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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Happy Books by Ricky

I’ve read my share of gay sex books over the years and it didn’t take long to realize those types of books held nothing of interest.  After awhile, all the stories resembled each other so I lost interest and they no longer attract me.

On the other hand, returning to the original meaning of gay (a synonym for “happy” or “merry”) there are a few books that come to my mind.  As a child, I liked the Disney book Little Toot; which was about a small tug boat that caused a catastrophe.  He was then banished but he later saved an ocean liner and all was well. 

Another book that had a happy ending was Peter Pan.  I’m sure you all have either read the book or saw: one of several productions of the story from Mary Martin’s performances from the stage or broadcast live on TV last century; the Disney animated feature; school plays; VHS/DVDs; and most recently, a version using live actors.  As a result, I will not go into the story here.

Any of Edgar Rice Burrows’ Tarzan books also were “happy”. Naturally, the plots all involved Tarzan having a few adventures but always ending with a “happy” note.  Since most books follow that pattern, we can include under the definition of “happy” all of the books where a male or female protagonist triumphs over all the enemies or difficulties placed in their path.  There are uncommon books, which have a rather dark ending and I try to stay away from them. I accidentally read one of those a few months ago.  I would not have read it, if I had known that the main character was going to die at the end.  There was a “last minute” twist to the plot which resulted in his death but in so doing, he managed to protect a whole community from a serial killer. This story unnerved me for 3 or 4 days before it finally left my mind and my stress over it vanished.

Another type of happy books, are collections of poetry for children (and the parents who read them to their offspring). Two of our favorites are by Dr. Seuss; they are Tweedle Beadle (from Fox in Socks), and the other is In A People House.  My youngest daughter’s all time favorite poem was written by Ogden Nash; The Tale of Custard the Dragon.  At one time, both she and I had it nearly memorized, but alas, my memory of it is only bits and pieces so, I am reduced to reading it every so often; like right now.
  
The Tale of Custard the Dragon

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon,
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week! which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage,

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! Cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood,
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda’s dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets, but they didn’t hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim.
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

But presently up spoke little dog Mustard,
I’d have been twice as brave if I hadn’t been flustered.
And up spoke Ink and up spoke Blink,
We’d have been three times as brave, we think,
Custard said, I quite agree
That everybody is braver than me.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

      ©  Ogden Nash

© 23 March 2011

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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My Favorite Place by Ray S

At first thought the subject today calls for ancient memories and especially nostalgia. My sand box in the back yard was a very favorite realm over which I was king. A fleet of yellow Tootsietoy sedans, roadsters, and two town cars with front seat open tops for the chauffeur, separating the enclosed passenger compartments. There were miles and miles of miniature roads and highways, bridges over rivers thtat sometimes flooded and washed out the roads due to the torrents of water from the garden hose. No, there was never any loss of lives. Those drivers knew what they were doing.

Along side the venerable sand box kingdom, father had constructed a club house from used wooden refrigerator crates. All sorts of secret and sometimes forbidden activities took place in that hallowed hall. Oaths of life-long friendship, confidences for no one’s ears but your best buddy, and a place of quiet consolation when things just became too hectic in the big people’s world.

Once that was a favorite place, but things change. An unrealized dream house materializes comfortably nestled in the verdant forested hills of some make believe New England landscape–all white clapboard and green shutters, stuffed with American antique funiture. “Autumn Leaves,” Thanksgiving by Currier and Ives, “White Christmas,” “Moonlight in Vermont,” etc, etc. Meanwhile life moved on in a post war ranch house in suburbia. Another unfulfilled “Favorite Place” is the magic city on the bay, or the drive up the coast past an oceanside community romantically named Sea Ranch. There, clinging to the cliffside a cluster of weathered cedar shingled cottages. Dream on…….

All of those material Favorite Places are or were important; however, is there anything that can supplant a warm hearth, the luxury of a cozy nesting place, strong shoulders to lean on, two arms to hold you tight and the security of another’s love. That is the ultimate “Favorite Place” to be for me.

