Posts

Posted on

What Makes Homophobes Tick? by Lewis Thompson

The easy answer to this query would be that “homophobe” means “a person with an irrational or obsessive fear of homosexuals”, according to Wikipedia. But it would be important to dig a little beneath the surface to examine not only where the “irrational or obsessive fear” arises from but also why it seems to persist over many years.

Any American born in the last century almost certainly spent their formative years being inculcated with certain “inalienable truths”. Among these were–

* To be white is better than to be a person of color;

* To be male is better than to be female;

* To be a female is better than to be a male who wants to become a female (if a female wants to become a male, well, who can blame them?);

* To be rich is better than to be poor;

* To be rich and a crook is also better than being poor;

* To be a Christian is better than to be a non-Christian;

* To be a non-Christian is better than to be an atheist;

* To be an atheist is better than being a homosexual because, at least usually, you’re not an embarrassment to your relatives;

* To be conservative is better than being liberal (because all of the Founding Fathers were conservative, otherwise, they would never have written the Second Amendment);

* To be black, female, liberal, a non-believer, and gay is the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person and they surely should be imprisoned at birth and executed as soon as their politics, non-believer status, and sexual orientation become manifest.

So, we can readily comprehend that homophobia is the natural outgrowth of a society based upon gender, race, religious and countless other biases. It is endemic, almost akin to fluoridated water, which, as we all know, was responsible for the rise of the John Birch Society.

© January 12, 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.

Posted on

Piece of Cake by Gillian

It isn’t just my age that makes it seem like many things that surely should be are not a piece of cake these days. Oh yes, I forget where I put things and logic occasionally skips a beat, but I’m talking about things made more complicated than they need to be by others, not myself.

Betsy and I regretfully sold our old camper van a few months ago. It was eating money and parts were becoming too hard to find. The man who bought it apparently drove it home on a toll road because a few weeks later we got a bill from the toll company for $3.20. Now even I am not going to quibble over three bucks, so I mailed the check and forgot all about it. Piece of cake! A few weeks later we received another bill for the same vehicle, time, and date, from a differently named company. It seems the toll collection passed to a different company without, surprise surprise, much communication. Other than the fact that this bill was mysteriously thirty cents higher, the bills were identical so we printed off a copy of the processed check, mailed it and forgot about it. Just last week we got a second bill from the toll company for sixty unexplained cents. Honestly! Can’t someone program their computer not to generate bills for amounts below a dollar? I am tempted to tape sixty pennies to a sheet of paper, but I know the computer wouldn’t know what to do with that. The next thing we’d receive would be a bill for $20.60 after they added a twenty dollar late charge. So I guess I’ll just write a check. I can honestly say I have never written a check for less than a dollar, but then, a woman in her seventies should probably be grateful for any new experience!

Have you noticed how people these days have developed the skill of completely ignoring evidence right in front of their eyes? Betsy’s granddaughter Lisi owed us some money and was paying it back via automated monthly checks mailed to us from her bank. Piece of cake! When she later closed out that account, the checks kept right on coming. After three monthly checks we should not have had, we visited a local branch of the bank and explained the situation. Yes, the young man agreed, that account was indeed closed and contained no money, therefore we would receive no checks. I pounded my poor pinkie on the paper until it pained me. There were the checks. Three of them. Keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the computer screen he continued to nod his agreement that the account was closed and empty and no checks could be issued. He simply refused to see the evidence before him. Really! What kind of bank continues to send out checks from a closed account with no money in it??

In fact, closing accounts just seems to cause problems. I closed out a savings account, withdrawing all the money. The next month I got a statement claiming I had thirty-nine cents in that account. I called the branch, but neither they nor I had any explanation for the thirty-nine cents.

“Oh well,” I said, “Just cut a check for the amount and toss it in the trash, then close the account.”

She explained that she could not do that, as the computer would not create checks for less than a dollar.

“Can I just pop in and you give me the cash then?”

Cash, all thirty-nine cents of it, was apparently, for some incomprehensible reason, not an option. I gave up.

After a couple of months my thirty-nine cent statement was accompanied by a letter expounding upon the joys of paperless banking. Yes! I thought, hastily completing the authorization. At least I would no longer be irritated every month by this three-page documentation of my thirty-nine
cents. I would never have to go on-line to look at it; it would be forgotten. Piece of cake! After the second month of continuing to receive the mailed statement, I phoned the 24 hour customer service number. Definitely, I was told, since I had signed up for paperless banking I no longer received hard-copy statements. I assured her that I was holding one in my hand at that very moment, and she continued to affirm that I no longer received statements by mail. I gave up, but the following month I took my apparently imaginary paper statement to the local branch and explained my problem. Eyes glued to the screen, the young woman agreed wholeheartedly with me. Yes, I had signed up for paperless accounts and no longer received hard copy. No amount of waving pages at her could distract her attention from that screen. I gave up. Now, each month as I watch my three-page proof of thirty-nine cents die an ignominious death in the shredder, I remind myself that I no longer receive hard copy.

