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Magic by Gillian

Tossing this topic around in my head, I consistently found myself humming that tune from West Side Story, I like to be in America, OK by me in America.

When it finally pushed into my consciousness, I realized that my subconscious was telling me something (as, of course, it always is!) Coming to, being in, America. That is magic. It has been for so many people for so many years. I am using the word America, here, the same way it was used in the movie, to mean the United States; politically incorrect, I was always taught, as America North and South encompasses many countries, but nevertheless that is how it was used in that particular song.

Now, almost half a century since I first set foot on American soil, I can still feel the magic I felt then. And I wasn’t a refugee escaping political persecution, or poverty, or violence. At worst, I was simply looking for a better life than was then on offer in a struggling, and still, in many ways war torn, Europe.

I stepped onto Pier 41, I think it was, off the ocean liner Queen Elisabeth, on a cold, drizzzly, October morning, and felt the magic. This was where I was supposed to be! Not where I wanted to be, I had no experience to tell me that, I had been here ten seconds, but where I was meant to be. I truly felt it in my inner self, as if my soul had somehow been misplaced in a body born elsewhere, when clearly my soul belonged here. I can’t explain that feeling, and I don’t know if all or most immigrants feel that way or if I am the only one. I only know that it was clear to me, and that I still feel it.
After fifty years, of course I recognize that there is much Black Magic abroad in the country; that all is not well, at least as I see it, with the good old U.S. of A. But I knew it then. President Kennedy had recently been assassinated. Oh yes, I knew there was a Dark Side. And since then, in my opinion, the Dark Side has become darker and more insidious; or perhaps I have just become more aware. But my place, my belonging, has nothing to do with intellectual processes. It is simply my soul, whatever that word may mean, knowing where I belong.

August 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.

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A Pulsar of Light by Carlos

We all enact a role upon the stage. In spite of our most polished performances, many of us often look back to the stage on which we have strutted and long for another script. Time and again, my friend Paul and I misconnected. He never asked anything of me. I suspect he felt he had no right to assert himself. Neither did I speak honestly to him for fear of being too forward. Looking back at the roles we played, I suspect that I should never have let him go without offering him the bounty of truth. Yet in spite of my misgivings and ponderings as to what, if anything, we may have been able to create, I am at peace, knowing that in the end, the script was perfect just the way it was.

A few months prior to my graduation from the University of Texas, I found myself leaving the classroom, enjoying the sun on my face and the sweet aroma of the west Texas desert in bloom. Unexpectedly, Peter, destined to become my first beau, approached, gave me a nod, and motioned me to follow. In spite of my trepidation, I followed, anxious to be inducted into a world that I had fantasized, yet feared, for years. I wanted to be held in a man’s embrace, overpowered by his testosterone. Because I was inexperienced, however, rather than becoming a love-under-the-sheets encounter, our rendezvous evolved into polite conversation and gentle hand-holding. Nevertheless, this being my first encounter with a man, my gay card was validated. Of course, I was anxious to learn from him and lie naked in his bed, but being a good Catholic boy, I deluded myself into believing our meeting was a divine act of intercession. Thus, I was determined to win his heart. Therefore, I decided to play my cards in the kitchen. After all, I’d heard the cliché that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. At least that is how I rationalized my actions in my gender-confused world where the game required one partner to be the hunter while the other was the gatherer. A few days later I knocked on his door, having practiced my invitation to cook for him for days. Even now decades later, I can still feel my heart beating like a little boy about to open his first Christmas gift. As the fates would have it, he was delighted, and we agreed to meet a few days later. That week I perused countless cookbooks for direction. I finally decided on a Russian feast to inspire my czar and win his devotion. That Saturday, I arrived at his apartment, ingredients at hand for savory beef stroganoff, buttered noodles, and Cointreau-kissed strawberries Romanoff. Though I was a nervous boy playing at being grown-up, I pulled it off. The dinner was magnificent. Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Festival Overture” provided the auditory punch to an evening filled with sensory delight. After the meal, as we held each other on his sofa, and I felt his heart poetically and impossibly beating to my own, I knew I had bagged my query. I had won him over through my culinary skills and domestic manipulations.

Within a few years, however, what had blossomed in the spring. withered and desiccated. We tried to forge a relationship, but because I had been drafted into the army and was away from home, our meetings were few and far in between. Our May-December flame sputtered, for while he had burned his candle at both ends over the years, my light had just started to flicker. Eventually, he recognized that he wanted what I could never offer, children. Thus, within months after I did return home, he dissolved our relationship, convinced our age differences and irreconcilable goals were impediments to the fairy tale ending on which I had been weaned. And thus, I encountered my first dissolution, my first of many failures. The “Russian Easter Festival Overture” became a dirge, its bells no longer heralding the resurrection of love, but rather the mournful eulogy of forsaken love and childish dreams.

