jnelson – Page 3 – Sage Telling Your Story

January 5, 2018February 26, 2019

My First GLBT Acquaintance, Ray S

In my Book of Standards, little boys were supposed to
have sports heroes, like baseball, football, Jack Armstrong, and the guys that
had their pictures on the Wheaties box.

No, not me. My heroes and role models were male movie
stars. At the time in my adolescent years I wasn’t aware that these crushes
were the signs of my beginning acquaintance with what became of my life’s
journey on the road to homosexuality. Little did I know, nor did I question,
why I found these men appealing and attractive, but these acquaintances lived
quietly in my pre-teen subconscious.

There was Franchot Tone, Clark Gable’s second mate on
Charles Laughton’s “Bounty.” Never did care for Tom Mix or Gene Autry, but give
me Randolph Scott anytime. Then there was a guy named Lou McAlister—“the boy
next door.” By this time I was beginning to wonder: did he like boys too?

All this time it was my imagination creating these
illusions that did not register as latent gayness. That developed shortly
thereafter, upon the arrival of slow but sure puberty.

“First Acquaintance.” Looking back so many years, it
is hard to remember which “first.” This is like so many other impertinent
questions posed to a newly “out” GLBT person—and you want to reply with “None
of your damned business” or proceed to bore the questioner with your life
story. TMI.

Let’s see, does First Acquaintance mean actual
physical contact or maybe talking about IT with a like-minded shy and timid boy?
All that fooling around with your cousin of the neighbor boy when you were 6 or
7 years old doesn’t count. It wasn’t’ a heart to heart talk with the priest or
some other spiritual counselor. In fact, the first instance may have been your
“first” but I avoided clergy at all costs, and the same can be said for Boy
Scout leaders.

There was a chance encounter at a movie house in
Richmond, VA. I was stationed there during the war, after I had finished basic
training. A teenaged U. S. Navy boy sat next to me in the darkened theatre and
I noticed somehow our knees began to become acquainted.

As I stated before the rest is none of your damned
business!

© 17 July 2017

About the Author

January 4, 2018February 26, 2019

Tears, by Phillip Hoyle

I’m writing a memoir about my too-brief relationship
with Rafael Martínez who provided me my first experience of falling deeply,
hopelessly in love. Part of my preparation has been to study what writing
teachers say about memoir and, just as important, to read several memoirs. I
read Frank McCourt’s ’Tis, Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind,
Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, several excerpts from other memoirs,
and am currently reading Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time.

I began the Rafael project years ago but realized I
was not yet ready to deal with organizing and writing about the experience of
love and loss. The grief was too keenly edged for me to be honest about myself
and fair to everyone else. The events took place fifteen years ago.

Two years ago I started readdressing the project. About
three weeks ago I started reading Monette’s AIDS memoir, a book I had read
years ago. I hoped I might learn a lot. A wealthy gay couple living in southern
California, Ivy League educated, driving around in a Jaguar, an attorney, a
Hollywood film writer living a rather high life seemed like a lot to take in. I
wondered if this story would even touch me.

By contrast, Rafael was HIV positive and poor, helped
a lot by Colorado AIDS Project. His doctors estimated he had about eight years
to go, but what they didn’t know was that he had full-term Hepatitis C. It was
diagnosed only three weeks before it killed him. Monette, while not my favorite
gay writer, skillfully took me to their home, clinic after clinic, test after
test, all experiences I knew too well for I went to such places with two friends
and with two lovers—just not in a Jaguar. Writing about Rafael while reading
this book opened my tear ducts, and I wondered: did I not cry enough fifteen
years ago? It seems likely.

My early weeks with Rafael showed how much we loved
one another and how practical and romantic we could be. I told him I would like
to meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. I was earnest though we
laughed. We thought we had time, but we were wrong. Too soon he was in the
hospital. There I met his younger brother, a very nice Mexican man who came north
on behalf of the family. The parents had learned that Rafael was gay and HIV
positive only six weeks before this hospitalization. The family’s life was in
crisis. Rafael got out of the hospital but then went back in with another
problem. Eventually more of the family arrived. I was caught between my lover
and his family; between Rafael’s insistence that they treat the two of us as a
family of our own, they being guests in our home, and what I saw so clearly in
his mother and father, the needs of shocked parents facing an illness they
didn’t understand and the possibility of losing their son altogether. In short,
I was pushed into an interpretive role of supporting both my lover and his
parents and siblings. I walked that tightrope, one that my ministerial experience
had so well prepared me to walk. And I was helpful. I cried but not much; there
were too many other people needing to be consoled and reasoned with and their
English was so poor and my Spanish functionally nonexistent.

