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Queens Community for Lesbian and Gay Seniors, formerly SAGE Queen, by Louis Brown

I
have been in New York City for the past 2 months because I had to stay there to
wait for my scheduled cataractectomy of my right eye. When in New York City, I
reside in College Point in Queens County. I have noticed over the years that
the Lesbian gay community of Queens County is not really as well organized as
the gay community in Manhattan. For example, Manhattan has a healthy chapter of
MCC, and most churches have a Lesbian-gay caucus.
About
30 years ago, I organized a group called The Good Shepherd Christian Fellowship
which lasted about 2 ½ years in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist
Church of Flushing. My purpose was to have local gay and Lesbian people talk to
the local Protestant clergy. It worked up to a point, but in the long run it
did not catch on. About 2 years before I started my religious project, a
chapter of Dignity Queens was open for business that also met in the basement
of the UU Church of Flushing. I remember the UU Church only charged $75.00 for
the use of the basement, and it had a very nice kitchen the tenant could use.
This was perfect for the Good Shepherd Christian Fellowship’s special gay
Christian Seder Service.
Then
of course around Easter time the UU Church held its own ecumenical style Seder
service. Once, a rabbi said that a Seder service should only be held in a
Jewish Synagogue. I think the message of the Seder service is universal and
should be celebrated by various religious traditions of course in a reverent
respectful manner.
Personally,
I am only semi-religious, but I am uncomfortable with the general lack of
options for gay people to have safe churches to go to.
One exploring
soul I told you about last year was openly Lesbian Rabbi Laura who
coincidentally also lives in College Point, my home town in Queens County. Last
year Rabbi Laura gave a course in comparative religion at New York SAGE. The
course was well attended. Last summer, also by way of coincidence, Laura met
John Nagel, the director of Queens Community House for Lesbian and Gay Seniors,
which operates out of the Jewish Center in Jackson Heights Queens. They met at
Cherry Grove on Long Island which, as you know, is an important gay and Lesbian
mecca. I recently asked John Nagel if he met Rabbi Laura. John said he had and
even tried to start her comparative religion course at Queens Community House,
but there was an insufficient response so the course did not happen.
About
two years ago Queens Community House was SAGE Queens. For some reason I do not
know about, they split away from SAGE although they remain on good terms with
SAGE New York. Queens Community House’s program for gay and Lesbian Seniors is
set up like a Senior Center, which means lunch is served
daily, Monday through Friday. I go Tuesdays and
Thursdays, Tuesday because that is the day of the general meeting and
Thursday because there is the spiritual hour.
The
past 2 Thursdays John Nagel made a presentation of the Christian religious
thought of Emma (Curtis) Hopkins, 1845-1925. Quoting briefly from her
biography, as seen on Wikipedia:
Differing from Eddy’s (i.e. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of
Christian Science), lead in speaking of God as both Mother and Father, Hopkins
conceptualized the Trinity as three aspects of divinity, each playing a role in
different historical epochs: God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Mother-Spirit or Holy Comforter. Hopkins believed (as did Eddy, though not as parochially)
that spiritual healing was the second coming of Christ into the world, and this
was the hallmark of her early work. Hopkins also believed more specifically
that the changing roles of women indicated their prominence in the Godhead,
signaling a new epoch identified by the INCLUSION [my caps] of the Mother
aspect God.
I
particularly liked that idea of INCLUSION. John Nagel’s obvious purpose in
discussing Emma Hopkins’ theological writing is to tell Lesbian and gay people
that obviously homophobes do not have a monopoly on faith, on Christianity. It
is all up for interpretation, and our community needs religious scholars to
develop a gay and Lesbian positive theology to fit our needs. Previously John
read passages about an ancient Islamic scholar Rumi and his soul mate Seth.
Their affectionate correspondence with one another points to a gay and Lesbian
history and an as yet unnamed Lesbian and gay history in Islam.
Also
on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Queens Community House meetings, Tony the Personal
Trainer, has a bunch of us do our exercises. Previously that would not have
interested me much, but, I had to have a lot of physical therapy since last
September 2014 when I had my bicycle accident, and Tony’s exercises make a very
appropriate extension of my physical therapy. I have already run out of what
Medicare would pay for this. Tony’s exercises are practically the same thing. I
go to Queens Community House with my College Point boyfriend Kevin who is
slightly spastic from aphasia so also derives benefit from these exercises.
My
“moral” for SAGE of the Rockies is perhaps an attempt to see if you can obtain
further services from Denver’s version of Office for the Aging. For example,
last summer Queens Community House’s annual trip to Cherry Grove was free. On
paper, New York City paid the bill although in reality some wealthy game, I am
pretty sure, ponied up the cash.
Joining
up with the New York City Department for the Aging also means lunch which costs
$2.00. It is always on Tuesdays and Thursdays chicken with barley or rice with
vegetables. It’s not that lunch is all that great, although it is well cooked,
it enables the participants to stay longer perhaps to participate in the
afternoon programs.
© September 2015 
About the Author 
I was born in 1944, I lived most of
my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for
many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration,
dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor
dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired
in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in
New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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Parental Warnings, by Phillip Hoyle

