Month: May 2018

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Escape, by Phillip Hoyle

Years ago I’d escape to the hideout in the attic of the garage where this boy with no brothers hung out with boy friends. I’d sometimes go there alone or at least sit downstairs in the garage with my dog Tippy. In Jr. Hi years I’d close the door to my room. I’d matured and moved from sharing a room upstairs with two sisters into my own bedroom across the hall from my parents. Mom consulted with me about color and I ended up with dog wall paper—a mix of portraits of several dog species. Having my own room was great. It was my escape and it had a door! I did my projects and reading there. I enjoyed the solitude.

My friends and I made escapes to the countryside—both on our own and with the Boy Scout troop. We’d hike or ride bikes, or sometimes pull our sleds through the snow. With Scouts we were driven to a campsite south of town where hundreds of years before Native Americans had camped, grown crops, and lived out their summers, one of my favorite places on my great grandparents’ homestead. Kansa and earlier tribes had lived in the valley for centuries. While there I had the further escape of dreams and imagination. I knew I was camping and swimming with Indians long gone from the place.

My other great escape took form in 8th grade with my discovery of the historical novel. I started with James Fenimore Cooper’s stories, The Spy and The Last of the Mohicans, but then found more by contemporary writers like Kenneth Roberts’ book Arundel. I was hooked and spent much of my escape time tramping through forests and prairies with explorers and pioneers, spies and troops, and American Indians of many tribes. Books are still a major escape for me.

Escape is an important factor in personality development (as Don Johnson might point out), to independence (as my daughter would avow), to maintaining long-term relationships (as I testify, both as related to my 29-year marriage and 32-year career in churches). I found meaningful the saying: when a minister leaves one congregation for another, it’s turning in one set of tired problems for a set of new ones.

I still need escapes in retirement. They relieve pressure. Some days escape takes the form of going for coffee, having lunch out, searching a public library, or visiting a museum. These mini-breaks remind me of childhood’s yearly one-week vacation trips with the folks. I recall the morning we woke up in the tiny motel room where we’d slept. Dad complained about how the blinking red neon sign announcing “FULL” had kept him awake, but then, putting his arm around Mom said, “But in all it was a really good night.” My junior-high eyes and ears realized that while we kids slept, Mom and Dad had sex. I’m committed to working hard and then escaping to a change of pace or another book. I guess my upbringing taught me that.

© 19 February 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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Finding Your Voice in the Dark, by Pat Gourley

For many of us in this Story Telling Group I imagine that “finding your voice” could easily be a metaphor for our individual coming out, an emerging from the dark. A truth is implied in finding one’s coming out voice and that truth is unable to flower until we start to let our queer flag fly. Of course, for many of us coming out is in some respects a lifelong process. It is hard to imagine that we simply woke up one day and said: “I am out.” Rather the coming out adventure often has many fits and starts. We eventually find ourselves in a space where we can easily find our true voice in nearly any situation. It is though something, even today, not always spoken out loud since a protective common sense often dictates whom we tell and whom we don’t.

I’d like to share an example of a lesbian friend in San Francisco finding a voice in part through her poetry. This woman’s name is Tova Green and she is a Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). In addition to her many teaching and administrative duties at the SFZC she was the co-founder of Queer Dharma an offering of the Zen Center since 2009.

During most of my extended sojourns to the City by the Bay I attend the Zen Center when I can made easy by the fact that it is located at the corner of Page and Laguna literally out the backdoor of the B&B. I most often participate in the evening Zazen session and occasionally the monthly Queer Dharma gatherings. It was at a Queer Dharma session that I encountered and struck up a budding friendship with Tova. On my most recent visit in September she again related her love for poetry over brunch, a wonderful trait it seems very common with many lesbians. Also shared was one of her own poems written about an event we were both made very sadly aware of that occurred on the night of January 9th 2015.