About the Author

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Finding Myself by Phillip Hoyle

A search began when in my twenty-seventh year my friend Ted introduced me to the gay novel. That first book was Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner (NY: William Morrow & Co., 1974), and Ted claimed it had just about everything in it. I took this to mean every gay theme. Reading it I discovered several topics and scenes of interest but was unable to find myself in the story. My own story included a life-long sexual response to men that lived peacefully alongside my commitment to a marriage and a largely conventional heterosexual life. The day I finished Warren’s book, I undertook a literary search for my gay self.
     
I read Robert Ferro, Edmund White, Paul Monnett, Richard Nava, Ethan Morddan, and many other authors of gay fiction over many years. Eventually I read Felice Picano’s book Ambidextrous and found myself. It wasn’t actually me, but the book described bisexual experiences and feelings similar to some I had as a child and teen and, thus, brought me relief that I wasn’t alone in the world. I was at least barely recognizable among gay males and no longer wondered if I was an outsider in this outsider existence. 
     
I was elated to find commonality with a writer who described the book as autobiographical fiction. I read more of his books including Men Who Loved Me and realized my sameness with Picano was limited. While I enjoyed his sense of spirituality and his vigorous personal searches for love, his stories included drugs—lots of them; mine was drug free. I continued to read Picano and other gay novelists who were being published in ever-increasing numbers looking for other glimmers of my life, hoping for a light to lead me into an unknown future.
     
My friend Bill told me he found himself in Paul Monnett’s Becoming a Man. He had been deeply moved by the book and felt it affirmed his experience. I read the book with interest for it allowed me a glimpse into the lives of the author and of my friend. I assumed that most details of Bill’s life differed from those in Monnett’s book, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t connect with the book very deeply although the beautiful, effective writing seemed very important as a gay statement. It simply wasn’t my story. I kept reading but mostly felt like I was still an outsider in the gay world that so fascinated me.
     
Then my life changed radically. I separated from my wife and then left my profession that I had found growing too gay-unfriendly for my taste. I began to live as a gay man and to write on a regular basis. In both, I set out to explore my life experiences in order to understand more about who I had become. I made interesting and helpful connections of diverse themes that seemed to make sense of my experience. As I wrote, I kept reading but didn’t find myself in these books, that is, until thirty years after reading my first gay novel. 
     
I was stunned and pleased when a few weeks ago I read the chapter “East of Ashshur” in Aryeh Lev Stollman’s The Far Euphrates (NY: Riverhead Books, 1997). Stollman’s character Alexandre tells the story as son and only child of a Rabbi and his wife living in Windsor, Ontario. In this chapter, the protagonist stated for the second time that he was not shamed by his homosexuality. I had heard the statement loud and clear at its first occurrence rather early in the book. Then in this chapter the sixteen-year-old Alexandre entered a period of study structured by his religious tradition. He embraced the practice but not its traditional goals such as becoming holy or knowing God. He moved himself into a world related to the Hebrew calendar and sought self-knowledge in the light of the moon. Daily standing before the mirror, he combined physical self-examination with intense reading of anatomy and physiology. In these twin ways, physiological and philosophical, he sought self-understanding. The statement’s repetition occurred toward the end of his year-long intense self-examination that included much more than Alexandre’s sexual feelings and led him to the affirmation of his sexuality that he could see might pose difficulties. Still he felt unashamed. 
     
My experience also has left me unashamed. Early on I knew I liked boys (eventually men) and understood it as a part of my life that I might outgrow. I did not reject it in my teens, and some fifteen years later I didn’t feel shocked when I fell in love with a man. During those intervening and following years I made an intense inquiry into the nature of human sexuality with a focus on homosexuality. I wanted to understand. My attempt was not carried out in a formal retreat like Alexandre’s. In making my inquiry I realized other folk were not interested or at least not at ease over my quest, for instance, my wife fell asleep when I wanted to read her the most interesting things I thought might be helpful enrichments to our sex life and others seemed afraid of my interest. So I did retreat into the relative privacy of my office, late night reading, library research, and internal thought. My reading spanned social science, sexology, biology, social ethics, philosophy, theology, literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and journalism. Like the teenager Alexandre, I observed myself and read about things I thought, felt, and experienced. Like him, my thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and like him, I was unashamed. 
     
