phoyle – Page 48 – Sage Telling Your Story

July 22, 2015February 26, 2019

Artistic by Ricky

Anyone who knows me at this point in my life will know that I am mostly a critic of the artistic skills of others. I learned all about the art of being critical from 66 years of living and listening to others criticizing me and my efforts and activities. I also have some practical learning in the world of art. At one point, while attending art classes for two years, my teachers gave me high marks for my creativity and technical skill with media and color application.

So as not to seem braggadocios, I will share with you some pieces of my work to prove the accuracy of my statements about my skill.

The first piece of art I will expose you to is from my early career. Like many an artist, I began with still life, in this case some fruit. Notice the excellent application of color and texture.

While living with my grandparents in Minnesota and being somewhat depressed, I next entered into what I refer to as my blue period. Using a waxy medium, I created this beautiful colorful drawing of my home back in Redondo Beach, California, complete with school bus.

I then improved my style and technique to the point that my next piece you will see was described by my art teacher as nearly as good as Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Modesty prevents me from contradicting her opinion.

Having reached the pinnacle of my technical skill in the world of traditional art, it was time to let my creativity run loose. The result was a decision to “marry” the styles of Salvador Dali with that of Picasso’s later works in impressionism and cubism.

The response was less than I had hoped for and I vowed to withhold my obvious talent and skill from the sight of the artistically insensitive, critics, and public.

By way of contrast with my work above, here is a recent piece of art by a famous artist. If my work doesn’t qualify as high quality, neither does her piece, in my opinion. Yet she is elevated to fame, while my works are dismissed.

Pablo Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”*

My knowledge of artistic techniques is now used to evaluate the work of others and hold them to the same rigorous standards applied to my works.

I have created nothing of quality art since that time.

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 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

July 21, 2015February 26, 2019

From the Pulpit by Phillip Hoyle

In the churches where I worshipped and worked, rants about homosexuality did not come from the pulpit but, rather, from the pew. In fact, the only homosexual statement I heard from the pulpit was a quote from an early 1950s semi-autobiographical novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin. The preacher made no allusion to Baldwin’s sexuality or any condemnation of the writer. He made no apology for using a quote from a literary best seller. What the preacher knew of Baldwin, I don’t know.

But there was a history in America, a tradition in Euro-American societies that made homosexuality more than a bad thing. Years of silence over the matter continued in the 20th century by sending homosexuals to counseling or to sanitariums. Folk who lived homosexual lives ran away to cities getting lost in urban concentration. Surely their condition was something foreign, out of the ordinary, and ‘here in our little Eden, will not be tolerated.’ Any change of public or even family perception of one’s sexuality caused folk to move away. Silence reigned.

Then the US saw the beginnings of the Civil Rights movements. With it came sensitivity training. The women’s movements, Black power movements, Gay Pride movements, and other liberation movements began to influence law making and law enforcement. They changed even the way the military went about its training and work.

Fears of these new powers fed the growth of conservative reactionary movements. Evangelical churches ended their lethargy and began focusing on influencing public life. They increasingly removed themselves from moderate and liberal denominations. For instance, many evangelicals left the United Presbyterian Church when that denomination’s Social Action committee helped fund Black woman radical Angela Davis’s defense in court. Then the same reactionaries rose up against what they saw as an attack on the modern American family. They wrote books on the way things were supposed to be. They were disturbed by their own children’s refusal to follow traditional ways. Their middle-class kids preferred to live with their spousal picks without the advantages of marriage. Someone had to pay. Very hurt, nice folk turned the accusing finger against gay males condemning them for trying to destroy the family with their gay agenda. Their vitriolic attack resulted in a split in public life.

While in college in the late 1960s I focused on reading about homosexual experience. Then I made my first adult friendship with another musician who was gay. Throughout the 70s I continued reading a rapidly expanding literature and minutely examined the nature of my own sexuality in which I was not really surprised to find a homosexual core. My self-consideration meant to create and maintain a balancing act of faith, morality, and ethics.

In 1968 the church denomination in which I worked voted to proclaim publically that gays and lesbians deserved the same civil rights as all other American citizens. I went to seminary a few years later. There I met more gays, fell in love with a man, read more about what churches were saying and doing, and costumed myself as a gay man when attending a minorities group at the seminary. I did so as a show of solidarity. Surely my actions were also a self-revelation of my own bisexuality.

As church clergy I started teaching my balancing act of faith, morality and ethics. My wife, children, and I were open and affirming of gays and lesbians. We welcomed gays and lesbians into our home. We travelled with two homosexuals to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. My studies embraced the issues. In one local congregation I led a seminar about human sexuality positing a bi-sexual norm for its consideration.

Finally I understood that I was going to live a homosexual life. My affairs with men pushed me into a much deeper understanding of myself. I was tired of church work. I didn’t know how to solve my domestic dilemma. I dropped out of church leadership and eventually of congregational life.

In my thirty-two years of ministry, I had observed a marked change in congregational attitudes toward homosexuality, particularly toward homosexual ministers. In fairness, I believe that lay attitudes didn’t so much change as they got expressed. In our denomination the discussion at times became vitriolic being attached to a larger fight for dominance between conservative and liberal factions.

