was explained that the father was ½ Persian or ½ Himalayan he calmed down a bit. In a day or two he will be fine with the situation—that’s his quirk. In fact, we don’t know for sure who the father is. The only cat we’ve seen in her company was the one we mentioned. I also will not tell him that on the weekends when he and his mother are gone all day, I repeatedly let the cat out knowing she was in heat. I did it for two reasons. I got tired of listening to the cat yowling and I like kittens. Maybe that’s my quirk.

© 17 Apr 2012

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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Empathy, by Lewis T

History is replete with examples of leaders who may have been brilliant empire builders but whose lack of empathy made them brutal tyrants whose legacy was one of despicable cruelty–Genghis Khan, who was responsible for the killing of 11 percent of the world’s population; Tamerlane the Great (aka Timur, who is believed to have beheaded 90,000 people and built more than 1000 towers out of the rotting skulls); Vlad the Impaler; Ivan the Terrible; Belgian King Leopold II; and Pol Pot of Cambodia—to name but a few.

Compared to those tyrannical lunatics, our President is, thankfully, a consummate underachiever. He does share one trait with the aforementioned, however: he is totally lacking in empathy.

Empathy is a more powerful emotion than sympathy. While expressions of sympathy signify the speaker’s awareness of someone else’s emotional pain, empathy suggests that the individual shares that pain. Lesser animals than humans clearly are capable of feeling a sense of loss when a mate or offspring dies. That feeling may linger for days, weeks, or even longer. But I have never known or heard such a creature to demonstrate empathy for the loss of another of its species.

Science and art are the manifestations of humans’ great intellect. The limits seem boundless. Generation after generation, we humans achieve greater and greater means of advancing civilization. Leonardo de Vinci, who was both a scientist and an artist (and a genius at both), has expressed what I consider the most moving example of how empathy is a connection between the human and the Divine. Having created Man and Woman and seen that they were both good, the God of the book of Genesis extends his index finger to a reclining Adam in what appears to be a blessing, a sign of empathy between the Loving and the Beloved.

My gut feeling is that our current POTUS may never have felt thus blessed by his father. His older brother, Freddy, “who died at the age of 43 in 1981 of alcoholism, was apparently unable to conform to a family dominated by a driven, perfectionist patriarch and an aggressive younger brother”, Donald. [Citation: Jason Horwitz, New York Times, Jan. 2, 2016]. Instead, Donald learned that pleasing father meant being tough, never touching alcohol, and always—ALWAYS—coming out on top.

For our President, a person’s worth is determined by their wealth, fame, and influence. There is no place for empathy, the payoff for which cannot be measured in those terms. Showing empathy will not improve your golf score or get you seated at the best table at the Gramercy Tavern but it can do wonders for your human relationships and—who knows—it might even get you into Heaven.

© 27 Nov 2017

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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Changes I would like to see, by Gillian

There are plenty I’m reminded of every time I look in a mirror! This scraggly old turkey-neck could lose some wrinkles to start with. The bags under the eyes could disappear along with the gray hair, and there could simply be … well …. less of me. Many pounds less of me. But I have no intention of buying overpriced skin cream nor coloring my hair, and seem quite incapable of taking either diet or exercise too seriously, so I suspect the changes I see in the mirror will be those I would rather not see. On the other hand, the things I don’t see in the mirror, those things which make up my inner self, my soul, however you choose to think of it, I am pretty happy with. My psyche seems to be doing OK and actually going in the right direction, and I provide as much spiritual help as I can give it. I think that is why I don’t worry much about the negatives offered up by the mirror. They just do not seem important.