My inquiry had begun way back in childhood when I started reading about American Indian culture, life, and history not aware I was studying myself. Then I added theology, then sexuality (my overt self-examination), then music history, and always exhaustive reading of novels—international works in translation, gay novels, Native American novels, murder mysteries, and more. 
     
I continue my reading quest, but most important, now I write to know myself, somehow to be true to my own self. Through my personal accounts and fiction I am seeking to express what I have learned and know. I write my childhood sex and friendships. I write my teenage fascinations with girls and boys. I write my marriage, one in which I dearly loved my wife while I became more acutely attentive to my homosexual needs. I develop characters who speak of my sexual values, reflect on my thoughts and feelings, and by their own adaptations, lead me into new perspectives about myself. I develop characters who do things I have only dreamed or never dared to dream, and in the writing become more aware of my needs and desires. I write how my life affects my work. I write how my self-knowledge creates tensions in my family and vocation. Still though, I see myself riding bikes with my best childhood friend as in Ambidextrous. Still, I stand before the mirror of self-reflection unashamed as in The Far Euphrates. The searching and finding continue as they surely will for the rest of my life.

Denver, 2011

About the Author

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

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My Favorite Place by Lewis

I have several favorite places, as no one place seems to have everything I need or want to be happy all the time.

If I were to pick just one favorite place to spend a vacation away from home, it would likely be Ouray, CO.

If I were to pick just one favorite place to be when going from one favorite place to another, it would be my car, unless distances were sufficiently short, in which case, it would be in my walking shoes.

If I were to name my favorite place to spend the biggest chunk of my time, it would be my bed.

If I had to pick a favorite place to spend all of my time, it would be my body.

If I were to pick a favorite place to pass the time, it would be in the presence of friends or family.

I find that, at certain times of the day and night, my most favorite place by far is my bathroom. No other place will do at all.

But if I were to pick the place that most nurtures my inner Lewis, it would be my balcony. No, check that. It would be my “terrace”. “Terrace” is defined as “a platform that extends out from a building”. Somehow, “terrace” sounds like a much more romantic place for soul-searching than a “balcony”. I’m sure that Juliet was courted by her Romeo while standing on a terrace. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward starred in From the Terrace; The Balcony starred Peter Falk and Shelley Winters. See what I mean?

So, when I have breakfast, I take it on the terrace, weather permitting. The same for lunch and dinner. When I do the New York Times crossword–which is always a Monday–I do it on the terrace. When I undertake to decipher Laurin’s journals, I find the fresh air and beautiful landscape help to keep my spirit more buoyant. Even the sound of neighbors’ voices helps to keep me connected to all that is good in the world. When I write in my own journal, same place. When I take in a little sun–for very limited amounts of time–the terrace offers all the privacy I need. My garden, what there is of it–on the terrace. When I want to take in the sky, the scenery, the action on the street, nothing fills the bill like my terrace.

Out there, I am part of the world. I count. I feel connected. If I don’t want to connect, I can leave the cordless and cell phones inside. Smells, tastes, sounds are more vivid. I can even hide when that feels right. Even oblivion is within easy reach–if I had the inclination and weren’t such a coward.

Oh, in case you’re curious, I did not type this while sitting on the terrace. I was late getting to it and had not the time to daydream.

Lewis, July 15, 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way. 

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Feathers on the Wing by Pat Gourley

“It has been my experience that gay and lesbian people who have fought through their self-hatred and their self-recriminations have a capacity for empathy that is glorious and a capacity to find laughter in things that is like praising God. There is a kind of flagrant joy about us that goes very deep and is not available to most people. I also think that something about our capacity to live and let live is uniquely foreign – that we have learned in the crucible of the discrimination against us how broad our definitions must be for us to be fully human.” 

Paul Monette 
(From an interview in Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul, 1995). 

