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Game, Set, Match by Betsy

     I started out in the sport of tennis later in life. I discovered that it took very little time away from my three young children to play a couple of sets, not a great deal of expensive equipment, and there were plenty of courts around town, the closest to my home here in Denver being at the time in City Park. This, as well as the fact that I loved it. I started out taking lessons at City Park courts from an old man named Mr. Harper. He could hardly move, but he knew the right concepts and how to teach them. I grew to respect his teaching greatly.

     Through the 1970s and into the 1990s I played many tournaments and leagues as well as for no particular reason at all. I think I still have a few dust-covered trophies in a cabinet somewhere to remind me of the competitions.

     The greatest benefit of playing tennis has been the many friends I made. When I retired in 1998 I decided to get serious about my game and joined the Denver Tennis Club. This is a club for tennis lovers–no swimming, no indoor facilities except locker rooms and sign-in desk and directors’ offices and a place to sit and relax. There is no bar at this club, just a coke machine. The focus is on the 12 outdoor courts located in the heart of Denver where it has been since 1928.

     Many wonderful things have happened due to my passion for playing tennis. Perhaps the best of these was my participation in the 1990 and 1994 Gay Games. The best tennis experience for me was in Gay Games III in 1990. Many athletes in just about every sport along with various GLBT choruses descended on the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, that summer of 1990. Much preparation and practice went into sending about 300 LGBT athletes from Colorado to this Gay Games and Cultural Festival III.

     Our infant tennis team was not well organized and had not had much chance to practice together. But a friend I had know for a number of years, a former H.S. tennis coach, had asked me if I wanted to go to the games and play doubles with her. Of course, I jumped at the invitation. Mind you, one does not have to qualify. You just get your name on the roster and go.

     Team Colorado–all 300 of us–were quite impressive when we finally all stood together in our uniform sweat suits at the ceremonial start of the event–a parade of the 7,300 participants representing 39 countries and 27 sports. The US–which had hosted the first and second quadrennial event, Gay Games I and II, had by far the largest contingent. But many came from Australia and Germany which were soon to become home of future Gay Games events. Canada, of course had a huge interest this being the first games on their side of the border.

     The Province, a conservative Vancouver newspaper, writes on its editorial page:

     “Almost a year ago, we called these gay games ‘silly.’ What’s next? we asked. Bisexual games? Asexual games? What, we queried, does sexual orientation have to do with the high jump? Since then, we’ve been educated. We’ve learned that these games are intended to build bridges, strengthen community and bolster self-esteem. Members of groups that bear the brunt of society’s ignorance and fear need to make special efforts to support each other. And sometimes they need to stand up and be counted. “It is not for us to question — so long as others are not being hurt — how the homosexual community chooses to celebrate itself and to educate us, any more than it is our place to question how native Indians or blacks or women choose to define and redefine themselves.” “What of the AIDS spectre? AIDS as a sexual issue is no more relevant to these games than it is to a convention of heterosexual mountaineers or carpet layers. These games are, above all, about having fun. It isn’t often we get to have fun and, at the same time, learn about tolerance, compassion and understanding. B.C. residents should go out to some of the events of the 1990 Gay Games and Cultural Festival.”*

     Vancouver is a wonderful city and we had a ball. Another comment that sticks in my mind was from another article in The Province. An event called Seafest was going on in the city at the same time as the games. The newspaper described Seafest as a drunken brawl with loud, rowdy, trash dropping people from all over the world attending. It goes into some length describing the unruly behavior of the Seafest participants. The article continues.

     “The GAY GAMES also brought in Zillions of men and women who spent lorryloads of money and indeed cluttered up the sidewalks, but who picked up their garbage, laughed a lot, said ‘excuse me’ and ‘good evening’ and ‘thank you’ a whole ton and, if they got drunk and disorderly, at least had the good taste not to do it under my bedroom window. In fact, the only disconcerting noise in the West End during the games was created by the yahoos who cruised the streets in their big egos and macho little trucks while shouting obscenities at anyone they deemed to be gay.”*

     Gay Games III was in every way a memorable experience for me personally. Gill was there with me cheering me on. Most of our time however was spent sight-seeing and enjoying watching the sports events. It was all quite new to me–all these gay people together. The men competing on the croquet lawn with their exotic hats and chiffon gowns flowing in the breeze as they wielded their mallets– that image will be with me forever.

     I managed to win a silver medal in the tennis competition. All the tennis awards were presented by a gay man whose name I forget. I do remember that he was an openly gay member of Canada’s parliament. Of course he was out. This was Canada.

