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Breaking into Gay Culture by Michael King

           It was a little over 4 years ago that I got the nerve to go to the Gay Pride activities at Civic Center. I had gone about 15 years ago and ran into someone that I knew and at that time I was so far in the closet that I couldn’t admit even to myself that I was fascinated and curious about the gay culture. Having seen someone that recognized me freaked me out. So after all those intervening years, I finally got up enough nerve to check things out again. My problem wasn’t with being gay, but with other peoples’ reactions. But now I was retired and my only concern would be my kids’ reactions. I figured it didn’t matter much at this point in my life now that they were grown. But I saw no point in saying anything unless I had a lover. I didn’t know much about gay culture and was uncomfortable with going to bars, straight or gay. And for the most part I was unaware of the gay activities and groups where I might meet others and learn about these things.

           So I leisurely strolled around Civic Center Park and observed, but without much understanding of the goings on. I was approached by this elderly man who handed me a green card about a luncheon held on Wednesdays with a group of gay men called the Prime Timers. The little gentleman I later got to know. His name was Francis Acres and I credit him with opening the door for me to discover a part of myself that was yearning for expression and acknowledgement. At the time I thanked Francis for the invitation and stuck the green card in my pocket fully intending to trash it when I got home. However just as I was about to throw it in the garbage I looked at it again. Suddenly it seemed like it was the thing I had hoped for. I called the telephone number on the card and left a message for someone to call me with more information. I didn’t get a response. On Wednesday I called the 20th St Café where the “Nooners” luncheon was held and found out the time it started. Not knowing how long it would take by bus, I got there quite early. Don Harvey and Jim Michaels were there, greeted me and explained the procedure for buying the lunch and some information about the group. I watched as the members came in and had my first exposure to a gay activity. By the third Wednesday I joined Prime Timers and have been going to events and activities ever since. I started going to the Monday “Coffee Tyme” where last year, I met my lover. Slowly I was feeling more and more comfortable with the group activities and discovered that many older men had also been married, raised children and came out late in life. Others have always been gay while a couple of the guys I met were not only out, but still married. I was no longer the only one with a family and straight friends. I got involved in The Denver Church, later to be known as The Center for Spiritual Living-Denver. And about 2 1/2 years ago, I started going to activities at the GLBT Center.

          When I met my first lover at “Nooners,” I finally told my kids. A surprise to me, they all said that they had always known. My oldest daughter said, “I knew you were gay before you did! Ha, ha, ha.”

          Now on Mondays we go to the Telling Your Story group, of which this writing is for this week. On Tuesdays is the Men’s Coffee group. Wednesdays is “Nooners,” Thursdays I go to The Open Art Studio and on Fridays I volunteer at the front desk. “Nooners” on Wednesday and The Center for Spiritual Living on Sundays are the only regular activities not at the GLBT Center. Of course there are other activities now and then, some monthly, others only one time events, others a few times a year. We also belong to the Colorado Front Rangers.

          Except for Sunday, Thursday and Friday, while I am either at one or the other Centers and while Merlyn is at the Gym, both of us are always together.

          I’m now experiencing one of the most rewarding and happy periods of my life. I am very comfortable being myself and doing things I would never have done in the past. I went to the celebration of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with my two lovers dressed in drag, fulfilling a fantasy I have had for a long time. I rode sitting on the back of convertibles in two Gay Pride Parades, waving like the queen that I have become. Last month I had 4 outfits, including 4 wigs and 3 pairs of shoes as I participated as Queen Anne Tique in The Gray Stocking Review. I am recognized by people that I don’t remember meeting because I’m almost always wearing large and often unusual gages. Gages is the name the kids use for body jewelry worn in piercings. Many of mine are 0 gage. I only wear 6 gages in my nipples. I also have a few tattoos, even though there is nothing particularly gay about that.

          A comment that I make perhaps too often is, “I was born a king, but it took me 70 years to become the queen I am today!”

          When interviewed by Channel 4 after the vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I looked so gay, it even surprised me when I saw it on the news. The anchor introduced the interview with this statement, “Michael King, a gay activist.” When I heard that remark, I realized that I now have a mission. I will let everyone know that I love being myself. So I guess that by now, I’ve truly broken into gay culture almost totally and feel so wonderful for having done so.

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, 4 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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Grandfather by Phillip Hoyle

    Grandpa Hoyle saved me when I was fifty years old even though he’d been dead for thirty-five years. I was really surprised that this elder ancestor with snowy-white hair and prominent hooked nose, who smoked a pipe while watching the television, would have such an effect in my life for I had always thought of him as being rather proper, emotionally distant, and not so interested in young folk. I’ll tell you how he saved me, but first these things I recall.

     Grandpa and Grandma Hoyle—Elmer and Mable—lived in Junction City, Kansas, just a block from us, so I often visited in their home. When at their house as a very young kid, I mostly liked the mangle, a big machine for pressing laundry in large quantities. I was fascinated when Grandma or Mom used it to press the laundry for the grocery stores owned by the family. The other thing I found engaging in their house was a totem pole I discovered on a shelf in the basement. They must have bought it while on a trip to the American North West, a tourist curio, carved and painted. Some of the bark still adhered to the carving that sat on an orange-painted base. The pole itself was transected by wooden wings near the top. I loved that totem pole. Oh, and I loved the glider on the screened-in porch even though it was metal and uncomfortable; I could really swing on it!

