Posts

Posted on

Mom by Gillian

Most of us are, of course, via nature
and nurture, to a lesser or greater degree a product of our parents. I can
easily identify many things; good, bad, and ugly, that I got from mine. On the
whole, though, I think what a received from my dad was of a simpler, less
complex nature, than the traits I received from Mom.  My father was essentially an uncomplicated
man. My mother was not an uncomplicated woman, although she put on a good act.
Probably most people who knew her, especially the many children she taught and
their parents, found her to be a warm, patient, conscientious, motherly woman
with a good sense of humor. She was all those things; but a whole lot more that
she never presented to the world, or to me, though eventually I caught at least
an occasional glimpse of what went on below that smooth veneer.
So it’s little surprise that for the first
forty-odd years of my life I found it relatively easy to hide the real, gay,
me, from the world and to a huge extent from myself, and play a very convincing
part. I learned those skills from Mom. Not that my mother was a lesbian, at
least as far as I can ever know, though in fact how can I ever know? I
can’t, but I just
don’t sense it, and
I believe I would. Her issue was her son and daughter who both died before I
was born. She never once talked about it; not to me nor to anyone as far as I
know. She buried her tragedy deep and set about developing a shell, never to be
broken.
At least I eventually broke free of
mine. My mother never did. I learned the truth from my aunt. OK Mum, (which is
what I actually called her, not the more American Mom) you didn’t tell me your
secret and I didn’t tell you mine. Na na na na naaa na!
So I guess that leaves us even in our
dysfunction.
I always felt that there was
something. Something missing. I can’t really express what I felt, or why,
it was simply a child’s intuition. And now, after all these
years, I wonder if a mother’s intuition told Mum that there was
something, something indefinable, missing in me, in who I was, and in my
communication with her.
Somehow, despite our chaotic psyches,
Mum and I were close and I always knew I was loved unconditionally, by both her
and my dad. They both also had a great sense of humor. Mum loved to giggle. I
loved to make her giggle. It was all part of the very complex hidden
relationship in which I knew it was up to me to heal her wounds, though I only
knew of them subliminally, and make her happy. It was up to me to make her
laugh. So in this way she helped me develop my own humor and we laughed a lot
together. My dad’s humor was completely different from
Mum’s, and I am
fortunate enough to have a wonderful mixture of both, but he would look on
fondly in puzzled silence while Mum and I giggled helplessly over something in
which he could find little humor.
Mum was, as were many people but
especially women, I think, back then, very concerned with appearances. I don’t know if any
of you ever watched Keeping Up Appearances on PBS, but the show always
reminds me of my mother, although she was a much nicer person that
Hyacinth Bucket! Mum had a bad case of don’t do it in the
street and scare the horses. I could wear that tattered old sweater I
loved so much in the house, but I couldn’t venture outside in it, and if there
was a knock on the door, I had to bolt upstairs and hide or change clothes
before I came back down. My dad didn’t have to wear his tie in the house
but had to put it on in a rush if anyone came to visit, and he had to wear it
outside even if he was gardening. Someone might see him without it! I,
on the other hand, don’t give a tinker’s curse about
what anyone thinks of the way I dress, or come to that the way I live, or
anything about me. That, I think, is greatly a generational thing, but in my
bones I feel that a lot of it is purely a reaction to Mum’s obsession
with what will people think? On the other hand, of course, it did take
me the first half of my life to come out of that bloody closet, so I cannot
have been as freewheeling as I’d like to believe.
My mother’s other
obsession was with her weight. She did seem to gain weight easily, though she
never ate very much and only drank once a year, on Christmas Eve. It was always
some kind of home-made wine: pretty strong stuff. After a couple of glasses she
was bright red in the face and invariably stated in rather slurred words, how
strange it was that although she only drank once a year, it never had any
effect on her! Oh Mum, ever in denial! She was never obese, just pleasingly
plump in a motherly kind of way.
But my dad and I could never convince
her of that. These days I think it’s much easier to get a good feel for
just how overweight, fat, or obese, you are, and how you look. With endless
photographs of ourselves easily available we can compare ourselves with others
only too often. In the days of only occasional snapshots, my mother constantly
needed assurance.
“Oh dear!”
Mum would
exclaim, eyeing a woman of roughly her age bulging out of her clothes, “I’m not as fat as
that am I?”
Well that was an easy answer in the
negative, whatever the truth. But worse, she would sometimes ask that classic
unanswerable question, “I’m not as fat as I used to be, am I?”
Just try to get that answer right!
I struggle to stay well clear of
denial, because Mum relied so heavily on it. She would cry, not shedding a
quiet tear but sobbing uncontrollably, over things with no direct relation to
her; miners dying down coal pits, a race horse with a broken leg having to be
shot, the death of King George V1. A therapist friend explained to me, many
years later, that this was a classic example of transferred grief, my mother
being way too terrified of facing her own grief, while needing to release it in
some other way.
Poor Mum. She lived in the wrong time
and the wrong place. Her children died in 1940 in a war torn Britain where
people died every day and you just sucked it up and soldiered on. These days
she would have had the benefit of therapy and support groups and various
spiritual teachings to ease her way. Of course you never recover from the death
of one child let alone two, but she would have had a lot of help in dealing
with her heartbreak.
On rare occasions I catch myself
glancing uneasily at an overweight woman and wondering if I am in fact more or
less fat than she is.  I panic. Oh God, I’m becoming my
mother! Eckhart Tolle and I try to keep me grounded in reality and dealing with
my own self, leaving Mum to rest in peace. I am what I am and whether all or
any of it comes from Mum and Dad hardly matters.  I recently accepted that my struggle to keep
the weight off is little to do with heredity and a whole lot more about beer.

