Author: jnelson

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Epiphany by Peg

     Life is an epiphany.

     Beginning with a transition from total dependence for all of
our needs, secure and warm, protected and nourished, oblivious of everything
beyond the walls of our mother’s womb.  Forces beyond our control begin to squeeze and push, in a while we enter
a completely different dimension. 
Suddenly we are now separate, an individual and well designed for this
new experience.

     When we die, what new dimension will we enter?  What epiphany will that turn out to be?  That answer lies far beyond our
understanding.  Some have certainty,
others don’t, in my mind I’ll just wait and see.
     I see life as Lewis Carroll wrote, “As through a looking
glass.” Picture a window in a wall; from inside, the view is very different
from the view observed from outside the glass. 
We can interpret the same scene in quite different ways.  Looking in we might see a place of comfort,
safety, and security in everything being known and predictable.  To another’s perspective that scene might look
confining, stifling and boring.
     The glass has no opinion of it’s own, it doesn’t care.
     From the other side of the glass looking out, one might see
danger, uncertainty and insecurity.  To
another it calls for exploration and discovery, and perhaps a strong need to
experience complete uncertainty.  What
each perceives is his or her own personal choice, we alone decide.  It’s our choice; we may experience peace
achieved through reasoned negotiation, or war driven by greed and the desire
for supremacy.  Life is a series of
choices.  All are decided by our own or
collective needs and wants.
 
     The glass has no preference it is just there.
 
     The glass is in it’s own dimension, existing both inside and
outside at the same time.  If it had eyes
it could see both ways at once, if it had a mind it could know every thought
produced by each observation.
     The glass doesn’t care what we see or do with the view.  In truth, the glass doesn’t see anything, it
doesn’t feel anything or think, it is just there.  It has no preference if the scene is peaceful
or a battlefield, is the weather calm or stormy, is it day or night.
     The glass doesn’t care.
     My epiphany?  Long ago
I was taught that the glass was there and did care. I believed that the window
provided the scenes for us, put there to test us and decide our fates.
     I have since then made my own choice by believing that the
window that guides us is a myth.  I am
not directed by dogma and I decide myself how to interpret the scenes.  I understood that I can decide my own destiny,
that others beliefs and opinions are theirs and my life is mine alone.  If someone has some difficulty with that,
they have the problem not me.
     There is no glass there to care. 

     Someone
long ago decided otherwise, he believed the glass was there, did care and since
he had that belief, he also believed it needed a name; and he called it …  God.

About the Author

I was born and raised in Denver Colorado and I have a divided history, I went to school, learned a trade, served in the military, married and fathered two sons. And I am Trans; I transitioned in 1986 after being fired for “not fitting in to their program”. 18 years ago I fulfilled my lifelong need to shed the package and become female. I continued working in my trade until retiring in 2006. I have been active in PFLAG Denver and served five years on the board of directors, two years as President of our chapter. Living now as a woman has let me be who I always knew I was and I am genuinely happy.

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Memoir: A Pile of Leaves by Cecil Bethea

     With the end of September comes the annual event of the falling of the leaves and the concomitant chore of raking them up and getting rid of them one way or another.  Back home we used to heap them up into piles and then set them afire.  The burning leaves produced an aroma, not a smell, that was a delight to the senses but pleasured us only once a year and is not forgotten decades later.  Since then I’ve often wondered whether a forest fire amongst deciduous trees produces so sweet a smell.  Anyhow I still have a Pavlovian reaction to burning leaves of memories from the distant past in Alabama.

     Friday I decided to start the series of rakings necessary to rid the yard of leaves.  Can’t burn them now without being inundated with police and vile thoughts of the neighbors.  Steven, who lives next door, operates a compost heap and is delighted with garbage cans of leaves.
  
     For some reason or another, I felt Puritanical and tackled the trash collected along the fence.  Pulling the leaves and other trash into a pile, I marched at a slow step down the fence.  Then it dawned that the pile had the shape of a recently dug grave.  By a quirk of mental contortions, I realized that it was also the 150th anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday.  This meant that Saturday, October 1st, would be the 77th anniversary of my brother’s.
     