We made it through. I helped them as Rafael was dying.
Still Rafael was strong and helpful and insistent. I was so proud of him. He
took care of his family. He reached out to nurses who were having difficulty.
He reached out to me. And of course, I cried, but not very much, not enough I now
am sure.

I’m carefully reading Monette’s scenes of bedsides,
hospital corridors, tests, last minute trips to favorite places, accommodation
to losses. I read; tears gather and fall.

I’m crying now.

© 16 Oct 2017

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

January 3, 2018February 26, 2019

School, by Pat Gourley

My formal education
stared in 1955 when I was a first grader at St. Peter Catholic School in La Porte
Indiana. My family lived on what was actually a real family farm of about 200
acres growing corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. We had a few milk cows, the
occasional pig, a few sheep and lots of chickens along with a dog or two and
several barnyard cats. The cats had escaped the fate of so many other barnyard felines
and not wound up in a gunnysack full of rocks at the bottom of a horse tank.
What can I say it was a different time and this cat population control was
usually done out of sight from us kids.

It was a short commute from
the farm to the town of La Porte that had three elementary Catholic schools. We
went to the one that served mostly Irish families.

My grandparents both
maternal and paternal were not far removed from Ireland and on my mother’s side
supposedly came from Roscommon County. I believe these grandparents were all
second-generation immigrants from the Emerald Isle, but unfortunately I do not
know this for sure. I should check this out though since if just one of your
grandparents was born in Ireland, even if neither parent was, you are eligible
for Irish citizenship. This is something
that seems quite attractive these days.

The family had been in
northern Indiana for sometime but being Irish Catholics they had not always
been welcomed with open arms. Family lore included an oft repeated story of a
KKK cross burning at the end of the lane leading to my paternal grandparent’s
home in the early 1920’s. The Klan was very resurgent at that time and Indiana
was a hotbed of this activity. Along with African Americans the Jews and
Catholics were also on their list of undesirables.

By the mid-1950’s and
being quite cocooned in the environment of conservative Catholicism 24/7 we
were fairly sheltered from these blatant forms of racism and xenophobia. I mean
we were after all white living in the very white world of rural Indiana and the
KKK was on the wane by this time. The unrelenting religious brainwashing I was
subjected to in grades 1-8 was in hindsight a form of child abuse no matter how
righteous or well intentioned. Sadly generations had been drinking that religious
kool-aide. My parents, at significant financial cost for a lower middle class
family, felt the burden of parochial school for their kids was an act of love,
a duty even and therefore something necessary. It was after all a bunch of
Protestants who had burned that cross at the family farm several decades
before.

A little over half way
through my grade school years the rumblings of great social change were on the
horizon. For my family this was manifest in the fact that an Irish Catholic was
running for president and the ground truly began to shift when he was actually elected
president of the United States. It was a true miracle, JFK in the White House.
Even his assassination a few short years later could not slow the train of
change.

Again, thanks to
significant sacrifice on my parents’ part I was enrolled in a Catholic high
school in Michigan City Indiana in 1963 called St. Mary. This was a time when
my queer juices were really taking off though the environment of a Catholic
School in northern Indiana was not conducive to supporting this gay
flowering. Then an amazing thing
happened late in my sophomore year and my family moved to a small farm outside
of Woodstock Illinois, a town best described as a suburban bedroom community
northwest of Chicago.

Thus began what in hindsight
I believe today to be my two most important school years. Nothing like coming under the influence of a
very politically left-leaning, staunchly anti-war Holy Cross nun and seeking
guidance to deal with my ever emerging gayness from a school counselor several
decades older than myself who was to become my first sexual partner. These two
mentors did more to shape who I am today than all the many other teachers I
encountered over my long and often tortuous formal educational path.