     Four years later I would participate in Gay Games IV in New York. I was able to share this experience with my daughter Lynne who lived not far from NY City in New Haven, Connecticut. This is when my lesbian daughter came out to me. When I told her I was coming to New York to play tennis in the Gay Games she replied Oh good!! We’ll go together. I’m going to participate in the games too, Mom. I’m playing on the Connecticut women’s soccer team.” Yes, that was her coming out statement to me! We did enjoy that time together and watched each other in our respective competitions and cheered each other on.

     The New York event drew 12,500 participants from 40 countries. It was definitely a proud and memorable moment for me when I found myself marching with my daughter in a parade of 12,000 LGBT athletes through Yankee stadium to the cheers of tens of thousands of supporters and spectators.

     I do like the sound of that word “athlete.” It is important to note that the event was never intended to be focused on athletic ability alone, however. In the words of Olympic track star Tom Waddell whose inspiration gave birth to the games in the 1980s, “The Gay Games are not separatist, they are not exclusive, they are not oriented to victory, and they are not for commercial gain. They are, however, intended to bring a global community together in friendship, to experience participation, to elevate consciousness and self-esteem and to achieve a form of cultural and intellectual synergy…..We are involved in the process of altering opinions whose foundations lie in ignorance. “

     I have not attended another Gay Games since 1994. But the event continues in various parts of the world and has forever etched it’s name in the annals of sporting events.

     I am still playing tennis 20 years after the NY Gay Games–no tournaments, just an old ladies’ league called super seniors and with friends two or three times per week at the Denver Tennis Club. I suppose the day will come when I can no longer hit that ever-so-satisfying backhand down the line winner, but I’m not planning on that happening any time soon. As far as I’m concerned I will keep getting better until I can’t hear those three little words anymore–game,set, match!

Cockburn, Lyn. “Some Games can be a real education.” Pacific Press Limited, The Province, Sunday, August 12,1990.

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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Snowstorm by Phillip Hoyle

     “We sure used to get a lot more snow than we do now,” is a sentiment I’ve heard many times, but I am cautious of the claim which seems akin to the old timer’s story of how many miles he had to walk through the snow to get to school. The main way to know about weather—how it was—is to study weather records. Still, to tell a story about the weather is to reveal more than the weather. It exposes a person’s feelings, a yearning for an experience of old, a desire to touch again some past season of delight or dread.

     My story celebrates my favorite stage of childhood development—that cusp of so many changes often called pre-pubescence. What I like most about the phase is the way the child is open to dream, ready to believe, full of play, and living in the now—at least that’s how I experienced it that winter of 1959, the winter of the big snow. We used to have snows in my childhood and celebrated them with snow angels, snow balls, snow forts, and snow men. But that winter the big storm brought new big snow adventures.

      Our gang, with our hideout in the rafters of my folks’ garage, hung out together at every opportunity. Gang travel had originally taken us to each other’s houses, then to the high school football field one block down the alley, then to the public swimming pool one mile away, and eventually to the hills and valleys several miles west of town.

     The summer before the storm, we hiked or rode our bicycles out west to a farm where we were allowed to play in the pastures. My best friend Keith took us to where a small spring flowed from the hillside. There we refilled our canteens. Downstream we would set up camp, build a small fire, cook whatever food we’d brought from home, and generally enjoy one another. That fall, we brought along our bows and arrows and hunted cottontails. We pursued those elusive hoppers for hours, stalking, chasing, shooting, running, screaming, and never once making a kill. We laughed raucously, imagining ourselves hunters, adventurers, and we slept deeply upon returning home at night.

     Then the snow came. It wasn’t a dusting; it wasn’t a snow that covered your shoes; it was a real snow, you know, like those we used to get in the old days, one that brought the town to a halt, a two-foot snow with wind, drifts, more snow. But Saturday dawned sunny. We gathered with sleds and plans and trudged west, out to the hills to make the best of it.

     The big snow came in the best year of my life, the one in which I lost track of time, the one I celebrated friendship along with country adventures. I was in the sixth grade, the year before I started sacking and carrying groceries at the store. Keith and I, probably Dinky and Dick too, went sledding in the deep snow. We had Boy Scout training and felt older-elementary-male confidence. We hiked west of town to a hillside where we could sled down to a ravine of woods where we could then get out of the wind. We spent all day for three Saturdays in a row out there having our winter adventures. Each week our Imaginations soared, our plans got bolder. New snow fell each week and although we nearly froze hiking through snow often over our knees, we laughed our way like fools or kings or warriors. In the woods we built a fire, and when we had warmed ourselves and dried our clothes, gave ourselves to snow play like never before.

     After two Saturdays out, Keith remembered seeing some old skis in his dad’s workshop. They were simple things, not long, but short skis with only a single leather strap across the midpoint, a place to insert the shoes. They must have been used on the farm when chores had to be completed but the snow was too deep for easy walking to the barn, at least that was our Kansas winter fantasy. The skis certainly were not meant for downhill skiing, but we were boys with great imaginations and enough snow to make a ramp.

