Author: jnelson

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All Writing is Experimental, by Gillian

If
writing is based on life, and I don’t know what else we’d base it on, then
surely it must be experimental because all life is experimental. And not just
human life; what is evolution, after all, but a series of experiments? Trouble
is, real life experiments can be painful; just think of all those critters who
ended up on the wrong side of the evolutionary experiments.
Whammo!
Extinct!
Betsy
and I read, somewhere, in some pop-psych book, that we should all look at life
as an experiment and therefor lighten up. Rather than castigating myself for
moving back to Podunk, Iowa, and consequently being miserable and wanting
nothing more than to return to Denver, what a stupid mistake, why did you do
such a stupid thing, etc. etc., I should shrug and say, ”Oh well, just an
experiment. Rather surprising results; not quite what I expected.”
and
move happily back to Denver. We both rather liked the concept. Putting yourself
down because you made a dumb mistake, a bad decision, resolves nothing. It was
an experiment. You cannot fail an experiment. The result just is, and
you go from there.
The
problem is, even though you perhaps are free from beating up on yourself, that
experiment was darned expensive: financially and emotionally. Often for others
as well as yourself. Your girlfriend was devastated that you didn’t care enough
to stick around. On the other hand, neither did she care enough to go with you.
Relationship over. You sold the condo that you so enjoyed. And now, by some
quirk of fate, it seems to require twice as much money as you sold it for, to
buy anything remotely equivalent. That move to Podunk has cost you a bundle,
regardless of whether you call it an experiment or a stupid mistake.
On
the other hand, in defense of experiments, there are indeed many situations
which might well be improved by being seen as experimental. The one that leaps
into my mind, is marriage. What else can it be? Two kids barely out of school
promise to love and be faithful to each other for what may well be the next
seventy years. How intimidating is that? How realistic is it? Clearly not very,
given our less than 50% success rate. Wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense
to promise to give this experiment your very best shot, and see what happens.
How much lighter, less intimidating, that would feel. Perhaps under such
circumstances, marriages would actually have a better chance of survival. That
institution needs a shot in the arm. I say we try it. Life truly is a
continuous series of experiments. We might as well face it.
Aaaah!
But writing, now, that really is free, except for my time. And harmless.
Spending three hours, or three months if it comes to that, writing something
which eventually falls victim to the delete key, is probably just as
beneficial to me as that which triumphantly ends up at the print
command. The process is as valuable as the end result. It’s all a series of
experiments which result in a string of surprises.
Sometimes
I sit down at the keyboard with a firm plan in place. I know how I’m going to
start, where I meander to from there, and how it will end. All I have to do is
put down the words and that, for me, is usually the easy part. Other times I
place my fingers on the keys and my mind is a complete blank. I haven’t managed
to form one thought about the topic on which I plan to write. I flex my fingers
as if preparing to play the piano, and wait for the music to start. From this
point on, whether I have a clear plan in my head or no thoughts at all,
everything comes a surprise. Who knows where this experiment will lead?
My
fingers start to move; slowly at first, then faster. The cymbals clash. A
crashing crescendo. Silence falls. I look back to see what I have actually
written. It’s fantastic! I love it! It’s godawful. It’s crap! Most often it’s
somewhere in between. What’s that whole paragraph about? Delete. Need to
explain this better. Insert. That word isn’t just, quite, exactly,
right. A gentle man. No. A quiet man? No. A calm man. Calm. That’s the word I’m
looking for. And, in finding the right word, I see him differently. A
wonderful, totally unexpected, result of this experiment.
Writing,
from the grand design to every single individual word or even punctuation, is
all an experiment; trial and error. I rarely, even on occasions when I have a
complete plan, end up where I intended. Well! I sit back and re-read what I
wrote. Who’da thunk? I ask myself. Who knew I thought that? Apparently my
fingers did. They are the ones who seem to know where we’re going. Not me. I
just evaluate and tweak it when they’re done.
The
topic we have chosen to write about is an experiment in itself. Some I look on
with approval. I know exactly how to approach that. Others I stare at
blankly and want to strangle whoever dreamed that one up. But in reality, some
of the topics I can’t seem to raise any interest in generate what I judge as
good stories; some of the topics I love end up somewhere in the mediocre.
A
while back I read a novel, can’t of course recall either the title or the
author, which was honestly kinda boring. It was long and moved slowly, but I
persevered. You know how it is sometimes with a book like that? You have to
finish it because it really can’t be as bad as you think it is and eventually
you’ll get it. Sometimes you don’t, and you wonder how the thing ever got
published. But this one had such a twist in the tail, or tale, that I still
remember it and in spite of a good deal of boredom to be suffered I would
recommend it. If I could remember what it was, that is! The point is, I found
myself wondering about the author’s process in this particular experiment. Did
she (yes, I do recall it was a woman) plan it that way all along. The reader
must plod on through this rather uninviting story, being set up, really,
for the dramatic shocker at the end, making the effort worthwhile after all? Or
did she get towards the end of her writing and have to accept that in all
honesty it was pretty boring. Who would read it? It would get bad reviews. It
would end up being sold for 10% of it’s original price, on Amazon, amongst all
the other dismal failures. And she was clever enough to dream up a way to save
it with the surprise ending?
Reams
have been written about how famous writers planned their work, from the
intricacies of James Joyce to the ball-point scrawls of Rowling, to Faulkner,
who famously outlined his
fiction on the walls of his study, in-between bottles of
bourbon. But I would be willing to bet, no matter how well established and
researched the plan, every day of writing brought with it a myriad of surprises
and adjustments. Writing, like any artistic creation, is an experiment whether
you’re at the very top of the game or a rank amateur, just struggling to put
one word in front of another.
© 27 Jul 2015 
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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Color Truth, by Eym