     When I got older, the television became more important. We didn’t watch it much, but I distinctly recall on summer Sunday afternoons watching the Kansas City A’s, my dad’s and grandpa’s favorite team. I was not contented simply to watch the game, so I sat on the floor near the TV, just in front of the shelves of the World Book Encyclopedia. As I watched the game, I perused my favorite volumes of the encyclopedia, especially the one that included the entries and pictures of Indians. I guess I never was much of a sports fan although I liked the idea that lacrosse was a game invented by Indian tribes.

     Grandpa told me about the two umbrella catalpa trees in his front yard, how it requires two trees to make one. The roots of one are grafted onto the trunk of the other. The grafted roots become newly-formed branches making the umbrella shape. I was fascinated by the unusual trees that to me looked like giant mushrooms and seemed somehow magical with their monstrously large leaves and long beans.

     Most stories of my grandfather I heard from my dad. For instance, during the Great Depression Grandpa always laid out a loaf of bread, ends of lunch meat, and sandwich spread in the back room of the store for anyone who was hungry. He fed lots of unemployed folk during those terrible times. Dad told me about Grandpa’s blue spruce trees that grew on either side of the front steps to the screened porch, how Grandpa had brought them home to Kansas from the Rocky Mountains in coffee cans and babied them for years. I loved their blue-cast sharp needles. Dad told me the saying Grandpa used if a guy had to take a leak on the side of the road: ‘If they’ve never seen one they won’t know what it is; if they have, it won’t make any difference.’ Dad told me with wonder of Grandpa’s practice that if he gave $100 to one of his sons to help him buy something, he’d give $100 to each of his others sons. Perhaps this was a balancing act of an old Quaker man in relationship with his three sons, a balancing act my dad didn’t think was necessary. 

     My sisters and I learned not to ask Grandpa how he was doing. If we forgot, he’d bore us with descriptions of pains, aches, and illness, yet Dad claimed he’d never been sick one day of his life until his eightieth and final year. We learned to say something like, “You’re sure looking good, Grandpa.” When adults asked Elmer how he was, he’d declare: “I think one more clean shirt will do me.” 

     My Hoyle grandparents went to the same church we attended, First Christian Church, on Eighth at Madison. I didn’t see them there often since I went to the early service to attend the children’s programs and they attended the second service in which the adult choir sang. They didn’t often attend Sunday nights (I was always there), and for many years they had been reluctant to become members of the congregation. 

     In general, Grandpa was a good man who somehow didn’t connect with me on an emotional level. He always seemed rather formal, likely a result of his Quaker upbringing. He didn’t kid or delight me like Grandpa Schmedemann, but he did come to my rescue when many years after his death I was facing some life-changing decisions. I was approximately fifty years old and saw my life falling apart. 

     I had heard a story about Grandpa when taking a college class taught by W.F. Lown, who years before had been the minister of our congregation. After church one Sunday morning during which Lown in his sermon had told a story that hung on the use of old Quaker language with thee’s and thou’s, Grandpa said, “I really liked your story, Brother Lown. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could use Bible language all the time?” Lown thought a moment and replied, “I guess we’d all be speaking Greek and Hebrew.” Grandpa apparently thought about Mr. Lown’s perspective and within a few weeks joined the church and immediately began tithing. Lown said he’d never before or since met a fifty-five year old man who made a change anywhere nearly as significant as that. I treasured the story about this ancestor I had never got to know very well. 

     The story served me as an anchor for handling my own changes. Grandpa Hoyle’s decisions set the stage. At age fifty-five, he made a major religious realignment and with it a redirection of his resources. I was mulling over my own situation when I realized Grandpa’s three sons had all made important mid- and mature-life changes. At age fifty-five Earl, my dad, left the grocery business that he really had loved to take on the responsibility of pastoring a church, a work he carried out creatively and faithfully until his retirement at age sixty-five. Ellis, my uncle two years older than Dad, sold the grocery business and set up an insurance agency he ran until he retired several years later. Eldon, Dad’s younger brother by ten years, left the grocery business in his early forties to pursue a real estate career. These solid, model-citizen men made major changes in their adulthood. I likewise could do the same even though my changes were a contrast. The religious dimension of my decisions was to leave a thirty-two-year career in ministry; the personal dimension was to leave a twenty-nine-year marriage. I did the former with elation and relief, the latter with reluctance and great care. I also knew I would be able to make both changes following the leadership of these man-ancestors.

     Grandpa’s practical approach helped. His thoughtful changes were a challenge for me to be likewise responsible towards the people I was leaving behind. So in my mature years I found my most reserved grandpa advising me and loving me in ways I’d never before experienced. If I ever seem reserved, even cool, it’s probably just that old Quaker in me showing through. 

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.”
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Closet Case by Colin Dale

          I was helped out of the closet by a man who died in 1935—ten years before I was born—a man who never successfully got out of his own closet. In other words, this man who helped me out of the closet lived and died a closet case.

          I’m going to begin, though, in telling you how, in 1959, I became acquainted not with the man who helped me out of the closet but with his surviving brother, under totally unrelated circumstances—

          It’s 1959. I am 14 years old. I’m living with my mother, father, and older brother in a second floor walk-up apartment in the East Bronx. I know you’ve heard me talk about my growing-up years in The Bronx a number of times before. It helps though to visualize my working-class surroundings in order to understand the improbability of a kid in the East Bronx making the acquaintance of an Oxford professor of archaeology. In my growing up years, fathers, like my father, were laborers. Mothers, like my mother, were housewives. Fathers disappeared each morning to their factory jobs on the elevated subway—the “el.” Mothers led kids like me to public school. They shopped. And they cooked. I say with complete kindness my father and mother were not very well educated. They had come through the Great Depression, and in all things did the very best they could.

