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The Essence of GLBTQ by Phillip Hoyle

For me, the essence of being GLBTQ(Aetc.) is first a recognition of being other, by which I mean being a person whose sexuality leaves him or her on the outside: a sinner, pervert, mentally ill, or more generally put, queer. Second, it means a dedication to some kind of community building within that outsider existence, by which I mean recognizing oneself as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, etc., and sometimes connecting as a couple or friend with others that attract you and who feel somehow attracted to you. Third, it means dedication to improving the lot of such outsiders through coalitions of community-building (as in GLBTetc) through communication, valuing, participation in GLBTetc groups, and sometimes activism related to political process. But I don’t here want simply to write an essay on philosophy. Let me tell you some stories.

I was attending a professional meeting in a Denver hotel in 1977 studying Jungian psychology as it relates to religious education. While alone in my room one afternoon, Jung’s Shadow concept about which I had been writing and thinking took the form of a vision hovering over me, and I realized the shadow experience was in fact my homosexuality.

A year later I was in seminary. My encounters with gay persons and my experience of falling in love with a man caused me to realize that my homosexual shadow was more than the flipside of my sexual self. I was walking down a street with the man when I found myself singing love songs to him. This experience helped me realize my homosexual desire was situated at the core of my sexuality. I then “knew” and came to prize my bi-sexual experience in a new and more essential way. I kept singing!

I studied sexuality; I experienced my bisexuality; I loved myself. My homosexual desire and experiences provided me joy and pain—the joy of feeling one night in a hotel that my heart was going to beat itself right out of my rib cage as I was making love to my male companion, the pain of realizing that same lover was never going to express his love for me in the ways I was willing to express mine to him. Still for years I nurtured that relationship—my smallest gay community—all the while knowing that its existence, should it become outwardly known, could spell the end of my marriage and of my career as a minister because my desire and experience occurred outside the cultural norms of religion (I was a sinner, probably the worst kind), failed to be monogamous (against the law), and beyond the psychological, medical, and psychotherapeutic norms (a pervert or mentally ill to many health professionals).

Eventually I did reveal these things—my alternate needs and complementary community. I paid a high price and entered a gay-male world that opened the way for me to enter into an LGBTQAetc. essential experience. I had know, loved, and supported lesbians. I had known and loved gay men. I had known and loved my own bisexual self. I had not known transgender persons, but in my fledgling practice as a massage therapist I was ushered into such a relationship. My transgender client intrigued me with her story. I saw her generosity and worked hard to adjust my own assumptions. I appreciate to this day her tolerance of my bungling attempts to adjust my language. Too often with her I felt like when I was a seminarian dealing with images of God. My miscommunication then was to address God as Father in the opening prayer of a feminist organizing effort—one I supported and promoted. My thirty years of prayer language resisted. Luckily I giggled aloud at my misstep. But with my transgender client, I did not giggle but realized that her good nature helped me understand that in order to be an LGBTQ, I’d have to concentrate and accept others and myself like never before in my whole life because old images and old language always want to interrupt the flow of love and acceptance. For me, the essence of GLBTQ is plain hard work. That’s what I know about such things.
Thanks for listening! What I most appreciate about being in this storytelling group is that weekly I get to practice GLBTQ essential experience. Here we can giggle together as we learn.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Mushrooms by Pat Gourley

My experiences with mushrooms have been varied over the years and for the most part quite wonderful with one exception, which I will address further on. I love to cook with them and in the past thirty years my use of these wonderful and diverse fungi has been limited to those legally sold in supermarkets or a couple edible varieties found in the foothills near Denver. The types I have harvested mostly in the hills surrounding South Park have been a variety of Boletes and the sinfully delicious Morels or as we called them when I was growing up in rural Indiana “sponge” mushrooms. Morels in particular are often found in burn areas the year following the blaze and occasionally in the caterpillar tracks left from post-fire cleanup.

My childhood contact with mushrooms outside of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup in a green bean casserole almost exclusively served at Thanksgiving was nonexistent until in my early teens when I started mushroom hunting with one of my uncles. Our trips to the woods looking for these delicacies happened in the spring and the morels we most often found were growing under small shrub-like plants called May Apples. We also harvested in much larger quantities something we called a button mushroom from decaying logs, these may actually have been a forest Bolete of some sort. My uncle would sauté the button mushrooms in butter and serve them in heaping piles on toast. In the interest of full disclosure these mushrooms were fried rather than sautéed, trust me nothing was sautéed in rural Indiana in the 1950’s. The morels were again lightly fried in butter and served alone. Their earthy and very funky taste would later in life come to mind when sampling certain varieties of semen.

Probably my most noticeable and life impacting mushroom experience though involved what most, myself included, would call a bad trip, though in hindsight with a bit of historical revision might be described as a prophetic visionary experience. Needless to say this trip did not occur as the result of eating the buttons and morels of my childhood. Rather it happened in the fall of 1979 with a variety of homegrown psilocybin or as they were known at the time “magic” mushrooms. I was no stranger to hallucinogens by this time in my life and had used mushrooms to very positive effect on numerous occasions though LSD was always my drug of choice. I was perhaps initially drawn to hallucinogenic mushrooms through the music and iconic art of the Allman Brothers Band- sorry, no, not the Grateful Dead.