My what a slippery concept “the essence of GLBTQ” is as I begin to think about it. Much of my gay adult life has been spent in pondering this but pretty exclusively from the perspective as a gay man. It was work with the Radical Fairies where cultivating our difference, our otherness, was often the stated goal. My thinking in this area has been most emphatically influenced by Harry Hay but also by John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, Mitch Walker, James Broughton, Mark Thompson and Will Roscoe along with many other Fairies brothers.

John Burnside, Pat Gourley, Harry Hay, 1983
Photo by David Woodyard

We know we are different, most of us from a very early age, but the questions have always been ‘how?’ and ‘does it go beyond the bedroom?’ Are we primarily shaped as little queer beings in response to societal pressures and oppressions or is their something much more intrinsic? Are we really “born this way” and then of course certainly flesh out individual responses to our otherness in part based on how we are received by parents, siblings, peers and the larger society? This debate today is largely mute as far as the masses of LGBTQ are concerned and occurs if at all really only in rarified academic, queer and mostly University connected enclaves. The take over of the LGBTQ liberation movement by the issues of military service and marriage equality have at least superficially provided us with an escape valve in the form of the meme “we are no different from anyone else and we’ll prove it if you just give us our rights”.

We have as a group largely abandoned pursuing the old Mattachine questions of ‘who are we,’ ‘where do we come from,’ and most importantly ‘what are we for?’ And perhaps this is OK; life does present more than enough daily struggles that can legitimately keep us from philosophizing about our intrinsic natures. The economic benefits alone that can come from marriage equality are real and beneficial for many. However, that we would need the hetero establishment to validate our relationships seems to me to have a bit of a pathetic groveling component to it.

Harry Hay would on occasion taunt those listening to him by twisting around the old bromide of “we are just like you except for what we do in bed” to and I am paraphrasing here “we need to realize that the only thing we have in common with straight people is what we do in bed”.

Hay used to talk frequently about our unique “gay windows” on the world. We see the same world as straight people do looking out of their windows but the view can be very different. This different window has the potential to provide us with outlooks and viewpoints that potentially could be very different in a beneficial way to society.

I think the above Monette quote is a great concrete example as to how that might look. I do not mean to imply that we have the market cornered on empathy as a result of the oppression we have experienced. The world seems to have lots of oppression to go around and I am sure that it can at times invoke great empathy in the compassionately oppressed. We GLBTQ are however uniquely exposed to it often in our own biological families and in our own communities. So often our oppression comes from within our “inner circle” if you will rather than from without. Ironically perhaps this is our greatest gift and can provide us with something “uniquely foreign” to bring to the human banquet, a very broad definition of what it is to be human and the great joy that can convey.

Let me venture far out on a limb with a very sharp saw. Hay had preached for many years that we are actually a separate people but in later years he began to refine this into the possibility that we are actually a separate gender. He began speaking in terms of a third gender. Not intending to piss anyone off here I think we could safely take this and run with it i.e. why not 4th and 5th and 6th genders as well. For a much more detailed and nuance discussion of the “other genders’ concept I would refer to Radically Gay and the section entitled “Our Third Gender Responsibilities”.

In being questioned by Mark Thompson in an interview with Hay published in the 1995 anthology Gay Soul the topic of third gender came up and in one partial response to a question from Thompson, Harry used a metaphor for us that is I think very beautiful and on topic for today.

“…I believe that gays are a specific development of humanity who have a specific contribution to make to the culture. We’re about multidimensionality, among other things. You might say we are the feathers on the wing.” Harry Hay, 1995.

I’d like to close by saying that coming here every week and interacting in such an intimate fashion with you all reinforces for me repeatedly just how we are all the feathers on the wing.

Denver, July, 2013

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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The Interview by Nicholas

It happened one day when Jamie and I were visiting his grandmother who lived in Palo Alto, California with her daughter, Jamie’s mom. We were living in San Francisco at the time, about an hour north, and frequently drove down the Peninsula to visit Jamie’s parents and grandmother. This day was a little different because Jamie’s folks were away so that made us Grandma’s chief entertainers/care givers for the day.

