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
Posted on

Drama Queen by Ricky

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

— Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter

Last week I had to ask
our group leader what exactly is a “drama queen”.  His answer was okay but due to the passage of
time I forgot the answer.  Thus, I was on
my own pondering this topic and how it relates to my life experiences.  I thought so hard that I gave myself a
dramatic headache to substitute for smoke pouring out my ears.

My ponderous labors were not in vain however,
as I did give birth to a personal point of reference; and it did not even take
nine months.
I
witnessed my first episode of “dramatical” behavior in 1953.  My mother made me wear sandals to
Kindergarten where other boys began to call me a “sissy” for wearing them.  When I got home that afternoon, I begged my
mother to get me “real” shoes like the other boys, but she said, “No.”  When my father came home, I turned on the
tears, panic, and near tantrum behavior and he took me out to get new footwear;
he truly understood the situation.  To
some that may qualify for juvenile (or infantile) drama queen behavior, but to
me it was self-preservation-behavior.
The
next time I noticed dramatical behavior in others and I, was in the Fall of 1965
and Spring of 1966.  This time it was
group behavior as many of us performed in the two high school plays, Pioneer Go Home and Tom Jones. 
Combined with a few skits in Boy Scouts, these were my only youthful
experiences with drama.  As it turns out
though, I really enjoyed it.

Cast of Tom Jones–I’m Tom

I enjoyed drama.

In
1969, three young adult males and I performed, at a church social, a skit in barbershop
quartet style; not the harmony parts just the dramatical part.  We sang a “moving” rendition of When It’s Hog Calling Time in Nebraska.  It was well received.  At least no one threw tomatoes at us.

Many
years later, while in the Air Force, I was the supervisor of a flight of
30-missile security personnel one of whom, the flight sergeant, was always
getting lost or stuck on unauthorized roads. 
I was joking with one of my staff sergeants about giving the flight
sergeant an award for all his efforts in finding new places to get stuck and
areas in which to play lost and found. 
The next week, the staff sergeant brought me a homemade medal of French
design to award the flight sergeant.
The
award was a little compass (the type with a small suction cup so it could be
attached to a windshield) which was suspended from a red, white, and blue
striped ribbon to fit around the recipient’s neck.  I invited the squadron commander and
operations officer to attend my flight’s guard mount that day to witness the
award ceremony.
After
attending to the normal activities of guard mount, I called the flight sergeant
to come Front and Center.  When he was in
place, I gave an “over the top” flowery spiel about his ability and skill in blazing new trails and
documenting response time to hazardous locations ending with, “Sergeant R., I
present you with the coveted Pathfinder of the Year Award.”  The highlight of the presentation was after I
placed the ribbon around his neck I grasped his shoulders and kissed him French
style on both cheeks.  Everyone “cracked
up laughing,” the sergeant turned bright red, and even the commander enjoyed
the “performance.”  This is not drama
queen behavior; it is morale boosting behavior to lighten the load of being in a
boring and thankless job.
After
all that pondering on the topic, I do recognize stereotypical drama queen
behavior, when I see others engage in it repeatedly.  However, I am not a stereotypical
person.  Like each of you, I am unique in
my personality, traits, speech patterns, sense of humor, and so on.  I believe that we all do things sometimes
that could make others refer to us as drama queens.  For myself, I may actually do these things
quite often but rather subtlety.  No one
has ever said I was effeminate or had effeminate traits or habits and I am not
flamboyant or flaming.  No, my drama
queeniness is very low key.
For
example, I like to tell jokes, mostly puns, at odd intervals to lighten the
mood; or perhaps to turn the attention to me. 
I like to wear bright solid color shirts and t-shirts with logos or
sayings or other messages on them; perhaps again to make people notice me.  While I do not deliberately arrive late to
our Telling Your Story group, it does draw attention to me.  So maybe I really do qualify as a drama
queen; except for one thing.  I am not
female so “queen” does not fit.
“The time has come,” this author said,
“To talk of many things: 
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax– 
Of cabbages–and drama kings– 
And why the sea is boiling hot– 
And whether pigs have wings.”
If
you must, just call me a Drama King.

©
16 April 2012

About the Author

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

When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay
and then at South Lake Tahoe, CA,
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.  “I find that writing these memories is very therapeutic.”

Ricky’s blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.
Posted on

Place of Origin by Jon Krey

All of my family was born in
the U.S. except for one elderly female cousin to my mother. Aunt Berta. She was
born before WWI in Bavaria. My relatives and parents were of German and English
descent or Pennsylvania Dutch as they insist on calling it. This mixture could
occasionally cause all kinds of ruckus though generally they were kind folk of
humble origins having migrated here well over a century before. None were
wealthy save one uncle on my mother’s side who used his considerable talent and
influence to climb the ladder of success at Allis Chalmers all the way to
president!  He was accorded the rank of
family hero and the one and only person of means. Others were just ordinary folk
tending the land as they had for generations. They came down into Kansas from
Pennsylvania Dutch country sometime around the beginning of the 20th
century living in or around the small farming community of Fort Scott
Kansas.  My how that little town of
memories has changed. Gone are the cobble stone streets now covered with asphalt.
Gone are the sidewalks of the Great Depression. Gone are the great and small
Victorian homes that dotted the narrow streets in the 1940’s. It’s sad that so
much history is buried; too often forgotten now-a-days. None of the young
generation of Ft. Scott seem to care much though many landmarks have been
preserved thanks in great part to my Dad‘s siblings.