This adventure also involved the Empire Baths, now known as the Denver Swim Club, and a rather torrid, at least in my own mind, affair with a very sweet, straight-acting Mormon, local emergency room doctor. I had met this man at one of the queer health care provider support groups popular at the time. I am still not sure what my attraction was to this guy but it was consuming. He was my own age and I strongly preferred older men. He was very conservative around things queer, into electronic disco music and in many ways still tied deeply to his large Utah-based Mormon family. There was some reciprocal interest on his part I suppose perhaps an attraction to the exotic, me being a queer rolling in things radical fairie and addicted to the music of the Grateful Dead while living with numerous other eccentric types in a communal situation. It certainly wasn’t the sex, which was mediocre at its infrequent best.

I’ll refer to him here as Hank since he remained tied to those Mormon roots until the time of his AIDS related death in 1991. His death was attributed to cancer on the death certificate I was told by his twink lover at the time and not HIV. I am cognizant after all that the big NSA spy building nearing completion is in Utah and though I expect my hum drum and really boring life is not of much interest to our homegrown extensive International spy apparatus I would not want to risk causing any existential anguish to his large and I am sure still very Mormon family in some indirect and convoluted way.

Hank’s drug of choice was always pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine and snorted in large quantities. A drug I never appreciated, I mean really where was the bang for the buck. Though I must say there was a time or two with another lover who would fuck me with powdered coke under his foreskin that I do have rather fond memories of. This was of course a bit selfish I suppose on my part since the head of his penis would get very numb while I got off a bit high.

Where Hank’s interest in psilocybin came from I am not sure but he became obsessed with growing them in his small Capitol Hill apartment. The spores were actually available for sale legally in head shops at the time. The spores were inoculated onto sterilized rye in quart size mason jars and then coaxed to grow under artificial light in a warm dark closet in his apartment. A much safer and environmentally friendly endeavor than cooking meth would have been. After several unsuccessful attempts, one of which involved an exploding pressure-cooker being used to sterilize the rye, he was able to inoculate the spores into the grain and was able to grow quite a nice large crop. I imagine that apartment may still have remnants of dry rye on the ceiling despite our repeated attempts to get it all off. The harvest was nicely dried in a toaster oven. We never sold any of these but they would make nice stocking stuffers.

Our maiden voyage with these mushrooms was a few weeks before my infamous bathhouse experience and involved a quick trip to the Grand Canyon. There, while hiking to the bottom of the canyon on a full moon night, we nibbled a few each and were as high as kites for the next 24 hours with no sleep that night. We were I think hiking the Bright Angel Trail and our destination was a waterfall that begged for nude moonlight bathing underneath it. Photos were taken but it was only moonlight and we were totally fucked up so little good evidence remains. I relate this merely to establish that the mushrooms were pretty good and not apparently one of the poisonous psilocybin varieties. Our drive back in his little sporty Volkswagen mostly at 100 miles an hour with obnoxious disco music playing was uneventful and for some inexplicable reason I was still very smitten with the guy.

My rather voracious sexual needs at the time were certainly not being met by Hank so a week or so after our return to Denver I decided that a trip to the bathes was in order and it would be nice to do a few shrooms to enhance the whole thing. Now being at the tubs in an altered state was not new to me though I tended most of the time to be a more utilitarian user often going at noon on no substances whatsoever to catch the butch middle age, often married guys, who could be great sex if the stars were right. I was looking for tops so spreading HIV to unsuspecting suburban women never really entered the picture and of course was not on anyone’s radar at all in 1979.

Shortly after arriving, I had dosed before leaving the house on my bicycle, things started to get strange. And to paraphrase the Grateful Dead things only got stranger as the evening progressed. Freaking out while tripping was something totally new to me. The bathes were busy that night and the potential ripe for some great fucking. I was quickly over come though with great anxiety and a sense of dread, my death seemed immanent. I left the cozy, moist and sexy confines and ventured outside to the pool. It was a cool night in late October so no one else in his right mind was out there. I of course was not in my right mind and soon felt the concrete gargoyles on the surrounding walls were threatening me and urging me to get out of there as soon as possible or I would surely die.

I left the bath on my bike in a frenzy to get somewhere to tell anyone I was sure I was dying. Long story short I ended up in an Indian boutique on East Colfax where the family running the business was cooking a curry dish in the back. I was unable to eat any sort of curry for years. Things kind of got lost in translation with the proprietors of the shop. How does one say I took a hallucinogenic mushroom, went to a gay bathhouse to fuck and proceeded to freak out? So when they kindly called me an ambulance they related that I had food poisoning from a bad mushroom.

The ambulance drivers soon discerned this was not food poisoning and that I would be OK soon. In fact they offered, since it was apparently a slow night, to take me home and they would love to buy some of these mushrooms from me. I was incredulous at this and insisted on being taken to the nearest E.D. There I received a lecture from a rather judgmental physician on duty about growing up. I wasn’t sure if the message was to quit taking drugs or quit fucking my brains out in gay bathhouses – probably both.