     We reasoned if we let the old German sled with steel covered wooden runners glide down the hill on its own, it would show us the best route for skiing. So we climbed the hill, and turned the sled loose, trusting in good luck and gravity. Following the sled, we tramped the area between the runner marks for our ski run. We had no poles but along the ravine found sticks to serve. With them we hurried back up the hill to try out the skis. We were pleased with our few successes and gleefully took turns trying until one of the brittle leather straps broke. Our disappointment led to more ideas. Keith thought we should go down the track on our sleds. When we discovered most of the sleds sat too low to make any speed, he brought the old German one to the top and sat on it, aimed downhill and went hurtling down our well packed run. Having forgotten his sixth grade science lessons on gravity, he’d made no plans for how to stop the sled. This was no drivable sled with flexible runners, no way to guide or stop it except by dragging a leg behind. But Keith wasn’t lying down. He was sitting tall and speeding down the hill towards the woods. He stopped when the front of the sled hit a sapping and broke the metal brace. He stopped when his crotch met the rough bark. He stopped when the tree knocked the wind of him and threw him to the ground. We ran to his rescue, dragged him over to the fire to warm up. He finally got his breath and described his feeling of elation on his brief trip from the top. We shared our snacks with Keith, our athletic hero, my best friend. Then, like good Scouts, we put out the fire and dragged home our sleds and packs. We trudged through the snow, laughing, making big plans for the next big snow.

     A year lapsed before it came. By then, I was helping customers get their groceries to their cars. I never returned to the slopes, but fortunately I did get to sled as an adult, then being pulled by ropes behind an International Harvester Scout up Highway 90 in western Colorado and sailing free back down the steep slope of the road’s switch backs. That ride took me back to my childhood and extended my thrill from a ride of a few feet to one of nearly a mile. Such a thrill. Such a fine reminder of the big Kansas snows and our small sixth grade adventures.

     I’m still amazed when the snow piles up. I have such fond memories, but now I also think about driving in blizzards and inconveniences such as the loss of work. My enthusiasm is dampened by adult concerns. Still, I say, “We used to get a lot more snow years ago,” and let my memory slide down the hills of yearning. I smile. I love my friends. I love my life. I love the snow.

Denver, 2011

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Going Pink by Will Stanton

     I have nothing lengthy nor profound to say about the topic of “going pink.”  Instead, I have just two, very short presentations.  Here’s the first:

     “Pan!  You’re pink!”

     Originally, I was going to leave it at just that, but I decided not to surprise everyone with just a four-word presentation.  So, here’s the second; it has to do with blushing.

     When I was in college eons ago, my classmate Ed discovered at the beginning of the semester that he had a roommate who could cause blushes at will, blushes, that is, with gay guys.  The evening that Ed arrived at his dorm, his assigned roommate had not shown up yet.  So, Ed chose the upper bunk and went to sleep.

     The next morning, Ed wondered if his roommate had come in during the night.  He looked over the edge of his bunk to the berth below.  His gaze was met with a totally unexpected and startling sight : the most beautiful young-male face he ever had seen punctuated by the biggest, shiniest blue eyes in the world looking right back at him.  Ed said that, for a moment, his heart stopped.  His roommate may or may not have noted Ed’s thunderstruck look, but what he immediately did see was Ed’s deep and uncontrolled blushing.  To add to Ed’s consternation was his roommate’s puzzled comment noting Ed’s deep-pink face.

     Climbing down from the bunk and stumbling for words, Ed tried to change the focus of the conversation and to introduce himself.  In the course of the exchange, it was established that Ed was gay but his roommate was not.  To Ed’s embarrassment, the roommate Chris returned to the topic of Ed’s blushing, so Ed resignedly explained that, whether Chris was aware of it or not, Chris was drop-dead gorgeous, and his eyes could devastate any gay guy who met his gaze.  Chris found this to be terribly amusing and stated that he would try it out on any guy that he sensed was looking at him.

     Perhaps Ed took pity on any potential gay victims of that devastating gaze and, therefore, tried to dissuade Chris from pursuing his plan; but Chris proceeded to practice his new-found power upon a whole series of unsuspecting gay guys.  Ed and I observed the unfailing results.

     Chris could sense when he was being admired.  He developed a strategy of casually walking past his next victim, then quietly turning around a few yards away, and looking right into the gay guy’s eyes. Whamo!  Immediate results.  Deep blushing.  I don’t know for how long Chris pursued his hobby of watching gay guys turn pink.  He may have become bored; it just was far too easy.