I have written extensively
about these two individuals for this group and won’t reiterate those details
here. Suffice it to say though that my formal schooling continued for years to
come. Those academic adventures included 5 years at the University Of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana, two years of nursing school at the University of Colorado
and another two years at Regis University here in Denver where I was awarded a
Masters Degree in Nursing Administration. That last one was truly a
masturbatory exercise in how to waste time and money for which I take total
responsibility, the faculty at Regis tried, and they really did.

So by my count that is at
least 21 years of formal education. There are really only two years of that
that mattered and those were 1966 and 1967 when I learned the joys of gay sex
and how to challenge the status quo. The knowledge of gay sex has served me
well, despite the little HIV issue. The importance of being a sexual adept though
seems to fade with each passing year but the ability to hit the streets and man
the barricades continues to be more salient than ever. As an often seen resistence
sign says these days “I can’t believe I
still have to protest this shit”

© 19 Aug 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.

January 2, 2018February 26, 2019

Dark (Précis), by Louis Brown

For me “Dark” means three
themes:

(a) Gay Liberation strategists should
acknowledge that, when we speak of minorities in the United States aspiring to
liberation, this means Americans with a darker complexion, the black and
brown complexioned people. Our liberation groups have to make political deals
with black liberation groups such as the NAACP, the National Action Network
founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton, The Urban League and the Southern Poverty Law
Center. Rev. Al Sharpton was a frequent visitor to the Queens Lesbian and Gay
Democratic Club of Queens County in New York City. He is a true friend of the
gay community of the USA.

The foremost
personification of black and gay liberation is James Baldwin.

James
Arthur “Jimmy” Baldwin (August
2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and social critic. His
essays, as collected in Notes of a Native
Son (1955), explore palpable
yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class
distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America.[1] Some
of Baldwin’s essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963)

(b) On the other hand, “Dark” also means, in
terms of gay European and American history the “Dark Ages,” the Middle Ages
which lasted from 478 A. D. to 1399 A. D., which is the last year covered by
John Boswell’s historical study, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality
(published 1976). John Boswell died of AIDS in 1994, the same year his other
book was published, Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe.
[moving outside of prompt: Jonathan Ned Katz’ Gay American History
could be seen as the historical sequel to Boswell’s book

(c)
“Dark” means Halloween fun.

The Middle Ages gave us a
rich population of ghosts, specters, elves, witches, wizards, warlocks, elves, goblins,
fairies, leprechauns, angels, demons, etc. Halloween is a medieval Irish
holiday, as pointed out in the film Halloween Three produced by Mustafa Akkad
in 1982.

© 30 Oct 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.

January 1, 2018February 26, 2019

Leaving, by Will Stanton / A Memorial

[This is the last posting submitted by Will Stanton. He passed into history and memories on 1 January 2017. He is missed. — Editor]

Leaving

He was diagnosed with
lung cancer in 1991. We knew the
inevitable end; we just did not know when.
Each passing day, each passing year, was, in its own way, leaving. We both understood that. Some acquaintances told me, “Why don’t you
leave him?” I would not, not that
way. I stayed.

I did not cry as a
child. My mother told me that, and we
both pondered my difference from other children. Of course, I felt emotion, but nothing seemed
to drive me to tears. That changed later. A special someone came into my life who truly
mattered – – – and then left. It was the
leaving that changed me. As the famous
19th-century, authoress George Eliot stated, “Only in the agony of parting do we look into
the depths of love.”

I always have been
sensitive to others, perhaps unusually empathetic and caring. That increased significantly after his
leaving, both with people whom I knew, and also even fictional characters in
movies. If, in viewing well presented
stories, I become particularly attached
to characters who have deep bonds with each other, I apparently identify with
them, at least subconsciously; for, if they part from each other, either in
having to leave or, perhaps, in dying, emotion wells up within me. Such deep emotion comes suddenly and
unbidden. When a good person dies,
leaving the loved-ones behind, the emotion catches within my gut. When loving, deeply bonded people part ways,
never to see each other again, that, too, deeply moves me. Again, quoting George Eliot: “In every
parting, there is an image of death.”

I admit it: I never have
come fully to terms with reality, with mortality. And, I’m not like so many who choose to hold
deep-seated beliefs that this world is merely a stepping-stone to a so-called
“better world,” beliefs based upon common indoctrination and, perhaps, upon
fear and hope, Oh, I don’t mind so much
the afflictions and death of inhuman humans, those whose cruelty and dire deeds
harm others. But, it is the good people,
the loving people, people who have contributed so much to the betterment of
humankind, whose leaving distresses me.
I would be so much more content if they (dare I say, “we”?) did not have
to leave.