I find, more and more, that I fail to understand what people are telling me. And no, it’s not because I can’t hear, or that English is their second language. No, English, as far as I know, is their first language. Yet they somehow speak it in a way I cannot follow. I understand the words, but the way they put them together makes no sense to me. Betsy recently e-mailed a very simple question to our insurance company. The reply, and I promise you this is a direct quote, read, “Yes your property is currently covered (but not now).” How in God’s name is a person to interpret that? How can something be currently but not now?

I think hell on earth must be struggling, from half way around the world, to deal helpfully and politely in a relatively unfamiliar language, with an angry American trying to set up his Smart TV. A few years ago, Betsy and I bought a new flat-screen TV, and, for the first time, splurged on Cable. The Comcast techie rushed off after a very speedy installation, leaving me no chance to ask questions. I could not figure out where to attach the DVD player, so in desperation I called the HELP number. After many minuets on hold and many more in conversation with a very frustrated young man, both he and I had had just about enough. His voice had risen an octave over the time we had spent together, and I was beginning to doubt his chances of reaching his twenty-first birthday without a heart attack.

“No no no! You are not listening to me. How then can I help if you do not listen?”

“I’m sorry. I am listening. Really.”

Like a recalcitrant three year old.

“Now.” He sighed; at the end of his tether.

“We are at the very top, on the left side of the television. This TV is not a person. It is not the left side of it of which we speak. No! It is your left. You are facing the screen. Yes?”

Without waiting for confirmation he plunged on.

“You are reaching out your left hand and placing it on the top of the side of the television that is there, closest to your exact left hand. Very good! Now, the first connection on top of all the connections on that very side. You see it. It is being very red and you do not use it.”

I replied that actually it was yellow, but no I did not use it.

“It is red!” he said, dismissively. “Now you move down your exact left hand and the next one is yellow and you do not use it.”

I saw little point in saying that it was white, and we moved rapidly on to the next which was supposedly white but was in fact red. Why wasn’t my TV like his picture of it? We had confirmed the model number.

“Now,” he said with an air of accomplishment, “in the next one below under your exact left hand is the unused white into which you place the white of your DVD cable.

I willed the thick cable already plugged into the dirty-mustard yellow connection to disappear, but it remained.

“Something’s already in that one. The cable box. Or maybe the DVR …” I said doubtfully, peering into the dark corner behind the TV and the tanglement of wires and cables nesting there.

“No no no! You are indeed not following me!”

I thanked him for his time and hung up.

And you know, among the endless frustrations of modern life, occasionally someone appears who reinvigorates your faith in people and even technology. Forgetting the DVD player, I worked on getting the DVR to work. Having failed on that score too, I called Comcast where the phone techie agreed that it was not working correctly and scheduled a real person techie visit in two days. She strode into the living room, an obvious lesbian wearing her overstuffed tool belt with pride. After a cursory glance, she began ripping out cables and wires and dumping them in a tangled mangled heap on the carpet. She scooped up the messy bundle and retreated to her van, returning with new, neatly coiled and labeled, cables and wires and connectors. In what seemed like no time she was demonstrating to me that the TV worked, the DVD player worked, the cable box worked, and the DVR worked. She gathered up her tools and waved a cheery goodbye.

Piece of cake!

© March 2015

About the Author

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

Posted on

Spiritual Journey by Will Stanton

I regard myself as a highly spiritual person. I’m not quite sure why that is. If so, it has come about naturally. I never was raised in a church, temple, or mosque. Many Americans regard religion as the one and only means to achieve spiritual development. I have heard some people, like Bill O’Reilly, even claim that spiritual development outside of church is impossible. I have had no formal religious teaching in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Zoroastrian dogma. I don’t pray to Zeus, although I do admire his selection of cup-bearer.

Yet, I instinctively always have been concerned with listening to “the better angels of our nature” and trying to develop a relationship with others and the world that is positive and commendable. I prefer to treat others as I would have them treat me, a precept similar to the instructions expressed in most religions. I feel that my instincts have lead me in the right direction on my spiritual journey.

Throughout my life, however, I have encountered, or been made aware of, a large percentage of people who do not think nor feel as I do. My positive values, my being sensitive to others’ needs and feelings, often have been regarded as being “too sensitive, too selfless, too impractical.” I also abhor all forms of violence and mistreatment of others. My heightened sense of what is most precious and beautiful in the world apparently is not shared by the majority of people. The more of the world I have seen around me, the more I feel that I am a member of that minority of humans living in a world full of troglodytes. Could one of the factors contributing to this increased sensitivity and spirituality be natural orientation?

There does seem to be a sense that those persons most interested in spiritual development have greater sensitivity than many others. People may think that priests and ministers may be more sensitive, more empathetic, and perhaps even sexually suspect. That may be a stereotype, but there also may be some truth in it. Certainly, many gay men go into the church. Pope John-Paul II (now “Saint John-Paul II”) once estimated that half the Catholic clergy were gay. (Or, was it the former Hitler-Youth pope who said that?) The previous Archbishop of Canterbury at the time also estimated that seventy percent of the clergy in the Anglican Church were homosexual. Did their orientation lead them to greater spirtual exploration?