But to go on:
With the Great Depression
still breathing down everyone’s neck my parents left the “security” of Ft.
Scott in 1939 hoping Dad could find a more lucrative job in the great
metropolis of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had no trouble leaving the farming community
behind. Mom bore me at St. John’s Hospital’s “Lying In”, in Tulsa in 1940, not
on the 4th of July but 3 days advanced; the whole world soon to be
toppling on the brink of WWII. 

Our home was a duplex on the
east side of town, across the tracks. Simply called EAST TULSA./ WHITTIER
SQUARE, in particular.   Certainly not
the best place in Tulsa. Some 5 years later my baby sister Barbara was born on
August 1945 on the same date, the 7th as I.  Before and during the war Dad’s job had
protected him ( and his small family) from the draft, staving off destitution .
Luck wasn’t with us, his job in Tulsa came to a screeching halt with the war’s
end leaving my family virtually out of a home. His brother found him work in
Ft. Scott and a subsequent move provided menial work for him as a machinist.
The company had held a government contract which expired suddenly, without
notice, at wars end. Dad was a proud man and refused to live with our relatives
there. He‘d maintained contact with fellow former employees in Tulsa.  New work opened for him in Tulsa with an up
and coming firm known then as Tulsa Winch which as of the mid 1980’s
evolved into the Sperry/Rand Corporation.  Though conditionally accepted, with the return
of GI’s in 1946/1947 it became months before he was gainfully employed. He was
able to find acceptable shelter for us with Aunt Berta in her dilapidated one
bedroom apartment above the Tulsa train station. Crowded was an understatement.
It was late fall, then a cruel winter. The only heat in the entire apartment
was a small gas fired stove on the floor. I remember being hypnotized by the
blue flame, orange glow of the radiant elements and “hush” of gas. Dad was
exhausted. Nothing during that time worked out for him. He had worked as a
house painter in the past as a young man but no work was available. Eventually,
having tried so desperately to support us he had something like a nervous
breakdown. Mom consoled him as best she could. He too often spent days with minimal
sleep, frequently crying. I remember continuous fighting between them. It
certainly didn’t help any of us and did nothing but scare me silly. I thought
Aunt Berta was going to call the police and haul Dad off to…where? It didn’t
help Barbara either though today she doesn’t remember it as I do. There was no
money for a doctor. No work, no medication, no alcohol, nothing! Not even money
for cigarettes. I heard years later there had been a family rumor of her
leaving him for one of his old single friends. Barbara was around 1 year old
then and definitely affected by the discord. 
As with many that age she would break into shrieking crying jags. It
might have been the arguing but Mom’s consistently bad temperament only
exacerbated the situation. I hid in the corners of our room, my heart pounded,
my own anxiety grew. 

In time, after around four
months he finally was back at work; his mood greatly improved.

Both sides of the family
were of Pennsylvania Dutch farming stock, a fact that many in my extended
family hated and never talked about. The ties with a German heritage weren‘t
something of pride then. I later learned that no one admitted any German
connection without being ostracized. Little was ever spoken of our European origins
but I did ultimately find out more. That’s another story.

These 4 wheeled vehicles are
forever changing  my place, my
“origin”! Years of family automobiles changed over time. We had a 1937
Plymouth for many years. Others had different sometimes bigger ones. All were
hugely interesting. Space-ships like cars; Buicks,Oldsmobiles, Fords, Hudsons,
Studebakers, Chevrolets, Packards. They’re all trasnport mechanisms.  Take you from one place in Space Time from
one party of ORIGIN TO another. Not many of my relatives had new
post war cars but those that did had things of pure beauty! I loved to pretend
driving them. One aunt on my Mom’s side actually let me “drive” hers with me
hanging onto the steering wheel. WOW what fun!  I WAS THERE, WHEREVER “THERE” IS. HEY LET’S
TAKE A TRIP. AN ORIGINAL TRIP.  THROUGH
SPACE TIME FROM AN ORIGINALLY, ORIGINAL PLACE.

Telephones with private
lines were unheard of in Ft. Scott or Tulsa and 
frequently used years-old wooden crank wall phones up in Ft. Scott to
summon the operator. I still remember the phone number of my favorite male cousin
I had a crush on (1558J). AM radio was all there was. FM was yet to be. Buicks
had radios that thundered with bass and I was hooked and still am.

We all had a large console
type radio with consistently bad tubes. It doesn’t matter where we lived or
live. Most of us had a dad who was the repairman and found new tubes at Rex-All
Drugs, Safeway, or in this day and age; 
RadioShack or Walmart (I doubt any of them still have vacuum tubes
though).. Among the many thingsJoplin. Joplin. Missouri was a Summer
Place of Origin and of discovery for me in my youth. Back then in 1953  I finally did get to leave Earth, at
least for 45 minutes.  Who knows, maybe
next time it’ll be to Mars, lol. After all when I was a school kid and into
space travel, my classmates called me MARS MAN!

Maybe my truest place of
origin is WITHIN MY OWN MIND. I’m something of a traveler though.
Always wanted to go from one PLACE OF ORIGIN to another PLACE OF ORIGIN
wondering how to get there from here. 
Wondering what’s just around that corner for me once there.

