Tag: AIDS

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Gym³, by Ricky

Gym1  
          It was in early
June 1956, when I was banished (due to divorce proceedings) from California and
sent to Minnesota to live with my grandparents on their farm.  I had just turned 8 years old on the 9th.  At the time, I expected to be gone for only
the summer; but it turned into a 2 year “prison sentence” away from home and
“loving” parents.
          I shared a room and bed with my uncle,
Dixon, who was 11 in December of 1955 and 11 ½ by June of ’56; and about to
enter 6th grade, while I was looking at starting 3rd
grade.  Due to that traumatic spanking I
received when only 4 or 5, I was extremely shy and reluctant to let anyone see
me dressing, undressing, in my underwear, or bathing; and would “pitch a fit”
if someone tried.  Of course, I couldn’t
do much when Grandma bathed me the first two times in the summer kitchen’s
galvanized “wash tub” because I hadn’t washed all the dirt off by myself.  I quickly learned to do that however.  I was dirty because farm life is not soil
free and baths were only on Saturday nights to be fresh for church on
Sunday.  I had to use my uncle’s used
bathwater so perhaps I never really got clean.
          When school began, my uncle, who by
then knew from personal experience of my extreme reactions to any attempt to
breach my “modesty”, began to tell me about having to take showers naked with
other boys present after gym classes beginning in 6th grade.  Daily school showers were a necessity back
then as most farms did not have indoor plumbing and once a week bathing on the
farm just wasn’t sufficient in a close social environment.  Pubescent boys smell as they perspire during
gym activities and recess playtime.
          As a result of my uncle’s teasing
about showering naked with other boys, I began to develop a fear of 6th
grade, even though it was 3 school years away and I expected to return to
California soon.  The months of my exile passed,
and a new school year began and I realized that 6th grade was now
closer than desired and my fear level increased but mostly ignored for the time
being.  Fortunately, I was given a
reprieve and my “sentence” was commuted in late May of 1958 and I was taken
back to California to live with my mother and her new husband.
          When I began 5th grade at
So. Lake Tahoe, I discovered that there were no showers after recess or any
P.E. classes in elementary school, those being reserved and mandatory in high
school only.  I was able to put my fear
and stress level on hold for 4 more years, while I got to “enjoy” the
beginnings of puberty.
          In September of 1962 I finally had to
face my fear as I had finally arrived at high school and the dreaded after P.E.
mandatory naked showers with other boys. 
By now, due to my well-established desire to see any boy naked, I no
longer feared being naked among boys (or girls for that matter).  What I was afraid of was having a spontaneous
erection while showering, because at 14, I was still having random ones. 
          At school, they mostly struck when I
was sitting in front of my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Joyce
Holmstad.  She wore low cut blouses and
sat on the front edge of her desk (directly in front of me) and would often
lean forward revealing to me (or maybe exposing to me) some bra and more than
sufficient for erection purposes, cleavage. 
I always had to hide my crotch with books when I left at the end of the
class period.  But I digress from the
gym.  In all the four years of mandatory
PE showers, no one ever got an erection that I could tell, and I certainly took
every opportunity to look for one.
          Gym2
          Actually, gym2
is really Jim #1.  I met Jim Robertson
when he was 11 and I was 13.  We became
friends and he asked me to go to church with him one Sunday and we went for
about one month until the pastor and his baby were killed in a car crash.  I invited Jim to join Boy Scouts with me and
he did.  We were two of seven boys who
ended up starting a new troop, #456, at So. Lake Tahoe.  I taught him about sex and we became
sex-playmates on sleep over nights but never did anything together during scout
campouts.  He ended up going to live with
his aunt and, according to him, began to really enjoy sex with his female
cousin.
          Gym3
          As you may have guessed, gym3
is really Jim #2.  Jim Dunn was the son
of a California highway patrolman and joined my scout troop when he was 12 and
I was 14.  He was taller than most boys
his age and matched my height of 5′ 11”. 
His hair was blondish and eyes a very nice shade of blue.  I liked him for his looks and gentle
personality.  Strangely, I was never
sexually attracted to him probably because he did not look “interested”.  I was so naïve about that stuff. 
          As we aged and moved into Explorer
Scouts, we shared a couple of experiences that should have tipped me off that
he was interested in boy sex play, but I never caught on.  As an adult, I learned that he died early
from AIDS.
          That’s all of my “gym” memories. 
© 24 Oct 2011 
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 was
sent to live 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 9-11-2001 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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The Recliner, by Pat Gourley