Regardless, in those years with Peter, I learned that being gay is a blessing; I learned to embrace and honor myself. Although the relationship did not take root, that meal became a precursor to my entry into adulthood. Thus, I remain forever grateful to our ephemeral dance. Over those years, Paul, Peter’s best friend, was often a guest at our apartment. Though Paul and I were never alone, in retrospect, I knew even then that the sexual and emotional attraction between us was palpable. I suspect Peter felt it, though he never spoke of it. After my first relationship came to an end and I moved out, Paul visited me often. Our encounters were polite and restrained. Paul stood off in the distance, silent, supportive, and stoic. In retrospect, I realize that though he wanted to reach out to me, his devotion to his best friend and to me precluded him from doing so. And thus, the Russian feast I had years earlier prepared for another was never his. And after months of agony and a realization that my first relationship could not be resurrected and that I needed to move on, I left Texas for Denver, hoping to start a life anew. Yet even before I flew away, Paul and I both knew that so much that needed disclosure would remain forever vaulted. I wanted him to give me reason to remain, yet I could not encourage him; he wanted me to stay, yet he could not betray his honor. We were both stuck in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t’ waltz. And thus, our chosen pathways became the denouement to our Greek tragedy.

And thus, our lives took us in different directions. Because we kept in touch, our friendship blossomed. Though our letters to each other were always warm, it was becoming clear to me that by my running away, I had thwarted a possible bond when he started to close his letters with…Love, Paul. Eventually, he even asked me if I could tolerate him for a brief visit should he find himself in Denver. I let him know that if he took a step toward me, I just might take two steps toward him. But because of his career, he never made it to Denver, and as time progressed, our letters became more infrequent. I concluded we had only forged footprints on a beach. A few years later, I awoke from a dream. Paul hovered protectively next to me, reaching down with his hand to touch my face. I decided enough time had passed between us. Unspoken words needed to be fleshed out. Thus, I called him. To my surprise, a kind stranger answered, and after I asked for Paul, he informed me that he had just passed away. And thus, the last dance came to an end. On my next visit to Texas, I went to his grave, knelt before it, and bide adieu to my friend for whom I should have prepared a feast. I recognized that time had flitted away like a ghost seen only in the periphery of one’s vision. I will always some regret that I did not marry savory to sweet, let the dough rest and rise, or grind the spices between my fingers for Paul. I suspect that my life might have been different had I recognized I am not exempt from the adagio’s last note. I regret my indecision; I regret his indecision. My naivete, my silence, his devotion, his honor, had collided like two star systems pulled apart by each other’s gravitational pull. I will always ponder whether a meal to remember might have scripted a sublime poetic couplet. But regret is a bowl of warm, curdled milk.

My experiences with Paul have taught me that to live life constrained by polite etiquette and fear of risks is like eating strawberries without the Cointreau. The little boy is no more. I have discovered that truth must be honored and life must be lived as though the big bang did not need God. When I look back at what might have been, I honor it, but remain firmly entrenched in what is today, in this Mobius strip of time. Thus, when I first met and recognized the man who a decade later still remains my soulmate, Ron, I turned around l80 degrees and gave him a smile that left nothing to the imagination. And the rest is history. No more retrospective regrets, no more cautious approaches. Life must be lived with a devil-may-care attitude. After all, the last supper is only the precursor to the first breakfast. Thus, I’ve learned to let the dead rest in peace and to keep alive the neutron star that is my lighthouse.

© Denver, 4/11/2014

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.

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Housecleaning by Betsy

There are two major reasons I don’t spend large amounts of time on housecleaning. One reason is that in my adult life I have never stayed in one place, one house, for years and years and years. Well, fifteen is about the most. Every time I’ve moved even within the area I have been forced to evaluate all my stuff–not just my stuff–but a good bit of the stuff of my three children and other family members. Then comes decision time. Either keep it and move it or throw it away. By stuff I mean memorabilia. Hundreds of photos, 8mm movies, 16mm movies that were my grandparents’, Lynne’s 1st book of drawings entitled “drawn flowers.” Or there’s her labor of love she produced in 2nd grade in the Netherlands when we lived there for two years–a drawing of a face with the words “voor Moeder Dag” glued onto a perfectly crafted wooden frame and given to me for Mother’s Day.

Or there’s Beth’s second grade handwriting exercise with the ever-so carefully drawn words:
“I wish teachers would not give us so much work
Because it makes my fingers hurt.”

Or her hand-bound booklet of birthday greetings for mom and the words “I love you” written on every page.

