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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The Facts by Merlyn

Americans live in a world where the facts don’t mean anything.

I have finally realized that people don’t want to know the facts about what is really happening in the world and choose to believe the lies they see on FOX and CNN.

When Iran, Germany, China, Russia, Asia times and Australian web sites all have the same story and that story isn’t even mentioned on American TV or web sites, I tend to believe the foreign news.

I’m not going to say anything about what is going on today in the real world because I don’t think anyone really wants to know about things that they can’t do anything about.
I used to spend hours every day looking for the FACTs.

For the last two years I have stopped looking at American TV news. I’m down to about 15 minutes a day reading the headlines on the foreign web sites.

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

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Porn Scorn by Gillian

To be honest, I don’t scorn porn.

To do that I’d have to think about it, and I don’t.
I never have.
I barely, no joke intended, know what it is.

I have a vague vision of assorted people in assorted numbers and assorted combinations doing assorted things of which I can have no concept as my imagination begins to falter somewhere in, I suspect, the early stages of so-called ‘Soft Porn.’
The reason I don’t think about it is not that it freaks me out or sickens me, except for child porn, which is a different thing all together, I’m talking about consenting adult stuff here, but simply that it does not affect my life.

At least, as far as I know.
Perhaps in a general societal way it does, but for every study that shows it’s negative effects there’s a corresponding one demonstrating the opposite.

So, I simply don’t know.

What, I asked myself, if it affected me personally?
What if Betsy was in fact playing the lead in some geriatric triple X movie?

Or what if I discovered that she was off with a whole group of dirty old wrinklies watching dirty old movies when I thought she was at the Senior Center doing Yoga stretch?
Sorry, but really! Can you imagine this group?
What did he say?
I don’t think he said anything. It was kinda grunting.
What’s he doing now? Could you do that?
With my arthritis?
Did you ever do that?
If I did I don’t remember.

The fact is, that unless you want to fly away on attitudes and prejudices formed by others, it is realistically impossible to hold an informed opinion about a subject on which you are completely ignorant.

Every argument has an opposing one and statistics on pornography I imagine to be about as accurate as 1950 statistics on homosexuality.

As to fiscal concerns the guesstimate seems to be an average spending per capita of less than $50 per year, so nothing to break the family bank. And, by the way, I couldn’t help myself and I had to get something to compare that figure with, and found that in 2007, just as an example, the Iraq war budget equaled an annual per capita expense of $121 thousand, and hey, I don’t have to contribute via taxes to support porn watchers so…..no worries there either.

Perhaps in the end my lack of opinion and concern is simply a result of my naivety, and if I really knew what porn was, I would have definite opinions.
But at my age I doubt that I’m going to find out.

And this quotation from Erica Jong would scare me off.
I’d be afraid of staying too long.

She says,
“My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.”

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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House Cleaning by Donny Kaye

Housecleaning, thoroughness, reward and perception were all interconnected in my early years of formation with my mother. By the ages of seven, eight and nine I was responsible for the weekly cleaning of our modest home in Athmar Park. My father was a laborer at the nearby rubber factory and consequently our resources were few. This meant that what belongings we did have were cared for in the most particular of ways to extend their life as much as possible. My parent’s European heritage as well as having survived the Great Depression resulted in the lived experience of the old adage, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Weekly, the house cleaning tasks were evident and it was my job to complete those tasks, thoroughly by noon on Saturdays. If the tasks were completed to my mother’s satisfaction, “The Best Little Boy” was rewarded with a trip to JC Penny on Broadway. There I would get to pick out new underwear, or socks, possibly a new striped t-shirt as my reward. The essentials hardly seemed a reward but if I didn’t meet the cleanliness requirements, I went without! Children of today might regard this as abusive!

I learned that each cleaning task in each room of our unassuming home was essential and non-negotiable if I was to receive my reward. Cleaning meant the whole house, in its entirety, not just the front rooms of the house or any type of weekly rotation of cleaning; it meant all of the rooms from the back door and out the front. “Spic and Span”, early on became my motto!

Being “The Best Little Boy” also meant distinguishing early on, the best cleaners for different tasks such as vinegar water, baking soda, bon-ami, as well as the skillful operation of the Hoover and manipulation of the ringer in the rag-mop bucket.

I trained early-on in life and developed some useful life skills when it comes to housecleaning. I also realized as a child that house cleaning served to cover up some of the unique character of our meager belongings. I don’t know that it was a direct teaching but I certainly learned that if it was clean and orderly, there was less likely a question to be raised about quality or fundamental characteristics. It certainly taught me that some things were best kept in the closet, even if the closet in the back of the house existed like the legendary “Fibber McGee and Molly’s” closet.