Sometime round 1993 my partner who was then suffering significant side effects from advanced HIV disease and near incapacitating peripheral neuropathy purchased two blue recliners. We had them located in our basement right in front of the TV. They brought great comfort and the ability for a modicum of relaxation to him in his final years.

I therefore highly recommend recliners for the terminally ill. If, however, you are not looking imminent death in the face I absolutely do not recommend recliners. If you occasionally feel the need to recline there are sofas, beds or in a pinch even the floor for that and for god-sakes don’t add a nearby TV or computer screen to the mix.

One of my greatest personal fears with advancing age is the possibility of debilitating dementia. Being the vain, drama queen I am a loss of cognitive function leads my hit parade of bad things that could go wrong. Living alone and with that reality unlikely to change, the thought of winding up in a near vegetative state in a nursing home really lacks appeal. The reality of course is that HIV will probably do me in first. Or perhaps some nasty side-effect from the meds I take to keep “full-blown” AIDS at bay will be my cause of death long before I have the chance to develop dementia. HIV meds are a strong driver for metabolic syndrome and its possible ramifications like diabetes, heart disease or stroke. Living to a ripe old age does present us with an ever-increasing menu of options for returning to the stardust we all are.

But the at times all consuming drive to postpone the inevitable tends to occupy an inordinate number of my waking hours. I was therefore very interested in a recently published study out of Canada dealing with exercise as a viable intervention for postponing or possibly preventing the development of vascular dementia, Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. Lets face it in this era of Trump all things Canadian have particular appeal.

There is a known genetic mutation that increases the chances of getting dementia. This gene is called the apolipoprotein E (APOE). What this study strongly implied was that even if you didn’t have this APOE that might pre-dispose you to dementia by not exercising you blew the benefit of not having the bad gene. It is an important caveat though to know this study showed association only and not causation. In other words the study did not prove that lack of exercise causes dementia.

People with this APOE gene are believed to have three to four times the risk of developing dementia. However people without the gene who did not exercise had the same risk for dementia as those with it. The amount of exercise needed to decrease risk was modest – brisk walking three times a week.

Remember regular aerobic exercise seems to lower the risk of dementia, Parkinsons and Alzheimers – gene or no gene. The bottom line here is get your ass out of the recliner.

I have included a link to a review article for this study: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lack-of-exercise-might-invite-dementia/

© February 2017

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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True Colors, by Nicholas

Take a Walk in the Grove

I want to tell a story today that involves one of our own, a member of this group. It’s about a group of people who showed their true colors in their loyalty to one friend and created a unique space for our entire community. Along the South Platte River on the edge of downtown Denver, is an area of Commons Park designated as a spot to remember those who have died of HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. It’s called The Grove and it is one of only two AIDS memorial gardens in this country—the other is in San Francisco. Our own Randy Wren was part of that group that labored for seven years to make it happen.

The Grove started with one man’s vision. Doug McNeil knew of the memorial grove in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and asked, literally as his dying wish, why can’t Denver create such a spot. Doug died of AIDS in 1993, a time when the LGBT community was focused more on the battle to undo the infamous Amendment 2 than on the AIDS epidemic. Amendment 2, passed by Colorado voters in 1992, prohibited any government or government agency in this state from enacting any provisions to ban discrimination against lesbian and gay people. (There’s an excellent exhibition on that history outside this door in The Center’s lobby.) And it was a time of still rampant AIDS phobia.

