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The Strangest Person I Ever Met by Colin Dale

I’m going to introduce you
to a villain.  I thought of a bunch of good strange people I’ve known, but none
tells you much about me, and telling you about me is what I strive for in
storytelling.  So I’m going to introduce
a villain—but first . . .
I sat there, as we all did,
probably, trying to think of the strangest person I ever met.  Imagining we’ve all lived good, full, rich
lives, and been open to all sorts of experiences, we each can think of, as I
could, dozens and dozens of strange characters we’ve crossed paths with.  Sometimes they were brief encounters, like
the man I met on a broken-down Trailways bus in the Poconos when I was a teen,
the man who was dressed in full 19th century British military garb, the man who
turned to me and said his experience of being on a broken-down bus reminded him
of the Crimean War. Sometimes our brushes with strange people are more prolonged,
like the homeless man—and Donald may remember this man—who, when Donald and I
were in visual merchandising at the Denver Dry, would stare fixedly all day
long into the big display windows, rocking from side to side, taking a break
every so often only to place small balled-up bits of aluminum foil under his
upper eyelids.  He was a sad case.  Nothing funny about  him. 
Then, too, there are strange people who are part our lives from
childhood–oddball aunts and uncles—and others who enter our lives—neighbors,
coworkers, even lovers sometimes—strange people we then spend weeks, months,
and even years trying to get back out of our lives.  I once had just such a lover, Lyndon (I’ll
call him), obsessive-compulsive to a fault, who was impatient with my
normal-guy’s sense of order, who one day thought signposts might help: I
arrived home one night, switched on the lights, to find our apartment a
snowstorm of white rectangles, hundreds and hundreds of them, white adhesive
mailing labels stuck to everything: on the tableware drawer, Forks only this compartment, tongs facing
north; on the floor lamps, Sixty-watt
bulbs only; on the glass-top coffee table, Current magazines go on top; on the toilet tissue dispenser, Paper unfurls from bottom-rear.   That was 30 years ago.  I still have a old bureau in a spare room
that today holds odds & ends; on the top drawer, now faded: Paired socks to the left, folded underpants
to the right. 
Too many strange people to
pick from.  Certainly too many from which
to pick the strangest.  As many of us do
when stuck in neutral, we pop open the dictionary.  Or the thesaurus.  That’s what I did, and I found, among
synonyms for strangest: weirdest, oddest, most peculiar, most uncommon,
most off, most irregular, most unaccountable.  I was happy to see that my thesaurus popping
was leading me away from the merely weird and more toward the disturbing.  That opened up all sorts of fresh possibilities
for title of Strangest.
The first guy I thought of
was Bill Reese.  I nominate Bill Reese
for the Strangest Person I Ever Met.  No,
wait, I don’t nominate him—after all, each of us is running his own contest—I
award Bill Reese the crown.  Not just as
the Strangest Person I Ever Met, but also the Meanest, Most Upsetting, Most Damaging.  Bill Reese—or Dr. William Reese—was my
English Department advisor at City College in New York. Advisors were usually
the youngest among the professors, a chore dumped on them by their
seniors.  Reese was maybe 30, but maybe
not even that.  He had the face of a
cherub, but the voice of high rpm machine long overdue for oiling.  Cocky and aloof, his head pitched to one
side, his eyes never on you, Reese’s delivery was a rapid-fire stream of
“The truth of the matter is . . . ” and “You’d be well advised
to . . . ” and “Among your shortcomings are . . . “.  To my eyes, a kid from a working class family
who had serious doubts about whether he even belonged in college, Reese was
Authority.  He was Judge.   He was Erudition.  Reese was Gatekeeper to a life I wanted but for
which I wasn’t sure I was qualified.
In awarding the title of
Strangest, Meanest, Most Damaging to Reese, I’m doing it not as Ray of 2012,
Ray who’s tested, tried, and pretty much worldly wise, but as Ray of 1962 who
was nervous and naive.  Ray of Today
finds it difficult to believe that Ray of 1962 couldn’t figure out what was
going on when Bill Reese would say at the close of one of our advising sessions,
after he’d turned me into a dishrag of insecurities, “What do you say we
have dinner this Saturday and I’ll explain more of what I’ve just told
you?”, or “I’m sure I can get Dr. Hitchings to up your grade to an
A-minus.  What say we have a drink and
talk about it?  I’m done a 5.”  Ray of 1962: dumb, dumb, dumb!  Needless to say, I failed to see the
obvious.  I never took Reese up on his
dinner offer.  Or drink offer.  I took my honestly earned B-plus and let it
go at that.
Before I finish my story of
Bill Reese, I want to award another crown; this one to One of the Most Understanding
Persons I Ever Met: another professor, this time one of the “elders,”
Dr. Frank Teige, also of the English Department. Dr. Teige was nearing his retirement.  Short, round, with an explosion of white hair
and a beard to match: if you were to phone and ask Central Casting to send over
a Santa, they’d send Frank Teige. There are countless reasons why I would award
the crown of One of the Most Understanding to Dr. Teige; one was the day after
class when, for a reason I can’t explain, I let it all pour out, how I’d had my
fill—nine months’ worth—of Bill Reese’s arrogance and strange behavior.  I remember Dr. Teige letting me vent, then,
after a theatrical pause, saying, “Ray, let me tell you what’s going on
here. . . “
My final meeting with Bill
Reese—I imagine I was pretty rigid, eager to get the year over with so I could
move on to another adviser—Reese leaned back, his head cocked to one side (I
remember this very clearly), saying, “It’s been a year.  A rough year, but you made it through.  I feel it’s my responsibility, at this our
last session, to give you the best possible advice I can.  Advice, not just for next year, but for the
long haul.  (I remember him saying ‘long
haul.’)  If I were you, Ray, in life, I
wouldn’t aim too high.”
I
wouldn’t aim too high.  Had
Reese used a chisel to channel those words into my flesh, he couldn’t have made
a more lasting impression.  That was
1963.  I’ve lived 49 years since, and not
one day have I not remembered Reese’s words. 
And struggled against them. 
Another time and place—in answer to a different storytellers’ prompt—I
could tell you what that struggle was like, but I’ve said enough to explain why—using
strangest in the sense of peculiar, irregular, and unaccountable—I’m
awarding Bill Reese the crown of the Strangest Person I Ever Met.
By the way, the names are
real.  Frank Teige’s name is real because
I care.  Bill Reese’s name is real
because I don’t.   
Finishing up, this has been
an interesting prompt, remembering the strange characters I’ve met in my
life.  Returning briefly to the stage of
my memory: being in a broken-down bus in the Pennsylvania mountains with a
seatmate who was reminded of the Crimean War, seeing again the homeless man I
saw most every day outside the Denver Dry—the deplorable man who placed
aluminum foil under his upper eyelids, and Lyndon, my short-term lover, who
thought mailing labels would prevent me from putting my socks in with the
knives, forks, and spoons. I also met again the damaging, the disturbing.
 What’s odd about this prompt, too: it’s a
one-way prompt: me, looking at all of
them. 
But what about me?  Am I not
strange in some ways?  I’m sure I am.