© 06 August 2012

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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Details by Colin Dale

The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood
that I’ve seen and walked through years on end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.
     
      Lady Luck.  Serendipity.  Fluke.  Whatever you want to call it, when I found my idea for today’s story it was a remarkable moment.  And thank god I sat down to look for something a few days ago and didn’t do what I usually do and wait until Monday morning.  Looking for an idea, I checked my Bartlett’s, but was unprepared for the coincidence–the GLBT coincidence–I’d find.
     
      Under details, Bartlett’s had only two citations: the first, God is in the details, by Anonymous, and the 5-line poem with its: I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,/with so many incidents, so many details.
     
      The poet is gay icon Constantine Cavafy, known today in GLBT circles for his homoerotic poetry.  To be fair, though, only a portion of Cavafy’s work is homoerotic.   Virtually unpublished in his lifetime, Cavafy is today regarded as one of the great European poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
     
      Constantine Cavafy died in 1933 at the age of 70.   Born to Greek parents in the Egyptian port-city of Alexandria, Cavafy lived the entirety of his life closeted.  His poetry was introduced to the English-speaking world by his friend and then equally closeted writer E.M. Forster.  Forster, though, who died in 1970 at 91, managed in his last years to emerge some from the closet.  Cavafy, dying 1933, wasn’t so lucky.
     
      A prolific writer, Cavafy drew heavily from classical history, Greek and Hellenistic.  History, and Cavafy’s home Alexandria with its own rich history, serve as metaphor for the whole of the human experience.
     
      First this–to make today seem a little less like a grad seminar in poetry:
     
It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.
     
      This is not Cavafy.  This is another of my heroes: Leonard Cohen.  Cohen transformed Cavafy’s poem, The God Abandons Antony, into a somewhat autobiographical love song, changing Alexandria to Alexandra.  In the Cavafy poem …
       
      Anthony is Marc Antony, Cleopatra’s lover. The story goes when Alexandria was besieged, the night before the city fell, Antony dreamed he heard an invisible troupe leaving the city.  He awoke the next morning to find that his soldiers had in fact deserted him–which Antony took to mean even the god Dionysus, his protector, had abandoned him.  The poem has many layers of meaning beyond the historical.   Most say it’s about facing up to great loss: lost loves, lost dreams, lost opportunities–ultimately, of course, life itself.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with cowardly pleas and protests;
listen–as a last pleasure–to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
     
      I’d wondered whether a poetry sampler was appropriate stuff for Storytellers.  It’s hardly run-of-the-mill memoir (“Then in 1988 this happened to me … “), but as a taste of some of the poetry I like, it qualifies, I think, as memoir-light.
     
      But, you’re thinking, what about those homoerotic poems?  I’ll give you a sample of two of Cavafy’s shorter homoerotic poems.    Now, neither one is going to make you go, Oh my God how could someone write that? –but consider when these were written.  Cavafy’s homoerotic poems, mild as they may seem to us today, do evoke the stifling repression that made emotional cripples of men like Cavafy and Forster.

He lost him completely. And he now tries to find
his lips in the lips of each new lover,
he tries in the union with each new lover
to convince himself that it’s the same young man,
that it’s to him he gives himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
He wanted, his lover said, to save himself
from the tainted, unhealthy form of sexual pleasure,
the tainted, shameful form of sexual pleasure.
There was still time, he said, to save himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
Through fantasy, through hallucination,
he tries to find his lips in the lips of other young men,
he longs to feel his kind of love once more.

      Tame, no, by what we’re used to?  But the works of kindred spirits like those of Constantine Cavafy and E.M. Forster–written only a few generations ago–remind us of how much we’ve to be thankful for today.
     
      That last poem is called In Despair.  This:
     
At the Next Table

He must be barely twenty-two years old—
yet I’m certain that almost that many years ago
I enjoyed the very same body.

It isn’t erotic fever at all.
And I’ve been in the casino for a few minutes only,
so I haven’t had time to drink a great deal.
I enjoyed that very same body.

And if I don’t remember where, this one lapse of memory
doesn’t mean a thing.

There, now that he’s sitting down at the next table,
I recognize every motion he makes—and under his clothes
I see again those beloved naked limbs.
     
      I’ll end with a cut of one of Cavafy’s best-known poems Ithaka.  You can find a YouTube video of Sean Connery reading Ithaka.  “Since Homer’s Odyssey . . . [and I shoplifted this from a Cavafy website] . . . Since Homer’s Odyssey, the island, Ithaca, symbolizes the destination of a long journey, the supreme aim that every man tries to fulfill all his life long . . . “
     
As you set out for Ithaka
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensation
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so that you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would have not set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

About the Author

Colin Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center. Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre. Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center. For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel, and memoir.

