Author: jnelson

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Aw Shucks: The Politics of Pizza and Wombs, by Pat Gourley

The phrase “aw shucks” implies to me a bit of ‘good ole boy’
perhaps false naiveté with a layer of self-consciousness around something or
the other. That is a phrase I really do not relate too. I am much more likely to
be heard exclaiming: ‘aw shit’.
The past week has provided me with ample opportunity to be heard
uttering, “aw shit”. Much but not all of this angst has centered on the
kerfuffle around the Indiana Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and all the dust stirred around that. Besides
having a strong queer political interest in this I was also further drawn to
the story by the fact that I grew up a few short miles from Walkerton, Indiana
on the banks of the Kankakee River. Walkerton is of course the home of Memories
Pizza and the owners of said establishment who plopped themselves into the
middle of the storm by saying they would never provide pizza for a gay
wedding. As has been pointed out countless times over the past ten days queers
are capable of great weddings but these events rarely if ever include serving
pizza.
The indignation directed at these pizza merchants though
understandable really did just create martyrs for the cause of intolerance. They
are basking in the glow of many tens of thousands of dollars sent their way
mostly in small donations by like-minded very fearful folks who, for reasons that
are really inexplicable, feel their world is actually threatened by gay
marriage.
Rather than posting and commenting on the sad ignorance of
Indiana pizza proprietors and giving them an undeserved platform, we need to
perhaps re-focus on what got us to this wedding in the first place. That would
be the millions of us all across the country who have come out as queer and the
profound rippling, change creating effect that has had on society. The coming
out process repeated over and over again is the fuel for the really remarkable
change in attitude towards the LGBTQ community in the past few decades.
The changes in social attitudes well underway even in rural
Indiana can only be further fueled by the coming out process by those folks
known as son, daughter, brother, sister, mother or father to these pizza shop
owners. The personal knowledge of queer loved ones almost always trumps the Bible,
or at least gives one pause before withholding the pizza dough. I hope and
actually know for a fact that my personal coming out has had an impact on at
least some of the folks I grew up with near Walkerton, Indiana some of whom
still live near there.
My real “aw shit” for the week though focused on another sad
tragedy that occurred in Indiana last week and that was the sentencing of a
woman named Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison. This is a complex story and I am
providing a link to one of the better stories on it I read on-line from Common Dreams which I would encourage
all to read: 
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/03/boycott-indiana-imprisoning-woman-who-miscarried
The long and short of it is that this woman was convicted
under an Indiana fetal homicide mandate along with a charge of neglect on her
part around the pregnancy. So this woman is facing twenty years in prison for
what seems most likely to be a late-term miscarriage or stillbirth. The actual
facts in the case remain somewhat murky however the larger issue does not and
that involves reproductive freedom and the control women should have over their
own bodies.
The right-wing assault on a woman’s right to have control
over what goes on in her own womb the past few years in particular is
absolutely stunning and breathtaking in scope. The closing of Planned Parenthood
clinics and abortion facilities in many states is only the tip of this
insidious iceberg. I think it very sad that these issues do not seem to have
received the attention or focused outrage that the denials of cake and pizza
have for us queers.
I realize we are fighting for more than cake but it really is
not the only issue that deserves much more of our attention. Obviously many
lesbians in particular are all over these encroachments into the womb by most
often white, right wing, male zealots and the spineless politicians who pander
to them. I do think though, speaking to my queer brothers here, we need to be a
bit more vocal and involved in what is truly a war on women and their
inalienable right to control their own bodies and reproductive choices. It is
all the same struggle whether it involves cake, pizza or someone’s womb.
© 6 April 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.
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Plumage, by Nicholas

          I like
scarves. I like to wear them and I like seeing them worn by other people.
Scarves are both fashionable and practical. They can provide warmth and
protection against the elements on a cold, blustery day. They can also provide
an elegant touch of color, a bit of flair with a swath of fabric flung around
your neck and over a shoulder. And they can make statements about who you are
and even what side you take.
          I’m always
surprised how much warmth a scarf can provide when wrapped around my neck on a
winter’s day. It’s an extra layer of protection against the wind. It feels cozy
and snuggly and shelters some exposed skin. The winter scarves I have are light
wool and are burgundy and purple. They’re long enough to completely wrap them
around me. I have another yellow scarf that my mother knitted for me years ago
but I rarely wear it because I keep it more as a memento of her.
          Scarves can
also make statements—fashion statements and political statements. Scarves can
be gay when a man wears one that is colorful and elegant. It can bring a
feminine touch to your wardrobe. I wear a blue and gold silk scarf sometimes
and I have a fuchsia and black scarf that I wear just for decoration. The
secret to always being fashionable, they say, is to accessorize. Scarves can be
so gay.