          I had an uncle though, a lion of a man, who, as a highly educated man, was an outlier in the family. He recognized in me a kindred bookworm. One day he delivered—to an apartment that could barely accommodate it—a 33-year-old set of the Britannica. The 1926 Britannica.

          Fourteen-year-old me wanted to be an archaeologist. I read in the Britannica every article I could find on archaeology. One article on Persian archaeology especially excited me. I decided to send the writer what today we would call a fan letter. The writer, the Britannica told me, was a “Arnold W. Lawrence, professor, Oxford.”

          I wrote my fan letter. In my innocence, I had addressed it to “Professor Arnold W. Lawrence, Oxford, England,” not knowing Oxford was a conglomerate of universities, and forgetting that the man who had written the article had written it more than three decades earlier.

          But months later I received a reply, from A.W. Lawrence, London. Professor Lawrence, 60, retired, was apparently stunned to get my fan letter. In 1926 for A.W. Lawrence, the Britannica article was an extraordinary credit. Professor Lawrence’s reply to my fan letter–a tissue-paper blue aerogram (which I have safely at home) was the beginning of a correspondence that lasted up and down, on and off for 31 years—although (and this is another story for another Monday), I met Professor Lawrence face-to-face only once, in 1990, two months before his death.

          Now, though, to bring the two brothers together—

          We move forward, from 1959 to 1962. I’m 17, studying architecture (so much for archaeology) at a vocational art school in Manhattan, and I’m corresponding every month or so from our second floor walk-up with this retired Oxford professor in London. And, I’m still closeted. A movie opens in Times Square, David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. I go to see it. I’m blown away. I never make the connection though—Lawrence and Lawrence—why should I? Lawrence is not an uncommon name. I want to learn more about Lawrence of Arabia. I stop in a midtown bookstore and I find a ratted copy of the Penguin The Essential T.E. Lawrence (that’s Lawrence of Arabia: Thomas Edward Lawrence). On the subway to the Bronx I pop the book and read in the sketch biography: “Thomas Edward Lawrence . . . five brothers . . . the youngest, Arnold Walter Lawrence.” Could this be? I think, this man I’ve been corresponding with for three years, could he be Lawrence of Arabia’s youngest brother? I write and ask, and of course he is.

          Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in 1888. His story is generally known, thanks to David Lean’s movie. Briefly: Lawrence studied at Oxford to be an archaeologist, went on a British Museum sponsored dig to the Middle East; at the onset of the First World War, he was drawn into British Army intelligence. Lawrence locked in his legacy during the war as guerilla mastermind of the Arab Revolt. At the war’s end, now Colonel Lawrence returned to England, sought to influence the Paris peace talks on behalf of the Arabs–failing that, and deeply disillusioned, he spent his remaining years running from the spotlight. Finally, four months before his death, Lawrence retired to a small cottage in Southern England, to wonder, as many of us to at such junctures, What next?

          But here I am in 1962, and for me Thomas Edward Lawrence is a movie. Not expecting the life affirming discovery I would make, I read everything I can find of T.E. Lawrence’s, chief being his massive, magnificent war memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom; also, his thousands upon thousands of letters—letters to such notables as Winston Churchill, Edward Elgar, E.M. Forster, Robert Graves, Ezra Pound, and George Bernard Shaw. My discovery, sometimes on the surface of Lawrence’s writing but more often between the lines, was that this man Lawrence—Lawrence of Arabia, warrior, author, scholar–was a deeply conflicted man, almost certainly over his sexuality, and possibly, if you comb carefully enough, over questions of gender. I sat in my bedroom in The Bronx reading this stuff and thought, Holy shit, this is me!

            At that time I was at a point familiar to many of us—sensing a difference in me, fearing that difference made me a lesser person, somehow sure I couldn’t talk to others about my difference, and resigned to living a life of reduced accomplishment because of this difference. But here was Lawrence of Arabia . . .

          Was Lawrence homosexual? (I’ll use “homosexual.” It seems more fitting for an Edwardian man.) No one knows for sure. In certain of his letters, Lawrence denied any sexual experience. Yet he was certainly (what we would call today) gay-friendly. Among his closest friends were men like E.M. Forster. Cited often is a suspicious friendship with a teenage Arab boy when Lawrence was a twenty-something archaeologist. The boy, Selim Ahmed—initials S.A.—is possibly the person to whom Lawrence dedicated Seven Pillars of Wisdom, with its introductory poem, S.A., which opens: I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands/and wrote my will across the sky in stars. In Seven Pillars Lawrence, seeing the intimacy enjoyed by some of his young fighters, tells us here is “the openness and honesty of perfect love.” In another chapter he describes “friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace.” (There were few such “intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace” in David Lean’s movie.) Then, too, in a letter to George Bernard Shaw’s wife, Lawrence wrote “I’ve seen lots of man-and-man loves: very lovely and fortunate some of them were.”

          Can you imagine what effect this sort of thing had on closeted me? No one—me included—can say with certainty that T.E. Lawrence was homosexual. But for me, reading his man’s books and letters in my Bronx bedroom all those many years ago, T.E. Lawrence was homosexual enough, enough for me to open my own closet door. My God, I thought, here’s a man troubled as I’m troubled, and he’s written his will across the sky in stars!