     I decided to sit down and have a cigarette.  All sorts of thoughts from a country churchyard spun through my head.  Moreover I now frequently ponder matters mortal.  These two men were and still are important to me.  Papa was born in 1860 remarkably two days after the census was taken.  His entire life was spent in Meadeville, Mississippi, thirty miles east of Natchez.  The population has always been less than 500 depending upon what had happened during the previous decade.  He vituprertivly denounced Lincoln and all his works.  Years later, I could understand his thinking.  Being born when he was, Papa could not remember what life was before the War.  No doubt his elders looked back at those times as a golden era.  We know this wasn’t so because by 1860 the nation was just recovering from the Panic of 1857.  
     
     No matter, he was old enough to remember when the Yankees came.  He had learned that the blue bellies were booger men who liked to steal bad little boys.  Then suddenly one day the whole front yard was filled with blue bellies.  Like any small boy, he went screaming to his mother.  The commanding officer picked him up and tried to calm him.  The result was that they discovered that Papa’s Christian name DeMont was the same as the officer’s sir name.  Papa was convinced that the Yankees did not burn the house because of this happy accident.  Maybe.  Even the Yankees did not have the time to burn every house they ran across.  

     Papa inadvertently taught me about aging.  Dying at ninety-seven, he was the oldest citizen of Franklin County.  The men who were mere elders gave him a birthday party organized primarily by Mr. John Rounds every year.  He told me that those men hadn’t been his friends. His comment was, “Why, I danced at the wedding of John Rounds’ folks.”  A body’s friends go, then his contemporaries, and finally only memories remain.

     My brother was born in 1933 and was named for our grandfather, but nobody called him Wentworth except Mother.  Those W’s and R were too much for me to cope with, so I called him Wimpy.  Then our sister, Duane, came along nine years later and called him Bibi, which became a name limited to the family.  To everybody else, he was Wimpy.  

     The three of us looked nothing alike.  My hair was dark brown back in those days, Bibi was early on tow headed which later became a dark blonde,  Duane was a red head.

     Bibi was six feet at fourteen and ended up at 6’2″.  His two sons grew to 6’6″ and 6’7″.  Duane’s boy is somewhere over six feet.  I just got none of the height genes in the family.
     
     Bibi deserves to be remembered by the world at large for one statement he made,  We were discussing intellectuals, what they were, their qualities, their purpose in society, et alia,  At the end of the conversation, he summarized by saying, “Intellectuals are just like Christians; many are called but few are chosen.”

     Later in his life during one week-end, one of his boys was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and the other was admitted to med school.  This would be a feather in any parent’s cap–actually two feathers.  Bibi was more modest; he asked the question “What did I do right?”  He realized that he was in as much a quandary as those parents who ask, “What did I do wrong?”  To me these questions show how iffy parenthood is.  
     
     Another more egocentric reason for my remembering him so fondly took place in Venice.  He was sitting at a table in an outdoor café in the Piazza watching the people, taking in the sights, and generally enjoying his place in the sun,  While studying the facade of St.  Mark’s, he noticed and remembered the four horses.  They were part of the loot the Venetians brought home from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade.  I believe they were had been removed from Rome by one of the early emperors.  Anyhow Bibi said he remembered my telling him the history of the horses when he was a little boy. .  From all the verbiage that I have spewed during my years on this earth, he is the only person to say that he had remembered some of my words years later.  I did say that my reasons were egocentric.

     Papa is buried in Meadeville cemetery amongst his friends and family.  Bibi’s ashes are scattered somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.

     Life goes on at least of some sort or another.  I picked up the rake and continued my chores. 

About the Author 





Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18the, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression. No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era. No matter we survived. I am talking about my sister, brother, and I. There are two things that set me apart from people. From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject. Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver. Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar. Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West. Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian. Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience. We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming. Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more. We totter on.



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His Story by Donny Kaye

     My story is an historical accounting of my life experience in this realm. It starts at birth, and even before. It is the accumulation of events and experiences documenting this life.