          This week’s prompt has been—at least for me—the
kettle calling the pot strange.  It’s possible
when I’m toting up my life, when all of the actors will have had their
entrances and exits, if on that day I try to think of the strangest person I
ever met, I may after all decide it was me. 

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 Fluffo Flotilla Revisited by Pat Gourley

One evening in the fall of 1978 I was at the Empire Baths. It was a rather slow evening as I recall and I was in the showers thinking I might head out when I noticed a bearded middle aged fellow just my type with a very impressive penis. Shower cruising is of course an ancient gay male art as old as showers themselves and it was always accelerated when taking place in a gay bathhouse. There was no need to worry about offending any straight male sensibilities in such an establishment.
The ensuing sex was great and as was my want on the occasion I tried to get the fellow to reconnect with me soon outside the bath. He was very hesitant but I was at my persuasive best and he reluctantly agreed to come by my house the next evening. And did I mention that the sex was pretty damn good!
I initially assumed, correctly, that he was married to a woman, which was the only option in those days. That however was not the reason for his reluctance. He did relate that he would look much different and when I pressed him on this he said he would have all the hair on his body shaved off when I saw him the next evening.
This turned out to be the case and I assumed it was not a part of a sexual scene at all, especially since I did not do any of the shaving. He said he was going to Texas the next day to take part in some sort of “experiment” in a sensory deprivation tank though I never got many details on this and did not push it since my main interest was getting this man in bed again.
The house I lived in and a couple of my roommates whom he met that night were I think quite foreign to him. We were that rare breed of “queer hippies” into the Grateful Dead and the communal décor of the house was eclectic to say the least, largely furnished with alley cast-offs. I do remember that he made a point of opening a briefcase he was carrying before we went upstairs. In addition to papers and a few personal effects there was a large handgun, which I remember he made a point of making sure I saw.
I elected not to comment on that probably thinking I hope he fucks me before he shoots me. The sex again was great and he was really more naked than a jaybird, not a hair anywhere to be found. He did not spend the night and I did not see him again for many months after that. I recall a few details of our subsequent meetings but they involved the cultivation and nurturing of a loving friendship outside the bedroom that lasts to this day. I learned that he was involved in a business on the Western Slope that ran river raft trips and had a wife and several adopted children. Oh and he was a conservative Republican. Remember though that conservative Republicans of that day were similar to the centrist Democrats of today. There was certainly a mutual sexual attraction but I think he thought of me as truly exotic in many ways other than in bed and I thought of his right wing worldview as quaintly misguided but tolerable.
In the fall of 1979 he persuaded me to come visit and do a raft trip down the Yampa River. I brought along several friends perhaps because I still was not totally comfortable visiting a gun-toting Republican on his turf by myself. The trip was a several day affair and very much fun. I slept in his tent and the rather unbelievable story presented to his crew was that I was his personal nurse and he was not feeling well. No one I think bought that story for a minute. The sex of course remained wonderful though I did learn the hard way that river sand and Vaseline are not a good combination.
The relationship continued albeit sporadically and the next year I met the love of my life, David Woodyard, and he moved in with me in a shared house here in Denver in the Five Points neighborhood. These were peak Radical Fairie years for me but even that level of esoteric queerness did not seem off putting to my western slope Republican friend. He loved being in the company of openly gay men and in the late summer of 1982 organized another raft trip of several days this one involving a larger group of friends. The first trip had been a gentle float but this one involved some real white water rafting through Desolation Canyon in Utah on the Green River.
I was happily partnered on that trip and not having sex with my friend though several of the folks I brought along I think accommodated his needs just fine. Being 1982 AIDS was still on the horizon especially for Denver so this trip proved to be quite the debauched event. My friend loved entertaining a large group of campy queens and there was plenty of fucking, booze, what passed for good food in those days and LSD to go around and though I was off the hallucinogens by that time many others were not.
A running joke amongst the group to the innocent confusion of the largely straight crew centered around a cooking shortening called Fluffo that was used to fry every meal it seemed. I don’t think any of us had heard of Fluffo before but we quickly incorporated it into our ongoing gay banter when we realized it was a cheap knock off of Crisco. Crisco was of course a lubricant of great renown in certain gay male circles at the time.
The final evening of the trip was a big party involving some very bad gender fuck drag and tasteless camp. This event was immortalized on our own return in a large spread in Out Front Magazine in an article called The Fluffo Flotilla accompanied by several photos. It helped of course get this sort of publicity by having the editor of Out Front at the time along on the trip.
Before eating and posing for pictures in our bad drag, and holidng a can of Fluffo strategically in the middle of the photo, my dear friend the raft company owner humored me and helped organized a group reading of selected poems from James Broughton’s just released Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven. To this day I wonder what several of the young straight crew thought of Broughton’s bawdy gay verse celebrating Nipples and Cocks, along with many other irreverent tomes, being read aloud in the Utah wilderness of the banks of the Green River. I would like to think it fostered future tolerance of gay people and perhaps even facilitated a coming out or two.

About the Author  

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I am currently on an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
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I’ll Do It My Way by Betsy