           I will regret, though, Lawrence himself never got out of his own closet. This, for me, remains a note of sustained sadness. Having retreated to his cottage—alone—Lawrence wrote to a friend—and I have often felt this to be one of the most melancholy snapshots of a life not fully realized—Lawrence wrote: “I’m sitting in my cottage rather puzzled to find out what has happened to me. At present the feeling is mere bewilderment. I imagine leaves must feel like this after they have fallen yet alive from their tree, now on the ground, looking up, and until they die, wondering.”

          A week later Lawrence, in a motorcycle crash, suffered fatal head injuries. He died six days later, never having recovered consciousness. He was 46. Lawrence was buried in a country cemetery not far from his cottage. A.W. Lawrence, his youngest brother, my correspondent, was the senior pallbearer.

_______

          Fifty-six years later, in February of 1990, I meet A.W. Lawrence face-to-face for the first time. The meeting was arranged by a mutual acquaintance. I am at Lawrence’s bedside. He’s 90 years of age. We reminisce about our lifetime correspondence. I show A.W. the aerogram he sent in 1959. He reads it very, very slowly, and at the end says, “Well, quite a good letter, that.”

          I leave with a promise to return in the summer. But I return home one day in April to my Capitol Hill apartment to find on my answering machine a message from our mutual acquaintance: “We’ve lost our dear friend, Ray. A.W. passed quietly last Sunday. That’s it then, Ray, isn’t it, the end of an era.”

          I telephoned the acquaintance to hear him say that my friendship with A.W. Lawrence—a friendship that was founded on A.W. himself and not on his famous brother—my friendship, particularly in his last years, had given back to A.W. his own identity.

______

          Although I consider myself successfully un-closeted, there does remain a pocket of silence, one that will always be there—

          What I was never able to say to A.W. Lawrence in 31 years was how grateful I was to his older brother—how this older brother, T.E. Lawrence, who had written his name “across the sky in stars” but who seems never to have made peace with his identity—how this older brother had managed to give a boy in the Bronx the gift of his own identity.

______

          A footnote in closing:

          If Lawrence of Arabia helped me out of the closet, and I considered myself fully out (the exception being the one pocket of silence I just mentioned), why then have I contributed my stories to our website under the name Colin Dale? Why not under my own name? Believe me, this is not another pocket of silence. Twenty-some years ago I and a friend were riding the London underground. We got off at a station stop called Colindale. Colindale: one word, no space. My friend said, “That’s not too shabby a name, Colindale. It would make a good alter-ego.” And so ever since if I write something that I send to my friend, I write it as Colin Dale: two words.

          If you were to look at a map of the London underground, you’d see that if my friend and I had gotten off one stop sooner, today I’d be Hendon Central. One stop later, I’d be Burnt Oak.

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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The Interview by Ray S

Q:  “Can I, or may I come over and interview you
for a piece I am doing for the station?”
     Although I’d known
Betsey was on the broadcast staff of the local fine arts FM radio station as
well as a musicologist that did background talks for the symphony, I was at a
loss as to what I had to offer.
A:  “Well, yes, it would be good to visit with
you, but what have I got to contribute to your job?”
     Her response informed
me that she was doing a general interest piece prior to the opening night
festivities in Central City at the Opera House. 
Someone had mentioned to her that a mutual acquaintance had long ago
been an usher or something on the Opera House staff.
     “Local color, human
interest,” she said.
     With the old what
goes around comes around feeling I said, “Ask away.”
Q.  “How did you learn about a summer job at
Central?”
A.  It was my junior year at college and a
sorority sister of my future wife told me I might be able to land a job
starting the end of May.  She was a voice
major and had worked at the Central City Opera box office in the men’s
department of the D & F store on Arapahoe St. in downtown Denver.
Not
looking forward to another sweltering summer in the Windy City, I jumped at the
chance to be in the midst of real live theatre and opera at that.
Q.  “So you got the job.  What did you do?”
A.  Once I boned up on the history of Central and
particularly Opera House, I would have washed dishes or scrubbed the Face on
the Bar Room Floor.  Seemed like the
business manager needed an eager and possibly rational gopher.  I lived in the ushers’ dormitory, ate at West
Matinees “Olde Fashioned” dining room on Eureka St. across from the Teller
House.  Every morning we breakfasted on
Miss Hanah’s  huge cinnamon buns.
My
routine was to drive my boss down to Denver every day to the office in the City
and County Building, run errands all day, and we would return to Central in
time to open the box office at the Teller House.  I couldn’t believe my life had been so
transformed.  I felt like an apprentice
to my employer learning all about what makes the show get going.
Q. “What
was the production that year?”
A.  The board and artistic director had to rile
the old guard by announcing it would be Strauss’s “Die Fledermous,” outraged
that grand opera had been replaced by an “operetta.”  As it turned out after the opening night
performance the house was sold out for the season, showmanship surpassed KULTUR
with a “K.”  Then to add insult to injury
the second 1/2 of the season was to be “Diamond Lil” starring in her original
role, Ms. Mae West.
Q. “I’ve
heard it was a beautiful production. 
What stands out in your memory?”
A.  For me the whole opera scene opened up, it was
a wonderland come to life.  The music is
unforgettable, the singers, from stars to chorus and orchestra, all so genuine,
professional, and talented.
Learning
to know the director and his staff.  Most
all major cast members brought their families so they needed baby sitting
too.  It was one big party in the cast
housing, but strictly business in the theatre.
    The
experience and opportunity to immerse one’s self in this high altitude
opera/theatre realm was like moving into an alternate life. So much happened
that summer in that wonderful old opera house. 
And to me, that I couldn’t believe I had my own voyage through a musical
looking glass. Guess I was forever stage struck and the battery died in Betsy’s
recorder.
     End of Interview!