          Political
statements are also made through scarves. Certain scarves in certain colors on
certain days often convey symbolic political sentiments. I own a scarf that is
checkered red and black which might be taken for a Middle Eastern keffiyeh, the checkered headdress worn
by many Palestinians and adopted by some non-Palestinians as a gesture of
solidarity. I didn’t buy it for that. In fact, the resemblance didn’t occur to
me until much later when I realized there could be political overtones to my
new fashion accessory. But then I doubt a Palestinian warrior would wear my
pinkish-red scarf anywhere. It’s not their style.
          My favorite
scarves are not actually scarves at all but can be worn as such. They are these
bright pieces of plumage from Renaissance Italy. These are actually flags or
banners representing the different neighborhoods of Siena. Each banner—with different
colors, animals (both mythical and real), wild patterns of stripes and daggers
of color, and patron saints displayed—symbolically represents one of the 17
districts of the old medieval city.
These banners are used by neighborhood
teams competing in the annual horse race, called the Palio, held since the 15th
century (and still held) each summer in the huge piazza in the center of town.
Of course, the three-day event is more than one horse race. Much pageantry and
pomp goes along with it, including parades with these banners carried by people
in equally flamboyant Renaissance costumes of tight leotards, puffy sleeves and
very bright colors.
So, wearing a scarf can be more than
putting on an accessory to highlight a color, more than showing your support
for a sports team, and more than just bundling up against the cold. Scarves
have become yet another way humans have concocted to say something in a world
that might not be paying much attention anyway. A scarf is a flag to wave.
©  March 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.
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Clothes: Strange Symbols of Freedom, by Gillian

I simply do not like
baseball caps. Maybe it’s no more than the fact that I grew up in a land
without them; maybe it’s simply that they are, to me, and I apologize to the
many of you, including my beautiful Betsy, who wear the things, the least
flattering of headgear – though I can think of some very close seconds, like
the British flat cap, or those German and Russian military caps of WW11 with
the exaggeratedly high fronts. But really, baseball caps are everywhere. If
some variety of hat had to go viral ….. no, that’s the wrong term: I
occasionally become over-excited by modern idiom! … had to become universal,
why not, say, the cowboy hat? Most people are enhanced by a jaunty Stetson. Or
a variation on one of many military caps such as the Aussie Slouch or the U.S.
army cap with that sexy curved bill? No! The entire world, or the greatest part
of it, had to go for the baseball cap, or, even worse, its offspring the
trucker hat with that flat bill, high foam front panel, and adjustable mesh in
the back. Those are the ones I really dislike; mostly worn by Bubba and
guaranteed to make the most modest, most harmless, of men, look like a
rapist/mugger and a woman (why would a woman wear one? But they do!)
resemble an escapee from the nearest Dickensian madhouse. 
O.K. So the world is,
for whatever incomprehensible reason, obsessed with variations of the American
baseball cap. But why do they proudly wear them complete with American logo;
almost invariably a sports team. Young Russians, Brits, Australians, now even
Chinese, strut their stuff under caps proudly proclaiming Red Sox or White Sox
or New Orleans Saints, most often accompanied by a t-shirt emblazoned with
Notre Dame or S.M.U. If you must adopt American clothes, why not, at least,
proclaim the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, or the
Tsinghua University of Beijing?
I suppose, when it
comes down to it, it’s all about marketing; the U.S probably takes Best of
Breed. But I do get angry when people in other countries sigh, shake their
heads, and regret ‘the Americanization of everything,’ placing the blame firmly
on the doorstep of the United States.
I hold our country
responsible for many things of which I am not proud, but, please! We don’t
force anyone to wear these clothes any more than we forced the world to install
over 33,000 McDonalds, and frequently in the most inappropriate places. No, we
did not invade Poland and force them to put a McDonalds in a historic medieval
vault in Krakow, or Russia to impose what claimed to be, at the time I visited
it, anyway, the most exotic McDonalds in the world. It’s in the St. Petersburg
railway station in a cavernous space with polished marble floors, exquisite
woodwork, and beautiful chandeliers hanging from a high, arched, beamed,
ceiling.
People tut-tut over the
amount of ‘American rubbish’ on T.V. across the world, but we don’t hold a gun
to the BBC producer’s head, and most certainly not to the head of Russian-controlled
TV.  Yet, in the early 1990’s when I was
there, they were glued to already outdated productions of ‘Dallas’ and ‘The
Young and the Restless,’ and ‘Dynasty.’ Gazing obsessively at the imaginary
American way of life, or at least one experienced by very few of us, they
proudly wore their New York Jets ball caps and their University of Michigan
tees. I suppose it was all part of the dream. Free at last, they could be
anything: anybody.