There
are a few issues which are of minor importance to some, but about which I have
remained steadfast in doing it my way.
 Growing up I was not spared from being
bombarded with advertising directed at young women.  Products such as cosmetics–eyeliner,
mascara–foundation garments designed to enhance your breasts and diminish your
waistline, crippling high heels, cancer causing hair removal products, etc,
etc. I decided early on (even before I knew what a dyke was–much less that I
was one) early on I decided these products were not for me.  It probably helped that I did not enjoy
reading “girlie” magazines with their come-on ads sucking in girls who were
trying to hurry up and become women. 
Perhaps this earthy attitude toward life was the influence of my Quaker
grandmother–a very earthy person indeed–and a person I admired very
much. 
Yet,
as a youngster, I had a strong tendency and still have a slight tendency to
want to “fit in.”  It was important to me
to be accepted by most of my peers, especially the popular ones.  I cannot say I never wore high heels–I
did.  I cannot say I never wore
lipstick.  I relented when it came to
lipstick and I still on special occasions put on the stuff.  The point here is that I refused to be taken
over, sucked in, controlled, if you will, by the industry.  Who are they to tell me I need to enhance my
natural appearance?  I cannot say I never
tried some of the products out.  But one
painful pluck of an eyebrow hair, one glance at dripping mascara, one attempt
to run in those spiked heels and I knew none of it was for me. When I came out,
I found that as a lesbian I was much more at home with this rebellious attitude
and stubborn refusal to contribute to Ms. Elizabeth Arden or Mary Kay.
Along
those lines, one other practice that I refuse to submit to is wearing those
tight-fitting, skin-clinging, indigestion-inducing women’s pants with no
pockets. I have to say, in the stores they look great on the manikins, but the
manikins are always holding their breath and never sitting down.  Nor do the manikins suffer the long term
effects of gravity on the body.
 Also, I will not buy a pair of women’s pants
if they have no pockets.  That’s partly
because my way is to not carry a purse. 
It is a nuisance and something to lose, leave behind, or have ripped
off.   How did this purse-carrying
practice come about?  I suppose it’s
because long ago women could not own property, including money, so there was no
need to have a safe place like a deep pocket to carry it.
Here’s
the thing with little teeny-weeny, everyday issues.   I don’t always do this, but I try most of
the time to not let ego or stubbornness get in the way of doing the other
person’s way.  For example questions
like, shall we take this route or that route? 
Shall we travel to this place or that place for vacation?  I have often found that the other person’s
way turns out to be a better way; and besides, if it turns out not to be the
better way, I don’t have to take responsibility for making the wrong choice.
          Then
there are a couple of issues which are of major importance and about which I
have been steadfast, albeit not throughout my entire life.  It was not until I was willing to live my
life honestly that I started doing it my way.  
What
I have in mind here is life style.  Well
actually, not just life style but, living a life according to who I really am,
in other words, being true to myself. 
When I was in my late forties, my children were almost grown and I had
been married for nearly 25 years.  I
finally realized that being attracted to and falling in love with females,
rather than males was not a fleeting, temporary phase of my development.  Instead this was my true nature and was part
of who I was.  I also came to the
realization that sexuality is a huge part of who a person is.  If I was going to ever be true to myself, I
needed to come out. This would not be easy because I had been married to my
best friend, and a good person.  I came
to understand, however, that I would not survive if I did not do it my way and
come out.  That other woman whose role I
had been playing all my life might have survived, but, it would have been in an
unhappy and depressed state and that was not my way.
My
way is to be comfortable in my skin. 
Although it has taken the better part of a lifetime to get there, now I
can say with assurance I am just that–comfortable, happy, content, and at
peace–and that is my way.

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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How I Learned Some Turkey Anatomy by Nicholas

          It was our first Thanksgiving together so we invited a
bunch of friends over to share a dinner. Jamie and I were to cook the turkey
and other people were assigned other courses for a sumptuous meal.
