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Where I Was in the 60’s by Louis

If you ask young people
today what they know about the 1960’s, some say the Beatles. Most are not aware
what a traumatic decade that was. As the war in Vietnam raged on and on and on,
pacifism and isolationism became more and more popular. The main problem with
the 60’s was the American people went left while the government went right.
There was a sort of  blow-up. The 1960’s
saw the blacks standing up and demanding their rights, and then there were the
riots. And then there were our riots that went on 3 days, the Stonewall riots,
that started on June 28, 1969. We must not forget either the assassination of
President Kennedy. (You were John Kennedy Jr.’s neighbor).
The only other
traumatic event that compares with the assassination of President Kennedy was
the blowing up of the Twin Towers. In both events, I think it is safe to say we
all felt personally threatened. I was an eye-witness to the blowing up of the
twin towers. I was on my way to work. I had to take a bus to get to the Long
Island Railroad stop that I took to get to work. On the bus route is a swampy
area with very low buildings that would enable the bus passenger to get a good
view of the twin towers. I saw smoke billowing out of the towers, and I
wondered what that was all about. When I got to the Long Island Railroad stop
in Flushing, I was told there was no service into Manhattan. Later I would know
why. So I tried the subway. I went a few stops to 61st Street. The
train stopped and the conductor said the train was not going any further since
the train was not permitted to enter Manhattan.
Where
were you when President John F. Kennedy was shot? I
remember I was on my way to swimming class in the Queens College gym. I never
got as far as the gym. A fellow student told me the President had been shot.
Next to the Queens College gym, that resembled an airplane hangar, was a
parking lot. The students with the cars turned on their car radios and let
passers-by listen. I listened and was horrified. Jack Kennedy was handsome,
well-educated, intelligent, well-spoken. Jacqueline Kennedy was beautiful,
soft-spoken, pretty much a perfect first lady. Remember how she remodeled the
White House? The whole world was dazzled. I was dazzled, and John Kennedy
convinced me that the USA would lead the world into a better place, that human
progress was going to continue. Our nasty right-wing neighbors in Dallas, Texas
had other ideas. Then Nixon got elected, and hope died, and it has been
downhill ever since, let’s face it.  
My
visit to the draft-board in lower Manhattan, on Whitehall Street:
I had to go for my physical. When the army doctor examined me, I told him I was
a homosexual, and I was pretty sure the U. S. military, for their reasons, did
not want homosexual men, I guess. So I asked to be excused on that basis though
I requested they do not write that down in my record. Whether they wrote that
down or not, I do not know. I did not show up in a gown, and I did not paint my
fingernails red, nothing like that. I got a 1-Y classification because I wore
glasses. My brother went through a long drawn-out rigmarole application process
as a conscientious objector. They ultimately denied his application for status
as a conscientious objector but they gave him a 1-Y classification. Much has
been made of student deferments in those days. Both I and my wannabe
conscientious objector brother were attending college, but we never received a
student deferment. Go figure. 1-Y meant we would not be drafted unless there
was a national emergency. I guess the Vietnam War was not considered a national
emergency for some unfathomable reason. Two of my other brothers got 1-Y
classifications. My oldest brother was in the Air Force, a major or something;
he got out when the Vietnam War was getting a little too hot.
© 19 May 2014
About the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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No Good Will Come of It by Lewis

“No good will come of it,” usually prefaced by “believe me,” is a line I don’t believe I have ever used in ordinary conversation. I have read the line in books, heard it voiced on the silver screen or from a stage, and can imagine it spoken by a finger-wagging false prophet from an obscure pulpit or a domineering parent in an American backwater community. Typically, in my experience, the person to whom such an admonition is directed would proceed to do the very thing against which he or she has been warned, presumably motivated by the realization that the odds that said act would result in an outcome that the doer was hoping for have been measurably increased. 