One universality which
puzzles me is the world-wide use of the word fuck. You see it scrawled
on walls everywhere, or at least in every country I have been in, and hear it
used by people who, apparently, speak not one more word of English. You hear an
endless stream of conversation in another language, and it is almost invariably
punctuated with the only words you can understand; an occasional fuck or
fucking. Why in the world this particular word has become so
wide-spread, I haven’t a clue though probably some linguist somewhere is, even
as I write this, doing his or her Ph.D. on this very subject.
Yeah, yeah, call me old
fashioned. but I do have a certain yearning for the days when clothes told a
story. (And of course, come to that, when the F word was not so
prevalent!) “Clothes and manners do not make the man,” said Henry Ward Beecher.
But clothes did make the man, at least in the eye of the beholder. Days gone
by, you could tell your bank manager from your milkman from your doctor by his
clothes. In that sense, they did indeed make the man. I don’t mean only when he
was at work, but when he was not. Now, if your plumber, financial advisor, and
grocery clerk walk their dog in the park, they probably all wear blue jeans
with tees proclaiming Rice University and ball caps bearing the Florida Gators’
logo.
Perhaps, I muse, if we
all dress alike we will find it harder to go to war against each other, though
I confess I have seen little evidence of this so far. And I do regret the
individuality.
When I was in school we
used to watch, once in a while as a special treat in geography class, an old
grainy jerky black and white film released from an 18″ diameter reel. It
showed workers collecting rubber in Brazil, or farming pineapples in Hawaii, or
cutting sugar cane in Jamaica. They dressed very differently depending on their
country. If we see a cable documentary about such activities today, chances are
the majority will be sporting Cardinals or Dodgers caps and Harvard or M.I.T. tee-shirts.
I have to hand it to
the countries of the Islamic world. They are almost alone in refusing to change
their traditional dress, for which I admire them. On the other hand, I abhor
the way women are, for the most part, treated, and forced to dress. I find
myself wishing and hoping that somehow some of these women are concealing a
Baltimore Colts cap and bright orange Denver Broncos tee-shirt beneath the
burqa – well, it would be a beginning, a tiny hint of freedom, wouldn’t it? –
but somehow cannot imagine it.
You know what?
In writing this, I have
talked myself round! Maybe the universal Atlanta Braves cap and Ann Arbor tee
is not so bad. We can all, in many countries and in these times, dress more or
less however we please, and after all, knowing a person’s social status by the
clothes they wear is in fact nothing desirable or positive at all. And being
able to identify a person’s nationality in the same manner means little
individual choice is available. So, now I think it all through, baseball caps
don’t look so bad after all. If they cover the world it is because individuals
have chosen them. I fear I shall never be able to find them aesthetically
appealing, but perhaps they can be, to me, a rather unattractive symbol of
freedom.
Afterthought
Reading through this I
was overcome by the most horrific of visions!
What if the universal
love for ball caps and that tiresome F word had collided? The world
would be covered in caps saying, simply, and with great lack of originality, FUCK.
© September 2014  
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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Role With the Flow: The Women in My Life, by Betsy

Aspiring to be one’s
own person is noble indeed.  No one would
doubt that.  But in my experience growing
up female in America in the mid twentieth century this ideal was indeed elusive
and impalpable to many girls.
As a youngster my
mother was my major role model.  Other
female role models were my grandmothers, an aunt, and to a lesser extent some
teachers. I consider these role models to be the most important in shaping my
adult persona because it was from these women that I learned who I was meant to
be–or should I say who I was supposed to be. 
Put another way, I learned how I was supposed to behave and, more
importantly, how to perceive myself going into adulthood. The women were also
the mirror for me which reflected who I was and who I was to become.
These role models I
mention were good people.  They strove to
take good care of their families; that is, to be good wives and mothers. They
were honest and loving.  The roles, however,
were clearly defined.  A woman’s role was
to NOT be in charge.  In fact it appeared
that a woman in that day in this culture was not even in charge of her own
life.
As a youngster growing
up the message I got was loud and clear: your happiness and your future welfare
requires, first, that you get a husband and the degree of that happiness and
welfare depends on who the man is that you marry.   A woman’s identity, her sense of who she is,
is intrinsic in what is reflected back to her from the people close to
her–especially her husband. I have recently come to realize that many females
of my generation have struggled with their true identity; they have struggled
to “be their own person.”
At the same time, my
growing up experience followed a period of time known as the Progressive Era,
the early decades of the 20th century, which saw the beginnings of huge changes
in the roles of women.  My grandmothers
and my mother saw some very obvious changes such as shorter skirts and short
hair, and some movement toward political equality. Women were no longer
expected to be frail and demure and confined to their parlors or their
kitchens.  Spurred on by the necessities
brought about by two world wars, women entered the work force and were allowed
to enter professions heretofore open only to men.  By mid-century women, especially of the
middle class and the Western World had completely redefined their roles in
almost every sphere of culture.