Rainbows display more colors than we may ever know.  As with human beings, the parade of true
colors in nature out marches the imagination of anyone.
Some sort of green tulip leaves now flop upward above the dull yet
crunchy brown dirt.  They pose near a
plastic white fence my dogs and I pass.  We
walk by them into many shades of gray pavement. 
My little pals reveal shiny ebony with trim of yummy caramel tan.  Tires, like shoes on cars, stand there.
Though also black, tires show a different tint next to my short dog boys.  For some reason the cars perching in their
stalls display shades of gray pavement.
I do not understand why any safety minded person would make cars the same
color as pavement or cement roads.  Perhaps
some gone-wild logic of marketing believes that pavement gray cars look
convincingly more road worthy.  Maybe we
actually need to hide from a hoard of unseen sky marauding aliens that peer down
at us as we travel about.  Both of these
angles seem to overlook the obvious interpretation I make.  It is harder to safely see gray cars on gray
roads.
Amid my gray worry, I must admit I have never walked into any of these
gray cars resting there in parking lot 3. 
This suggests that even in plain ole boring gray the variety of colors
out runs my imagination.  The challenge
of trying to match greens while in art school served to restate the same
humbling truth.
By standard description our rainbow offers only six colors as it glows
against the special backdrop of generous rain clouds.  This short sided summary leads us to miss a
good deal of natural wonder.  Springtime
will soon give us new encouraging colors. 
Could it be that part of this surprise, year after year, stems from the
unrealized diversity of true colors in flowers.
It is always springtime when we are really getting know another person,
or when we are becoming the person we truly can be.  Just like flowers and rainbows, an amazing
variety of true colors unfold in a lovely endless surprise of creation.
© Feb 2016

 

About the Author

A native of
Colorado, she followed her Dad to the work bench to develop a love of using
tools, building things and solving problems. Her Mother supported her talents
in the arts. She sang her first solo at age 8. Childhood memories include
playing cowboy with a real horse in the great outdoors. Professional
involvements have included music, teaching, human services, and being a helper
and handy woman. Her writing reflects her sixties identity and a noted
fascination with nature, people and human causes. For Eydie, life is deep and
joyous, ever challenging and so much fun.
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Where in the World is Nowhere?, by Betsy