I have been aware over the years that I feel deeply the spirituality in the most sublime music, such as Mozart’s “Ave verum corpus.” I know that greater understanding and feeling for sublime music is partly the result of one of the several heightened levels of secondary intelligences; yet possibly orientation does, too.

I often have seen men, who regard themselves as quite macho, raise an eyebrow in suspicion of anyone who has a passion for the arts or chooses a profession that is regarded as un-macho. This stereotypical attitude is not limited to modern American men. For several hundred years, the aristocratic men of Europe were convinced than any man who spent too much time involved with music or the arts would deplete his masculinity and become more feminized. It may be true that a devoté of art and music might devote too many hours to his passion to permit him to, for example, conduct a war in Iraq, or work twelve hours per day to become a multi-billionaire, or slander all political opponents to gain a seat in Congress. I am certain that, if I were to spend my life around such troglodytes in any form, I would be committing spiritual suicide. I prefer to associate with friends who possess an admirable spirituality about them. In my working years, my own sensitivity and empathy enhanced my ability to help others with their problems. It has been, however, in my passion for sublime music and art that I personally have found the greatest spiritual fulfillment, finding within such creations intrinsic value, a value that I enjoy sharing with others who are like-minded.

© 05 June 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.

Posted on

Artistic by Ricky

Anyone who knows me at this point in my life will know that I am mostly a critic of the artistic skills of others. I learned all about the art of being critical from 66 years of living and listening to others criticizing me and my efforts and activities. I also have some practical learning in the world of art. At one point, while attending art classes for two years, my teachers gave me high marks for my creativity and technical skill with media and color application.

So as not to seem braggadocios, I will share with you some pieces of my work to prove the accuracy of my statements about my skill.

The first piece of art I will expose you to is from my early career. Like many an artist, I began with still life, in this case some fruit. Notice the excellent application of color and texture.

While living with my grandparents in Minnesota and being somewhat depressed, I next entered into what I refer to as my blue period. Using a waxy medium, I created this beautiful colorful drawing of my home back in Redondo Beach, California, complete with school bus.

I then improved my style and technique to the point that my next piece you will see was described by my art teacher as nearly as good as Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Modesty prevents me from contradicting her opinion.


Having reached the pinnacle of my technical skill in the world of traditional art, it was time to let my creativity run loose. The result was a decision to “marry” the styles of Salvador Dali with that of Picasso’s later works in impressionism and cubism.

The response was less than I had hoped for and I vowed to withhold my obvious talent and skill from the sight of the artistically insensitive, critics, and public.

By way of contrast with my work above, here is a recent piece of art by a famous artist. If my work doesn’t qualify as high quality, neither does her piece, in my opinion. Yet she is elevated to fame, while my works are dismissed.

Pablo Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”*

My knowledge of artistic techniques is now used to evaluate the work of others and hold them to the same rigorous standards applied to my works.

I have created nothing of quality art since that time.

*Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pablo_picasso.html#GRum34Xqs3xA2eIB.99

© 8 Sep 2014

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

Posted on

From the Pulpit by Phillip Hoyle

In the churches where I worshipped and worked, rants about homosexuality did not come from the pulpit but, rather, from the pew. In fact, the only homosexual statement I heard from the pulpit was a quote from an early 1950s semi-autobiographical novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin. The preacher made no allusion to Baldwin’s sexuality or any condemnation of the writer. He made no apology for using a quote from a literary best seller. What the preacher knew of Baldwin, I don’t know.

But there was a history in America, a tradition in Euro-American societies that made homosexuality more than a bad thing. Years of silence over the matter continued in the 20th century by sending homosexuals to counseling or to sanitariums. Folk who lived homosexual lives ran away to cities getting lost in urban concentration. Surely their condition was something foreign, out of the ordinary, and ‘here in our little Eden, will not be tolerated.’ Any change of public or even family perception of one’s sexuality caused folk to move away. Silence reigned.

Then the US saw the beginnings of the Civil Rights movements. With it came sensitivity training. The women’s movements, Black power movements, Gay Pride movements, and other liberation movements began to influence law making and law enforcement. They changed even the way the military went about its training and work.

Fears of these new powers fed the growth of conservative reactionary movements. Evangelical churches ended their lethargy and began focusing on influencing public life. They increasingly removed themselves from moderate and liberal denominations. For instance, many evangelicals left the United Presbyterian Church when that denomination’s Social Action committee helped fund Black woman radical Angela Davis’s defense in court. Then the same reactionaries rose up against what they saw as an attack on the modern American family. They wrote books on the way things were supposed to be. They were disturbed by their own children’s refusal to follow traditional ways. Their middle-class kids preferred to live with their spousal picks without the advantages of marriage. Someone had to pay. Very hurt, nice folk turned the accusing finger against gay males condemning them for trying to destroy the family with their gay agenda. Their vitriolic attack resulted in a split in public life.

While in college in the late 1960s I focused on reading about homosexual experience. Then I made my first adult friendship with another musician who was gay. Throughout the 70s I continued reading a rapidly expanding literature and minutely examined the nature of my own sexuality in which I was not really surprised to find a homosexual core. My self-consideration meant to create and maintain a balancing act of faith, morality, and ethics.