I was staying at the Inn that night with a dear friend from Denver named Clark. Clark and I have been friends since 1989 and share an unbreakable bond having been present for each other at the deaths of our partners from AIDS, his dear Phil in 1994 and my David in 1995. I had invited Clark on this trip to see the engraving of Phil’s name up in the AIDS Grove in Golden Gate Park. I had already had David’s name put up there the year before.

As was the case so often I was asleep early in the evening that January night but woke to the sound of what I first thought was firecrackers. It was a rapid staccato of noise that just didn’t really seem like firecrackers soon eliciting a sense of dread and quite frankly an emerging fear deep in the pit of my stomach. My worst fears were soon confirmed with the sound of many police and emergency vehicles arriving on the scene at the corner of Page and Laguna again right out the back door of the B&B and very visible from the first-floor bay window facing west.

What had occurred was a shooting, thought to be gang-turf related that left four young men dead at the scene. The probable semi-automatic weapon that was used allowed the perpetrator to snuff out four lives in a matter of seconds. An event that barely registered outside of San Francisco, since the cut off for significant media attention for a “mass-shooting” in America these days is five murders not just four.

We watched with disbelief and numbness as at least one of the victims in a body bag was loaded into an ambulance. Knocks at our front door and short interviews with police and homicide detectives soon took place. We were only able to offer after the fact partial accounts. The shooter or shooters were gone from the scene before we got to the window and realized what had happened.

By the next morning a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles had appeared at the lamppost directly out and across Page Street from the Zen Center. Living at the Zen Center, Tova was very aware of the tragedy that had occurred that night. She recently shared with me the poem she had written about that night. I am quite moved by how beautifully she was able to find her voice to acknowledge that very dark event on a dark winter night right on the doorstep of a place dedicated to compassion and meditative solace. Her poem in remembrance is titled “Prayer”.

Prayer by Tova Green

For Yalani Chinyamurindi, David Saucier, Harith Atchan and Manuel O’Neal

When my car was stolen
I remembered the four
young men, shot and killed
in a stolen car double parked
at our corner. It was nine
on a cold Friday night.
One was on his break
from work, catching
a ride with friends
to cash his paycheck.


The four had grown up
nearby, I learned,
when I joined their mothers
in a candlelight walk and saw
the wilting bouquets, photos
taped to a lamppost,
flickering flames enclosed
in glass on the sidewalk.

A girl gripped the lamp post
wailing—I want my brother back.
The next Mothers’ Day I stood
again with those women
on the steps of City Hall
and heard them tell their stories.
I’ll never know who
stole my car or what they
did with it before they left it,
wrecked, across the Bay.

I pray it wasn’t used
in an act of violence. I pray
for the safety of those
who stole it, knowing
their mothers pray for them
night and day

© 23 October 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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Choice, by Betsy

“When did you decide to be homosexual?” A gay man was once asked that question in an interview on TV. His answer was perfect: “When did YOU decide to be heterosexual.” That says it all, doesn’t it? Did any LGB or T ever make the choice to be LGB or T. I don’t think so. That is not to say there are no choices involved. “When did you decide to come out,” might be the more appropriate question. But is coming out or not coming out even a viable choice, really. In our society today, I would say “no,” not if an LGBT person wants to live life to the fullest, then he/she must come out. But the choice must be made and that is sometimes easier said than done.

Every day is replete with decisions from the moment we wake up in the morning. Shall I get out of bed or not? Shall I have eggs or cereal for breakfast? Shall I wear this or that? Shall I go shopping? Shall I go to Sprouts or Whole Foods? Most of these choices I can make easily because I am familiar with what is required to carry them out and I can easily imagine their respective outcomes.

Here’s when I have trouble: Let’s say (theoretically) I have never been to New Mexico or Arizona and (theoretically) I know absolutely nothing about either place. We’re on a road trip. Gill says to me, “You choose where we go. New Mexico or Arizona? Which will it be? Tell me right now because there is a fork in the road up ahead and I have to know which one to take.”