 Give me liberty or death but first give
me a flying saucer so I can find new places and globs in space from which to
originate. But first I have to get someone to loan me the money to by the
damned saucer  at which time I have no
idea where my origin will be.

So from Germany, England,
Ft. Scott, Kansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma and now Denver, Colorado; all is history but
history moves toward the present. So here I am and where I was and where from
here I will go next. No one origin but many. No one place to live but many.

About the Author

“I’m
just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they’re an
illusion.”
Posted on

Learning to Dance (According to Mother Goose) by Nicholas

Girls and boys, come out to play,
The moon is shining as bright as day.

Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows into the street.

Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about
princes and princesses and queens. There’s magic and elegant balls and fancy
costumes. Carriages take us to places of great imagination. And we dance all
night till dawn’s dim light.

Dancing, I mean disco dancing, was a part of
my liberation. Getting myself out onto the dance floor to shake and writhe was liberating.
I had spent plenty of time watching the sensuous moves of dancers wishing I
could just step out and let go and give in to the music. I think that disco
dancing in the 1980s was to gay men what going to church on Sunday was to black
women. Release me, oh, sweet Jesus, release me.

          Swaying, twisting, turning, stomping,
and waving arms to those simple rhythms and an overwhelming drumbeat at
deafening volume produced a sense of reverie. You could do anything and call it
dancing. You didn’t even need a partner. It just took some nerve to go out onto
a dance floor and shake your booty and other body parts.

          What got me dancing was hanging out
with Jack, Steven and Bill (whom we called Chester). We worked together at
Macy’s in San Francisco and we would go out after work. Friday saw us head to
Trinity Place, a downtown bar that featured cabaret shows. Then it was on to
get something to eat and then out dancing. These guys were light years ahead of
me. They didn’t just dance, they had moves, fancy ones, sometimes with fans or with
their stripped-off shirts. It was a performance to behold.

          On Halloween one year there was an
all-night extravaganza at the Galleria, a designers warehouse with a five-story
atrium. Entertainment was some disco diva headliner, the place was ablaze with
a continuous laser light show, and the best dance music in the world pulsed through
the night. We paid the high price for tickets, acquired the right wardrobe, and
did the right drugs so we could dance frenetically all night long.

          For Halloween everybody was in
costume. Jack loved the theatre and was adept at sewing so he
volunteered—insisted, actually—on making all our costumes. We decided on a
Renaissance courtier theme, with tights, puffy-sleeved velvet doublets, magnificent
capes and flouncy hats with feathers. Mine was midnight blue and grey with
ermine trim, of course. Our regal carriage—a grubby San Francisco taxi—took us
to the ball. There were no pumpkins and no mean sisters. It was all glamour,
like something out of a fairy tale.

          They’re all gone now and my dancing
days are over for sure. Chester was the first to go. I took him to see my
doctor because he didn’t have a doctor. But there wasn’t much to be done and he
died before they even named his illness. Steven went dancing into eternity next.
Jack hung on the longest, righteously angry that his life was being cut short.

          I don’t know what this has to do with
Mother Goose. There may be no rhymes here but I and my “playfellows” left our
supper and left our sleep and danced all night, seeking that release. This tale
of princes and magic and carriage rides into the night and back again with the
rising sun was one of those rare moments of wonder that stand out from
day-to-day life. Not all Mother Goose rhymes have happy endings—like “down will
come baby, cradle and all.” But though baby came to a hard landing, he enjoyed
his time swaying high in the tree top.

Rock-a-bye, baby,
   In the tree top:
When the wind blows,
   The cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks,
   The cradle will fall;
Down will come baby,
   Cradle and all.

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.
Posted on

Marriage by Gillian

Hey, you only have to look around my family to see.

IT  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My paternal grandfather was what we would call these days a
recovering alcoholic. In his day he was just one of several local drunks. The
fact that he no longer touched the booze seemed to be ignored and he was still
thought of as a drunk by neighbors and family alike. Certainly my grandmother
never gave him any credit, or even acknowledgement, for having quit.

He had drunk his way out of a good job, lost the lovely old house
that they had owned when my dad was a little boy, and had to settle for moving
to the cold dark damp dreary dwelling I lived in as a child.

My grandfather rarely spoke, or moved for that matter. He sat in
his armchair beside the fireplace which rarely had a fire in it, hour after
hour, doing nothing.

For all the attention he paid us, we all might as well not have
been there.

At least he was harmless; unlike my grandmother.

She never spoke a civil word to anyone, but droned on with an
endless litany of complaints about my grandfather.

In some circumstances two negatives equal a positive but alas not
in human relationships.

MARRIAGE  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My mother’s parents were very different.

Her mother actually did approach the storybook grandma image;
endless hours in the kitchen in a faded flowered apron, and my Irish maternal
grandpa was one of the delights of my youth. He was a stonemason, creating
gravestones from the local marble. I loved to sit and watch him, and
occasionally I was even allowed to help. He sang or whistled while he worked,
or regaled my juvenile ears with endless fantastical tales in which I doubt
there was an ounce of truth.

They lived in a gorgeous rambling old house, built in 1742. It
was light and warm with welcome, and different in every way from that of my
other grandparents.

But I can’t recall a single time when they talked to each other.

They lived separate lives, I think, and so survived.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My mother hated my father.

It took me many years to understand why; he had done nothing as
far as I could tell.

A therapist friend explained it to me many years after I left
home.

My parents had two children who died of meningitis within a week
of each other, before I was born.