Dear friends soon rescued me from the E.D. and delivered me safely to my soul mate Don. Don was an expert at helping people calm down in general so he put me in a warm corner with a couple of oranges and told me to peal and eat them and I would soon be OK. About two hours later and only one orange gone I was good enough to leave and head home.

Just to wrap up I did get my bike back the next day from the wonderfully kind folks at the Indian store who kept an eye on it for me. For some inexplicable reason I had been able to securely lock my bike up before entering the store and announcing to all that I was about to die. I also have often thought that the Universe aided by a bit of psilocybin was alerting me that night to the impeding AIDS nightmare and that a gay bathhouse even as early as 1979 was not the best place to be, certainly not with one’s legs in the air. I of course did not heed that advice but doubt I was infected at the bathes but rather in the rectory of a Protestant church in Aspen Colorado about a year later but that’s another story.

December 2013

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.

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Gay Music by Nicholas

I don’t know what gay music is. In a narrow sense, gay and lesbian music is that music composed or performed by gay or lesbian musicians presumably for gay or lesbian people. There’s quite a lot of that. In a wider sense, gay music is what makes me feel gay, i.e., in the old sense of happy and inspired. There’s quite a lot of that music too. Then there is the music by which I became gay identified or queer (i.e., disco and such) and there’s plenty of that.

If gay music is that music by gay song writers, composers and performers then that can include Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and many others singing the lesbian blues about how they do not need a man and want to find a good woman. In contemporary times, this category includes k.d.lang, Melissa Etheridge, Joe Jackson and others singing their love songs to their own kind. Then there are the Kinsey Sicks and Romanovsky & Phillips, et al. singing their musical parodies. And the musical Fairy Tale of Zanna Don’t, the gay musical that made it to Broadway (or somewhere near).

I have to mention the many choruses of men and women, sometimes together, sometimes separate, who perform a wide range of choral musical styles in nearly every large city in the country for the benefit of lesbian and gay communities.

Does gay music include composers Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein (more or less openly gay), Chopin and Tchaikovsky (probably gay), and John Cage and John Corigliano (totally out and gay)? And everytime Michael Tilson Thomas steps onto the podium to conduct—whether he’s wearing his leather or not—does that make it gay music?

And there’s Liberace. Nobody knows what to do about Liberace.

There’s also music that brings out my gay identity, or memories of that, from those wild disco days. Abba (definitely not gay) was great to dance to. Sylvester (very definitely gay and no relation to our own Mr. Silvester) practically invented disco music. And Madonna—everybody knows what to do with Madonna.

There is also other music that sometimes makes me gay for no apparent reason like Beethoven (rumored to have had an inordinate interest in a nephew) and his 7th Symphony or his Emperor Concerto for piano. And the whole world of opera, though relentlessly heterosexual, just drips drama and costumes fit for any queen.

So, it seems there’s gay music all over the place, in all genres and in every era. From Bessie to Beethoven, from zany to somber, we love to listen, play, sing, dance and are probably responsible for much of the funding for whatever orchestras and opera companies are surviving in the U.S.
Gay music—there’s just no end to it.

February, 2014

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Exploring by Michael King

In my fantasies I perceive myself as one who would explore places, ideas and experiences. Then I remember being in the Amazon and knew that without a guide I would get hopelessly lost. With that in mind I realize that in most areas except in reading books, checking out Google or in conversation I probably need a guide. Merlyn is the perfect guide and has had phenomenal experiences, is knowledgeable in computers and anything mechanical and has traveled and lived all over the mainland 48 states. I on the other hand was (and mostly still am) computer illiterate, non-mechanical and have no idea geographically the distance between one city and another or even the configuration of the states east of the Mississippi. I guess I’m not much of an explorer when it comes to even looking at a map. However, in areas of the spirit, aesthetics, design, color, cooking, feelings and ideals I have a world of my own and explore where few have or would even be interested.
For the most part I don’t even think in a language and probably wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate my inner world to another person nor can I imagine anyone even being interested.

The first time I traveled outside the western United States was when I was in the military. I took photographs while I was in Thailand. They were really excellent and I was so proud to show them to my family both as images representing where I had traveled and as artistic photography. I never did get anyone to even look at them. They weren’t interested. From that time until Merlyn insisted that I use his camera to take a few shots of my paintings and my apartment did I ever use a camera again. Looking back I realize that in Thailand, in the Philippines and in many other places around the world I have done a lot of exploring, especially if I thought I could ask directions if I got lost. I didn’t feel that way in the Amazon or in parts of Africa where I felt I needed a guide. I feel I also need a guide with the computer and not just once but repeatedly.

Exploring the inner world there is a kind of guidance but I only realized that after many years. In research I often find that I am limited by the authors of the material that is either in the library or on the internet. The key there is figuring how to locate what I’m looking for. These days I’m too occupied with activities and relationship to do much serious exploration using books or even the computer.