About the Author

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If I Won the Lottery by Ricky

     When I win the lottery, if I ever play, I will do what the majority of people will do; share some with family, pay off the mortgage and other bills, and perhaps buy a newer car. Depending upon the amount won, there may be varying amounts of funds left over after all the foregoing activity. Thus, the following list is what I think I would do if the financial opportunity exists after accomplishing the things in the above list. The list is in no particular order as there is no way to predict the amount of winnings.

     1. Build a private, GLBT, high-rise senior citizen center. Under the ground floor would be a large parking garage part of which is open to the public for a small fee. The resident parking area would have wide diagonal parking spaces for each unit of the high rise. The ground floor would house a super-size grocery/department store.  

     The second floor would house geriatric medical facilities (to include a non-emergency clinic for minor medical issues but staffed by trained emergency room doctors and nurses). These facilities, except the clinic, would be open to the public.

     The third floor will house two swimming pools; one for residents and one for non-residents (for a membership). Both swimming areas will also have typical gym exercise equipment and other related facilities.

     All floors above would consist of living spaces of various designs to accommodate senior GLBT citizens and their partners and dependents (if any).

     Separate stairs and lifts will keep the general public out of the residents and their “guests-only” areas. The top three floors will be dedicated to: senior and diabetic-menu eating facilities; a solarium; recreation rooms and areas.

     2. Build a similar structure for “troubled” GLBT children, adolescents, teens, and their parents (if needed). This structure would not be open to the public, except for the medical facilities and therapists, and the medical facilities will be tailored to meet the needs of pediatricians and therapists. There would also be private school and day care facilities on site. 
     The upper floors would have some apartments designed for the homeless who had children who qualified to live in the facility so that families could stay together. Other apartments would be for single teens who don’t have families or who need shelter. 
     Younger children needing to be temporarily away from their parents or whose parents are in long or short-term custody would live in age appropriate small dorms each with a state-licensed dorm mother and father foster care parents and who are official staff so there is no need for them to work anywhere else – the children being their only concern.
     3. Trusts for my grandchildren.
     4. A trust for a budding artist named Edgar, who is 16, extremely handsome, and (as I write this) working as a busboy at a local Mexican restaurant.
     5. Visit England and Australia.
     6. Visit and perhaps move to Tahiti.
© 10 June 2012
About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los Angeles, California. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. Just prior to turning 8 years old, he went to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After two tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children. His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

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

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.

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Nobody Warned Me about This by Nicholas

          Maybe it was because my parents assumed that their kids
would just know better, I don’t recall my youth being burdened with parental
warnings. There was none of the hectoring others have told me that they got from
their parents about do this or don’t do that. My sophisticated mom and dad relied
on that mystical bond between parent and child in which good and harm are
communicated without words or maybe with the slightest gesture or frown.
          Oh, there were the usual admonitions to drive carefully
when I went out. And once when I was about to head off to college, mom asked if
I knew about homosexuals in an attempted warning that I stopped short. It
wasn’t that I feared I was one and she was going to out me but rather that any
conversation about anything sexual at age 18 with my mother was just too creepy
to let happen.
          Once I sort of asked for a warning. I was testing out my
new independence living away from home at college. Ohio State,
like every college campus in the country in 1964, was rumbling with movements
of change and I as a freshman jumped right in. It was a battle over the rights
of students to hear the free speech of forbidden speakers, namely Marxist
political theorists. Talk was there would be a demonstration with the
likelihood of arrests the next day.
          I mentioned all this to mom and dad in my regular weekly
phone call to see what they would say. Like, no, don’t do it, you’ll ruin your
future. But no such warning came. Mom thought about it and said that I should
do whatever I thought was best. Now, how was I going to rebel with an attitude
like that? I felt almost encouraged to get arrested. Maybe it was a trick. But
mom didn’t play tricks; she pretty much said exactly what she was thinking.
          So much for warnings. How is it then, I wonder, that I
turned out to be, as we used to say back then, one of the people my parents warned
me about. Free thinking, authority questioning, not too impressed with money
for its own sake, experimenter with odd drugs and even odder spiritualities,
totally supportive of people who go to great lengths to shape their lives, and
even their bodies, their way, and, to top it off, queer. It isn’t that I set
out to break all the rules, just the big ones. Perhaps mom and
dad knew that I was destined to break or ignore just about every admonition
they would have given me so they just didn’t bother.
          I joined radical political organizations, didn’t often cut
my hair, refused to join the army when told to do so, picked a pretty useless
college major instead of a practical one, never got around exactly to having a
career (I’ve had a few here and there, actually), ran away to San Francisco
twice, went to all-night dance parties when I was 35, and ended up marrying a
man.
          And in the end, I can say that taking risks and ignoring
even well-meaning warnings almost always pays off. If nothing else, I learned
some things I would never do again. I have sown my wild oats and they have
grown up to nourish me well over the years. I think Edith Piaf sang a song about
that.
          And now, though I went against most parental warnings and
admonitions, spoken or unspoken, I can say that the parents I ignored and shocked
many times are now my role models. We stayed together and sort of grew up
together—me changing and them changing. They too did things their way and they
aged well, remaining active though never failing to take naps, and learning new
things while steadfastly keeping their old familiar ways so that I say, yes,
they are my role models now.
Nobody
warned me that I’d come around to saying that.