Once a week now for three
years I have sat down to write on some topic for the Sage Telling My Story group.  These are the steps I take to accomplish that
task. First I mull the topic over in my mind and come up with an idea. “Oh, I
know,” say I, “I’ll
write about the time that………, or I’ll
write about my parents, or I’ll
write about my trip to……, or I’ll
write about coming out to my sister, or I’ll
comment on the last election.” Many, many ideas have come to mind. Next, I sit
down at my computer and start writing.
A few sentences appear on
the screen.  The next step is that I say
to myself, “This is going nowhere.”  Well,
now that I’m
writing about nowhere, I find that today my writing actually has a place to go.
Of course, we all know that to say this is going nowhere means there is nothing
more to say about this event or this person or this feeling or this whatever I’m writing about.  However in this case I can at least describe
what “nowhere” looks like to me.
 In the case of composing a so-called story
entitled “Nowhere,” now that I am at stage three of the writing process, I find
that what “nowhere” looks like in a piece of writing is “nothing.” It looks
like nothing, a blank page, an empty mind, no way to tie anything together or
to relate the ending to the beginning thoughts. 
A void.
Speaking of a void, the
question comes to mind: What is nothing. Is there such thing as “nothing?”  That brings me to the subject of the cosmos.
We used to think that space was nothingness. But it turns out that where there
appears to be nothing, there is actually quite a lot. The so-called black holes
of the cosmos are full of compacted cosmic material. The space in between
objects, only APPEARS as nothing.  The
space in outer space, apparently empty, is full.  Beyond that, cosmic space itself is full of “dark
matter.”  Apparently there is no such
thing as nothing, our human senses simply cannot perceive what is there. If
there is no such thing as nothing, then I guess there is no such thing as
nowhere.  What we call nowhere really is
somewhere, a certain place.
I’m am so happy to have come to this
conclusion because now I can move on to stage four and work out an ending for
this composition.  And here it is.  THE END.
© 1 Feb 2014 

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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Compulsion, by Will Stanton


I suppose that it is human
nature for many of us to succumb to compulsive behavior.  If we attempted to list every possible form
of compulsion, we would be here all day.

Eating certainly is one of the
most prevalent compulsions, especially in America.  I once was invited by a 400-pound man to join
him and a few others for dim-sung dinner.  I tried to avert my eyes while he ravenously
ate multiple courses, along with everything left over from other diners at the
table.  I will never subject myself to
that kind of disturbing experience again. 
America is so notorious for overeating that someone posted on-line a
photo-shopped image of Michelangelo’s “David” supposedly after visiting here
and eating too much American food.
 