These were huge
changes.  Yet they were mostly all
outward superficial changes.  I still
received the message from my female role models that if I did not marry, I
would end up unhappy, unfulfilled, and lonely. In other words, I, by myself,
could not create my own persona. I had to depend on others to do that. Most
females I knew received the same message. But for some of us that image of just
who we were and who we were to become did not fit. Many of us had to try it on
before learning that it did not fit.  I
suppose this is one reason that so many lesbian woman of my generation were
married and had families and were middle aged before recognizing their own
sexual orientation and their true identity. This and the awareness that came
along with the gay rights movement helped us along.
Even today’s women
struggle for power. Many men are threatened by women who have more power than
they. Not all men, but some, feel emasculated by women who have more control
and become more powerful than they at home or in the work place. Is this a
natural happening or is it learned?  The
evidence, to me, shows that it is learned since not all men have this insecurity.  (I sincerely doubt that any man in this room
falls into that insecurity category.) Again in many cases I suppose it depends
on the role models they followed.  I
contend that the woman role models in my life were married to men who did not
have this insecurity.  They were not
controlling and overbearing at least insofar as my memory and my experience
allows me to make the judgement.
The women in my life,
my mother and my grandmothers, were products of their culture and reflected
that.  At the same time they were
progressive and welcomed the changes and disappearance of the restrictions that
kept them from expressing themselves earlier. Perhaps their progressive
attitudes contributed to my ability to come out later in life.
As it turns out neither
of my parents ever learned who I really was. They both died before I came out.
To me this is a sad fact.  However, only
mothers and grandmothers who outlive their daughters ever learn who these
daughters FINALLY become.
We are constantly
changing hopefully growing and progressing. 
If we make it into old age of course our role models are not there to
see how we finally turn out.  But it is
for certain that the spirit of the women in my life has been traveling with me
every step of the way and will continue to the end.
© 24 Nov 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).  She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren. 
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Joey, by Will Stanton

I was in my car, driving to
a friend’s house in town.  The
destination does not matter.  What
happened along the way is what is important, something very poignant that I
just cannot forget.
It was 1974.  The Vietnam War was supposed to be over – –
“Peace with honor,” we were told.  My
classmate Bernard had lost his younger brother Larry in Nam and still was
having a hard time dealing with it.  The
little blond boy in the class ahead of me, the one who looked to be no older
than an adolescent, he was dead, too. 
Ours was a very small town, yet we had our share of losses.  Maya Lin was the talented designer who later
would be chosen to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial honoring the 58,000
American lives lost.  I remember her as
the little girl who once lived in our town.
As I started up a steep
hill, I saw an older man slowly making his way up the sidewalk.  Head down, he moved as though he had the
weight of the world upon his shoulders. 
As I drew alongside of him, I recognized him as Mr. Bodnar.  I stopped next to him and offered him a ride
up the hill.  Expressing appreciation, he
accepted and wearily sat in the passenger seat next to me.
Mr. Bodnar was from
Hungary.  He was an educated attorney in
his home country.  Here in the U.S., he
worked for a pittance doing furniture repair and as a handy man.  His knowledge of Hungarian law was of no use
to him in this country, and his limited English also was a handicap.
The Bodnar family fled
Hungary in 1956 when the Soviet army invaded his homeland in response to the
Hungarian people’s abortive attempt to bring a modicum of freedom to their
lives.  The Bodnars chose America to come
to, the land of peace and opportunity.  I
imagine that they were proud when they received their American citizenship.
Nicholas Bodnar was in my
class at school.  He was deemed
unsuitable for the draft, but his younger brother Joey received his draft
letter.
Joey was a very impressive
person, exceptionally bright and very talented. 
In addition to being a very good student, he was a remarkable
artist.  He was very athletic, too.  Blond, small but compact, he could swim more
than two lengths of the pool underwater in just one breath.
Because Joey now was an
American citizen, he had the honor of being drafted into the American army in
1966 and being sent to Vietnam to go to war to save the world for
democracy.  On one unfortunate day when
he was slogging through the rice paddies or dense jungles, he contracted
malaria and was removed to the rear.  He
was given time to recover his strength and eventually returned to the front
lines.  His company received enemy fire,
and Joey did not survive.  His family was
notified.  He was only twenty-two.
As I drove Mr. Bodnar up the
hill, I mentioned that Nicholas was in my class.  Mr. Bodnar then quietly asked me, “Did you
know Joey?”  I replied, “Yes,” and said
that I had admired him.  There was a
moment of silence, after which Mr. Bodnar, in a soft, tearful voice, said,
“They killed my Joey.”
It was clear to me what Mr.