          We got the bird which was frozen but no problem, we knew
enough to leave it in the frig for a few days to thaw out. It seemed to be
doing so nicely and on Thanksgiving morning as I prepared the stuffing and
prepped the turkey, things were moving along smoothly. Turkey in the
oven, we were on our way to a feast.
          The first sign of trouble came innocently enough when Jamie
was talking to his mother about our celebration. I should point out that this
Thanksgiving was a kind of late rebellion on his part. We had decided not to go
to his parents for dinner, even though they were nearby, so we could have our
own gathering with friends. But mothers have that knack for asking questions
that can throw your plans right into the rubbish.
          Bragging about our turkey in the oven, mom posed the
question, “Did you get the giblets and stuff out of both ends of the turkey?”
          What “both ends,” I demanded. Of course we’d pried out a
bag of turkey parts from its hollow innards. But was there more in some other
secret cavity? Was there something stuffed up its ass, too?
          So, we hauled the bird out of the oven and poked around its
backside to find out that not only was there another pouch of miscellaneous
bits but that our future dinner was still, actually, frozen. Well, it did seem
a little stiff when we stuffed it but now we realized we had a still frozen
12-15 pound animal and all bets were off as just when dinner would be served.
          We threw the thing back into the oven and cranked up the
temperature. Nothing much happened. We turned the oven up higher. Still, not
much changed. It was turkey’s revenge—it would cook in its own time and never
mind our plans for dinner.
          Our guests started arriving and our main course was just
thawing out. We had appetizers and wine and conversation while the bird began
to show some sign of cooking. We reversed the order of the meal and served other
courses like salad, potatoes and vegetable and more wine until at long last we
pulled from the oven what we hoped was a cooked turkey. I can’t even remember
what it tasted like. I guess it was good or we were all too hungry to care. Everybody
ate it, nobody got sick. It was a fun time, even though a disaster.
          My first venture into real cooking did not augur well for
pursuing culinary delights. But, as it happens, one gets hungry and has to
repeatedly do something about it. Peanut butter sandwiches as a diet are not
that appealing. So, despite being shamed by a turkey, the lowest form of
conscious life on this planet, I did go back into that kitchen with the intention
of turning food into meals.
          I am happy to report that success followed my persistence.
Hunger is a good teacher and I have come since to associate the kitchen with
many satisfactions and pleasures.
          I love to indulge myself and what higher form of indulgence
is there than food. And food grows ever more satisfying with age. Taste grows
more complex and nuanced with age and taste buds, unlike other body parts,
actually work better as you grow older. Kids can be finicky eaters, it has been
said, because their underdeveloped taste buds aren’t working to their full
capacity with just sweet and bitter dominating their little palates.
          I like food. I like everything to do with food—shopping for
it, growing it, picking it in the garden, preparing it, cooking it, eating and
sharing it with others. I like reading about food and cooking; I like planning
big meals. My favorite store in the whole world is the Savory Spice Shop down
on Platte Street.
Walking in their door is entering a different world full of wonderful aromas
that hint of countless flavors from the dozens of herbs, spices and exotic
salts on the shelves. The variations and sensations are near endless in my
imagination.
          Cooking is now part of my identity. I love to cook. Well, I
just love food. Cooking is now a creative endeavor as I tend to use recipes not
as instructions but for inspiration and as suggestions as to what goes well
together and in what measure. Many times I simply dispense with recipes and
make it up on the basis of what’s in the frig and hunches. The hunches—like
adding paprika and dry mustard to a stew—usually pay off, i.e., are edible, but
sometimes they do not turn out so well. Those I won’t go into.
          Food has its rituals that can be likened to religious
liturgies culminating with the sharing of sacrament. Food is work and joy, is
nourishment and pleasure and connotes special relationships to those you share
it with and to the earth it comes from.
          So, let me officially launch this great season of holiday feasting—my
favorite time of the year—with the words: Ladies and gentlemen, start your
ovens. Let the eating begin!