A small group of Doug’s friends vowed to carry out his dream for The Grove. They weren’t the usual gaggle of community activists and politicos. They included socialites, arts community supporters, an attorney, and an Episcopal priest. Most were not gay. They organized a non-profit group called The Grove Project, got 501c3 IRS status so they could collect funds, and began the long process of taking on the bureaucracy of the city’s Parks Department.

The Parks Department never openly rejected the idea but negotiations dragged on for years. At first, the area in front of the performing arts complex on Speer Blvd was proposed. The city objected that theatre and concert goers wouldn’t want to be reminded of the awfulness of AIDS on their nights out on the town. Another location in a park in southeast Denver was suggested but that would have left the memorial far from the Capitol Hill neighborhood that was most affected by AIDS.

At some point, the riverfront came into the discussion. At that time, the area was just beginning to be developed. There was a quiet, somewhat out of the way spot in a new park—Commons Park—that the city was planning. That fit the criteria of being visible, centrally located and quiet enough to promote the atmosphere desired.

The Grove was envisioned to be a natural area for contemplation. It was landscaped very simply with trees, natural grasses and shrubs, and some rocks. A simple inscription reads: “Dedicated to the remembrance of those who have lost their lives to AIDS and to their loving caregivers who helped them live out those lives with dignity.”

The Grove was dedicated in a simple ceremony in August 2000. Doug McNeil’s loyal and persistent friends accomplished his dream after seven years of work.

Now, The Grove sits largely ignored and sort of neglected in a recessed corner of Commons Park, near 15th Street and Little Raven Street. It is surrounded by high priced condos and apartments but it is still a quiet and attractive area.

Recently, a movement got underway to renew the spot, clean it up, refresh the landscaping and, most importantly, make the community aware that this historical and spiritual resource exists. In recalling all the individuals who battled, and continue to battle AIDS, we remember how our community grew from that experience. We remember those we’ve lost. We remember when being gay changed from just giving the most fabulous parties to a truly mature community of caregivers and advocates. We remember our past and that we have a history. A history that is the root of our present and future.

I encourage everyone to seek out The Grove and spend a few quiet moments there remembering. And maybe you can help in its renewal. You too can show your true colors.