Chunky David
I fell pray to overeating for
a few years, all because of chronic stress. 
My partner died.  He also was my
business partner, and I tried to do both jobs. 
Further, in our profession, we were required to deal with many people’s
ongoing problems, which was hard enough. 
I also had to be concerned with professional clinical and legal
liability.  Worse, most competing clinics
were thoroughly corrupt, making tons of money, and stealing away most of my
clients.  Big stress.
For a while, a little place
close by, B.J.’s Carousel, became the antidote to my own stress.  I must have driven by B.J.’s 10,000 times
before someone told me that there was a little restaurant in the back that
served solid American-style food at reasonable prices.  In addition, the regular patrons and staff
were exceptionally friendly and accommodating. 
Frequently, patrons chatted with each other from table to table,
fostering a warm, supportive atmosphere. 
The restaurant played soft, classical music, rather than the pounding
drums and screaming that most restaurants play now-days.  Also in the winter, they had a pot-bellied
stove in the middle of the room that made the area very cozy.  That’s where I would go to unwind.
Once my evening therapy groups
were gone, and I had discussed each person’s case with my contract
psychologist, and I had prepared the individual sessions notes for the clinical
files, I felt drained.  I would jump into
my car and race down to B.J.’s, which stayed open late, and order an excess of
comfort-food – – meat, potatoes, salad, veggies, and (of course) desert.  This went on for a few years, and I must have
been oblivious to the consequence until it became more obvious.  Fortunately, I rarely eat that way now.  The fact that B.J.’s since has shut down
probably removed a pit-fall from my path.
Over those many evening
dinners and Sunday brunches that I had at B.J.’s, I got to know one of the
other regular patrons.  It turns out that
this person had a life-long obsession with trains  – – – real trains, model trains, train videos
and DVDs, train paintings, train artifacts and clothes.  He even chose what cities in which to work so
that he could be around trains.  His
compulsion to continually buy train stuff resulted in his living in a house
crammed so full that one would need a front-loader to clear it out.  His having a lot of discretionary income in
retirement, he could  afford to buy a
state-of-the-art Lionel “Big Boy” steam locomotive that lists for $3,000.
Lionel O-gauge model “Big Boy” steam locomotive
I later found out that the
front of B.J.’s was a bar that was known as the place where drag-queens could
go and to be in occasional drag-shows. 
Although popular with some people, I never have had the slightest interest
in that phenomenon and don’t quite understand the compulsion to dress-up like
that.  But, I could not escape noticing
them on show-nights when some of them would wander through the back
restaurant.  I truly admire natural
beauty, but I can’t say that any of those individuals fit into that
category.  I sense that most of them
realize that they never will look like ravishing, natural beauties, and some
probably dress up with some sense of satire. 
There may be those occasional individuals who do try to look like
Hollywood models.  B.J.’s, however, was
not Hollywood nor Los Vegas, and I never did see anything appealingly
eye-catching.  Instead, homely faces,
chunky bodies, big feet, ungraceful movements, and lip-syncing tended to betray
any efforts to look truly attractive.
Two-drag-queens
I recall one individual who,
from time to time, would come stomping through the restaurant section in a most
ungraceful manner, carrying high-heels, on his way to the dressing area.  That poor person’s face looked as though he once
had suffered a bad case of acne.  Between
those pockmarks and his usual grumpy scowl, I might have surmised that this sad
person once had worked at McDonald’s and possibly had a compulsion to bob for
fries.
I suppose that it is
inevitable that, wherever there are drag-queens, there is a certain percentage
of them who become titillated with the idea of toying with female
hormones.  For some time now, I have
understood the theory of clinical transgender orientation, and I intellectually
can handle that concept.  These are the
people who seriously think of themselves as the opposite gender, and their
transition is carried out, over time, carefully and seriously, with the
assistance and advice of professional doctors and therapists.
However, as naïve as I usually
am and until recent years, I was totally unaware of the fact that, throughout
the world, there is an amazingly large number of young guys whose compulsion is
to take massive doses of female hormone, permanently changing their bodies but
with no intention of surgically fully transitioning to female.  They rashly do this with black-market
hormones and without the supervision of professional therapists.  Instead, they turn themselves into, what is
crudely called, “shemales,” neither male nor female, but individuals with male
genitalia and, in addition, breasts, wide hips, and large buttocks.  These are the hybrid individuals who Robin
Williams jokingly referred to as “The Swiss Army Knife of Sex.”
Finally made aware of this
phenomenon, I have tried to intellectually handle well this phenomenon of
hybrid gender, but I have a hard time handling it emotionally.  What disturbs me most is that many of these
individuals start out as very good looking young males; yet their masculinity
is destroyed forever.  To my personal way
of thinking, that is a waste.        
Shemale
I also understand that such
unpredictable use of hormones may not always turn out well.  There was one tall, good-looking guy who
decided to secretly take hormones.  He
told me that he always was afraid that his family might find out.  Oddly enough, his day-job was as a tow-truck
driver.  He hid from his coworkers what
he was doing by wearing heavy, loose clothes. 
Then he would change into women’s clothing and go to B.J.’s.  Later, after he had developed breasts, I
overheard him lament that he was sorry that he had taken those hormones because
now he no longer could take his clothes off and go swimming.
More bizarrely, I saw one
evening a short, previously normally built teenager, who had been named  “Miss Teen Queen,” who, from taking hormones,
quickly put on a vast amount of weight and ended up with huge, bulging belly,
drooping breasts, and bizarrely wide hips. 
I found that sight very disturbing. 
I was very puzzled as to why that boy had such a irresistible   compulsion to so dramatically change his
body.  Did he imagine the results being
different?
Then, a skinny, drag-queen
waiter told me that he once had considered taking hormones until he saw what
happened to one of his friends who had succumbed to that compulsion.  His friend took lots of black-market hormones
and then (in the waiter’s own words) “really freaked out and totally lost it”
when he saw how dramatically his body had changed and also realized that those
changes were permanent, especially the expanded bone-structure of his
hips.  Just the idea of his doing that to
himself freaks me out, especially since the friend obviously never
thoroughly thought through what he was doing or sought advice from any
therapists.
I guess that the
“trains-on-the-brains” guy’s compulsion to continually buy model trains, train
artifacts and clothes, especially since he has the money to do so, is pretty
mild in contrast to the kid who totally freaked out.  At least, compulsive train-guy can trade or
sell-off his trains if he wants to.  And
as for me, I can fairly safely continue my obsession with classical music by
spending an inordinate amount of time playing and listening to good music.  The freaked-out kid, however, will have to live
a long time with the all-too obvious consequences of his compulsion.
© 6 October 2015 
About
the Author 
I have had a life-long fascination with
people and their life stories.  I also
realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or
fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual
ones.  Since I joined this Story Time
group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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Queer as a Two Dollar Bill, by Terry Dart