I heard heated words: accusations of not being biblical, arguments arising from holiness code excerpts from Leviticus, assumptions that anyone involved in any homosexual activity must repent or go to hell, and so forth. Eventually I received messages from family members registering both their rejection of me while living in such a sinful life and prayers for my reconciliation and redemption. I had to receive them as truly hopeful but reject them as a path I might follow.

Early on in my ministry I realized I might get in trouble over homosexual issues in the church when I suggested to a man I really liked that he shouldn’t use anti-homosexual humor. I did so because he was using it among the men in the cast of a play we were producing for a Maundy Thursday service. The young man playing the Jesus role was homosexual. The man I criticized was playing Judas. There was the obligatory kiss. Perhaps my Judas was simply playing out his part or perhaps he was also secretly homosexual. I have no idea and say none of this as accusation. Both men were beautiful to me. I didn’t want the church member to be making the guest Jesus uncomfortable. I also realized that my non-public warning to the jokester might be just the kind of thing that I would pay for. Still, for the greater good of the play and of the persons involved, I suggested such humor was out of place.

I saw this kind of thing several times in my career. I tried to keep an even keel for the old ark of the church, one that didn’t alienate the more conservative but also made a place for the more liberal or, as some conservatives thought, the more sinful or worldly. I preached that the world and the world of the church was very large encompassing unimaginable diversity. I encouraged loving forbearance and acceptance of that diversity. I quietly preached such a doctrine for thirty-two years. Finally I had preached enough.

I have read and heard the anti-gay rhetoric. I have analyzed the pick-and-choose approach of scriptural proofs. I came to realize I had made different picks and choices of proofs to maintain a consistent logic in a commitment to the image of the creative and ultimately loving God. I declare myself a Christian, and although I’ve retired from the clergy and haven’t preached in a church for over fourteen years, I have one last sermon to preach. Listen.

Some folk seem to think that one cannot be Christian and gay. Well, I’m announcing from my pulpit that I am one such person, a gay Christian. There are thousands, tens of thousands others like me, who do not accept the rejecting authority of would-be representatives of the Truth. These accusers assume the role of the god in their communications of condemnation. Tens of thousands like me also reject the more subtle settlement of many churches that one can be homosexual but cannot live in that way. These judges condemn having sex with a person of the same sex even in a committed marriage, itself anathema in their view.

My pulpit announces the beauty and norm of gay marriage or any other loving, living arrangements. My pulpit announces the end of the holiness code like any self-respecting dispensationalist preacher should. My pulpit announces a new beginning of the ancient standards of love, felicity, and creativity in all human relationships. Oh well, lest this sermon go on too long, I’ll follow the advice of one preacher’s wife who told her husband when he was done, he should simply say “Amen” and sit down.

Amen.

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

July 20, 2015February 26, 2019

Gifts from Afar by Lewis J. Thompson, III

or, so goes my story–

Gifts from a Farm

I did not grow up on a farm. It wouldn’t have suited me at all, despite the fact that my dad grew up on a farm and made his living as a farm loan manager and rural appraiser and my mother grew up with chickens and a couple of cows in a rural small town. No, farm boys have to get up very early to do chores, drink raw milk, shovel really nasty stuff, and work on dirty machinery. Besides, farm work is dangerous. Believe me, I know.

One of my mother’s three brothers had a farm near the teeny, tiny town of McCune in far southeastern Kansas. A couple times a year, we would make the two-hundred-mile journey by car to pay a visit. One of my cousins was a boy close to my age. The other male child, Richard, was eight years older than I. He had contracted spinal meningitis when he was about ten years old and nearly died. It left him mentally disabled, though physically OK. He dropped out of school at about age 14 and later got work as a farm and ranch hand. The only time I can recall that he stayed overnight at our house in Hutchinson was when he was on his way to Wyoming or Montana to work on a ranch. He was about 20 and I was 12.

I recall my mother being upset because she had learned from her brother or sister-in-law that Richard was in the habit of sleeping “in the altogether”, which seems an odd expression for sleeping in nothing at all. I remember being somewhat titillated by the thought of lying next to a naked boy, cousin or not. To my disappointment, I soon found out that he would be sleeping on an Army cot at the foot of my bed.

On one of our visits to the farm, I and a couple of my cousins went on an egg-collecting excursion to the hay loft above the shed where machinery were stored and the corn was husked. This required that one go up a ladder and through a hole in the floor of the loft that measured about 2 feet by 2 feet. Bales of hay were stacked to within a foot or so of the opening on three sides. This made getting down from the loft more than a little tricky. Although I prided myself on being a pretty good climber and not especially afraid of heights, I found my attempt to make the transition gracefully woefully lacking. I slipped and soon was falling feet-first, arms straight up in the air through the opening toward the hard floor 12′ below. As luck would have it, a horizontal wooden beam crossed the space directly below the opening in such a way that my body missed it but my out-stretched fingers were perfectly positioned to reflexively close on it as I passed by. There I dangled, feet swinging two feet above the ground. Lucky me!