A sunny day with warm air at the municipal park; picnic weather for sure. I was eating a sandwich when my dad said with some feeling, “Phillip, don’t move.”

“Why?” I asked nervously fearing a snake might be coiling ready to strike.

“It’s a bee. It’s landed on your shirt,” my dad said calmly. “I’ll get it.” And he did, swatting it away.

That experience was about as urgent as my parents’ warnings ever got for we lived a very calm life. I’m sure they asked me to watch when I crossed the street and the like, but there were no dire warnings that I remember. I just lived through my nineteen-fifties’ childhood in a kind of Eden. All seemed so stable.

Although my parents didn’t preach much at us kids, they did discipline. There were spankings. Surely these originated as hand slaps on tiny butts, but were administered through the clothing. I do recall mother’s house slipper once when three of us kids were getting to be too much. We had been fighting among ourselves. Perhaps the noise level had got too high, so the three of us were instructed to lean over the couch cushion, our hinies in the air. I whispered to my youngest sister not to cry. We both knew our other sister would cry to high heaven. We tittered to one another and in so doing we realized the slipper didn’t hurt all that much anyway. I suspect mom had to suppress her laughter as well. I don’t remember her ever spanking us again as if she realized the hopelessness of it all.

My dad was another matter. He was larger, stronger. Sometimes he used his belt. The only spanking from him I clearly remember was when I was just a little too old, maybe twelve. I had been acting up in front of his parents and may have embarrassed him. He was angry, took me to the next room, pulled off his belt, and let me have it. I deeply resented this spanking, the last one he ever gave me. I suspect he embarrassed himself by giving it. Perhaps his dad told him I was too old or he just figured it out himself. All the spankings were immediate responses to small infractions and rarely were attached to rants or sermons.

From my parents I received no dramatic warnings about the larger issues of life. I suppose they were watching us five kids and wanted us to avoid problems, but they may have been more concerned for the other four, my sisters. Being a boy, I got away with more with my parents, but of course not with my sisters. Perhaps the folks were just saving their breath. Although I don’t recall any overt warnings or sermons, I realize I got some anyway. Mostly these were realizations from what I experienced at home.

* Don‘t exasperate others with your behavior.

* Don’t embarrass people in power in front of their superiors.

* Don’t embarrass your children with your discipline.

One result was that I didn’t give warnings to my kids except those common ones to pay attention while driving, and so forth, the same ones my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive.

Other teachings I got came from the established and predictable schedule of family life. For instance, take sheets off the bed each Monday morning and drop them over the banister onto mom’s head when we called her. Other responsibilities I was expected to perform included doing yard work, carrying out and burning the trash, cleaning up after meals, keeping an acceptable level of personal cleanliness, participating in family activities, and keeping up grades in school. It was as if not to do these things would somehow bode ill. Still, such warnings were never preached.

I credit my parents. For whatever reasons, they did well tolerating one another and five kids in a small house and later in a larger one. They gave independence to five rather independent-thinking offspring. They doled out simple immediate punishments in predictable and appropriate ways. Mostly they lived consistent lives and reared five children who also have found it easy to accept responsibility, to provide appropriate leadership, to like themselves and others, and to enjoy the many opportunities life proffers. And my parents did it all without leveling dire warnings and with a mainly calm style and loving attitude.

I sometimes got advice when I asked but it wasn’t preached. They gave me insight into problems and people. They gave me skills for dealing with life. They gave me the stability to live my own life. I remember when Dad drove me to the eye doctor to get my first prescription glasses, and I still wear the rosy-tinted pair my mother provided me.