How queer am I? Butch and Fem are ancient concepts,
just not dealt only with except for the Greeks, the ancient ones, well maybe
the Frat Boys too, well some anyway.
Now, I had always thought of myself as Butch, because
of being athletic and competitive. And I have a high opinion of many Butch men.
So what was I? Proudly Butch. But somewhere along the way I became a clothes
horse. I probably caught that from Mom, who was also a tomboy in her youth and
who also gave me her sense of color and who has been a model, locally in Minot,
N Dak, for J. C. Penney. I no longer have her figure, but then neither has she.
Now back to the How Queerness of Queer.
For Lesbis and Bi Lesbis
For Fems and Butches (not Bitches)
Are you Fem because you wear makeup and dress in
matching colors, and wear high heels once in awhile? (Turns me on!)
What if a Lesbian is a Fem who likes other Fems?
Should we call her a Fem-Fem?
Is a Butch Butch woman a super Lesbian?
And what about a woman who wears a see-through blouse
with no modesty packs, who drops it all and steps menacingly into grimy pair of
overalls and steel-toed combat boots to crawl underneath a VW Bus?
What about the girl who we might call a
Slide-Bi-Butch, who hangs out at baseball fields, spikes tread and over the
shoulders, and keeps an eagle eye on batting practice to scout out the Butch
Catcher who swings both ways in order to slide into her at home.
Here we have a menagerie of soft and muscular
Lesbians. God bless us all, every one.
© 14 March 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.
Posted on

The Fractured History of Clothes, by Ricky

The
first case of sunburn resulted in the slang term “red skins” to differentiate
the early humans into two groups; the clothed and the nudists.
Clothes!
 What a wonderful invention.  The first recorded version of clothes was fig
leaves, which were then exchanged for animal skins; a much needed improvement
for winter and colder climates.  We
should all be grateful for those two “cave” people who had the foresight to
switch from leaves to animal hides.  This
had the added benefit to reduce the excessively sunburned population so that
today the only few remaining “red skins” are those very few that play professional
baseball.
Over
time the cave people moved into communities and the hunter-gatherer peoples
prospered.  But as populations of these
people increased and the animals used for food and skins began to shun the
presence of hunters, some enterprising gatherers sought out some means of
supplementing the animal skin shortage. 
Eventually, they found a way to process animal fur, vegetable fibers,
and worm cocoons into a suitable product for making something to wear.
Since
this was something completely new, there was no name for it.  Clothes are what they wanted to make out of
the new product but they needed a catchy new word to market their product.  Finally some pundit from “Madison on the
Avenue” in the ancient village of York reasoned that since “clothes” was a
plural word and this new product is what is used to make clothes, the product
should be named “cloth” using the singular form of “clothes”.  The community of merchants quickly adapting
to the new word, needed a generic way to indicate the multitude of different
furs, vegetable, and worm based products they had for sale in their
possession.  They decided to use the word
“clothes” but were quickly corrected by their language instructors that
“clothes” and “clothes” were spelled the same but pronounced differently.  Since homonyms had not yet been invented, the
merchants were compelled by their instructors to use the word “fabrics” to
avoid confusion.
The
makers of fabrics tended to be women and were referred to as “loomies” because
“fabric makers” was too hard to say and “loomers” sounded to close to “losers”
which had already been assigned to those who did not win at arm wrestling and
“weavers” was used to label people who would drink too much fermented liquids
and thus could not walk a straight or gay line.
The
merchants quickly discovered that the majority of people who purchased their
fabrics were male.  Indeed, in those
ancient times and into our modern day the males would wear highly colored
fabrics with varied glyphs, runes, borders, and designs to make themselves look
more important than another.  This became
a quasi-universal trait among males of any community.  They were easily recognized by their plain or
elaborate dresses, robes, and evening gowns. 
Eventually, these men became known as “men-of-the-cloth” because “men-of-the-fabric”
seemed too formal.
As
the cost of the fabrics became prohibitive for the poorer members of a
community, the “men-of-the-cloth” were looked upon as being wise and
knowledgeable because they could afford to buy clothing made of fabric.  So, gradually the men-of-the-cloth were
granted leadership positions and the power of authority over other community
members.  This did not always work out
well.
There
are remnants of this practice today. 
Traditional men-of-the-cloth still exist nearly everywhere, but they are
not as powerful as they once were. 
Modern men-of-the-cloth can be identified by the red color of their
neckties and can still be heard talking as if they were all wise and
knowledgeable.  In our day, the most
flamboyant of the men-of-the-cloth often attend after work establishments and
entertain the crowds.  Reportedly, they
are well respected and revered by everyone except those known as being “dragaphobic”.
With
hindsight, perhaps it would have been better if the ancient fig leaf wearing
cave people had stayed nudists.