In 1968 the church denomination in which I worked voted to proclaim publically that gays and lesbians deserved the same civil rights as all other American citizens. I went to seminary a few years later. There I met more gays, fell in love with a man, read more about what churches were saying and doing, and costumed myself as a gay man when attending a minorities group at the seminary. I did so as a show of solidarity. Surely my actions were also a self-revelation of my own bisexuality.

As church clergy I started teaching my balancing act of faith, morality and ethics. My wife, children, and I were open and affirming of gays and lesbians. We welcomed gays and lesbians into our home. We travelled with two homosexuals to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. My studies embraced the issues. In one local congregation I led a seminar about human sexuality positing a bi-sexual norm for its consideration.

Finally I understood that I was going to live a homosexual life. My affairs with men pushed me into a much deeper understanding of myself. I was tired of church work. I didn’t know how to solve my domestic dilemma. I dropped out of church leadership and eventually of congregational life.

In my thirty-two years of ministry, I had observed a marked change in congregational attitudes toward homosexuality, particularly toward homosexual ministers. In fairness, I believe that lay attitudes didn’t so much change as they got expressed. In our denomination the discussion at times became vitriolic being attached to a larger fight for dominance between conservative and liberal factions.

I heard heated words: accusations of not being biblical, arguments arising from holiness code excerpts from Leviticus, assumptions that anyone involved in any homosexual activity must repent or go to hell, and so forth. Eventually I received messages from family members registering both their rejection of me while living in such a sinful life and prayers for my reconciliation and redemption. I had to receive them as truly hopeful but reject them as a path I might follow.

Early on in my ministry I realized I might get in trouble over homosexual issues in the church when I suggested to a man I really liked that he shouldn’t use anti-homosexual humor. I did so because he was using it among the men in the cast of a play we were producing for a Maundy Thursday service. The young man playing the Jesus role was homosexual. The man I criticized was playing Judas. There was the obligatory kiss. Perhaps my Judas was simply playing out his part or perhaps he was also secretly homosexual. I have no idea and say none of this as accusation. Both men were beautiful to me. I didn’t want the church member to be making the guest Jesus uncomfortable. I also realized that my non-public warning to the jokester might be just the kind of thing that I would pay for. Still, for the greater good of the play and of the persons involved, I suggested such humor was out of place.

I saw this kind of thing several times in my career. I tried to keep an even keel for the old ark of the church, one that didn’t alienate the more conservative but also made a place for the more liberal or, as some conservatives thought, the more sinful or worldly. I preached that the world and the world of the church was very large encompassing unimaginable diversity. I encouraged loving forbearance and acceptance of that diversity. I quietly preached such a doctrine for thirty-two years. Finally I had preached enough.

I have read and heard the anti-gay rhetoric. I have analyzed the pick-and-choose approach of scriptural proofs. I came to realize I had made different picks and choices of proofs to maintain a consistent logic in a commitment to the image of the creative and ultimately loving God. I declare myself a Christian, and although I’ve retired from the clergy and haven’t preached in a church for over fourteen years, I have one last sermon to preach. Listen.

Some folk seem to think that one cannot be Christian and gay. Well, I’m announcing from my pulpit that I am one such person, a gay Christian. There are thousands, tens of thousands others like me, who do not accept the rejecting authority of would-be representatives of the Truth. These accusers assume the role of the god in their communications of condemnation. Tens of thousands like me also reject the more subtle settlement of many churches that one can be homosexual but cannot live in that way. These judges condemn having sex with a person of the same sex even in a committed marriage, itself anathema in their view.

My pulpit announces the beauty and norm of gay marriage or any other loving, living arrangements. My pulpit announces the end of the holiness code like any self-respecting dispensationalist preacher should. My pulpit announces a new beginning of the ancient standards of love, felicity, and creativity in all human relationships. Oh well, lest this sermon go on too long, I’ll follow the advice of one preacher’s wife who told her husband when he was done, he should simply say “Amen” and sit down.

Amen.

© 2015

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

Posted on

Gifts from Afar by Lewis J. Thompson, III

or, so goes my story–

Gifts from a Farm

I did not grow up on a farm. It wouldn’t have suited me at all, despite the fact that my dad grew up on a farm and made his living as a farm loan manager and rural appraiser and my mother grew up with chickens and a couple of cows in a rural small town. No, farm boys have to get up very early to do chores, drink raw milk, shovel really nasty stuff, and work on dirty machinery. Besides, farm work is dangerous. Believe me, I know.

One of my mother’s three brothers had a farm near the teeny, tiny town of McCune in far southeastern Kansas. A couple times a year, we would make the two-hundred-mile journey by car to pay a visit. One of my cousins was a boy close to my age. The other male child, Richard, was eight years older than I. He had contracted spinal meningitis when he was about ten years old and nearly died. It left him mentally disabled, though physically OK. He dropped out of school at about age 14 and later got work as a farm and ranch hand. The only time I can recall that he stayed overnight at our house in Hutchinson was when he was on his way to Wyoming or Montana to work on a ranch. He was about 20 and I was 12.