In 99% of life’s daily situations, to announce as fact the conviction that doing act ‘a’ will inevitably lead to result ‘b’–‘b’ being shorthand for “bad”—is a presumption scarcely justified by the vast convolutions of possibility that life throws at us. Even to say to a person who has a cocked and loaded gun at their temple, “If you pull that trigger, no good will come of it,” may not be true in the opinion of everyone who knows the poor despondent in question. Or, the gun may misfire, in which case the owner at least knows not to rely on that particular weapon for protection against intruders.
If I were to say to you, as you are about to set fire to a stock certificate worth $10 million, “Surely, no good will come of that,” again, I would be liar, because its demise would mean that the value of every other shareholders holdings would thereby be increased.
Tell someone who is addicted that to imbibe would surely lead to no good, and they might respond, “But at least, I’ll feel better for awhile.”
Tell that to the boy who is about to throw the pet cat into a bathtub full of water and he might well answer, “But it’s funny.”
Tell the husband or wife who is about to have a fling with a third party and they might tell you to mind your own business.
In short, hardly anything good can come from saying to someone, “No good will come of it.” Either you may well lose the love or respect of your friend or you will prove to have been wrong. A better approach would be to express what, in your mind, the consequences of doing such-and-such will be and those consequences had better be ones over which you have control, such as “I will never speak to you again” (and mean it). This kind of trade-off the person you are admonishing can understand and actually has a chance of influencing their behavior.

© 5 May 2013

About the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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An Elder’s Day at Pridefest 2014 by Donaciano Martinez

In the post-Pride public announcement from the GLBT Community Center (which produces Pride each year), Communications Manager Melody Glover noted there were 365,000 people who attended the June 2014 two-day event and there were 145 contingents in the Pride parade. As someone who has been in Denver’s Pride march/parade since its first one in 1976, I always have noticed that there are more spectators than there are marchers.

When the parade was over and I attempted to enter the park at which the festival was being held, I was stopped by an official gatekeeper (yes, child, nowadays personal items of festival goers must be inspected at all public events – such as Pride – held in a park). The young lesbian gatekeeper said she wasn’t sure she could let me in because she thought the placard (“I’ve Been Marching for Justice Since 1965”) in my hand “seemed anti-gay” to her. I have been accused of being anti-many things in my 50-year activism since 1964, but being anti-gay was not among them. Quite amused by her comment, I told her: (a) I carried the placard in the parade; (b) I have been marching in the Pride parade long before she was born; and (c) she could check with the GLBT Center’s Elders Program Manager Reynaldo Mireles if she needed verification that I am NOT anti-gay. Still unsure, she reluctantly let me in and soon thereafter I reconnected with Reynaldo at what I thought was the Elders Program (SAGE) booth. It turned out it was the GLBT Center’s information booth for which I volunteered (at Reynaldo’s request) for three hours handing brochures to attendees as they walked by.
The highlight of the day was a straight married couple who brought their two young children to meet me as the parents were so impressed upon seeing me proudly marching in the parade while holding the aforementioned sign that was baffling to the young lesbian gatekeeper. Very nice and respectful, the married couple told me their children have a gay uncle and the children are being raised to accept and support their uncle and other GLBT people.
A confusing part of the day occurred when I had a good chat with a vendor whose appearance and aura were so gay, yet he turned out to be straight — my longtime gay radar obviously isn’t reliable anymore.
Reflecting on his experiences at this year’s Pride festival, community elder and longtime human rights activist William Watts wrote: “Sorry, but I found it fairly bland, insipid, un-special, a major sin and overly ordinary. It could have been the People’s Fair [a straight event] or Taste of Colorado Fair [a straight event] with rainbow county fair junk-goods. Listening to some of the vendors’ conversations, they knew nothing of the LGBTQQI struggle and history and didn’t care. It was such a letdown. With success comes failure quickly!”
Inevitably, an overt Q-hating incident occurred while I was waiting for the bus to head home. The target was an effeminate gay man, who strutted by the bus stop while carrying a rainbow-color umbrella. A het supremacist repeatedly yelled the “F” word (rhymes with the word maggot) at the gay man and told him that he should be a “real man” and pursue women instead of men. At any moment, there could have been violence on the part of the enraged het supremacist. Although there was no violence, the incident underscored the reality that Q hating is alive and well – even on Pride Day.

