Tag: Carlos

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Writing is Like a Gondola Ride, by Carlos

Writing is an Exploration.
You start from nothing
and learn as you go….E. L.
Doctorow
Last
week when my husband Ron and I first boarded the Venetian-inspired gondola
intent on riding the canals of Fort Lauderdale, I felt a bit self-conscious.
After all, we are not overt crusaders of gay rights, instead changing the world
one grain of sand at a time. Yet, here we were about to draft a testament
declaring our emancipation. As sole passengers of our flat-bottomed boat decked
out in sensuous cushions, billowing curtains, and floral bouquets, we were making
an emotive and political statement about our right to love as our gondolier
guided us through the circuitous waterways. Tito, our gondolier, greeted us
warmly, taking pictures of the happy couple as we smiled in romantic bliss, I
probably smiling more like a shy bridegroom than a well-seasoned lover. At the
table next to a divan in which we reclined, we laid out a feast, cold English
ginger ale, honeyed matzo crackers, a disc of Boursin cheese flecked with
cracked black pepper, and strawberries with sensuous nipples begging to be tongued,
nibbled and devoured. Having requested classical romantic music, Chopin,
Debussy, Rachmaninoff, I soon discovered that the music wafted out into the
canals and walkways, enrapturing the world around us with love’s hymns. We made
an adorable couple, as we lounged and fed each other blissfully, basking in the
gentle heartbeats of lyrical watery refrains. 
The
gentle waves beneath us gurgled in a rhythmical flow as they massed and fell like
the breathing of my beloved sleeping under a field of stars keeping watch. The
gondola sliced through the water slow and steady, its bow knifing through the
glassy reflection and creating undulating waves measuring a beat out to shore.
The sound of the waters kissing the shoreline commingled with the soft strains
of piano and violins billowing around us. We nuzzled against each other, toasting
our relationship like a candle flame damning the night as we drifted off into
inner worlds so infrequently traversed. Visually, we could not get enough of Camelot;
with every turn, we were met by tiered pagodas crowned with brass finials, red-tiled
Mediterranean villas, and by expansive lush grounds populated by strutting
peafowl, colorful Muscovy ducks, and oblivious loons sauntering amidst Eden. Although
I subconsciously rebelled at the ostentatious wealth surrounding me, where
money built empires on the backs of the working class, at this particular moment
in time, I decided to suspend my political sensibilities, recognizing that my
own feet are often unwashed.
Around
us, the scarlet pendants of flamboyant blossoms dangled from leafy canopies
like ruby earrings worn by a royal Persian bride, contrasting with the rosy
fingers of the tenderly setting sun in the horizon. When the sea breezes tickled
them, coconut palms sashayed in unison, like a well-syncopated troupe performing
a choreographed repertoire. We drifted through the sun-dappled canals,
surrounded by a Crayola calliope of rainbow colors, citron, Bahama water blues,
egg yolk yellows, and the ever present shades of island paradise greens.
In
the downtown section of the canals, boatloads of tourists shared the waterway
with us. On the river walk, they sauntered along the meandering sidewalks graced
by restaurants, art galleries, and parkways. Ron and I noticed numerous interesting,
but for the most part gratifying, reactions to our presence in the slow-moving
gondola as we cuddled and kissed openly. Certainly, we were not attempting to
be the standard of a gay couple in love. We simply sought our rightful place as
two men standing before the altar of history.  Some people, especially older men with paunchy
bellies and Republican scowls on their face, simply ignored us as though choosing
to deny our presence by cloaking themselves in the vestments of moral
indignation. Some just gawked at us with an incredulous
did-we-really-see-what-we-thought-we-saw open-mouthed gape. However, most, and
especially the millennial generation, smiled and waved at us, clearly conveying
that despite the Scalias and Alitos slithering under their rocks, despite
homophobic political and religious ideologues, America is changing. Violators
of human rights may continue to reject our rights to love, refusing to condone
our way of life to justify their holier-than-thou prejudices, but America is
evolving as it comes to recognize that I love him and he loves me, and that’s
all that matters. Fortune has sided with those who dare!
Writing
is the equivalent of a gay couple gliding on a gondola scrutinized by the
world. Writing requires courage and conviction. It requires standing up against
the fear that we will divulge too much of our souls, placing ourselves in a
position of being misunderstood, judged, rejected. When we write, we open
ourselves up to the eyes of others, never knowing whether our creation, our
lives, our authentic voices will be validated or whether reviewers’ accusations
will have us shrivel up, becoming small and voiceless. Thus, to be a writer requires
taking risks, recognizing that fear has the potential to open up new venues,
new worlds, new ideals for the writer as well as for those fortunate enough to
be a part of the sacred journey. A writer needs to unleash her/his fears,
embrace his identity, and glide, not necessarily fearlessly, but with
conviction that only when he is true to himself, will others smile back and be
transformed. The writer himself shall be transformed. He will give himself
permission to sit on a beach and witness the rising of the sun; he will recline
upon the earth and in a blade of grass commune with the cosmos as it unfolds
majestically before him; he will dance with the stars above him, and know that
he originated from some deep longing out there, as well as within him. Writers
do not work in a vacuum. We are aware of the coconut palms’ calypso waltzes, of
the droplets of water that nourish the countless ancestors of our pasts as well
as the progeny of our futures. As Toni Morrison wrote, “all water has a perfect
memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”  As a writer, I capture, awkward and unevolved
as it may be, a moment of time, a beam of sunlight glistening on the surface, a
coiled blossom whose epicenter holds intangible truths. I am a wayfarer
blissfully celebrating as I glide  down
the currents that are but a Mobius strip of eternity. Writers are listeners and
observers and thus responsible for capturing moments that will dissipate as
quickly as a lifetime, but in surrendering to those moments, our explorations
come to an end, and we arrive where we started, recognizing the point where it
all began. Like all artists and philosophers, we embrace what and where we are,
we face our fears, swim the currents, and remind our fellow wayfarers that we
are all enlightened mediators on the canals in which we are carried. Therefore,
if my good reader will excuse me, I will return to the embrace of my beloved
word, knowing that the journey begins with a cadenced breath.
© 27 July 2015 – Denver
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.
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Unraveling the Knot by Carlos

