Author: phoyle

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

Prompt for this story: “When I decided”

This prompt reminded me of an old corny Protestant hymn, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” Gay Christians have a big responsibility. They have to have answers for atheists and agnostics. Institutionalized church-sponsored homophobia is another good reason to be anti-church, our atheist friend would point out. My parents thought religion was a mental illness. They could not understand why a bunch of people would make a cult of a rabbi being tortured to death two thousand years ago. There was a famous play that received a lot of coverage in the 1960’s reminding the public that during the holocaust the Catholic Church was silent, and yet they make a claim of being the ultimate moral authority. What a joke! How can the typical member of Dignity, gay and lesbian Catholics, advocate for their point of view?

My four brothers also believed science and 18th century style “reason” would make a better moral touchstone than “organized religion.” My parents also thought that Protestants, most of them, went to church to worship the all-mighty dollar rather than God. They were closet atheists doing a song and dance to engage in social climbing.

My counter arguments are as follows. First, Christianity is our heritage. We have to improve it. Upon reading scripture, we learn Jesus was well aware that institutionalized establishment religious authorities tend to be hypocritical and just love to condemn their neighbors. In other words, do not blame Jesus for contemporary religious hypocrisy. Judge not thy neighbors lest thou be judged.

The gay lib Russians have informed us that the Russian Orthodox Church is a solid bastion of homophobia. The response should not be Communist style or enlightenment style deism, atheism or agnosticism; the response should be to question their Christian credentials. If their so-called faith is based on hating gay people, hate is what is in their hearts. Therefore, they are not Christian, they cannot claim to be Christians, if you take true Christianity seriously.

In other words, true Christianity is quite revolutionary. If you read Scripture with a sensitive heart, you will note that Jesus even spoke in terms of empowering out-groups.

In other words, Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies and Metropolitan Community Church of New York would agree with my stance on this religious issue. We also have to realize that the Church is a human institution although they have to claim they are ordained by God. Humans, unlike God, tend to make mistakes, they tend to project their own prejudices into sacred places. MCC teaches that gay and Lesbian are a holy, sacred people, beloved by God. In addition to a religious statement, this is of course a political statement. Sometimes the victimized out-groups have to become teachers for the whole of humanity, for the oppressors. In other words, Scripture does not justify homophobia, au contraire, when you see blind hatred, oppose it. It is a Christian responsibility.

March 21, 2014

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Camping by Lewis

Ah, fresh air, the sounds of nature’s myriad creatures, the vast array of nighttime stars, the perfumed air, stillness, the sleep of angels–all are reasons that the urban heart is beckoned to forsake convenience, connection, and comfort for the ruggedness of pitching a tent against the wind and rain, digging a trench around it to channel any rain water harmlessly away, inflating those cumbersome sleeping mattresses, getting out the propane tank and stove, finding firewood for toasting marshmallows, and making a practice-run to the bathrooms and showers in hopes of avoiding discombobulation in the dark of night.

To a boy of 12, it seems not to matter whether the tent is pitched on the north rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison or the back yard. Tenting means adventuring into an environment that, even though it may be as familiar as one’s own porch or yard, invites the imagination to blossom, the inhibitions to fall away, and perceptions of possible danger to usurp the bounds of reason.

A couple of cases in point–

It was the occasion of a visit from my dad’s youngest brother and his family. They lived in far southeastern Kansas, a largely rural area not far from the border with Missouri. My aunt and uncle brought their young son and daughter with them, as expected. The son, Dana, was about 8 or 9. I was around 11 or 12. I was preparing to spend the night sleeping in our tent in the backyard. Dana wanted to join me. My dog, Skippy, a toy fox terrier mix, would be with us, too.

We had two Army surplus cots and blankets and all seemed settled in for the night. Dawn came and I stood up fully rested and ready to face the day. My feet felt something on the floor of the tent that was cold and wet. Even against the pale green of the tent floor, I could tell it was piss. I’m sure that some exclamation came out of my mouth, which roused a sleeping Dana. I asked him if he knew anything about the noxious liquid. He blamed Skippy. Well, I knew Skippy sufficiently to know that he would never do something so uncouth. I accused Dana and he confessed that he had had to pee in the middle of the night and was afraid to step outside of the tent. The esteem in which my eyes had held him was significantly diminished from that night on.