Under such circumstances it is apparently not uncommon for one
parent, more frequently the mother, to blame the other, not from any logical
reason but because they have a huge need to hate someone for the dreadful thing
that has happened, and raving at God or a disease is just not personal enough,
not close enough, not cathartic enough.

At least, right or wrong, it’s an explanation that works for me
as I remember my mother’s inexplicable seething hatred constantly simmering
just beneath the surface, and frequently erupting, ostensibly over minor
things.

These days they would have divorced, I’m sure, but in those days
you just soldiered on.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My aunts’ and uncles’ marriages were little better and would, I
believe, also have ended in divorce had that been the ready option it is today.
I did have one uncle whose fifty years with the same woman seemed to be
mutually rewarding, but ironically we discovered, after his death, that they
were in fact never married at all.

Needless to say, my family history did nothing to foster a
particularly positive view of marriage.

I knew
that MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
But I got married anyway. How else was I to prove to myself that
I was NOT gay?

My ex-husband and I have personalities that were born to clash,
so even without that teensy wee
detail of my suppressed homosexuality, our marriage was doomed.

My cousin, who lives in London is on her third marriage so there
you go…

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

And it sure as Hell isn’t just my family.

Statistically, over fifty percent of marriages now end in
divorce.

So what do we, the GLBT Community, seem to want most in the
world????

Would we fight to get a surgical procedure that has a less than
fifty percent success rate?

Would we rush to get on a flight with a less than fifty percent
chance of ever reaching its destination?

Why are we rushing like some pack of crazed lemmings towards the
sea, when …

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
Of course I do understand; and agree.

We should have the opportunity, the right, to accept or refuse that seat on the doomed flight.

Yet, if it were freely offered, would we really want it?

Betsy and I sometimes mull over the question of whether we would
in fact marry if the opportunity arose. (Not a question we are likely to have
to answer in our lifetime, I think, though I do believe it’s coming.)

The answer is probably in the affirmative simply for practical
fiscal considerations, but certainly not for spiritual reasons.

I have two dreams for Gay Marriage.

The first is that when it finally becomes legal nobody does it!

They give a party and nobody comes!

How great would that be?

Thanks but no thanks, folks, we are above your failed
institutions.

I can see them now, the huge rainbow banners saying …..
MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My second, serious dream, is that we can indeed be better than
our hetero brethren

and perhaps even help them out of the marriage doldrums into
relationships that actually work.

That should be our goal, way above and beyond getting that legal
sanction.

What if we had such successful relationships ourselves that we
could shine a light to guide the het-set out of the darkness they have created?

They would envy us, and copy us, and just maybe the world would
become a better place.

I can see the banners now, all those straight folks coming over
from the Dark Side, marching down Broadway.
GAY MARRIAGE FREEKIN’ WORKS!!!!!

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.
Posted on

Locked Out by Ray S

     Being locked out has been a self imposed restriction of a latent life style.  Homosexuality was from the very earliest years of Sebastian’s life a guilty little deeply hidden reality there, but not to be openly acknowledged.  Except during a youthful stolen moment or encounter, not consciously planned but acted upon when the opportunity availed itself.

     The accepted norm governed by proper middle class morality was the life pattern to be aspired to, accepted and certainly not questioned or faulted.   Those values taught that there were deviations in behavioral patterns of varied societies, but not talked about in his.

     Time and education did expose Sebastian to the “facts of life” and its variants, but one didn’t talk about such things except in locker rooms or a discussion of “Lady Chatterlie’s Lover,” Oscar Wilde, and maybe the antics set down by Christopher Isherwood in advanced English Lit 101.

     Most of the time the problem or condition, if even recognized remained dormant.  The chosen and accepted heterosexual life style goal consumed all of his energies, except for those brief secret lapses when his guard was down and his libido up.

     Life’s formulas were tried on for size, some fitting better than others, some even seemingly pleasant and successful when gauged by the conventional norm.   Sometimes conformity appeared to have its rewards.  Especially when he needed acceptance.

     Sebastian was so guarded and so aware of needing to fit in.  More often than not unsure of himself and seasoned with a good spoonful of self hate.

     Finally the decision to marry his needy school sweetheart and begin the charade of marital bliss.  Sometimes often the initial stumbling attempts at sex it actually worked, but in retrospect it seemed like mutual masturbation.  Certainly no proper young lady would consider any deviation from the prescribed missionary script.  Any oral advances were unheard of if not forbidden.

     With such sketchy limited fornication Sebastian knew there was a reason or reasons why they both secretly knew they were unable to conceive.  The solution for the ultimate conformist:  adoption.

     Sometime when there was a 3 year old at home while Daddy was baby sitting and Mommy out of town, he recalls a friendly trick made an unannounced stop at the house.  While Junior was napping the friend and he drifted into an encounter that ended behind a closed bedroom door.

     Only to be interrupted by a wee voice on the other side of the door pleading,

“Don’t lock me out.”

Daddy responded as his ardor shrank with some subterfuge about needing privacy and would be out in a minute.  Quickly dressing and abandoning his naked friend to escape later, he exited and escorted little Junior to the kitchen for a cookie.   The door was still locked and the secret still locked out of his conventional and frustrated double life.
     To be continued…………..