Bodnar meant.  The “they” that he was
referring to were not the Vietnamese people who had killed Joey; the “they”
were not some faceless enemy.  The “they”
he was referring to was the American government that had the legal right to
draft this naturalized boy and send him off to war, adding him to the 58,000
others who were killed in Vietnam – – a boy from a family that had fled Hungary
to escape violence and governmental oppression, who had come to America to find
peace and safety.  I deeply felt the
tragic irony of Joey’s fate.
We came to the address where
Mr. Bodnar was to do some work.  He
opened the door and got out, thanking me for the ride.  I sincerely wished him well.  After the door closed and I continued on, Mr.
Bodnar’s painful lamentation continued to haunt me, “They killed my Joey.”  I never have forgotten.  Those words and the mournful sound of Mr.
Bodnar’s voice have remained with me ever since.
© 23 August 2014
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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Birth Experiences, by Ricky

        I don’t remember being born, but I
imagine it was not a pleasant experience being squeezed through a small opening
like toothpaste from a tube and suddenly finding oneself in a cold unfriendly
environment without mom’s heartbeat to supply normalcy.  I’ve since learned that it wasn’t an
enjoyable experience for my mother either.
        I do remember
that the births of my four children filled me with happiness.  Considering what my wife went through and
what she put me through during “transition”, it jolly well better had made me
happy.
        There were some
rather humorous events during the birth of our first daughter in 1977.  At about 5AM, I was awakened by a swift poke
in the ribs and a voice that said, “My water broke.  Go get a towel.”  I sleepily replied, “What?” after which the
first message was repeated.  I then
staggered to the bathroom to get a towel, but first answered the call of nature
for about 1-minute.  Meanwhile, Deborah
was repeatedly yelling at me to hurry up. 
Well, this is only funny in hindsight but the excitement of the
impending birth quelled her anger.
        By 10PM she
still had not dilated sufficiently for birthing nor had she eaten anything
since dinner the day before.  Deborah was
famished so I went to a McDonald’s and brought her back a Big Mac and a vanilla
shake, which she wolfed down reasonably slow considering.  At the midnight nursing shift change, an
unsympathetic nurse took over and decided to “move things along” by trying to get
Deborah to push, attempting to use the baby’s head to stretch the cervix.  At one point, Deborah was told to tuck her
chin down and push hard.  Deb tried once
but told the nurse that it made her gag. 
The nurse told her it was nonsense and to tuck her chin and push.
        The nurse was
standing where the doctor would stand during delivery so she could monitor the
cervix stretching.  Deb did as she was
told and again told the nurse it was making her gag.  The nurse again insisted that Deborah to tuck
her chin down and push hard.  At this
point, the nurse learned an important and disgusting lesson as Deborah threw up
her recently ingested Big Mac and vanilla shake.  It was a perfectly cylindrical projectile
that arched over her chest and stomach and hit the nurse squarely in the chest.  I was mortified on behalf of the nurse and
did not laugh until the nurse had angrily stomped out of the room.  After all, she had been warned, apparently she
was a “know-it-all” type.
        With some more
suffering on Deborah’s part, but no more drama, our first daughter was born
26–hours after Deb’s water broke.  The
smile and happiness on her face when she was able to hold our baby made it all
worthwhile for the both of us.
        Each of the
following children took less and less time to deliver.  The only other unforgettable event was during
the birth of our third baby, our son.  He
was two weeks overdue and large.  It was
decided that Deborah would be “induced” using Pitocin.  The day for birthing arrived.  We had never needed Pitocin before and did
not know exactly what to expect.  We
waited and waited and waited for the Pitocin drip to take effect.  After about two hours, nothing had begun and
it was explained that the Pitocin did not work because Deborah’s body was not
ready to give birth.  So, the doctor
decided to wait another week.
The next delivery day also arrived
and all went well with the preparation until the nurse administered the
Pitocin. Again we waited and waited and waited but nothing was happening.  After about an hour, another nurse arrived
and discovered that the first nurse had missed the vein and the Pitocin was not
getting into Deb’s blood stream.
        So, while the
nurses were now preparing everything to insert the drip needle properly, I went
to another wing of the hospital for a brief visit with a family friend who was
in the hospital due to heart issues. 
After about 20-30 minutes, I returned to Deborah only to find out that
she was in transition, yelling at me for not being there (I was her Lamaze
labor coach) and was about to be wheeled into the delivery room.  Apparently, Pitocin works very fast and I
barely had time to change into the delivery room green scrubs.  I arrived just ahead of the doctor.
        One week later, Deb
and I were driving two cars to Florida from Montana, as I had just been
discharged from the Air Force.  That was
the trip that was hell for Deborah.  But
that is another story probably best not remembered or told—the modern version of the pioneers
crossing the prairie in covered wagons or on foot.
© 27 January 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 began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
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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A Travelogue of Terror, by Phillip Hoyle

I suppose I’ve always held an
exaggerated sense of the word terror and an exaggerated sense of my own safety.