Looking out at the world through plain glass, however, is a very different matter. Perhaps because I so love taking photographs myself, some of the memories burned into my brain come in the form of photos I have seen over a lifetime. And they mostly represent things I hope never to see again. For humanity, that is the change I would like to see; simply never to see such things again. Never again to see photos of beautiful old cities carpet-bombed in the way The Allies punished Dresden, managing to kill an estimated 135,000 people in one nightmare nigh. I hope never again to see photos of thousands of refugee children, as in post World War Two Europe. The photos were posted in the hope that someone would recognize these poor tattered, shattered, bodies and souls, and return them to someone who loved them. I would like to see a world where we don’t look at photos of a little naked girl running from the napalm destruction of all she knows. The Siege of Sarajevo’s 20th anniversary was memorialized in 2012. Empty red chairs were set out in the main street, symbolizing 11,541 victims of the war. 643 of the chairs were small, representing the slain children. On some of them, during the day-long event, passers-by left teddy bears, little plastic cars, other toys or candy. I hope never to see a picture like that again. At one Storytime last year I passed around a photo I think says it all about the horror that is now Syria; a tiny little child, obviously near death from starvation, being eyes greedily by a hungry vulture. I won’t inflict it on you again today, but it still haunts me.

I very much want to see a changed world in which such terrible photographs represent an awful past from which we have recovered and moved on. Somehow I doubt that. In fact at this time, with two madmen with their fingers on red buttons, it seems less likely than ever. Being a political pessimist ain’t easy. And so, I’m back to me again. I started out saying I was pretty happy with the way I feel inside. But should I be seeking to change, at the very least, my political pessimism? No, I don’t think so. If I were a real true pessimist that might be different; it must surely be depressing always to expect the worst from life. But being a political pessimist I really believe brings me peace. It’s very much the philosophy of hope for the best but prepare for the worst which I find to be very practical political advice. I found a wonderful quote from Thomas Hardy, who said, “And as I am surely approaching that infamous stage of life, second childhood, I’m sure I’m much better off sticking with child’s play.”

© January 2018

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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Seashells, by Ray S

In a most quiet time I have found a treasure chest of sea shells, each one a different and radiant color.

I can reach down into their midst and pull up two handfuls with the excess falling back into a music-like pile.

Here’s the beauty and magic of each one of these shells. In something short of a century there have been or are still, a shell for each of those years, actually hundreds of little shells standing for the events of a lifetime. They are memory keepsakes, memories stored away for ever so long; some brighter than others and a number of not so bright or happy.

But like the waves washing to the shore, more shells and newly-made memories appear, to be added to our collection of a lifetime.

© 12 March 2018

About the Author

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When I Knew, by Phillip Hoyle

I knew I liked sex games when I was in second grade—age 7.

I knew I liked sex games with boys in third grade—age 8.

I knew I missed sex games with boys in seventh grade, but this time the knowing was complicated by the fact that my boyfriends didn’t seem interested any more—age 12.

I knew when I was sexually molested by an older man that some men wanted sex with other men. I also knew I didn’t feel molested—age 14.

I knew I wasn’t the only teenager to get hard ons in the shower room at school. I also learned not to be distressed—age 14.

I knew some boys my age liked to kiss and have sex with other boys and that I too liked it. I also knew my friend missed his big brother who went off to university—age 15.

I knew that only some boys attracted me sexually, not all of them. In fact I knew that only a few boys attracted me; few girls as well—age 16.

I knew one guy in the dorm who attracted me by his personality, humor, and relaxed nudity—age 18.

I knew one other boy at college who liked to wrestle with me alone in my room and realized he must miss his brothers—age 19.

I knew I had unusually intense feelings for a younger undergraduate the year after I had married. He was the first person I ever lost sleep over—age 21.

I knew the new music teacher, Ted, would like to do sexual things I might like to do and hoped we’d become friends but not complicate my marriage—age 22.

I knew I had deep emotional responses to some few men in my first fulltime church job. I knew I wouldn’t do anything with them but did experience and enjoy the attractions—ages 23-25.

I knew an undergraduate at university who was gay and seemed interested in me—age 28.

I knew I had fallen in love with a fellow male student in seminary—age 30.

These when’s are only part of the story, for I kept having them—still do—age 70. The content, or what’s are, as they say, the rest of the story, and I have enjoyed these what images as I have written about my when’s. Ah, the glories of memory; but that’s another story or a million more.

© 2 April 2018

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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My favorite childhood hero, by Pat Gourley

“…he was a queer man and would go about the village without noticing people or saying anything. In his own teepee he would joke, and when he was on the warpath with a small party, he would joke to make his warriors feel good. But around the village he hardly ever noticed anybody, except little children.”

From Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt

The quote I am opening with here is from John Neihardt’s 1932 book titled Black Elk Speaks and is a description of Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse along with the great Chiricahua, Cochise, was truly my boyhood hero. Crazy Horse though came out as one of my formative heroes and remains so to this day. I still read anything I can get my hands on about the great man and Native Americans in general.

I was initially enamored with Cochise largely because of the rather stereotypical presentation of the great Apache in the 1956-58 T.V. show called Broken Arrow. I was 7 years old when the series started and I did everything possible to be able to stay up past my 8pm bedtime to watch it. In researching this piece I found an old snippet of video from the show with Cochise and Tom Jeffords half naked in a sweat lodge. Talk about something that might indelibly imprint in a little buddy gay boy’s psyche. Cochise’s grey hair and very manly chest left poor Tom Jeffords in the dust. Awareness of the stereotypical and racist elements of this show as of course way beyond my pay grade in 1957 at age eight. Michael Ansara who played Cochise was not even Native American but a Syrian immigrant.

Unlike many of my peers in my pre-teen years my favorite heroes were not Roy Rogers, Gene Autry or the Lone Ranger. I have recently found re-runs of Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger on an obscure cable channel. Watching some of the Roy Rogers shows and seeing his over the top cowboy-drag through my 2018 eyes I have to wonder if Dale Evans wasn’t really Roy’s beard.

Cochise sparked my interest in Native Americans but as I got older I was able to put my hands on much more honest and realistic presentations of Native Americans. I was drawn to Crazy Horse and the Plains Indian wars against white genocidal encroachment, treachery and theft. Crazy Horse was a loner, a vision seeker who was dedicated to preserving the “old ways” before the white invasions. Though no evidence exists that I am aware of that he was a homosexual and certainly did not fit the bill of a Winkte, Lakota males who adapted woman’s roles and were totally incorporated with in the tribe he was certainly “different”.

I most recently ran across a description of him in a 2016 book tilted The Earth Is Weeping by Peter Cozzens:

“ His perpetually youthful appearance, pale skin, and fine hip-length hair imparted to him an androgynous quality. An Indian agent described the man at age thirty-six as a “bashful girlish looking boy”. Page 194- The Earth is Weeping.

Queer or not, and most likely not, Crazy Horse certainly had many admirable qualities that in many ways were those of someone different, an outsider. He was totally dedicated to the survival and well being of his people and their “old ways” up until the moment he took his last breath after being bayoneted in the back trying not to be put in jail on the trumped up supposition that he was about to again go to war with the white man.

In a 2012 piece by the great Chris Hedges, writing in Truthdig, he pays homage to Crazy Horse with this closing line:

“His ferocity of spirit remains a guiding light for all who seek lives of defiance.”

I hope that all my heroes have ferocity of spirit and seek lives of defiance. Though not often successful I strive to emulate these qualities and truly belief we as queer people are given a leg up with these heroic qualities.

© January 2018

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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Empathy, by Louis Brown

Empathy, Sympathy and Psychological Projection.

Empathy [em-puh-thee] noun

1. the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself:

By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.

Sympathy

1. the harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.

2. the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions.

3. the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.

Projection: Psychology.

1. The tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself, or to regard external reality as embodying such feelings, thoughts, etc., in some way.

2. Psychoanalysis. Such an ascription relieving the ego of a sense of guilt or other intolerable feeling.

Let us build a new Liberal majority Party

Through “empathy” we can identify other oppressed groups that we identify with for the purpose of building a broader coalition for the mutual benefit of all the oppressed groups. And remember, if you put all the oppressed groups together, you have a majority.

(1) Blacks have a grievance:

(a) Trayvon Martin’s assassin, George Zimmerman, goes free and shows no remorse. The oppression is overt. The murder took place 2-27-2012.

(b) The massacre of 9 church goers in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 6, 2015, there were nine black victims, church attendees. The perpetrator was Dylan Roof.