To my utter amazement, Dana later became a member of the military police. That fact, coupled with my learning in early adulthood of a young man–the son-in-law of my landlord–who was a member of the police reserve in Dearborn, MI, and, while on duty on a Friday night and riding shotgun in a cruiser on its way to break up a bar fight, also found it necessary to evacuate his bladder at an inopportune moment, has led me to believe that some men–probably a small minority–seek to reassure themselves that they are, indeed, men by signing up for jobs almost certain to test that hypothesis.

My other story also involves a planned overnight backyard camping adventure, only this time with Eddy and Donnie, the brothers very close in age to me who lived next door, on the other side of a drainage ditch (what we used to call a “slough”). I was about 13 and Eddy was a year older than I and Donny a year younger. This time, we were going to sleep on the cots but without the tent.

When the appointed hour for the brothers to come over came and nobody showed up, well, if it had happened today, I would have simply called one of them on his cell phone. As it was, I waited what I thought was a sufficient time and then decided to teach them a lesson. I crossed the slough, which had no water in it, and crept up to the window of the boys’ bedroom, which was separated from the slough
by a bit of lawn and a hedge. The boys were in their bunk bed, apparently asleep. Using my fingernails, I scratched the screen covering the open window, much as I’m sure I had seen in some horror movie.

I couldn’t have been more delighted at the result. Donny, in the lower bunk, sprang out of the bed as if dismounting from a trampoline and ran screaming into the living room, which was lighted. Realizing my danger of being exposed, I rushed behind the hedge and crouched down, so as to be able to see if anybody emerged from the house.

I had barely gotten into position when the father emerged from the house with a flashlight and headed directly toward where I was hiding. Too afraid to move a muscle, I soon found the beam of light pointing at my head like the finger of doom and Mr. Nunn calmly explaining to me that, if I ever did something like that again, he would be happy to inform my parents. I sheepishly stood up and apologized for my misbehavior and ran the short distance home. I spent the rest of the night sleeping alone in the yard after a brief period of introspection after which I’m certain I decided that I had just had an adventure which neither Donny nor I would ever forget.

There are many more camping stories that I could tell, those with my parents in various parks in Colorado and elsewhere, but none give me the pleasure in relating as those I have shared today.

© 17 March 2014

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.

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Favorite Literary Character by Gillian

This one took up a chunk of thinking time. With little trouble I can come up with many literary characters I love for many different reasons: I empathize with them, they make me laugh, they express themselves brilliantly, they make me cry. So first of all it depends whether the actual topic is a favorite character, as in one of many, or my favorite, as in one and only. I decided on the latter, which of course makes it a much more challenging pick. I next tried to get a clearer vision than my own as to the exact meaning of “literature,” but found that most definitions seem as loose, fluid, and confused as mine and so concluded it means just about anything that anyone has written, ever, about anything.

My eventual choice I find to be more than a little embarrassing. In fact coming out with it is a bit like coming out of the closet; a bit scary, unsure of acceptance. Fears of rejection or ridicule abound. I fear you expect more of me. You perhaps are awaiting the introduction of some obscure character from some equally obscure piece of writing which has rarely crossed The Pond, and in those rare cases only to lodge itself in still more obscure ivory towers of Academe. Or maybe someone extremely funny, created by Kingsley Amis or Hilaire Belloc. Or some delightful female creation out of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf. Or someone in one of those gritty novels by Ruark or Hemingway. Or a real person writing with true courage, such as Anne Frank and Paul Monette, or authors out to change the world like Rachel Carson or Mary Pipher, who wrote a book actually titled, Writing to Change the World.

The choices are endless, and all good. But I rejected them all.

One of the problems is that my very favorite changes all the time. I read a new book and one of the characters in it becomes my favorite, but pretty soon another from yet another new book replaces him or her. My one and only very favorite, then, has to be one who has stuck with me; every time I encounter that character, it is still my favorite. If I simply remember it, it is my favorite. And I could only, then, looking at it like that, think of one. I have loved this character since my childhood, and have never lost that love. Even movie and TV portrayals have not diminished it.

And, yes, dammit, it is like coming out. So I’m not ashamed, I’m not embarrassed, I can love whoever I want, and I will not apologize for my love, nor will I deny it. I shout it from the rooftops for all the world to hear —–

MY FAVORITE LITERARY CHARACTER IS ……. WINNIE the POOH!!!