Some of what I learned as a seven-year-old has transferred into essential skills and learning for life. Especially these past 10 years I have come to realize the whole house does not have to be done immediately and that it’s possible to approach it one room at a time starting with the most essential of the living spaces. If that space that is the most lived in is attended to in a good way, the other spaces of the interior can hold and be dealt with as necessary. And when the main interior space is cleared, the need to cover up what is fundamental diminishes into nonexistence. Since that day in the quiet and isolation of the bathroom when I first acknowledged my homosexuality, the cleansing that was necessary for me to begin this journey into wholeness began. One day at a time; one revelation to the next. First, my former wife, a few close friends, and then my children, extending into coming out clearings with 39 others, the cobwebs of a lifetime resulting from a closet not opened. Recently someone asked me about my coming out. Specifically, they were curious to know how my parents and siblings had taken the news.

“I waited until they all had passed!” I responded.

All had passed except for my nieces, whom I have come out to and one remaining brother-in-law, whom who has known me since I was two. And whom I haven’t been ready to face, much like that closet in the back of the house filled with the messy keepings of a lifetime. Last Wednesday I made that call and scheduled a face-to-face visit with my brother-in-law whom I’ve been avoiding for nearly 2 years. After dusting off some of the space between us with light conversation, I came clean and revealed that I was divorced and finally acknowledged to him what I have always known, that I am a man of a certain sexual persuasion. He moved toward me, close in. With eyes soft and moist, he responded by acknowledging having known me since I was two, that he and my sister realized long ago, when I was a child, that I was different. At eighty-six he even used the words, “coming out” with me as he assured me that my orientation made no difference in his love for me.

A true cleansing had occurred, a housecleaning of sorts. The skills I have learned over a lifetime applied to that final space within. I had come clean, no longer needing to hide the orientation within me that I presumed objectionable to those who have become the fabric of my life. The experience of confiding in him and experiencing his love was about acceptance, both mine and his. We parted with a long embrace, him whispering to me his love for me and his acknowledgment of how courageous it was for me to have come and sat with him. I walked from his front door with a spring in my step. Whew! A sigh of relief! This house is finally clear, it might even be called clean. I know this won’t be the last house cleaning I will have to do regarding this room of my house. Many more conversations will occur allowing me to come clean about the essence of me, just as the housecleaning that is always there as a result of living and the passage of time. But for this moment, like Saturdays when I was 7, 8 &9, the house is clean! What’s my reward? Clean underwear, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe the satisfaction that comes with recognition of a job well done! I think I’m going out and play!!

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.

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From the Pulpit by Colin Dale

As a child and young adult I was spoken to from two pulpits. The one was a Roman Catholic pulpit. The other was an Episcopal pulpit. My father was a Roman Catholic. My mother an Episcopalian. My father Bill hadn’t realized when he asked my mother Anna to marry him that as far as his Roman Catholic church was concerned the only proper marriage was between one Roman Catholic and one Roman Catholic. In other words, a same faith marriage. Nevertheless, the pastor of my father’s Roman Catholic church, Saint Monica’s in Manhattan, consented to marry Bill and Anna–but not before humiliating my Anna in exacting from her a promise to raise her children as Roman Catholics, in effect invalidating her faith. Compounding his sin, the pastor at Saint Monica’s informed Bill and Anna the marriage would have to be held quietly, privately, not in the church sanctuary but in what I must assume was the less holy ground of rectory house next-door, in effect telling Anna she was a touch less worthy. Perhaps even a dangerous. Anna, my mother, a supremely gentle woman, never forgave Saint Monica’s pastor for the insults. Nor have I.

Now this may sound like a real downer, this story I’ve started to tell, the beginning of a relentlessly bitter memoir that might be titled How Faith Fucked Me Up. But there were deeply rewarding ups along with the downs in the years of my growing up in my relationship not only with my father’s Catholic pulpit but also with my mother’s Episcopal pulpit. It’s the rewarding ups I want to tell you about. To do so, though, I need to talk about these pulpits as metaphor but as people–about the men who commanded these two pulpits and who came to represent in my mind contrasting theologies not as hard-ass doctrine but as three-dimensional human beings. And as much as to this day I scorn the pastor of Saint Monica’s, I’m pleased to say in the years of my growing up I eventually found in the two pulpits–the Catholic and the Episcopal–men of every stripe: the compassionate and the cold, virtuosos and sad-sacks, comics and grouches, altruists and narcissists, scholars and fools. The variety alone bolstered my faith, if not in god, then certainly in humanity. It amused me too to see that these men of every stripe sorted themselves pretty much equally between the two pulpits, informing me neither faith was in full possession of the virtuosos and scholars. Nor, for that matter, of the narcissists and fools.