Or how about John’s ninth grade Mothers’ Day creation:
“One fair day, ‘Twas the month of May, A maiden received a card fair and gay.” The poetry goes on and then finally, “Fair maiden cannot you see. The labor invested in this card for thee? Upon a high mountain I meditated, and to this point my thoughts did sway. I want to wish you a Happy Mothers’ Day.”

All of these are precious bits of my life which I will never throw away. I have said so often: someone else will have to throw these things away for me after I am gone. Then THEY can do the housecleaning. THEY can decide what to keep and what to throw out.

I have much memorabilia passed down to me from parents and grandparents as well. These items will never be the victims of a housecleaning frenzy either. The few times I have considered going through memorabilia and doing some housecleaning, I have ended up spending the better part of the day reading, studying the items, and learning new things about my forebears.

Just to name a few treasures: The story of the Drib Yoj written by my grandmother Edith Rand. (The Drib Yoj, you know, is the Joy Bird.) Newspaper articles and photos describing the lives of my grandparents, great grand parents and in some cases their grandparents.

An article clipped from the New York Herald Tribune draws my attention. It is about the family gathering to celebrate my great grandmother’s 100th birthday. The words on the fragile, yellowed newsprint describe the life of no ordinary woman. Cecelia McConnell, my great grandmother, grew up in Illinois, knew Abraham Lincoln and heard the Lincoln-Douglas debates. At the age of five years she traveled from the East to the mid west in a covered wagon. Then ninety-five years later at the age of 100 she returned to her home on one of the first passenger planes to fly the skies. I was two years old at her one hundredth birthday party and I doubt anyone I know will ever throw out the photo of Cecelia 100 years old with her great grandchildren.

Not all treasures I come across in my housecleaning are ancient. One piece of family history I have acquired very recently. Cecelia’s son, my grandfather Ira McConnell, died before I was born so I have no memory of him. In spite of that I have recently gotten to know him a little bit. Last summer while visiting the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park I came across a bit of information previously unknown to me. Gill and I were camping in the park campground. We had been to the visitor center and brought back to the campsite with us a couple of brochures about the history of the area. I was reading the brochure about East Portal, the town at the bottom of the canyon on the Gunnison River. The town had a tiny community that had sprung up in 1904 when the site for the Gunnison Tunnel was chosen. The brochure describes the conceiving of the tunnel which would carry the waters of the Gunnison River five long miles through the 2000 foot solid rock cliff wall to the arid Uncompahgre Valley to the West. Surveying the tunnel and actually digging it would be a daunting engineering challenge.

Reading on I see a picture of the man I never knew but I have seen enough pictures of my Grandfather to recognize him even as a young man. Quoting from the brochure my recognition is confirmed.

“The jovial Ira McConnell explored the depths of the canyon. He completed surveys that pinpointed the tunnel headings and towns of East Portal in the canyon, and Lujane on the valley side of the tunnel. He guided tunnel construction through the most difficult of problems.”

“Look, Gill,” I yelled. “It’s my grandfather. He is here in this brochure.” This discovery took me completely by surprise, although I knew my grandfather had engineered tunnels in Colorado in the early 1900’s. But the Gunnison Tunnel–I had no idea! This was very exciting, indeed! I returned to the visitor center where I helped myself to a good supply of the brochures knowing I would want to give some away and have some to add to my memorabilia.

I’m quite sure I accumulate material at a faster rate than I get rid of it. This makes housecleaning all the more difficult–downright impossible.

Remember, I said there were two reasons for avoiding serious housecleaning. The second reason is that I have found that housecleaning is hazardous to your health.
It can result in confusion and memory loss and sometimes stress. Let me explain.

Housecleaning can be physically hazardous.

Mop the kitchen floor and lately I find I’m wiped out for the day. These housecleaning chores have become exhausting. I think I would almost rather go to the gym and do a two hour strenuous workout, or climb Lookout Mountain on my bicycle. Nowhere near as exhausting. I wonder why that is?
Another hazard. The minute I settle into a new home I find the perfect place to house my precious memorabilia. Items that cannot be filed in a filing cabinet; such as some of the treasures mentioned above. Then a couple of years later for whatever reason a surge of energy comes upon me and I am inspired to do some housecleaning and find an even more perfect place to store my things that I treasure.

So I move them to their new, improved resting place. Next time I go to look up one of these items it’s not where it should be. Where, then is it? Of course, I have forgotten where the new, improved resting place is. I remember clearly where it used to be. Why did I change it? Or sometimes I remember very clearly where I stored my treasures in my previous home. But I no longer live there. I live HERE. 

Where IS the stuff, anyway

Someday I will learn to spend my energy doing something more useful than moving things around. Let them be. As a result of what I think is a housecleaning endeavor, I’m just confused, stressed, searching, and the house is no cleaner–all because I was inspired to do some clearing out.