© 1 April 2012

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Life is Experimental!, by Pat Gourley

The title for today’s group was “Any Writing is Experimental”. I guess I would say to that I hope so. Something experimental is based on “untested ideas or techniques not yet established or finalized”. Any other writing would seem to be merely regurgitating someone else’s thoughts. I would though like to expand on this theme and say that all life is experimental, especially when it is queer.

Life is quite the dicey proposition when you think about it – you only get this one chance at it, the fanciful notion of reincarnation aside. It really is all about trial and error from start to finish.

We queers though are masters at experimentation since how we are predisposed to live our lives and grow and develop in ways not sanctioned by society as a whole. We really are constantly in a test drive mode especially in our first few decades. We have to experiment since we are not given any road map and in fact constantly have to re-evaluate, sometimes even withdraw and then come at it again from an angle often more suitable to survival. You really can’t ogle your young peers in the grade school locker room and proffer an innocent wink and get away with it.

I am not saying that growing up hetero is not without its fair share of experimentation but let’s face it they have many more societally sanctioned suggestions and institutional support on how to proceed. And this hetero support starts quite early in life where as we LGBT people often can’t find the support needed to validate our life’s experiments until we at least reach late adolescence and for many of us it comes even much later in life.

That really is the role (identity validation) of Queer Community Centers like the one we are in today and that would apply programmatically right down to this very group we are sitting in this afternoon. Our experimental and often very successful efforts at creating our own institutions, that foster and support gay identity, are really quite remarkable. These efforts are fostered and sustained by our individual coming out process and then the very altruistic pay back to help others along the path. And I would emphasize how truly grassroots they are with minimal outside support financial or otherwise.

Hopefully we will bring our true sense of experimentation to the institutions of marriage and the military, which we have recently gained some tentative access to. Both are sorely in need of all the queer sensibility we can muster and bring to them.

I would close with an anecdote that I think underscores my points here. Last week was the first time I ran into an old friend named Tom at this group. We frequently run into each other at the gym and have for decades. When we spoke mid-week last week at the “Y” he related to me the sense of deja-vu he had on seeing me here at Story Telling last Monday and it made him recall our first meeting 40 years ago. I was apparently the first or one of the first folks he spoke with when he walked into the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street back in the mid-1970’s. Though he didn’t specifically say so I hope it was a pleasant recollection that brought back pleasant memories and not a dreadful sense of “boy, are we in a fucking rut”!

© July 2015

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Multi-Racial, by Lewis

I am actually ashamed to say that I have almost nothing worthwhile to say about the subject of racial diversity. I have heard the demographers’ predictions about the U.S. becoming a “majority minority” racial country within 30-40 years. The America I grew up with was so heterogeneously white that it was more common to see pastel linen sheets on the clothesline than it was to pass a person of color on the street. Hutchinson, Kansas, was bisected by two sets of railroad tracks. Anything south of the “lower” set of tracks might as well have been Mexico, as far as my family and friends were concerned.

One notable exception was the one black family that lived about two blocks away on the same street. Theirs was the old, white wood-sided farmhouse with the detached garage that was probably the oldest property on our long street. No doubt they were there before any of us white folk or else they wouldn’t have been at all welcome. Their kids were older and I never attended school with any of them. When I passed by, I usually paid them no mind, unless someone was in the yard and then I would stare to see what they looked like. Seemed nice enough. Had no horns that I could see.

When I was about 10, my parents paid the family’s teenage daughter to babysit me. Of all my babysitters, she is the only one I remember. I think I was feeling very uncertain of myself and stayed pretty much in my bedroom. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her other than, “Hi”.

All through primary and secondary school, I didn’t have a single friend of color. My elementary and junior high schools were all-white. The junior high was so white, I almost made the 9th grade basketball team. The first time I ever looked out at a group of kids my age and saw a black face was when I gave the invocation at a junior high school exchange assembly. Sherman Junior High was south of the color line.

I’m almost positive I was in high school before I ever passed a student of a different race in the hall. Rarely did I ever share a classroom with one. As I type this, it seems so dehumanizing to refer to human beings of a different color as “ones”, as if I were talking about aliens or primates. Yet, I never gave it a thought. That’s just the way the world was. Whites ruled and that’s the way God intended it.

Even in junior college and college, nothing happened to change my views on race. I was either a pre-med major or in engineering. Those are not majors whereby one was likely to sit next to a person of color in those days.