I’m the younger of two boys born to Bill and Anna, and there’s a 14-year spread between my brother and me. Good by her word, my mother permitted my brother and me to be raised as Catholics. When I was born, the family was no longer living in Manhattan–no longer in Saint Monica’s parish. Home when I was born was The Bronx–Pelham Bay–the rabidly Catholic Italian, Irish, and–in my case–dissonant Welsh–northeast corner of The Bronx. My father, my brother and I attended what was for its time a mega-church, populous–a hefty congregation needing six full masses on Sunday mornings–a church with respectable affluence for what was a working-class neighborhood. The church was Our Lady of the Assumption–which, as a kid, I thought was strange. Our Lady of the Assumption? I thought that was like saying Our Lady of Your Guess is as Good as Mine.

In any event, OLA (as it was called) was too big for me to ever get to know any of the priests as people. The Catholic priests I’d meet and learn to admire–to even regard as friends–came along later. While I was a kid going to OLA the priests were all two-dimensional, known to me only by the attributes neighbors would gossip about–such as OLA’s pastor, Monsignor Francis Randolf, the Tippler, sometimes called Randolf the Red-Nosed Pastor, whose rambling Latin on Sundays was sloppy and slurred; and Father Mario Giordano, for whom English must not have been even his third, fifth, or tenth language, the best bet for Saturday confession, we kids knew, because in Father Giordano’s confessional even a confession of genocide would draw as penance only three Hail Marys, one Our Father, and a promise to go forth and do genocide no more.

All the while, my mother was attending Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, a founded in 1693, a handsome Gothic Revival structure with a piercing copper-plate spire and picture-postcard cemetery, still in use back when I was a kid, but with scores of wafer-thin, leaning Revolutionary War headstones.

Whereas my father and I would shuffle off Sundays to OLA–my brother, a capable right-fielder, had already exchange Sunday morning worship for city-league baseball–while my father and I would shuffle off half-heartedly to OLA, my mother would be worshipping with comparative sincerity at Saint Peter’s. My mother, unlike my father, really believed. I didn’t know back then if there was such a thing as real faith, but if there was, my mother had it in spades. She never proselytized; hers was a quiet faith. And the depth of this faith led my mother into all sort of available involvements at Saint Peter’s–the choir, the altar society, the food bank. I can still see her at the Smith Corona typing up mimeograph stencils for the Sunday bulletin.

These volunteer activities in turn led to her making a great friend of Saint Peter’s rector, Father Jeremy Brown. Father Brown was my mother’s idea of a priest–warm, kindly, charismatic–the sort if you’d ask Central Casting to send over a lovable priest, they send Jeremy Brown. Brown would have dinner with us. In Brown, I met my first fully human cleric. It was Father Brown who told me, to satisfy my curiosity, it would be safe for me to go along with my mother to an Episcopal service–which I did, nervously, fearful the next time I stepped into Our Lady of the Assumption I would explode in flame.

When I was in my late teens my father lost the only job I’d ever known him to have, a foreman in a lower Manhattan factory. To help until my father could find another permanent job, Rector Brown invited my father to work in Saint Peter’s ancient cemetery. Although it paid modestly–for which my father was grateful–the work was tough, not just physically but emotionally–graves were still dug by hand at St. Peter’s, and, as my father learned, digging adjacent graves often made for disturbing discoveries.

When it became obvious this work was taking a damaging toll on my father, Rector Brown reached across the aisle–or I could say nave–to a Jesuit friend at Fordham University–Fordham University, a great concentration of Catholism. Brown secured for my mother a part-time typist’s job in Fordham’s philosophy department. Again my mother drilled down, volunteering, doing far more than what was expected of her, and in doing so, endeared herself to the Jesuit faculty. It was only a matter of time now before we had Jesuits at our dinner table. Jesuit philosophers no less–occasions which, for my mother with her finishing school certificate and my father, a high school drop-out, made for challenging suppertime conversation.