     All of the stories of my “history” exist within me. All are memorable, each for their very own reasons. Many of the stories stir delight and goodness in my recollection of the experience. In my history is the remembrance of riding my bike the first time without the assistance of training wheels or someone running beside me steadying the teetering cycle. I re-collect the stories of making of new friends who have grown old with me in time, remaining as witnesses to a life that has unfolded in time. There are those friends whose appearance was brief in the experience called my life.

     Some of my history is more painful to recall or even want to remember. Those times when for whatever reason I was at dis-ease with myself. I have recollections of feeling different and consequently, not enough. What is intriguing to realize is that the events of my history are all interpreted by me. My interpretation colors the experience in a good, bad or neutral way.

     There have been those experiences when I have not acted from a higher place within. My uncertainty has resulted in actions that only untruth can cover. The time I damaged another’s property intentionally; a reflection of unexpressed anger or emotions I couldn’t understand much less directly express. A test I cheated on because I didn’t hold confidence in my very own capacity. Actions I took out of fear that I wasn’t good enough in my own right. Moments of sadness and a sense of disconnection. My history is riddled with actions where I acted from a sense of lack rather than abundance and confidence.

All of who I am is an expression of the learning in my life that have become my history. What are the stories that get told? Of more significance than the history that gets told are the stories that don’t get told. What is realized is that only I get to choose the revelations of my history. No different from authors, publishers and political parties that are about a certain truth only achievable by withholding the truth, the whole truth that is.

     And so it is in this life; my history comes together with yours. Each believing in the history, at least to the extent that we choose to reveal. A new friend appears, the attraction found in the stories we tell–either ourselves or the other. The truth expressed and withheld.

     And so it is; my history comes together with “His Story”. And only history will tell the impact of the two, stories intertwined into one.

About the Author

Donny Kaye is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.”

Story Time at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community. 
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Mayan Pottery by Ricky

     From the time I was 10-years old through my 18th birthday, every December around Christmas time, I journeyed from South Lake Tahoe to Los Angeles via the Greyhound bus line. Each year the bus either went to Sacramento where I had to change to a different bus, or through Carson City, where I had a four or five hour layover before riding another bus to Los Angeles.

     Carson City had no lavish bus depot. It consisted of a small “office” with a small storage area for packages and unclaimed baggage. The bus driver had a key to the baggage area where he put my luggage but the office would not open until just before the scheduled arrival time for the north/south buses; in my case a four or five hour wait. I was ten when I took that first trip alone to Los Angeles via Carson City. I arrived at the still closed bus depot at 7:30 AM and had to wait until 12:30 PM to catch my bus.

     So I did what any 10-year old boy would do to stay warm and not be bored; I went street walking to find something to do. I was not hungry yet and I never ran across an open cafe. Carson City’s casinos were open but unavailable to me. Around 8:00, I arrived at an old building that resembled my schoolhouse from Minnesota. I stopped to read the sign, which informed me that the building was not an old school, but was the Nevada State Museum, formerly the U.S. Mint at Carson City.

     The museum was open and admission was free with donations accepted. Being on a very limited budget with enough funds for two snack meals to get me to my dad, I did not donate but entered anyway. I spent the next several hours in the museum wandering around and viewing all the exhibits that interested me.

     The first exhibit I saw was on the left side of the hall after entering. In a small room was a display of all the formal silverware presented to the navy’s battleship Nevada as a gift from the State of Nevada. Also on display were the ship’s bell and other items. All those items were returned or given to the state after the ship was selected to be the target ship for the hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll.

     Another item in the room was an old stamp or press machine, which actually placed the coin’s designs onto silver or gold coin “blanks.” In one side of the room was an old walk-in vault. The vault contained a permanent display of a private collection of gold and silver coins minted at the Carson City mint.

     I continued to wander through the museum for the next few hours reading all the posted display information and in general enjoying myself. I learned a lot about things not taught in school at the fifth grade level. The museum had an extensive display of Native American baskets and pottery, but no Mayan pottery or baskets. Eventually, I left through the basement exit mock up of a silver mine and caught my bus to Los Angeles. From then on, every time I ended up in Carson City to change buses, I spent my waiting time in the museum. I have been a “museumphile” ever since.