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Acting by Gillian

I have often said that members of the GLBT community are the best actors around. Most of us played a part for at least some of our lives after all: a few for most or even all of it.
I’m not so sure it was acting though, in my case at least, and I can only speak for myself.
I don’t know what it was, and I have never tried to write about it before so who knows what sense it will make.

But here goes.

I’m tempted to say, I was two people, but that’s not quite right; not what I understand, and admittedly that’s very little, schizophrenia to be.
It was not that I had more than one personality and they were interchangeable, coming and going on some undisclosed schedule. 
They certainly were not equal partners.
Rather, my body was off doing its own thing while the real me, whatever form that took, was separate, flitting about somewhere, watching what my body was up to.
I mean, how weird is that?
I have described this, verbally, to a few other GLBT people, but have yet to hear anyone say
Oh yes I know exactly what you mean …… it was just the same for me ……. anything like that.

But anyway ……. Back to my body and soul. Not that I pretend to grasp the meaning of the word soul but it’s the best I can do given the situation; something other than, quite apart from, my body.
My body went on its merry way: working, marrying, raising kids.
I watched. Rather like watching a play.

I didn’t judge.
I didn’t advise.
I observed.
I felt nothing.

That body was not me. At least the life it lived was not.
The bodily me was not unhappy. The bodily me felt very little.
It was not happy, neither was it unhappy.
It just was.

This continued until around forty, when I was swept away in an avalanche of emotion and came out. 
To myself, and that was all that mattered.
I will never forget that moment when I knew, unequivocally, what and who I was.
The two parts of me came together.
They had never been joined.
Not as long as I could remember.
Now they were.
Now we were.

I have been one ever since.

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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Mayan Pottery and How It Came To Be by Merlyn and Michael

     As we go back beyond the time of what most people think of as the era of recorded history, the archaeologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have the bits and pieces that form a different pre-history every few years.


     Our story starts about 32,000 years ago in a village on the Tigris River. There was at that time a famous soothsayer whose reputation had spread for thousands of miles. This was unusual since most travel was within 40 or 50 miles from any given location. One day a young man by the name of Yahoo (not to be confused with a search engine) came to the soothsayer to find out about his future. The soothsayer was shocked beyond comprehension as Yahoo was to be the ancestor of most of the movers and shakers of history; Abraham, Lao Tse, Gautama Sid Hartha, Moses, Confucius, Jesus, and Mother Theresa. All this the soothsayer saw. He also told Yahoo that his descendants would populate a very large land to the west that wouldn’t be discovered by the majority of humanity for another 25,000 years.

     And as predicted a number of groups of the descendants of Yahoo crossed the frozen ice from present day Russia to the Alaskan frontier about 20,000 years ago. One group sought shelter where Sara Palin’s house overlooks the shores of Russia. The state of Alaska must have been paying the electric bill as the porch light may have guided them there. This group was starving when, as if by some miracle, a herd of reindeer passed by and several were slaughtered which saved their DNA for the later Tabasco, Olmec, and Mayan peoples. One of the reindeer was curious and smelled his bleeding relativities and ended up getting his nose covered with blood, all the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, but he ended up becoming famous 20,000 years later. He became the most famous reindeer of them all.

     Those descendants of Yahoo coming from the north eventually migrated as far south as present day Peru while as late as 5,000 years ago some of the descendant of Abraham (also Yahoo) traveled by boat across the Atlantic following the winds and ocean currents and arriving just south of where Columbus landed just 508 years ago, more DNA proof of the descendants of Yahoo.

     What is now considered to be the first true civilization of the Americas is the Olmec, 500 BC-150 AD, who were the primary cultivators of the early ancestor of Corn which may have originally come from south western South America. Other contributions to future civilizations were pottery and sacrifice. The Mayans perfected the role of a leader god through using the famous golden poison arrow frog’s venom, the most potent venom known at the time, to slowly take very, very small doses until eventually developing both immunity and an addiction to the poison. The royal family could then hold a tiny gold frog that if touched by anyone else could kill as many as a hundred grown men. A room about 12X12X12 was discovered a few years back that was full of skeletons of these tiny creatures.

     Another of the annual sacrificial pageant performances performed by the god king was the piercing of the penis with a flint blade so the blood would bring about a good harvest. We can’t imagine what his appendage would look like after a few decades of such ceremonial sacrifices.

     One of the interesting things about the Mayans was their passion with astronomy. They built on the Olmec calendar which was already at least 1500 years old. They continued revising until today we have a calendar whose origin is about 3500 years in the making. Contemporary voodooists and nut cases predict that even Nostradamus knew of this time, the end of or the starting of some Time Rock, the Mayan calendar.