The youngest of the Jesuit philosophers was Jack Balog. Father Jack wasn’t much older than me, or so it seemed. He and I became great pal-around friends. At my age I would have to reach way up to hold my own in conversation with Father Jack, but fortunately, because his own Jesuit training was still fresh, Father Jack had only to reach a little ways down so as not to embarrass me. Father Jack and I did typical guy things–concerts, movies, bowling, always ending our evenings at the Steak & Brew near campus. A couple of beers and Jack was honest even about his concerns about celibacy. A couple of beers and I was undeterred in my dishonesty about my sexuality. Retired today, Jack lives on a university campus in Eastern Pennsylvania. I’m out now to Jack. We’re still friends.

But the fellow I want mostly to tell you about is Father George Maloney. Father Maloney–or Father George as we all called him–was the chair of the Philosophy Department. Father George was easily two decades older than me, so an uncle figure. He was also a man whose IQ dazzled but without a hint of pretention. Father George’s specialty was Eastern Orthodoxy, a subject on which he authored quite literally two or three dozen books (many of which I have, warmly inscribed, on my bookshelf today). Unlike my pal Father Jack, though, Father George, Father Jack’s boss at Fordham, was an austere man, in appearance as well as in character. A lifetime of extraordinary self-discipline, strict vegetarianism, and long, long-distance cycling had give Father George, from a distance, rail-thin and with a wild salt & pepper beard, a somewhat disquieting look. It was only when you got up close, across our dinner table for instance, you could see how his eyes said you’ve no reason to be keep away. Nonetheless, unlike Father Jack, I would never have called Father George a pal-around friend. Our relationship was and remained mentor and pupil.

I’ll close with a snapshot of Father George, one of many years later. Father George remained at Fordham as chair of the Philosophy Department. I went off to college, got my B.A. in ’66, then went into the Army (having screwed up and taken R.O.T.C.–another story for another Monday), got discharged in ’70, worked for a newspaper in New Jersey for a few months, quit, discovered Colorado and snagged my M.A. at Western State in Gunnison, went back to New York for a year to help pout as my father slowly disappeared into dementia. I then returned to Colorado–this time to Denver and D.U. It was at D.U. that I met Jim, the young man who would be my partner for a decade. To collapse the tale, after a year Jim and I lost interest in D.U. We settled into an apartment in Capitol Hill and tried to keep it together working as waiters in a number of disappointing restaurants around Denver. Discouraged, I suggested we try our luck in my hometown, New York. Arriving, already nervous about the visibility of a love that dare not speak its name, Jim and I found it too, too uncomfortable living with my mother. Father George, though, over for dinner, spotted our distress and asked if we would like to come live at no cost, albeit temporarily until we could a place of our own, with the Jesuits on the Fordham campus. All of a sudden Jim and I were thinking this love that dare not speak its name–if we were to move into a Jesuit dorm–this love might just start hollering in the hallways. Anyway, Jim and I met with Father George. “I know what your concerned about,” Father George said. “Don’t be. The way I see it, God loves all love.”

And so Jim and I moved in with the Jesuits. We found ourselves in a four-story dorm full of Jesuits, mostly philosophers, many from Eastern Europe and the Orient with absolutely no English. Ours was an incredible experience, living in the Jesuit dorm–but that brings me to the threshold of another story, another story for another Monday.

Father George Maloney lived a good, long life, retiring not all that many years ago to a monastery in Southern California. I would phone every three, four months and we would chat. I never did get out there to see Father George, although I had the best of intentions. Then, last year, I phoned to learn that Father George, at 96, had died.

I grew up with two pulpits. Today I have none. I’m not sure if I’m any the worse off for that. I am sure, however, I’m grateful for the two pulpits–the Catholic and the Eposcopal–I had in my childhood and young adult years, not for pulpits themselves but for the lifelong friends they released into my company.

About the Author

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

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Lottery by Betsy

If it is the Colorado Lottery we are referring to here, then it is highly unlikely that I will ever win, since I do not play. I gave up playing that lottery after giving away about one hundred dollars in five dollar increments with zero return and asked myself the profound question: “Why am I doing this?” There are better investments for even one hundred dollars which do not require that I give away ALL my capital.

Don’t get me wrong. I do benefit everyday from the Colorado Lottery. We all do. I especially enjoy the bicycle paths and parks and other amenities immensely.

Of the $2.3 billion utilized by the state since the start of the lottery in 1983, 50% has gone to the Great Outdoors Trust Fund, 40% to the Conservation Trust Fund, and 10% to the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife.