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.
Posted on

Three Loves: Three Losses by Phillip Hoyle

I tell of Ted, Michael, and Rafael.
I tell of Kaposi’s sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and Hepatitis
C.
I tell of the loving effects of all on me.
Ted’s illness eventually became the focus of my
relationship to him, a kind of maturing friendship that clarified my need to
take care of another person who was dying. I wanted to attend to him at the end
of his life and realized I’d willingly take a leave of absence from work to do
so. This seemed a great change for me. It also clarified my anger at the church
and society for their often callus response to gay folk in general and
specifically to those living with and dying from HIV-related diseases. It seemed
that in our society to debate long-held fears was more important than to
support people—the real places of life and death.
I found meaning as well as satisfaction in letting Ted
teach me more about the issues and about myself before his death. The last time
we were together—a several-day stay at his home in San Francisco—we visited San
Francisco General Hospital, and I walked around Pacific Heights while he met
with his psychiatrist. We heard Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” together, and he
taught me how to smoke marijuana.  He
told me that when his KS lesions so distressed him, he complained to his HIV
physician. “I just can’t stand to look at them.”
“Then don’t,” she responded. “Wear long pants.”
Ted wore long pants but was not doing well on that last
visit. I wanted to return to be with him. Although I volunteered, I wasn’t
called in at the end, which frustrated me. Still, I was able to attend his
memorial service, an experience of balloons, tributes, music, and love.
After I moved to Denver I gave massages at Colorado AIDS
Project as a kind of memorial to my long-time friend Ted. There I met Michael,
a man who came to me for massage. I noticed that he was noticing me. He wanted
more massage. When later he came to my home studio to receive one, I was
pleased and served tea at the end of the session. Then he wanted more than
massage. We began seeing each other socially. Of course, I knew he was HIV
positive. What I didn’t know was that he was losing weight rapidly and that his
numbers were going in the wrong directions. When I realized these distressing
trends, I suggested that at his next medical appointment he show the swollen
lymph nodes in his neck and groin and insist that someone touch them. He did so
and the tests that ensued pinpointed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I started spending
most nights at his place when he started chemotherapy and discovered just how
much I had come to love him in our short time together. As he sickened I did
more and more of his yard and housework. I wanted him to be comfortable and I wanted
to enjoy his company.
Michael taught me some rather genteel approaches to
breakfast, to eating out, and to living with another man. I was an avid
learner. He also was the occasion for me to see the down side of some gay relationships
particularly as relates to family complications. When his brother and elderly
mother were coming to see him after his chemotherapy had to be discontinued, he
asked me to move back to my apartment during their stay. I was confused but also
realized we are what we are: he was who he was, I was who I was, both imperfect
when coping with the extremities of life. I made sure I dropped by to meet his
family, to be for them one of Michael’s friends. I never knew what they understood
of our relationship.
I did for Michael in his last weeks what I couldn’t do
for Ted: made him comfortable, showered him with my love, sat by him while he
took his final breaths. My sadness mixed with love at his death. I was so
pleased that I had cleaned up after him, prepared his food, and loved him in
the most practical ways possible—the work of family and of gay lovers in the
face of AIDS. In it all, I came to appreciate the effective work of Denver
Health’s clinics and staff. I appreciated the attentions of other friends of
this lover of mine. His memorial service brought together a wide variety of
folk who celebrated his life, friendships, and love.
Some months later I met Rafael at a bus stop. We talked;
we liked each other. Eventually we got together after a frustrating courtship
characterized by my wondering where this cute man was. We came together with an
emotional intensity that surely would have entertained both Ted and Michael and
that surprised me. It also thrilled me to my innermost gay self that I was
still discovering.
Rafael told me he was HIV positive some weeks into this
intense relationship. I said that was fine and told him about Ted and Michael.
We set up housekeeping, but in a few weeks he was growing ill. He too was a
client at the Infectious Diseases Clinic at Denver Health. I warned him I might
cry when we went there because of my memories of going to the same kind of
appointments with Michael.
I felt somewhat like a veteran and told him I wanted to
meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. That didn’t happen. I met
his brother in his room at Denver Health. Later I met his parents and sister at
the same place. I stood by him and helped his family as his illness worsened. We
waited during a surgery on his aorta, made visits to the Intensive Care Unit, the
Intensive Care Step-down Unit, and other floors where he was treated. Finally,
a diagnosis of full-term hepatitis C emerged. Two weeks later, after a one-day
home hospice attempt, the Hospice of St. John took him in. There he died.
I liked that at the end he was surrounded by family. I
was pleased to be included. He had told his parents they’d not be welcome in
our home if they in any way excluded me. This frail man of indomitable spirit
took care of me with his family as I took care of his daily needs. Our love’s
intensity sustained and wrecked us both at the end. I let go gently, deeply
saddened, and with startlingly grateful respect for this man’s life and death.
But I was also afraid of the effect the loss of such an intense relationship
would bring. The resulting low I experienced was as intense as the heights of
the love we shared. I survived. I felt as if Saints Ted and Michael attended me
in my adoration of the beautiful and strong Rafael.
This awful disease with all its science, social ramifications,
and family trauma and drama continues to affect my life daily. Friends and
clients still live and die with its effects. Memories seared deeply into my
brain and body accompany my every move. I continue to hate the disease while I
love those with it, both past and present. 