OK, OK, I’m sure it’s really my inner child that loves him, and why not? One of the many Pooh books, and I don’t know which, is the first book I remember having read to me. I cuddled on my mother’s knee and jabbed a finger and squealed at the delightful illustrations and headed off with my buddy Pooh for adventures in Hundred Acre Wood, though I’m sure I had no idea what a hundred acres would be like. (Come to that, I still don’t!) That particular book was just wonderfully illustrated, and I’m sure that’s why my inner kid fell in love with Pooh Bear.

I mean, what’s not to love in an androgynous, vaguely ursine creature of indeterminate age, whose height of ambition is to suck down the very last drop of honey in the pot and then go to sleep, and whose closest approach to an expletive is, “Oh bother!”

Pooh portrays the the very height of non-ambition, and his tiny bear-brain is certainly not very active. He trails along with his wonderfully entertaining friends, seeking a spot to nap or consume more honey or both. And his friends are all such exquisite characters, each depicted so that the reader inevitably reacts with, oh I know someone just like that! Take Tigger, for instance. He bounds and bounces and is never still for a moment. He overflows with zest and zeal, bouncing off this way and that, never thinking first, and bouncing into endless troubles. He bounces right through the ice on the lake and Pooh et al have to go to the rescue; likewise when he bounces right up into a big tree or into a raging river. His friends are tired of always having to rescue him and wish he would occasionally take time out for a little thought before taking his next big bounce. But when, in one book, Tigger loses his bounce, he just isn’t the same old Tigger they know and love, and they are all delighted when his bounce eventually returns. Now don’t we all know someone like that?

There’s Mrs. Roo, mother of Kanga. She’s the quintessential mother everyone wants for their own. Soft-spoken, never issuing a reprimand stronger than, “Oh dear!” she is always on hand with milk and fresh-baked cookies, and of course toast and honey, or just honey, for Pooh.

Then there’s Eeyore, most definitely a glass-half-empty kinda donkey. He trails dejectedly at the back of the pack and rarely intones anything more significant then, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

In my childhood book, the wonderful illustrations brought these and many more characters to life in a time preceding mass animation. Pooh was illustrated dozing at the bottom of page four, waking up on page five, ambling along the bottom of pages six through ten, then, having caught up with the narrative, dozing at the bottom of page eleven. Later, on page fourteen, he was depicted climbing a ladder to the top of the page fifteen where he appeared again in the story, sucked another pot of honey dry, and promptly fell asleep on line two. Meanwhile, Tigger had bounced off to page twenty, way ahead of the story, and bounded up above the top line and back down below the bottom, up and down across the page while he impatiently waited for the others to catch up with him.

I don’t know how many 21st century children read Winnie the Pooh. Maybe they play computer games or enter chat rooms instead. If so, I think they miss out on something warm and wonderful. Winnie the Pooh and his assorted anthropomorphic friends make me smile even now, and provide me with that deep warm glow inside that isn’t always easy to acquire in adulthood. I still read the books, occasionally, and still delight in them, although I do try not to jab my finger at the illustrations and squeal with joy as I once did. I also watch the animated versions of Milne’s stories on TV, because by some miracle, to me at least, they have not ruined but rather enhanced my own version of the characters. Pooh Bear has filled me with warm fuzzies for seventy years. How can he not qualify as my favorite literary character?

April 19, 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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A Few Things I Have Learned in My Old Age by Betsy

Respect your elders–even ‘though they may become fewer and fewer in number left on this earth

Take care of your body–no new models are available

Make friends with and understand your ego. When it is out of control you will need to counsel it and put it in your pocket.

Take your medicine everyday and know what it is and why you are taking it.

Exercise every day

Learn something new every day

Think, think, think—everyday

Never stop seeking adventure. Never stop dreaming

Take a nap everyday even if it’s only a two minute one.

Listen–listen to the birds, listen to the wind, listen to your children–even after they have become adults.

Measure your worth and accomplishments according to your own values–not those of others.

April 2, 2012

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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A Meal to Remember by Will Stanton

I arrived in Colorado in 1975. I first found an apartment in Arvada, then Englewood, and then finally gravitated to Capitol Hill by ’77. I gradually acquired a number of friends and acquaintances. Among them was a very wealthy gentleman named Stan A. and his much younger and particularly attractive partner Michael B.

Stan had made his money by owning a major construction firm that, among other projects, helped to construct I-70 into the foothills west of Denver. By the time I met him, apparently he did not need to work anymore, having made plenty of money. I recall Stan as being immaculately dressed, well groomed, and always very polite. His large apartment was kept perfectly spotless by his house-keeper. His apartment’s décor included carefully selected paintings and objects d’art, all perfectly placed and without a spot of dust. In addition to whatever attractive personal attributes Stan might have had, plenty of money probably was a contributing factor in his wooing an especially handsome young man as his sweety.