Grandma G was in her mid-80s and totally together mentally. Because she was getting up in years and finding it difficult getting around, Jamie’s parents moved her from her home in Chicago to their rambling ranch-style house in sunny, mild California. It wasn’t a move that she was totally happy with but she seemed to get along well enough and didn’t complain. At least not to me and Jamie.

She was always happy to see us. One day we brought her a piece of this fabulously delicious peanut butter cake with peanut butter and cream cheese frosting from one of the exquisite bakeries in our neighborhood of San Francisco. She loved it and told us that this was her day to sin. What day was that, we asked. Any day I want, she said. We always brought some cake down with us after that.

I don’t know that I would label Grandma G a “character,” though she certainly had plenty of character. She once told us that sometimes she stayed up all night reading a book she just could not put down. She was sharing a secret like a kid who deliberately went against curfew to do what she wanted.

She’d had an interesting career and for a time had had her own radio show on homemaking, complete with her own show business radio name, on a station in Chicago. She had also been very involved in liberal politics in Chicago—one of the first women to do so—and in the Presbyterian church. Grandma G is probably the reason Jamie’s family turned out so solidly liberal and progressive minded. Jamie likes to show a photograph of him and Grandma at a 1980 Chicago rally for the Equal Rights Amendment, the one that would have put gender equality into the U.S. Constitution.

I always enjoyed our visits to Palo Alto where it was usually sunny and warm unlike San Francisco with its chill and fog. I felt like I was actually in California there.

Jamie was busy doing something outside, cleaning the pool or something. Grandma and I were in the family room chatting about nothing in particular when the questions began.

She was curious, in an innocent grandmotherly way, about me and Jamie, her favorite grandson. How did we meet, she asked. I told her the story of friends inviting us both to dinner, meeting at their house and then going out. Jamie and I hit it off, he offered me a ride home and, after talking a while, we made plans to get together.

Did we love each other? Yes, I said, sort of gulping as I wondered just where this conversation was going and where was Jamie.

Did Jamie treat me well? Oh, yes, he does, I said. Very well.

Does he apologize when he hurts your feelings, asked Grandma. Well, yes, I guess, I said. He hadn’t really ever hurt my feelings in the short time we’d known each other but I imagined he would apologize if he ever did so.

I imagine there were more questions, but then Jamie returned to the room. I joked about being grilled by Grandma and the conversation shifted to another topic. I’ve always had a fond memory of that afternoon and my brief interview by the matriarch.

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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One Monday Afternoon by Michael King

Almost every Monday afternoon I go to the GLBT Center for the “Telling Your Story” activity. There are from twelve to eighteen men and women who write or tell a story based on a topic. The topics may be very unusual or fairly mundane. I have been involved now for about three and a half years and have found that this program has been for me very therapeutic. When I first started attending it didn’t seem to make a difference what the topic was, some past suppressed painful memory would come to mind and It would be all I could do not to choke up and break down in front of the group. Most were of almost forgotten childhood traumas that I hadn’t thought about for 60 or more years. I wasn’t aware that I had so much baggage but afterwards I felt a relief and a freedom. This process continued for a couple of years but seldom occurs now.

Now I am challenged to write whatever comes to mind without preplanning and I just let the story unfold. I’m getting to know myself more each week and sometimes have fun just being silly with the story. Other times I am exposing myself in ways I wouldn’t have even weeks ago. I’m seldom concerned what other people think which could never have been the case up until a couple of years ago.

There have been Mondays that I recall the dynamics of the group when someone’s story particularly stood out. Cecil’s stories often are very captivating as are numerous others. I think that Cecil with his accent and Donald with his shy approach, Ray’s theatrical voice, numerous others with wit and humor along with the incredible variety that always happens every week makes for one of the best programs I have ever experienced.

For me one Monday afternoon stands out more than all the others. I wrote about an experience that had occurred during the week before. I was told later that stories shouldn’t have a surprise ending. The story was particularly emotional and personal. The topic for that week was “The Interview.” I wrote it in July and later submitted it for the blog. It was put on the blog on November 7th. I have reread it several times and not only do I still get choked up, but I also think it’s the best story I have written. I can still feel the electricity (for lack of a better term) that went through my body and soul as well as the effect on the others in the room when I read the last sentence one Monday afternoon.