Luck did not seem to play such an active role in the life of Bobby, the cousin just a few months younger than I, especially when it came to fire and modes of transportation. When Bobby was old enough to own a car, he had been using gasoline to clean off his engine. When he finished, he started the engine. There was a back-fire through the carburetor that set the engine on fire. Much damage was done.

Not too long after that, he and my uncle were burning stubble in a field. Bobby accidentally splashed gasoline on his legs. His pants caught fire and he was badly burned. The final calamity came when we were both about 16. He had been riding his motorcycle when a driver ran a stop sign and he hit her broadside. His head hit the car’s roof where the pillar behind the driver’s door joins it. He died instantly. We drove down for the funeral. I had taken a suit from my closet to wear for the occasion. When we arrived at the chapel, I discovered that there were no pants hanging under the jacket. I had to remain in the car during the service. It was one of the worst goofs of my life.

My point in writing all this, I guess, is to provide an opportunity to thank all those Americans who till the soil, shovel the dung, shoe the horses, milk the cows, and get up at dawn every day so that I have what I need to survive. It troubles me to think that the days of the family farm are rapidly fading away but along with them the great risk those families took each and every day–truly a gift to all of us from a farm.

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.

July 17, 2015February 26, 2019

Aw Shucks! by Gillian

I really want to thank whoever came up with this topic because it made me dig way down in my memory and dredge up a story I have not thought about for fifty years. I wasn’t sure I had ever actually heard anyone use the expression aw shucks, except possibly Andy Griffith in 1950s Mayberry, but then slowly it bubbled up in my brain; an old black man in Houston in early 1965, and the story that goes with him.

His name was Noah. His age was indeterminate but my best guess would be mid-seventies. He worked as the gardener at the apartment complex where I was living with my friend Lucie. We had only arrived in this country from England three months before and were not quite familiar with all of the U.S. mores, especially those of the South. Houston of the early 1960’s was apparently unaware of such things as a minimum wage and equal rights. As far as we could tell, we were the only people among the apartment complex’s all-whites residents who ever spoke to Noah. He was apparently invisible to all our neighbors. Lucie and I managed to converse with him on most days, complimenting him most sincerely on the crisply trimmed bushes and the gorgeously colorful arrays of flowers, and his reply was always more or less the same.

“Shucks, Ma’am, just doin’ mah job.”

I would love to report here that he said aw shucks but I honestly remember it being, more simply, shucks. He had offered that his name was Noah, but although we had told him our names, he invariably addressed us, whether singly or collectively, as Ma’am.

And clearly it was more than just doing his job. He loved those plants. He coaxed and gentled them along, and they responded to him in all their glory.

I was in awe of him. He always looked so pristine. His gray hair was neatly barbered, the white tee-shirts he wore were unfailingly spotless, at least at the start of his day, and his bib overhauls always clean and crisp with a sharply ironed crease.

He had such a quiet dignity about him, giving off an air of a soul at peace, that I found myself envying him. Yet he puzzled me. I wondered about his life, the details of which he firmly shied away from if we tried to question him. Born …. when? Late in the previous century, perhaps. The things he must have seen and heard and experienced were unlikely to be the kind that would, in most people, engender this aura of dignified tranquility.

One day, just as we arrived home from work, a group of rowdy young men, white of course, were running across the lawn, whooping and giving their best rebel yells while tossing a football back and forth and tossing back beer from cans. They shouted derogatory things at two young women, also white of course, who quickly turned away down another path. Noah, trimming bushes at the far side of the lawn, was almost hidden by the thick foliage, and as the men crashed through the bushes they knocked him to the ground. Lucie and I could see him, slowly sitting up, and ran over, rather wondering how to act. We wanted to show concern but knew that offering to help him up would only cause embarrassment.

“Bloody hooligans!” Lucie growled as we reached him.

“Aw shucks, Ma’am, they wasn’t meanin’ no harm. Ma’am, do y’all see my glasses?”

He was fumbling his fingers in the grass about him.

“Huh!” responded Lucie. “Not meaning any harm indeed. They didn’t stop to see you were OK though, did they?”

Noah gazed speculatively at Lucie. and it occurred to me that perhaps concern for his health and safety was the last thing that life had taught him to expect from a group such as that.

“Here,” I handed him the glasses from where I found them still suspended on the branch that had snagged them as he fell. They were small and thick with thin steel frames, and looked more fit for a German scientist than an old black Texas groundsman. Noah curled them behind his ears and got to his feet, but he was favoring one foot.

“Stand still!” commanded Lucie. “Let me look at it.”

She knelt down and pulled up his pant leg, feeling his ankle gently. I could see it was already swollen.

Three white men in business suits just getting out of a car in the parking lot looked askance at the young white woman kneeling before the old black man and caressing his ankle. The N word was tossed back and forth loudly between two of them but the third walked over to us, just as I unthinking put my arm around Noah’s waist so he could lean his bad side on me.

The young man, I had met him briefly at some pool party or something, and thought his name was Howard, pried me gently away from Noah, frowning at me and shaking his head.

“Here, let me he’p you” he said, taking my place. “Can you put weight on that foot?”

“No, he can’t,” snapped Lucie before Noah had time to insist he was OK and they hadn’t meant no harm.