I recall my mother being upset because she had learned from her brother or sister-in-law that Richard was in the habit of sleeping “in the altogether”, which seems an odd expression for sleeping in nothing at all. I remember being somewhat titillated by the thought of lying next to a naked boy, cousin or not. To my disappointment, I soon found out that he would be sleeping on an Army cot at the foot of my bed.

On one of our visits to the farm, I and a couple of my cousins went on an egg-collecting excursion to the hay loft above the shed where machinery were stored and the corn was husked. This required that one go up a ladder and through a hole in the floor of the loft that measured about 2 feet by 2 feet. Bales of hay were stacked to within a foot or so of the opening on three sides. This made getting down from the loft more than a little tricky. Although I prided myself on being a pretty good climber and not especially afraid of heights, I found my attempt to make the transition gracefully woefully lacking. I slipped and soon was falling feet-first, arms straight up in the air through the opening toward the hard floor 12′ below. As luck would have it, a horizontal wooden beam crossed the space directly below the opening in such a way that my body missed it but my out-stretched fingers were perfectly positioned to reflexively close on it as I passed by. There I dangled, feet swinging two feet above the ground. Lucky me!

Luck did not seem to play such an active role in the life of Bobby, the cousin just a few months younger than I, especially when it came to fire and modes of transportation. When Bobby was old enough to own a car, he had been using gasoline to clean off his engine. When he finished, he started the engine. There was a back-fire through the carburetor that set the engine on fire. Much damage was done.

Not too long after that, he and my uncle were burning stubble in a field. Bobby accidentally splashed gasoline on his legs. His pants caught fire and he was badly burned. The final calamity came when we were both about 16. He had been riding his motorcycle when a driver ran a stop sign and he hit her broadside. His head hit the car’s roof where the pillar behind the driver’s door joins it. He died instantly. We drove down for the funeral. I had taken a suit from my closet to wear for the occasion. When we arrived at the chapel, I discovered that there were no pants hanging under the jacket. I had to remain in the car during the service. It was one of the worst goofs of my life.

My point in writing all this, I guess, is to provide an opportunity to thank all those Americans who till the soil, shovel the dung, shoe the horses, milk the cows, and get up at dawn every day so that I have what I need to survive. It troubles me to think that the days of the family farm are rapidly fading away but along with them the great risk those families took each and every day–truly a gift to all of us from a farm.

© May 11, 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.

Posted on

Aw Shucks! by Gillian

I really want to thank whoever came up with this topic because it made me dig way down in my memory and dredge up a story I have not thought about for fifty years. I wasn’t sure I had ever actually heard anyone use the expression aw shucks, except possibly Andy Griffith in 1950s Mayberry, but then slowly it bubbled up in my brain; an old black man in Houston in early 1965, and the story that goes with him.

His name was Noah. His age was indeterminate but my best guess would be mid-seventies. He worked as the gardener at the apartment complex where I was living with my friend Lucie. We had only arrived in this country from England three months before and were not quite familiar with all of the U.S. mores, especially those of the South. Houston of the early 1960’s was apparently unaware of such things as a minimum wage and equal rights. As far as we could tell, we were the only people among the apartment complex’s all-whites residents who ever spoke to Noah. He was apparently invisible to all our neighbors. Lucie and I managed to converse with him on most days, complimenting him most sincerely on the crisply trimmed bushes and the gorgeously colorful arrays of flowers, and his reply was always more or less the same.

“Shucks, Ma’am, just doin’ mah job.”

I would love to report here that he said aw shucks but I honestly remember it being, more simply, shucks. He had offered that his name was Noah, but although we had told him our names, he invariably addressed us, whether singly or collectively, as Ma’am.

And clearly it was more than just doing his job. He loved those plants. He coaxed and gentled them along, and they responded to him in all their glory.

I was in awe of him. He always looked so pristine. His gray hair was neatly barbered, the white tee-shirts he wore were unfailingly spotless, at least at the start of his day, and his bib overhauls always clean and crisp with a sharply ironed crease.

He had such a quiet dignity about him, giving off an air of a soul at peace, that I found myself envying him. Yet he puzzled me. I wondered about his life, the details of which he firmly shied away from if we tried to question him. Born …. when? Late in the previous century, perhaps. The things he must have seen and heard and experienced were unlikely to be the kind that would, in most people, engender this aura of dignified tranquility.

One day, just as we arrived home from work, a group of rowdy young men, white of course, were running across the lawn, whooping and giving their best rebel yells while tossing a football back and forth and tossing back beer from cans. They shouted derogatory things at two young women, also white of course, who quickly turned away down another path. Noah, trimming bushes at the far side of the lawn, was almost hidden by the thick foliage, and as the men crashed through the bushes they knocked him to the ground. Lucie and I could see him, slowly sitting up, and ran over, rather wondering how to act. We wanted to show concern but knew that offering to help him up would only cause embarrassment.

“Bloody hooligans!” Lucie growled as we reached him.

“Aw shucks, Ma’am, they wasn’t meanin’ no harm. Ma’am, do y’all see my glasses?”

He was fumbling his fingers in the grass about him.