© 22 September 2014

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 was sent to live 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 9-11-2001
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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Master of the Rant, by Pat Gourley

Dear fellow Queer
writers:
http://www.papermag.com/2015/10/larry_kramer_sour_times.php
Comments from Larry
Kramer on discrimination from the straight world he adamantly believes exists
towards gay writers.
© 23 Oct 2015
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.
Posted on

I Hate My Hair, by Nicholas

          The famous
essayist Nora Ephron once wrote a piece in which she denounced her neck. She
said simply that she did not like her neck. It was scrawny and too long and had
to be hidden with scarves and turtleneck sweaters. That’s how I feel about
hair. I don’t like my hair and I never have. It’s fine, soft, and thin and
getting thinner. It never was a color I liked—and gray did not improve over the
former brown. It never grew out into any shape or style that was appealing. It
grew long but not curly. It grew longer still but never full. It just sort of hung
there.
          The standard
for beautiful hair, for me, is Danielle Grant, the woman who does the weather
on Channel 9. I watch the weather just to watch her hair. Her rich brown tresses
hang long over her shoulders in a lustrous waterfall of hair. Her hair shines
with a deep luster. I don’t care if it rains or snows or turns sunny, her hair
is a beauty to behold.
          Hair has many
functions, none of them really all that important. It can be a thing of natural
beauty, a fashion statement, a political statement, a symbol and, of course, it
was even a musical. In the 1960s, we let our hair grow long and shaggy to show
our disdain for an oppressive establishment and our attachment to a new culture
of freedom that did not include barbershops. We let our “freak flag” fly, as
one song put it.
          In the 1970s,
we returned to those few barbershops that survived the ‘60s, and got it cut
short—gay short—because we didn’t want to be seen as some kind of hippie longhair
redneck. Hair styles came full circle, I guess. What was once a protest of the
establishment, became the establishment. Long hair meant you were a right wing
crazy conservative. Short hair was the rebellion.
          Of course, we
didn’t just go to barbershops. We went to stylists and had our hair styled. And
paid a lot more for that styling. When I was first coming out I even had my
hair permed once. I wanted curls and decided to torture my hair into curls even
if I had to wear a toxic waste dump on my head. It didn’t work. I got curls,
alright, but I looked like I had a nice dust mop on top of my head. I looked
like Woody Allen on a bad day. I realized that my hair just was not made for
fashion.
          Now I just get
it mowed now and then, about once a month. It’s like the lawn. Doesn’t really
do anything or contribute anything but looks better if it’s kept under control.
The problem is that there is too much of it where I don’t need it, like ears
and nose, and not enough where I do want it. I go to the cheapest barber I know
and for $10 get whatever excess is there clipped to a reasonable shortness. I
like my hair best when I don’t have to think about it.
          It would be
nice to keep up with fashion, but I’ve given up. I would love to die it blue or
purple, colors I really like in other people’s hair. But on me, it would just
look silly. Beyond the basic requirement of workable hair, I don’t have that
fashion persona to pull it off. You know how some people can walk down a street
like they’re walking across a stage. I’m just trying to get a bus home before
somebody stops and says, “God, what did you do to your hair?”
© 15 Jan
2015 
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.
Posted on