©
5 July 2014

About the Author


Since 1964 Donaciano Martinez has been an activist in peace and social justice movements in Colorado. His family was part of a big migration of Mexican Americans from northern New Mexico to Colorado Springs in the 1940s. He lived in Colorado Springs until 1975 and then moved to Denver, where he still resides. He was among 20 people arrested and jailed in Colorado Springs during a 1972 protest in support of the United Farm Workers union that was co-founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. For his many years of activism, Martinez received the 1998 Equality Award, 1999 Founders Award, 2000 Paul Hunter Award, 2001 Community Activist Award, 2005 Movement Veterans Award, 2006 Champion of Health Award, 2008 Cesar Chavez Award, 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2013 Pendleton Award. La Gente Unida, a nonprofit co-founded by Martinez, received the 2002 Civil Rights Award. The year 2014 marks the 50-year anniversary of his volunteer work in numerous nonprofit situations.

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The Accident by Betsy

My first pregnancy which resulted in the birth of my oldest child Lynne was a so-called accident. The discovery of my unintended pregnancy was overwhelming, anxiety producing, and stressful–for about one day. Quickly when the reality of what was unfolding set in, the wonder, excitement, and joy of it firmly took hold in my psyche. 

My oldest daughter is anything but an accident to me. She is a joy and always has been to me and her father. Her conception may have been unintended, but SHE is my pride and joy as are her sister and brother. 
At the time this accident occurred, my husband and I were hardly in a position financially to start a family. However, we had the resources we needed to adjust to the situation. It would only be one or two years before we would intentionally have considered starting a family, and so we were able to welcome the accidental pregnancy. 
Unfortunately it is not so in most cases of unintended pregnancy. Here are some interesting facts on the subject.
Births resulting from unintended pregnancies are associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes, such as delayed prenatal care, premature birth and negative physical and mental health effects for children. 
For these reasons reducing the unintended pregnancy rate is a national public health goal. The U.S Dept. of Health and Human Services “Healthy People 2020” campaign aims to reduce unintended pregnancy by 10% over the next 10 years. 
Guess how many pregnancies each year in the U.S. are unintended. Close to half–49%. Of the 6.7 million pregnancies 3.2 million are not intentional. Of the two million publicly funded births, about one million resulted from unintended pregnancies, accounting for one half the total public expenditures on births. Total public expenditures on births resulting from unintended pregnancies were estimated to be $11.1 billion in 2006.
The rate of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. is significantly higher than in many other developed countries.
In 2006 of women aged 15-44, those with incomes at or below the federal poverty level the rate of unintended pregnancies was five times higher than that of women of higher income levels. The unintended birth rate for those poor women was six times higher than that of the higher income group. 
The unintended pregnancy rate for sexually active teens is considerably higher than for women overall. 
Facts prove w/o a doubt that contraception works. Sixteen percent of women of child bearing age do not practice contraception. These 16% account for 52% of all unintended pregnancies in the U.S. Two thirds of the U.S. women who correctly practice contraception account for only 5% of unintended pregnancies.
Without publicly funded family planning services the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the US would be nearly 2/3 higher among women overall. The number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double. 
The costs associated with unintended pregnancies would be even higher if not for continued federal and state investments in family planning services. In the absence of services provided by publicly funded planning centers, the annual public costs of non intentional births would increase 60% to $18 billion.
Oh why, then, are so many states shutting down their family planning centers? Why do the states doing away with family planning services think that abortion is the only service provided by these centers?

2

Why, oh why is it that political discussions focus on abortion only. I don’t think I have ever heard a politician discuss the pros and cons of contraception.

Let me repeat: without publicly funded family planning services the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the US would be nearly two thirds higher among women overall. The number of unintended pregnancies among poor women will nearly double, and safe abortions will not be available to many. Shutting down publicly funded family planning clinics is hardly the answer. The overall cost of these actions to society as a whole is difficult to foresee as the consequences are many and far reaching.
Just last Friday Oklahoma based Hobby Lobby won a temporary injunction against the Obamacare requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage for their employees. The conservative Christian owner’s site their religious beliefs as their reason for avoiding the required coverage.
Republican controlled legislatures in several states have recently shut down hundreds of family planning clinics or abortion clinics as they are usually characterized by the media.
In response to stringent abortion restrictions that the Texas GOP controlled legislature approved last week, the Democratic caucus of that state is asking the lawmakers to study the impact that sex education and family planning support has on reducing the abortion rate. Sex education and family planning support–as if that were a unique idea!
Sex education and family planning are so obviously lacking in our culture. In recent years Texas and many other states have defunded women’s health clinics and Planned Parenthood causing many clinics to shut down. If as they say they want to cut down on the number of abortions, then why, why shut down the means for women to acquire contraceptives and information. As a result of these actions the Texas health department has projected that unintended pregnancies and births will certainly increase, especially among those with the least resources.