“It’s not broken,” Lucie always said things with supreme confidence, “but it’s badly sprained.” She launched into an indignant account of what had happened, while Howard lowered Noah back down onto the lawn and I trotted off to our apartment to get ice and look for bandages.

We bound up his ankle with a strip I had torn off an old shirt we planned to use for dusters, then tied ice over it, securing it with the rest of the shirt.

Howard helped Noah to his feet, but putting weight on his badly swollen ankle was clearly a problem.

“C’mon,” said the ever-decisive Lucy, “We’ll take you home.”

A look of alarm crossed his face.

“No Ma’am! I come on the bus, I go home on the bus.”

Lucie snorted.

“Don’t be ridiculous! It’s five or six blocks to the bus stop just from this side. You can’t walk. Of course we’ll take you home.”

Noah’s look of alarm became one closer to fear.

He glanced in appeal at Howard, a look that said, these women are foreigners and don’t understand. Help me!

“I live th’other side of Lazy Bayou,” he offered to Howard in a tone of desperation. “Lizard Creek Muddy.”

Howard shook his head at Lucie and me.

“NO!” he said, firmly. “Y’all cannot go there.”

Never tell Lucie she cannot do something. She tossed her hair at both men in disdain.

“Ugh. Men! C’mon.” She headed for the car as I followed behind, fumbling to find the car keys.

Howard and Noah struggled in some kind of three-legged gait behind us, neither apparently able to come up with a reasonable alternative course of action.

“I’ll come with you, then,” said Howard resignedly, helping Noah into the front passenger seat, and I slipped the car into gear as Noah offered grunted, reluctant, directions.

I had no idea where we were by the time we sloshed over a muddy crossing of what must have been Lazy Bayou, and followed the dirt road as it disappeared into thick trees. The road was suddenly lined on either side by wooden shanties in various stages of disrepair, and an occasional tattered trailer. Everyone in sight was black, and every single one of them stopped whatever they were doing to stare at the car, and, perhaps more than the unaccustomed car, the three shiny white faces in it. If any of you have watched that old TV series, Heat of the Night, this place was very like the area that program depicts as The Bottoms.

But this was well before that series existed; Lucie and I, innocents that we were, had no idea places like this existed.

Following a silent wave of Noah’s arm, I pulled the car to a halt in front of rickety steps below a screen door. I heard Howard mutter in the back seat.

“Goddammit!”

I knew he referred to the steps.

“Y’all he’p him. Less antagonism that way. An’ git right back. We need to go!”

An old woman with a deeply wrinkles face was creaking down the steps. She pushed Lucie and me out of the way, turned her back on us, turned Noah’s back on us, and hustled him up the steps and in through the screen door which slammed shut behind them. Despite Howard’s hissed,

“Come on!” we stood there, non-plussed. We hadn’t exactly expected to be invited in for tea, but neither had we expected a look that might have turned lesser mortals to stone. In silence the three white faces in the black car left Lizard Creek Muddy.

Our relationship with Noah, though his courteous dignity remained, was never quite the same after that. His dignity had become cool and distanced, like that of an English butler. We had crossed some invisible line we had not even known existed.

I think of that wonderful old man after all these years, as I read of the recently documented 4000 lynchings of people of color in the South from 1877 to 1950, the racial hatred in certain fraternities, the institutionalized racism in Ferguson ……. sadly I could go on and on.

I need to say something a whole lot stronger than aw, shucks!

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.

July 16, 2015February 26, 2019

What Makes Homophobes Tick? by Will Stanton

Well well well! What we have suspected about homophobes is true. To paraphrase Shakespeare from “Hamlet,” “The homophobes protest too much, methinks.” Understandably, what makes people “tick” always is a multifactorial answer…their inborn natures, their learned behaviors from their parental upbringing, the social environment in which they live, church dogma, influence from school friends, and many other experiences. Recent research also shows that brain-structure has something to do with it. Significantly, research now also shows that, frequently, people who express hate toward gays are in fear of their own, inner feelings. That fear leads to denial of their own natures, verbal expressions of intolerance or hate, and unfortunately too often, violence. We can laugh at people’s hypocrisy; however, too often they do damage to others before they are exposed.

Ted Haggard, the evangelical mega-church leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute. Republican United States Senator Larry Craig opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, yet he was arrested on suspicion of propositioning someone in a men’s bathroom. Republican Congressman from Florida Mark Foley, Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, favored strengthening the sanctions against inappropriate behavior with congressional pages; yet that’s exactly what he was accused of. Then Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe was accused of engaging in improper conduct with two youths. Glenn Murphy Jr., a leader of the Young Republican National Convention and an opponent of same-sex marriage, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after being accused of sexually assaulting another man. I could list many more. Apparently, it is hardly unusual for someone who describes himself as having “conservative values” and as being a member of the “moral majority” to have desires that he denies but engages in behavior that he loudly condemns.