Apparently, Stan preferred having a partner who also was immaculate in his dress and appearance, which enhanced Michael’s being especially eye-catching. He took plenty of time every morning for his libations and grooming. Not a hair was out of place. Being younger than Stan, Michael was still working at that time as a salesman of some sort. I recall seeing on his bathroom mirror self-motivating quotations that he would recite each morning as he combed his hair. For the short time that I lived in Capital Hill, I was happy to be invited to their apartment for gatherings of friends or to use their swimming pool with Michael.

Unlike some wealthy people whom I have met, Stan was not tight with his money. He was perfectly happy to pick up a check if we all went out to dinner.

I recall when Stan piled six of us into his BMW and drove south to the Tech Center to a Chinese restaurant. We all had a grand ol’ time sitting for some time around a large round table with a sizable lazy Susan carrying plenty of Chinese delicacies to choose from.

As excellent as the food was, it soon became apparent that the most obvious attraction at dinner was the bus-boy. He truly was unusually handsome. It was one thing for us younger guys to notice and admire the bus-boy; but now that I’m much older, I understand that Stan, being about a generation older than we, had as much right as we to admire him as well. We guessed that the bus-boy was about seventeen based upon his boyish features, although, physically, he certainly was not puny. He easily could have been a star high-school swimmer or baseball player.

I still am not sure whether we all simply had succumbed to the extraordinary good looks of the bus-boy or whether the wine during dinner had contributed to our increasingly indiscreet glances—and to Stan’s comment. Someone at the table asked if anyone would like dessert. Stan immediately announced that he certainly would love to have that bus-boy for dessert. He was standing right behind Stan. I never knew that a person’s face could turn so red.

© 31 March 2014

About the Author

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

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My 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 everyday 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.
© 14 October 2013

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

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Gay Music by Ray S.

If I could sing “My Favorite Valentine” to my GLBT lover would that qualify as Gay Music? Last week my friend inquired as to how I was progressing with the very esoteric subject of this week’s story time. In response I allowed as how I was relying on procrastination, presently.
What I was really thinking to myself was what qualifies as Gay Music? Who might have been the provocateur that thought this subject up? It’s been really interesting to hear what all our muses fabricate.

I am reminded of the repetitious beat of gay porn film background music, if you’re not familiar with this genre, think the beat goes on and on. Then there is the highly syncopated rhythm of the music used by drag queens, attributed commonly to the old burlesque theatre–Let Me Entertain You.” Does lip-syncing qualify as gay music. Guess it depends on the performer’s abilities.

Along those lines, we can’t overlook the music preempted by the Gay World of Judy and Barbara. Some of their works almost amount to gay national anthems.

Then their are the naughty “wink, wink” creations of song writers such as Noel Coward, Cole Porter and let’s see who wrote, “Let’s Do It” and the titles of Tin Pan Ally that lend themselves so aptly to parody, like “I’m Just Wild About Harry.”

When it comes to the classics, the LGBT scene was very much alive but not so much musically as was the lifestyle of some of the composers. And of course most of the creative time on the QT.

Belonging to another generation and not into the bar scene. I understand that the popular idioms that pass for music employ a real extensive list of raunchy lyrics–how many could qualify as gay is questionable, but as the old adage goes “beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.”

So, strike up the band and start dancing with of without a shirt on and with or without a partner. After all it’s a liberated but crowded dance floor and who knows what the gay music will produce. For instance, “Do you come here often?” “Can I have your number?” “Sure, bring him along.” “What did you say your name is?” “God, you’re so hot,” and on into the night of gay music.

Denver, February 10, 2014

About the Author

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Four Saturday Scenes by Phillip Hoyle

Days change from dawn to dusk, from cool to warm, from humid to dry. Still we reckon seven days a week but they too are not the same. For instance, the seventh day is sometimes called Shabbat, for the old Hebrew word meaning he rested, an allusion to the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. The day was marked by a tradition of rest that emphasized contemplation and prayer. On my calendar the seventh day reads Saturday, recalling a Roman God, Saturn, to whom I have little relationship. History reminds me that Roman culture and government had a great determining effect on western culture and thus on Christian development. So, the name changed from Sabbath to Saturday, and the time of its beginning and ending changed from sundown to midnight. Even its purpose changed for most Christians although the mythological symbol of a day of rest persisted. For the majority, Sunday gathered the resting and worshipping to itself to create a Sunday Sabbath. Saturday stayed the same work day it had been under Roman law.