     As time passed and I visited other museums, I saw many examples of ancient pottery; ancient in this case meaning older than 500 years. The first ancient artifacts that discretely held my attention were not pottery, but wood, and came from Africa. It was a representative display of the various depictions of fertility gods, totems, or icons. These typically had either large breasts or over-sized and erect male genitals; a few actually had both.

     I have always been attracted to “images” that show or represent male genitals perhaps due to my adolescent fixation on all things sexual. I began to wonder how a museum could display such “naughty” things. It was many years before I understood the concept of understanding other cultures through anthropology. In other words, these cultures did not view these artifacts as being “naughty.”

     Many of the museums I visited had these types of displays and I was attracted to them all. When I finally arrived in Denver and visited the Denver Art Museum, I saw my first pieces of Mayan pottery (or at least pottery from Central and South America during the existence {and in the trading area} of the Mayan culture). Pieces on display came in various sizes, some small enough to fit on one’s palm and other pieces large enough to carry one or two gallons of liquid. Naturally, there were sizes in between the smallest and the largest artifacts.

Denver Art Museum — 4th Floor

     The ones of particular interest to me are the pieces with male genitalia. One of the larger items is a seated male in the act of masturbation. It is displayed in such a manner that anyone can see what the “man” is doing. It is prominently displayed on the bottom shelf of the display area, where any child can easily view it. On a higher shelf to the viewer’s right, is what appears to be an engraved penis perhaps used as a pre-Colombian sex toy or maybe venerated as a power symbol as did the ancient Romans and Greeks. This object is also within easy viewing of the young.

Denver Art Museum — 4th Floor
     Is it not strange that our “enlightened” culture can define a pottery man masturbating or an “engraved” penis as art, but proclaims a photograph of a real man masturbating or of a real erect penis as pornography?
© 16 December 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in 1948 in downtown Los Angeles. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. Just days prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

When reunited with his mother and new stepfather, he lived one summer at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children. His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. He says, “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”  

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.



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Goofy Tales by Colin Dale

It’s probably true for each one of
us, we sit down a few days before Storytellers, or the day before, or the
morning of, look at the topic and think, What the hell can I say about this
one?  I’ve said just about every other
Monday about how I had to scrounge for inspiration.  Somehow, though, sometimes with only an hour
to spare–and sometimes thanks to the dictionary, a memory, or
Google–something would suggest itself. 
Looking at today’s topic, Goofy Tales, right up to this past Saturday
morning I was thinking maybe I would just skip today, or take a pass and just
be a listener.  But then on Saturday…
I went to the first meeting of a writers’ workshop I’d
enrolled in.  The instructor had warned
us by email the previous week, in addition to the usual first-day
stuff–introducing ourselves, talking about our individual goals, and laying
out a plan for the coming four weeks–we’d do a half hour or so of free writing.  The topic would be revealed to us on the
spot.  So last Saturday morning, we met
at the appointed hour, did the go-round of introductions–seven women and
me–stumbled through defining short literary nonfiction, when the instructor
said, Okay, it’s time for some free writing. 
The topic is guilty pleasures.
“I want you to begin,” she said, “by thinking of one of your
guilty pleasures, and remembering one particular time when you were really
enjoying it.  I’m going to interrupt you
several times to redirect your thinking, but I want you to start by telling
us–in the present tense, create a scene, use dialogue if you like–what it
feels like, this guilty pleasure, to be really, really enjoying it.  And then, without warning, you’re
interrupted.  What do you do?”
Each of us pulled back into our own private worlds–the
seven women and me–and began scribbling.
Three, four minutes of head-scratching and panicky
scribbling and the instructor said, “The interruption is over.  You’re free to go back to enjoying your
guilty pleasure.  What do you do
now?”
A few more minutes of wild writing and the instructor
said, “Now think back to one time–an earlier time–when you were caught
in the act of your guilty pleasure-absolutely
caught.  Again, create a scene, but now
using the past tense, tell us what that was like.  What did you say to the person who caught you
in the act?”
Heads down, scribble, scribble, and we were done.  The reason I’ve mentioned already that the
workshop was made up of seven women–the instructor was also a woman–and me,
is because of what these other students had come up with for their guilty
pleasures, and what I’d written.  We
started around the table clockwise, reading aloud our free writing.  Denise–and here I’m using phony
names–Denise, a bank manager from Louisville, confessed her addiction to dark
chocolate.  Tessa, a Montesori teacher
from Golden, opened up about her secret love for reality TV.  Joyce, who introduced herself as “only a
housewife,” revealed her passion for celebrity gossip magazines.  The youngest workshopper, Karen, a sophomore
at Metro, said something about not being able to pass up Starbucks lattes.  Then they all turned to look at me.  The instructor said, “Well, Colin, what
have you written?”
I thought: dark chocolate, reality TV, celebrity
gossip, Starbucks lattes.  I looked down
at what I had written, with no time to change anything, looked up at all the
women–who all now looked like my mother, even Karen–and began:
“I have it in my hand
when they come in.  Surprised like that,
there’s no way I can put it away quickly. 
I do the best I can, though, and press it into my lap…