I understand and feel the
passionate, poetic lines of Dylan Thomas:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

So, with these thoughts
of mine being presented close to All Souls Day (or in German, “Allerseelen”),
with the cold days of December soon upon us, I prefer my thoughts to dwell,
instead, upon our happier memories of May, our younger days, as expressed in
the final lines of Hermann von Gilm poem, “Allerseelen”, “— Spend on my heart again those lovely
hours, like once in May.”

© 23 July 2016

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.

December 29, 2017February 26, 2019

Purple Rage, by Lewis Thompson

In his brilliant and
encyclopedic new book, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party
and Beyond, E. J. Dionne, Jr., spells out in exhaustive detail how the
Grand Ol’ Party evolved from the Middle American conservatism of Dwight David
Eisenhower to the rabid, ranting, rage of Donald Trumps’ avid band of Storm
Troopers. In a nutshell, it happened
when the bedrock conservative vision of Barry Goldwater–which had given rise
to the hopes of millions of conservative, white working-class people that their
superior status among the races was assured—sustained set-back after set-back
politically in the decades to follow.

Not only did Goldwater
lose in a landslide resulting in the election of LBJ who ushered in the Voting
Rights Act but the next Republican president, Richard M. Nixon turned out to be
a stealth liberal whose term ended in utter shame and embarrassment. In his
1978 memoir, RN, Nixon wrote, “I won a majority of every key population
group identified by Gallup except the blacks and the Democrats. Four of those groups—manual workers,
Catholics, members of labor union families and people with only grade school
educations—had never before been in the Republican camp in all the years since
Gallup had begun keeping these records.”
[Why the Right Went Wrong, p.74.]

“Now,” Nixon wrote, “I
planned to give expression to the more conservative values and beliefs of the
New Majority throughout the country….I intended to revitalize the Republican
Party along New Majority lines.” [ibid.]

The migration of white
Southern Democrats to the GOP had been going on since LBJ’s hay-day as
president. But it was Ronald Reagan’s failed
1976 campaign, whereby he “rais[ed] a banner of no pale pastels but bold colors
which make it unmistakenly clear where we stand” that launched the “Reagan
Revolution” toward which the Party stills displays undying fealty. It was a banner that Gerald Ford hastened to
pick up, as has every GOP president since, though George H. W. Bush dropped it
more than once.

His son, George W. Bush,
who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative”, further frustrated
those who considered themselves to be “true conservatives”. His bumbling engagement in two costly wars in
southern Asia and the Middle East further alienated his conservative base and
the Great Recession which closed out his term in office left many of them in a
sad way economically.

In Dionne’s view, this,
combined with the ascension of a black man to the Presidency, is what led to
the level of vitriol we now see on the faces of the men and women who comprise
a typical Donald Trump mob today. They
are the new base of the GOP. They come
from “red states” as well as “blue states”.
(Thus my title for this piece, Purple
Rage.) They see change not as
something they can believe in but as something to fear. It is not stalemate in Washington that they
lament but an arc of history that for them is bending toward the Left. For almost 50 years, they have witnessed one
frustration after another coming out of Washington. The only bright light for them is Ronald
Reagan. He made this country, in their
eyes, “great”.

Now, along comes The
Donald, promising to make America great again.
He is unlike any politician they have ever known—brash, tough, taking no
crap. He is rich, he is powerful and
he’s bold. Perhaps they haven’t noticed
that his posture on stage, his swagger, suggests no one–as someone on the Bill
Maher Show last Friday pointed out—so much as “Il Duce” himself, Benito
Mussolini. I like to think of him as
“Donito Trumponi”.