Time, by Lewis

Is there any cliché about
time that has yet gone unwritten or unspoken? 
I don’t feel comfortable making generalizations about the subject of
time.  I can only speak my own truths
about time, if I can figure out what they are.
People spend a lot of
money trying to mitigate the effects of time on their bodies.  They are usually rich, perhaps even as rich
as their plastic surgeons.  I don’t know
what a facelift costs.  I’m sure that it
depends upon a number of factors—the number of wrinkles per square inch of skin,
the number of square inches of skin per linear inch of one’s face, the elapsed
time since the previous facelift, the degree of satisfaction from the previous
facelift, the amount of time spent in the sun showing off one’s facelift, and
the percentage of body fat.
Also, I’m sure that, once
one has had a facelift, there is tremendous pressure to make some adjustments
to the birth date that appears on various personal documents.  It must be extremely embarrassing to be pulled
over for a traffic violation only to have the officer look at you, then your
driver’s license, and ask you step out of the car, put your hands on the roof,
and receive a pat down on suspicion of having a stolen ID.
What must a facelift do
to one’s relationship with a twin who cannot afford to follow suit?  Would they then introduce him or her as a
parent or much older sibling?  And what
of the spouse who now must endure the clucks and chuckles from those who assume
that he or she has “robbed the cradle”?  Upon death—still, I’m afraid an
inevitability—would it not feel unnatural to gaze upon the 90-year-old corpse
with skin stretched drum-tight across its chops and exclaim, “Oh, how natural
he/she looks?”  And, of course, the worst
message such shenanigans sends is that all the rest of us, the ones who choose
to age naturally, are growing uglier by the day. 
But I’m not buying
it.  I think of aging skin as a beauty
mark.  Nobody who’s into classic cars
would think of putting 2013 parts on a 1957 Chevrolet.  Sure, we might hammer out the dents,
straighten out the frame, fix the rust, replace the worn-out springs, and spray
a new coat of paint on her, but we would never try to make her look like this
year’s model.  I’m a 1946 model of a
white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant gay male who prefers to nuzzle the bumpers of
others like me and who doesn’t give a fig for brand-new sporty SUV’s with
programmable liftgates, reverse-view cameras, and touch screens.  I’ve been around the block with beloved
partners of both sexes, fathered two children, had a 30-year career that
provided a comfortable life, and I want to look the part.  I don’t want to pose for “before” and “after”
pictures where the “before” photo looks like an old picture of me after being
sucker punched in the mouth.  George
Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  Yeah, and today youthfulness is wasted on the
old.
But the bitter old men of
Congress have found a way to exact their revenge.  They have saddled our youth with endless wars
that ravage their bodies in horrible ways but mollify themselves by providing
medical care that allows them to survive to live a full life in a condition
that no octogenarian would envy.  We load
the young up with student loan debt that makes the home loan of my generation
seem like chump change.  We trap them in
$9 an hour jobs with no hope of advancement so that they are actually making
less money at 35 than they were at 25. 
And, worst of all, we are handing off to them a world who atmosphere has
been poisoned to the point that their children almost surely will face a
lifetime of struggle for ever-dwindling resources.  We have made sure that, for them, growing old
is the most coveted luxury of all.
For those of us who have
lived free of ecological and demographic constraints on how we live our
lives—how many children we have; how big a house we build or live in; how many
vacation trips we take to how distant a destination; how we get to work, to
church, or the store; how we feel entitled to anything we can afford—it is time
to reimagine our lives in a new way. 
What truly makes us happy?  Where
does happiness happen?  What kind of
happiness do we want for those who come after? 
What is true?  How much time is
left before it’s too late?  We are threatened
not by growing old but by growing apart from what we know in our hearts is true
and that time is not on the side of the young and we are responsible.
© 19 May 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.
Posted on