I germinated in a small pot layered with rich loam. The respirating testa split, whispering softly to my now differentiating cells to trust. With radicle and root hairs, I explored, while my plumule sought the light above. A seedling was coaxed to life through a marvelously and massively intricate and interactive process that proved that the photosynthesis of life is neither accidental nor incidental. Hope was an aroma breathed out by a world of cosmic possibilities, caressed within a world of multiple universes. Unfortunately, in time, the world around me grew small, and I become root-bound. The nutrients that once nourished me dissipated, and although I valiantly sought reconciliation, the oppressive forces decimated my strength. Such was my life as a gay man struggling to embrace my sacred core. In time, with the kneading touch of gentle hands and with the alchemy of divine consciousness, the base kernel of a prosaic mundane life transmuted into the radiant gold of dawning light.

I was about eight-years-old when I first saw my father wear a tie. I looked up at him as he interlaced the snaking fabric into a credible Windsor knot. Because his job at a local trucking company as a dispatcher did not warrant any pretentious attire, I concluded that only a certain class or men brandished ties, namely professional white men I saw on our black-and-white Zenith, men whose fingernails were always immaculately manicured. Such men came home at the end of the day and sat at an easy chair, shielding themselves behind the newspaper as they awaited their supper and lorded over their kingdoms. Thus, as my father clumsily manipulated the knot, I knew it was an important day. Little did I realize the significance of the moment, for on that morning he, and in a sense I, earned our wings of citizenship. He was on his way to the federal courthouse, where after 40 some years of living in this country as an undocumented man born in Mexico, he was transformed, by his own choosing, into a new American. A few hours later, he proudly walked through the threshold of our 3-room adobe. He had left an invisible man weighed down by misidentity and had emerged like Nestor returning to Pylos. He was now free to bathe in the golden font channeling redemption upon the newly baptized although, in fact, he remained a working stiff drained by corporate vampirism. I don’t think I saw him wear a tie again until I graduated from high school a decade later. On that morning, as I fumbled with the manipulation of my own tie, he walked up to me, took the tie in his hands, and proceeded to show me how to be a man of learning, a man whose palms, unlike his, would never know the callouses of hard and dingy work. And I stood patiently as he metaphorically let me know my destiny would be different than his. Decades later, on those occasions when I still wear a tie, I can uncannily feel his fingers interlacing with mine; I can still feel his warm breath on my cheek. I can still see his eyes proudly declaring, “This is my son.”