We spend most of our time exploring antique and junk stores. I am surprised at what one can find in a thrift store. We check out museums, places of interest as we travel and we explore each other’s memories and experiences.

The attitude I have now is to fully experience today and explore the possibilities that exist in the moment. Sharing that with someone makes each day a process of discovery, freshness and exploration.

April 29, 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.

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Revelation by Gillian

I do believe that our socially conservative friends, well actually I don’t have any but you get the drift, must be having a bad time lately. There have been a couple of revelations which doubtless crowded right into their worst nightmares.

Jonny Weir

First, we have the Winter Olympics. Much of what was shown on TV was ice skating. Fine and dandy, but,

“Why oh why,” moans my imaginary friend, and I’m sorry, but, yes, he does have a Southern accent, “Did they have to ruin every moment of it by having that dreadful Jonny Weird as a commentator?” 

Yes, I have returned to my childhood ways, or perhaps gone into my second-childhood ways, and created for myself an imaginary friend with whom I can discuss these things, as I lack a real-life socially conservative buddy.

“His name is Weir,” I correct.

Jonny Weir and Friend

“Whatever, he sure as Hell is weird. Dresses like a goddam woman, for Christ’s sake. Lace blouses and all covered in jewels. Jesus! If they must have him do that job they don’t have to show him do they? His hair all primped and curled and piled on top of his head. Shit! It’s indecent. I sure as Hell hope his broadcasts don’t go outside of this country. He’s an embarrassment to this once proud nation of ours. What in Hell would the rest of the world make of us? Is this what we fought for?”

Oh, that’s using we a little loosely, I think. He’s too young to have been in ‘Nam; I know because I created him. By the same token, I know he has never defended his country in any war, much as he encourages everyone else to do so. Were he a Vietnam vet., I would have too much sympathy for him, so I took that crutch away.

“Perhaps not a great shocker to much of the world,” I shrug. “Most of Europe for a start would probably not think a whole lot about it.”

“Yurp. Who cares about Yurp? Bunch of socialist lay-about faggots themselves. This was once a God-fearin’ respectable country. I just don’t get why that goddam NBC allows that guy to dress like that, makin’ a laughing stock of hi’self, preening in front of millions of people. Why ain’t he made to dress right like everybody else? All th’other commentators wear suits and ties and look like men. I mean, for the love of God, if NBC won’t do it then they should be be made to. I never did believe that I would live to see days like this. This was once a law-abiding country. Now anybody can do any goddam thing. We need laws and we gotta to enforce them.”

This, I think, but don’t say, from a guy with a bedroom full of repeating rifles and sub-machine guns or whatever the mass destruction weapons of choice are these days. A guy who thinks the ‘gubmit’ should stay out of his life.

“And then,” he’s on a roll now, and yes, sorry again, but my conservative buddy is definitely a man, “they got all that women’s hockey hoopla. Ice hockey yusta be a man’s game for God’s sake. Now they got women. And we’re supposed to be proud of ‘em with their medals. Be the day when I let my daughter do somethin’ like that.” As I have provided for my imaginary friend with a relatively independent, politically middle-of-the-road, daughter, I smile to myself at his illusion of a power over her which he has long ago lost, if indeed he ever had it. Which, of course, is fuel to his general anger and resentment.

“Shit, they all covered up so you can’t even tell what they are. They ain’t women and that Weird guy ain’t a man. Jeeeesus!”

“Soccer,” I offer, unable to resist the temptation, “Used to be just for men. Now women and girls everywhere play it.”

He snorts in disgust. “Another bunch of lesbians! Don’t fool me if they talk about husbands and babies. They nothin’ but lesbians!”

“Some of them,” I shrug again, “but all those husbands and boyfriends supporting many of these women are, what? Hired actors?”

“Maybe they jus’ fools who think they married real women who fake it for them. Thinka that?”

What I think is we’ve exhausted this topic. Usually I listen rather than talk with my imaginary bud, after all his very purpose is to help me get inside the heads of people who think like him, as best I can; to try to comprehend their thought processes, what drives them.

So sometimes I just cannot resist egging him on, for that very purpose. “There was that college football player last week too ….. Michael Sam …” 

He spits.

“What in all Hell’s wrong with that guy? Apart from being a queer, I mean. Football’s one place left where no sissy-boys allowed. What on God’s green earth he trying to prove? He coulda been drafted pretty high and had a good career ahead and he just shoots hisself in the foot. No NFL team going after him now. Wouldn’t you think being a ni…. bein’ black makes him different enough without he gotta be more different. Not that being black is any problem in the football world. But being gay sure as Hell is. Why didn’ he just keep his mouth shut? Why do they always have to be in my face with that crap? I don’t wanna know. Being gay is nothin’ to do with how he plays football!”

And that, I think to myself, is indeed a revelation. But did he get the irony of what he just said? Sadly, I doubt it.

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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One Monday Afternoon by Betsy

When I retired I was quite elated that I would no longer have to do any work. That is work other than the menial chores of maintaining a household. The rest of the time I would play–perpetual play for the rest of my life. This attitude only lasted for about the first week of retirement. I soon found myself redefining what for me was work and what was play and just exactly what was rest and recreation anyway? Since I did quite a bit of writing in the last 10 years of my job, it seemed like writing was work.

