Tag: All My Exes Live in Texas

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All My Exes Live in Texas by Will Stanton

Who the heck came up with
this topic?  Just because the title
rhymes doesn’t mean that every member of the Story-Time group will have
something worthwhile to say about it…and, in my case, certainly nothing serious.  I’ve read the lyrics of the Shafer and Shafer
song, and I can’t say that the song has any memorable quality to it, regardless
of whether the song is sung by George Straight or Marvin Gay.
To begin with, I don’t have
any exes.  I had just one partner of
twenty years before he died of lung cancer, and I don’t consider him to be an
“ex.”  Besides, if I did have exes, the
kind of person I would have associated with, as sure as hell, never would want
to move to Texas.
Oh, I’m sure that a few of
the people in Texas are very nice and have something to offer humanity, but I
have to say the the ones that I met on a couple of visits left me
unimpressed.  Now, maybe this statement
is too much of a generality, but it appeared to me that the only things the
Texans whom I met were interested in were money, power, food, and sex…and
maybe in that order.  They practiced a
form of Texan chauvinism, viewing outsiders as suspect, probably even
un-American.
The Texan culture (to use
that term loosely) seems to consist of strident guitars, pounding drums, cold
beer, and line-dancing.  The Texas
Two-Step probably was devised by quickly avoiding cow paddies out on the
prairie.  Yes, I know that Houston has an
opera, but I suspect that its oil-rich patrons gave tons of money to Carl Rove
to help him execute the 2000 George-Bush junta that placed him the Presidents’
office.
After eight years of W,
along with a plague of senators and congressman from that lunatic asylum, I
cringe at even the hint of a Texas accent. 
I recall when a Texas senator (who expressed his dislike of faggots) had
the hubris to consider running for President. 
He naturally went to his base, the N.R.A., for a speech.  One of his statements, and his thick Texas
drawl, remain indelibly printed in my memory. 
He said, “Ah own more guhns than ah need, but not as minny as ah
wohnt!”  I suppose he thought that this
sentiment qualified him to be leader of the “Free World.”
In case any of you needs
assistance in interpreting Texan speech, there is, in fact, a Texan-English
dictionary.  For example, “ohll” is that
black stuff that they pump out of the ground.   
And, “Yurp” is that place east across the ocean.
I’ll tell you what – – how
about culling out those Texan senators and congressmen who are scary, delusional
nut-cases and making them all exes.  Get
them out of Washington and send them back to Texas.  Then if they want to secede, let them.  Let them try to make it on their own without
all the federal services and benefits that they claim are a commie intrusion
upon their freedom.  The next time a
hurricane devastates their coastline cities and industries, let them try to
make it on their own.  Or, maybe they can
ask Mexico for help.
I have one more suggestion:
how about all those people throughout the nation who have had the misfortune to
have made terrible choices in selecting partners sending all their exes to
Texas?  Get them out of the country and
put them where they belong.  We could
call that program “Keep America Beautiful.”
 © 17 December 2013 

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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All My Exes Live in Texas by Ricky