Scars, by Gillian

We all have them. Don’t
try to tell me you don’t. Nobody gets to our age without them.
The first one I remember
acquiring came along when I was seven or eight. Mum and Dad and I were
wandering through the woods picking blackberries when a sharp, jagged, end of a
broken-off small branch scraped a gash in my thigh. These days I’m sure it
would be off to the ER for stitches, with perhaps a butterfly bandage to keep
it together on the way, but back then we were expected to suck it up and
soldier on; the result being a scar wider than necessary and very long-lasting.
I still have it.
Roughly forty years later
I needed a butterfly bandage again when I fell on sharp rock edges while
backpacking in the Shoshone Wilderness Area, miles from anywhere. But this time
I was carefully tended to by my beautiful Betsy, who had the foresight to carry
butterfly bandages in her pack.
Back again in the old
days, in college, I slipped at the top of some icy steps and fell, with my knee
doubled under me, onto the metal blade of a boot scraper. Now that one did
require stitches. But that was all it got. These days we’d be given all kinds
of physical therapy; exercises to help it heal as efficiently as possible, but
in 1959 I was on my own. It hurt like Hell to bend it, so a couple of days
later, on a bus, I stretched my leg out beneath the seat in front of me. The
bus got in an accident, the seat above my leg came down on it and hyperextended
my knee. That hurt like Hell. A week later, with my knee the size of a
football, I went off for a long-planned week’s hiking trip with a classmate.
Well, I was madly in unacknowledged love with the woman! What’s a girl to do?
Not surprisingly, I have had a lot of trouble with that knee over the years but
I’ve worked hard at keeping it in working condition, mainly through water
aerobics. It remains functional, and actually gives me less pain than it did
twenty years ago, though I’m not off on any more backpacking or even hiking
trips.
A few years back I broke
my ankle – just a simple break. It healed perfectly, leaving no scars. Then, as
some of you might recall, I broke my wrist a couple of years ago. That was a
compound fracture, requiring surgery, nuts and bolts, and a long scar which has
now basically disappeared. My ankle and wrist both healed quickly, fully
functioning in record time. That, of course, in addition to skillful surgeons,
is because I diligently did every therapeutic exercise I was given, painful
though they often were. I would like to think that I have become a little less dumb
in dealing with injuries, over the years, but much of that is because
healthcare professionals know so much more these days. Our job is just to
follow their excellent advice.
Which, it seems to me, is
much the same for our inner, psychological, scars as for our outer, physical,
injuries.
As a child, and even as a
student, I had no more idea how to deal with my inner than my outer pains.
Neither, come to that, did my parents. All of us colluded in some strange way
to pretend I had no injuries, inside or out. Just get on with life, denying the
pain. I’ve written often enough about my childhood angst so I’m not going to
repeat it, but I rode roughshod over it just as I did my mashed knee, making
both worse while denying there was a problem. Over the years, I have paid
heavily enough for that. But, as I gained knowledge and sought expert advise to
try to make my knee more functional and less painful, so I did with my inner
dysfunctions. Endless physical therapy, endless psychotherapy. Both mostly of
the self-help variety, but they worked. The trouble is, it’s so much harder to
go back; to try to fix those old inner and outer scars years later. Now, I try
to deal with both immediately. Keep exercising that wrist, don’t let that scar
tissue form or I’ll be sorry. Take those emotions out and look at them right
now. Work them over. I don’t want that psychological scar tissue building up,
either.
I don’t expect to stop
receiving wounds, and so the scars that mark them, either physical or
emotional. But as I age, perhaps becoming increasingly vulnerable to physical
scarring, I hope to balance it with a healthy decrease in psychological
scarring. Due largely to my attempts to follow the spiritual path, and in no
small part to this group where I find healing by writing out and sharing my
problems, my wounds are less deep, less painful, and heal more readily. Little
scar tissue has the chance to form. Even those big bad deep wounds don’t get
reopened as once they did. Those are the ones that are there because I’m a woman.
Because I am gay. I am happy about both, but being female or being GLB or T
leaves you constantly open to painful slashes of hate-filled sabers. Oh they
are not usually directed at me, personally, but I feel the stab of the knife of
every woman murdered because she wants an education, or refuses to hide away
her body, and of every gay man murdered in Uganda or left to die in Wyoming.
It’s certainly not that I find any of those horrors less painful, nor, alas,
less frequent. I simply, for the most part, recognize the pain sooner, deal
with it better, avoid reopening those old wounds.
Yet I am happy to have
scars. How can you live any kind of eventful, meaningful, life, and not have
them? We are battle-scarred warriors who, having fought the good fight, did not
come out unscathed. As Kahlil Gibran puts it,
“Out of
suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are
seared with scars.”
© 30 June 2015 
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.