Still, I do recall one dark night thirty years ago when I realized some of the
big things might not go well. It was during a family trip to celebrate Christmas
in western Colorado. Packed into our VW Jetta, we left our home in mid-Missouri
stopping overnight at my parents’ home in central Kansas. The next morning we
continued on our way with my sixteen-year-old son Michael driving. I wanted him
to experience driving on a long trip since in my teen years I did the same
thing. I recall that while driving those long hours I had become used to where
the car was on the road and no longer had to calculate its position by keeping
the white marks on the right of the lane lined up with a certain point on the
fender. It worked for me and I hoped it would for him. He drove well, but on
our approach to Limon, Colorado, a light snow began to fall. “I’m not ready to
drive in this,” Michael announced, so he and I switched places. Like a good
navigator, he tuned in the radio for more information about the storm. Since it
was moving toward the southeast, I decided we should change from our plan to
drive through Colorado Springs and continue on I-70 through Denver and over the
mountains. I couldn’t imagine crossing the high plains country on US-24, a
two-lane highway that had always seemed rather narrow. I didn’t want to risk
getting stranded out there with its few small towns and few snowplows. Certainly
I didn’t want an accident. I hoped by going northwest we would drive out of the
storm.
The snow picked up just west of Limon
in that high country known for its terrible winds and difficult driving
conditions. In fact it became so bad we saw lots of semi’s jackknifed in the
ditches along the road. I had driven in snow many times, so confidently and
carefully we continued west. As we neared Denver the snow on the road got
deeper and deeper and the Interstate became nearly deserted. Since I didn’t
want to get stuck in Denver for Christmas, I proposed we stop briefly for
gasoline and a quick meal.
We got back on I-70 as evening darkened.
The snow kept falling, the driving conditions steadily worsened. As we started
into the foothills, I said to my family, “I’m going to follow that tan 4-wheel-drive
vehicle. Its big tires should keep a track open for us.” My idea worked well
enough. Then we were climbing the incline past Georgetown, still in the tracks
of another SUV. Entering the Eisenhower tunnel at the top of the divide gave me
a great sense of relief. With no snow falling, the windshield warmed up and I
felt calm; that is until we emerged into a whiteout with 20-miles-per-hour
winds and a minus 20° F temperature. Immediately the windshield frosted over.
All I could see were the out-of-focus red lights on the car in front of me. “See
those lights?” I told my family. “I’m going to follow them and hope for the
best.” That road is steep, a fact I was all too well aware of as I downshifted and
said my prayers.
We made it safely to the bottom of
the incline, exited the road at the first opportunity, and pulled into a
service station with a restroom. I ran inside only to find a long line of
people impatiently waiting to use the all-too-inadequate toilet facilities. The
terrifying ride into Denver, up the divide, and back down was bad, but the wait
in that line with the prospect of wetting my pants was for me an even greater
terror. By the time I got into the restroom, I was shaking. Some minutes later
more relaxed, a thankful man emerged. I ate some unhealthy but comforting snack
food, drank a Coca Cola, filled the gas tank, and gathered the family again to
travel on to Battlement Mesa. Thankfully the snow gave out on Vail Pass. The
snowplows kept that part of the road passable. We spent the night at the home
of one of my wife’s relatives before driving the rest of the way to Montrose the
next morning in full, dazzling, comforting sunlight.
That’s about as close to terror as I
have come, and I freely admit it was quite enough for me. Furthermore, I
realized far beyond the fears of driving snowy roads that needing to pee and
not being able to do so presented a new threat of terror to a middle-age man.
Now as an old man, I have known that terror way too often.
© 28 Oct 2014 
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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A Piece of Cake, by Pat Gourley

The phrase “a piece of cake” usually implies something that
is easy or simple and often even pleasant to do. Often though when this phrase
is used in regards to many different tasks the reality turns out to be
something quite different. For example when told by someone at the hardware
store that changing the leaking parts in your toilet bowl will be “a piece of
cake” when it actually turns out to be several hours of hell and eventually
involves calling a plumber!
A similar meaning phrase that seems to have creped into the
vernacular these days is “easy-peasy”. The use of which seems for some reason
to make my skin crawl and a nearly overpowering urge to slap the crap out of
whoever just said it comes over me.
However, I plan to address this phrase, Piece O’ Cake, for purposes of this Story Telling group by turning
it into a question, approaching it in very concrete fashion and then twisting
into a LGBT call to arms! Which reminds me of a criticism I used to get flung
at me much more in the 1970’s and 1980’s which was “why does everything have to
be political for you”. So here goes.
The issue for me, and most of us aging LGBT folk, is the
cake. The last fucking thing we need in our lives is cake. Specifically the
sugar that comes with the cake to say nothing of the processed flour it is
embedded in.