© 2016

About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Movies, by Pat Gourley

Unlike many of my gay
male brethren in particular, I am not a great fan of the big screen.  A consistent theme in my life has been to
almost exclusively read non-fiction books and that spills over these days to
rarely seeing any movie that is not a documentary. I am fond of anything
dealing with political themes but in rather cowardly fashion I suppose I do avoid
films on the climate crisis. I find them very valuable but so disturbingly truthful
and realistic I can’t watch. I suppose I do watch documentaries because I am
lazy and it’s easier to just sit back and have it all laid out for me. Reaching
for the popcorn is easier than reading and having to continually turn the page.
Perhaps this avoidance to
film dates back to the first movie I ever saw in a theatre and that was
Disney’s Old Yeller. A quick
refresher: the movie takes place in Texas in 1869 and the star is a loveable
yellow lab, who would put Lassie to shame any day. Yeller of course had the
advantage of being teamed up with a much more relatable friend in 15 year old
Travis. Lassie was burdened with Timmy who seemed destined in every episode to
make really stupid choices that only his dog could save him from. What of
course so seared Old Yeller into my
psyche was that he gets rabies fighting off a predatory wolf and has to be shot
by Travis. I never really got past this despite the Disney attempts to soften
the ending with a new puppy for the family. Sorry, the damage was done. I
actually don’t think I saw any movies after that until the James Bond movies
came out and the obvious draw for me to these films was James and not any of
the Fox-News-personality-type female sexual partners central to every Bond
film.
I do though appreciate
how important film is to the LGBT community and the tremendous impact this can
have in both very positive ways and damagingly negative reinforcement of out
internalized homophobia. So much of our early coming out is the struggle to find
the “other”, a soul we can relate to. The search to find someone else like us
is often relentless. The game-changing realization that I am not alone is
certainly a recurring theme bringing us back again and again to celluloid
escapism as a way to soothe our pain. Gay men in particular may want to be fucked
by the leading man but it is the strong female leads that have been our succor
for decades and we grasp at any hit of a queer character or theme.
Perhaps the singular
patron saint of the tortured history of Queers and their portrayal in film was
Vito Russo. He is best known for his landmark book the Celluloid Closet, still easily available and I suspect or hope a
copy or two is in The Center’s library. Russo
was one of the founders of GLAAD in 1985; previously know as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
In recognition of bisexual and trans-persons the organization is now just GLAAD
and no long an acronym.  GLAAD was
initially formed in response to the hateful and vile portrayal of persons with AIDS
by the New York media particularly the New York Post. Vito Russo himself died
from AIDS in 1990.
GLAAD remains quite
active today keeping a watchful eye on all forms of media for inaccurate
portrayals of Queer folk. They have developed their own criteria for analyzing
how LGBT characters are portrayed called the Vito Russo Test. This link is to
their web site: http://www.glaad.org
This Vito Russo Test is
patterned after the “Bechdel Test” which is used to look at how women are
portrayed in film. I have included the criteria for the Russo test and they are
as follows:
1.The film
contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or
transgender.
2. That character
must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or
gender identity. I.E. they are made up of the same sort of unique character
traits commonly used to differentiate straight characters from one another.
3. The LGBT
character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would
have a significant effect. Meaning they are not there to simply provide
colorful commentary, paint urban authenticity, or (perhaps most commonly) set
up a punchline. The character must matter.
These criteria are taken from GLAAD’s 2016
Studio Responsibility Index. Unfortunately, this year out of 22 films with
significant LGBT characters only 8 or 36% have met these criteria and that is
apparently a significant decrease from recent years. http://www.glaad.org/sri/2016/vitorusso
Our struggle continues; so to the
barricades brother and sisters or at least to the theatres with a
discriminating eye.
© 25 July 2016
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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True Colors, by Pat Gourley