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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An Ode to a Toad by Bobbi

Oh, Dr. Laura, now you’re
mistaken
I was married but not
forsaken.
I met my first woman-love at
45;
Oh, how good it was to feel
alive.
Now Dr. Laura don’t be cruel
At 14 I loved a girl.
I know that someone gave me
a hex;
‘cause I fell in love with
the wrong sex.
Dr. Laura, I really pouted.
“Fairy, queer” were words
they shouted.
Oh, God, help me because I’m
Jewish
And I shouldn’t do anything
so foolish.
Oh, Dr. Laura, I took some
pills.
Wish you had been there to
cure my ills.
Then I decided to be a phony
And marched down the aisle
to matrimony.
Dr. Laura you’d be so proud
In my white gown and what a
crowd!
As I was walking in that big
room
I was smiling at my …..
Oy vey, it was my maid of
honor, not the groom!
Oy, Dr. Laura it was a
blast,
But the marriage it didn’t
last.
For 20 years I tried
another;
After all a Jewish girl has
got to please her mother.
Oh, Dr. Laura get a clue.
You want families
I do too.
And I’ve got one to name a
few:
Max, Jeanetter, Karen and
Pete, Spencer, Rawls, Goobers and
Beebles, Gary, Daric, Frick
and Frack, Julie and Robert, Todd and Papa,
And my sweetheart of 13
years: Linda, Linda.
And Dr. Laura, We Are
Family!
So, Dr. Laura, get a life,
girlfriend.

About the Author

Bobbi, 82, a native Denverite, came out at age 45. “Glad to be alive.”
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Feeling Different by Donny Kaye

In the poem, Self Portrait, by the Irish poet David Whyte, the verse invites; “it doesn’t interest me if there is one god or many.  I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.  I want to know if you are prepared to live in a world with its harsh need to change you.  If you can look back with firm eyes and saying, this is where I stand.  This is where I stand.”

I don’t think that I started out feeling different but it seems that the world often exists with a harsh message and need to change a person.  To have me be something other than what I am.
  • Men don’t kiss men,  my brother declared when I was ten and he was thirty
  • Don’t sit like that-you’re sitting like a girl.
  • You sissy!
  • Ok, Donny you can be on my team says the leader of the pick-up sandlot game as he selects from the two remaining kids to be chosen, the other being a girl.
I’ve existed with a sense of feeling different since about the age of ten.  I began searching for ways for me to feel accepted.  My interests served to be too much for others, after all, who really cares if it is a ‘55 or ‘56 Dodge Royal Lancer or that the Buick Roadmaster has four holes and not three.