I was shaken by the Detroit riots in 1967, not because I thought the “niggers were getting uppity” but because somewhere, deep inside, I understood. How was it that I felt that way? Why wasn’t I outraged like most of my friends and the folks quoted in the newspapers? After all, wasn’t I a person who enjoyed the perks of “white privilege” (though white folk would never acknowledge such a thing existed)? When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated the following spring, I wished the white on my skin would wash off. I saw my own race as filled with hate and spite and a sense of entitlement.

You can imagine how uncomfortable, how awkward it was for me not to know anything about what being black was like and resenting the color that I was stuck with. It was kind of like—shit, it’s just hitting me now—it was like knowing that I wasn’t attracted to the gender that I was supposed to be attracted to but instead having feelings of deep attraction for members of the gender that was “verboten”. If my friends and family knew that I was “queer”, a “homo”, a “fag”, wouldn’t they treat me as badly or even worse than if I were black?

The experience of knowing how badly people of color had been treated for centuries colored forever my perceptions of American history and the differences among the races economically, socially, and politically. My politics became almost radicalized, though the demands of school and then finding employment kept my activity to a minimum for a few years. Although I grew up in a state that was purple and is now deep red, I still cannot understand how any human being who has felt what I felt—the deep sense of rejection for what I held to be most true in the deepest recesses of my heart—could possibly vote Republican. All of those who have been victimized by prejudice by the powerful should stand shoulder-to-shoulder until such time as justice for one means justice for all.
© 13 April 2015

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Dreams – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, by Gillian

Good or bad, but I don’t dream much.

Oooooops! I forgot!

I try not to say it that way or I’m guaranteed a lecture on how we all dream, it’s just that I don’t, for the most part, remember mine.

Let’s start again.

Good or bad, I don’t usually remember my dreams. Even if I have, on occasion, they must not have been very interesting because I can’t remember the content of a single one. Some people apparently have vivid dreams just about every night, and remember them clearly. Betsy’s daughter-in-law, or daughter-out-law as we refer to her as she lives with Betsy’s daughter in Georgia where they will probably never sanction gay marriage, is amazing. She can spend hours recounting every dream from every night down to the minutest detail. Understandably, she takes some interest in the supposed significance of the content of dreams. I, equally understandably, do not!

Good or bad, there was a time when this absence of dream memories changed, for a while. I had to take prednisone for a few years. Now that is not good, definitely bad, in fact downright ugly. I am off it now and hope it stays that way. But one of the side-effects when I was taking it, was dreams so vivid they were more like hallucinations; I remembered them equally vividly. Of course I don’t think you can really use the word hallucination for things that occur in your sleep, but it’s how I think of them, simply because they were so very real. No, they were beyond real in a way I can’t describe. I have never done drugs so I can’t compare, but perhaps that’s what a “good trip” on hallucinogens is like. If so, I can see why people get hooked. Or maybe most ordinary everyday, or I should say everynight, dreams are like that for most people. I simply don’t know. Mine were never scary, nor even weird. They were terribly mundane, and very short.

I would walk along a beach, or in a wood, or drive on I70 or pick flowers from the garden. I don’t know how long they lasted, in my memories they were maybe a minute at the most. But so clear: blindingly bright. They are the only thing I that I regret the loss of from no longer taking prednisone, and that one regret will certainly not send me back on it.

Good or bad, I rarely daydream either. As a child I suppose I conjured up possible futures the way most children do. I think, though, that, even at a young age, I knew at some level of consciousness that my future was to be different from what I was currently experiencing. There was something in it I couldn’t see, around some hidden corner, or should I say in some dark closet, that I was happy enough not to see too clearly. So I never was much of a daydreamer. I tended rather to roll along, letting life take me where it may. In some ways I guess that’s bad, not picturing your future, not having goals and really very little direction. But I ended up with a wonderful life so it can’t have done me much harm. And these days we are encouraged by spiritual leaders to live in the moment and in fact not to daydream, so perhaps I accidentally fell into good habits!

Anyway, there’s little to be done about any of it, good or bad. In my seventies, I don’t see myself suddenly spending hours daydreaming of my future. And there is no way, as far as I know, to make myself remember dreams for the first time in my life. Except for some drug-induced method, that is, and in my seventies I don’t quite see myself taking that route either.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” said Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman I greatly admire and usually agree with. But I have to say I have managed to live a life just about as good as any I could imagine, without the influence of dreams: good, bad, or ugly.

© November 2014

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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Exercising, by Will Stanton

Exercise – – – hmm. Let me think. I guess I’ll start with the many forms of exercise that I did when I was young a few decades ago. Let me count the ways.