“You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
Its hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside of
you
Can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let
them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow.”
Lyrics from True Colors
by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.
Once you read the lyrics
to the song True Colors made a famous
hit by Cyndi Lauper back in 1986 you can see why it has been adapted as a Queer
anthem and especially by certain LGBT youth groups. A great coming out song if
there ever was one.
Steinberg originally
wrote the song about his mother. Later modified by Tom Kelly and picked up,
when offered, by Cyndi Lauper. At the time she apparently felt drawn to it
because of the recent death of a friend from AIDS.
All the gains made by
Queer people in the past 50+ years or so can be laid squarely at the feet of
our being willing to let our true colors shine through. As has been mentioned
many times in this group and then powerfully validated by our personal stories
it is the individual coming out process that is such a very powerful
change-creating phenomenon.
It is this act of true
self-expression that sets us apart from all other minorities and gives us such
power. Also the fact that we are part of and transcend all economic, class and
racial groups gives us a leg up. We are everywhere.
The AIDS connection to
the song brought to it by Lauper has made me wonder about the reason and
implications for recent data on new HIV infections just released last week. In a
story from the Boston Globe published on February 23rd, 2016 they
broke down recent CDC data on projected lifetime risk of HIV among gay men by
race.
The data was sobering to
say the least. Overall risk for HIV infection among Americans as a whole has
decreased. The risk of infection was 1 in 78. It has now decreased to 1 in 99
for the U.S. population. However, per the CDC report the lifetime risk for
queer men is 1 in 6, overwhelmingly greater than for the population as a whole.
That is amazing enough but where it gets truly shocking is in the racial
disparity for gay men. The lifetime risk for black gay men is 1 in 2, for
Latinos it is 1 in 4 and for white gay men 1 in 11.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/23/sobering-findings-hiv-half-black-gay-men-will-infected-during-their-lifetimes-cdc-finds/hT0lGsMsJqqn8OMsXRMZMJ/story.html
WTF! I guess not
surprising the greatest risk for black gay men is in southern states but the
highest risk is in the District of Columbia. As depressing as this news is it
actually reflects an improvement over the past but still unacceptably bad.
In the actual CDC report
certain prevention challenges for the gay African American community were
identified. These were: socioeconomic factors, smaller and more exclusive
sexual networks, sexual relations with older men, lack of awareness of HIV
status and stigma, homophobia and discrimination.  I would hope that these “prevention
challenges” are ones that have been identified by community-based black gay men
themselves and not pronouncements that have come down from on high by CDC AIDS
specialists.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/bmsm.html
So I’d ask what we as the
broader queer community can do to help reverse these dismal statistics? A first
step might be taking a hard look at how significant racism is still a reality
within the queer community particularly and what am I doing personally to
address any latent racism I may harbor.
Does the safe space exist
in a non-threatening manner for the queer black community to develop and thrive
and what is needed from the broader queer community to facilitate this happening?
Perhaps this just involves our ongoing participation in the struggle for peace
and social justice.
We must guard against a
cop-out response to these stats by saying well it is the homophobia within the
broader African American community that is responsible for this. Most of us
have come out of families and communities less that welcoming of our queerness
if not out right hostile. Something else has to be going on here. At the very
least these extremely sobering AIDS statistics need to be a reason for pause
and sincere soul searching certainly by gay white men looking sincerely at how we
might be part of the problem too.
The best HIV prevention strategy
is the creation of a society where everyone’s true colors can shine
through from cradle to grave.
© 25 Feb 2016 
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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Purple, by Will Stanton

How much can one say about purple? The person who chose this topic told me that he had something quite special in mind. I don’t. So, I guess I will have to settle with simply commenting upon a few situations involving the color purple which I have observed over the years.

To start off with, I’ll be blunt and succinct about this first example just to get it out of the way.
Unfortunately (and I will not dwell on these points, either), purple often can be an indication of some serious medical crisis. I recall seeing a very elderly, fragile man whose lips were a scary dark purple, almost black. Of course, we all are familiar with the ominous purple lesions too often seen on people of our generation, Kaposi’s sarcoma, the infection with human herpesvirus that often has been associated with AIDS. And, if you permit me to quickly mention it, I never will erase from my memory seeing the faint streaks of purple as I watched my partner die from lung-cancer. Enough of that, however.
Moving on, some people claim that certain ethnic cultures prefer various colors. I recall early in my education, I worked one summer for an architect, my entertaining the idea that I might choose architecture as a profession. The firm, at that time, was drawing up plans for some low-income housing, most of the residents predicted to be blacks. One architect stated that a major color theme for the interior would be the color purple “because blacks like the color purple.” His comment struck me as an over-generalization, although I do recall seeing groups of blacks elegantly dressed in their Sunday finest at Black Eyed Pea. Often, their suit-coats and fancy dresses were in various shades of purple.
The school color for South High School is purple, a color most prominently displayed on football outfits. Unlike the 1950s or 60s, I never see, these days, students wearing school jackets or shirts sporting the color purple. I have seen some girls, however, with purple hair. 
I also know someone who claims the color of his vehicle, known as a “Cube,” is burgundy, although it looks more like a dark purple to me. I have to look carefully in the sunlight to conclude that, however.
Here, I have another opportunity to use one of my favorite phrases, “bloviating ignoramus.” I had no desire ever to watch Rush Limbaugh on TV, although I occasionally have stumbled upon some clips on the news. I recall seeing Rush so fired up and blustering with some false accusation he wished to spread about someone whom he hates that, I swear, his face seemed to be turning purple. Somehow, he appears to have avoided a heart attack or stroke.
I have witnessed that purple-faced phenomenon first-hand, too, with a local intellectual-Neanderthal whom I refer to as “Neanderthal-Joe.” Back in the early days of the Bush junta and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I casually mentioned to Joe that I was disappointed with Bush. Joe stood up, starting screaming at me, stomping around the room, slathering at the lips. He retorted that “Bush is doing God’s work!” His face literally was turning purple.
That happened also with a mutual acquaintance and good friend of Joe, a man who quickly had become a millionaire working for the sleaziest mortgage-banking company in America. When the Colorado Supreme Court declared Amendment 2, which in effect denied civil rights to gays, was unconstitutional, this man was infuriated, stating to me that, “Nine unelected men in black robes denied the will of the people.” I “pushed his button” by replying, “When I was in grade school, we were taught that America is a constitutional democracy.” At that, he exploded, sputtering and shouting. His face was a slightly different shade of purple from Joe’s.
Last of all, and on a more positive side, there also are some purple things that give me great pleasure. I have enjoyed seeing nature’s paintbrush at work with purple flowers, sunsets, Purple Martin birds, and bushes of wild berries, so dark that they look almost black. And, who can resist a heaping helping of homemade berry cobbler? Now, there’s something purple that is enjoyable to think about.