3

Many unintended pregnancies turn out to be welcomed, as mine did. But in too many cases families,young teens, single women, people of meager means are unable to meet all the needs of a new life–material needs and emotional needs. Often the parent or parents themselves are terribly needy. In these cases the choice to continue or not continue the pregnancy should certainly be available. But in a society such as ours there is no good reason not to have an adequate support system in place for those families to turn to when help is needed.

  
Source
1.   Guttmacher Institute, Fact Sheet, December, 2013


© 13 July 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.

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Grief and Its Enterage by Beth Kahmann

Grief greeted me unexpectedly.

Like the other day, when I tipped my toe in a icy cold pool
My mind, as well as my blood was frozen, stymied,
The scene reminded me of a generation of life’s collectible sorrows, all lined up in a row of dominoes, waiting for the first tile, of many accidents, assaults, barrages, ballistics and statistics of fallen human souls in an insanely, archaic savage battering, smatterings of shard glass thrown aimlessly afoot.

Not unlike the slinky that we placed upon the top of our musty, worn out wooden floors. With each step, year after year, catastrophe after calamity, corruption after collision,
Decision after division after dying, and after death.

Grief, then rage filled me and fueled my heart with madness, until I felt like a mummy, entombed in sadness. More than likely, until the day I perish, grief might accompany me on the many trips I take til that final resting place, ’til that final resting place.

©  25 February 2013

About the Author 

Beth is an artist, educator, and is very passionate about
poetry.

She owns Kahmann Sense Communications (bethkahmann@yahoo.com).
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Don’t Touch Me There by Will Stanton

This topic seems immediately to imply unwanted physical contact. Perhaps that’s what the person who chose it was thinking. I suppose one could, by extension, think of “touching the mind,” or “touching the soul.” But then again, maybe that’s stretching it; those approaches sound too philosophical for such a small presentation.

So, what can a person such as I write about unwanted touching? Any form of touching is foreign to my experience growing up and into my early adulthood. Coming from a rather Puritanical home where touching and expressions of love were extremely limited, I craved the kind of attention that psychologists have learned is so important for helping to develop happy, healthy people with a good sense of self-esteem. I’m speaking of wanted touching, of course. I would not have been comfortable with unwanted touching. In my case, that was not a problem. My having had a very controlled childhood, apparently I never was placed into a situation where I was vulnerable to unwanted touching.

So, rather than my speaking of my own limited experience, I’ll address the fact that the human need to be touched, to be held, to have sex, is a powerful need; and if a majority of people, or those people with power and authority, feel that some expressions are outside their experience and therefore not normal, they tend to make such expressions taboo. What human expressions are deemed to be abnormal and worthy of being demonized or punished has changed from era to era and country to country. This certainly is true with same-sex relationships and relationships of individuals of disparate ages.

What once was accepted may no longer be accepted. The spreading of the Judeo-Christian mindset and influence in the West and the Muslim belief-system in the Middle East is what turned same-sex attraction taboo and instilled greatly varying limits upon age-of-consent. Societies do change. To exist in contemporary society, one needs to makes certain rational accommodations if for no other reason than for self-preservation. Such accommodations, however, should not result in denying the reality of one’s own nature or the acceptance of the facts of human nature in general. Ignorance and fear should not negate empathy and love for other people. Unfortunately, that ignorance, intolerance, and even stupidity continue to be pervasive, and with terrible consequences to the health and wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole.

I have observed cases of persons suddenly developing extremely painful emotions with terrible shame and guilt when it has been drummed into them that they should, they must, harbor such destructive feelings. Churches with intolerant, antiquated dogma and social groups that have lived with such bias firmly ingrained for generations continue to contribute to a social atmosphere that harms rather than helps. The legal system and courts have exacerbated fears of human sex, both straight and gay.