It is now indisputable that many of our chronic health
problems are aggravated if not directly caused by what we put in our mouths for
what passes as food. Over the ages we queer folk have often been accused of
diabolically putting in our mouths things god and nature did not intend to have
in there. I want to redirect the conversation away from tongues and genitalia
to the real evil shortening our lives and compromising the quality of the
golden years and that would be the sugar we put in our mouths!
The literature and science to back it up on the true poison
of sugar is voluminous. I would refer you though to the writings on diet by a
man named Joel Fuhrman. I need to extend a H/T to Betsy McConnell for turning
me on to this man’s writings about a year ago. I had been a neurotic student of
diet long before being turned-on to Fuhrman’s writings but I currently consider
him to be the last word on matters of food, at least for now!
The first step, and this is true for me, is admitting that I
am a sugar addict. Disturbing research using brain scans has repeatedly shown
that the same parts of the brain are titillated and light up from sugar as they
do from cocaine.
A close friend just sent me a piece from The Sun over the weekend that was an interview with a fellow named
Daniel Lieberman. A short quote from the article sums things up nicely in
regards to the evils of sugar:
“Sugar as a modern,
industrialized product has created an incredible amount of misery, starting
with slavery and the plantation system. Today it is increasing rates of disease
and death because our bodies can’t handle it. But we love it. We are addicted
to it”.
The litany of health problems related to poor diet is a long
one from diabetes to stroke to heart disease to obesity to several forms of
cancer. You can actually without too much effort connect the dots and relate
global warming at least in part to sugar and certainly processed foods. Animal
product of any source is of course a bigger culprit in regards to global warming
but that is a topic for another time.
As with many evils in the world sugar often creeps into our
lives in very insidious ways. The first step for me was becoming aware of the
staggering amount of hidden sugars in our food. Reading labels is a great way
to begin raising one’s consciousness in this regard. Of course as one of my many
health gurus, one Robert Lustig, has emphasized we should be eating real food
and that would eliminate anything that comes with a label on it.
There are no “healthy sugars”. Fruit juice for example has as
much sugar as equal amounts of any soda and your pancreas and liver could not
give a rat’s ass where the sugar comes from, it all has to be dealt with the
same be it O.J. or Pepsi.
I can hear the hue and cry now that there are no bad foods
and if we just approach things in moderation no harm no foul. Bullshit! The
words of the great Texas populist Jim Hightower apply here: “the only thing in
the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead Armadillos”.  And I would guess those Armadillos had type 2
diabetes.
So in my admittedly very biased opinion the LGBT community,
particularly the over 50 crowd, would be much better served in the long run by
moving the issues of diet and climate change ahead of marriage equality and
military service.
This sea change in queer priorities I think would bring us
much more in line with a whole host of other pertinent social issues from
racism to income inequality to the devastation of the planet.  And it would go a long way towards reducing
our unwanted belly fat. 

Eat more fruit and vegetables.

© March 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. 
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Ticking Away – Homophobes, by Nicholas

I was feeling just kind of stupid the
other day so I did what you do when you feel just kind of stupid: I turned on
the TV. Surfing the channels, I came across a CNN show talking about the
attacks in France that left 12 journalists and 5 others dead. One commentator
was identified as being from the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic organization.
This spokesman started by, of course, condemning the violent attacks but then
went on to say how he thought the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, who also ran items lampooning Catholic hierarchs,
were provocateurs and pornographers and if they hadn’t done what they did, they
would be alive today. The first part of his statement was delivered in bland,
white-guy-speak; but when he began criticizing the victims, whom he clearly
didn’t like, his dull, fat face fairly well lit up with determination. This is
what he really wanted to say. I don’t know if this man is prone to violence,
but he displayed an attitude of contempt for the victims.
What makes homophobes tick? Probably
much of the same thing that makes all phobes–racists, anti-Semites,
women-haters and murderous jihadists–tick. The time bomb of intolerance they
carry around.
          I’m right, says
the phobe, my culture and religion tell me I’m right and you’re wrong and
therefore I have the right, maybe the duty, to attack you, beat you, even kill
you. Getting angry isn’t enough. I’m entitled to get even.
Start with a conviction of
superiority and power, add a sense of entitlement and plain old egoism,
sprinkle with self-righteousness and every imagined criticism becomes a threat
to be answered with explosive violence. Clearly, this good Catholic, supposed Christian
didn’t mind at all that 12 people he didn’t like lost their lives. They
shouldn’t have done what they did. They shouldn’t bug people like me. We’re
entitled to defend ourselves against such bad behavior as making fun of the
pope or the prophet. That line used to be commonly used against gay people: if
you didn’t flaunt it (i.e., live openly) you wouldn’t antagonize those who
don’t like you and maybe then we wouldn’t have to beat you up.