     A special characteristic of Mayan pottery is known as Mayan Blue, a glaze which has stood the test of time beyond any other. So here goes on Mayan pottery. Take any piece that has survived to this day and put it up against one done today that you might find on Santa Fe’s Art District on first Fridays in Denver and the only thing about the Mayan is that it’s old and characteristic of a bygone era. Beauty and the appreciation of objects are very subjective, sometimes interesting in a museum, but not necessarily in our house. If you compare the old stuff with those on Santa Fe, the Mayan looks like it was done by amatuers and of course in many ways it was. It is nice that there are those who appreciate antiquity and will preserve it for those yet to come and be the later descendants of Yahoo. It takes a study of the Mayan culture to appreciate the utilitarian function and the significance of the figures and designs.

     The Mayan calendar is one of the things we focus on since 12-21-2012 is only a few days from now. Archaeologists have unearthed a Mayan mural of a calendar projecting some 7,000 years into the future. The 5,125 years of the present calendar is the end of an era with the new and productive era being heralded in by the god of creation and war, Bolon Yokte. So we’re safe for at least another calendar and a half. We can wonder, however, what this god will do on Friday.  We think he would at least call on President Obama to plan out our future. They’ll probably do a better job than trying to work with the House and the Senate.

     This will also introduce an era where we can all wear huge feather headdresses and little skirts. Just think of the businesses that can grow and all the unemployed will be put to work making these highly desired fashions. The world economy will become healthy and President Obama will be honored with another Nobel Peace Prize. The religions of the world will have to make adjustments and the new Mayan pottery industry will surpass anything that has ever been on the New York Stock Exchange. Because the god Bolon Yokte is the god of creation and war, through these negotiations the global warming can be reversed to provide universally perfect weather conditions. All war will be terminated and the ensuing peace will save trillions of dollars. Sara Palin will be known as the savior of the indigenous peoples. Historians will discover that this was all predicted before it came to pass by a couple of gay senior citizens at the GLBT Center in Denver.

About the Authors

Michael

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.

Merlyn

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day. 

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The Wisdom of LGBT Identity (Living Outside the Box) by Nicholas

  Gay is code. The word “gay” was used by generations of gay men to refer to a lot more than a state of happiness. One could say one had been to a gay party over the weekend and most co-workers would assume it was a pleasant get together while some would know the fuller and more specific meaning. Not only was this clever code, it denoted that you were a clever person—smart, witty and gay—and you went to interesting, unusual, maybe ever artful, parties. Gay set you apart not only as a sexual minority but as a lively, quick-witted, sophisticated individual.

  It’s a good thing to be born outside the box or to be thrown outside the box and have to imagine your own life because you have no standard guideposts to lean on. That, to me, is the heart of the wisdom of being L, G, B and T. Imagination is required for each of those letters. And your reward for each imaginative step you take is that you are blessed with more imagination. Gay liberation simply took that quality beyond cocktail hour. Being gay means one accumulates imagination, one develops the colorful side of the brain—right, left or both, maybe. You just make it up as you go along.

So, here are some points I have learned as I have made it up and watched others make it up as we go along.

        1.) Life is about more than money in this money obsessed culture. Life choices are not always made just on the basis of good career moves (although coming out these days can be a good career move). There are other values to live by, like integrity, satisfaction, wit, intelligence, selfhood, fun.

        2.) Life is not always fun. Sometimes you have to upset the apple cart and put yourself and those you love through some stress. The road to happiness can have some bumps along the way but happiness is still to be found at the end of the journey.

        3.) Life is not always fun, part 2. There are consequences. You take care of those you partied with or marched with or worked out your identity with. You do not abandon the needy, the sick and the dying.

        4.) Still, however, when you’re having fun, really do it. Don’t just have fun, make it fabulous fun. You want to give—or go to—parties that will become legends.

        5.) Question authority, all authority, especially the highest authorities. Defy standards everyday—it is, after all, the little things that count. Most lives aren’t lived in historical epochs but on a day-by-day basis with daily resistance and daily creativity.

        6.) Life is not all about just being young. As we grow older, we grow richer in experience and feeling. Having re-invented youth and masculinity, having restored a number of city neighborhoods, having shown America another model for compassionate, community-based health care support, we are now busy re-defining old age.

        Yes, there’s still that urge for the fabulous. There won’t be pastels in any nursing home I go to.

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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Epiphany by Peg

     Life is an epiphany.

     Beginning with a transition from total dependence for all of
our needs, secure and warm, protected and nourished, oblivious of everything
beyond the walls of our mother’s womb.  Forces beyond our control begin to squeeze and push, in a while we enter
a completely different dimension. 
Suddenly we are now separate, an individual and well designed for this
new experience.