In one case, the Denver County District Attorney charged a young man with ten felony counts for a several-month, mutually agreed-upon relationship because his girlfriend was not yet eighteen. Under the laws of age-of-consent in France, the relationship would have been legal. Those felony charges must have succeeded in causing life-long trauma to both individuals and also destroyed for life the reputation of the young man. I was so disturbed by seeing the young man crushed by the weight of authority and law that I could not stomach the idea of serving on the jury. I fortunately was able to have myself excused from the jury because of my work obligations.

In another example, had seventeen-year-old Daniel Radcliffe opened his play “Equus” in New York rather than London, he could have been arrested for public nudity because what was legal in England was not in New York. There are implied moral determinations here, too. What was moral in England would have been immoral in New York. A rational person would be right in questioning if this made any sense.

The news media also do their share of sensationalizing sex, too, turning human nature into titillating, yet shocking, tales of human depravity. The viewing audience and voting public, therefore, focus on sex rather than the important issues of the day.

Mind you, I’m not excusing unwanted touching or harming other people. Instead, I’m speaking of the profound need of humans for love and touch that often goes unmet. Years of psychological research has proved that emotional closeness and physical touch are essential for good mental and physical health. Without loving contact, the mind and body suffer. In addition, without them, the young, from frustration, may place themselves into undesirable situations, seeking that needed love and touch. A college friend of mine revealed to me that, during high school, he had been so desperate for love and touch that he briefly had turned to prostitution, not so much for money, but rather for hoped-for comfort.

I’ll relate a case of someone I met who described in detail his experience of touching. From his telling, it was hard to discern what his current feelings are regarding his experience, wanted or unwanted touching.

When I first met him, the scandal involving the Catholic Church was just breaking. At thirty, he still looked very boyish and attractive, although he also had made a macho place for himself in society by forming a successful concrete-cutting company. During a group-conversation about the apparent molestation of boys by priests, he ironically quipped, “None of the priests touched me. What was wrong with me?”

I say “ironically” because what he experienced was far more significant than a mere occasion or two being fondled by an adult. His experience also began at an age that even ancient Greeks thought to be too young, eleven; and the man was twenty-one.

There were stereotypical aspects to his childhood, such as a totally dysfunctional family and an absence of love. Lacking guidance, support, and affection, he was an easy target, as often is the case with such boys. Yet, the boy and the man apparently derived sufficient comfort and satisfaction from the relationship because it lasted ten years. One would assume that, as he grew into adulthood and gained some more mature perspective of his situation, he might have felt more comfortable withdrawing from the relationship if he had developed growing misgivings. Apparently, he had not.

As it turned out, it took an outside force to radically change his perspective. The disharmony and dysfunction within his family had only increased, so he sought professional help. Now, I know something about how to work constructively with patients, and immediately imposing one’s own, personal beliefs upon a patient, especially when such beliefs are intolerant and deny human nature, should be avoided. Apparently however, avoidance is precisely what this therapist did not do. When he was informed of the ten-year relationship, the therapist told the young man that he had been taken advantage of, abused, molested, scarred for life, that he always would feel guilt and shame. Not surprisingly, he consequently concluded that the therapist must be right and developed agitated feelings of having been scarred for life and shamed. So rather than coming to comfortable terms with his homosexuality, he became confused and angry.

All this occurred unbeknownst to the older man. To celebrate his young friend’s birthday, he had delivered to him a nice, new television set. Still feeling his new-found rage, the young man walked it over to the other’s home and smashed the TV on his front porch. Obviously, that was the end of their relationship.

Any thinking person who has become familiar with history can not escape the realization that such desires and relationships are ubiquitous and have existed for many centuries. This is not a limited nor new phenomenon. If any rational person takes the time and makes the effort to dispassionately analyze this fact, some logical questions are raised. What kind of touching is, in the truest sense, natural; what kind unnatural? What kind of intimacy is healthful; what kind unhealthful? If society or religion make normal human needs taboo, and people’s attempts to meet their desires become misunderstood, feared, corrupted, and unnatural, its logical to conclude that the resulting behaviors may become fear-laden, twisted and unnatural. Harm may come to one or both parties. Skewed behavior may turn even to violence.