Let’s see. When I was a kid and for many years, I engaged in summer games of very competitive badminton and croquet in our side yard.

I swam a lot and rode my bike. I canoed on a nearby lake and at some camps. I did a lot of hiking in the woods and through the hills. I played the normal neighborhood sports like driveway-basketball and games of “horse.” Sometimes, we hiked up onto a hillside and played hide-and-seek or combat. In elementary school, we did kickball and softball. On a few occasions, I tried horseback riding. I tried a little bit of tennis, but it didn’t take.

Around 17 and 18, I did a little Korean and Japanese judo. I took a couple of lessons in Aikido. I might have stayed with judo, but I soon discovered karate; and that interested me a lot more.
Starting at age 18, I did 43 years of intense Japanese karate. That included a lot of self-training. I would get up at 5:30, go to the golf course and run several miles. Then I would do roundhouse kicks the length of a football field, side-thrust kicks back, then front-snap kicks, lunge punches, the whole shebang of techniques. Plus, I did extra training at the gym with other karate students. Of course, I could have spent my time doing something of greater long-term importance, but I did skip three belt-grades on my first karate examination. Karate probably was the most intense and prolonged form of exercise that I ever did.

I still do a little bit of swimming, whenever the pool is open, that is. I occasionally walk in the park. But generally, my exercise consists mainly of getting up out of the recliner in front of the TV, or the recliner in front of my computer, or getting up from the supper table. Yes, I do a lot of social eating, which may exercise the jaw, but that probably is not the way to lose weight.

© 5 August 2015

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Away from Home, by Ricky

On Tuesday, 21 July, Donald and I drove to Lehi, Utah and used it as a “base” to do a little tourism. The next day we visited the Temple Square visitor center. I took him up to see the copy of the Christus Statue whose original is in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is a special place to me because this is where I proposed to Deborah who promptly said, “Maybe.” Being an artist, Donald was impressed with the surroundings.

Donald and I then went across the grassy “plaza” to the Tabernacle where at luck would have it, we were in time for an organ recital. Donald really enjoyed that. He had been to Temple Square before but had no opportunity to see or go inside.

We then went to the Family Search facility where with a little help from a friendly volunteer managed to find Donald’s father in some old census records.

Donald used to work as window trimmer supervisor for various department stores throughout his life. His store would often come in second place to ZCMI department store in Salt Lake City, so he wanted to see who was winning the awards. During the past century, the LDS Church divested itself from ownership and sold the pioneer era building to Macy’s. The old building was demolished but the old front façade was preserved into the new building.

It was late by then so we returned to Lehi and prepared for our adventure on the next day.

The next morning, Thursday, we drove to BYU because Donald really wanted to see where I went to college. After arriving, we walked from the parking lot to what you would call the “student union building”. While there, I bought us each a “famous” BYU Brownie. When I sent my daughters back in Lakewood the photo below, they replied I better bring them some or don’t bother to come home.

Donald and I really enjoyed them. When finished, we walked over part of the campus and I pointed out some of the landmarks. I took him to the Karl G. Maeser Memorial Building, the oldest building on the BYU campus which currently houses the honors program.

The campus is built on the shelf/plateau left behind by the receding waters of Lake Utah and consequently overlooks Utah Valley.

After Deborah gave me her “maybe” at my proposal of marriage, we drove to BYU and she took me to her favorite place which is/was on the side of the plateau not far from the Maeser Building. I tried to take Donald there to show him, but too much time had passed and the place was no longer in existence. At the time it was a small bench underneath a small arched trellis along a tree and plant lined path which ran from the bottom of the plateau upwards to the top coming out just before the university president’s house. While sitting together there, she changed her “maybe” to “YES”.

It was a HOT day and Donald and I were running out of walking power so we returned to the air conditioned car and left the campus. He really wanted to go see where the church’s Christmas programs were broadcast from so we returned to Salt Lake City.

The Tabernacle was too small to hold the crowds of people who wanted to attend the semi-annual church conferences, so the church built a new and huge Conference Center across the street to the north of Temple Square. Upon our arrival, we parked in an underground parking garage directly under the “center of town” and then went to the Conference Center.

We took the 30-minute tour and, as luck would have it, discovered that every Thursday night at 7:30pm, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir held a rehearsal in the building. We attended. Donald was mesmerized and I learned a lot about how much practice and effort goes into a professional choir performance.