     When we die, what new dimension will we enter?  What epiphany will that turn out to be?  That answer lies far beyond our
understanding.  Some have certainty,
others don’t, in my mind I’ll just wait and see.
     I see life as Lewis Carroll wrote, “As through a looking
glass.” Picture a window in a wall; from inside, the view is very different
from the view observed from outside the glass. 
We can interpret the same scene in quite different ways.  Looking in we might see a place of comfort,
safety, and security in everything being known and predictable.  To another’s perspective that scene might look
confining, stifling and boring.
     The glass has no opinion of it’s own, it doesn’t care.
     From the other side of the glass looking out, one might see
danger, uncertainty and insecurity.  To
another it calls for exploration and discovery, and perhaps a strong need to
experience complete uncertainty.  What
each perceives is his or her own personal choice, we alone decide.  It’s our choice; we may experience peace
achieved through reasoned negotiation, or war driven by greed and the desire
for supremacy.  Life is a series of
choices.  All are decided by our own or
collective needs and wants.
 
     The glass has no preference it is just there.
 
     The glass is in it’s own dimension, existing both inside and
outside at the same time.  If it had eyes
it could see both ways at once, if it had a mind it could know every thought
produced by each observation.
     The glass doesn’t care what we see or do with the view.  In truth, the glass doesn’t see anything, it
doesn’t feel anything or think, it is just there.  It has no preference if the scene is peaceful
or a battlefield, is the weather calm or stormy, is it day or night.
     The glass doesn’t care.
     My epiphany?  Long ago
I was taught that the glass was there and did care. I believed that the window
provided the scenes for us, put there to test us and decide our fates.
     I have since then made my own choice by believing that the
window that guides us is a myth.  I am
not directed by dogma and I decide myself how to interpret the scenes.  I understood that I can decide my own destiny,
that others beliefs and opinions are theirs and my life is mine alone.  If someone has some difficulty with that,
they have the problem not me.
     There is no glass there to care. 

     Someone
long ago decided otherwise, he believed the glass was there, did care and since
he had that belief, he also believed it needed a name; and he called it …  God.

About the Author

I was born and raised in Denver Colorado and I have a divided history, I went to school, learned a trade, served in the military, married and fathered two sons. And I am Trans; I transitioned in 1986 after being fired for “not fitting in to their program”. 18 years ago I fulfilled my lifelong need to shed the package and become female. I continued working in my trade until retiring in 2006. I have been active in PFLAG Denver and served five years on the board of directors, two years as President of our chapter. Living now as a woman has let me be who I always knew I was and I am genuinely happy.

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Memoir: A Pile of Leaves by Cecil Bethea

     With the end of September comes the annual event of the falling of the leaves and the concomitant chore of raking them up and getting rid of them one way or another.  Back home we used to heap them up into piles and then set them afire.  The burning leaves produced an aroma, not a smell, that was a delight to the senses but pleasured us only once a year and is not forgotten decades later.  Since then I’ve often wondered whether a forest fire amongst deciduous trees produces so sweet a smell.  Anyhow I still have a Pavlovian reaction to burning leaves of memories from the distant past in Alabama.

     Friday I decided to start the series of rakings necessary to rid the yard of leaves.  Can’t burn them now without being inundated with police and vile thoughts of the neighbors.  Steven, who lives next door, operates a compost heap and is delighted with garbage cans of leaves.
  
     For some reason or another, I felt Puritanical and tackled the trash collected along the fence.  Pulling the leaves and other trash into a pile, I marched at a slow step down the fence.  Then it dawned that the pile had the shape of a recently dug grave.  By a quirk of mental contortions, I realized that it was also the 150th anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday.  This meant that Saturday, October 1st, would be the 77th anniversary of my brother’s.
     
     I decided to sit down and have a cigarette.  All sorts of thoughts from a country churchyard spun through my head.  Moreover I now frequently ponder matters mortal.  These two men were and still are important to me.  Papa was born in 1860 remarkably two days after the census was taken.  His entire life was spent in Meadeville, Mississippi, thirty miles east of Natchez.  The population has always been less than 500 depending upon what had happened during the previous decade.  He vituprertivly denounced Lincoln and all his works.  Years later, I could understand his thinking.  Being born when he was, Papa could not remember what life was before the War.  No doubt his elders looked back at those times as a golden era.  We know this wasn’t so because by 1860 the nation was just recovering from the Panic of 1857.  
     