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.”

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Dis-ease by Donny Kaye

Smile.  The threesome posed with an apprehensive grin
as their buddy taking the picture commented on the potential FaceBook caption
he would assign to this particular photo op,
“My buddies waiting to get tested at the STD Clinic”. 
And then, one-by-one each of
the buddies was called into the clinic offices 
for their chance to fill one of those plastic containers, complete a blood
draw,  and finally, meet with the
counselor. 
“Have you had sex in the
past 48 hours?” questioned the counselor. 
“Yes.” 
“24? ”
“24 what?”
“Hours”
‘”Uh, yes.”
“More recent than 12?”
With a grin and a deep sense
of satisfaction, “Yes.”
The counselor then proceeded
to demonstrate, using his finger, how a condom rides down the organ, exposing
the shaft and consequently exposing the base, you know—The BASE, to potential
infection.  It seemed like the lead into
an infomercial for some type of device, much like a garter that could be
attached somewhere on the body to hold the condom in its appropriate location
for $19.95 (and if ordered within the next while, the order would be
tripled).  Just what was needed for the
threesome who had been waiting in the outer office for their time for direction
and instruction in safe sex. 
Upon leaving the Clinic, the
buddies compared the stash of condoms each had been given proclaiming there was
agreement that they were safe for the next while, at least 48 hours. 
A week later at coffee there
was a sense of relief and satisfaction knowing that each of the three had gotten
his tests back.  All was OK. 
“No syphilis,” the first
proclaimed.
“All is clear with me,”
stated another; only to be joined by the third, “I’m clean.”
There was a deep smile and
hug shared by the three, as they raised their mugs to their mouths and cheered
this most recent reporting.  Something
they have committed to on a routine basis.
AIDS, has become the focus
of health considerations for the GLBT community since the early 1980’s when the
death causing syndrome at the time was first identified.  Especially for men, AIDS was thought by some
to be God’s judgment and retribution for “unnatural relationships between men.”  This particular disease for a while ravaged
the bodies and lives of many of our brothers and sisters, as well. 
As a result of the focus on
AIDS since the 80’s, the disease is better managed within the culture.
AIDS has become part of my life.  Knowing that each of us to some extent live
with AIDS daily, even though it is not in my body, it has become part of my
culture and day-to-day existence.  AIDS
exists all around me and I don’t want it in me. 
Understanding how AIDS has
become part of our culture, and my day-to-day existence, I’m also drawn to the
realization that much of my reaction to life actually creates Dis-Ease.  
Dis-Ease
actually occurs within each of us as we experience the contraction that comes
with judgment, be it judgment about something or someone outside of me, or more
commonly, judgments against my own self. 
It has been suggested by some researchers that there is a physiological
reaction within the bodies various systems to the contraction that is
experienced within when judgment occurs. 
 Judgment causes the very cellular
structure to break down.  The cells
within the body vibrate in a completely dissonant way.  There is contraction.  The fluids do not move through the cells as
they were created to move.  The nutrients
do not become transported or delivered to the cells.  The waste matter is not processed
properly.  Everything gets clogged up,
and there is dis-ease.
Dis-ease
exists within me in a very physiological way. 
Its cause may result from actual physical infection or from the
contractions within resulting from my judgments against myself and others.  Certainly there are measures that I must take
to protect myself from external causes of infection resulting in disease, such
as those recommendations of the STD Clinic staff.  Equally, I must pay attention to the
contractions and disruptions to my bodies various systems that occur when I
experience judgments against myself and others.
I entered the office alone.  There were no buddies, no photo op.
“Have you made any judgments
against yourself or another in the past 48 hours?”
“Yes.” (I mean, after all,
do I want that politician representing me as a gay man?)
“24?”
“Yes.” (Well, the person in
the express checkout line had more than ten items.)
“More recently?”
“Yes.  Actually in the moments before sharing this
writing.”  Stated without a grin or sense
of satisfaction.
Oh for an infomercial
offering some type of device that would help me to self-monitor the judgments
that occur in my mind, moment-by-moment. 
The judgments that create contractions and dis-ease within that can serve to be more lethal than
actually contracting some other dreaded disease, such as AIDS.  The remedy?  Hmmmmmmmm! 
The remedy, self
forgiveness.  For each time I am judging
another, even the driver in front of me or the customer in the express checkout
ahead of me, I’m actually judging myself. 
Certainly those judgments against myself about being unworthy or in some
way, not enough; ripple through my body in the form of contraction that
disrupts the various systems within my body creating dis-ease which can be as life
altering as other forms of disease. 
I am learning what to do to
protect myself from dis-ease.  I take my
vitamins, practice safe sex and even wear my seatbelt.  The consideration that begs my attention is Am I as vigilant about monitoring the
judgments that can exist in my life experience in a very inconspicuous way?
 The judgments that are life altering especially
when I withdraw and step aside out of a sense of unworthiness.
Dis-ease.  I live with it silently.  Separately. 
Alone.  
Hey, what was that 800 number
again?

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.” StoryTime
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.  

Posted on

NEVER-never Land by Gillian

I
completely inhabit a never-never land all of my own making.
Growing
up in remote farm country I said I could NEVER be happy living in the city,
and here I am living happily
in the middle of three million people in the Denver metro area.
With
that same rural attitude I said I could NEVER be happy working in some big corporation,
and here I am retired after
thirty wonderful years with IBM.
After
I got divorced I said I shall NEVER get married again,
and here I am after 25
wonderful years with Betsy.
And we know we are married even
if the Government does not.
So
if ever you hear me say I could NEVER live …
wherever,  just look for me there.
Never-never
land seems where I’m destined to be!