Because of my feeling different, I always worked to overcompensate. I was determined to cover up the differences that were felt.  So, I wasn’t the best ball player, I put my energy into achieving—always working harder for an A or A+ to earn my mother’s praise, which she wasn’t capable of giving me in the way I needed it—other than in a sideways kind of way; always wanting to stretch my performance to be even better.  My achievements only seemed to reinforce my feeling different.

I polished my perfectionistic skills with the intent that the world wouldn’t see my imperfection, after all I was different.  That word I had heard said once too often, you know the one—sissy – yeah that one, I was different.  I felt it inside.  Unfortunately my perfectionism only served to separate me even more, after all who wants to be around someone that strives for perfection to the extent I was capable.   

Feeling different has served to develop some essential life skills.  My sense of being different resulted in a successful career serving others.  An impressive resume and on top of that, I’ve enjoyed happiness and fulfillment raising three children and being Papa to seven incredible grandchildren and as a life partner in a married relationship for  forty-two years.

I also recognize that the truth about me, as a result of feeling different, has been denied and repressed.  It’s interesting at this point in my journey to realize that I owe a lot of my happiness and success to withholding the truth.  It’s typically thought that the truth will set one free—when in fact the truth has served to imprison me.

Feeling different?  Yes, I am—Different and yet the same as any other being existing on the planet.  Before this experience called human life, I came from a place where there was no sense of difference, only oneness.  This life experience has been about allowing me to know the attributes (if you can call them that) about feeling different.  In coming to know different, I better understand not being different, or what I call the quality of unity or oneness with everything.  Not separate.   

The change?  The truth.  Accepting me, all of me.  The good and the bad.  The up and down.  The in and the out.  These opposites allow me to recognize the qualities of just being who I was created to be.  Realizing the longing to not feel different is merely the longing for a return to the place of oneness with everything and everyone.  This seems to be the heart of life’s lesson for me, this sunny day in mid August.  Might I finally be realizing the lesson? Enough with feeling different and into the differences that make me this individual experience called Kent. 

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.  
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Dance by Gillian

I’ve always loved what
we used to call “ballroom dancing.” In my youth, in England anyway, it was one
of those “social skills” taught in schools. Being trundled around the gym by
gawky boys in farm boots and with sweaty palms was totally uninviting, but I was
lucky. For some reason there was a serious female surplus in my year, so many
girls had to dance together. Hey! I learned to lead at about thirteen.
          No wonder I’m gay!
My husband also loved to
dance. We could waltz and two-step for hours.
Betsy loved to dance. We
could waltz and two-step for hours.
Alas, with Betsy’s back
problems and my bum knee, not to mention that miscellany of other age-induced
aches and pains, we slowly cut back on the dancing until now we only take to
the floor a few times in one evening, and skip the faster numbers.
We were a bit
discouraged about it, one more joy severely minimized by that bloody aging
thing, along with all-day hikes and backpacking trips. 
Betsy fears that her
days of tennis and skiing are perhaps for the chop before long: things that
have meant so much to her practically since she was just a little butch baby.
So we are working on our
attitudes.
If you can no longer do
things that have brought you endless joy over many years, be grateful for those
many years.
Be content to remember
the many, many things you have been fortunate enough to enjoy for so long:
things that many others less fortunate have never experienced.

         Wallow in your happy memories rather than resentment and regrets.
We sometimes sit, on a
cold snowy winter morning, and sip at our coffee while watching a computer
slideshow of one of the many warm and wonderful places we have been, and
fortunately traveling is still something we can do. But we see a vision of the
future in which we watch those rotating photos of endless things we can no
longer do, and that’s OK.
We are fortunate enough
to know what it is like to do them, and that’s enough.

         And with luck our writing abilities, limited as they may be, will
continue for a while yet.

         So through this wonderful story telling group we can relive
endless experiences by sharing them with others who do the same.
Perhaps we are only just
beginning to see the endless positives to come from and to this group, and each
and every one of us in it.