In my own life, Saturday’s meaning has shifted. Originally my Saturdays were structured around the needs of my mother: a time to have help with the kids so she could shop and keep her weekly hair appointment. A grandmother would sometimes watch us, but as we children aged, Mom would take us to the library just upstairs from the hair salon. We’d check out our books and then join her towards the end of her appointment. But that one fall Saturday was singular in that I had decided I was tired of trying to keep up with the older kids on my tricycle. My sisters and some neighbors were riding a small boy’s bicycle. “I want to ride it,” I screamed in my high-pitched six-year-old voice as they flew by. They were happy to play teacher. So with their help I got on the big thing, achieved my balance, and took off in a hurry thrilled by the air rushing over my skin and through my hair. But they had forgotten to tell me how to slow down and the corner of the block was fast approaching. I kept my balance as I bumped down the curb into the street and accomplished a turn to avoid the curb across the street, but I was unable to avoid the curb waiting catty-corner across the intersection. I crashed landing on the bar, smashing my genitals. There was a little blood. I must have screamed in pain. Mom came running and took me into the house. She bathed me, explained about circumcision (the only sex-related information she ever proffered, probably to help me understand why I my penis looked so different than dad’s), and told me I was to go with her downtown. She must have wanted me close by in case I really had hurt myself or had decided I needed some extra attention. As we walked the several blocks to the salon, she taught me how to escort a woman in public along with a few other fine points of good manners. Perhaps these items were meant to further my sex education. Turns out I was just fine. Eventually I did learn how to brake and how to avoid accidents. I also continue to this day to heed my mother’s advice about escorting women to the delight of several friends who still find me mannerly.

Eventually Saturdays moved me into my father’s world. At age 12, after I’d failed to make the team in seventh grade basketball, I began to work on Saturdays at the family IGA store sacking groceries and carrying them to customer’s cars. I now worked in a mostly man’s world with its structure of having a goal, earning income related to hours and usefulness, and working around people who didn’t live on our block. I did more than sack and carry. At slow times I helped dust cans, face shelves, assist in the produce market, and help restock the freezer. I’d take returned soda bottles to the back room and sometimes take a short break sitting there drinking a Coke.

Saturday was the busiest day of the week at the grocery store with ten, twelve, three, and five o’clock rushes when the aisles got as crowded as Main Street. We worked hard; at least it seemed that way to me, a skinny boy and not very strong. All day I ran out into the winter cold carrying bags to the yellow Desoto, the green Chevy pickup, or the purple Cadillac and then ran back into the warm building to prepare the next bunch of groceries. I got stronger and more efficient. Customers liked me.

The family arrangement was informal. We kids paid ourselves out of the cash register on Saturday evening leaving a paper slip with the information of hours and payment. That winter Saturday after I had worked a year and a half earning forty cents an hour, I asked my oldest sister, “How can I get a raise?” She said, “Just start paying yourself more.” So I gave myself a ten cent raise, noting the new amount times my hours on the slip of paper. No one ever said a word to me about the change. A year later, when I began working for my uncle at the family’s other store, I got another raise of fifty cents bringing my remuneration to a dollar an hour. Perhaps by then my work was worth the pay.

Saturday changed most when Myrna and I became engaged to be married. We would travel each Saturday to Glen Elder, KS where she played house and I played church. She’d cook a meal. I’d go to the church office to check on the mail, read the worship bulletin, or make some other arrangement for the Sunday service. Sometimes we’d visit the Spooners at their dairy farm, the elderly Foresters in their gracious home, or someone else with a special need. Then in the evening we’d make out on the couch in the front room of the parsonage as we step by step increased our physical intimacy in preparation for the full disclosure we anticipated on our wedding night. Later I’d drive her over to Ella Neifert’s house where my fiancé slept. One spring Saturday evening when the western Kansas wind blew with extra force, we huddled together on the couch to soothe each other’s chill. We warmed up, further than ever before. Realizing we’d soon be parted for several months while she made preparations for our wedding in western Colorado, I thought we needed to touch each other more intimately than before. So we educated one other about some of the finer details of our bodies. We didn’t go all the way, but we did share ourselves in new ways. The cold-sounding wind howled around the old house as we warmed ourselves with our explorations. We loved our intimacy. We both realized we had to end this session, so we bundled up to drive over to the widow’s house. When we left the parsonage, we were both surprised how warm the wind had turned, or we were just so heated up as to believe it was almost summertime! Thus a spring Saturday helped prepare us for a wonderful marriage.