“Huh!” responded Lucie. “Not meaning any harm indeed. They didn’t stop to see you were OK though, did they?”

Noah gazed speculatively at Lucie. and it occurred to me that perhaps concern for his health and safety was the last thing that life had taught him to expect from a group such as that.

“Here,” I handed him the glasses from where I found them still suspended on the branch that had snagged them as he fell. They were small and thick with thin steel frames, and looked more fit for a German scientist than an old black Texas groundsman. Noah curled them behind his ears and got to his feet, but he was favoring one foot.

“Stand still!” commanded Lucie. “Let me look at it.”

She knelt down and pulled up his pant leg, feeling his ankle gently. I could see it was already swollen.

Three white men in business suits just getting out of a car in the parking lot looked askance at the young white woman kneeling before the old black man and caressing his ankle. The N word was tossed back and forth loudly between two of them but the third walked over to us, just as I unthinking put my arm around Noah’s waist so he could lean his bad side on me.

The young man, I had met him briefly at some pool party or something, and thought his name was Howard, pried me gently away from Noah, frowning at me and shaking his head.

“Here, let me he’p you” he said, taking my place. “Can you put weight on that foot?”

“No, he can’t,” snapped Lucie before Noah had time to insist he was OK and they hadn’t meant no harm.

“It’s not broken,” Lucie always said things with supreme confidence, “but it’s badly sprained.” She launched into an indignant account of what had happened, while Howard lowered Noah back down onto the lawn and I trotted off to our apartment to get ice and look for bandages.

We bound up his ankle with a strip I had torn off an old shirt we planned to use for dusters, then tied ice over it, securing it with the rest of the shirt.

Howard helped Noah to his feet, but putting weight on his badly swollen ankle was clearly a problem.

“C’mon,” said the ever-decisive Lucy, “We’ll take you home.”

A look of alarm crossed his face.

“No Ma’am! I come on the bus, I go home on the bus.”

Lucie snorted.

“Don’t be ridiculous! It’s five or six blocks to the bus stop just from this side. You can’t walk. Of course we’ll take you home.”

Noah’s look of alarm became one closer to fear.

He glanced in appeal at Howard, a look that said, these women are foreigners and don’t understand. Help me!

“I live th’other side of Lazy Bayou,” he offered to Howard in a tone of desperation. “Lizard Creek Muddy.”

Howard shook his head at Lucie and me.

“NO!” he said, firmly. “Y’all cannot go there.”

Never tell Lucie she cannot do something. She tossed her hair at both men in disdain.

“Ugh. Men! C’mon.” She headed for the car as I followed behind, fumbling to find the car keys.

Howard and Noah struggled in some kind of three-legged gait behind us, neither apparently able to come up with a reasonable alternative course of action.

“I’ll come with you, then,” said Howard resignedly, helping Noah into the front passenger seat, and I slipped the car into gear as Noah offered grunted, reluctant, directions.

I had no idea where we were by the time we sloshed over a muddy crossing of what must have been Lazy Bayou, and followed the dirt road as it disappeared into thick trees. The road was suddenly lined on either side by wooden shanties in various stages of disrepair, and an occasional tattered trailer. Everyone in sight was black, and every single one of them stopped whatever they were doing to stare at the car, and, perhaps more than the unaccustomed car, the three shiny white faces in it. If any of you have watched that old TV series, Heat of the Night, this place was very like the area that program depicts as The Bottoms.

But this was well before that series existed; Lucie and I, innocents that we were, had no idea places like this existed.

Following a silent wave of Noah’s arm, I pulled the car to a halt in front of rickety steps below a screen door. I heard Howard mutter in the back seat.

“Goddammit!”

I knew he referred to the steps.

“Y’all he’p him. Less antagonism that way. An’ git right back. We need to go!”

An old woman with a deeply wrinkles face was creaking down the steps. She pushed Lucie and me out of the way, turned her back on us, turned Noah’s back on us, and hustled him up the steps and in through the screen door which slammed shut behind them. Despite Howard’s hissed,

“Come on!” we stood there, non-plussed. We hadn’t exactly expected to be invited in for tea, but neither had we expected a look that might have turned lesser mortals to stone. In silence the three white faces in the black car left Lizard Creek Muddy.

Our relationship with Noah, though his courteous dignity remained, was never quite the same after that. His dignity had become cool and distanced, like that of an English butler. We had crossed some invisible line we had not even known existed.

I think of that wonderful old man after all these years, as I read of the recently documented 4000 lynchings of people of color in the South from 1877 to 1950, the racial hatred in certain fraternities, the institutionalized racism in Ferguson ……. sadly I could go on and on.

I need to say something a whole lot stronger than aw, shucks!

© March 2015

About the Author

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

Posted on

What Makes Homophobes Tick? by Will Stanton

Well well well! What we have suspected about homophobes is true. To paraphrase Shakespeare from “Hamlet,” “The homophobes protest too much, methinks.” Understandably, what makes people “tick” always is a multifactorial answer…their inborn natures, their learned behaviors from their parental upbringing, the social environment in which they live, church dogma, influence from school friends, and many other experiences. Recent research also shows that brain-structure has something to do with it. Significantly, research now also shows that, frequently, people who express hate toward gays are in fear of their own, inner feelings. That fear leads to denial of their own natures, verbal expressions of intolerance or hate, and unfortunately too often, violence. We can laugh at people’s hypocrisy; however, too often they do damage to others before they are exposed.