     No matter, he was old enough to remember when the Yankees came.  He had learned that the blue bellies were booger men who liked to steal bad little boys.  Then suddenly one day the whole front yard was filled with blue bellies.  Like any small boy, he went screaming to his mother.  The commanding officer picked him up and tried to calm him.  The result was that they discovered that Papa’s Christian name DeMont was the same as the officer’s sir name.  Papa was convinced that the Yankees did not burn the house because of this happy accident.  Maybe.  Even the Yankees did not have the time to burn every house they ran across.  

     Papa inadvertently taught me about aging.  Dying at ninety-seven, he was the oldest citizen of Franklin County.  The men who were mere elders gave him a birthday party organized primarily by Mr. John Rounds every year.  He told me that those men hadn’t been his friends. His comment was, “Why, I danced at the wedding of John Rounds’ folks.”  A body’s friends go, then his contemporaries, and finally only memories remain.

     My brother was born in 1933 and was named for our grandfather, but nobody called him Wentworth except Mother.  Those W’s and R were too much for me to cope with, so I called him Wimpy.  Then our sister, Duane, came along nine years later and called him Bibi, which became a name limited to the family.  To everybody else, he was Wimpy.  

     The three of us looked nothing alike.  My hair was dark brown back in those days, Bibi was early on tow headed which later became a dark blonde,  Duane was a red head.

     Bibi was six feet at fourteen and ended up at 6’2″.  His two sons grew to 6’6″ and 6’7″.  Duane’s boy is somewhere over six feet.  I just got none of the height genes in the family.
     
     Bibi deserves to be remembered by the world at large for one statement he made,  We were discussing intellectuals, what they were, their qualities, their purpose in society, et alia,  At the end of the conversation, he summarized by saying, “Intellectuals are just like Christians; many are called but few are chosen.”

     Later in his life during one week-end, one of his boys was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and the other was admitted to med school.  This would be a feather in any parent’s cap–actually two feathers.  Bibi was more modest; he asked the question “What did I do right?”  He realized that he was in as much a quandary as those parents who ask, “What did I do wrong?”  To me these questions show how iffy parenthood is.  
     
     Another more egocentric reason for my remembering him so fondly took place in Venice.  He was sitting at a table in an outdoor café in the Piazza watching the people, taking in the sights, and generally enjoying his place in the sun,  While studying the facade of St.  Mark’s, he noticed and remembered the four horses.  They were part of the loot the Venetians brought home from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade.  I believe they were had been removed from Rome by one of the early emperors.  Anyhow Bibi said he remembered my telling him the history of the horses when he was a little boy. .  From all the verbiage that I have spewed during my years on this earth, he is the only person to say that he had remembered some of my words years later.  I did say that my reasons were egocentric.

     Papa is buried in Meadeville cemetery amongst his friends and family.  Bibi’s ashes are scattered somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.

     Life goes on at least of some sort or another.  I picked up the rake and continued my chores. 

About the Author 





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

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

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

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

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



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His Story by Donny Kaye

     My story is an historical accounting of my life experience in this realm. It starts at birth, and even before. It is the accumulation of events and experiences documenting this life.


     All of the stories of my “history” exist within me. All are memorable, each for their very own reasons. Many of the stories stir delight and goodness in my recollection of the experience. In my history is the remembrance of riding my bike the first time without the assistance of training wheels or someone running beside me steadying the teetering cycle. I re-collect the stories of making of new friends who have grown old with me in time, remaining as witnesses to a life that has unfolded in time. There are those friends whose appearance was brief in the experience called my life.

     Some of my history is more painful to recall or even want to remember. Those times when for whatever reason I was at dis-ease with myself. I have recollections of feeling different and consequently, not enough. What is intriguing to realize is that the events of my history are all interpreted by me. My interpretation colors the experience in a good, bad or neutral way.

     There have been those experiences when I have not acted from a higher place within. My uncertainty has resulted in actions that only untruth can cover. The time I damaged another’s property intentionally; a reflection of unexpressed anger or emotions I couldn’t understand much less directly express. A test I cheated on because I didn’t hold confidence in my very own capacity. Actions I took out of fear that I wasn’t good enough in my own right. Moments of sadness and a sense of disconnection. My history is riddled with actions where I acted from a sense of lack rather than abundance and confidence.

All of who I am is an expression of the learning in my life that have become my history. What are the stories that get told? Of more significance than the history that gets told are the stories that don’t get told. What is realized is that only I get to choose the revelations of my history. No different from authors, publishers and political parties that are about a certain truth only achievable by withholding the truth, the whole truth that is.

     And so it is in this life; my history comes together with yours. Each believing in the history, at least to the extent that we choose to reveal. A new friend appears, the attraction found in the stories we tell–either ourselves or the other. The truth expressed and withheld.

     And so it is; my history comes together with “His Story”. And only history will tell the impact of the two, stories intertwined into one.

About the Author

Donny Kaye is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.”

Story Time at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.