About the Author



Posted on

Buddies by Phillip Hoyle

     Last week I visited my family, the one related to my long-standing marriage with my ex-wife, the one that produced two interesting children, the one that has graced me with ten grandchildren. That family has extensions: my family of origin with four sisters and their husbands and, for three of them, children; my ex-wife’s family of origin with three siblings and their families; an informally adopted child and his wife and children. My week seemed both long and short, long in that I was away from my Denver family of Jim and his mother, a group of close friends, and other important relationships with storytellers, writers, artists, and neighbors. But my stay was also short in that the whirlwind of Mid-Missouri card playing, discussions of writing and art, politics and theology, observations of life at my son’s new farm, graduations, parties, trips to coffee shops, supporting my daughter when she heard her partner had been arrested at the Mexico-USA border, grandkids going to new jobs, two little girls who still drive me crazy, and themes related to my nine years of residence there when I served on the staff of a local church made the time fly by like a Kansas storm. At the end of the week I was tired. Upon returning to Denver I was united with my urban family of gay friends that sometimes reminds me of one of my favorite books, Ethan Mordden’s Buddies.

     Philosophy and science work hard at defining concepts and terms. The words of sexuality get such treatment and with them an assignment into moral categories, behavioral norms, psychological perspectives, and the like. The author of Buddies (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1982) seems also to have been on a search for definitions, particularly of gay and straight. In telling his stories, Mordden played with the feelings and sensibilities of readers. Bud, the writer-protagonist of the book plays similarly with the feelings and sensibilities of quite a few of the other characters, some of whom argue with him about the meanings. Mordden’s meanings arose from the emerging gay life of Stonewall and post-Stonewall Manhattan and proposed a new kind of relationship characterized by sexual freedom but not without norms.

     When back in the 1980s I stood in a mid-Missouri bookstore reading the novel during several consecutive noon-hour stops there, I was most taken by the chapter “Hardhats” in which Mordden tells a story of ironworkers, a tale that provides a glance at their social profile, extremely macho lives, blended in with an instance of homosexuality or bisexuality. (Mordden didn’t like bi-sexual, didn’t believe in it.) But his language of friendship paired with the need for a sexual component made great sense to me. The picture Mordden provided of homosexuality among the most macho of all macho construction workers surprised me with a world that contrasted with that of artists found in most of the gay narratives I’d read up to that time. The privacy of the ironworkers’ gay experience—or the closeted character rarely uttered—engaged me. I liked other Mordden characters as well; the ironworker who was friend to the homosexual worker but didn’t have sex with him or even realize he was homosexual, the school-teacher gay, and the hooker gay young man who had little interest in work, and a 20s something kept man with great and odd creativity. Mostly, though, I liked this plain ironworker who drank too much but who, on occasion, could express his love through sex and sexual words. He seemed a homosexual who didn’t make a career of his sexuality. I may have liked his story so much because I experienced a similar yet contrasting closeted experience. I sought a discrete homosexual relationship that wouldn’t destroy the rest of my life. Standing there reading the new book, I saw that novel-writing gay critic Mordden understood and valued that kind of life. He also showed how it wasn’t gay in the Stonewall sense of gay—an existence with the social demand for recognition, tolerance, acceptance, and civil rights for homosexual persons. 

     Still, Mordden urged closeted folk out of the closet even while he accepted that homosexual ironworkers could never be openly gay. Their understanding of faggot was different. They separated men from fagots by their build, muscles, costume, etc., but they couldn’t fit in with the 80s macho gay crowd. Mordden concluded that their distinction was ultimately cultural, not sexual.

     Buddies examines family of origin with siblings and parents, theatre (especially the American musical), social class, language, defining ethos of work, writer/storyteller, friendship, romance, families of choice (although I don’t think he uses that jargon), personal perspective, and more. This work reminds me a lot of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales although Buddies does have a bit more discernable plot. If Bud is the protagonist, he really has no evil antagonist. His quest is observation and storytelling for the purpose of definition. His friends and subjects are his only antagonists in that they resist his categories and argue with him over his whole project. This gay family gathers around Bud and his long-time friend Denis Savage who live in the same building. Stories occur in their apartments, in others around the city, on streets, in bars, and often on Fire Island. 

     I have my gay family, too. I don’t care so much about definition since I’m not trying to define Gay life in Denver, but like Bud, I too make some of my friends nervous. Will they end up as characters in one of my stories? They sometimes wonder. And yes, they will be in stories even if effectively camouflaged. But this family is more for me, also including folk I know from an annual retreat, massage friends, and clients. 

     So yesterday I attended a birthday party held at the Denver Wrangler Sunday beer bust. There I was surrounded by that solidarity (at least many guys had solid physiques), and I was there with my family of the five guys I’m most often with and saw others I knew who are related to the annual retreat I attend. I laughed, hugged, and felt comfortable with this nutty, sometimes nelly, crowd of like-minded, like-inclined gays. I felt at home and knew my feelings connected with Mordden’s as I stood there with my Buddies.

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.”

Posted on

Stories of Where I Came From by Michael King

Along with everything else
in my childhood, being from Kansas was not acceptable to me. As I saw the
world, I wasn’t where I belonged. From the very limited perspective I had at
the time, my environment had no class, no culture and certainly no elegance. I
didn’t even know how to speak the language correctly, or in my expectation,
properly. And that was the key concept in my mind, properly. I felt I should be
in a world where everything was proper, and I felt embarrassed to be living in
poverty and ignorance. And even though I later learned differently, my concept
of Kansas was just that, poverty and ignorance, a bunch of hicks trying to
exist on farms as sharecroppers. And where I was, that was true.