          It’s the
classic rationale of the bully, full of egoism and entitlement and yet
self-pity. Phobe equals bully. They think the world is theirs and others are
allowed in only in so far as they do not impinge on preconceived notions. And
those preconceived notions and common prejudices frequently get bundled up with
high flying notions like it’s god’s will and law or it’s the bedrock of
civilization. Of course, we know that civilization has no bedrock; it’s really
a fragile thing.
          What makes
phobes tick? Self-righteousness, anger, helplessness, isolation, fear of change—all
the ingredients of prejudice, discrimination, homophobia.
          But while the
racist, anti-semite, and woman-hater can separate himself from those he hates,
it’s more difficult with sexual discrimination because everybody has a
sexuality. This prejudice hits inside. Some straight men fear that if they
accept gay men they will become gay themselves or, just as bad, others will see
them as gay. Their presumed code of manhood will unravel. And if they accept
lesbian women, they become useless and irrelevant instead of dominant. Sexual
prejudice has that unique quality of turning the political into the very, very
personal.
          I recently saw
a refrigerator magnet that read: “Why should you mind that I’m gay? I don’t
mind that you’re an idiot.” In our multi-cultural world, that could be the best
we can do in establishing mutual tolerance. Ultimately, I don’t care what makes
phobes tick just so they keep their ticking away from me.
Intolerance, as we’ve just seen, is a
lit stick of dynamite set to explode. It comes from a sense of helplessness in
a world that offers plenty that is offensive to what you hold dear. We’re all
entitled to be angry when offended. But we are not entitled to abuse anybody
else with our anger. Sometimes, “fuck you” has to be enough.
Nous sommes tous Charlie.
© 22 Apr
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.
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House Cleaning, by Lewis

I
have been doing housework since I was no more than eight years old.  I remember this very specifically because the
summer of my eighth year I contracted ringworm of the scalp.  It was the summer that my nuclear
family—granddad, dad, mom and me—drove Granddad’s 1952 Packard sedan to New
England and Washington, DC.  We hadn’t
been home one week when my scalp started to scale and itch.  We had a pet cat, which had every reason to hate
me but, when checked, it showed no sign of the skin disease.  I might have picked it up in the Big Apple
but my favorite theory is that I got it from putting the nozzle of the vacuum
cleaner up to my cheek and making funny faces at myself.
In
any event, that was only the beginning of a series of odd associations with
house cleaning in my early life.  My
parents were lower middle class folk who rarely could afford to pay a cleaning
person but my mother hated—that’s H-A-T-E-D—housework—so, when she was working,
it was necessary to pay someone to clean our house.  One day, according to my mother, she found a
black cleaning woman asleep on her bed. 
That was the last time she ever paid anyone to do housework and, as far
I know, the last time she ever spoke kindly of a black person.  No, from then on, if house cleaning needed to
be done and I was around, I did it (or, so it seems, looking back across so
many foggy years).
Luckily
for me, I kind of liked doing housework. (Please note the past tense!)  I put cleanliness and order above godliness
and I was the only person I trusted to do the job right.  When I started working at the public library
at the age of 15, my favorite job was to “read the shelves” on Saturday
mornings.  That meant putting hundreds of
fiction books in alphabetical order by author and title and a similar number of
non-fiction books in Dewey Decimal System order.  I could do it faster and more accurately than
anyone else on the staff though they seemed only upset that I lay on the floor
to read the bottom shelf.
My
second-favorite job was working the basement stacks.  Down there was a large “squirrel cage” that
housed back issues of periodicals, including National Geographic.  Growing
up in the 1950’s meant that there were a number of native peoples in the world
who were accustomed to wearing little other than a loin cloth and, sometimes,
some body paint or other ornamentation. 
The only magazine store in my home town was a great source of comic
books and Christian literature but most definitely lacking in anything that
would appeal to the prurient interest of a nascent adolescent.  National
Geographic filled the gap nicely, especially articles on the golden, stocky
tribes of the Amazon River basin.
In
my senior year of college, I took a job cleaning house for a retired professor
and his wife.  He was wheelchair bound
and she was his primary caregiver.  Their
house was a two-story colonial with a half-finished basement.  The finished half was the professor’s office
and the unfinished half a place to store books, magazines, and other
paraphernalia.  My job was to clean only
his office every other week, which only took two hours.  I think they paid me $2.50 an hour but that
would pay for soda, movies, and cigarettes for the month.  Soon I discovered that the professor was a
collector of National Geographics.  Suddenly, my job satisfaction improved by
leaps-and-bounds.
I
now no longer do house cleaning—for myself or anyone.  The thrill has gone.  I still get a kick, however, out of watching
the houseboy in La Cage aux Folles as
he combines his flouncing with his feather dusting.
© 1 April 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.