© Dec 2013

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

Intoxicating Water by Carlos

The streets and alleyways behind the
public market in Juarez resembled a labyrinth of third-world sensibilities.
Shopkeepers sat on rickety crate boxes announcing their wares to pedestrians
and bicyclists on the narrow streets, some of them hoarse due to the sing-song
bellowing; others nonchalantly people-watching as though in quiet judgment.
Many of the storefronts intrigued me, not necessarily because of the
merchandise erratically displayed behind the small enclosures, but because of
the world of magical realism that percolated around me. Whereas one shopkeeper
offered sweet sugar-cured yams or pineapples on which honeybees danced, another
displayed little pyramids of toasted sesame seeds, pistachio green pumpkin
seeds, or maroon hibiscus flowers, all necessary ingredients to enrich the
Mexican palate. Across the street, the heady aroma of cured leather wafted
through the shoemaker’s shop while next to him hand-turned ochre cooking
vessels, plates, and pitchers waited like soldiers at military parade rest
awaiting customers. I felt comfortable walking the streets around the marketplace
next to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe with its twin towers puncturing
the fabric of heaven. After all, my grandmother lived only blocks from the
market and the streets were idealized vignettes of typical life south of the
border. I felt I was journeying out into arenas revolving with a maddening pace
with life, akin to a twirling cup-and-saucer ride at a here-today-gone-tomorrow
carnival attraction. My own life in Texas, across the border from Juarez, was
idyllic enough. The Texas downtown area was conventional, broad streets,
stately stuccoed homes, broad stretches of mulberry-shaded parks in which to
play, and the convenience of well-stocked but staid, gray businesses. However, my
world was transformed upon crossing the border of sleepy, lazy life of El Paso
and journeying into a frenetic roller coaster ride of Juarez. There the
mariachi bands played shoe-stomping jarabes
and tapatios. There the enticing
aromas of chile-infused roast pork and
Mennonite cheese stuffed enchiladas simmering in pans and griddles from little
out-of the-way stalls on the streets perfumed the air. There the house colors,
bougainvillea pink and turquoise, Buddhist robe saffron and apricot, made life
in El Paso seem staid in comparison. It was on one of my jaunts into my
ancestral homeland that I learned the most important lesson of my life.
Being a natural explorer, I turned
into a small winding side street that I had never scouted. The shadows
lengthened before me. Pools of stagnant water collected and eddied down the
street. I noted mounds of uncollected garbage strewn throughout, garbage on
which flies twirled as though to a rhythm only they heard. The air was rancid
with decay. In spite of the spectral scene punctuated by the shafts of light
broken by the intermittent dance of dust devils, I plodded on. After all, the
sky above was still blue and the earth beneath was still firm to my footing. I
carried a large plastic cup of icy horchata,
a cinnamon-infused rice beverage that I had purchased from an itinerant water merchant
only moments before. The only sound I heard was the music of the marketplace dissipating
in the distance, the discordant drone of the flies, and the sloshing of ice
against my cup. The thought of turning back crossed my mind, as the brick-paved
streets gave way to hard-packed clay and the crowds of only moments earlier flew
off into the shadows. However, I was young and immune, an explorer out on a
hero’s journey, canvassing the world etched before me. Unexpectedly, to my
left, I noticed a mound of garbage move as though it had taken a life of its
own. I heard the rattling of newspapers and cardboard boxes, sounds made by the
displacement of something within the pile. Intrigued, I stood transfixed, that
is, until I saw a leathery skeletal hand emerge from the pitiful pile.
Momentarily, I saw her face, an old woman enveloped in a black tattered rebozo, and as she lowered the folds of
the rebozo, I saw her face,
desiccated and worn by a lifetime of depravation. Her toothless mouth opened as
she hoarsely whispered to me, her hands beseeching me in supplication, “Mijo, tengo sed. Dame que tomar….” “My
son, I am thirsty. Give me drink.” Out of revulsion, out of fear, and out of
the funereal disquiet that permeated the scene, I ran away from the woman, only
looking back to make sure the cadaverous specter in her rotting shrouds had not
pursued me. And though I soon reached the safe side streets of the nearby
marketplace, the woman did, in fact, pursue me, haunting me and forever altering
the direction that my life would take.
I have been blessed with many people
who have loved me unconditionally, with many mentors and insights that taught
me to be a faithful believer. I have been enriched with untold life experiences,
ranging from the ecstasy of being held in the arms of men who breathed in
syncopation with my soul, to the agony of a heart fractured by the skillful
cleaving of a diamond-cutting saw, yet none has ever managed to reveal as much
of life as one shadow creature in a shadow city, a thirsty soul who asked but
for a drink, a drink that I denied her. Maimonides has written “The risk of a
wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” The words sting me
to the core although I’ve managed to assuage my sin. Even before I saw a good
shepherd reach out with compassion toward one disfigured by Neurofibromatosis,
even before he reminded me to wash the feet of the prisoner, I recognized I had
erred when I allowed my fear to circumvent my actions. I erred when I dared not
look into her eyes; I erred when I dared not touch her head. Nevertheless, I’ve
forgiven myself for my lack of judgment. After all, I recognize that standing
before the portal of the underworld has the power to lead to my
transfiguration.
An incident when I was eight-years-old
compelled me to recognize that reality is outside of the realm of my experience;
life consists of fleeting moments of potential reawakening. It took an old
woman, thrown away by a world ill equipped to satiate her thirst for me to acknowledge
the hallow victory of living without awareness. Although I never returned to
the winding streets that led me to this woman, not a day goes by when I don’t
see and recognize her, specifically in the LGBT community. I see her in the
eyes of those members of our community who have been envenomed by the toxins
spewed out by bigots and homophobes, all in the name of holier-than-thou
morality. I see her, in the desperate looks of gay men throughout central
Africa and the Middle East contemplating suicide rather than face societal
reprisal. I see her in the discarded LGBT youth banished by their conditionally
accepting families. I myself have known that thirst and humiliation; I recognize
in myself the quiet desperation of rejection and ostracism that I have spent a
lifetime releasing as I learned to heal myself. At those moments, I acknowledge
a wake-up call from a woman living at the edge of a garden. At such times I honor
she who once offered me redemption and promise myself that she will never again
thirst.
© 30 Apr
2014