Back to the workshop. 
There were a few uneasy coughs around the table, and I could hear
folding chairs squeak–but I knew there was no turning back, so I read on…

“Luckily there is a copy
of Westword next to me, which I quickly slide over, making of it a sort of
paper apron.  ‘You didn’t knock.  You scared me,’ I say, joking.

“‘Yeah, boo,’ Gerry, the
jock asshole says, screwing up his nose. 
‘You got the paper upside down. 
Whatcha hiding?'”

“Tony, the assistant
asshole, who hangs back by the door, says, ‘We’re gonna go workout.   Wanna come?’

“‘Let’s see what you got
there,’ the jock asshole says, and grabs for the Westword.

“‘Nothing,’ I say,
letting the paper get taken, knowing in the split-second I had had I have moved
it deep down and out of sight.  ‘See?’

“‘Yeah, well, thought you
were hiding some good shit.’

“‘Let’s go,’ says the
assistant asshole, and they disappear as abruptly as they appeared.
Back when I’d been doing the free writing, this was
when the instructor broke in: “The interruption is over.  What do you do now”?  Now, reading what I’d written, I looked up at
the women, each one with an expression of Oh, no, am I the only one who thinks
she knows what Ray is telling us? 
Confident my salvation is just ahead, I go back to what I’d written and
read on…
“From where I’m sitting
I’m able to lean forward and reach the door without standing.   Turning the twist-latch I feel a return of
reasonable privacy.  I reach down between
my legs, around the curve of my inner thigh, lift it into the light of day and
hold it with both hands: The Oxford Book
of English Verse.  My breathing
quickens as I open to Coleridge–back to The Ancient Mariner:

                 Like one that on a lonesome road
                 Doth walk in fear
and dread,
                  And having once
turned round walks on,
                  And turns no more
his head;
                  Because he knows,
a frightful fiend
                  Doth close behind
him tread.

“My guilty pleasure (I wrote) in this freshman land of asshole jocks is 19th-century romantic poetry. My 1942 Oxford goes with me everywhere.”

I got that far Saturday in my free writing about guilty
pleasures and I thought, Good Lord, this is silly.  And then, driving home Saturday from the
workshop, I also thought, You know, the story I just free wrote and then had to
read aloud–it wasn’t just silly.  It was
goofy!  But back again to
Saturday…  
Back to when we were free writing.  The instructor interrupted for the last time
and asked us to recall an earlier time when we had been caught–in no uncertain
terms–in the act of our guilty pleasures, I wrote:
“My father, who had no
interest in literature, and who was outspoken especially in his contempt for
poetry–fag lit, as far as he was
concerned–threw open my bedroom door, making the big posters taped over my
bed–my unframed Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman portraits rattle like paper
flags.  And there I was, spread-eagled on
my bed, the Oxford in my hand,
savoring again my Ancient Mariner. 
Caught dead to rights in the act.

“‘Damn it, son,’ my
father said, a look of deep disgust on his face, ‘I’ve told you what that
shit will do to you.’

“‘But, Dad…

“‘Give it to me,’ he
said, thrusting his hand toward the Oxford. 