        After graduating college in May of 1978, I was commissioned a
Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force (Security Police) and stationed at
Malmstrom AFB, in Great Falls, Montana.  During
that summer, I attended Camp Bullis near San Antonio, Texas for training in
security police officer duties, policies, procedures, and combat field
skills.  The first four weeks were
devoted to classroom activities and physical fitness.  The next six weeks were taught under field
conditions to hone the skills we read about in the classroom.
        One of those skills was map reading and orienteering (not to
be confused with sexual orientationeering). 
The highlight of that portion of our training involved day and night
navigation using a map and compass to follow printed directions from one point
to another.  The first set of
instructions was given us at our starting point.  We had to follow that instruction to find the
next leg of our course and so forth for a total of ten legs.  The destination of each leg was a “soup can”
mounted on top of a 3-foot post.  There
were 75 such posts scattered around the 3 square miles of our training area so
it was vital that we used the map and compass accurately or we would not arrive
at the correct final destination.
        I had done this type of compass course in the Boy Scouts so I
was not intimidated by the task and found it to be rather fun.  We had to follow the course in teams of
three.  I don’t know what the others did,
but my team drew our course out on the map and marked the desired destination
with an “X” and then walked the route. 
As we completed each leg, we drew out the next leg and added another
“X”.  No one was shooting at us since
this was training and not combat, so we had an easy time following the course
as drawn on the map except for the oppressive heat.  Due to the rolling hills, gullies, and
scattered light and dense vegetation, we would take a compass sighting and send
two of us ahead a convenient number of yards to establish a straight line.
        The legs were of varying lengths with some as long as a mile
from one point to another.  A one-degree
error over a mile distance could cause one to miss the destination by several
yards.  The target posts with the “soup
cans” containing our next set of co-ordinates were not all easily seen.  Many were placed such that one could not see
it until you passed it and looked back. 
Several were deliberately placed inside thickets of scrub brush that had
grown several feet high.  And there was
the constant watchfulness for Texas sized spiders, scorpions, tarantulas, and
snakes all while counting our steps and detouring around thickets too wide to
push through.  As I said, the day light
course was easy, but the night course was a different matter.
        The night course was the same event obviously without the
benefit of sunlight and in our case, without moonlight either.  With only flashlights, it was difficult to
send two teammates ahead to establish a straight line for walking.  We still had to deal with the local
“critters” and also the smelly night prowling ones too.  After completing the first leg with all its
difficulties, I decided to cheat a little. 
Well, it wasn’t really cheating because we were doing a compass course
and orienteering after all, and in a combat situation, it’s the result that
counts not the method.  And besides, I
really did not want to be walking around Texas all night dodging spiders,
snakes, and skunks looking for some elusive “soup can” on a post.
        Therefore, I had my team switch to nighttime orienteering using
a method not taught in our classroom experience, but taught in my Boy Scout
troop night games—celestial navigation using the stars as a guide.  After we took our compass heading and placed
the “X” on the map, we picked out a star on the horizon that was in-line with
the desired course and just walked towards that star counting our steps.  Once we switched to that method, the course
went very fast indeed.  In fact, my team
was the first one done not only for the night course, but also for the daylight
course.
        I imagine that all my “Xs” on those maps are still somewhere
in Texas, most likely in a landfill somewhere on Camp Bullis or possibly their
ashes from an incinerator are blowing around Texas on the wind.
        My only other “exes” are in Texas for sure.  My ex-president, LBJ, is buried there and the
“ex-decider” is apparently on his ranch attempting to create excellent works of
art and beauty.
© 13 January 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.
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All My Exes Live in Texas by Gillian

George Strait’s rendition of this hit was at the top of the Country charts in the summer of 1987. It seems like last week that I danced many a night away to that song, but it doesn’t take higher math to figure out that it was actually over twenty-five years ago. It was also the year I came out, at the age of forty-five, and began dancing with women, and one woman in particular, which is doubtless the main reason I remember this particular track with such fondness. It was the year I met my beautiful Betsy. All in all, 1987 was just a bloody good year!

I was living alone in Lyons then, working at IBM in Boulder. I was prompted to come out to the world in a letter to the Boulder Camera newspaper on the subject of the upcoming referendum to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. The referendum passed that November, the first one in this country and quite a trail-blazer. It was only the year before, after all, that our trusty U.S. Supreme Court had declared that the right to privacy did not extend to homosexuals. How far we have come in the last quarter century.

In 1987, Charlie’s was further East on Colfax than it is now. That location became Ms C’s when Charlie’s moved, but before that there were few places for lesbians to dance, so every Thursday night Charlie’s was turned over to the women.

Oh how I loved those wonderful Thursday nights!

I had to practice up for them, though. I mean, if you plan to indulge in same-sex dancing, you need to be at ease either leading or following. So I practiced, leading an imaginary, very sexy, partner around my basement and, yes, often to the accompaniment of “All My Exes …. ”

I carpooled with a Lyons/Estes Park group. Katie, the leader of the pack, had a passenger van and in piled five or six of us every Thursday night, come rain or shine, come gale or snow. Women came from all over Colorado. I danced with lesbians from Grand Junction to Pueblo to Julesburg, and at least once during any Thursday night, we would two-step with much gusto to “All My Exes Live in Texas.”

Many were boycotting Coors at the time for their anti-gay bigotry, and Katie had a unique way of introducing herself to Coors-supping strangers. She bought another beer brand, took it over to the Coors-drinker, and wordlessly replaced the Coors with her preferred brand. Needless to say that engendered many interesting conversations!

When Charlie’s closed at two in the morning, the carpool group went to the White Spot for breakfast, accompanied by endless cups of caffeine stimulant, and an analysis of the night’s events. Then it was back to Lyons, a quick shower and change, and off to work.

Just the thought of it exhausts me, now! But how I enjoy those memories.

The beautiful, energetic, funny, Katie, now nearing ninety and lost to dementia, can no longer enjoy hers. The only other remaining member of our car-pool group lost her home to last year’s Estes Park fire. Yes, a lot has changed over twenty-five years; not all good.

And the moral of that story is; make your memories while you can, and enjoy them while you may, for who knows what the future may bring?