© 8 January 2016

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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Moving by Pat Gourley

Moving from one abode to another has been something I have done quite a bit of since moving to Colorado in December of 1972. A quick and probably incomplete count would indicate at least 13 moves and different living situations. And as of today I am seriously entertaining the possibility of a move back to San Francisco after the 1st of the year.

Now I suppose this could be viewed as an immature and possibly pathological inability to settle down but I prefer to look at as a chance to cleanse. This was brought home to me in a short comment on Facebook that someone made to a friend’s post about “moving again”. The commenter said he viewed his many moves as cleansing behavior since these changes in locale usually resulted in the jettisoning of fair amount of accumulated stuff.

I suppose if I tried to further rationalize my frequent moves I could put a Buddhist spin on it and think of it as one more lesson in impermanence. Now this lesson of impermanence certainly has come easier to me in my life than say a Syrian refugee whose home has been blown to bits or the Palestinian family who have repeatedly had their homes demolished by the Israeli army. It is even hard for me to imagine the loss experienced by people whose homes in South Carolina that were recently flooded or abodes blown completely away by a Kansas tornado.

When I think about it though my major lesson in impermanence has not been related to any physical moves I have made but rather by the death of my loving companion David in September of 1995. In the last days before his death when he would lay down to try to temper the significant pain he was experiencing and that liquid morphine was only dulling he would ask to be covered in a purple sarong I had purchased at some Grateful Dead concert a few years earlier. It was this simple piece of cloth that somewhat soothed his soul. It wasn’t his nice car, his extensive Haviland China collection, our nice home or the many of his beautiful stain glass creations but rather my foot rubs and then covering him with that shawl.

I still have that shawl now tattered and frayed and it lives on my zafu as stark reminder of my own impermanence. These days as I contemplate a move back to OZ the main driver for this planned relocation is to get back to the strong village aspect to living at the B&B. I have many more friends here but I don’t live with any of them and this is really a bit of a lonely situation. The likelihood of an old wrinkled HIV+ queen finding another partner is slim to non-existent.

I have used my current job at Urgent Care to partially fill this void of being alone and though I like and enjoy the company of my co-workers the seemingly endless stream of folks with abdominal pain, bleeding vaginas, heroin addiction and homelessness can be taxing.

I do enjoy people being in my business on a daily basis in my actual living situation. If I were to die at home now my cat would eat me before anyone would find me. In San Francisco I would have folks looking for me frequently if for no other reason than that they want their breakfast and it would be highly unlikely that they are seeking me out because their vagina is bleeding or they are jonesing bad for their next smack pop.