About the Author 


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

Posted on

Do I Have Your Trust? by Betsy

The
internet is such a great source of instant information.  Put in a search word and in a nano-second you
have more information than you ever needed. 
Often more information than you know what to do with. Sifting through it
can be daunting.  Can you trust that the
information is true?  To separate the
reliable from the suspicious, I apply this criterion:  what or who is the source and are they trying
to sell me something or promote a product or service.  If the answer is “yes” I toss it out as
untrustworthy.   The motive for putting
the information out there is to get me to buy something, not to disseminate
information that could be helpful or to help get to the truth, or to advance
someone’s knowledge.  To report and
promote the truth simply for the sake of truth itself is a noble cause.  Most people, organizations, and corporations
have ulterior motives for promoting their “truth.”   If this is the case when I am searching the
internet I cannot trust the information I am reading.
We
are all familiar with some of the books promoting certain diets–often promoted
as cure-alls for whatever ails you.  For
example the vegan diet will keep your heart healthy well into old-age.  It can actually reverse heart disease claim
its authors.  The Paleo diet of meat and
vegetables, no grains, no starch will keep you from ever getting any disease at
all.  I truly believe the authors of
these books are sincere and I know they are scientific in their research and
presentations of the facts they have determined to be true.  But I also know they cannot all be touting
the truth. The research they have done and they will continue to do is going to
be exclusively designed to support their truth, not destroy it.
I
cannot say enough on the subject of the media and its lack of
trustworthiness.  Many mainstream TV
programs claim to be reporting the news. 
But some are actually making political comments at the expense of the
truth.  The truth all too often never
gets out until it is too late.  Even if
the true story is reported, we still must be very suspicious as to whether or
not it is accurate.
Consider
the now known fact that the Iraq war was based on a lie.  The people and the news media were told that
Saddam Hussein had wmd’s.  We had proof.  Our government reported this information
unequivocally knowing that it was not true and the media passed it on.  Yes, the media did report the lie
accurately.  And then later reported
accurately that it all was a lie, but some effective investigative reporting
might have been very useful in the beginning.   
So
how do we know what to believe or not believe? 
People often select one belief over another because they want to believe
it.  This turns out to be simply a case
of self-deception.  Try changing the mind
of a person who has deceived himself into believing what he wants to
believe.  I personally know very few
people who behave this way.  I suppose
that’s because I prefer to hang with people who value the truth and the ability
to think things through.
Do
you have my trust?  Yes, you do.  I think there is a very high degree of trust
in this room.  When we share our weekly
stories, I believe we are all being as truthful as possible.  In some cases we have to dig deep inside to
put some of our truths on paper or into words.  
The level of trust among us is truly a Monday afternoon gift and at
least for me makes it a whole lot easier to do the digging.
© 16 Sep 2013