It was a particular summer Saturday a few years ago, several years after I had left my marriage and ministry and had moved to a big city to live as a gay man. It was a late June Saturday that I experienced with complex delight. My son Michael and his family had come to visit. Our schedule that weekend included the Saturday Buskerfest with its unusual street performances and the Sunday Gay Pridefest with its parade and concerts. On Friday evening I discovered a phone message from Rafael, the man I’d hoped to hear from for two months. I had sometimes walked the neighborhood wanting to run into him but kept missing him. I’d already concluded he’d moved back to El Paso when I finally got this contact. In response I left on his voice mail an invitation for him to join us for spaghetti the next evening. He should call me when he got off work. Now it was Saturday evening. The spaghetti tasted good, at least my family said so before Heather and her three younger kids fell asleep exhausted by the day’s activities and their light sunburns. Rafael called and with several more calls found his way the one block to my apartment. I brought plates of spaghetti with meat sauce to the patio table. We were eating when I noticed his gold wedding band had been turned around to reveal a rainbow flag. I pointed at it saying, “Look at that.” Rafael’s warm and amused smile increased my anticipation of what the evening might mean. My son and eldest grandson came downstairs to meet Rafael. We talked. Our guest asked for wine. I told him I didn’t have any but suggested he and I go to a nearby restaurant for wine and dessert. As we were leaving the restaurant, Rafael said, “Let’s go dancing.” We started walking towards a nearby club.

“Do you have your ID?” I asked.

“I don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do,” I insisted.

He led me to his apartment to retrieve his ID, but we didn’t leave the place, ending that Saturday with a passion I won’t try to describe except to suggest it seemed emotionally perfect as we two came together with open arms and hearts, and with humor, concern, and love.

Rafael died several delightful and sad months later. I live on, wondering what new Saturdays I will experience as my life continues to change and mature. I’ve had Mom’s, Dad’s, a wife’s, and a lover’s Saturdays. What next?

Denver, 2010

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

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Favorite Literary Character by Pat Gourley

Anna Madrigal (a girl and a man)

My first trip to San Francisco was in 1979 with a friend named Phil. I met Phil I recall through the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street a few years earlier. His story of coming to the Center was one of the classic coming out stories I remember from those years. He had recently been discharged from the Navy and had wound up in Denver. His home was rural Ohio and his Catholic family very conservative and probably not fond of queers but totally unaware that there own son was one of those people.

Phil related to me some years later that he had first actually seen me at a party and thought I was the butchest thing he had ever seen when I walked in wearing my winter leather jacket – that was, he said empathically, until I opened my mouth and the whole masculine illusion evaporated in a Nellie mist. I loved him despite of this tacky and very snarky story.

Phil had apparently walked around the block at the Center many times before getting up the nerve to come in. There he met several others and quickly became a fast friend and member of our budding community. We remained close until his death in August of 1994 from AIDS. He died at home in the arms of his true love. I had been summoned to get there quickly but walked in just minutes after Phil took his leave.

Our trip to San Francisco was magical in that I totally fell for that City and all its magic. Phil had been there before while in the Navy. I believe several times – Fleet Week perhaps – though that I don’t know that for sure. He showed me all the sights and sounds and we sampled many different tastes.

Marin Headlands (Titled “Oz”)  2012

This year of 1979 was momentous for me for many reasons but one little thing that happened was I was introduced to the work of Armistead Maupin. Tales of the City was published in 1978 and was essentially his columns on life in the City syndicated in the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories consisted of an eclectic cast of characters whose lives crisscrossed through that novel and eight more to follow culminating in the most recent release The Days of Anna Madrigal. Good friends of mine owned the local Gay Book store and I suspect that is how I got turned onto the book.

The novel’s stories and many adventures often revolved around a straight female character named Mary Ann Singleton. She, soon on arrival in San Francisco, was living at 28 Barbary Lane in a large multi-story dwelling on Russian Hill managed by one Anna Madrigal. My initial visit to the City and my budding connection with a few Radical Fairies from the Bay area provided a modicum of familiarity with the characters, adventures and environs described in Tales of the City.