Here are a few winners which we all benefit from due to the Colorado Lottery.

Close to 1000 miles of hiking and biking trails built and maintained all over the state.

Open space and land acquisition. Development and maintenance for city, county, and state parks and recreation facilities.

Funding for school health and safety issues.

If we are talking about other lotteries in life–or the lottery of life, truth be told, I have won many times indeed. I had the winning ticket when I was born to the parents that I had. I won when I married Bill instead of Jim or Al. I had a winning ticket when I got my daughter back. I won when I chose to come out. I could go on and on describing the lucky things that have happened to me over my lifetime. Yes, some involved making a good choice. Like, the winningest lottery ticket of my entire life: when I cashed in and got Gill. But face it. Much of life is a crap-shoot. This was very clear to me recently when I chose to have my spine go under the knife.
“There is a 20% chance you will be worse off after surgery. There is a 1% chance of severe damage to nerves, paralysis, or even death,” I was told. True, the odds were on my side but the chance for disaster is always there.

If I win the lottery? If it’s the Colorado Lottery–I won’t. The Life Lottery–I have won, and I do win–most of the time–and I hope to continue my run of good luck.

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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Writing My Story by Ricky

I suppose that everyone else has some or most of the same impediments to writing their story as I do when writing mine.  Between all authors of course, there are the differences of skill, vocabulary, imagination, and life experiences from which to draw inspiration. I am referring to the hindrances brought about by the so-called “writers block” and “the muse isn’t musing” and a lack of “passion” for the topic.

Only rarely do inspiration and passion combine to motivate me to write on a topic earlier than five to eighteen hours in advance of its presentation to our Telling Your Story group. A procrastinator all my life, (influenced by all those before-the-sun-comes-up farm chores while living with my grandparents) I seem to be my best when faced with a rapidly approaching deadline. This writing is well within those time limits as I began to type it at 8:15 this morning after having it in my subconscious mind for over a week. Even after all that passage of time, no ideas on how to approach the topic for writing presented themselves until Sunday morning between 1:30 and 3:00 AM.

While looking for some photographs I could place into my stories on my blog site to jazz-it-up a bit, I found a box of photos labeled “John & Deborah.” As I perused the contents, I began to travel down the memories invoked by the images. Suddenly, the muse attacked and I knew what to write about this week.

Actually, the writing about part is really the same-old-thing; it’s about me. I am writing about my life’s story not just any story (as most of us do in this group). What makes the topic most difficult for me to write about, is my desire to include my dealings within in the context of how I interpret the meaning of the topic. I guess that is the “Drama King” or ego part of me wanting the story to be about me. But then again, that is the premise of this Telling Your Story group, so maybe I am not being a drama king or an egotist; just following the premise.

Now you might think that I am done with this topic as this is an easy place to stop but you would be wrong. This story is really about the effect the photographs have on me because the muse attacked me with that idea. Therefore, this is the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.

There were several photographs of major interest to me. Especially enjoyable are the ones where either my spouse or I had written some information on the back. Then there were those where nothing is written but I knew all the people and the background indicated the place if not the exact year. Then there are the mysterious ones where again nothing is written on the back and I knew at least one person in the photo but the background does not provide any memory jogs to time or location.

I found three black & white photos of me as a little boy of at various ages. One shows me sitting on a new Schwinn bicycle in front of the Christmas tree. I was five or six-years old.

Another photo shows me standing at the curb waiting for the school bus for my first day of 1st grade at the Hawthorn Christian School.

There are two official school photos of first and second grades. I really cannot tell which is which. There are very slight changes in my facial structure and one slight difference in the school uniform I am wearing, but I am not sure which one shows the younger me although I made an “educated” guess.

1st Grade
2nd Grade

Yet another shows me at 5-years old crouching on the front porch of our home. The expression on my face made me think that I was looking at a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio at 5-years old. In contrast, Donald thinks I look like a young Buddy Ebsen, which I can’t see any resemblance.

I have seen a photo of my mother, stepfather, and my 3-year old brother and sister taken on Easter Sunday in 1962. I know I took that picture but always wondered why there wasn’t one of me. Well, I found my equivalent photo in the box with all the others through which I was rummaging.

Me and my dog, PeeWee.

That photo and another one taken at high school graduation made me re-evaluate my life-long self-image.

HS Graduation

 Even though it will make me appear to be vain and egocentric if not an egomaniac, I must say that depending upon age I have always been very cute or rather handsome. (Perhaps not vain or an egomaniac as this is supposed to be a story about me.) This next part might be though. I was good looking enough that every pedophile within 50-miles of me should have had me on their most wanted list. Why they did not I will never know. Perhaps I was not all that attractive in reality.