About the Author 


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

Posted on

Time by Will Stanton

“This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.”
So went Gollum’s riddle to
Bilbo.  Of course, the answer is “Time.”  Everything falls prey to time; nothing
lasts.  And, this includes humankind.  Our lives are but a mere speck in contrast
to, for example, geological time, although our lives usually are longer than
the fleeting moment allotted to a butterfly.
We usually have no inkling as to
how long our lives will be.  I always
have felt uncomfortable with the possibility that I may not have used my time
so productively as I might have, that I may have accomplished more to make me
truly worthy of this gift of time. 
Ironically, I currently spend a lot of time on these Story-Time
presentations.
In Thomas Mann’s acclaimed novella
“Death in Venice,” the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach is shocked by a sudden
realization of mortality when he suffers a heart attack.  Afterwards as he watches the sands running
through a large hourglass, he muses, “The aperture through which the sand runs
is so tiny that, at first sight, it seems as if the level in the upper glass
never changes.  To our eyes, it appears
that the sand runs out …only at the end. 
And ‘til it does, its’ not worth thinking about ‘til the last moment
when there’s no more time…when there’s no more time to think about it.”     
Oh, I know that, in comparison, I
may have used my time more productively than many other people.  A lot of  people waste their lives in pursuit of hedonistic
pleasure or self-aggrandizement.   Or
worse, they throw away their lives through self-destructive behaviors or
destroy other people’s lives through mistreatment or violence.  Yet for even those of us who have had good
intentions, have we made the best use of our time?
I never have come to terms with
reality, always fantasizing that life and the world could be more ideal.  It may not be so, but it often appears that
the good die young, and the bad live on into old age. Why can’t those persons
throughout history who devoted their lives to helping others, to making the
world a better place, who had the talent to create great beauty in life, live
very long lives? 
Can you imagine a 20th-century
world without World War I, the Russian revolution and communism, World War II,
the Cold War?  What if Archduke Ferdinand
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been assassinated at age of fifty and
had had time to continue his reformist influence that well may have defused the
tension between Serbia and the monarchy? 
There may have been no Great War, no millions of dead, no World War II,
not so much horror and sorrow.
Anyone who cares to learn the true
facts of history now knows through revelations from U.S. and former Soviet
Union officials that J.F.K. and Bobby, through back-channels, literally
prevented World War III and nuclear holocaust. 
What if John F. Kennedy had not been shot at age 47 and, instead, had
time to carry out his plans to withdraw our troops from Vietnam and to continue
to counter, as best he could, the military-industrial complex that President
Eisenhower had warned against?  Could he
have prevented thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign civilians
from dying?  Could he have prevented the
waste of trillions of dollars?  We only
can speculate, for he did not have enough time with us.  Neither did Bobby.
What if Martin Luther King, who
died at 39, had had time to continue his message of non-violence, equal rights
for all, economic balance among all citizens? 
We might not have had the riots and blazing neighborhoods that followed
his assassination.  He might have helped
to avert the rapid back-slide into political discrimination and the
disproportionate domination of wealth by so few.  His concern was for more than just the Blacks
of the nation but rather for all.  But,
his time was cut short.
Then in early history, there was
Giordano Bruno in the 16th century who, through his scientific observations,
saw for himself that our sun is a star, just like many other stars in the
heavens; and he expressed the opinion that we are not alone in the universe,
that there are many worlds far beyond. 
What other scientific revelations would he have found had the Church not
burned him at the stake in 1600 at age fifty-two?  He should have lived a long life.
There also have been many creative
individuals such as the young physicist Henry Moseley whose scientific theories
were so brilliant that he was assumed to be destined to win the Nobel Prize had
he not been killed in action at Gallipoli in World War I.  Why couldn’t someone like that have more time?
Music historians claim that Mozart
was the greatest musical genius of all times. 
The beauty of his creations continues to enhance the lives of those of
us who choose to listen.  What great
works could he have written had ne not died of rheumatic fever at age thirty-five?  Wasn’t he entitled to a life at least as long
as some evil person such as Mafia don Joseph Bonano?
And, what about the young and
innocent such as Ryan White who received a tainted blood transfusion and died
of AIDS at eighteen, or Martin Richard, the little eight-year-old boy who
recently was blown to bits in a terrorist bombing in Boston?  Ironically, one of the last photos of him
showed him holding a sign that he had made that said, “No more hurting
people.”  If they had lived full lives,
what contributions might they have made to the world?
If people must meet untimely
deaths, why not the evil and destructive people of the world instead, those terrible
individuals who harm others, destroy the planet, those who lie, cheat, and
steal?  There are far too many of those.  Had their time been extremely short, what
horrors could have been avoided?   
What if Adolf Hitler had died
young of syphilis in Munich, or Josef Stalin had died early so that his
paranoid evil had no chance of infecting Russia and the world?  How much more wonderful the world might have
been without the Hitler’s Holocaust, Stalin’s genocides, “Bomber” Harris’ order
to fire-bomb peaceful Dresden.
And frankly said, what about the
possibility of an apparently sociopathic vice-president succumbing to his first
heart attack instead of mechanically being kept alive like Darth Vader?  What if he, along with all of his nefarious
political manipulators and financial supporters, had perished from the earth
early on?  Might the President whom the
people actually chose have had a chance to serve his two terms rather than a cadre
of misguided ideologues who wreaked endless political and financial havoc upon
the nation and the world?  How different
would the world be today?  If that time
had been allotted to other people who were motivated to do good, what a
different world we would live in today.
Ironically in recent years, that
realization has come to a couple of Supreme Court Justices.  They quietly have lamented to friends that,
in retrospect, they now realize that the Supreme Court broke with all legal
precedence, terminating a presidential vote-count, an action that subsequently
was found to have put the wrong men into office and consequently unleashed
unforeseen events that have caused great hardship and sorrow to the nation and
the world.
None of us in this room is either
J.F.K. nor Stalin, neither Mozart nor Darth Vader.  So, what do we make of our lives?  All that each of us can do is to take the
time remaining for us and do the best we can. 
Be positive and creative, be honest and loyal, treat each other well,
love each other.  And, enjoy the company
of those who feel as we do.  Live well,
for time is short.  Eventually, this
thing, time, all things devours.