Sometime in ’87, a new women’s dance-bar called Divine Madness opened up, so the carpool extended to two nights a week, but thankfully we could go to DM on the weekend without work the next day looming over us, while of course we kept up our Thursdays at Charlie’s. And so we doubled the frequency of trying to pick up a good woman while dancing to “All My Exes Live in Texas.”

One Friday night in November 1987, I spotted Betsy across the floor at Divine Madness and asked her for a dance. This is where, obviously, I should say that the tune we danced to was “All My Exes Live in Texas,” but it was not, it was Ann Murray singing, “Could I Have This Dance,” a beautiful waltz. I returned to my car-pool group after that dance and announced, “I’m going to marry that woman!”

Of course I didn’t dream, at that time, that some day I would be able to make that statement literally become true. Oh, yes, a lot has changed since then; and some things have stayed the same. With sincere apologies to a great dance tune, I cannot say that “All My Exes … ” offers much in the way of romance: rather the opposite! But for me, “Could I Have This Dance,” is every bit as meaningful today as it was that November night in 1987.

I’ll always remember,
the song they were playing,
The first time we danced and I knew
As we swayed to the music,
and held to each other,
I fell in love with you.

Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life,
Could you be my partner
every night,
when we’re together
it feels so right,
Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life?

January, 2014

About the Author

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

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All My Exes Live In Texas by Pat Gourley

Actually none of my exes live in Texas, are from Texas or to my knowledge ever had any significant connection to Texas. I have been there only once. That was an overnight stay in Dallas for teaching purposes on a new HIV drug called ddc. We were beginning a study with it at the AIDS clinic where I worked. I believe the year was 1990 or 1991. I seem to recall that this overnighter was in August and other than staying in a very plush hotel it was the throat grabbing heat and humidity that I remember best. The short trip from cab to inside the hotel made me think ‘so this is what hell is like.’

For those of you who have not seen the Dallas Buyers Club, currently playing at the Esquire Theatre one of the drugs they were trying hard to have access to early was ddc. AZT was all that was available early on and many thought it was poison. Ironically it was the high dosage of AZT that was the big problem and in the long run it proved less toxic than ddc. AZT is still in use today in combinations with other drugs and ddc nowhere to be found.

I believe the first buyers clubs were in New York City and on the west coast a direct offshoot of ACT-UP organizing and efforts. They did not originate in Texas.

I strongly recommend the movie which I feel is great validation for folks not sitting by quietly waiting to be saved (or not) but rather taking matters into our own hands and strongly and forcefully demanding change and action. This is something we queers are quite adept at when we put our minds to it. There has been some controversy in the gay press about the movie and after last night’s Golden Globe awards where the best actor and best supporting actor awards were won by the stars of the movie some minor bitching continues. I won’t get into the controversies here other than to say I think it is perhaps a bit “much ado about not much.” Everyone does agree the acting was superb.

In retrospect I do feel bad that I was attending a drug company teaching session on ddc in Dallas in the early 1990’s rather than spending my time visiting their buyer’s club. We of course had to be properly trained on the drug before we could be designated a study site for it. I never got to meet the infamous Ron Woodroof and the charismatic Rayon, the lead characters in the Dallas Buyers Club.

In the movie the main protagonist is a man named Ron Woodroof played by Matthew McConaughey. The other main character is a trans-women played in quite dramatic fashion by Jared Leto named Rayon. A strong subtext throughout the movie is the genuine bonds that developed between her and McConaughey a supposedly straight man. The Dallas Buyers Club itself as an entity doesn’t really take off until Rayon becomes involved and brings in many customers. It needed a bit more legitimate queer street cred, which Rayon brought to it, countering the McConaughey character and his early on really vicious, drug addled homophobia.

Buyer’s Clubs became a quite widespread phenomenon in the late 1980’s and were a force even locally here in Denver until the late 1990’s when protease inhibitors came on the scene. The flawed but immensely better new drugs that actually worked to keep the virus at bay tended to take the desperate energy out of the sails of the various PWA coalitions and the often loosely affiliated buyers clubs.

Locally there was a strong PWA coalition and a loosely associated buyer’s club. I was never involved directly with either though I did on occasion contribute educational pieces for their newsletter called Resolute, my most infamous piece being one titled “Its Chemotherapy Stupid.” I might read it here some day.

I do though recall that our buyer’s club was run in a bit more egalitarian fashion than the Dallas Buyers Club was. Less profit motivated for sure and really queer run here. I only accessed them once and that was the day before my partner David died at Rose Medical Center on September 17th, 1995. His AIDS was quite advanced by this time and David had just been home a few days from a rather lengthy and traumatic hospital stay. He adamantly did not want to return for another stay or to die there if at all possible.