So now, you know what struggles I have with writing my story and what goes through my brain as I do it. I hope it is not an ugly or frightful sight. 

©
16 July 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in 1948 in downtown Los Angeles.  Just prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grand-parents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce. 

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

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

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.
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Communications by Phillip Hoyle

Communications involve much more than words, a fact that to me seems especially true of communications made in the context of love, sex, and romance. In those contexts I feel uncertain what anyone is communicating to me. Why? Perhaps because I live too much in my own world. Perhaps I don’t hear anything except the words. Perhaps I just don’t get the emotional content of things said. Perhaps I didn’t get to practice love talk as a teen because I didn’t feel impelled toward girls and assumed boys were not interested. Perhaps I just cut off any expectation of falling in love so as to keep from getting hurt. Perhaps I married too young. I really cannot settle on any of these possibilities. 

A psychiatrist challenged my over use of ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe.’ He would say, “There you go again, waffling. Just tell me. Make up your mind.” That’s a problem. In my own defense I could have appealed to my scores on the Myers-Briggs inventory with its use of Jung’s conscious ego states (I was a strong perceiver and weak judge), but then maybe the psychiatrist wasn’t interested in Jung! Setting that aside, I will try to make a synthesis of these ideas—all my perhapses—and that synthesis begins with a story.

When I was in my mid-forties living in Albuquerque, Teresa, a pastoral counselor, attended the same interdenominational clergy support group I did even though she was not clergy. I liked that for I had always thought the clergy/lay distinction rather meaningless given my background. It seemed good to have present in the group the experience and perspective of someone not trained so thoroughly in theology and congregational life. Pastoral counseling is a category of psychotherapy alongside, for instance, family-systems counseling and other specialties. In addition to psychotherapeutic techniques used in other approaches, Pastoral counseling employs spiritual and religious themes as they seem appropriate to the counselor and counselee. (I say this to be as precise as possible.) Pastoral counselors offer pastors and parishes a referral resource for cases that go beyond the training of local parish pastors.

I liked Teresa. She liked me. When my high-school age daughter needed support in a particularly tough time, I asked Teresa if she’d be her counselor for about two months. Teresa told me it was not her practice to work with children of colleagues, but she trusted me and agreed to talk with my daughter. They met on two or three occasions and helped pave the way for Desma’s decisions to be successful. Teresa told me how impressed she was with my daughter.

Some months later Teresa opened up to me about her frustrations with work. We developed a caring and trusting relationship in which our communications always interlaced mutual respect and humor. She asked me about how I dealt with the dynamics of being an associate minister. I saw she needed help thinking through how to deal with some kind of power inequity in her own work. We talked informally over several weeks as she met whatever was her current crisis. Then she told me, “Phillip, you’re the best defended man I’ve ever known.”

I really didn’t know what she was saying to me but decided to take it as a compliment. After all she had said ‘best,’ and mom had taught me to say ‘thank you’ to compliments, even those I thought I didn’t earn or didn’t quite understand. For years I mulled over Teresa’s evaluation. I knew she was an astute observer of human behavior. I knew she took a woman-oriented point of view. I knew she followed current trends in psychoanalytic perspective. I knew she was kind. So I accepted her comment as I tried to understand its insight in order to better understand the dynamics it could reveal both in my personality and in my work relationships.

My musings eventually went far beyond work and landed me back at the point in my teen years when I must have been feeling the juices of sexual yearning churning in my system. I had watched my older sisters fall in love with guys and get hurt over it. I reasoned if you didn’t fall in love, you wouldn’t get hurt. I have no memory that my homosexual proclivity entered into my reasoning. I simply wasn’t interested in being hurt. I liked both boys and girls. I got hard-ons over both girls and boys. I liked both a lot. I decided that was okay, of course, even quite enjoyable. I dated girls. I sometimes had sex with a boy. I kept busy with music, studies, art, reading, various church and school groups, and my part-time work at the grocery store. I took care of the lawn at home. I was a nice kid who fit in well. I lived into my life. I defended myself from love’s potential pain.