© 2 April
20013

About the Author


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

Reframing Reality by Ricky

Perhaps a better term would be Remaking Reality. I am sure most of us have at one time or another wished we could make changes in the actual reality we exist in or that surrounds us all. For example, changes that would allow all people to age but whose bodies would not show age or become infirm; diseases would not exist; no one would seek to harm anyone else; everyone would live peaceably; and everyone would practice good manners with common courtesy towards all. These seem to be examples of reframing or remaking reality that would be good, nice, and pleasant to have surrounding us. You could think of other changes that also would appear to be beneficial. Society could certainly gain much from such a remaking. But, what would society or more specifically, individual people lose with the changes?

At 12 years old, I remade my reality by mentality deciding that like Peter Pan, I did not want to “grow up.” To a very large degree, my subconscious made that happen mentality but could not stop the biological progression from boy to man. With some outside influences, I have lived within that reality my whole life from 12 forward. While my life’s “journey” has had great swings in stress levels and peacefulness, I have maintained a childlike personality that is able to see humor in the darkest of events and make jokes amid tragedy. I can even see the positive in negative events, sometimes even as the events are occurring.

Consequently, I can appreciate good health because I’ve experienced illness. I can appreciate the routine and proper operation of my body’s parts because I’ve experienced pain. I can appreciate and bask in love because I’ve experienced the lack of love and seen hate. I can appreciate life because I’ve seen and experienced the death of others. I can enjoy and appreciate good music because I’ve heard noise and screaming lyrics posing as music. I can enjoy family and friends because I’ve been alone. I am grateful for my finances because I’ve been poor. I appreciate my education because I’ve seen and experienced ignorance in myself and others. I can appreciate even modest food because I’ve seen starvation. I can work for peace because I’ve seen the results of war. I can be as generous as I can because I’ve seen greed destroy. I can be drug and alcohol free because I’ve grown up with alcoholics and seen the results of drug use. I can obey traffic laws because I’ve been to too many accidents where men, women, and children died. I know joy and happiness because I’ve suffered depression and sorrow. I can face life’s challenges because I’ve developed the inner strength and resourcefulness needed to overcome the challenges.

What one LOSES by remaking reality into what appears to be a happy, peaceful, bucolic existence is an appreciation of WHY such an existence IS happy, peaceful, bucolic, and desirable in the first place. The “silver lining” in the cloud of a “hard-knock-life” is, knowing exactly what happiness, joyfulness, peacefulness, goodness, and love really feel like when one encounters them. In other words, without the negatives for comparison, there can be no positives.

From a religious point of view, Adam and Eve HAD to eat that “apple” or they would not have known the difference between obedience and disobedience but would have remained in ignorance for as long as they lived. That one act introduced the negatives into Earth life and we have all been blessed as the result.

Homophobic ignoramuses don’t need to have their reality reframed or remade. All they need is an attitude adjustment by a swift kick in the pants—preferably by their fathers and a dose of castor oil from their mothers. That should do the trick. Maybe we can get the governor to arrange for “film at 11” reporting on the event.

© 18 June 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Long Ago, Far Away by Phillip Hoyle

Many years ago (at least fifty) and far away in the galaxy (at places like Kansas, Texas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Oklahoma) I lived a rational life. Reason guided my decisions, took precedence over desires or fears, led me in ways that served cultural, educational, career, and personal ideals. I followed this rational trajectory, not uncritically, but still in a somewhat ordinary fashion. I lived a good life yet one that signaled caution whenever feelings were on the rise—either mine or those of others around me. Were I to look for a metaphor, I’d certainly have to entertain the notion that I lived a rather Dr. Spockian life, if you know what I mean.