I soon adjusted to retired life. The only writing I did was in our travel log as we journeyed here and there in our beloved VW camper van to many different parts of the U. S. “Mileage today was 350. Spent the night at Frigid Frosty Forest Service campground. Woke up to snow and froze our butts,” would be a typical entry into the journal.

Then one day about twelve years into retirement my partner Gill and I were presented with the opportunity to join a certain writing group at the LGBT Center. Currently I was told the group is made up of about 10-15 men–zero women, but surely more women would be joining the group. Well, that’s okay I said. I like men. But do I want to do the work of writing?

How often does the group meet, I ask? Every week. Surely, I say to myself, we don’t all write something every week. Probably we take turns so that each individual ends up writing something maybe once a month. I suppose I could try this out. When I learned that there is an assigned topic about which every one writes and shares with the group, it did seem for a moment like this would be burdensome. But Gill was enthused about doing it so why not give it a try. After all, I could pass or just not attend when I had nothing to share.

I must confess. The fact that this group was made up of men did get my attention. I had always had men in my life. I was close to my father and adored him. I was married for 25 years to my best friend, and I have a son and grandson whom I love very much. Life as a lesbian leaves little room for men and I had missed the contacts.

I made some close male friends years ago when I answered an announcement in the LGBT community for anyone interested in forming a tennis group. I showed up on the appointed day at Congress Park tennis courts with 20 men–no women. Our group maintained the same twenty-something to one gender ratio for several years. I became very good friends with some of these men and consider a couple of them still my friends although the group broke up several years ago after about 7-8 years of tennis and friendship.

But a writing group? Creating a piece of writing EVERY week. Telling my story. That sounds like work to me. I’ll have to exercise my brain and delve into memories and emotional stuff of the past and present. Do I really want to do that? Writing. Much harder than talking or thinking or imagining. After all, I thought, writing my story I will have to finish my dangling thoughts as well as correcting my dangling participles. Do I really want to get into that?

That was two years ago. Here I am cranking out the words to share just about every darn week. I feel deprived if I miss a week. I had no idea I would get so much out of being a part of this group when I was considering whether or not to join.

I have learned more than I can measure from the stories I hear from others on Monday afternoons. Sometimes funny and entertaining, sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes informative, sometimes insightful, sometimes inspiring. I believe these Monday afternoons hone not only my writing skills, but also my listening skills. I don’t want to miss a word most of the time.

Furthermore, there is tremendous value to me in documenting experiences I have had, feelings I now have or have had in the past, beliefs I hold dear; ie, documenting who I am. The process of telling one’s story is not always easy, but with practice it gets easier. How much value the stories have for anyone else I will never know. But I find it oddly comforting knowing that I am leaving them behind when I depart this life.

Finally I believe this Monday afternoon activity of telling our stories gives a broader perspective on our own lives–a perspective perhaps not otherwise attained and certainly a perspective not easily attained.

March 3, 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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Endless Joy by Will Stanton

This selected topic “Endless Joy” puzzles me. Why was it chosen? What could it possibly mean? After all, for any human being to experience endless joy rationally seems to be an impossibility. No one experiences endless joy unless he either wishes to arbitrarily interpret his life that way or if he is delusional.

The human condition does not allow for endless joy. We are born mortal, already flawed, and vulnerable to a myriad of trials, tribulations, disappointments, and sorrows throughout life. I realize that some people apparently are blessed with a generally positive attitude, whereas others are plagued with doubt and pessimism. Each may view conditions and events differently; however, neither is slated to be gifted with endless joy.

Perhaps if a person compartmentalizes his life into a variety of conditions, experiences, and activities, one might suggest that one or more of those categories presents endless joy. Taking myself for an example, I have learned over the years that I have an especially deep understanding and appreciation of truly fine music. Such superlative music never fails to provide me with joy, passion, and solace. So, separating out those moments when I either hear or play such high-quality music, they cumulatively provide me with endless joy.

By nature, I also especially appreciate and respond to true love, friendship, and camaraderie. It is a rare person who claims not to require the companionship of fellow human beings, but I do sense that I especially am sensitive to such human gifts.

Admittedly, my appreciation of Mother Nature is very selective. I am a romantic and idealist. So, there are seasons and locales to which I respond deeply, whereas there are others that I feel to be far less inviting, less aesthetic, perhaps even harsh or dangerous. For those ideal aspects of nature, they, too, provide me with great joy. To, again, express such experiences cumulatively, Nature can provide me with joy.

Because none of us is in the springtime of our lives, we generally are suffering a variety of afflictions to our health along with daily concerns and trials. I pity those who may have bowed under the weight of elder life and have lost a sense of joy. Instead, we might regard being alive each day as joy, at least in some aspects of our lives, no matter the difficulties or pain.