I have trouble with that. Since I have no information about either place and know nothing about them, it is not a choice. It’s a guess—a “pick a name, throw a dart exercise at best.” So, “no information” renders good choice-making difficult or impossible. This is not to say there is anything wrong with guessing and taking a chance, but only in some situations.

Even in the case of coming out or not, again it’s a matter of having some information to base your choice on. When I first became aware of my sexual attractions, I did not choose to come out because I had no information about what was going on with my feelings. I didn’t even know there was a choice involved. I was convinced that those feelings would change as I matured. I was totally unaware of any other person having homosexual feelings. When those feelings didn’t change I was convinced there was something wrong with me and I needed to fix it. Now, thanks to the gay rights movement and the general availability and dissemination of information, we know better and we can honor our feelings rather than denying them.

Another problem with choice making: Have you ever been in the store looking for say toothpaste? Your favorite old stand-by kind is no longer available—at least you cannot recognize anything that looks like it on the shelf. You need to choose a new kind. How do you choose one out of 250 boxes of toothpaste and you do not want to spend your entire day comparing them? Again you are faced with guessing because there is no way you are going to get all the information about all of the different brands in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes choices can be overwhelming. Guessing and taking a chance on toothpaste in this situation makes sense.

When I was teaching young children in school I learned it’s best to give them a choice but make it very simple. Do you want “this” or “that?” Choose between no more than two things. This way the little buggers feel empowered because they are choosing, but the outcome of their choosing will be appropriate and doable for the teacher.

Sometimes I wish choices would be kept simple for adults; namely, our electorate. Take the presidential election of 2000. The voters were given a choice of two major candidates: George Bush, Al Gore, and multiple third-party candidates, most notably Ralph Nader. Had we been given a simpler choice; i.e., George Bush or Al Gore, Mr. Gore would have been elected according to many analysts, and the world would be quite a different place today; certainly our country would be a different place today. One has to wonder if it was true that the republicans paid Nader to run that year. They knew it would split the democrat’s vote.

That was not the problem in the recent Brexit vote in Britain. A simple choice was presented: in or out of the European Union. The majority, though the vote was close, chose to leave the EU. Now, in retrospect, it seems a couple of million British voters feel they made the wrong choice. But here is a good example of the choice-making problem described above: not enough information. It seems clear now that the dust has settled that many who voted to leave the EU were persuaded by the fear mongers of the opposing side.

Sounds very much like our current presidential campaign. Mr. Trump is an entertainer and gets huge media attention. He’s different—not establishment. Many people have chosen to support him for this reason alone—literally this reason alone—ignoring his ideology and dangerous policies and beliefs. Guessing and taking a chance when choosing a president does not make sense to me.

So, for me, to create an opportunity to make a good choice requires having enough factual information, not lies, not propaganda, not spins, plus information from both sides. Unfortunately, in politics most people are not willing to listen equally to both sides. Or they have already made the emotional decision that one side is good or maybe just okay, but the other side is so bad that they cannot be believed no matter what. Often, it seems, it’s a question of which lies are most convincing. I love “fact checker” and I wish journalists would use it on the spot in interviews and debates.

In the case of making a choice, say, to avoid an accident while driving a car one cannot take the time to gather information and ponder it even for a minute. A choice is made to swerve to one side or the other, but that fits my concept of a reaction rather than a choice.

The next time I am faced with a choice I only hope I have some, not TOO much, but SOME good information, factual information, and some time to apply it. I do not want to react instantly, unless I have to, but I prefer to have enough time to think it through. In the case of a presidential election, I don’t mean years. I should think a couple of months would be enough before one is ready to cast a vote. In the case of coming out, well, I see choices to come out occurring everyday as an ongoing, lifetime process. But once the basic choice is made to open the closet door, the rest should fall into place.

© 5 July 2015

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.