It wasn’t that I failed to experience emotion; I had plenty of feelings. After all, I was reared the only boy with four sisters. As a child I sometimes became so frustrated and angry that I stomped through the house slamming doors and throwing myself on the bed where I either screamed or cried. But before too long I gave up such childish ways and assumed a rational exterior. Then if I were still angry or felt frustrated, I’d go out to the garage and talk to Tippy my beagle. She was a great counselor with unlimited acceptance and constant warmth in my presence. She’d lick away my wounds and allow me to go on with my rational life. So, I grew up pulling in my emotions, always ruled by good manners. When I observed others throwing fits or getting too emotional, I’d evaluate their effectiveness and eventually distance myself.

As a working adult I served as a study of self-control in order to facilitate a group’s process. My work was effective! I watched how someone’s emotions would cloud issues impeding a program’s movement towards some goal, and then, setting aside my own emotional needs, would offer rational and workable solutions. I got along well.

Eventually I was done with all that. My memories of childhood served as my mentors in this change—not just my fits of pique, but my involvement in many childhood activities of play, dance, unstoppable laughter, and running around with my friends. My observations of artists further encouraged me to change. For instance, in a collage workshop, the teacher asked me about what I was doing. I described the “why” of my design. “But I can’t read your piece,” she observed. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but her comment pushed me right where I need pushing! I turned to the piece and angrily added the two essential figures that were missing, an older man adoring a younger man. When she came by my table about an hour later, she said, “Now that I can really read.” I was thrilled. I had something to say in my art! Furthermore, this terminal experience opened me to a new level of communication with my wife.

As healthy as that may sound, I realized that my artistic and personal self-indulgences would have the effect of focusing my life away from the groups that had so enriched my first fifty years. Away from my old life focused on church and family I moved to Denver and hoped thereby to learn how trust my feelings and let them lead me into helpful decisions.

I need to clarify. My half-century of life had not gone by without emotional outlets. I was a musician; such an artistic and emotion-filled pursuit allowed me to tolerate all the self-control demanded by the rest of my work. From about age thirty, I also lived with an increasing focus on visual arts and on writing. Finally I sensed I had things to express in both. So essentially at age fifty-one I replaced the loss of music making and self-discipline with wild dancing at Charlie’s of Denver, the Denver Wrangler, TRAX, and Denver BASIX. I employed recorded music of many varieties as a background in my new massage practice. I created collage after collage, painting after painting, works that helped move me along a road of emotional expression. Still, I am in touch with that Dr. Spock part of myself, that careful monitor of feelings and their possible misdirection.

But a few weeks ago, just after recording a Colorado Public Broadcast radio interview of an older and a younger gay man, the journalist/producer asked us if there were revelations in the taping we’d not want to hear in the eventual show. The twenty three-year-old guy said, “No, I’m always careful with what I say.” Then I, the sixty-six-year-old man, said, “Not at all. I’ve spent the past fifteen years learning to say what I am feeling. Use anything you want.”

Denver, 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

Posted on

Anger by Pat Gourley

It was often noted in my teens and twenties in particular that I had quite the Irish temper. This seems to have greatly diminished over the years and now is an emotion I rarely indulge in. Much of the anger I have expressed over the years has really been not much more that self-indulgent bravado. Often the sort of flash in the pan display that passes quickly usually followed by regret and at times an appropriate apology.

There have however been at least two instances in my life where my anger was sustained and in one of those seems at times to persist to this day. Both of these involve the suicides of two people close to me, one professionally and the other a dear friend of many decades. Today I will address the suicide of a co-worker from over twenty years ago. The other death will be the focus of an upcoming piece.

Even this anger, at a tragic death, certainly seems to have a quality of indignant rage – ‘how could you do this to me’ which in some respects seems quite silly since they are the ones who are dead, but then so much of my life has always really been about me.

This first suicide involved a psychiatric nurse who worked in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health in the early 1990’s. She was a lesbian woman who on the surface seemed very strong and as put together as anyone I knew. Unbeknownst to me, but not to several others in her life, she purchased a handgun I believe in late 1992, saying she feared for her safety around the passage by referendum of Amendment Two by the voters of Colorado which read as follows:

Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing.

I thought after the fact that if I had known about her gun purchase and the stated reason for it I would certainly have confronted it for the bullshit it turned out to be. Even back then I was sort of the resident out radical queer in an AIDS Clinic no less a place full of ACT Up members in 1992 and I would have said “oh honey all they are doing is finally being honest about how they hate us”. The statewide vote on the referendum was something like 53% in favor of literally codifying discrimination across the board based solely on sexual preference and 47% opposed. We were simply being put on notice to a fact that had always been the reality. This was of course challenged in court and overturned eventually by the United States Supreme Court in the case Evans vs. Romer in 1996.

I would in hindsight have been right to call her on this purchase since she used the gun along with some alcohol and prescribed medications as lubrication to drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier in early January of 1993 and blow her brains out. I would hope I would have insisted on a better reason, than homophobes run amok, for buying a lethal weapon by a person who was in many instances a very out and proud queer woman.