From my earliest memories, I
saw myself, or at least wanted to see myself, as self-assured, secure,
respected and very proper. Of course none of that was true and I was
embarrassed, ashamed and unhappy.

Later, when I learned to
speak without the poor grammar, mispronounced words and the middle Kansas
accent, I was also moving away from the poverty and hopelessness and the
embarrassment of my childhood. I now see that in rejecting my surroundings and
environment, I also rejected my family.

I now know that someone can
be from Kansas and not be a hick. I was so pleased that when I was 10 we moved
to New Mexico. All I’d ever known was living in a shack on a farm, where my
father was a sharecropper, a mile outside of Nashville, Kansas, population
about 110. Now we lived in a town, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, population
about 10,000. It was exciting and very different. My vistas were expanding and
opportunities for becoming the me that I wanted to be, seemed possible, but I
also experienced much pain and unhappiness.

I discovered that we lived
in the wrong part of town, got laughed at because I still talked like a hick
and since I hadn’t been around people, I didn’t have the skills to make
friends.

Fortunately I did well in
school and learned to speak correctly. I excelled in classwork and participated
in plays, art contests and exhibits and won a scholarship to college.

I escaped the destitute and
hopeless existence of my early years and in college found the environment and
happiness I had for so long wanted.

Fortunately where one comes
from doesn’t mean they have to stay there. It isn’t the geography or even the
environment that is important. It is the consciousness. It took me too long to
realize that. But, I did, and have accomplished a great deal. I was an officer
in the air force, taught school, worked as an art therapist, a mold maker for
fine arts bronzes, did retail, both as owner and as an employee, and worked in
retirement communities. I have traveled to 44 countries and have seen many
environments much worse than mine. As I see it now, I created much of my own
unhappiness. I am now happier than I’ve ever been and have a life that is
wonderful, a lover that is fantastic and a family where there is love, respect
and kindness.
About the Author

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

Posted on

If I Won the Lottery by Colin Dale

If I
won the lottery.   What
do you mean “if”?  I did win the lottery, in 2004.  I was visiting my brother in West Milford,
New Jersey.  I’d gone back there to run
in the New York City marathon.  While there,
I bought a New Jersey Pick Six lottery ticket. 
I won.  The prize was $19,500,000.
 I didn’t take home $19,500,00.  Taxes amounted to $6,825,000.  I ended up with $12,675,000.

The marathon was a bust.  I felt like crap from the start, and dropped
out at Mile 18.  I knew what the problem
was.  It wasn’t lack of training.  The problem was I was getting older.  But I was now a multi-millionaire.  My thought–with aging in one hand and wealth
in the other–how much YOUTH could I buy? 
I’d read a story in Runners’ World about a procedure at the Huntington
Memorial Hospital in Glendale, Wisconsin–not a surgery where you get artificial
parts but a procedure called tissue
transference where you get whole new parts, real parts, in a sense, the body of someone 20, 30 years
younger.  The procedure cost me $188,000;
then, $22,280 for the hospital stay, $3,350 for post-op rehab, $970 for
medication, $450 for hotel & meals, and $16 for cab fare.  The total cost of YOUTH: $215,066.  Not bad.

My after-tax prize, if you
recall, was $12,675,000.  $12,675,000
minus $215,066 for YOUTH — I was left with $12,459,934.

Unfortunately, the new,
youthful me needed some new, youthful FRIENDS. 
It would hurt to part with my old old
friends, but what the hell.  I’d seen an
infomercial on TV: “Tired of your old do-nothing friends?” it
said.  “Buy new FRIENDS, fun-loving FRIENDS,
high-energy FRIENDS able to keep up with your high-energy lifestyle.  Buy one FRIEND, two FRIENDS, buy a dozen FRIENDS.  Call for prices.  You’ll be surprised how affordable.  Operators are standing by.”  And so I called.  The cost: $15,134 per FRIEND.  I bought a dozen for $181,608.  I wanted these FRIENDS close by, so I had them
moved to Denver: add shipping & handling at $4,700 per FRIEND, and
resettling costs of $234,000 — the grand total for a dozen new, high-energy,
close-by FRIENDS: $472,008.

After buying YOUTH & FRIENDS,
I still had $11,987,926 left.

What frustrated me next was
my stalled career.  An actor, I was at a
dead-end.  I wondered if I could buy some
TALENT somewhere.  That’s when I happened
to catch Kevin Costner on The View.  He
was saying how after Dances With Wolves
every movie he made got panned.  He was
introduced to an acting coach who knew the secrets of real TALENT.  And now Costner was offering these same
secrets to anyone who wanted to buy them. 
The next day I was on a plane to Costner’s ranch in Twentynine
Palms.  Six weeks later I was winging my
way back to Denver, the new owner of TALENT. 
The cost (itemizing it): $388 in phone calls to Costner, $1,267 for a
roundtrip ticket to California, $6,200 for car rental, etc., $770,000 for The
Intensive (that’s the learning of the secrets), $4,250 for new headshots, and
$45 for a thank you gift for Mr. Costner. 
Total cost of TALENT: $782,150.

I now had renewed YOUTH, new
FRIENDS, and real TALENT — and I still had $11,205,776 in the bank.  