As early as the era of famous Sigmund Freud, psychologists theorized that shame and fear regarding one’s own homosexual urges can be expressed as homophobia. Freud described this phenomenon as “reactions formation.” Since then, there have been several remarkable laboratory studies that confirm this theory.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had a revealing article by Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, and Bethany A. Lohr of the University of Georgia. They used sixty-four subjects, all young men who claimed to be exclusively heterosexual. To begin with, they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). Twenty-nine expressed no homophobia; thirty-five expressed homophobia. Then each group was given the Aggression Questionnaire, created by A.H. Buss and M. Perry in 1992, to compare the subjects’ natural tendency toward generalized aggression. There was no difference in those results; aggressiveness is not the source of homophobia.

Then each group was shown two different series of erotic videos. All the subjects were wired to monitor responses, including pineal arousal. When shown videos of heterosexual love-making, the resulting graph showed some gradual increase in arousal among the homophobes but a greater degree of arousal among those who were not. Then when each group was shown videos of homosexual love-making, the non-homophobic group showed a degree of arousal; however, the homophobes’ graph showed a greater degree of arousal.

When homophobes express their fear and shame by verbally abusing gays, lesbians, or transgendered people, that can cause serious harm to the victims. Victims might be emotionally scarred for life. Or worse, the victims may feel driven to suicide. A greater percentage of bullied or depressed gay youths than straight kids commit suicide. Jamey Rodemeyer was a gay teenager who tried to lead an open life and to not hide his orientation. He also felt strongly enough about gay rights to be an activist and to post videos on YouTube, trying to help victims of homophobic bullying. Unfortunately, there was only so much bullying that he himself could tolerate, and he committed suicide at age fourteen.

Jamey Rodemeyer (21 Mar 1997 – 18 Sep 2011)

Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer

The news, from time to time, reports beatings and murders of gays. Even in my hometown, a trucker, who had a teen in his truck cab for sex, beat the “living daylights” out of the boy just to prove to himself that the trucker really was straight. Another young gay was shot dead at a rest-stop just outside of town. And, we all have become familiar with poor Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student, who was tied to a prairie fence and beaten so badly that, after several days of suffering, he died. I find it very hard to understand the level of hate and violence that so many people are prone to. What ever happened to “Love thy neighbor”?

Matthew Shepard (1 Dec 1976 – 12 Oct 1998)

Matthew Shepard Biography

Homophobia certainly is not limited to our own country. Russia recently has gained further notoriety by passing anti-gay laws and by allowing young toughs to lure young gays to bogus rendezvous and then severely beating them while filming the atrocity. Even some conservative U.S. senators have encouraged the Uganda government (as though their government needed any encouragement) to pass laws that could put gays into prison for life or even to execute them. The proposed bill stated that straight friends and family who did not turn in gays to the authorities could, themselves, be jailed for three years. One ultra-conservative, American senator is reported to have told the Ugandans that the U.S. had failed to stop the spread of homosexuality, but it was not too late for Uganda to stop it.

Fortunately in our country with the passage of time, with greater understanding among young people, and gradually fewer narrow minded people as they die off, the U.S. appears to be becoming better informed, more tolerant, and more open. Fewer people are “living in the closet” in fear and shame. Perhaps fewer will try to prove how tough and straight they are by attacking their own kind. Although the causes of homophobia will continue to exist, I hope that we will have far fewer people afflicted with that disease. We must continue to work toward a cure for homophobia.

13 February 2015

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

July 15, 2015February 26, 2019

Favorite Fantasy by Ricky

If I were to follow my financial greediness, my favorite fantasy would involve having lots of money so I could travel when and where I wanted. I am not greedy, but I could become so should I ever have large amounts of personal funds.

A not so favorite but highly enjoyable fantasy involves lots of Baseball Nut ice-cream every day for treats between meals.

As a pubescent pre-teen and an adolescent-teen, to help me fall asleep, I would draft movie plots in my head. One favorite was a series about a group of humanoid, pubescent, hermaphrodite, pre-teen aliens from another planet who land on Earth because their flying-saucer needed some repair. While here they used their advanced technology to secretly fight crime like the comic book heroes of the time.

During my youth, my all-time favorite fantasy, as you might expect from my previous stories, involves a lot of sexual behaviors featuring me. I won’t go into any details but if you could see the geographic setting for my adventures, you would understand without being told that my name in the fantasy is, Peter.

About the Author

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

July 14, 2015February 26, 2019

Horseshoes by Phillip Hoyle

Both my dad Earl and my maternal grandpa Charley had horseshoes. Dad had large ones he threw at an iron rod hoping to make a ringer. He smiled when he played and enjoyed his conversation with the other men. But I liked Grandpa’s horseshoes better for they represented something more essential than a game even with its skill and camaraderie. Grandpa’s horseshoes represented a way of life, one close to the soil, close to history, actually an extension of that history. The imagination of living on a tract of land that had been farmed for hundreds of years by American natives and nearly one hundred years by American immigrants from German and Sweden held more attraction for me. Grandpa’s farm and life invited me into a world in which horseshoes were actually worn by horses. I really liked that.

My father’s life was much more disconnected from the essentials of a farm. Oh he sold groceries, sometimes even local produce, but he sold them, not raised them. He worked hard, dealt with many people, hired quite a few employees, and following the example of his grocer father, sometimes gave groceries to folk who were too broke to afford them. He offered monthly credit to many people who lived on monthly-paid incomes. His life did exemplify a deep dedication to people. But his horseshoes were stored in a box on a shelf in the garage and taken out only when he and some other men were meeting at the park for a game. Grandpa’s horseshoes had holes in them to accommodate real nails to be pounded into horse’s hooves; dad’s horseshoes were only for sport.