Now I have confirmed that housecleaning causes stress. Today I cannot put my hands on that treasured photo of my great, great, great grandparents homestead on the Erie Canal. BEFORE housecleaning at least I didn’t know that I didn’t know where it was.

April1,2013

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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Mirror Image by Will Stanton

Back in the 1930s when millions of people were out of work, most people thought that it was OK, even wonderful, that the federal government would step in and help to provide good jobs for people, especially since there was so much work that needed to be done. Much of that needed work was fixing what previous generations of people had broken through lack of foresight, no sense of wise land use, and even from simple greed. That certainly was true in the rural areas of Ohio where I grew up. Forests had been stripped, top-soil had eroded away, mine tailings dumped near water sources, and streams had been polluted. Many poor homesteads and small villages were left to decay. Work was scarce, the economy poor.

So F.D.R., the President that some people chose to hate, created the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Just in our area alone, hundreds upon hundreds of people were given useful jobs during the 1930s. Thousands of trees were planted to prevent further soil erosion and pollution of waterways. Roads were improved, and small concrete bridges replaced fords through streams.

Nature had created no natural lakes in the area; so to help control water-flow and to boost the local economy in the Zaleski Forest region, a small damn was built, creating a many-fingered lake. Workers built a swimming area with wooden docks and diving towers. They made places for boating and canoeing. They added a picnic area with benches and fireplaces along side of the shore. They built a road to a scenic overlook where, eventually, a rustic lodge was constructed. Nearby, they made several wooden cabins for campers. The Division of Forestry officially opened the Zaleski Forest Park in 1940. Once the Division of Parks and Recreation was created 1949, it was renamed Lake Hope State Park. The area has provided employment and recreation ever since.

I recall with pleasure and a good amount of nostalgia visiting Lake Hope on many occasions from as young as age two. Sometimes it was just our family; at other times it was with family friends. During those first years, the three routes to the lake were gravel. The northern route was the shortest and passed by the remains of a stone structure resembling an oversize barbeque chimney. It was just one of several dozen 18th and 19th-century iron furnaces long abandoned since the charcoal and ore had been depleted in the area. The southern route took us through miles of hilly rural forest including many acres of pines planted by the C.C.C. And, the eastern route was the most primitive route of all, winding its way through the dense woods past abandoned and near-abandoned settlements and crossing the railroad tracks near the Moonville Tunnel, built in the mid-1800s. The tracks are long-gone, and the tunnel now is rumored to be haunted.

I recall how with excitement I would catch the first sight of the lake, eagerly looking forward to going to the man-made beach. We would wind our way to the parking lot and head for the wooden bathhouse. At age two, I was taken by my mother to the women’s side. (Yes, I can remember that young.) When older, my father took me to the men’s. When so young, I was required to stay near the beach, but I remember seeing my oldest brother going out to the wooden diving tower, climbing up so high, and diving in.

Vintage photo of
Lake Hope’s swimming area

My family and friends would bring along picnics, and afterwards we would find a picnic table near the water’s edge and lay out our food on one of the tables. Little stone fireplaces were provided in case we wished to grill hamburgers or hotdogs. We did not know in those days that potato chips were not so healthful, but we loved them and looked forward to our friends bringing them. They actually brought commercial-size bucketsful. Then there was desert.

Once sated with picnic-food, we would stroll along a path that closely followed the edge of the lake, listening for birds and watching for water foul. In the time of my childhood, the lake was surrounded by old-growth as well as reforested hills. Looking across the lake in any direction, I enjoyed seeing the wooded hills reflected, mirror-image, in the calm water.

Vintage photo of Lake Hope — a mirror image

On other occasions, we rented a small cabin up near the lodge. They had few real amenities, but at least there was a roof over our heads. We brought food and supplies with us, and the lodge was nearby in case we needed anything more.

Later, when my grandmother once came visiting, we took her with us to Lake Hope. It was my birthday, and she thought that I was old enough by then for me to have a Camp King jackknife. My mother did not; she was sure that I would cut myself. Of course, I did, but it was only a slight wound on my thumb.

And as we grew older, we made use of the beautiful stone and wood lodge for dinner. It was perched high on the ridge and had a fine view through the trees to the shimmering lake below. Near the entrance to the dining room, they had placed a Skittles game, and we kids enjoyed playing it when we had some time after our meal. I was sorry to learn that the lodge burned to the ground in 2006. I new one has been built to replace it.

More than seventy years have passed since Lake Hope was opened to the public. Generations of families, locals, and students from surrounding colleges, have enjoyed the facilities and the beauty of this lake. When I last visited there, my memories flowed. Looking across the lake and admiring the mirror-image reflections from the wooded hills, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. I knew that generations more of employees and visitors would continue to enjoy this little Eden. Those 1930s politicians who opposed such projects, those hard-nosed naysayers, were proved wrong. Thank you, you far-sighted individuals who made possible the many benefits from their proposed work projects. Thank you W.P.A. and C.C.C. for work well done.   