So as it turns out Anna was a male to female transsexual, pot-growing/smoking landlady who was mentor to all who came through 28 Barbary Lane. Her early years were spent growing up in a house of ill repute in Winnemucca Nevada, in an establishment run by her mother.

I was certainly very familiar with and predisposed to like her character from the first book on but this was cemented when the first three books of the series were immortalized in a PBS (originating in the U.K.) and Showtime miniseries in which Anna was played by the flawlessly cast Olympia Dukakis. These are available on DVD and highly recommended if you haven’t seen them, but do read the books first.

I think it is safe to say that LGBT literature and literature in general is bereft of positive, powerful and dynamic Transsexual characters. Though I suppose one could argue that Maupin’s books don’t fall into the category of great literature, whatever the fuck that is, they are much loved, iconic tomes in the pantheon of queer literature documenting our generation. I certainly enjoyed reading them and this was magnified and has been enhanced with my growing knowledge over the decades of the City of San Francisco starting back in 1979 thanks to my friend Phil.

What I would have not given to have my shit together enough to have moved to San Francisco in the late seventies and to then have fallen under the spell of a powerful female mentor like Anna Madrigal. I downloaded the last in the series –The Days of Anna Madrigal – to my Kindle this week and ripped through it in a couple days. Lots of loose ends about Anna get tied up and the ending is really wonderful and plays out in the only place it could really, at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.

I think Phil liked and read Maupin’s books and I am sad that he can’t be around to read the final book in the series. Who knows it might have provided the impetus for a group of us to get our act together and attend Burning Man. We would fit right in and I am quite sure that the entire festival owes a significant debt of gratitude to the Radical Fairies whose influence seems stamped all over the event particularly as it is described in vivid detail by Maupin in his latest work.

Let me close by saying that I think the only real radical juice left in the LGBTQI movement is coming from the T’s. The word radical, as Harry Hay pointed out to me about 10,000 times, means, “to the root.” If the “gay agenda” ever had a truly revolutionary component to it, it was our willingness to turn gender on its head and shake it all up real good and see what would come out on top so to speak. These days many of us G’s, L’s and B’s seem quite caught up in imitating the dominant hetero-defined roles of male and female. Perhaps more Anna Madrigals will come along to finally lead us out of the hetero-dominated wilderness and our true agenda will come to pass.

March, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Competition Is No Good Except Sometimes by Nicholas

Competition is something I don’t like. I have no use for it. I think it brings out some of the worst in people, not the best. It turns people against one another instead of turning humans to one another for support. If competition produces accomplishments, cooperation and mutual support can produce much more.

In the just-finished Winter Olympics, we saw what competition leads to—a lot of hoopla for very little. If anything, modern Olympics games have lowered healthy competition to the point of absurdity. Athletes strive relentlessly, work their whole lives, push their bodies and minds to their absolute limits to win by hundredths of a second. But then many people don’t watch the Olympics for the competition; they watch to see the spectacular stumbles by elegant figure skaters and crashes by downhill racers at stunning speeds.

But what do I know? All my life, I’ve had that gay boy syndrome of “I can’t do it anyway, so why bother? There are so many more fabulous things to do.” It’s a form of self-protection. You’re not going to get picked–you really don’t want to get picked–for the team, so look the other way. I spent many a recess on the school playground muttering, “Don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me.”

There are things I will definitely not compete for.

> Love: There’s plenty to go around; why would one compete for love?

> Money: I have plenty, thanks, no need to get greedy.

> Medals: They just become so much dust-collecting stuff.

> Recognition: I’m already recognized in enough places.

> Parking Spaces: Unless I am driving a Humvee or a tank with a ram on it.

> Spots in line at Trader Joe’s.

> Prizes: More stuff to dust every now and then.

On the other hand, some things are worth competing for, such as:

> A seat on the bus: fine, if you must stand at the front of the bus, but just get out of my way, please.

> A spot at yoga class: how else am I to find the peace of Buddha?

> The bathroom in the morning: you’d better get out of my way now.

> A viewing point to at least try to see a great painting at a crowded Denver Art Museum exhibit.

> My favorite table at my favorite coffeehouse (no, I’m not saying where because you’ll probably try to take it.)

> Chocolate: anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

Though I exude gay disdain for competition, I do nonetheless indulge in it from time to time and then with determination fit for a queen. Life is complicated.

March 2014

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.