Once again Donald was thrilled. I was also enjoying this trip because Donald was excited with just about everything we did and his enthusiasm was infectious. At this point we were done being tourists and were ready to return to Lehi for a good night’s rest before returning to Denver in the morning. However, one more real and unexpected adventure lay before us. 

(The following is the story all of the previous stuff was leading up to.)

As I said earlier, we had parked in an underground parking garage. When we came up from the garage, the elevator doors opened directly into what had been the old Hotel Utah. Naturally, we did not pay attention to where it was. Consequently, we had to ask directions on how to get back into the parking garage where we were parked on level 2.  A local volunteer gave us good directions but unknowingly to the wrong garage. When Donald and I got out of the elevator, we were on Level 1 and we could not find any other elevator or stairs to level 2. Eventually, a middle aged man came by and I told him we were lost and if he knew where level 2 was. He invited us to ride in his car as he drove around all of level 1 to make sure I was not confused as to which level on which I had parked.

Not having any success, we then went to level 2 followed by levels 3, 4, and 5. At that point the gentleman thought he would have to drop us off at security. Suddenly, he asked if I had a parking permit. I said I did and pulled it out of my pocket. (It was the kind of small business card size permit you usually get at any paid parking complex.) He was a bit mystified and then pulled out his permit which was much bigger, plastic, and a hang-on-the-rearview-mirror type. That is when he recognize that we, in fact, Donald and I were in the wrong garage. At that point we left the underground complex, drove around the block and entered the complex again and following my entry route arrived at my car on level 2 moments later.

We thanked him for his kindness, courtesy, and assistance and learned that his name was Phillip. Judging from another Phillip I know, I guess kindness and courtesy automatically come with the name.

© 3 August 2015

PS: Maybe if we each contribute $20 to Gillian and Betsy, perhaps they will let us have a party at their house while they are Away From Home.

About the Author
I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced. 

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

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

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Being Gay Is … by Phillip Hoyle

For me being gay started out as a tricky process. My childhood explorations of things sexual left me clear that I liked sex with male peers. Oh, I liked girls a lot—quite a few of them—but then I was living into societal, cultural, and biological norms that sought something more than friendships between males and females. I assumed I would take a wife, and luckily I found a superb one. Still, I knew that I was sexually somehow needy in a way my wife would never approach. I was dedicated to the marriage and to our two children and knew they would remain at the center of my life concerns

After age thirty I knew for sure my homosexual urges were not a side issue or a shadow self, but that the urges related directly and powerfully to my emotional and physical needs. I realized I was walking a rather perilous path with marriage, parenthood, career, and who knew what else at stake. I also knew I was in love with another man. So I opened myself to a bisexual world of my imagination and through a single male to male relationship and loads of reading began looking at what it might mean for me at some point in my life to live openly gay. Some years later—some twenty years later—I did just that.

Thinking that I should be living gay seemed a choice, yet the fact that I considered it and desired it seemed in no way a choice. So in essence, one might say, I am homosexual, and now in my existence I am gay. Perhaps that distinction seems inadequate, even a bit cant. I know many folk who would simply shake their heads no. But I think in this way in order to describe my experience, not to normalize or moralize it in any way.

I chose to be gay (my definition of a lifestyle) because this life most nurtures my needs. I find ironic the fact that I entered this full-time gay existence toward the end of my life, but I knew what I was doing and realized I had to do this in a loving way. My only regrets? That my life and choices have sometimes hurt other people. But my knowledge of life shows that such pains always occur in human relationships. My wife and I had a long run, produced and reared two fine and interesting people, and we all remain loving and supportive of one another.

My idea serves only as a simplistic background to what I want to tell you now—the really important things!

For me, being gay is:

          A great relief
          A real hoot
          A dubious mark of distinction I wouldn’t trade for anything
          The most sensible thing I have done in my life although I have done many sensible things
          A connection with a vast and varied community
          An experiment in life quality, and
          A beautiful, heartfelt experience.

© Denver, 2014

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Singing, by Lewis

Everybody, it seems, loves music. Now that technology has made it possible to take one’s music with them wherever they go, ear buds have become ubiquitous and conversation passé. Throw in a smart phone and Twitter or text messaging and we may be approaching the end of the era wherein no man (or woman) is an island unto themself.