© 11 February 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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Juvenile Crime by Ricky

The very first criminal act I can remember doing was when I was only 10; in the 5th grade and on my way home from school. I have a powerful attraction to ice cream. So strong it is that back then, you might have even seen me transform into an “ice cream-zombie”. For that matter, I still do occasionally.

So, one particular week previous to my act of criminality, I had been stopping by the local grocery store where my parents shopped. I had left over lunch money and my purpose for stopping there was to buy an ice cream sandwich at a cost of 10-cents; eating it on my way home.

The week following I had no left over lunch money but the attraction to ice cream was still as powerful as ever and I stopped by the store. I searched everywhere in my pockets and book binder while walking up and down the aisles but try as I might, I just could not find the money that was not there. So I turned into a criminal. Carefully scanning for potential witnesses and hoping no one could hear my pounding heart, I quickly opened the ice cream cooler, removed one ice cream sandwich, placed it into my book binder and left the store.

I waited until I crossed the highway before I removed the thing, unwrapped, and ate it. On the bright side, I did throw the wrapper into a trash bin I was walking by; after all I wasn’t a despicable litter-bug. The next four days found me doing the same thing before guilt overcame attraction. I learned from these experiences that males (especially boys) can hear the “siren call” of inanimate objects quite clearly, objects such as ice cream sandwiches, or firearms, or fast cars, or any baseball/football games in their vicinity or on a TV, or the call of a video game console.

Once back from my grandparent’s farm and again living with my mother, I went by myself trick or treating until my little brother and sister were old enough to go, and then I took them. The last year I ever went, my friend and I did pull a couple of “tricks” on two homes we got candy from (interpret that as vandalism). Both people we met at the door said that we were too old to be “trick-or-treating”; I was 15 and my friend was 13. I replied that no one is too old to want free candy. Since they had challenged our “right” to beg for candy, we used ski wax to write four letter words on their car windows. Ski wax doesn’t come off by washing; it must be scrapped off.

Like Peter Pan, I also had a dark side. I wasn’t always a nice kid.

Pan’s Dark Side

© 2 February 2013

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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Heading West by Nicholas

Road trips set off many memories for me of family vacations when I and my sisters and mom and dad all piled into the family car and off we’d go driving to see the sights. We made trips to southern Ohio’s Hocking Hills, Pennsylvania’s Cook Forest, and up to Michigan to pick and eat cherries at an uncle’s farm. One year we ventured across the great land to see the west and ended up in Southern California where my dad’s brother and his family lived.

So, when Jamie and I decided to take a road trip one summer from Denver to California, I envisioned turning our Honda into a little nest on wheels. We packed up the car, kept some water and snacks handy, and had a multi-cassette Harry Potter book to listen to when radio stations or music CDs got boring.

We plotted out our route, heading west on I-70 through Colorado and Utah, stopping at Colorado National Monument and Bryce Canyon, and then striking out through Nevada on Highway 50.

It was a good trip even though we almost died in the barren Nevada desert.

The drive through the Colorado mountains was as beautiful as usual and all very familiar. Frisco, Vail, Glenwood Springs were all places we’d been to many times and by Grand Junction a certain monotony had set in. Utah didn’t help the monotony. So, we found a motel and stopped for the night in Richfield.

Next morning we drove further south to Bryce Canyon National Park. So many people want to see the canyons that access is controlled. We parked well outside the park and took a shuttle bus in, stopping at different sites from which we could hike or jump onto the next bus to the next spot. The canyons are filled with spectacular red orange rock formations called hoodoos. Hoodoos are tall stacks of rock left over from eons of erosion. You can walk on top of the canyon edge and see acres of these 2 and 3 story tall chimneys of stone or you can hike down into the canyon and walk among them. It’s like walking among the feet of giants.
We wished we’d planned more time to see other canyons, like Zion, nearby but we had miles to make by sundown and so headed into Nevada. Driving across Nevada must be like driving on the moon except warmer. We got to Ely (eelee), by Nevada standards, a big city. Of course, we did a little gambling and Jamie got hit on by some lady hookers—neither of which was a highlight of our trip.

We went to Ely so we could pick up U.S. Highway 50, known as the loneliest road in America. It is that. From Ely, the highway just heads west in a more or less straight line, up one rise, over a crest, down into a valley, then up the next rise, one after another for hundreds of miles. Few towns, not much to look at and very little traffic. It was beautiful. We stopped in the little settlement of Austin which turned out to be a kind of artist’s colony in the middle of nowhere. Good lunch, charming shops, gotta go.

