Tag: A Revolution of Priorities

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Exploring, by Ricky

Boys and “exploring” naturally fit together like peanut butter and jelly or love and civil-unions because it is part of a boy’s job description. I began my career as an explorer in January 1949 when I began to explore my home by crawling about on the floor and tasting small objects I encountered. Eventually, I reached other rooms as I began to walk and could “disappear” if my mother turned her back for more than 2-seconds. I don’t think the term “baby-proofing” existed yet so drawers and cupboards were never off-limits to me. Mom did empress upon my mind, via my behind, exactly which bottles and boxes were dangerous to me.

Somewhere between the ages of 1 and 3, I learned without spankings that spiders with the red hour-glass emblem were very dangerous and to stay away from them. I suspect what I actually learned was, “if it has red, stay away.” Once I began to open doors and explore outside the house, it was child’s play to open the gate in the fence and do some serious exploring. I quickly learned to take the dog with me so no one would notice I was gone.

My exploration of kindergarten began in September 1953. I looked over my classmates for a suitable playmate (I mean classmate) with which to be friends and chose a girl of all people, Sandra Flora. I loved to color and play with all the messy artistic stuff. In first grade, Sandra and I were sent to a fifth grade class to be an example to the other kids on how to work quietly. I’m sure I did not measure up to the teacher’s expectations as I kept getting out of my seat, quietly of course, and going to the book shelves trying to find a book with lots of pictures. Being unsuccessful in finding a book to keep me interested, I think the teacher became frustrated and eventually sent us back to our class.
Now enter 1956, I (a newly arrived eight-year old), was sent to live on my grandparents farm in central Minnesota while my parents were arranging their divorce. Suddenly, I had a whole farm to explore that summer (and ultimately), autumn, winter, and spring in rotation. Eighty acres of new frontier for the world’s greatest explorer and trapper to collect beautiful animal pelts and bring them in for the women back east to wear. (Okay, so they really were not bison or bear pelts, but if an 8-year old boy squints, just right, under the proper lighting conditions, gopher skins can look just like bison or bear hides only smaller.)
1956 was the year of my awakening to the expanded world of exploring everything on the farm: the barn, milk house, hayloft, silo, chicken coop guarded by a vicious rooster, granary, workshop (nice adult stuff in there), equipment shed where various farm implements were stored until needed, and the outhouse (the stink you “enjoyed” twice a day). State and county fair time brought other places to explore: animal barns for varieties of chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, horses, etc., judging of canning, 4-H, displays of quilts, new farm machinery (tractors, bailers, rakes, yucky manure spreaders, thrashers, and combines), and of course the midway in the evenings.
As summer waned and school began, I met and made a few friends.
I rode a school bus for three years in Los Angeles so that was not new. One of my neighboring farm friends and I were part of the “space race” as we would design rocket ships every evening and then compare them on the bus ride to school the next morning. Another farm boy and I did a bit of exploring of another type while riding the bus to school with our coats covering our crotches (use your imagination—and “No” we never were caught).
Another schoolyard “exploratory” activity involved games. One favorite among all students (townies and farm boys) was marbles. Our version involved scooping out a shallow depression next to the wall of the school, placing the marbles we wanted to risk (bet) into the depression, and then stepping back a distance (which increased with each turn) and attempting to roll a “shooter” into the depression so it stayed. If more than one boy’s shooter stayed in, the two “winners” would roll again from a greater distance and repeat the process until there was only one shooter in the depression. The winner would then collect all the marbles in the hole and the betting process would begin again. Sadly, I don’t remember the name of this game.
The second game we called Stretch. I can’t speak for the townies, but all self-respecting farm boys had a small pocket knife in one of his pockets all the time (including at school). In this game two boys would face each other and one would start by throwing his knife at the ground at a distance calculated to be beyond the reach of the other boy’s leg. If the knife didn’t stick, it was retrieved and the other boy took his turn. If the knife stuck, the other boy would have to “stretch” one leg/foot to touch the knife all the while keeping the other leg/foot firmly in place where he had been standing. If he was successful in touching the knife without moving the other foot, he retrieved the knife, returned it to its owner, and then took his turn of throwing the knife. If he could not touch the knife, he lost the game and another boy would take his place challenging the winner.
The third and fourth games were “King of the Hill” and snowball fights (obviously reserved for winter recess). I trust I do not need to describe these. In all of these games, we boys were “exploring” our limits or increasing our skills.
The elementary part of this school was of the old style, a “square” three-story edifice with one classroom located at each of the corners of the first two floors and storage rooms on the third floor. The restrooms were in the basement and (miracles of miracles) the rope to ring the bell up in the cupola on the roof ran all the way into the boys’ restroom. “Yes,” even during a pee break (raise one finger and wait for permission) I would occasionally “just have to” “explore” pulling on that rope and then run back to class, (mischievous is in a boy’s job description).
Once I turned 10, I began to explore the woods around our home sites in South Lake Tahoe. My Boy Scout Troop provided many opportunities to explore not only the great outdoors but also my own leadership skills and camping abilities. About this time, I also began to explore other boys; not sexually, but socially; learning to interact with them and developing an understanding of what “boy culture” is and is not. Well, to be completely honest, of course there was a little pubescent sex play occasionally, but not on troop hikes or campouts.
During those halcyon days of early adolescence, more and more I learned that it is not what a person looks like on the outside but what a person is on the inside that really matters. Therefore, I now explore the minds of new acquaintances by getting to know them enough to determine if they are friend or faux material.
Those early years of exploring my environment’s people, places, and things shaped my personality and instilled within my mind, a large dose of curiosity combined with a love of knowledge. Those who know me best can certify that I ponder on the strangest things or ask unexpected questions on unusual topics in my searches for answers. If that bothers some people, it is just too bad, because this is who I am; a curious little boy trapped in an adult body.
© 29 April 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