I have a photo taken of me when I was five-years-old, dressed head-to-foot in cowboy gear, playing 7” records on my portable 78-rpm record player. Even though I wasn’t reading yet, I knew every record’s title by heart. As an adult, it was my wont to make cassette recordings of all types of music, from opera to jazz, from borrowed sources, meticulously transcribing the titles, artists, and recording data onto the tiny cardboard inserts. I still have them—close to 900 of them—and, contrary to expectations back in their day, they still sound fine after nearly 30 years.

All this was prologue in that small boy’s head to a career in music. To be a singer in the tradition of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Vic Damone, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Vaughan Monroe, Marty Robbins, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Perry Como was my fondest dream. Much later, I realized that it would be even cooler to be a songwriter who sang his own material. So, I turned my ears toward artists like Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, and Don McLean.

To my extreme disappointment, as my voice matured and the guitar lessons became more demanding, I realized that I had not the talent to ever hope to find myself among the hall-of-fame singers of any genre—although I would have liked to have been in a blind audition with Bob Dylan in his early days. Instead, I would have to content myself with playing my three-necked, Hawaiian steel guitar for my great aunt—the one who was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution–at Christmas and for grade school kids at music recitals. (It was at one such recital that the other music students with whom I was on stage lost their places or backbone and dropped out one-by-one leaving me to finish the piece as a solo.)

As both a child and an adult, I have sung in church choirs but that is the limit of my public exposure. Recently, a persistent post nasal drip has caused my vocal chords to completely shut down after a couple of stanzas, putting a premature end to any illusions I may still have about bringing a crowd to its feet in ecstasy. I don’t even sing in the shower any more. (The vinyl curtain just doesn’t have the same effect as a glass one.) However, I still take great pleasure in hearing a beautiful tune sung well. Nothing else in the art world has as much effect on me. Visual arts can be stunning and beautiful but often need some background to give them meaning. Prose and poetry illuminate and entertain. But for me, nothing can inspire so much as poetry set to music. You can frame and hang a painting or tapestry and I can look at it and appreciate the talent behind it. But it doesn’t grab me by the heartstrings and wrap them around my throat. To combine the talents of a vocal artist with a brilliant writer of songs is to give flight to both art and audience.

7 April 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Nowhere, by Gillian

This is going to be very repetitive for some of you who have been part of this group for some time, but I’m not going to apologize for that. When you have shared little pieces of your life story almost every week for about three years, even at seventy-something there just isn’t enough life to go round and a little repetition is inevitable! And, for all that I have had some practice, I doubt that I shall be able to express this whole thing any more clearly this time around. As far as explaining it, I don’t even try.

So …. nowhere is pretty much where I was for the first 40-odd years of my life. I was living nowhere, going nowhere. You see, you have to be someone to be somewhere. And I was not.

Oh sure, I was a human body going about it’s business on this earth. But that’s all I was. I wasn’t real. The real me, my essence, my soul if you like, wasn’t with me. At least it wasn’t part of me: in me. For as far back as I can remember, maybe the age of about three or four, the real me hovered somewhere above or occasionally beside what I think of as the faux me. The real me simply watched. Observed. The faux me went on acting a part on the world wide stage, all the time knowing she was playing a part as the real me looked on. I thought perhaps everyone felt this way, though now I know better. In fact I have never once, since I have, only recently, started to try to describe all this, had anyone say to me,

“Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean! I felt the same way.”

Never.

The moment I came out to myself, at around forty, I literally felt the faux me and the real me merge. It was like an expertly guided boat bumping gently against the old worn wood of the dock. A softly whispered thunk, and my soul was safely home.

It has never left again.

I have no fear that it will.

I have, as I said, absolutely no explanation. It most certainly was not some schizophrenic kind of thing. I never felt like two people; just two separated parts of the same one. I never, rather to my regret, heard voices telling me what to do. I am actually rather resentful about that. Why did my soul sit silently like a lump on a log instead of offering a little guidance once in a while? I certainly could have used it. Or, giving her some benefit of the doubt, maybe she did. Without her I might still be in the closet. But if so, why didn’t she save me sooner? A case of, for everything there is a season, perhaps.

No, I never will understand it.

I never will be able to explain it.

I’m just so happy we are now united.

There’s a Country song, I’m Half Way to Nowhere.

“I’m half way to nowhere but it’s too late to turn back now.”

When I came out, I was half way from nowhere, and it was way too late to turn back.

And why would I?

I was finally whole.

I have finally found my way out of nowhere. I never intend to live there again.

© December 2014

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.