I had read that remains of some Pony Express stations could still be seen in the desert just off Highway 50. I thought that would be neat to see so I tracked one down. A guidebook listed one at a certain mile marker, a few miles off in the scrub and sand. But we couldn’t find that road and rather than turn around and search it out, we decided to continue on to Virginia City.

Good decision. We arrived in Virginia City, where Mark Twain worked for a time and which once rivaled San Francisco as a wealthy and elegant outpost of civilization on the mid-19th century frontier. We strolled around the quaint old Western town and then got back into our car planning to finish our day in Carson City. The car had other plans. It was totally dead. I had noticed while I was driving earlier that at one point all the dials, like the speedometer, went flat briefly but the car seemed OK so we kept on. Had we gone off into the desert way out in nowhere and the car had died there, somebody would probably have found our bleached bones years later, this being still in the era before cell phones and communication everywhere.

We got the car towed into Carson City where a mechanic replaced some electric gizmo—an ignition switch or something—and off we went next day over Donner Pass into beautiful California. We weren’t hungry, so we kept driving.
Almost the moment we crossed into California, traffic picked up and grew and grew until we hit one long traffic jam from Sacramento to the Bay Area. Ah, California! Joni Mitchell was just then singing about coming home to California and we were doing just that.

February, 2014

About the Author

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Second Honeymoon by Ray S

Over a cup of coffee (1/2 regular and 1/2 decaf) In the kitchen of Marcella Norton’s Victorian home in Georgetown, Colorado she casually suggested Pat and I visit her the coming August in Escanaba, MI. Of course, she added, I’ll put you to work when you get there–adding “It is a beautiful time of the year in the UP–upper peninsula to us non Michiganders.

We thanked her for the invitation and wondered to ourselves how, when, and where, and maybe why? Out came the maps and discovery of the best route. to that part of Michigan, our northernmost venture in that part of the mid west having been Green Bay.

But look it is not too much further to our old stomping grounds–Chicago land. Maybe we should stretch this trip to a few days in the Windy City–well, maybe.

I digress to a blustery March day in 1951 when the two of us departed the site of our nuptials, headed for the first act of our 55-year marriage drama. We spent that night at a vintage 1920’s Hotel Baker in Aurora, Illinois. I mention this memorable occasion only because on this road trip to the UP, it was a close as we got to Chicago. For old time sake, as they say, we returned to the scene of the crime and checked out to Baker to see how much it had changed, if at all. And yes there were some marked but few changes. The dining room had been transformed from a glamorous 1940’s glass block dance floor illuminated from below by colored lights to something more acceptably 1970’s Neo-Mediterranean villa. Again giving into a bit of nostalgia we had lunch suitably spiked with the waitress’s story of her times at the Baker as well as ours.

As if that were not sufficient time spent in Memory Lane, we headed for the little historic Illinois City named Galen. The name means “tin” for which it at one time was a financial center and port, since the days the river silted up and the city has slept quietly, except for its other claim-to-fame. It is the home of General U.S. Grant. We had reserved a room at a B and B perched on the side of the hill that sloped down to city center and what had been the tin boats docks on the Fever River, a tributary of the Mississippi.

Galena has grown into a tourist haven and a very charming historic old place, if you happen to be a history buff. We enjoyed scoping out the museum, post office of Civil War note, appropriate restaurants and bars. But the real highlight of our pre-work/vacation in Escanaba was that first morning at the bit of Victorian splendor when we made it downstairs in time for breakfast.

Our hostess inquired if we had rested well as she served us a very nice breakfast of fresh fruit, coffee, and quiche Lorraine. Our reply was positive, and exclaiming that the bed could have been one of Mr. Lincoln’s but much more comfortable. She smiled and returned to the kitchen.

As a matter of fact we finished our breakfast, went upstairs and back to bed.

So much for Escanaba.

© 3 February 2014

About the Author

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Porn by Phillip Hoyle

The book circulated through the men’s dorm that fall of 1967, a pornographic novel that my roommate claimed was written by a group as an experiment to see if a coherent novel could be written by a committee, each member contributing one chapter. Protagonist Candy’s sexual exploits made up the content, and a different male was introduced in each chapter. It was my turn to read the book.

Did I think the committee’s book worked? Would it fool the editorial world? He asked. Of course, it must have worked; I was reading a printed and bound commercial copy. Was it literary? What a question. Perhaps the holy air of a dorm at a church-related college demanded literary posturing. One must consider that people who desire a book with a convincingly direct and graphically explicit sex scene at the climax of every chapter don’t really care who or how many who’s wrote it. They might count the chapters to see how many times the book could bring them to a climax, to guess how many days the book might last! Editors and publishers might also calculate similarly with an eye on porn rights and profits, especially if such a book could be marketed on the legitimate book list. I avidly read Candy by Jerry Southern.