“‘No, Dad!” I
yelped, recoiling against the headboard. 
‘Please!’

“‘Stop with that shit
now, son.  Hand it over.’

“‘No, please, Dad,
no.  Please let me read my
Coleridge.  Please.  I promise, Dad, I really do, I promise I’ll
stop before I go blind.”
Here endeth the free writing.
And here endeth today’s goofy tale.

About the Author


Colin Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center. Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre. Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center. For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel, and memoir.

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Deepest Passion by Gillian

Passion
is that whip-crack of thunder
following
the lightning flash across the sky
no
time to breath
It‘s
the forest fire of red white heat
urged
on by the winds flashing and cracking
no-one
can stop it
It’s
the wild wet waves crashing, smashing
against
the rusty red rocks
shattering
into wild wet pieces
that
re-form to recede at peace
only
to return
It’s
the early snow that softly falls
whispering
to dry autumn leaves
the
perfect flake clings to your skin
to
melt there
Passion
is a billion stars
in
an endless black night
and
the sudden lone howl of a wolf.
© August 29, 2011
 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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Three Little Words by Phillip

Love and marriage
Love and marriage
Go  together  like  a
Horse and carriage

     So we heard in the fifties; archaic expressions to bolster old-fashioned values. We didn’t think how the song was a commercial jingle rather than a poetic and musical reflection on human activity. It was show music for comedy. The simplicity of the words belied the complexity of the relationships, even the ones being portrayed on the screen. But this fanciful appeal to the medieval literary tradition of romantic love with its Lords and Ladies, royalty and riches, princes and princesses, troubadours and trouveres, lutes and loyalties, knights in shining armor riding trusty steeds and hoping to win the attention of the most important Lady of the realm; scenes from movies with white dresses, tiaras, and happily ever afters. It’s a dream of Edenic idealism based on the combination of three little words: I love you.

     Back when I was nineteen, my girlfriend manipulated me into saying those words to her. Of course I had heard the words in movies, but not in the house in which I grew up. I had no doubt I was loved appropriately by my parents and that they loved one another. Their actions showed these truths. Still, they didn’t go around saying it. In fact, few people I knew said the words which were were groan words for us boys watching movies. We so hated that romantic syrup, and thus I was unprepared to say it to my girlfriend. With great difficulty I played my part in the fantasy and finally stuttered out, “I love you.”

     Analytical logic demands that I was unprepared because what I felt for her was something other than love. Oh to understand the relationship between words and feelings, something that’s always been difficult for me. Anyway, I did learn to say the three words in combination to my girlfriend. I believed them although the feelings I had were more related to sexual hopes than falling in love.

     So I married the woman who taught me to say “I love you.” I practiced and practiced. I loved her in practical ways that made for a fine marriage. We liked and respected one another. We treated one another with kindness and love. I didn’t use the words to manipulate, but I did employ them daily. I taught them to my children. I was judicious in their use, and when I fell in love with a man, I didn’t use them with him for quite a few years. Eventually, I signed my letters to him, “Love, Phillip.” He never fell into line with my practice; so I noted. We never talked about love. I came to love other people as well—women and men. I said the words to a few. One young man said them to me. I explained my perspective, that these words can never mean the same thing to two people. Feeling meets feeling. What fantasies arise from such feelings need to be handled with caution should a couple of people want their sexual attraction and deeper affection to grow into a lasting relationship.

     Gay male romance may focus more on “Harder, deeper, faster,” than on pledges of “love and marriage”, yet even “Harder, deeper, faster,” is a convention not original to gay men. It surely became a focus due to the combination of two testosterone-laden individuals getting together sexually. These days modern gay experience does play with hopes of love and marriage in a growing movement for equality before the law. Perhaps American gay men want to say to one another “I love you harder, deeper, and faster.” Still love, words of love, and that potent combination of I, love, and you have a long history, and most American relationships want it to become personal.

     Words have creative potential. It’s an old tradition from any number of cultures. The ancient Hebrews believed in such creativity. For them, Yahweh called into existence the moon and stars, earth and innumerable varieties of life forms. God spoke. It’s a metaphor with great power in the imagination.