Because of its difference from city life, the farm was magical for me. I was amazed by all its elements that didn’t occur in our home on a city lot: its location alongside a gravel road and a ravine, its tall barns and squat hen house, its underground cellar and the large wood stack, its wood-burning stoves and deep wells, its tractor and truck. The farm seemed nearly foreign when compared to the things I knew. We had cats at home, but Grandpa had dogs that brought in the cattle each evening, cows that gave milk. He sometimes had calves that were auctioned off at the local sales barn. In the cellar sat large cans of milk and eggs that Grandpa took to the mill each Saturday. The chopping block next to the wood stack displayed the heavy ax that he used to split logs for cooking meals and heating the house. And the place had stories of an ancient ceremonial ground down by the creek, a place that was used annually by the native folk who had lived there before my great grandfather. There were also stories of the old sod house my forebear built when he homesteaded the place in the 1870s, of Indians stopping by to trade, of the old two-story house that used to stand there but that burned down when two girls were playing and lit a fire in their play oven. I treasured these stories; the farm captured my imagination becoming the site of my dreams. In addition to dreams, I clearly recall the saddle that hung in the central part of the barn, the leather, wood and metal gear to hitch the horses to the wagons, and the lucky horseshoe Grandpa had tacked to the barn wall. I liked Grandpa’s horseshoes.

By contrast, Dad’s horseshoes represented another world of sports and competition. They went to church picnics at the city park. I watched the play, even tried it but was neither strong nor accurate enough in my tosses. Even as I grew my game did not improve for I still threw the shoes wildly, rarely hitting the rod or making points, certainly making no ringers. I did like watching the older guys—my dad and others—toss them. The players had their own techniques: how they held the horseshoe, how they tossed it, how they followed through the throw, how they cheered or rued the results. They relished their sport with Sears and Roebuck fake horseshoes. Although my dad liked sports and mild competition, I never got into it.

Growing up I saw my grandpa work. Farming allows that; at least on family farms where the children help. Actually I helped Grandma mostly in her garden and sometimes collecting eggs. Still, Grandpa was always around—milking cows, making things in his shop, working fields, keeping his equipment in good order. He invited me to ride with him on the tractor or to go with him in the pickup to a nearby mechanic’s shop. By contrast dad’s work took place away from home. For years I rarely saw Dad’s work at the store, only occasionally a bit of bookkeeping on a Sunday night when the store was closed. What work I did see him do was at church where he played the organ for two or three services each Sunday. I thrilled at his playing and singing, his accompanying and service music, his improvisations on hymns and gospel songs, and his tasteful selections of classical pieces. But soon I was sent off to children’s church and didn’t hear him except on Sunday evenings. When I was in junior high choir I did again hear the morning service, and in the 8th grade started conducting the choir calls to worship and amen responses to prayers. In this I got to collaborate with Dad; I liked that—very much.

Grandpa died while I was in 5th or 6th grade. I matured without him. He remained a wonderful element of my imagination inspiring me with his love, humor, and gentle kidding. Soon after his death I entered dad’s world of work at the store and, thankfully, his world of music and artistry at the church.

I keep alive a great memory of hunting with dad and grandpa. They carried shot guns. I walked along and I carried the rabbits they shot using a handle Grandpa fashioned from a branch with just a few cuts with his pocket knife. I loved that afternoon even though the rabbits got very heavy. I cherish my memory of hunting at the farm with these two men who loved me and whom I adored.

About the Author

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

July 13, 2015February 26, 2019

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.

About the Author

July 10, 2015February 26, 2019

Spirituality, by Gillian

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss him….” Julian Barnes

I haven’t believed in God since I decided, at the age of nine, that it was all hogwash; at least, in the way God was portrayed by the church. I did miss him, but believing is not something you can learn or force yourself to do. You either do or you don’t, and I didn’t. However, not believing left me with, as they say, a god-shaped hole. It was this, I suspect, which drove me, eventually, to begin to delve seriously into Spirituality, and so, a few years ago, to a group at the nearby Senior Center who were about to read, and discuss, Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth.

OK. I know those of you who have been in this group for a while are sick of me droning on about Tolle, so feel free to groan loudly right now and get it over with.

(Pause for communal groan!)

But he became, via that group, my spiritual guide and leader. Not that his thoughts are original, as he would be the first to say, but he combines the best thoughts of the other main spiritual teachers from Buddha to Christ and many many more, and nets them out succinctly and in a language so easily understood. And, most valuable of all, he then proceeds to illustrate each point with everyday examples, and makes it clear how we can apply it to our own lives; our own inner selves.

At the first of these study-group meetings we were all asked to say what we hoped to get out of the group. I completely surprised myself by saying,

‘Peace for my soul.’

Where on earth had that come from? I had never spent very much time contemplating the condition of my soul. Not only did I not know it was not at peace, I most certainly did not know that I knew it. My, how we can astonish ourselves at times!