But there I was, in the
summer of ’05, with YOUTH, FRIENDS, TALENT, and money, and no matter how hard I
tried, I still couldn’t seem to earn the RESPECT of people who mattered.  What the hell could I do to earn RESPECT?  That’s when I heard on the radio: “Don’t
earn respect.  Buy it!  Silvan Life Systems
will equip you with the RESPECT you deserve. 
Arrange an in-service with a Silvan life coach today.”  I called Silvan and contracted with the best:
Baron Baptiste, senior mentor.  I flew
Mr. Baptiste to Denver and he stayed with me for a full month.  When he left, I had RESPECT.  The cost: Baron Baptiste’s fee, $937,400.  His per diem, at $420 a day, $12,600.  His CD’s (the full set): $112.  The grand total for a little genuine RESPECT:
$950,112.

***

Now this is getting
long-winded, so I’ll abbreviate the rest. 
I toted it up in the fall of 2005: I was YOUNG, surrounded by FRIENDS,
super TALENTED, and deeply RESPECTED. 
And the amazing part: I still had $10,255,664 in the bank.

Unfortunately, though, the
things I still wanted, when I checked the prices, were a lot more expensive.  For example . . .

I bought CHARACTER.  I found CHARACTER through goodcharacter.com.  They offered a variable-length retreat
depending upon how much CHARACTER you wanted. 
I took the whole enchilada: Kindness, Fairness, Courage, Honesty,
Diligence, and Integrity.  The grand
total, including the prefrontal cortex implants: $1,290,022.

Next I bought LOVE, from the
Yabyummy Institute.  My personal Love
Master David Deidra’s fee, $75,800, his per diem, $3,000; my Joy Buddy Rex
Winter’s fee, $58,000, Rex’s per diem, $2,000; the Sacred Loving Program to
include Tantric Love for the Soul, Body Heat, Heart & Soul, and What a
Difference a Touch Makes, $876,549; plus the Sacred Loving Pleasure Kit, marked
down to $484,650.  Total cost for LOVE:
$1,499,999.

Next came PEACE: PEACE of
mind.  An easy one–expensive, but easy:
eight potions, given by Lakshmi Ganesh Punjam at the Peaceable Dragon Lodge in
Kaski, Nepal.  Each potion gave me a
piece of PEACE:

1) Do not be jealous

2) Do not crave recognition

3) Forgive & forget

4) Do not interfere

5) Endure what cannot be
cured

6) Do not procrastinate

7) Never leave the mind
vacant

8) Never regret

Cost?  The potions, $250,000 each–$2,000,000
total.   Travel: $125,142.  So, PEACE: $2,125,142.

Next-to-last: IMMORTALITY.  This was a weird one.   A guy by the name of Gerald came to my door.  He said he’d give me IMMORTALITY for $4,500,000.  I knew from Angie’s List that he was on the
up & up.  Gerald stayed with me while
he taught me IMMORTALITY.  Total cost:
$4,500,000 for the IMMORTALITY itself; I gave Gerald a $675,555 tip — that’s
15% (seemed fair); and incidentals during his stay (food, beverage, and DVD
rentals): $125,142.  Total for
IMMORTALITY: $5,340,500.

That left me with only one
thing I wanted to buy, but before we get to that . . .

If you’ve been adding this
up as we went along . . .

YOUTH

FRIENDS

TALENT

RESPECT

CHARACTER

LOVE

PEACE, and

IMMORTALITY

. . . you’ll know I’d spent
$12,459,933.  I’d won (after taxes)12,459,934.  I had $1 left.  Well . . .

The last thing I wanted was
HAPPINESS.  How lucky then I found a shop
around the corner where, with my senior discount, I could buy HAPPINESS for
only a buck.

But when I tried to buy it,
the shopkeeper said, that’s going to be a buck seventy-five.

“But I’m a
senior,” I said.

“Don’t try it, friend,”
the shopkeeper said.  “I know you
from around here.  You’re YOUNG, got young
FRIENDS, your TALENTED, RESPECTED by everybody, got great CHARACTER, obviously
in LOVE, blessed with PEACE of mind, and, for all I know, you’re IMMORTAL.  No way you’re a senior.  HAPPINESS’ll be a buck seventy-five.”

“Shit,” I said,
and went home.

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.

Posted on

The Teacher by Merlyn

I was the second oldest of
eight kids, my youngest brother was the only one of us kids that graduated from
high school. I never liked school.  I
never had a favorite teacher there.

We lived in the country 15
miles outside of Detroit

When I was 11 years old I
got my first newspaper route. I had to walk 5 miles on dirt roads to deliver 60
papers.

The last stop on the route
was a gas station and I started hanging out there

I started helping out a
little and they started letting me drink all of the 5 cent cokes I wanted to.

When I was 12 years old every
night around 7 o’clock I would be sent across the street to a small store to
get sandwiches  after a while they
started  ordering one for me I stopped
going home for dinner and would stay there till 9 every night when we closed
up.

One of the men that worked
there I called BIG Mike. He was in his fifties and a little over weight. He was
one of the best auto mechanics I have ever known.

When he was working, I would
watch everything he did. He made sure I knew why the car brokeand how to fix
it.

He always made sure I knew
why something broke or wore out and how to make it last longer than the old
part.

The first tune up I ever did
was when I was 12 years old; it a 52 Chevy. While Mike sat in the office, he
would let me do the work then he would look it over to make sure I did
everything right. When he found something I did wrong he never got mad he would
just help me fix it.