Denver, March 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story,” “Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio.” I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Vulnerable Gay Me by Phillip Hoyle

     A minister I had met just that day asked me, “Should we kiss now or later?”

     “Now’s fine,” I flippantly responded wondering if he was kidding. He wasn’t.

      He pushed me against the wall, pressed his body against mine, kissed me full on the lips, stuck his tongue in my mouth. He seemed to be boiling over with passion while I had been expecting a laugh or a nice, gentle kiss. Perhaps he sensed I would end up getting more than I had agreed to and wanted to make his claim. I wasn’t asking for anything from him, but I did get quite a lot. 

     That morning three of us, including a regional minister, a pastoral minister, and I, an associate minister, traveled together. I was excited about the trip to a city several hours south of where we lived. Since we travelers wanted to get to know one another better, we all rode in the front seat. (Obviously the events occurred before bucket seats became standard.) Being the youngest, I sat in the middle with my feet on the hump. A few miles down the road the muscles of my lower back started to tighten. There just wasn’t enough room for both feet to be comfortable so I placed my right foot in the well next to the pastoral minister’s feet. My leg rested against his. I was able to relax and was pleased that he didn’t pull away. So I rested my leg there much of the way to the town where we were to lead religious education workshops the next day. I was slated to room with this same man. 

     We checked into the hotel and had a short break before dinner at a nearby restaurant where we would join other workshop leaders. As we waited, the minister and I talked freely about his work as pastor and my as an associate. From our conversations on the way down, I knew of this pastor’s singular work in communications and education and of a literature program in the congregation he now led. I clarified some questions about his programming and also got a feel for his personality. As we talked, he complimented me on my personality and intelligence and said how much he thought of the minister I worked with. A few minutes before leaving the room to meet the other leaders, he asked if we should kiss. After we kissed, he indicated he had liked my leg next to his and took it to be an invitation for us to do more together. I knew our touch could be interpreted in that way and realized that I may have actually hoped to be accepted thus, but still I felt shocked by his passion. I may have said something corny like, “Thank you.” At least, I should have.

     I didn’t like the live music in the restaurant. It was too loud and not one of my favorite styles. After dinner we took a walk along the riverfront but due to the cool air soon returned to our room. There we opened up to one another even more, much more than kissing. There was massage and, eventually, sex. He took the lead but the next morning told me he had never shared sex with another man who was so active. I guess he thought I should simply play a role of passive bottom for him, but I was too creative, too excited by the things we were doing together. I was the most top-like bottom he had met. He told me, somewhat prematurely I thought, that he was pretty sure he could fall in love with me. 

     Now I knew about love. I knew quite a lot about sex. I knew even more about myself. And now I’m describing my vulnerability—a sexual vulnerability—a readiness to open myself to a man I didn’t even know but who I saw others trusted. Why was I so ready to kiss him with passion? Why was I so ready to have full-out sex? I was up against a new kind of gay experience like that in books I had read, one that was ready to have sex with almost any available man. Here I was opening up to a discrete, married man who was horny as a goat and who saw me as a delectable younger fruit ready for the picking. But that last perception was to occur to me only later. Here was a man who proposed we kiss. I was ready. I was aware that the kiss could lead to more.

     I had long experienced the tension between being vulnerable and defended in the sexual arena. The year before I had fallen in love with a male friend but had pledged myself not to go sexual with him. After all, he was a newly-wed. At about that same time my wife in frustration said, “I just wish you’d get your sex somewhere else.” Those conditions set me up for what happened, but I’m not looking to blame anyone. There were more contributors, for example, I had not had male-to-male sex since age fifteen. And, of course, that evening I was away from home with a stranger who desired me. I was needy and not shocked by my condition. I was also lucky. This late 70s sex without protection with a man who had lived and worked in large cities did not leave me with an STD. 

     I was vulnerable not only to the sex that night; I was also ready to have an affair. I had heard his words of maybe-love and a couple of weeks later, when I called him, I realized that he must be running scared, even experiencing guilt feelings. That didn’t suit me. I didn’t want the guilt feelings of another to spoil our relationship as it surely would have. My formidable defenses arose. I never called back. 