(c) The lack of real life-saving intervention in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Aug. 21, 2005-Aug. 31, 2005 White supremacy became obvious.

(2) Peaceniks:

(a) The George McGovern presidential campaign of 1972 showed most dramatically that a large percentage of the American public is dissatisfied with our right-wing foreign policy.

(b) Currently there are only two U. S. Senators who see the importance of future non-intervention policies. They are Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, both are Republicans. The paucity of peace-oriented, non-interventionist representatives should be corrected. Mike Lee’s laudable isolationist policies are kept pretty much a secret.

(3) Gay men and Lesbians: us. We are mainly concerned with state legislatures passing irrational laws that discriminate against sexual minorities and are designed to intimidate us. We are concerned also with discrimination in employment and housing, for starters.

(4) Hispanics claim that lack of appropriate levels of assistance for the reconstruction of the infrastructure of Puerto Rico gives another example of white supremacy.

(5) The physically disabled claim cogently they are frequently subjected to discriminatory practices and are marginalized. See Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

(6) Women libbers claim on the work site abuse mostly by male supervisors. Also that women have been given the right to an abortion but male chauvinist conservative legislatures are taking this right away, mainly with dirty tricks. Their particular enemy is male chauvinism.

Women’s March on Washington took place on January 21, 2017, and much of their rhetoric and political positions were in opposition to the recently inaugurated Donald Trump.

(7) Muslims, Jews, Atheists all claim cogently to be oppressed minorities.

George McGovern from American historian

3. George Stanley McGovern was an American historian, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. Wikipedia Quotes

4. I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

5. The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher plain.

6. The longer the title [of any given public official], the less important the job.

© 27 November 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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Patriotism, by Lewis T

· “See the USA in your Chevrolet.”

· “See America first.”

· “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”

· “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and Country.”

· “Duty, honor, country.”

· “Loose lips sink ships.”

These are all valid expressions of love and loyalty to our native or chosen country. It is natural and normal and expected that we feel some sense of obligation to the people and places that nurture and sustain us. That is why we sometimes refer to the United States as our Mother Country. It is why we usually react more strongly to reports of patricide, matricide, and, especially, infanticide than to other murders. How could anyone do harm to those who have given so much to us–freedom, opportunity, sustenance?

· “Love it or leave it.”

· “My country, right or wrong.”

· Manifest Destiny

· American exceptionalism

· Genocide

· Religious intolerance

· Prejudice

These are manifestations of extreme forms of love and loyalty to those places and people that have nurtured us. There is a flip side to that coin. Just as we love the nurturer (and, perhaps, question how worthy we are of that love), we tend to distrust the stranger, who may not be disposed to see us so favorably. In long ago times, it was the tribe to which we owed our loyalty. It was Arian against the Jew, the Montagues against the Capulets, the Hatfields against the McCoys. All others were with the favored tribe or against it. The “Other” was deemed less than human, disdained by God, fit only to be slaughtered and their bodies left to rot in the sun or be picked clean by vultures.

Thus, America can wage a geopolitical war on Viet Nam or Iraq on the pretext of threat to the homeland while counting only the American dead and wounded and ignoring the order-of-magnitude greater losses on the other side. We systematically and mercilessly brought the Native population of the United States down by 95% over 400 years–an estimated 11-3/4 million people, almost double the number of Jews murdered during the Nazi Holocaust. Every year we hold a celebration in honor of the white man who “discovered” America but about the near extermination of an entire race of humans we are silent. During World War II, we built concentration camps for 110,000 Japanese-Americans, 62% of whom were American citizens.

What constitutes a “tribe” these days is changing. Some Americans have figured out that there is a lot of money to be made by exploiting the very human capacity for pitting “us” against “them”. Thus, the NFL has become a multi-billion-dollar industry which uses human beings as the raw material, violence as the lure, and attachment to a geographical place as the motivator. Only within the past ten years or so have we begun to understand the toll that “cash cow” has taken on its gladiators.

Homo sapiens is almost unique in its capacity to devour its own. No wonder so many are unwilling to acknowledge the fact that we evolved from the primordial slime. How, if true, could we then think of ourselves as the “chosen people”? How, then, could we call others “gooks”, “slopes”, “niggers”, “redskins”, or “chinks”?