Nobody should take advantage of another person, young or old, to selfishly attempt to satisfy a need. This is especially true with very young people who have not yet developed their minds and personalities to the extent where they can make rational decisions for themselves. That is precisely why the ancient Greeks assumed that young adolescents where not appropriate for intimate relationships, although courting older ephebes was not only accepted but celebrated. A thinking person might conclude that ancient Greeks had a more normal, healthful attitude about sex than modern societies. For any person to hold intolerant beliefs and to instill in others self-destructive thoughts and feelings not felt naturally is thoughtless and harmful.

Too little effort has been made by professionals and the general public to understand natural human needs, needs that have gone unmet with so many people for so long. I have read some surprising comments posted on YouTube regarding the film “For a Lost Soldier,” an autobiographical account similar to my description of the relationship told to me. There were several posted comments from viewers who, when young, apparently had lacked the love and touch they so desperately needed. Several of them said, “I wish that had happened to me.” How the relationship in the story happened was not the most healthful or desirable; however, I can understand the feelings of those who still felt hurt that they were denied a loving touch.

© 04/18/2013

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.

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For a Good Time by Ron Zutz


For a good time, walk out the door. Feel the fear,
and stand up anyway. Inhale slowly, deeply. Take the first step. Despite
trembling arms, grab the door handle and twist. Walk out despite a tightening
chest.
For a good time, move toward the light. Step over
the bumps and around the cracks. Keep walking when balance wobbles. Move around
puddles. Move toward life.
For a good time, see the sun twinkling through
green leaves. Ignore palpitations. Feel breezes. Hear people laughing, and
ignore premonitions of doom.
For a good time, show up.

© 12 August 2013






About the Author



Ron Zutz was born in
New Jersey, lived in New England, and retired to Denver. The best parts of his
biography have yet to be written.



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Camping by Ricky

In the summer of 1986, I was in the Air Force and stationed at Little Rock AFB in Jacksonville, Arkansas. While there my wife, Deborah and I got the irresistible urge to buy a tent trailer in which to go camping with our three children. We looked at several models and finally decided to purchase the top-of-the-line Coleman tent camper. We were mesmerized by the quality and creature comforts built into the unit.

It had a queen size bed at one end and a double bed at the other. The table could be converted into a space for one or two small children. The refrigerator could be run on propane, electricity, or the battery. There was an outside compartment for the Coleman stove as well as a stove on the inside. An electric air conditioner was mounted in the roof along with a fresh air vent. The hot water heater ran on either gas or electricity. Besides plenty of storage space, there was a room for a standup shower and another room for the indoor port-a-potty. Completely prepared for travel, the unit was slightly longer than our Chevy Astro van.

We promised each other that due to the cost, we would go camping at least twice a month. That promise was easy to make but hard to maintain in the short to long term. My duty schedule enabled me to have weekends off but not consistently. So, gradually our commitment to camping waned.

Deborah and I loved to visit and camp in state and federal parks. Our thought was that the camper was a good deal because many parks do not have motels or hotels within their boundaries so the camper would be our portable home at a park.

In February 1987, Deborah became pregnant with our last child and that spring, I received orders transferring me to Ellsworth AFB, near Rapid City, SD. We were all excited to go but me most of all, as I had finally “had it” up the “ying-yang” with a completely incompetent commander and really “could not wait” to get away from there.

We left Jacksonville in late May or early June enroute to Ellsworth. Deborah was feeling pretty pregnant and enduring morning sickness, fatigue, and gestational diabetes. Greatly adding to her discomfort was the oppressive muggy heat. We only made about 150-miles that day and spent the night in our camper in northern Arkansas in a “mom & pop” tiny campground where other RV‘s were parked within 3-feet on either side.

The next day we only went about 50-miles because Deborah was so stressed and uncomfortable. We camped in a Missouri state part a few miles off the main highway. Our spot was under a canopy formed by overarching trees which kept out the direct sunlight and provided much shade to keep the temperature way down. There was even a children’s play area close by.

The next morning, Deborah was feeling better and we and the kids all took a walk along one of the park nature trails. This one was about ¾-mile long and remained in the forest mostly under the trees where it was shady and cool. Along the trail we discovered wild strawberries and raspberries. We stopped and ate a few each then finished our walk. The trail began and ended very near our campsite. By this time Deborah was a little “tuckered out” and wanted to rest quietly (i.e. without the kids making noise), so she made an offer we did not want to refuse. Deborah suggested that while she rested, that all of us go back along the trail with some small buckets and pick as many strawberries and raspberries as we could. She said that when we got back, she would then make us some pancakes with the berries included. She didn’t need to say it twice. In a couple of minutes we were off and she was asleep.