The big issue was controlling pain. All we had at home were morphine tables and plenty of them but they didn’t seem to be working and were a sustained release version. I thought a quicker acting liquid form might be more helpful but it was late in the evening and accessing it through his doc at Rose problematic. So I picked up the phone and called one of my friends, a local buyer’s club member. Within less than an hour our doorbell rang. No one was at the door but there was a small paper bag on the stoop with two bottles of liquid morphine.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work either. So we gave in and went back to Rose for IV pain relief. That did help immensely but David died the next morning at 9 A.M.

I am reminded constantly how lucky I am to be alive today. I turned 65 yesterday. I know that makes me a youngster in this room but in the AIDS community I am an old man. I do think I owe a great debt of gratitude to all the AIDS activists of the 1980’s and 1990’s for speeding up the process of drug development and access to these drugs for people with AIDS. If not for a lot of loudmouthed and uppity queens, including many in Texas, I might very well not be here today.

© January 2014

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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All My Exes Live in Texas by Lewis

[Disclaimer:
I sincerely hope that I do not offend anyone by what I am about
to say.  If Texas is the state of your
birth, please forgive me.  I understand
that you had no choice in the matter and would naturally feel somewhat defensive.  I apologize in advance for my unbridled
antagonism toward your home state.  If
Texas is your adopted state, however, then we must simply agree to disagree.  Since you are gay and because Texan’s in
general are about as homophobic as you can get, I have no desire to add to your
mental anguish. I hope you can get some help.]
 It’s safe to assume, I
suppose, that by the term “ex” is meant “erstwhile”.  It would also likely be safe to assume that
the “erstwhile” refers to lovers. 
Since I have had only two lovers in my lifetime and one of them is dead
and the other lives in Michigan, there is very little I can say about this
subject directly.  However, I do have a
few things to say about the state of Texas in general.
If I ever have a lover who
says to me, “Let’s move to Texas”, the next words out of my mouth
will be, “So long, pardner. 
Remember to roll your pant legs up so they don’t get in the horse
shit”.  I hate Texas so much that,
whenever I think of the Alamo, I’m overcome not with pride but with
regret.  My most hated actor, John Wayne,
not only directed the movie, The Alamo,
but cast himself in the role of Col. Davy Crockett.  As fate would have it, I had been planning to
watch the movie the very evening the call came that my father had died of a
massive stroke.  That was not the cause
of my regret, however.  No, that was
because the wrong side lost.
My daddy had a brother–the
youngest of four–who moved his family to Austin.  He was a high muckety-muck with the state
school Board.  When I say
“high”, I mean tall–he was about 6 foot 4.  He was also the first of the four brothers to
die.  I’m not going to say that Texas
politics killed him but the Texan he married might have been implicated had
there been an investigation.  Not only
did she have a drawl that would have shamed the two Andy’s–Devine and
Griffith–into going back to acting school, she had a temper that had me hiding
beneath the dining room buffet in abject fear.
Oh, they sure do take their
football serious down there.  I once attended
a game between the Texas Longhorns and the Aggies.  It was the only time I saw a referee get
knocked out.  I think the crowd made more
noise over that than any of the scoring plays.
During the OPEC-induced
recession of 1984, I and several of my co-workers at Ford Motor in Dearborn,
MI, were laid off.  One of them moved to
Texas looking for work.  He stayed less
than a year due to culture shock.
And what’s the deal with
“The Lone Star State” as their motto? 
According to Wikipedia, “Texas
is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify Texas as a former
independent republic and as a reminder of the state’s struggle for independence
from Mexico”.  Sounds like a lot of
“Texas hooey” to me.  I think
the motto is a way to remind the other 49 states how special Texas is and that
they just might secede at any time.
Secession is no idle threat,
coming as it did from Texas’ governor himself. 
I would humbly suggest that the U.S. cede Texas to Mexico in exchange
for Tijuana.  Not only would this overnight
raise the cultural and political intelligence of the United States as a whole
but also cure a good bit of our problems with border security.
As a boy, I was enamored of
the Lone Ranger.  As a man, I’ve learned
that the real Texas Rangers used to take Mexicans out into the desert and shoot
them, leaving their corpses to rot, just as I’ve seen John Wayne do in the
movie, Red River.
Well, I don’t want this to
turn into a rant.  If you’ve ever been to
Amarillo, you’ll understand why I think that the people of Texas have suffered
enough already.  I’m just biding my time
for the day when the brown-skinned immigrant voters outnumber the knuckle-heads
that control the politics down there today. 
Better the state turn purple than my face.
© 13 January 2014 

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.