When from my old age perspective I look most searchingly at my young self, I realize that probably something homosexual was at play, but it was deeply submerged. I liked the same boy who broke my sister’s heart, but I didn’t want the hurt she experienced. I wasn’t able to picture a social price for being gay because I couldn’t imagine two guys living together into adulthood. I pushed down what I didn’t even know. I feel fortunate my parents had not taught me guilt feelings or self-loathing. Those would have been destructive. As a teenager trying to figure out life and desire, I took my practical approach and set aside the potential of same-sex love. My defenses were sure and served me well. I didn’t reject my interest in other guys, just watched it. I enjoyed the feelings but didn’t pursue them into any kind of institutional form.

When I was twenty-one, I married a fine woman. When I was thirty, I fell in love with a nice man. I saw what was happening and was thrilled to my toes with the feelings. Eventually an affair began. It was controlled by distance and the uneven needs of my buddy. Some fifteen years later, our on and off occasional contact was not sufficient for me. I wanted to simplify my life, to find something that seemed more natural. Teresa’s comment which was made at around that time may have helped facilitate my changes. I opened myself to more feelings and to acting on them with people who lived nearby. Of course, it was a costly decision that ripped apart the stability of my life. I found thrills, but some twenty years later, even with all my new experiences in love, I still don’t catch onto the emotional content of what may be pick-up lines. I really still need folk to speak to me in simple, straightforward English. I need a hand to reach out and touch me before I am ready to shed my defenses. My settlement these days stands in great contrast to what I did as a fifteen year old, or a thirty-five year old, or even a forty-five year old.

I am so glad this sixty-five year old man had all these experiences. I continue to shed my inhibitions but still don’t want to hurt anyone else with the shedding. I recall when at fifty-five years I was so thrilled over meeting Rafael. I really was. I told a friend about him and wondered aloud at my surprise and at my elation that anyone would be interested in me. My friend Tony laughed and said, “Phillip, you just aren’t paying attention.”

Now I listen more carefully but still am not sure what I am hearing. Does this mean my closet door could open even wider? Does it mean I could become even more gay? I’m listening for the deepest levels of communication in my effort to overcome my own residual defenses—you know that ‘best’ stuff in me—and in my effort I hope really to hear what others are trying to communicate to me.

Whew.

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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What Is Your Sign? by Ray S

     Besides the classic “Do you come here often?”, “What is your sign?” seems to serve as an opening to a conversation at the local or, more often, an out of town watering hole.

     Generally those questions don’t result in a discussion of politics, current events, or religion. The basic motivation is to pick up an interested participant for some hopeful liaison more historically referred to as “hanky-panky.” This applies to everyone straight or gay.

     In retrospect I must admit my fifty-some years of matrimony never afforded me any bar hopping time, and before those days I was underage and much too shy to venture out into the worldly world, straight or gay!

     When Eros finally did rear his torrid head, there was no conversation just the signal of the adjacent rubbing knees in a darkened movie palace. So much for leading conversations. In this case actions spoke louder than words.

     Last year I finally ventured into what was purported to be a gay bar with a very distraught friend who was recovering from a bad dream and some form of rejection. Nothing a double martini couldn’t remedy. End result, he got drunk and the Black Crown was over populated with women not of the LGBT persuasion.

     With due respect to those of you “Horiscopians” from Aquarius to Capricorn, you may have something there with your crystal balls, but at the bar your contact probably doesn’t have time or the inclination for fortune telling and you need to get down to business.

     But if you do run across an interested soul mate remind them of the Sunday, February 10th, 2013 birthday horoscope which concluded with the following:

     “Use caution with over indulging. If you are attached, try to walk in your sweetie’s foot steps. Move often. Pisces draws you in. You enjoy his or her reverie.”

     Now that’s on the right track!

About the Author

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Mistaken Identity by Michael King

     There are numerous times I have been mistaken for someone else which I will disclose at the end of this story. I will in the meantime discuss my experiences with my own identity.

     Looking back, I believe that much of the way we think of ourselves comes from the way we think others see us. Early childhood expectations from those around us, the labels given to us, the comparisons we draw from observing other people and the successes and failures relating to our attempts to live up to being how we think we should be.
When I was in my thirties I changed my name. I don’t remember ever liking the one I was given at birth.

     I loved my grandfather but being named after him wasn’t what I would have wanted. My middle name was from a dead great, great uncle, I think. Somehow I never felt comfortable being George Albert King.

     My father’s name was Francis Frederick King and I felt uncomfortable that my younger brother was given that name with a roman numeral II after it. I felt that rightfully that should have been my name even though I didn’t like it either.