     Several years later when I saw the pastoral minister at a regional conference, he said, “Let’s go fuck.” 

     I responded, “I don’t have time.” 

     He countered with a smile and a chuckle, “I thought you’d say that.”

About the Author

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


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

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A Visit to the Doctor/Nurse by Pat Gourley

“The responsibility of the nurse is not to make people well, or to prevent their getting sick, but to assist people to recognize the power that is within them to move to higher levels of consciousness.”

Margaret A. Newman, Health as Expanding Consciousness, 1994.
There are fresh flowers daily, AIDS Grove in Golden Gate Park
Photo by Author

I would have thought that after forty years in health care and thirty-five of them as an R.N. I could write on this in my sleep. That proved not to be the case.

Looking back on my own considerable number of visits to a nurse or doctor and the many thousands of interactions I have had where I was the nurse I do think the most satisfying and hopefully successful interactions were those that could be characterized as a partnership.
The realization, that I suppose was forced on me through my own HIV infection and then being in a caring capacity for many dying from AIDS, was that we, the medical establishment, were essentially helpless to make it all better. Our role seemed to be postponing and ameliorating the inevitable. This could obviously get very depressing in a hurry and I was occasionally asked over my 20 years of direct HIV care why I hadn’t “burned out.” I guess I never had a very good answer for that but looking back then and now I think I never felt that way, certainly not for very long.

Even in an AIDS clinic I was able to find joy in my work. On my best days I think it can be summed up with another quote from Newman: “The joy of nursing lies in being fully present with the clients in the disorganization and uncertainty of their lives – an unconditional acceptance of the unpredictable, paradoxical nature of life.” In other words always be aware that shit happens to everyone sooner or later. My own personal description of confronting this reality goes something like this. “Hey, we are all in this together and its always going to be messy, whether we are talking about the secret sauce from that Big Mac dripping down our chins or the drainage coming out of our private parts.”

A totally anecdotal observation on my part, and one certainly not applicable to all, is that hospice and oncology nurses tend to hang in there for a long time whereas ICU and ER folks tend to come and go much more quickly. Maybe that is why you see so many young ones in the urgent care settings and a lot more grey hair on those hanging your chemo. Perhaps this is due to a relationship in one setting predicated on a lot of adrenalin and the “I am here to save you” mentality while the other being more of a partnership that involves mutual problem solving around the issue for the day. Or perhaps it just takes a few decades to learn the art of compassionate communication?

I certainly am not suggesting that if you go to an ER with crushing chest pain that you should first insist on a mutual dialogue to outline a plan of care before they reach for the nitroglycerin. Give the providers all the pertinent information they ask for and then let them do their thing and hopefully they won’t have to reach for the paddles.

A key realization I came to some decades back, and I relate it to a combination of ICU nursing and the books of a physician named Larry Dossey, was that you really cannot as a provider and also as a patient view illness as bad or a failure. Margaret Newman, the nursing theorist quoted above, also planted the seeds for this in my nursing school years. I think it was Dossey who brought to my attention that health and illness are really two sides of the same coin; you cannot have the realization of one without the other.

It is, I think, when either or both the provider and the patient, perhaps even just subliminally, have the idea that someone has fucked-up that the real trouble starts. This leads to judgment and defensiveness and not an honest sharing of all the gory details that are often a part of everyone’s life. I am not implying that we don’t often make impertinent choices that have consequences, but that should not compromise the reality of the here and now and certainly does not need to define how we and our nurse or doctor will address the problem on the table at that moment. Those of us repetitive sinners can take some, rather sick I suppose, solace from the fact that a whole bunch of bad stuff happens even to those who are always doing it the “right way.”

What I think Newman was referring to as “moving to higher levels of consciousness” is realizing that we do not need to make so many impertinent choices.

As a patient if you have a truly nonjudgmental provider, not always easy to find, there is absolutely nothing you can tell them that will shock or if it does it will be only a transient reaction that is soon put into appropriate perspective. All the cards need to be on the table or an effective plan for addressing the issue at hand is often needlessly delayed. When honesty is involved many fewer mistakes get made in deciding on any intervention.