You must remember this was in 1993 and the peak of the AIDS nightmare. So many of our clients were valiantly struggling to often just stay alive for one more day and this crazy-ass women who I loved and admired, in excellent physical health as far as we knew, goes and kills herself. It was a great blow to many of my staff and her clinic patients to whom she provided psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to even speak her name for many months but we did finally put up a plaque in her memory when our own unbelievably raw feelings subsided and perhaps I personally better appreciated whatever the mental anguish she was suffering from. There were apparently major relationship issues in her life and perhaps these involved anger on her part or maybe it was simply an overwhelming depression made worse by well intentioned use of psychiatric medicines that unfortunately proved to be disinhibiting in the long run and maybe even direct facilitators in pulling the trigger. Suicides seem to often to be impulsively facilitated in our society by the criminally easy access to guns along with alcohol and certain psychotropic medications most often legally prescribed.

My feelings around suicides of people in my life are not however universal and do not always involve anger. In those days in particular end of life decisions to speed the dying process along by many suffering terribly from the ravages of AIDS were not uncommon. For those unfamiliar with this time and its nearly unbearable realities I would encourage you to see the current HBO movie version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, visually at least it is much more riveting and intensely in your face than the play ever was.

The best suicides as I recall from those days were well thought out and often involved much support from lovers, family and friends. The act was rarely impulsive, rarely to my knowledge involved a gun and rarely if ever done in isolation. News of these passing when they would reach the clinic often invoked great sadness and sometimes a sense of relief but no anger.

If this is to be an act with integrity it seems to me it should never occur as a result of subterfuge and certainly not as an expression of anger toward others or one’s self. That itself seems to be a very angry last dance that certainly does not affect in any positive fashion others in your life, many of who may care deeply about you. It strikes me as not only very angry but selfish. I appreciate that deep depression can often set the stage but a common caveat about suicide is that it is mostly the choice when one is coming out of depression.

As mentioned above I will again explore suicide in a future piece, one by a dear friend of many decades and my own personal feelings about it. Most days I tend to take a Buddhist approach that suicide will only result in another reincarnation something to be avoided and continued samsara on the wheel of death and rebirth, which could go very wrong with one perhaps returning as a banana slug.


June, 2014

About the Author

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

Posted on

Goofy Tales: Draggin’ Main by Lewis

Draggin’ Main Street is a uniquely American teenage ritual. At least, it was in my home town of Hutchinson, Kansas. It didn’t matter whether you were male or female, drove a new Corvette or Thunderbird or your grandfather’s 1951 Plymouth. The main point was just makin’ the scene.

Of course, there were rules of decorum. If you were a boy-becoming-man, you were expected to look like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, aloof and unapproachable. Above all, you had to appear the master of all you surveyed, most especially, your “wheels.” “Goofiness,” meaning any mistake as insignificant as forgetting to put your tranny in a lower gear at a red light or, heaven forbid, stalling your engine on a jackrabbit start, was certain to make you the subject of an urban legend that would shame your progeny for generations.

Such was the milieu within which the story of my most embarrassing goofiness unfolded.

I was about 20 and the season was summer. My “baby” was a British racing green 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible. Ensconced within, loosely speaking, were I and three long-time best buds. The Main Street run extended from downtown to a Sandy’s (nee McDonald’s) restaurant near 27th Street—a distance of about 2 miles. Just past the restaurant was a gas station.

On this particular day, my attention was captured by something other than the rapid approach of the driveway into which it was customary to turn to make the southbound leg of the Main Street Drag. Realizing my predicament, I attempted to compensate by making my version of a ‘J Turn’ which, as every bootlegger knows, involves a skillfully coordinated application of the brakes combined with a violent spin of the steering wheel. As executed by me, however, it resulted in a yawing, skewing slide across three lanes of opposing traffic, up the drive of the gas station, and coming to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke within arm’s reach of the first pump.

The looks on my passengers’ faces reminded me of the time I had taken a group of friends to see Psycho at the South Hutch drive-in. Wanting to set their minds at ease—and mine, as well—I said the first thing that popped into my head, “Fill ’er up!”

About the Author

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

Posted on

Falling among Forbidden Fruit by Gillian

Oh, Adam and Eve have a lot to answer for! Things have gone downhill ever since she gave him that damn apple. Much of humankind seem to consider themselves sufficiently righteous to sit in judgment of others; not to say that applies to all of the people all of the time, but sadly it’s probably true for most of the people most of the time. Equally sadly, it’s not confined to those who proclaim themselves to be Christians, either, so we cannot hold Adam and Eve completely responsible.

We judge others to be different and therefore inferior, but worse than that we fear and hate them. Why, I have never understood. I’m sure I have my parents to thank for that, as they never understood it either. It may also be, at least partly, in our case, that we simply did not encounter these ‘others.’ I grew up in a very homogeneous area, as perhaps many of us of our generation did, and so was really not challenged in acceptance until I left home for college. One would like to believe that a university is not the place where one learns prejudices, so all in all I think I was fairly well sheltered from bigotry until a later stage of maturity by which time I was pretty well protected against acquiring it.