I don’t know how similar
the situation in the United States today is to that of Eastern and Southern
Europe in the days following World War I and the Great Depression. But I do believe that the kind of change the
world has undergone over the past 60 years can produce a great deal of fear—and
the concomitant anger—in those whose core values appear to be steadily eroding. I have seen their faces in the crowds
surrounding Mr. Trump and it frightens me.
I am frightened even though I have made the attempt to understand from
where they are coming. But when I think
of what lies in store for America and the rest of the world should Mr. Trump
become the most powerful man in that world, my knees start to rattle. It is not too late to interrupt this
eventuality. I still believe that there
are more Americans who welcome progress toward a better life for all than
resent it. But those of us of that mind
must follow through on what we know is the only peaceful means available to
interrupt that darker vision and that is to vote for the side that still
believes that justice for all and animosity for none is the better way.

P.S.
Here’s a quote that I just ran across.
The source is unknown:

“When you’re
accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

© 7 Mar 2016

About
the Author

I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and 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.

December 28, 2017February 26, 2019

Ne Me Ouitte Pas / Don’t Leave Me, by Gillian

If You Go Away
has been recorded by many famous singers, but I first became aware of it with
the Neil Diamond* release in 1971.
It’s a sad song but I always liked it well enough, singing along with it on the
radio. I also had it on a Neil Diamond album on cassette.

If you go away

On this summer day

Then you might as
well

Take the sun away
………..

The refrain
is simply if you go away repeated four times.

I’m sure
many of you are familiar with the song.

I never
thought a whole lot about the lyrics until, several years later, I stumbled
upon the original version. In French, it was written in 1959 by Belgian
singer/songwriter Jacques Brel. Like it’s English counterpart, it has been
recorded by many artists in many languages: 24 to be precise. The English
adaptation was done by Rod McKuen and, sadly, to me, is a mere hint of the
beauty and power of the original French.

That was
when I began actually listening to the English lyrics of If You Go Away.
That phrase is undeniably poignant, but repeating it in sets of three several
times, in retrospect, seems a slight overkill. My life is going to be turned
upside down if you go away …… if you go away …… OK, I get
it. Somehow there seemed something slightly irritating about that conditional;
that if. It made me feel like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking
him. Alright already! Apparently, it’s not yet a done deal so stop whimpering
in the corner and get up and fight! Do something about it!

There is a
middle passage of the song which turns hopeful.

But if you stay

I’ll make you a day

Like no day has been

Or will be again
………..

But …
really? Is that it? If I stay with you, I get one wonderful day. That’s it? No
more? Business as usual? Hardly a compelling argument. If I’m dying, if that’s why
I might go away, perhaps the offer might inspire me to the strength to hang on
just one more day. But to be realistic, it’s hardly likely to be the wonderful
one on offer, and even if it were I probably could not delay my leaving for
more than just one day.

No, the
English lyrics do not stand up to too much examination.

But the
French. Oh, the original French. What power. What tragedy. What pathos. We lost
everything when we translated the simple, ever-powerful, ne me quitte pas,
don’t leave me, into the somewhat insipid if you go away. (Of
course, I should not even use the word translate. If I had translated don’t
leave me into if you go away in my high school French exams, I’d
have flunked for sure. Poetic license can be a dangerous thing.)

Today it’s
easy to find an English translation of the original lyrics of Ne Me Quitte
Pas, as opposed to our English adaptation from the ’60’s. In the early
’80’s when I first discovered the original French version, my command of the
language was insufficient for me to gain more than a loose understanding of
most of the meaning. Now I know that the original, for instance of I’ll make
you a day etc, was –

I will offer you

Pearls made of rain

Coming from countries

Where it never rains
……….

Slightly
more imaginative. But what did it matter? All you really need is that
gut-wrenching repeated phrase: ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas, don’t
leave me, don’t leave me.

My favorite
version** is by the inimitable Nina Simone,
American singer, songwriter, and political activist. Her throaty, almost
tear-filled, voice, is almost enough to make me cry without benefit of words.
The song haunts me. It leaps into my head each time one more friend or loved
one leaves this earth, which sadly happens more frequently as we age.

To stick
with French, it is a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart.

Ne me quite pas. Don’t leave me.

Although
sung in almost a whisper, it is a howl from the depth of the soul.

Ne me quitte pas. Don’t leave me.

It is a beg for mercy.

Ne me quitte pas. Don’t leave me.

Finally the words sink to their knees in
despair.

Ne me quitte
pas.

Don’t leave me.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52B7ZWfJNHE

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q7w7gk1JhQ

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.