I see no viable alternative. Wishing is unrealistic and impractical, although we may engage in it from time to time. I am aware that in some Greek plays and Baroque operas, when some problem has become overwhelming and unsolvable, the authors often employed (as expressed in the Latin phrase) deus ex machina, meaning that a divine power spontaneously intervenes with a device that solves the problems. For example, the lonely and unfortunate cyclops Polifemo, blinded and desperate, pleads with Jove for intervention, who does respond and grants Polifemo the gift of immortality. We might envy Polifemo’s great good fortune.

On a more realistic plain, finding joy in life may be a real art, an acquired skill, a consistent philosophy. So, it is important for each of us to seek and experience a variety of joys, great or small, each day. For me, Story Time, and its members, has become one of those joys.

December, 2014

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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Still Learning by Ricky

Part 1


My brother Bill runs a still on the hill
Where he turns out a gallon or two.
The birds in the sky get so drunk they can’t fly
From that good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]
They call it that good ol’ mountain dew, mountain dew,
And them that refuse it are few, mighty few.
Well I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good ol’ mountain dew.

My aunt Lucille had an automobile,
It ran on a gallon or two.
It needed no gas and it needed no oil,
It just ran on that good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]

My uncle Mort, he is sawed off and short,
He stands ’bout four foot two,
But he thinks he’s a giant when you give him a pie-ant
Of that good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]

Old Auntie June had a brand new perfume,
It had such a wonderful “pew”.
But to her surprise, when she had it analyzed,
It was nothing but good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]

The preacher-he walked by, with a tear in his eye
Said his wife came down with the flu.
And hadn’t I ought just to give him a quar-art
Of that good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]

There’s an old holler tree, just a little way from me
Where you lay down a dollar or two.
You go ‘round the bend and come back again
And pickup a jug of that good ol’ mountain dew.

[Chorus]

Part 2

When I was born, I began to learn how to control my body and to understand the sensory input I was receiving. Rather quickly, I learned to control my environment to obtain things for myself by communicating with the moving objects within my field of view. My method of communication was not all that sophisticated as I was still trying to control my vocal cords and mouth, but the moving objects seemed to understand and brought me food and warmth. I felt cared for and the master of my “world”.

As I grew, I realized that those moving objects did not always respond to gentle requests and I had to raise the volume of my slowly improving speech. They were rather slow in understanding my attempts to learn their sounds. But eventually we learned to communicate reliably.

At last I had learned enough to be safely around other people and I was sent to school to learn more skills and information about the world I live in. This learning process continued for 12-years until I graduated high school. My first year in college taught me that I would never be a high school chemistry teacher. Shortly after I learned that particular lesson, I joined the Air Force and serious education began.

The first military lesson I learned was self-discipline. This was achieved by forced discipline based upon fear of what would be the consequences to me if I did not do what I was told – consequences far worse than my parents had inflicted upon me. I learned that not all friendly people were “true friends”; not all good looking people were in fact, good; not all “ugly” people were dumb; and most importantly, don’t judge people by skin color. I also learned to differentiate between people worth knowing and those whose personalities were so distasteful as to be avoided.

During those years and the ones that followed, I continued to learn about people, places, and things worth knowing. Unfortunately, I also learned that the world is not a particularly safe place and that tragedy and injustice abound. I learned the world of people is constantly changing, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. I also learned that when the wicked rule, the people mourn.

Now, some 65-years after my birth, I am still learning. Only the lessons are more about me than the world around me. I am learning about my orientation and what it means. I am learning to integrate my 12-year old adolescent personality with my 65-year old adult body. It is not happening very smoothly and probably has to do with a left-brain, right-brain conflict. Or perhaps I am just doomed to have a child-like outlook my whole life.

As the time draws ever closer to the occasion of my passing, I will still be looking to learn what is beyond this life. To paraphrase the attitude of my close friend, Peter, I declare, “To die will be a great adventure — in learning.”

© 18
November 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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Dance, Dance, Dance by Phillip Hoyle

I have a kind of dance thing. It started early. In second grade I had my first date with a neighbor girl attending a square dance at the Elks Club. I did other folk dancing with the Girl Scouts. I’ve done interpretative dances in therapeutic and religious settings including one in a sermon I gave in a seminary preaching class. I taught African tribal dancing to children. I danced Universal Peace with adults. I danced in traditional Native American style at intertribal powwows and two stepped with an Indian guy at a cowboy bar. I’ve danced to rock music: first the bop, then the jerk, then disco, then new wave, and finally on-your-own improvised dancing to a variety of music, which brings me to this story.

I went down to The Denver Compound/Basix to dance one Saturday night several years ago; went with my friend Tony. I had been a number of times before and especially liked dancing there by myself. The music at the club had provided me some firsts: hearing a club mix with Gregorian chant in it, and then another mix with American Indian singing. The music there seemed to pull together several themes of my life, so my dance responses to the nearly deafening techno music combined barely-disguised choral directing, Indian dance steps, interactions with various friends, sexual movements, and my ever-changing dance steps to the ever-changing music. Dancing had become for me an exultation of life, of my still relatively new life as a gay man. Evenings there combined sweat, music, men, reveries, and always movement enhanced by a light show; an evening dancing on the Basix floor for me an unparalleled celebration. This evening like others seemed a mix of need, allure, and creative movement.