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A Revolution of Priorities by Carlos

Decades ago, it was probably apparent to the patrons at the Diamond Lil Bar, the only gay bar in El Paso at the time, that it was my first time crossing the threshold into a gay bar. Because it was in a basement of a 1920’s-vintage building that had seen better days, I had to descend down the stairs into the bar. It took me a moment to get my bearings in the darkness, but the aroma of stale beer and acrid cigarette smoke immediately validated what I had heard about gay bars, that they were dens of gratuitous, sensory depravity. I pondered whether this was the venue for me, since it seemed like such an alien world. Nevertheless, I hungered to be around my own in spite of the fact that they terrified me. After all, the only images of gay men I had ever encountered were the eerily unsettling gay stereotypes depicted in films like Boys in the Band or Cabaret. I had been weaned on rumors of men who frequented public restrooms at Greyhound terminals or lurked in parks in search of quick encounters. If only I had had positive role models, but my potential mentors were generally closeted men living unobtrusive, invisible lives. For years, I realized that I wanted to be with a man, but I failed to act on my inclinations, cloistering myself in a monastery of self-denial. The only man I had ever touched, in fact, was when I worked briefly as a dishwasher following my freshman year in high school. At the end of the second day, when the cook and I were alone, he approached me and guided my hand toward his erect self. Though I touched him with anticipation, momentarily I panicked and stormed out of the restaurant. I walked for hours tormented by my sin, asking God for forgiveness. The next morning, the cook fired me and because I was ashamed, I cataloged the experience neatly in my repertoire of painful memories, always conflicted by my desire to touch him, yet repulsed by the act. Now, I found myself walking down into a dark dungeon at the Diamond Lil, devoured by ambivalent confusion. On the one hand, all my senses were heightened and repulsed by sensory overload. On the other hand, I recognized that what I longed for might be waiting for me just on the other side of the shadows to which I was descending. I walked around nervously. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was horrified. The men I saw were effeminate men who laughed too loud and flittered around the bar like damselflies strutting atop a mirrored lake. The women, on the other hand, wore black leather, sported short-cropped hair and glared like birds of prey in search of victims. In retrospect, I wonder how much of what I remember was a fabrication of my own fears, a sepia cinematic scene from my reel of expectations. I thundered out of the bar in a state of stupor. If this is what awaited me as a gay man, I wanted no part of it. I had sore knees from kneeling before the crucified statue of a moribund Christ at church as I prayed that my curse be lifted. I had always believed that Spirit always answers all prayers with a “Yes, a Not Yet, or an I-have-something-better-in-mind-for-you” response. I walked home from the Diamond Lil conflicted by personal and theological implications. I didn’t want to be a husk of my former self, like the pod people who are possessed by alien-prodding, no pun intended, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Based on the propaganda I had heard all my life, I nevertheless feared becoming a depressed, angry, lost soul lurking in the dark shadows like the roaches that proliferated on the steamy streets and dark alleyways. I feared a life of hurried sex acts behind greasy dumpsters and anonymous glory holes reeking of pungent ammonia. I longed to be held tenderly in the arms of one who would cradle me in his arms and assure me he would love me, yes love me, in spite of my fears that as a gay man I was undeserving. I hated that world where like Shakespeare’s Ophelia, God gave me one face and I made myself another. I lived a life in quiet desperation resulting from the insidious indoctrination from misguided propaganda. Although I wanted to be a good boy, with a relationship modeled after an unrealistic hetero romance movie-of-the-week fantasy, I also wanted dirty sex, and the dirtier, the better. And there lay my quandary. After all, while my inclinations dominated me, I was conflicted by my labeled offenses against nature, against family and community, and against God. I concluded that since I was unable to change the situation, I had to confront the challenge to change myself.