About the Author

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

Neverland by Ricky

           I first went to Neverland in 1953 at the age of 5 when my parents took me to an indoor theater for the first time to see Walt Disney’s animated movie Peter Pan, which begins with the narrator telling the viewing audience that the action about to take place, “has happened before, and will all happen again”, only this time it is happening in Edwardian London, in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury. 
          The movie is an adaptation of Sir James Matthew Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.  In 1935 Walt wanted Peter Pan to be his second film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but he couldn’t get the rights from the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London* until four years later and then WWII interrupted production.  Barrie’s 1911 novelization of the play is titled Peter Pan and Wendy. 
Cover of the 1911 Novel
          1953 was the year that my parents bought me the large Disney book of Peter Pan complete with text and lots of pictures of scenes from the film.
          The next time I remember going to Neverland was in 1955 at age 7, when my family watched the NBC television broadcast of the Broadway musical of Peter Pan; starring Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook, which had earned Tony Awards for both stars in 1954.
          Soon after the TV broadcast, I visited Neverland yet again that same year after the opening of Disneyland on July 18th.  My favorite areas of the park are Fantasy Land and Tomorrow Land.  From that visit on, I have probably lived in a fantasy world and the world of the future; jumping into either one of them alternately and refusing to live in the present reality.  My favorite rides have remained the same over the years; the Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland rides.  Both are fantasy related but to me were the most beautifully crafted and colorful rides.
          The Peter Pan ride begins with one sitting in a small pirate ship flying out the window of the nursery following Peter’s shadow into a nighttime scene flying over the city of London and around Big Ben.  The city below is aglow with lights brought out by overhead “black lights.”  The illusion of flying was most impressive to me.  The ride continues through the night sky until you circle around the Neverland portrayed in the movie.  It then continues through various dioramas from the movie and ends at the opposite end of the starting point.  I loved it.
          The Alice in Wonderland ride is similar but featuring scenes from that movie. In spite of the Queen of Hearts, the ride is beautiful, colorful, and mostly non-threatening except the short part in the scary nighttime forest.  I liked the peacefulness of the ride.
          Another ride in Fantasy Land is the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ride.  I wanted to go on that ride but my parents continued their refusal to ride on what they perceived as a “kids” ride (either that or they didn’t have the money to spend).  I have always maintained that kid or adult rides are absolutely no fun to do alone.  As with the previously mentioned rides, this one began benignly with lots of good music and colors in the scenes from the movie.  The part where the ride goes into the Dwarf’s mine was especially nice with all the multicolored gemstones lining the tunnels.  Then there was the exit, which was suddenly blocked by the evil and ugly witch and the vehicle turned down a dark side tunnel.  Another exit appeared only to be blocked and another turn down yet another tunnel; only this one held a nasty surprise.  Dangling in the dark were black threads, which slid across my face and felt like spider webs.  It didn’t help any that at that moment a large glowing spider appeared on the wall just ahead and to the side.  Well, I lost my joy, happiness, and composure right then.  As the song asserts, “I don’t like spiders and snakes and that ain’t what it takes to love me…”  Mr. Disney.  I panicked and was really scared that there were spiders in the vehicle and on me.  By the time the ride ended, I was crying and ran to my waiting parents, probably yelling something about spiders.  I had forgotten that this was a ride and that everything was fake.
          Looking back on that event all I can think of to account for my behavior is one of two things.  Either I was a “scaredy cat” or my parents’ warnings about the Black Widow spiders (found around the outside of our house) being poisonous had really been taken very seriously.  I still hate spiders and I don’t like snakes.
          From 1958 thru 1965 (ages 10 to 17), I went to Neverland whenever I visited my dad for his one-week-at-Christmas visitation rights.  We always went to Disneyland and I rode my two favorite rides among others.  I only rode the Snow White ride once again when my wife and I went there and I told her the story of my panic.  That time there were no black threads.
          Perhaps the trip to Neverland that had the most impact on my life was in 1960 at age 12.  That was the year my toy box from when I was 7 reappeared in my life and I found the large Disney book on Peter Pan.  When I began to read the book I returned to Neverland.  During the reading I mentally wished that I would not grow up and would stay 12 forever (a version of the “Peter Pan Pledge”) and I internalized the wish. 
The Peter Pan Pledge

“I pledge allegiance to Peter Pan and the Land of Never Never, to stay young in mind, [and] in spirit; to grow old and grouchy never!”
          If you don’t count the opinions of my children, most people who know me really well would say that I’ve done a good job in keeping that pledge.
          In 1953, I went to Neverland for the first time.  In all truthfulness, I never left.
Sir James M. Barrie, 1st Baronet
*  “In 1929, J. M. Barrie donated all rights in Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.  In 1987, fifty years after Barrie’s death, copyright expired under UK law. However, the following year a unique act of Parliament restored royalty income from all versions of Peter Pan to the hospital, which means that very sick children will continue to benefit from J. M. Barrie’s generous gift for as long as the hospital exists.”
© 12 March 2012

Illustration from 1911 Edition



 

Illustration from 1911 Edition



“Never say goodbye, …”

 

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA
Ricky was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los Angeles.  He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA.  Just prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

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

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.  “I find writing these memories to be theraputic.”

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.