He taught me how to drive
when I was 12 by just giving me the keys and told me to change the oil and
filter on the car he pointed to. Which meant told me to drive a car inside and
put it up in the air on the hoist, change the oil,  then park the car back outside all by myself. After
that I started driving all the time.

Not long after that He gave
me the keys to the pickup and sent me to pull a car in that would not start.  I knew the people and how to get there.  I hooked up the chain to the car.  I slowly started pulling him back to the
station, when I got to the corner that I always turned at when I delivered
papers riding a bike I turned and he went straight. The chain pulled the back
of the pickup around in a circle. We both got out and he said he always turned
on the next block. I was going slow and car bumpers were stronger back then so
there was no damage.

When we got back to the
station I was mad at the guy and told Mike what happened, he listened as I told
him the story, with that look on his face that said you are lucky there was no
damage. All he said was  “Did you
signal that you were going to turn?” and walked away.

Big Mike was always up to
something.

He loved women. He would
have me do the work while he sat at the desk and talked to the men and women
that came in for gas. Sometimes he would take one of women into the back room
and shut the door for a while and leave me in charge.

He would bet money on
anything at any time. There was a horse track a few miles from the station. A
lot of the people that worked at the track would come into the station. One day
a jockey from the track came in and told Mike to bet everything he could on a
horse. It was a sure bet. I was about 15 then and was getting paid  to work there. We cleaned out the till and
closed the station early and went to the track.  I gave him every penny of my next week’s pay to
bet o this sure thing. The olds were something like 10 to 1 to win.

The gates opened, my horse
came out like a rocket. By the first turn he was way out in front. I was
already spending the 10 weeks’ pay I was going to get when the unbelievable
happened. The horse was so drugged up it never turned. He went straight though
the fence.

I have never bet on a sure
thing since.

Big Mike was the teacher
that taught me the most about the things I loved and about life, at a point in my life when I had the most to learn.

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.

Posted on

The Last Goodbye by Cecil Bethea

The
wind blew straight down from the Yukon chilling the plains of eastern Colorado
and the town of Whitney.  Don walked past
the sere, brown grass on either side, toward the 1920’s bungalow.  After crossing the porch, he opened the screen
door and unlocked the front door.  The
living room was so empty that it looked as though a family had not lived there
for twenty-six years.  Back when he was
five, the Folks had bought the house and moved into its more spacious
quarters.  Only vaguely could he remember
running through the empty rooms which seemed so vast before Dad, helped by
Uncles Sam, Bill, and Bob, had arrived with the family’s possessions.
The
house needed a good cleaning–especially the windows.  Thank God, for the Mary and Martha
Society.  They were ladies from the
Baptist Church.  With the motto, “We make
bad times a little better”.  Part of
their Christian duty.  Actually they had
organized the auction for the all the stuff that he and the girls had not
wanted.  Tomorrow the ladies would come
to give the house a good cleaning.  Have
to send them a really nice check for all their help.

Looking
around the empty room he remembered it crowded with people and furniture.  Dad’s and Mom’s lounge chairs had sat side by
side on the other side of the fireplace facing the TV against the front wall.  The Christmas tree had always stood before
the front widows so that they could share its glory with passers-by.  Eleanor had wanted the print of Canaletto’s
GRAND CANAL.  Wonder how it would look
decorating a wall in Silicon Valley?  
Looking
back, the dining room was a waste of space considering how seldom they had used
it along with the “good” dishes.  On
Holidays, birthdays, and Sundays and from time to time.  Never would forget the Thanksgiving that an
errant football, thrown by his cousin Percy, had blasted the window to
smithereens about an hour before the meal. 
Couldn’t have bought a piece of glass in Denver on Thanksgiving.  No problem for Dad and the uncles.  They covered the empty sash with a piece of
plywood chinked with an old blanket.  All
done and over by the time the turkey was taken from the oven.
The
folks’ room never really interested him what with Mom having a strict policy of
knocking before opening a closed door. 
Besides he had checked it out and found nothing interesting except some
photograph albums inherited from his grandparents which he studied from
time.  People, long dead, posed before
antique cars. 
His
sisters shared a room which he later found more interesting.  Nothing really dirty just an interest in how
girls were different from boys.  Had to
do his snooping when alone at home. 
His
room seemed so small.  He wondered how a
chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and a set of bunk beds could crammed into
such a small space.  Here he had had high
dreams, found solace from psychic stings, and read about the rest of the world
outside of Winston and Kiowa County.
The
kitchen was the center of the family’s life and certainly Mom’s life.  She spent most of her time cooking for
us.  We ate practically all of our meals
over there at the table in the corner. 
Some kind of meat, potatoes, at least one vegetable, a salad, and some
sort of desert.  Mom liked to try recipes
from the women’s magazines.  Women don’t
cook like that any more –don’t have the time. 
He left the house keys on the mantel for Bill Roberts, the real estate agent.
Suddenly
he realized that after the house was sold he’d have no ties to Winston except
Longview Cemetery.  They still owned
three burial plots of the five that the Folks had bought years ago.  Maybe they could be sold.

He
realized it would be two o’clock before he got to Denver.  Before getting into his car, he stood
buffeted by the High Plains wind, studied the house once more ,and then drove
off without looking back.

About the Author

My Biography
in 264 Words

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

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

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

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

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