About the Author

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

I
chose to remember Detroit Michigan the way it was when I was a kid.
It
was a great place to live at that time. Everyone had the attitude that anything
and everything we could dream about could be accomplished if we worked at it.
Detroit was the manufacturing capital of the world.
Automotive
pioneers Henry Ford, the Dodge brothers, Packard, and Walter Chrysler lived there.
Union
leaders like Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters and Walter Reuther of the autoworkers
lived there and helped bring a living wage to the people.
The
Detroit Theatre District is still the second largest Entertainment and
performing arts center in the United States. (Note: I don’t know if anyone goes
there anymore.)
Detroit
has a total land area of 143.0 square miles
I
was born in Highland Park Michigan. It is a three square mile city that is
inside the Detroit city limits.
Henry
Ford changed the world when he opened the world’s first assembly line at the
Highland Park plant in 1913 and paid his workers enough to buy the cars they
helped make.
Chrysler
Corporation was founded in Highland Park In 1925 the company’s headquarters stayed
there for the next 70 years till 1995.
Sometime
in the 40’s a WWII vet took an old railroad car and made a diner out of it on Woodward
Ave.  
When
I was 16 years old when a black guy named Berry Gordy, took one of Detroit’s
nicknames at the time (motor city) and started Motown Records a not far from
that diner.
The
Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the
Pips, The Commodores, Stevie Wonder and The Jackson 5, Recorded their hit
records there.
My
best friend Denny Morgan and I would go to the diner and watch and listen to the
stars from Motown while they ate lunch and made changes to the songs they were
recording.
Times
have changed and the only people that live in the city now are the people that
don’t have the skills to make something out of themselves.
In
1950 there were 60,000 people living in that 3 square mile area called Highland
Park it was one of the best places to live in the country. Today the population
is down to 10,000 people; 97% black with an average household income of
$16,000.
I
moved to the suburbs of Detroit in 1969 then out of the state in 1979.

         There isn’t any reason to
ever go back there now.

About the Author

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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Breaking into Gay Culture by Jon Krey

BREAKING INTO GAY CULTURE:  But first a little history.
Gay Culture? SEX was gay culture! It was found in public bathrooms (called tea rooms), dark allies, parked cars on out of town dirt roads,  money paid to hitchhikers for services rendered,  raided bars with entrapment, jail terms, fines, well enforced sodomy laws,  media exposure both in newspaper and TV many times. That was Gay Culture as far as I could see. There were some deviations with similar trappings, like the drunken gay Osage Indians I knew, suicides, gay bashing, murders and disease. I should also mention the guy who “blew” me out of the closet. He was as suggested in “Boys in the Band” one of the many “unhappy homosexuals”.
It might have been different if I had lived on either of the coasts but I didn’t.
I know this is dark but truth is truth and that was the truth then!
I suppose in reality homosexuality did exist in the arts as it always had throughout the world but that’s not what I learned in Tulsa in the late 50s and I wasn’t looking in the arts. No at least initially.
Still my late teen hormones roared; commanded my body to get it on but where and with whom? Danger was foremost in my mind and good ole’ Christian teaching. I wasn’t into sex alone and had a deep seated need for a boy-friend. All the other kids in High School had girl friends, why couldn’t I have a boy friend? Still where could I go, where to find others like myself? I fell for Tab Hunter, after reading the expose’ in “Confidential Magazine. He was one of my early crushes in life and himself a gay icon, I had to do something. I had to find “my people”. But where? Tab was an actor so I thought of the theater scene and found the “Tulsa Little Theater.”I certainly was no actor but thought it a possibility. I joined the fledgling theater; saw a few really effeminate flippant men running around mostly dishing one another; found out by hear-shot who’d blown whom and where. They certainly did notice me, at least physically, in particular a specific bodily area. None had enough interest to really become acquainted with me. I became terrified. I had made my connection but these men were nothing like boyfriend material. Sex, when I engaged in it, was so amateurish it was a constant disappointment. Socially, the theater group, an aloof group with few ties outside and with little interest other than physically.
I officially broke into the physical aspect of gay society when a gay man from the theater group put the make on me, but I never felt any commonality with him or the others. No sense of community existed then that I could identify with. Most were hidden from their families, non-gay friends and themselves! Yes they were gay but it was just for mere sexual expression or better exploitation.  I became disgusted, frightened, disheartened, terrified, filled with guilt and fell into my own internalized homophobia. Being gay wasn’t anything I had dreamed of. No boy-friends’ anywhere to grant me my authenticity, no real friends. Only a few sexual alliances. Most of them highly unsatisfactory. Tulsa gays were marginalized much worse than today. They stood alone, did whatever was necessary then to find, well, sex. It was a get it up, get it on, get off and GET OUT society!! Downright awful. I never participated in any of this, at least as an initiator, and was deeply isolated and lonely.
In the early ’60’s I had one thoroughly devastating LTR, a very bland and abusive scene which prevailed emotionally in me for many years! With all the familial pressure at home, gay bar plus other social exclusion I developed a continuous problem with alcohol.
Eventually around 1974 I left Tulsa for good but here in Denver but found the same. Small splinter groups of exclusionary people. Not many connections for basic sex even if that took place. Certainly no sense of belonging, no love, no acceptance on most levels and certainly no culture. I must have been looking in all the wrong places.
So where was this gay culture of lore? Where was this elusive thing I’d needed for so many years?  For me over five decades had passed, devoid of genuine gay socialization, emotionality and sensuality. I was closeted within; bound by internalized homophobia, feeling forgotten, overlooked, outside of a world I’d never understood nor fully participated in. I didn’t want their two dimensional reality I wanted and needed a three dimensional one. One that celebrated gay life. 
Then came the birth of the first organized gay center in Denver. Still it was exclusionary. Made up of young professionals and activists, and I wasn’t one. But then after some time it all changed. When moved and reopened at 1301 E. Colfax, The Center gave me a sense of ownership of myself, a feeling of pride, of belonging, of comradeship of meeting people like myself as I’d always hoped for.  I was home at last. Thank God Almighty I was home at last. Over 50 years later I was reborn. Though much has still to be I have hope for the future now. Maybe in this new form of Zeitgeist and true friendships a mature loving partnership may still be possible. I certainly hope so against even now in my seventy-second year. At least I’m among my own kind and have a strong degree of completeness. Men and women who do care about me. People like myself in so many ways. People I feel included with, not excluded as in the past. So it’s time to get on with life and bury the past in some other dimension.
I’M FREE AT LAST.