In the final analysis, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. Why is it so important to engage in countless hours of tedious research to be able to show that our ancestors came over on the Mayflower or, still less likely, Noah’s Ark? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to really get to know our relatives in order to understand whether they were worth giving them the time of day? What I want to know about a person is what they are like on the inside, not the outside. What things were like for them growing up, not where they grew up.

What does their soul look like, not their skin. What makes us unique and wonderful cannot be seen with the eyes or learned from examining their DNA. If you must classify something, measure the temperature of their heart, the depth of their compassion, and the breadth of their wisdom. If these things measure up, then I don’t care if they come from Uranus.

© 11 November 2013

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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Will-o’-the Wisp, by Gillian

For the first few decades of my life, of course, my own personal – very personal – will-o’-the-wisp was my attempt to catch and then kill whatever this very vaguely-defined ‘thing’ was which was ‘wrong with me’. But, no, that wasn’t right. I honestly did not feel that there was anything wrong with me; in which case the problem must lie with the boys, and then men, that I knew. If I felt no desire for any of them, either in the role of a quickie or a lifetime lover, then there was something wrong with them! So rather than search for the thing which did exist, what it was which made me different, I switched to chasing that real will-o’-the-wisp, this magical ‘right’ man.The search took me from home to college, from country to city, from country to country. When, in an eventual flash of clarity, the mystery was solved, I was freed from the chase, but by then was married to a man who could never, I finally understood, solve my problem.

The original meaning of will-o’-the-wisp is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travelers into the dangerous marshes. Certainly, in marrying a man when deep in my being I knew I should not, I was following a ghost light into tricky emotional swampland. Having lost my path I hurt innocent people along the way, and I shall always regret that. But on occasion we all find ourselves blundering around in the dark, following strange lights. And I don’t always hear my aunt’s voice warning me,

‘Nay, Lass, tha’s no-but a will o’ ‘t- wisp!’

© March 2018

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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Rolling Thunder, by Ricky


As an 8 to 10-year-old boy living on a farm in central Minnesota, my 3½ year older uncle and I had to listen to the thunder that rolled across the rolling hills during rain storms. Many was the night when we had to sleep with the thunderous noise created by lightning strikes. As if that wasn’t enough, the flashes of lightning played havoc with the time it took us to fall asleep.

We were not overly scared of the lightning and thunder while in bed, or in the house. The farm-house we lived in had six lightning rods along the spine of the roof. My uncle and I slept together in a wire spring frame bed with metal head and foot-boards. We were well insulated from a direct strike to the house. At least, we believed we were safe from lightning. Now the storms that produced tornados, were another matter entirely.

On a side note, when I was 9¾-years old and sleeping in that bed, my uncle and I fondled each other once, two nights in a row. These events showed me the possibilities of male to male pleasurable activities. I am very fond of that bed.

J.K. Rowling receives thunderous applause at her presentations as did the first showing of Star Wars in Rapid City, South Dakota, which my spouse and I attended. As soon as the first space ship appeared traveling from the top towards the middle of the screen trying to escape the even larger ship chasing it, the fans of space movies began to applaud for about two minutes. Consequently, there was some dialog everyone missed.

North Vietnam and Laos received the fruits of Operation Rolling Thunder from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968. The effort was ultimately a failure as it did not achieve stated goals. See operation rolling thunder in Wikipedia for more details.

I have been seated in restroom stalls and often have heard “rolling thunder” from nearby stalls, and in all honesty, from my own as well.

Who can forget the rolling thunder of multiple bowling balls dropping to the lane and the subsequent crashing of the pins as they are knocked about. And, there is also the vibrating air as a railroad diesel powered engine, or two or three and sometimes four, pass by loud enough to be classified as rolling thunder (in my opinion).

Anyone who has witnessed in person the launch of a Saturn V rocket, carrying astronauts to the moon, could never forget the rolling thunder of the powerful engines pulsing across the water to the on-lookers 3-miles away.

© 13 November 2017

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