An example of this I heard once was, “I think I got this hepatitis from a bad lime in my drink at the Triangle,” when much more helpful information would have been, “Do you think maybe I got this from licking butt at the baths a couple weeks ago?” I have countless examples of this sort of magical thinking handed to me perhaps in an attempt to either not shock me or make me not think less of the person. Happily over the years of building trust with many of my clients we were able to dispense with the bullshit and cut to the chase, almost always facilitating a better outcome.

If we as both patients and providers could approach each encounter as an endeavor at caring for the soul everyone would be much better off. I’d close with another quote this one from Thomas Moore and his 1992 book Care of the Soul:

“Care of the soul… isn’t about curing, fixing, changing, adjusting or making healthy…. It doesn’t look to the future for an ideal, trouble free existence. Rather, it remains patiently in the present, close to life as it presents itself day by day….”

Gourley 6/23/2013

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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To Be Held by Betsy

When I was an infant, the scientists–physicians and psychologists–who knew everything there was to know about mothering, all proclaimed that holding your baby too much was not a good thing. The consequences of this seemingly natural human behavior was, in fact, risky. Babies could grow up expecting to be held all the time. They would become dependent on being held, they would become “spoiled.” Also at the time cow’s milk or cow-milk-based formula created by humans and promoted by the forces of capitalism, was better for a human baby than human milk which was, after all, only poor mother nature’s formula for what is best for a newborn.

Years later when I became a mother the same thinking was prevalent–except for the milk ideas. There had sprung up in recent years a group of rebel mothers called Le Leche League. The group promoted breast feeding among new moms. They had a book which described the benefits of not only the milk, but also the process of delivering the milk, not the least of which was to hold your baby close while feeding him. They held the notion that there is a reason the female human body is configured as it is. That properly and naturally feeding your baby required holding him close.

I actually heard many mothers at the time say “The problem is that if you breast feed your baby, you will become completely tied down to him/her.” When I told my doctor husband this, he had the perfect answer. “Well, a mother SHOULD be tied down to her baby. That is how a baby survives and thrives.”

My oldest child did not have the benefits of breast milk for very long. The pediatrician instructed me, a very insecure novice mom, to begin supplementing the breast milk with formula after two months or so. Why? Well, baby needs more milk and it was believed baby could not get enough milk from its mother alone. I soon learned that once you start the process of bottle feeding, baby learns really fast. It’s much easier for her to suck milk from a bottle than from a breast. It flows much, much faster out of a bottle and, well, they don’t have to work so hard to get it. Then, of course, they don’t want the breast milk, demand for the rich liquid plummets, and the milk-making machine quickly becomes non-productive.

I later learned that breast milk is the best, there is plenty of it as supply usually meets with demand, and it works perfectly for about one year, longer if one wishes, and if the feeding is supplemented with a source of iron.

Actually, in a society driven by corporate profits the truth is the main problem with breast feeding in that the milk is free, so long as the mother is properly nourished and hydrated. No one is buying anything. No one benefits monetarily from that method of feeding, no one except baby and mother. No corporate profit is to be made. Baby and mother alone benefit.

It seems that to be held IS important–not just for babies but for children and adults as well. Being held promotes healing, comfort, security, well being of all kinds. It is hard to imagine how it ever came to be regarded as detrimental. Yet the notion continues in some minds.

One of the first complete sentences my oldest child ever uttered was, “I want to behold.”

Of course when we first heard this we asked, “behold–behold what? A star in the East.

What do you mean, “I want to behold? Oohh! You need comforting and reassurance. You want to be held.” we said, realizing that our brilliant three year old was not familiar with the passive form of the verb to hold.

Holding in a loving way and being held is loving behavior. What adult does not want to hold a kitten or puppy immediately when he or she see it. I think holding each other as an expression of love is something we learn or at least become comfortable with early in life. I think we could use more of it in this troubled world of ours. I’m all for it.

Denver 2013

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.