     Shall we not sing the possibility of creative love? After all St. Valentine’s Day falls tomorrow and creative love is a romance, one to pursue in both feelings and thoughts. Perhaps we need to approach “I love you” with the realism of my late mother-in-law who advised her daughter about sex in marriage: “You’ll get used to it.” Yet even this practicality didn’t mitigate her daughter’s fairy tale fantasy about marriage. The advice probably did help her survive the separation and the divorce that ended it.

Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends
his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage
practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers
and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he
now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice.
He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

Read more at Phillip’s blog: artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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To Be Held by Michael King

Increasingly in my senior years I am more aware of the power of touch, human warmth and acceptance, with acknowledgement and sincerity in my interactions with others. I went to a study group thirty-six years ago and had a new experience. The male host, as I was leaving, grabbed me and gave me a big bear hug. I froze. Never had anyone except a close family member had ever done that. Even as a child there was seldom more than a pat or handshake. 

Slowly, as I became a father and had intimate relations with my wife, I was more and more affectionate and receptive of warmth and closeness that I’d seldom experienced as a child. However, I had never hugged or been hugged by a man and only by the women that I had dated or married. When Jim hugged me, my automatic stiffing and adrenalin rush became an obsessive mind blower over the next several weeks, something I’d never even thought about. Intellectually I knew that hugging was one of the things that everyone at the study group did as they said good bye. I wasn’t prepared emotionally. It is surprising how a single, seemingly innocent happening can be life changing.

At the time I could not have let myself think of having an emotional or physical interaction with anyone other than my wife and kids. I was now introduced to a group of people who showed each other their welcomeing, acceptance, acknowledgement and greetings by hugging each other, and doing so without any sexual or manipulative overtones. It took a while for me to adjust to this totally different way of interacting with others. This whole thing about touching and having different emotions and intensions became a new and complex learning experience, both mentally and experientially.

As the years passed and my last marriage dissolved I became more and more attracted to men, another challenging and mind boggling growth experience. I must be an awfully slow learner or had so much childhood baggage that it took many years to wrap my mind and emotions around the simple act of an affectionate, heart-felt hug or even being comfortable in intimate encounters, of which I hadn’t had much experience. Not only does our thinking change almost unconsciously over time, but so do our emotions, our attitudes, our beliefs and the naturalness of opening our arms, inviting a hug and having that contact that is warm and personal without the unwanted overtones.

I now have a reputation for being a hugger. It is amazing how starved people are for acceptance and acknowledgement. Yesterday I was with someone I hadn’t seen for a couple of months. We greeted each other and gave each other a hug. It was so natural and caring and she said what I so often hear, “I really needed that.”

At the GLBT Center, Prime Timers, and in other situations when it seems comfortable, I usually invite hugs and often a kiss. Most of the time a hug is accepted and I think, appreciated. Receiving that acceptance and affection for me is a joy and a boost. It makes being so much more meaningful and positive. I feel uplifted, accepted and appreciated.

I’ve heard that it is a gift to someone to offer your friendship and affection. I believe and experience that as true.

I would also mention that to wake up in someone’s arms is one of the most comforting and fulfilling of experiences.

Living a life filled with love is what I am most thankful for among all the other wonderful blessings that are now a part of the joys of my beingness.

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 4 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities, “Telling your Story”,”Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio,” I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Details by Peg

Without details you wouldn’t have stories. Without details, life would be missing all its color and purpose. Relationships are all about details, how could you like someone if it weren’t for the person’s characteristics; their appearance, your common interests, or purpose, personality and chemistry.

Details bond families. With conflicting details; blood relationships fail and friendships dissolve. Wars are fought over details; contracts are all about details, without them laws would be impossible.

This short essay is about relationships that cannot flower because necessary details are missing.

I have grandchildren, two are my son’s, and two are of a previous marriage. I have not seen any of them for over eight years, and the reason for that long absence is the desire of their parents. A certain detail, my being Transgender is the core of their decision. Fear of what might happen IF, the father of the older two children were to find out that me, the grandfather of my son’s children is Transgender, and with that information, he MIGHT cause trouble for the family.