I had noticed a man who danced there regularly on Saturday nights. He stood off to the side of the dance floor, out of the way of other more exuberant dancers. Always dressed the same in cap, tee shirt, Levis, and work boots, he swayed from side to side shifting his weight from left to right, barely lifting his heels, and for several hours never missing a beat. He was there simply to dance. I imagined him as dancing alone with his daemon— perhaps St. Speed or the great god Oxycodon. He never moved toward a partner. He seemed a symbol for my too-solitary self. Would he ever alter his repetitions? Perhaps it was he that one of my friends watched the night he judged the techno music boring! Tonight he was there in his place.

I knew I was different than the solitary dancer, knew I’d move toward someone eventually, would need a human partner to copy, contrast, or complement my dance. Would this night be the one? I didn’t know. I just melded into the crowd as if joining a primal dance of love. A male-to-male mating ritual. A free-form yet stylized communication bolstered by drugs and alcohol (I was in a bar) just like in so many primal cultures. One alcoholic drink sufficed for me to enter the ceremony, released me into the musical exploration of what I could communicate there. I emulated the booted swayer as I moved into the magic of the rhythm. When I felt the backbeats my arms joined in the dance. My feet began to move me out from the wall-flower pose and into the seething mass of the group. Finally my whole body took up the demands of the beat, the possibilities of the night. I danced.

Then I saw him, not the solitary dancer who barely moved, but another guy across the room. He didn’t seem to be dancing with anyone, so I started dancing with him. I’d never noticed him before, didn’t know him, didn’t even know if he was aware of me. I just wanted some kind of relationship with another man, another dancer whose movements I could complement. It seemed a game and a pleasant game at that. For nearly an hour I danced with him at a great distance. I stepped this way and that, always in touch with him in my sidelong glances, my peripheral awareness as I slowly edged across the room to be near him. Eventually he did acknowledge my moves. Then we danced back to back, then side by side, then face to face. Dancing, smiling, moving away, then together. We touched. Shy smiles. Sparkling eyes.

He was not particularly handsome. Dark brown hair neatly trimmed, black stretchy shirt revealing a nice-enough body with square build, black slacks obscuring the shape of legs and more. His dance moves more conservative than mine. As I matched his pace I wondered what was going on in his mind. Was he amused? He didn’t turn his back except to bump. Drunk? On drugs? Didn’t seem to be, but I was not sure. What I had drunk? Probably the Cape Cod I liked to start my dancing nights with, that and water. We were warmed by our dance that winter night, warmed by our responses, our constant motion, the crowded dance floor.

“Gotta go,” I finally said when my friend Tony signaled his need to leave. “Thanks. Oh, I’m Phil. Hey, this was fun. Hope to see you again.” He didn’t object. Said “Bye.”

I rode the bus down to the Baker neighborhood the next Saturday night. He showed up too there across the room. I was pleased. We danced. The move across the floor didn’t take nearly as long. The body to body movements were more direct, not requiring much interpretation. Then it was closing time. “Gotta catch the bus,” I said. I stalled while he got his coat out of a locker. That’s when I saw the pin, knew it was a Trekkie symbol. I politely said “Thanks for dancing” and “Goodnight” and moved away. Somehow his identification with science fiction stood in the way for me. Made him less attractive? Boy. I danced out of there, across the Walgreens parking lot to catch the Number Zero bus back home. I wondered what I had learned about myself, what I had learned in a bar. What was the truth? The reality? Really. What dance was I willing to execute? I admit I was looking for more than a dance partner, but I certainly wasn’t interested in a relationship characterized by going to sci-fi movies and that kind of fantasy. I wanted a dancer that could dance a domestic and somehow romanticized relationship. Me? Romantic? Must have been the effect of living with my wife for twenty-nine years. Or was it the combination of booze and dancing? Thought about these things all the way home. Boy. What we can learn dancing and ponder riding busses.

© Denver, 2012 

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.com

Posted on

Patriotism by Pat Gourley

“The
owners of this country know the truth…its called the American dream because you
have to be asleep to believe it” George Carlin

When I was in grade school in the 1950’s I attended a predominately Irish Catholic institution called St. Peter in LaPorte, Indiana. We would start each day with Mass and then once we had left the church and reached the classroom we would begin the rest of the day with the pledge of allegiance. In hindsight I now recognize both of these activities for the not so subtle forms of child abuse and indoctrination that they were.

I escaped the clutches of this myopic worldview I feel in no small part through the transformation that occurred with my getting in touch with my queerness. The idea of a person who calls themselves a patriot to me is someone who often unthinkingly is a member of a tribe and this results all too often in a blind and selfish xenophobia. A working title for this piece could have been “Patriotism- Tribalism Run Amok”.