Ted Haggard, the evangelical mega-church leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute. Republican United States Senator Larry Craig opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, yet he was arrested on suspicion of propositioning someone in a men’s bathroom. Republican Congressman from Florida Mark Foley, Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, favored strengthening the sanctions against inappropriate behavior with congressional pages; yet that’s exactly what he was accused of. Then Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe was accused of engaging in improper conduct with two youths. Glenn Murphy Jr., a leader of the Young Republican National Convention and an opponent of same-sex marriage, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge after being accused of sexually assaulting another man. I could list many more. Apparently, it is hardly unusual for someone who describes himself as having “conservative values” and as being a member of the “moral majority” to have desires that he denies but engages in behavior that he loudly condemns.

As early as the era of famous Sigmund Freud, psychologists theorized that shame and fear regarding one’s own homosexual urges can be expressed as homophobia. Freud described this phenomenon as “reactions formation.” Since then, there have been several remarkable laboratory studies that confirm this theory.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had a revealing article by Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, and Bethany A. Lohr of the University of Georgia. They used sixty-four subjects, all young men who claimed to be exclusively heterosexual. To begin with, they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). Twenty-nine expressed no homophobia; thirty-five expressed homophobia. Then each group was given the Aggression Questionnaire, created by A.H. Buss and M. Perry in 1992, to compare the subjects’ natural tendency toward generalized aggression. There was no difference in those results; aggressiveness is not the source of homophobia.

Then each group was shown two different series of erotic videos. All the subjects were wired to monitor responses, including pineal arousal. When shown videos of heterosexual love-making, the resulting graph showed some gradual increase in arousal among the homophobes but a greater degree of arousal among those who were not. Then when each group was shown videos of homosexual love-making, the non-homophobic group showed a degree of arousal; however, the homophobes’ graph showed a greater degree of arousal.

When homophobes express their fear and shame by verbally abusing gays, lesbians, or transgendered people, that can cause serious harm to the victims. Victims might be emotionally scarred for life. Or worse, the victims may feel driven to suicide. A greater percentage of bullied or depressed gay youths than straight kids commit suicide. Jamey Rodemeyer was a gay teenager who tried to lead an open life and to not hide his orientation. He also felt strongly enough about gay rights to be an activist and to post videos on YouTube, trying to help victims of homophobic bullying. Unfortunately, there was only so much bullying that he himself could tolerate, and he committed suicide at age fourteen.

Jamey Rodemeyer (21 Mar 1997 – 18 Sep 2011)

Suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer

The news, from time to time, reports beatings and murders of gays. Even in my hometown, a trucker, who had a teen in his truck cab for sex, beat the “living daylights” out of the boy just to prove to himself that the trucker really was straight. Another young gay was shot dead at a rest-stop just outside of town. And, we all have become familiar with poor Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student, who was tied to a prairie fence and beaten so badly that, after several days of suffering, he died. I find it very hard to understand the level of hate and violence that so many people are prone to. What ever happened to “Love thy neighbor”?

Matthew Shepard (1 Dec 1976 – 12 Oct 1998)

Matthew Shepard Biography

Homophobia certainly is not limited to our own country. Russia recently has gained further notoriety by passing anti-gay laws and by allowing young toughs to lure young gays to bogus rendezvous and then severely beating them while filming the atrocity. Even some conservative U.S. senators have encouraged the Uganda government (as though their government needed any encouragement) to pass laws that could put gays into prison for life or even to execute them. The proposed bill stated that straight friends and family who did not turn in gays to the authorities could, themselves, be jailed for three years. One ultra-conservative, American senator is reported to have told the Ugandans that the U.S. had failed to stop the spread of homosexuality, but it was not too late for Uganda to stop it.

Fortunately in our country with the passage of time, with greater understanding among young people, and gradually fewer narrow minded people as they die off, the U.S. appears to be becoming better informed, more tolerant, and more open. Fewer people are “living in the closet” in fear and shame. Perhaps fewer will try to prove how tough and straight they are by attacking their own kind. Although the causes of homophobia will continue to exist, I hope that we will have far fewer people afflicted with that disease. We must continue to work toward a cure for homophobia.

13 February 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.

Posted on

Favorite Fantasy by Ricky

If I were to follow my financial greediness, my favorite fantasy would involve having lots of money so I could travel when and where I wanted. I am not greedy, but I could become so should I ever have large amounts of personal funds.

A not so favorite but highly enjoyable fantasy involves lots of Baseball Nut ice-cream every day for treats between meals.

As a pubescent pre-teen and an adolescent-teen, to help me fall asleep, I would draft movie plots in my head. One favorite was a series about a group of humanoid, pubescent, hermaphrodite, pre-teen aliens from another planet who land on Earth because their flying-saucer needed some repair. While here they used their advanced technology to secretly fight crime like the comic book heroes of the time.