December 27, 2017February 26, 2019

Igpay Atinlay, by Ricky

In the summer of 1964, I turned
16. My father and I drove north to visit
my uncle. When we arrived, my aunt and
uncle were not home; dad went to visit with them while they were at a mutual
friend’s home elsewhere in the city.
This left my two cousins (ages 14 and 12) and me, home alone for several
hours.

Being mischievous and mean spirited, my
older cousin decided to lock his brother out of the house. I actually helped him to do it, but he wanted
it to last for a while. In any case, the
younger cousin left to ride his bike to a friend’s house, so my conscience was
mostly clear.

At this point, my older cousin chose
to use the bathroom. After what seemed
like 10-minutes, or at least plenty of time to finish his business, I knocked
on the door and asked how much longer he would be in there. He said, “Not long.” I then suspected that he might be doing more
than what is customary in a bathroom; not an unreasonable supposition
considering that we had sex play each time I had visited before.

I found the “junk drawer” in the
kitchen and found a small screwdriver and I inserted it into the bathroom
doorknob to “pop” the lock into the unlock position. It did so with a very loud “pop” sound. My cousin immediately shouted, “Don’t come in!” I rattled the knob, but did not go in. About a minute later he said, “Okay, you can
come in now.” Not knowing what to
expect, I entered.

My cousin asked me if I wanted to play
as if we were the Gestapo torturing prisoners for information. I said okay and asked, “What are the
rules?” He explained that the prisoner
would stand in the bathtub with his hands holding the shower curtain rod and
could not let go; as if he were tied up.
The other person would pretend to torture the prisoner any way he wanted
as long as it was pretend and not painful.
He even volunteered to be the first prisoner. How could I say no? I began to play torture him, which did not
take too long evolving into sex play. We
eventually traded places, so I had my turn also as the prisoner.

As soon as we finished and exited the
bathroom, there was a knock on the door.
We thought it was the younger cousin returning home. It was not.
Instead, it was a 12-year old friend of my younger cousin. We let him in and introductions followed. He and I were chatting away about nothing
important while sitting at the kitchen table.
He asked me if I spoke Pig Latin.

When I was in elementary school, some
of us kids did dabble in it for a week or so, but it was not very interesting
to us so we dropped it; so I told him, “No.
I don’t speak it.” He promptly
turned to my cousin and said, “Owhay igbay isway ishay ickday?” My cousin held up his hands about 7-inches
apart. I then said, “No it’s not. It’s about this big,” holding up my hands to
indicate the size. The friend of my
cousin then said, “I thought you said you didn’t speak Pig Latin.” I told him that I don’t speak it, but I never
said I didn’t understand it.

The boy wanted to see me naked right
then, but my cousin told him to wait until that night. As it turned out, that night my two cousins,
the boy, his 16-year old brother, and I had a sleepover in the family’s steam
bath outbuilding. There was a lot more
sex play, which started out by playing a game of Strip Go Fish.

Oh what a day, the night was even
better.

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.

December 26, 2017February 26, 2019

Figures, by Ray S

It’s 6 AM, my eyes creep open, throw back the covers, swing my legs out of bed, checking to see if I can stand surely enough to hit the head.

Ah! I made it and as I addressed the American Standard porcelain I wondered what “Figures” of mine would be interesting to my woman-and-man-kind enough to avail them with. I began to list some in my mind. To me, the word “Figures” means the visual arts, Michael Angelo’s David, Winged Victory, the Statue of Liberty in NY Harbor, the Acropolis, Mona Lisa, Rodin’s sculptures, something you can see, feel, or imagine.

What about numbers? Well, look how our fearless leader spurts out the “thousands”, “millions” and “trillions” at the drop of a twitter, yet stumbles on into one of his own “cowpies” after another. That’s some America First figure.

Numbers, numbers everywhere, if I could only translate them in my mind into something meaningful. Having limited mathematical skills from a bout of childhood dyslexia, I could visualize the measurements of a yardstick, but talk miles or heights of mountains, depths of the oceans, and those figures escaped me. I was and still am proud that I mastered my 3rd-grade times tables.

Today, figures like names of places and people escape me. Is it a sign of dementia or just plain forgetfulness? You know! I just can’t figure all of this out, so I’ll simply continue to count the petals on the daisy and not figure how many there are. Life’s too short, or too large; go figure.

About the Author