     In college I had a friend whose name was Michael. I couldn’t have let myself even think about my feelings for him. He was so stunningly beautiful that people would make strange sounds when seeing him; the girls especially. Not only was he good looking, he was a wonderful person. I felt so honored to be his best friend. I can see now that I was in love with him and probably he was with me. Our wives were also the best of friends. I had wished that I had been named Michael but the idea of changing my name didn’t occur to me for another dozen years. I did however name my son Michael.

     When I was 33 I had a vision that changed my life. As a result I changed my name. Two years later I went to court and officially became Michael Jon King. Almost immediately after I started calling myself Michael I became aware that people acted very differently to me than they had when I was George. I felt different about myself and it seemed like I was finally being who I really was. I also had a better sense of how I wanted to become and by now have actually changed myself into the person I feel I really am. I owe a lot to this to the “Telling your story” group as so much of my baggage, the pains of the past, the delusions I had created have been recognized and in recognizing this has brought about a clarity of being the who that I am and has given me a freedom and a peace of mind that I had never known before. I have self-respect. I didn’t know what was missing previously but felt something was. I was too burdened with trying to be what I thought I should be and wasn’t being who I am.

I’m glad that I had a family. I glad I had the failures that taught me so much, and, I’m glad I had successes. I created a mistaken identity for myself in many ways.

     The mistaken identity that I mentioned at the beginning of this story has been because I have received many calls from collectors mistaking me for some deadbeats with the same name as mine who don’t pay their bills.

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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Goofy Tales by Merlyn

     This tale starts on a cold windy and snowy Friday night in Jan 1979. I was driving truck hauling meat out of Denver. To the east coast, there was a big storm passing east of Denver.
I had a load that wouldn’t be ready until 6 pm; around 5pm Colorado closed all of the main roads going east out of Denver.

     At 6 pm I went down to Curtis picked up my paper work, fueled the truck, hooked up to the loaded trailer and did the pre-trip inspection so the truck was ready to go when the roads opened. There wasn’t any reason to go thirty miles and sit in the truck waiting for the road to open so I went back home.

     I always liked to have some kind of music on when I was driving and there were so many places that you could not pick up anything that I would recorded my favorite radio station on tape while I was listening to the road reports, I would play the tapes when I got tired of listening to the tapes that I had owned.
Around 5 am they opened I 70 and I got out of Denver.

     A few weeks later I was on the last leg of an east coast run. I had made my last fuel stop in Omaha, ate a good meal, It was a beautiful clear moonless night, the road was dry and the sky was full of stars life was good. I was less than nine hours from being home and I was looking forward to having a good time in Denver before I left out again.

     It was around midnight when I pulled back onto westbound I 80. I only had to make one more stop at the scales entering CO for my port slip. Nebraska was one of the best states to drive across at night back then, I 80 was in good shape and late at night then the cops would see a bunch of trucks running together driving in single file doing around 72 -75 mph they would leave us alone and let us go about our business.

     I could hear a couple of drivers talking on the CB. One of them was telling a story, now being a good story-teller is a skill that carries a lot of weight on (CB) Channel 19.

     The driver that was doing the most talking was a good old southern boy with the kind of voice everyone likes to listen to. I caught up with them slowed down and fell in about a block or so behind them.
He was headed for Seattle I would be dropping south on I76. When you drive coast to coast it’s not unusual to meet someone and spend a day or more running together.

     We would spend the next 5 hours 350 mile with him doing most of the talking.
At some point I changed the tape in the radio, and someone came on the CB and asked me what station I was listening to. I told him it was a station in Denver. The CB was quiet for a while then someone came back on and he said he could not pick up anything but though he heard something about the roads being closed around Denver on my radio when I was talking. I decided to have some fun. I said I wasn’t paying attention it.
I waited a while backed up the tape turned the volume up and keyed the mike so everyone could hear them reporting about I 70 I 25 and I 76 being closed.

     You never know how many people are listening on a CB but all of a sudden we had 5 or 6 drivers talking about if the roads were going to be closed ahead maybe we should stop somewhere before we got stuck in a snow storm waiting for the roads to open.
As we went past an exit a cop turned on his blue lights for a second and told everyone to drive carefully when we got to the storm. He knew there wasn’t any storm ahead of us.

     Since I was the only one picking up the Denver station I was telling everyone that the snow was letting up on I 80 and I 76 and they may be open for a while before the worst part of the storm got there.

     Three of us turned onto south on I76 the weather was clear and nice, it was warm when we got to the CO scales. I waited until then to tell everyone about how I had recorded the radio station and we all had a good laugh.

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.