We stayed at that campground another day and Deborah recuperated quite well and the kids had fun playing in a new environment with other kids whom also were camping overnight. The next day, we continued our journey to South Dakota without any further significant problems except for the “Are we there yet?” and “How much longer?” routine as the endless miles of the Great Plains rolled by.

© 17 March 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

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Feeling Different by Phillip Hoyle


As a young adult in seminary discussions I realized that sometimes students and professors alike didn’t know what I was going on about. A professor would listen to my ideas and respond, “Very interesting, Mr. Hoyle.” I took it he had no clear understanding of my perspective. That was okay, something I had encountered most of my life. I was talking about one of these seminary “interesting” instances with my mentor Katherine Williams. “They must think I’m strange,” I concluded.

“You are strange, Phillip,” she replied without hesitation.
Strange was not new to me. Although I didn’t feel particularly unaccepted or unacceptable as a teenager, I was aware that my sexual yearnings were unusual enough that they could get me into a lot of trouble or at least make my life a problem to other folk. Besides that, I was mildly nerdy but found my niche in music. If any musician fits in, I fit in easily enough singing in church, school and community. I was a reluctant leader in a couple of school organizations. I felt different; I was different: for instance, I didn’t know any other kids my age who organized music groups; I didn’t know very many guys who studied as attentively as I did although I admit I didn’t over-do it; I was physically rather uncoordinated, but not so much as to be made into a fool; I had good humor; I was independent and happy to be so. My feeling different didn’t make me feel particularly bad since I was easily entertained, easy going, and tolerant of groups and different kinds of people. By that time in my life I was reconciled to the fact that I was quite different and that the difference was acceptable to me if not to anyone else.

In college, I felt attracted to three guys: Todd, Dirk, and Chad. Todd and Chad seemed straight. I assumed Dirk was but now wonder if he was bisexual. He seemed somehow attracted to me as if he knew I was do-able. We never went beyond touching disguised as wrestling. Straight Chad was rather needy, and I fell for him. He was the first person I ever lost sleep over. But I was on an earnest straight road toward marriage. After seven years of marriage, I had a one-night stand with a gay friend. Our friendship continued. After nine years of marriage, I fell in love with a man and forged a friendship that after five years added a sexual element. The sex was sporadic, yet the love and interest remained constant.

While living in Albuquerque, a mid-life crisis led me into two homosexual affairs. I conducted these contacts with less care than before as I explored an increasingly gay world. The feelings had changed; my feelings.

Around that time a gay friend said to me, “No one can grow up gay in America without developing some neurosis.” His assertion would mean all gays need psychiatric help. I objected to the notion but then recalled hearing a lecture by a psychiatrist who reckoned ninety per cent of his patients didn’t really need his help. He judged they needed trusted friends to talk with. He laughed at himself saying he was a highly paid substitute friend. The neurosis, if that is the accurate term, subsides when one is accepted in love.

My Albuquerque affairs seemed that to me: the friendships that could sustain me and my sanity. They also were sexual. The first one would never be more than sex play, play I found exciting and that helped me understand so much about my own needs. It afforded the sexual contrast, the complement I desired. The second affair had an emotionally complicated excitement the first did not proffer yet it was sexually boring: the techniques my partner initiated were always the same. I realized sex in my marriage had measures of all these experiences, but the feelings of the homosex offered an amazing contrast. I discovered needs and joys that thrilled me when with these two men. (No, there was never a three-way. Oh well.)


Much of my life I have felt different. I continue to feel different. I’m sure it’s not just because I am gay or that I was always homosexual. It’s the whole package of my life, my different and strange life. I love it. I love myself. I love life.


© Denver, 2011

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot
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Lavender University by Pat Gourley

My involvement in the Gay Community Center began back in 1976. My first volunteer duties started very shortly after it opened at its first location in the 1400 block of Lafayette. This was an old brick two story duplex that I think was owned at the time by the Unitarian Church on the corner and the Center was renting the space from them. My main duties initially involved phone volunteering and coordinating other phone volunteers along with building our database of referrals, which we kept on a single Rolodex! A majority of our calls were for social referrals to local bars and bathes and the emerging number of local LGBT organizations, and also not a few requests for gay-sensitive therapists and health care providers. We referred men frequently to the Men’s Coming Out Group still in existence today, which met early on in the Unitarian Church itself, their library I think.