To cut a rambling story short, I have most definitely found that inner peace I needed via Tolle’s teachings and practices. Not to infer, lest you get the wrong idea, that my work is now done and I can relax. Oh, no no! Spirituality, like anything worth doing, requires endless effort and constant practice.

Let’s take just one aspect of the myriad facets of Spirituality; living in The Now. Tolle clearly thinks this is one of the biggies, as he devoted a whole book, The Power of Now, to the topic. Of course what it’s all about is keeping your mind and spirit in the present, not your body. Where else would a body find itself, after all? But somehow our minds, whisked away on thoughts, love to linger in the past or dash off into the future; and so we rob ourselves of the present. That voice in our heads drones on endlessly, reminding us of how much better things were before Mom and Dad divorced, Hubby left with that young chick, or the kids left home. Or piling on the guilt: if we’d been better parents Roger wouldn’t be an alcoholic, or Sally would not have run off with that complete delinquent. Or we trip off into the future on a sequence of what ifs. What if we lose our jobs, or that pain turns out to be cancer, or those damn Republicans take away our Social Security? Or we fall into the trap of coloring all future happenings with a rosy glow which reality can never live up to and we condemn ourselves to endless disappointment. Words chatter continuously in our heads. Tolle refers to it as the tapes playing over and over, though he’s rather dating himself there. I supposed a more up-to-date image might be u-tube videos constantly playing, but that didn’t feel quite right to me. Then it came to me. Of course! Streaming! That’s exactly what it is; words streaming endlessly across your mind and filling up your thoughts.

But, oh, the glorious peace, the blessed silence, when you can just turn that streaming off.

These days I rarely fall victim to that endless chatter, and if I do, I can usually recognize it and shut it off. The last time I remember really having to deal with it was when I treated my wrist to a compound fracture in a silly ping pong fall. I lay at St. Jo’s being prepped for surgery and the words were streaming and screaming. You knew you were wearing the wrong shoes but did you bother to change them? No! What an idiot. Why don’t you act like a grown-up? Didn’t you learn anything from when you broke your ankle? You’re a moron. And now what? We’re planning to go off on a camping trip soon but now you won’t be able to drive for who knows how long and Betsy won’t want to do all that driving herself and anyhow what sense does it make to go camping at all with broken wrist. A fine mess you’ve made of things. Why in hell didn’t you change your shoes……and round and round the voice goes, over and over and over.

Finally I recognized what was happening and applied the brake which Tolle recommends. A few deep breaths, relax, and ask yourself a very simple question. But what exactly is wrong this very moment, this exact current second tick of the clock? And almost invariably the answer is – nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yes, my wrist was hurting a bit, but that was it. All that angst was over whys and what-ifs of past and future. Keep yourself in the now, and there are no problems, no recriminations, no anger or guilt or fear. That one key question is one of the most healing things in my life.

At first this whole concept confused me. Other Spiritual teachers I read had the same concept, of living in The Now, but I didn’t quite get it. I have to live in this world. I have to plan when to take my car in for service and what to buy for the week’s groceries and what to write for Monday afternoon, and so what if I like to remember that wonderful beach in Mexico or think fondly of my mother in days long gone? Ah, Mr. Tolle to the rescue! Another question to ask myself. Am I in psychological time or clock time? Clock time has no emotional entanglements, it is purely for practical use. What time are we meeting for lunch? Psychological time is time that comes with all that baggage. Remembering Mom is fine, but not if the memories are accompanied by resentment, or guilt, or any of the multitudes of emotions we entangle ourselves with, drag them into the present, and ruin a perfectly peaceful Now.

Strangely, for me, Spirituality has provided all those things that I rejected when offered by the Church: angels and demons, Heaven and Hell, and, yes, God. None of these are in the form religion offers them, but they work for me in their re-creations. All of them are within me. They are me. And through spiritual practices I will get more in touch with those I need, and learn to minimize those I reject. Simply, I must believe in me; that me who is part of everything, as everything is part of me. And therein lies true peace. At least for me.

About the Author

July 9, 2015February 26, 2019

Unraveling the Knot by Carlos

I germinated in a small pot layered with rich loam. The respirating testa split, whispering softly to my now differentiating cells to trust. With radicle and root hairs, I explored, while my plumule sought the light above. A seedling was coaxed to life through a marvelously and massively intricate and interactive process that proved that the photosynthesis of life is neither accidental nor incidental. Hope was an aroma breathed out by a world of cosmic possibilities, caressed within a world of multiple universes. Unfortunately, in time, the world around me grew small, and I become root-bound. The nutrients that once nourished me dissipated, and although I valiantly sought reconciliation, the oppressive forces decimated my strength. Such was my life as a gay man struggling to embrace my sacred core. In time, with the kneading touch of gentle hands and with the alchemy of divine consciousness, the base kernel of a prosaic mundane life transmuted into the radiant gold of dawning light.