You could view ‘patriotism” as a particularly perverse manipulation of our innate hard wiring to belong to a tribe. Quoting Edward O. Wilson from his great new book The Social Conquest of Earth: “People must have a tribe. It gives them a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It makes the environment less disorienting and dangerous.” It is a bit ironic I suppose that I escaped the white, insular, Irish Catholic, lower middle class and very “patriotic” tribe I was born into by discovering and joining another tribe. For many of us our initial realizations of being ‘different or other’ were very disorienting and dangerous. The early coming out process is a struggle to give ourselves a name that will create meaning for us in what we correctly perceive to be a very chaotic and often hostile world.

Was Mother Nature though handing us little queers a truly change creating gift in the form of our ‘otherness’? Was this a possible genetic gift to the human race with the potential to allow us to actualize a more constructive way of relating to one another as human beings? Quoting again from The Social Conquest of Earth:

“…homosexuality may give advantages to the group by special talents, unusual qualities of personality, and the specialized roles and professions it generates. There is abundant evidence that such is the case in both preliterate and modern societies. Either way, societies are mistaken to disapprove of homosexuality because gays have different sexual preferences and reproduce less. Their presence should be valued instead for what they contribute constructively to human diversity. A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself.”


I would follow this by saying ‘take that’ all you queer theorists who think we are nothing more that social constructs resulting from societal oppression. A question I have often asked myself since the late 1970’s is have we abdicated our birthright or legitimate power to contribute constructively to human diversity in our often craven desire to be accepted and to emulate the straight world by insisting that we are no different than they are except for what we do in bed. Rather is our true purpose to be the valuable expression of some of humankind’s most altruistic impulses?

I was first introduced to the writings of Edward O. Wilson through none other than Harry Hay who turned me on to Wilson’s 1978 book “On Human Nature”. For those unfamiliar with Wilson he is a professor Emeritus of Biology at Harvard University. Wilson wrote in 1978: “Homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficial behavior that evolved as an important element in human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of mankind’s rare altruistic impulses.”

Well you can just imagine what sort of manna from heaven this prominent biologist’s theories were for an activist like Hay who had been running around for years saying we were a ‘separate people whose time had come’. It was actually through an email I recently received from Don Kilhefner that I was alerted to Wilson’s most recent work. Kilhefner along with Hay, John Burnside and Mitch Walker birthed the Radical Fairies in 1979.

It is certainly my contention that we are a separate people who time is here and that many of our great queer thinkers long ago saw through the manipulative jingoistic, sense of exceptionalism that passes for patriotism as something beneath us as a people. We are the guardians and hopefully proponents of some of mankind’s rare altruistic impulses and certainly we must know in our hearts that as Oscar Wilde so succinctly stated ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”. Patriotism simply does not suit us if we bother to own our revolutionary potential.

Having said this I certainly own the fact that we often as a people do not live up to our potential as change creators for the better. I do think we veer off course most frequently though when we try to emulate straight society and particularly certain qualities most often seen in the heterosexual male of the species.

American patriotism seems to have a very dangerous component of exceptionalism – we are God’s chosen people. What could possibly go wrong with a worldview in which might makes right especially when driven by a sense of manifest destiny? I think much of the social unrest and sharp disconnects between segments of our U.S. population today are caused by the fact that many folks are realizing that America is not particularly exceptional as a country creating a cognitive dissonance that is truly unsettling. In fact we are responsible for much of the grief inflicting the planet from climate change to drones and kill lists to tapping everyone’s phone on the entire planet to name just a few examples. The war against terror and certainly our last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been made possible in part by the unscrupulous manipulation of our misguided sense of what true patriotism might be.

I am aware that we are reading our pieces on patriotism on Veterans Day. It seems particularly crass of me I suppose to be trashing patriotism on such a day but I have no problem separating the men and women in the armed forces from the puppeteers manipulating the strings of false patriotism. Chelsea Manning as a young, frail, tormented teenage queer from some God-forsaken part of rural Oklahoma saw military service as the only honorable way out of hell. I am sure she felt she was also doing her patriotic duty. But you see the playing field is not level. The interests of corporate America are really not the interests of the 99%. The corporate oligarchs have no compunction when it comes to playing the patriotism card in order to sustain their empire. A recent example was sited in a piece in Salon today called “Stop Thanking the Troops for Me: No They Do Not Protect our Freedoms” by Justin Doolittle.

(http://www.salon.com/2013/11/11/stop_thanking_the_troops_for_me_no_they_dont_protect_our_freedoms/).

Doolittle pointed out the patriotic stunt from the opening game of the World Series where Bank of America pledged to donate a dollar for every posting of a troop supporting video to an agency or group helping veterans. No mention was made of the many, many homes of active duty personnel and veterans foreclosed on since 2008 by the Bank of America.

It was either in one of his more provocative moments, or perhaps something I just dreamed up, that Harry Hay once said something to the effect that there are really only two races on earth – gay and straight. I certainly can view queer folk as change creating seeds sprinkled throughout the globe in every country and among every people. This it seems to me lends a compelling element of universality to the human condition that gives lie to the false concept of patriotism. If you buy, albeit, this rather fanciful picture of the human family which I guess I do then our responsibility as queer folk is too pursue in every country on Earth that wonderful and subversive change creating Homosexual Agenda. We truly are all one people on one planet, One Taste.

© November 2013 

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.