1976 was the year I started nursing school and eventually did my Community Health rotation at the Center. One of my nursing student activities was participating, as a tester, in a weekly STD clinic at the Center on Friday evenings. I am not sure why it wasn’t on a Monday rather than a Friday since the business would have probably been more brisk after a busy weekend in the late seventies, the age of thriving bathhouses. These clinics involved a fair amount of counseling on STD’s and how you got them and how to possibly avoid getting them. Unfortunately, though, we gay men rather cavalierly thought of STD’s as just the cost of doing business and not something to particularly strive to avoid. We drew blood for syphilis and did throat, penis and rectal cultures for gonorrhea. HIV was still several years away.

My Center volunteer activities drifted from phone work and coordination to milking penises and swabbing buttholes to the much more highbrow efforts involved with a program of the Center called Lavender University. Where or from whom the name came has been lost in the mist but it was a queer take off at the time on the very successful Denver Free University. I was a member of the Center’s University Staff from its inception until probably early 1984 when The Center kind of imploded around a variety of issues including extreme tension between some community-based organizations, the tumultuous resignation of Carol Lease and the demands and urgency of the emerging AIDS epidemic. I do believe much of this tumult was fueled in no small part at the time by often-blatant sexism and an at times over the top focus on the perceived supremacy of the penis within the gay male community but that is a topic for another time.

Our quasi mission statement read as follows: “Lavender University of the Rockies is a free school by and for the lesbian and gay communities of Colorado. It is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, to the examination of diverse points of view and to free speech without censorship.” In addition to being on the University staff I was an occasional instructor offering often erudite classes including one called: Evolving Queer Spirituality or The Potential Significance of Paganism For Gay Men further subtitled “might Christianity just be paganism with the gayness taken out.” In only three of the course catalogs I managed to keep I also see I offered a class on the Tarot and one year a November 1st celebration of the Harvest Sabbat. Yeah, what can I say this was certainly my “witch-phase?”

The most fulfilling repeated offering I made though was one for gay men and involved a series of writings we would read and dissect by gay visionaries including Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard, Harry Hay, Mitch Walker, and Don Kilhefner among others. These offerings were usually weekly and involved spirited group discussion around that week’s selected piece and food. Most of the sessions were held at the Center or my house up in Five Points. Many of the attendees were budding radical fairies and some friendships were made that last until this day.

These were probably the peak years of what I will rather presumptuously and ostentatiously call my Queer-Radical-Phase. These years of my life involved hours and hours of community work and play with many other often very receptive comrades in arms. It was a very exciting and challenging time for me personally and I think for the larger LGBT community, the world was truly becoming our oyster. It was constantly being reinforced for me on a daily basis that Harry Hay was right-on that we were a distinct people and a real cultural minority.

It is my belief that it was the slowing emerging AIDS nightmare that derailed this truly grassroots revolution and really forced a refocusing of our energies into survival. The tensions created by that little retrovirus locally nearly led to the end of The Gay and Lesbian Community Center and certainly to lots of soul searching and critique of the rich expressions of much of the gay male world we had come to know and love in the 1970’s.

I like to fantasize that if AIDS had not come along we would have seen a much more radical queer community and force for seminal social change than we are today. The community might have led a nationwide revolt that would have tossed Ronald Reagan out of office in 1984 and reversed the countries unfortunate slide into oligarchy. Perhaps igniting a re-election of Jimmy Carter and a return of the solar panels to the roof of the White House. We might well have been in the vanguard of the dissolution of traditional marriage, replacing it with a much more polymorphous and rich arrangement of human interaction and loving support.

A severe curtailing and redefinition of the American military into a force truly devoted to peace on earth would have been another goal. Instead of the race to the local recruiters office for those with no other economic choice everyone would do two years or more of service to the community that would have been of great benefit to the entire world and health of the planet. But perhaps I am putting way too much on our plate or …. hmm … maybe I did do too much LSD in the 70’s.

© April 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.