My very first exposure to pornography, though, was in magazines we pre-pubescent boys stole from Eefie Enzor’s little grocery store on West Tenth Street. We stowed them in a secret place in our hideout. We saw pictures of breasts and probably made lots of stupid comments about them. We reveled in the forbidden nature of having purloined print to go along with the purloined cigarettes and cigars we smoked while turning the pages. My favorite magazine was Adam, a glossy-print rag with photographs and stories. Once, someone lifted a copy of the smaller-format Sexology Monthly that featured informational articles on sex plus a few stories. I began reading porn at age ten.

As a twenty-year-old in a college dorm I read Candy. It had been years since I’d even looked at pornography, for by the time I reached puberty, our gang of little thieves had broken up, and I no longer had access to such magazines. Rather, I discovered the joys of ejaculation with another live boy, one a couple of years younger than I. He didn’t come and we weren’t exactly close friends. At least that is my memory. My sexual development at that time was free of glossy porn. I had sex with boys in a most direct and powerful manner.

Still, I was a reader and as a ninth grader found a couple of sex scenes in a murder mystery in my father’s collection of books. I found another hot sex scene in one of his historical novels. As a tenth grader, I continued reading historical novels. I didn’t find sex scenes very often but didn’t miss them or the porn because I found another boy with whom to have sex. Rather, he found me. We kept busy. After he moved away, I got too busy with church, school, and extracurricular activities, and with girls. Then in college, Candy came to call. I suspect that in reading some of the chapters, I made my first conventional use of pornography.

  • Porn helped me understand my sexual needs. For example, straight porn, as in Playboy, did little for me. Pictures of men and women in sex, as sometimes showed up in Penthouse, I found more interesting.
  • I grew to detest the objectifying of other persons as things or tools to be used either as sex object or in general.
  • I like sex but want it with people; real live, complex folk who interest me.
  • I am more interested in people than in bodies or body types. I prefer smiles to muscles.
  • I like porn as substitute sex; at least I value porn at this level.
  • As a married man I didn’t use porn for I had my wife with whom I made love several times a week. I didn’t want a prostitute, even if only a print prostitute.
  • As my homosexual needs gained my attention, I found gay pornography useful to me. In fact, gay literature and occasionally porn helped me sustain my sanity. In addition to my very nice marriage and my longstanding affair with a male lover, gay literature and pornography gave me a growing sense of identity and an immediate sexual release that contrasted with the rest of my life.
  • Pornography for me was literally what the old word means: writing and/or pictures of prostitution. Eventually porn was my going to a male prostitute for what I otherwise could not get in my other relationships. It was the lifesaver for this married man.
  • I’ve long had friends in literary characters and sometimes in pornographic characters as well.

© 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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Revelation–The Key to Our Revolution by Pat Gourley

Yes, Dorothy, there is a homosexual agenda. It is not, however, fueled by the paranoid fantasies of the homophobic that we are in the business of recruitment. No it is something much more powerful than that. Our true agenda is one of personal revelation and the ripples of awesome change that naturally occurs as a result.

If you pull the religious mysticism crap out of the definition of “revelation” what you are left with at the root is “the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge.” It does seem to me that the coming-out process is one of the purest and certainly most powerful forms of revelation.

Another “R” word that I think is closely tied in here with our true agenda is revolution. A lesser definition of this word but one quite applicable to my beliefs here states that revolution is “a dramatic and wide-ranging change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.”

Homosexuality it seems is certainly undergoing such a major paradigm shift in how it is perceived by the larger society. Oh sure Neanderthal pockets of reluctance to accept the inevitable still exist as very dramatically demonstrated by certain members of the state legislature’s of Kansas and Arizona and a couple of African nations to say nothing of the Russian State. The crazies in our neighboring state to the east are certainly being motivated by a sense of desperation. They have to invoke a convoluted sense of victimhood; we queers are impinging on their religious freedoms by asking them to bake us a cake. How ridiculous is that? They can play with poisonous snakes all they want just keep them away from the kids and I’ll bake my own damn cake, thank you.

The desperation of these folks is indicative that they now realize they have really lost the battle. The reason the scales have tipped so much in our favor is very clearly due to “revelation” on our part. I am firm believer that is has been the individual coming out process repeated and repeated millions of times over the past nearly fifty years that has created this tipping point. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the acceptance of gay professional athletes, queers on TV and all the favorable marriage equality rulings are the result not the cause of this dramatic national “sea change”. And let me add I am not speaking about the coming out of the famous sports person, politician, TV or movie personality as the fuel that has sustained this change, but the coming out of the very average queer in every corner of the world. Revealing often with gut wrenching courage their true selves to friends, co-workers and family.