I decided that like Lucifer, I would have to rebel against the status quo and take the plunge into a new realm, hoping I would find myself not in pandemonium, but in some gay kingdom where I could eat my bread in gladness and where I could finally realize Spirit’s I-have-something-better-in-mind-for-you agenda. Only later did I realize that my act of rebellion, in fact, would materialize into my act of redemption. In years to come, I would embrace my gay and lesbian kin, as well as myself, as masterworks of creation. I would realize that although we are disparaged by the world, when we embrace our own core and honor our mystic journey, we reclaim our perfect selves.

Making changes is never easy. It took time and courage to know what I wanted and to give myself permission to direct myself toward those goals. There was a time when I felt I was not entitled to be happy because I preferred a man’s touch, a man’s affection, a man’s love. There was a time when like so many in our community, I felt that I was destined never to celebrate a healthy adult relationship, one in which he loved me regardless of my frailties, my fears, my challenges, and vice versa. More importantly, I acknowledged that I could be whole, whether in a relationship with another or not, as long as I honored the relationship with myself. When I walked into the Diamond Lil, it became a rewarding and life-altering experience. I walked in a frightened, vulnerable, defensive child, but I walked out a frightened, vulnerable, defensive adult. That evening, I discovered that I am lovable, and as such, I deserve a life in which I remove my armor and discover gratefulness and joy.

Demanding our rightful place in this world can be challenging and at times even dangerous. In spite of the many triumphs our community has won in the last few years, right-wing Republican bureaucrats and hate-mongering evangelical theocrats continue to advocate policies of hate, insisting being gay can never be affirmed or affirming. I, we, don’t need permission or approval to celebrate the milestones in our lives. For too much of my life, I was a victim of distorted, misguided lies leveled against me. It took me a lifetime to recognize that when I finally let go of the past, something better comes along. Spirit may not have changed me as I attempted to storm the gates of heaven, but before I called, Spirit did, in fact, answer.

© Denver, August 2014

About the Author

Cervantes wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.” In spite of my constant quest to live up to this proposition, I often falter. I am a man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic. Something I know to be true. I am a survivor, a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite charming. Nevertheless, I often ask Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth. My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the Tuscan Sun. I am a pragmatic romantic and a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time. My beloved husband and our three rambunctious cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under coconut palms on tropical sands. I believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty. I am always on the look-out for friends, people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread together and finding humor in the world around us.