So once again I will be moving as a way of dealing with my own inevitable impermanence and hoping my last dance is in the company of folks who love me and I them.

Addendum February 18th, 2016: I will not be moving back to San Francisco but rather staying in Denver and making a concerted effort to incorporate even more fully the many friends I have here into my everyday life. Details on this decision will follow in future ramblings.

© November 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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Alas, Poor Homophobes by Lewis

An Open Letter to Universal Haters Everywhere

These are the times that try men’s souls–at the very least those souls, male or female, whose salvation depends upon making other souls miserable. It must seem to you that the very forces of human progress are aligned against you, that every cause toward which you have given the last full measure of your devotion has almost overnight become politically incorrect. You must long for the day when it was acceptable to denigrate kikes, wops, niggers, slopes and whatever minority whose presence in your consciousness caused you so much consternation in the past. Then along came Nazi Germany and Martin Luther King, Jr. and, before you could shake a faggot at it, tolerance began to creep into American society. (Strange that 300 years of Christian dogma wasn’t doing the trick.)

It must have been quite an adjustment, having to look for new subjects toward which to direct your righteous anger for all that’s unfair in this life. All the easy-to-spot suspects were becoming off limits–the odd-colored skin, the funny dress, the strange accent.

So, it must have seemed that Providence smiled on you once again when you realized that, if you looked closely enough, you could actually spot a queer by his or her manner of dress or lisp or limp wrists. Unlike your earlier victims who could barely conceal their differences, queers often were terrified of being “found out”. They thought they could mix with ordinary people and kind of blend in. That idea must have really pissed you off. I mean, if they could pass for straight, didn’t that mean that someone might mistake you for a queer? No, there was only one way that you could clearly demonstrate that you were a manly man–bash, ridicule and call out queers whenever and wherever you found them.

What a blessing it must have been for you when AIDS came along. Not only did the disease become a litmus test for being queer, it thinned their ranks so you didn’t have to bother so much. I’m sure that made you feel quite smug. I could almost hear you saying, “What goes around, comes around”.

It must have felt good to put yourself in the position of being a champion for the sacred institution of marriage against the attempts of perverts to infiltrate the institution, even as the divorce rate was skyrocketing. One of your most memorable victories was the nobly-named “Defense of Marriage Act”, which scolded those states that dared grant full legal recognition of same-sex unions.

But here it is nearly 20-years later and the U.S. Supreme Court is almost certain to rule by the end of the month that gay people are deserving of the same equal protection and due process under the Constitution as anybody else, including you. I’ll bet that really gets your goat. Who would have thought such a thing could happen so quickly?

You must have shuddered recently when Wal-Mart threatened economic reprisals against states that passed so-called Freedom of Religion laws that would sanction faith-based bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered folk. (I doubt that you can read that last sentence without gagging mentally but I thought the acronym, glbt, might be mistaken for a typo.)

“What happened to my country?” you might rightfully ask. Well, the answer is pretty simple, really. It’s the same thing that happens whenever two human beings have the inclination and the time to get to know one another before the labeling starts. It’s what happens when commonality overwhelms tribalism. It’s what happens when reality trumps preconception. The Jew, the gay, the black you know can’t always be the exception. In fact, they’re almost always never are the exception. Anne Frank may have said it best when she wrote in her remarkable diary–

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.”

Freedom and dignity cannot be hoarded, like money. They are the birthright of every person. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be here in America. You cannot make yourself more free by denying anyone else their freedom. It’s not theirs to give away and it’s not yours to take. It is not yours to say whom I shall I love any more than you can deny me the same air you breathe. It’s not a sacrifice at all. In fact, you won’t even notice the difference. Once you let this sink in, however, you may notice something else is different. You may find yourself walking with a bit lighter step. And that would be good not only for your feet but for your heart as well.

© 15 June 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.