Another detail is how to explain me (now a woman) to the children and what they might do with that information. The existence of me (the missing grandfather) has been questioned but never honestly answered.

I know the children only by what their grandmother tells me, and the pictures she brings home with her. I don’t hear their voices, see them at play, or listen to their interests. I can’t watch them grow from the toddler and two year old they were the last time I saw them, develop into the people they are now or will become. Without all of those details, a relationship with them is impossible.

Still, I feel them, they are a part of my being, yet they might as well be someone else’s children and if I were to see them on the street; I might not recognize them without an introduction. I love them though they don’t know anything about me; a great void exists because…we don’t know any or all the necessary details.

About the Author


I was born and raised in Denver Colorado and I have a divided history, I went to school, learned a trade, served in the military, married and fathered two sons. And I am Trans; I transitioned in 1986 after being fired for “not fitting in to their program.” 18 years ago I fulfilled my lifelong need to shed the package and become female. I continued working in my trade until retiring in 2006. I have been active in PFLAG Denver and served five years on the board of directors, two years as President of our chapter. Living now as a woman has let me be who I always knew I was and I am genuinely happy.

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I Do Deviate by Nicholas

     I am not terribly fond of the term “queer.” I do not share the enthusiasm for that word that many younger gays and lesbians seem to. I came out in the great age of gay lib when we most wanted to show the world how not-queer we were. I needed also to show me how not-queer I was. 

     “Queer” depends on a context. It needs a norm to deviate from. It needs a norm from which to accuse others of not measuring up to or violating. Queer back then meant weak, inadequate, incapable, diseased, shameful. A queer was one who couldn’t live a healthy life. A queer was sunken in lust and incapable of rising to the romantic heights of love.

     I’ve had my lusts for sure but have known and given love as well. The problem for me is that while I do not identify as queer nor take any pride in being queer, I am definitely not normal—normal as defined by present day American culture. I do deviate. Let me count the ways.

     Sex, of course. I, a man, have sex with men. Not normal, though I hardly see it as queer. Most of that sex is currently with one man—my husband—in a sort of nod to normality. But I guess that is queer, for me to talk of a husband.

     On to politics and the queer thing shows up again. Though I see many of my political views as fitting easily into mainstream liberal American thinking, I can’t help but feel that is getting queerer and queerer. For one thing, I value intelligence. So that by itself pushes me off the political stage. I tend to be critical of politicians, all politicians, even those on my side. I don’t believe Barack Obama can fix the economy and certainly not in ways I would think essential—like helping poor people instead of rich ones. But Republicans on the other hand would only make a bigger, more inequitable mess of it. I would really rather see an American president talk about investing more money in public transit than giving nice speeches about gay marriage. Go figure. I must be queer.

     I do see myself as part of some larger things like a community, a society, a world, a natural system. That’s queer in the individually greedy USA. I don’t mind paying taxes and think that more people (i.e., those who have fed hugely from the money trough) should pay more so others can count on a decent life. Now that’s really queer. My lavender is now turning pink, as in pinko.  

     I can’t leave out religion because this is where I get really queer. My soul pulls me in to be part of one though I remain highly skeptical of it. I guess I’d call myself Christian though I prefer to follow the example of Jesus Christ as a man seeking to include everybody in his fellowship. I find it intriguing that Christ taught with stories and parables and not the heavy-handed lectures that his followers prefer today. I think that the “Jesus is my personal savior” approach to spirituality as kind of preposterous and egotistical and the body and blood stuff is just gruesome and distasteful. 

     I see the Christian message as one inspiring humans to be kind, do good, practice humility, and restrain egoism. It is a way of questioning, not of imposing answers on others, not a way of trumpeting ego and excluding people you don’t like because of something handily called “god’s will.” I am so queer, in fact, that I like to say your faith is only as strong as your doubts.

     Well, it seems that I am more queer outside of bed than in it. And that is a status that I highly cherish and value in friends as well. One is better off being queer not only because the sex is actually better but so is the rest of life. Be yourself means, always be yourself, that unique person with your unique perspectives. It’s a full-time job being queer.

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.