About the Author

“I’m just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they’re an illusion.”
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Brave, Braver, Bravest by Nicholas

I’m not a big fan of reality. Especially when it intrudes on my preferred and prolonged dream state that I like to call my life. I know there are seasons to life and, as Ecclesiastes says, a time for everything.  
Given my reluctance to face reality, it’s understandable that I do not see myself as a brave person. My husband and I have a saying about facing unpleasant situations and tasks. We joke about grabbing the bull by the tail and facing the situation head on. Bravery is mostly just not ducking when you really want to. 
I remember my first trip to Europe when I joined the backpack brigades of young Americans hitchhiking through foreign lands. The wheels of the plane were barely off the runway in Cleveland when the doubts popped up as I headed for Ireland, the first stop on my fairly loosely planned six week jaunt. I sank back in my seat in complete dismay and anxiety, saying to myself, what am I doing here? 
Well, I don’t know if that constituted any act of bravery on my part since I couldn’t really do anything about it like say, hey, can you stop the plane, I changed my mind, this is too scary. I don’t even speak the language of where I’m going. But I went on. The trip turned out to be a mix of fascination and misery. Fascination in meeting people from all over the globe, many of whom helped when I needed it, and misery in getting stranded on a cold rainy night in Paris when I couldn’t find my recently met French friend who promised me a place to stay. Never did find him. But I got to love Paris. 
I found that if I just hung in there long enough, something was bound to happen. Just go. Just do it. I moved to San Francisco in that spirit. I landed there with a few hundred dollars in my pocket and nothing else. And I found happiness, prosperity and even love. Just do it. 
I guess one element of bravery is forging ahead on something you feel you must do even though you’re not sure what exactly is going to happen next. You don’t know what lies ahead but you go ahead anyway. When an ex-boyfriend Wayne called me one night and said he’d been diagnosed with AIDS—this before any treatments existed to even alleviate the suffering—I was fearful for him and I was afraid for me and felt directly exposed to that disease. I felt like saying, “Oh, come on, Wayne, you’re ruining my dream.” But instead, I said, let’s get together. What am I going to do, I wondered—I don’t even speak the language. He was the brave one, I thought. I just had to swallow hard a few times.  
There was one time in my life when I did something that I would call brave—at least nervy—one time I deliberately dared the wrath of the empire. In July 1970, I refused to be inducted into the US Army. Years before I’d set into motion the process that lead up to that day and there I was to defy society and its power.  
Coming out was like that too. Although I did learn the language for that.  
What’s brave and what’s foolish are not always that far apart. You really can’t tell which is which many times until long after what’s done is done. I don’t have any stories of charging into burning buildings to rescue babies or puppies or risking all to save a drowning man and, frankly, I hope I never do. For most of us it’s the little everyday acts that catch you off guard and turn out to be brave whether you want them to or not. Like taking Jamie to the ER one day and answering the nurse’s question as to what my relationship was to the patient when I said, “He’s my husband,” not partner or friend or any vague nonsense. 
Bravery is plunging ahead to do right even though you don’t know where exactly you’re going to land. 

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.