During my youth, my all-time favorite fantasy, as you might expect from my previous stories, involves a lot of sexual behaviors featuring me. I won’t go into any details but if you could see the geographic setting for my adventures, you would understand without being told that my name in the fantasy is, Peter.

© 14 October 2013

About the Author

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

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

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic. My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Horseshoes by Phillip Hoyle

Both my dad Earl and my maternal grandpa Charley had horseshoes. Dad had large ones he threw at an iron rod hoping to make a ringer. He smiled when he played and enjoyed his conversation with the other men. But I liked Grandpa’s horseshoes better for they represented something more essential than a game even with its skill and camaraderie. Grandpa’s horseshoes represented a way of life, one close to the soil, close to history, actually an extension of that history. The imagination of living on a tract of land that had been farmed for hundreds of years by American natives and nearly one hundred years by American immigrants from German and Sweden held more attraction for me. Grandpa’s farm and life invited me into a world in which horseshoes were actually worn by horses. I really liked that.

My father’s life was much more disconnected from the essentials of a farm. Oh he sold groceries, sometimes even local produce, but he sold them, not raised them. He worked hard, dealt with many people, hired quite a few employees, and following the example of his grocer father, sometimes gave groceries to folk who were too broke to afford them. He offered monthly credit to many people who lived on monthly-paid incomes. His life did exemplify a deep dedication to people. But his horseshoes were stored in a box on a shelf in the garage and taken out only when he and some other men were meeting at the park for a game. Grandpa’s horseshoes had holes in them to accommodate real nails to be pounded into horse’s hooves; dad’s horseshoes were only for sport.


Because of its difference from city life, the farm was magical for me. I was amazed by all its elements that didn’t occur in our home on a city lot: its location alongside a gravel road and a ravine, its tall barns and squat hen house, its underground cellar and the large wood stack, its wood-burning stoves and deep wells, its tractor and truck. The farm seemed nearly foreign when compared to the things I knew. We had cats at home, but Grandpa had dogs that brought in the cattle each evening, cows that gave milk. He sometimes had calves that were auctioned off at the local sales barn. In the cellar sat large cans of milk and eggs that Grandpa took to the mill each Saturday. The chopping block next to the wood stack displayed the heavy ax that he used to split logs for cooking meals and heating the house. And the place had stories of an ancient ceremonial ground down by the creek, a place that was used annually by the native folk who had lived there before my great grandfather. There were also stories of the old sod house my forebear built when he homesteaded the place in the 1870s, of Indians stopping by to trade, of the old two-story house that used to stand there but that burned down when two girls were playing and lit a fire in their play oven. I treasured these stories; the farm captured my imagination becoming the site of my dreams. In addition to dreams, I clearly recall the saddle that hung in the central part of the barn, the leather, wood and metal gear to hitch the horses to the wagons, and the lucky horseshoe Grandpa had tacked to the barn wall. I liked Grandpa’s horseshoes.

By contrast, Dad’s horseshoes represented another world of sports and competition. They went to church picnics at the city park. I watched the play, even tried it but was neither strong nor accurate enough in my tosses. Even as I grew my game did not improve for I still threw the shoes wildly, rarely hitting the rod or making points, certainly making no ringers. I did like watching the older guys—my dad and others—toss them. The players had their own techniques: how they held the horseshoe, how they tossed it, how they followed through the throw, how they cheered or rued the results. They relished their sport with Sears and Roebuck fake horseshoes. Although my dad liked sports and mild competition, I never got into it.

Growing up I saw my grandpa work. Farming allows that; at least on family farms where the children help. Actually I helped Grandma mostly in her garden and sometimes collecting eggs. Still, Grandpa was always around—milking cows, making things in his shop, working fields, keeping his equipment in good order. He invited me to ride with him on the tractor or to go with him in the pickup to a nearby mechanic’s shop. By contrast dad’s work took place away from home. For years I rarely saw Dad’s work at the store, only occasionally a bit of bookkeeping on a Sunday night when the store was closed. What work I did see him do was at church where he played the organ for two or three services each Sunday. I thrilled at his playing and singing, his accompanying and service music, his improvisations on hymns and gospel songs, and his tasteful selections of classical pieces. But soon I was sent off to children’s church and didn’t hear him except on Sunday evenings. When I was in junior high choir I did again hear the morning service, and in the 8th grade started conducting the choir calls to worship and amen responses to prayers. In this I got to collaborate with Dad; I liked that—very much.

Grandpa died while I was in 5th or 6th grade. I matured without him. He remained a wonderful element of my imagination inspiring me with his love, humor, and gentle kidding. Soon after his death I entered dad’s world of work at the store and, thankfully, his world of music and artistry at the church.

I keep alive a great memory of hunting with dad and grandpa. They carried shot guns. I walked along and I carried the rabbits they shot using a handle Grandpa fashioned from a branch with just a few cuts with his pocket knife. I loved that afternoon even though the rabbits got very heavy. I cherish my memory of hunting at the farm with these two men who loved me and whom I adored.

Denver, © 2 March 2015

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.”