I was about eight-years-old when I first saw my father wear a tie. I looked up at him as he interlaced the snaking fabric into a credible Windsor knot. Because his job at a local trucking company as a dispatcher did not warrant any pretentious attire, I concluded that only a certain class or men brandished ties, namely professional white men I saw on our black-and-white Zenith, men whose fingernails were always immaculately manicured. Such men came home at the end of the day and sat at an easy chair, shielding themselves behind the newspaper as they awaited their supper and lorded over their kingdoms. Thus, as my father clumsily manipulated the knot, I knew it was an important day. Little did I realize the significance of the moment, for on that morning he, and in a sense I, earned our wings of citizenship. He was on his way to the federal courthouse, where after 40 some years of living in this country as an undocumented man born in Mexico, he was transformed, by his own choosing, into a new American. A few hours later, he proudly walked through the threshold of our 3-room adobe. He had left an invisible man weighed down by misidentity and had emerged like Nestor returning to Pylos. He was now free to bathe in the golden font channeling redemption upon the newly baptized although, in fact, he remained a working stiff drained by corporate vampirism. I don’t think I saw him wear a tie again until I graduated from high school a decade later. On that morning, as I fumbled with the manipulation of my own tie, he walked up to me, took the tie in his hands, and proceeded to show me how to be a man of learning, a man whose palms, unlike his, would never know the callouses of hard and dingy work. And I stood patiently as he metaphorically let me know my destiny would be different than his. Decades later, on those occasions when I still wear a tie, I can uncannily feel his fingers interlacing with mine; I can still feel his warm breath on my cheek. I can still see his eyes proudly declaring, “This is my son.”

In time, I did achieve my father’s expectations, becoming the educated man denied him. Throughout my youth he had encouraged me to be priest, even a Mason, a man to whom the world would genuflect, rather than one destined to be victimized by planned obsolescence. Instead I chose to become a teacher, not because I really wanted to be one but because my delusions of grandeur of being an architect did not see eye-to-eye with my lack of left-brained mathematical reasoning. And thus, for the next four decades, I taught generations of young people to wade through the shoals of Dickinson and Shakespeare, Lincoln, King, and Garcia Marquez, as well as how to write with urgency, with conviction, and with a need to let Spirit itself know that human reasoning is inspired by life itself. And every day I wore a tie because it was my father’s dream, because it was a symbol of the American quest, and because it purportedly conveyed confidence and power. I knotted ties around my neck that were whimsical, yet political in scope, as was a polyester sporting a lone black sheep daring to thrive amidst a flock of white sheep. I wore stately cravats that were door-openers as was my blue silk or my burgundy I’m dangerously-sensual cashmere. On occasion, I wound a black satin noose that bespoke of the renting of my heart, as when I stood before my father’s bier, straightened the tie festooned around his neck, and closed the casket lid. The sound of the latch was like the shattering of dewy ice crystals on a frigid night.

Not long ago, I accepted a position at a local college. I was ready to close my eyes, look within, and contemplate time’s Source. One of the first things I did was to shirk the tie. The first time I walked on campus liberated of my silken noose, I felt somewhat fragile. But like Francis standing unadorned before Pope Innocent III, I stood my ground, convinced my tie was not the sum of me, confident that my being would sufficiently address the crux of my truth. For decades I harbored internal doubts because as a gay man I bore witness to the stars rather than to the sun. It sapped my energy to walk on eggshells, valiantly trying to deflect the assaults around me. On the surface, I thrived, but when a man is gay and exists in a world where he has been acculturated to believe that only the validation and approval of others can give him substance, I struggled with self-acceptance. My reservoirs were diminished as sleepless night after sleepless night I sought unattainable rest. And all of this resulted to please those who imprisoned me in reduction, accusing me of infidelity because I was not the man of their vision.

It took time to reject the infernal scenario as I whittled away at the incrustations I had permitted others to impose upon me. I married the man of my dreams publically and with pride. I honed my voice before peers and strangers alike, casting down the veils that had previously denied me my holy tabernacle. I cut the umbilical cord to those in my tribe who loved me only on the condition that I spoke not my name. Of course, it has been difficult to tear into the carapace of fossilized layers I once so passively accepted. However, acceptance is like breathing in the aroma of freshly tilled spring earth pungent with the living energy of seasons no longer in repose. I was always a part of the garden around me, but only when I gave myself permission to cauterize the wounds resulting from death of a thousand self-imposed cuts, did I send shoots up into the stratosphere.

I have shunned the ties that I once wore like a scarlet letter around my neck; in addition, I have banished my shame and doubts of being gay to a domain of shadows. Only fools believe the adage that old dogs cannot learn new tricks. The fact is we, we proud gay men and lesbian women, are mutable beings capable of adapting to the undertows always swirling around us like a Mad Hatter. Awakening to my spiritual power is the equivalent of enjoying a piece of rich rum cake, listening to Bach, or sinking my toes into the sands of a Florida beach. As the Buddha found his enlightenment by sitting in immaculate Emptiness, I have found mine by dancing in radical Fullness, sans my tie.

About the Author

Cervantes wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.” In spite of my constant quest to live up to this proposition, I often falter. I am a man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic. Something I know to be true. I am a survivor, a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite charming. Nevertheless, I often ask Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth. My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the Tuscan Sun. I am a pragmatic romantic and a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time. My beloved husband and our three rambunctious cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under coconut palms on tropical sands. I believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty. I am always on the look-out for friends, people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread together and finding humor in the world around us.