I wrote a piece in August of 1983 titled “Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are”. It can be found in its original form on my web site www.pjgourley.com, in the Radical Gay Politics section. In a moment of laziness this weekend I thought I might just bring that piece to read but I have rested on my laurels perhaps a few too many times in this group by reading old shit and besides I kind of felt the need to rant a bit.

This article from 1983 was a feeble attempt on my part to try and rally the troops if you will and goose along the need for continuing our waves of revelation that had marked the 1970’s in particular. This was the early days of the AIDS epidemic with fear starting to really creep into the core of the gay male psyche; doubts in the minds of some that maybe the homophobes were right all along and nature was finally going to take care of this “homosexual problem.”

My exhortation was not to retreat into our closets but to start coming out in even greater force. I open the article quoting a Gallop Poll cited in Newsweek magazine from August of 1983 back in a time when Newsweek was actually read by large numbers of people. One question asked in the poll was “Do you have any friends or acquaintances who are homosexual?” 26% answered “Yes” while 74% answered “No.” There was clearly still lots of revealing to do on our part. With AIDS just beginning to creep into the national consciousness and no causative agent yet identified, Jerry Falwell was calling for the quarantining of gay men and I quote “like cattle with brucellosis.”

As it turned out though the community didn’t need my feeble cheerleading with the LGBTQ response to the epidemic being in the long run phenomenally community building and empowering, tragic and horrific as it was.

Harvey Milk
Photo taken in SF Public Library in2010

My personal efforts at “revelation” in this area of my own queerness started in 1967 and after several fitful starts and stops really took off in 1976 with my involvement with an organization called the Gay Community Center of Colorado located on Lafayette street just a block and a half from our current location. So here I am 38 years later still hanging out in this local community center. I ask myself what at this stage of the game I could possibly still have to reveal? Well you see my own personal growth and the ongoing ripening of my own queerness continues to be enhanced by listening to all the revelations here each week and sharing a few of my own. Love and hugs to you all!

© February
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.

Read more of Patrick’s blogs at www.pjgourley.com

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Writing by Michael King

Off and on in the past, I attempted to do some writing. The stories were probably OK but I never did anything with them. They may be in some notebook that I will never open again. My spelling was atrocious and I printed so that even I might be able to read it. I didn’t use the dictionary until more recently and then along with the arrival of Merlyn there is a computer and spell-check.

About four and a half years ago I started attending the men’s coffee at the GLBT Center when it was still on Broadway. When I found out that Jackie, Ken’s intern with the SAGE program was doing a “Telling your story” group, I decided to attend. At first I did a couple of oral reports based on the topic. Then I decided to write the stories. It seems that no matter what the topic was, some suppressed memory, baggage of the past would appear. I would choke up. I had no idea how much childhood pain I had hidden from myself. I’m sure it is a form of self-protection to ignore unpleasant and traumatic experiences so we can continue on. Having been unable to resolve the situation and not having the skills to confront those family members that I depended on, I tried to ignore all unpleasantness. Some things that nearly brought on tears and caused me to feel like I was falling apart had been forgotten for well over 60 years.

Within a few weeks of these emotional breakdowns, I realized that I started feeling a resolve, a freedom, an understanding. I recognized that as a child I could not possibly have known how to be perfect, wise, in control, etc.

As time went on I had less and less flashbacks. I had a new freedom and was realizing that for me to really be comfortable with myself I had to discover my own truths, my now unencumbered potentials. I needed to examine what I wanted to do with my life all over again. I no longer had the old encumbered paradigm of how to be. I could more freely create a future that is based on my wishes and desires, hopes and dreams, freed from outside limitations and expectations.

This new awareness allowed for subtle changes, no dramatic or immediately recognizable differences. Mostly I could be without guilt or self-doubt. I could say “No” without getting emotional. And interestingly enough, I could have critical thoughts and not feel I had to say anything or sense regret. I could just keep them to myself or I could, if I so desired, raise a stink or attempt to change things without the accompanying embarrassment.

Now what happens when I write is that I have little concern what other people think. I seldom get emotional and I find that writing is a fantastic tool for more self-discovery, for a kind of inner growth and allows me to critically examine what I think and feel in areas that I’ve previously given no thought to. I am very thankful for “Story Time”. Writing has opened many doors and has come to be something to look forward to each week. It also is an activity that Merlyn and I do at the same time and share with each other before we come to the group. I’m so glad we got Phil to take charge and build the program that Jackie started. I think it is one of the best programs at the GLBT Center and that seems to be the opinion of all the regular participants. It has been not only an activity for personal gratification but an environment where we have developed friendships, better understanding of one another and we get insights from the disclosures that can only be made in such a loving and trusting group.

© 13 May 2013

About the Author

  

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