The bigots of this world make ‘them’ the forbidden fruit. In this country, as in many others, it was anyone of a different national origin, ethnicity, language, religion, and especially race. And now, of course, the big battle over same-sex relationships. Multiple prejudices been writ large throughout the history of this ‘melting pot’ of which we are so proud. I observed the horror of it in amazement. I have no more comprehension of it now than I have ever had. I simply cannot get inside the head of prejudiced hate-mongers and so have little hope of gaining any understanding. The very beast inclusivity we can hope for from most people seems to be the old joke,

“Oh yeah I guess they,” whichever particular ‘they’ you may be discussing, “are OK. But you wouldn’t want your sister to marry one!”

So it was with further amazement that I suddenly found myself to have fallen among forbidden fruit.

When I came out, I suddenly realized; I am now one of the Undesirables. I intuited that I should not talk about what I did at the weekend; people might not want to hear it. I had become that person who wouldn’t be coming to dinner; at least not unless I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut and ‘act normal.’ As forbidden fruit I could lie on the orchard floor and rot. Quickly understanding that I was allowing myself to be victimized by the judgment of others, I ceased to modify my reality for their comfort and relaxed.

Then, in 1992, along came Amendment 2. I cried, as I’m sure many of us did, waking in the morning following Election Day and finding myself to be, and really feel to be, someone who could be discriminated against. Legally. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was one of God knows how many throughout the world and over the ages. I had sympathized with them, but until that moment never actually empathized. And my problems were essentially non-existent compared with those of so many others. I was not immediately threatened with death, imprisonment, or deportation. I would not lose my home nor would I lose my job. Practically, I had no fear that the passage of Amendment 2 would effect my life in any way. Yet I felt insulted and violated. Also, luckily, I was very, very, angry.

That was the final point, I think, in my total ‘outing’ process. I will not let these ignorant bigots make me feel like this. I will not be their victim. I will not let the attitude of others make me feel bad about myself. I will not apologize, even to myself, no, above all not to myself, for who I am. I know I have done nothing wrong and that is all that matters.

And if I have become forbidden fruit to others, it is their problem and not mine.

I will not lie silently, invisibly, under the tree and rot, while the wasps buzz hungrily, angrily, around me.

I will pick myself up and dust myself off, and mix with pride with the rest of the beautiful shiny forbidden fruit, enclosed in that strongly woven basket of understanding, support, and caring that fills me with pure joy at what and who I am, without one single ounce of regret.

April, 2014

About the Author

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

Posted on

Right Now by Will Stanton

From time to time, I have heard the phrase, “You think too much.” That probably applies to me. I’m a thinky type of person. Of course, the type of thinking one does determines whether or not the thinking is “too much.” We often waste too much time with non-productive thinking. I’m good at that; I’ve had lots of experience with it.

Opposed to that, I’m reminded by a recent news story about the brilliant fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka who spent so much time in the Johns Hopkins lab that he often slept on a cot, and he even missed his own birthday. All his thinking resulted in his discovering a new, fast way of detecting pancreatic cancer. He won the youth-achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award along with $75,000. So, all that thinking resulted in something truly worthwhile. His efforts and thinking were in the right-now.

I suppose that I can admit to having an “artist’s nature,” as opposed to a “scientist’s nature.” Dreamy minds may not be the best for focusing on the right-now.

Having been part of Story Time for going on three years, I have had ample opportunity to avoid thinking about the right-now. Instead, I have allowed my mind to wander back several decades to my youth, dredging up old memories, even in fine detail, and spending time writing them down to share with the other members of the group. I’m afraid that I also have engaged too frequently in thinking back in time and wondering what I might have done differently, what if circumstances had been different, how could my life have been different. So, I probably have spent far too much time in the past, not in the right-now.

Also,I had the habit for many years of wondering about the future, not necessarily making pragmatic plans to carry out, but rather, less organized musings about who I wanted to be when I grew up. I probably continued doing that even through mid-life, which does not make very much sense. Time seems to have passed by quickly, and I definitely am way beyond the point where I should be wondering about what I want to be when I grow up. All that wondering was not in the right-now, either.

I always have accused myself of being a slow learner, but it’s beginning to dawn on me that concentrating upon the right-now throughout my life most likely would have been much more productive. Also, living in the moment can prove to be more enjoyable and satisfying. I’m sure that’s true with some humans, but I’ve seen that frequently with dogs.

I realize that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks; but in my case, I suppose living in the right-now probably is a skill I need to practice. So for right-now, I’m going to enjoy listening to the other members’ stories, and I’ll put off until later debating whether or not after Story Time I want to go across the street to get a cup of coffee and a fresh-baked cookie.

© 12 December 2013

About the Author

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