In time, I did achieve my father’s expectations, becoming the educated man denied him. Throughout my youth he had encouraged me to be priest, even a Mason, a man to whom the world would genuflect, rather than one destined to be victimized by planned obsolescence. Instead I chose to become a teacher, not because I really wanted to be one but because my delusions of grandeur of being an architect did not see eye-to-eye with my lack of left-brained mathematical reasoning. And thus, for the next four decades, I taught generations of young people to wade through the shoals of Dickinson and Shakespeare, Lincoln, King, and Garcia Marquez, as well as how to write with urgency, with conviction, and with a need to let Spirit itself know that human reasoning is inspired by life itself. And every day I wore a tie because it was my father’s dream, because it was a symbol of the American quest, and because it purportedly conveyed confidence and power. I knotted ties around my neck that were whimsical, yet political in scope, as was a polyester sporting a lone black sheep daring to thrive amidst a flock of white sheep. I wore stately cravats that were door-openers as was my blue silk or my burgundy I’m dangerously-sensual cashmere. On occasion, I wound a black satin noose that bespoke of the renting of my heart, as when I stood before my father’s bier, straightened the tie festooned around his neck, and closed the casket lid. The sound of the latch was like the shattering of dewy ice crystals on a frigid night.

Not long ago, I accepted a position at a local college. I was ready to close my eyes, look within, and contemplate time’s Source. One of the first things I did was to shirk the tie. The first time I walked on campus liberated of my silken noose, I felt somewhat fragile. But like Francis standing unadorned before Pope Innocent III, I stood my ground, convinced my tie was not the sum of me, confident that my being would sufficiently address the crux of my truth. For decades I harbored internal doubts because as a gay man I bore witness to the stars rather than to the sun. It sapped my energy to walk on eggshells, valiantly trying to deflect the assaults around me. On the surface, I thrived, but when a man is gay and exists in a world where he has been acculturated to believe that only the validation and approval of others can give him substance, I struggled with self-acceptance. My reservoirs were diminished as sleepless night after sleepless night I sought unattainable rest. And all of this resulted to please those who imprisoned me in reduction, accusing me of infidelity because I was not the man of their vision.

It took time to reject the infernal scenario as I whittled away at the incrustations I had permitted others to impose upon me. I married the man of my dreams publically and with pride. I honed my voice before peers and strangers alike, casting down the veils that had previously denied me my holy tabernacle. I cut the umbilical cord to those in my tribe who loved me only on the condition that I spoke not my name. Of course, it has been difficult to tear into the carapace of fossilized layers I once so passively accepted. However, acceptance is like breathing in the aroma of freshly tilled spring earth pungent with the living energy of seasons no longer in repose. I was always a part of the garden around me, but only when I gave myself permission to cauterize the wounds resulting from death of a thousand self-imposed cuts, did I send shoots up into the stratosphere.

I have shunned the ties that I once wore like a scarlet letter around my neck; in addition, I have banished my shame and doubts of being gay to a domain of shadows. Only fools believe the adage that old dogs cannot learn new tricks. The fact is we, we proud gay men and lesbian women, are mutable beings capable of adapting to the undertows always swirling around us like a Mad Hatter. Awakening to my spiritual power is the equivalent of enjoying a piece of rich rum cake, listening to Bach, or sinking my toes into the sands of a Florida beach. As the Buddha found his enlightenment by sitting in immaculate Emptiness, I have found mine by dancing in radical Fullness, sans my tie.

© 1 June 2015

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.

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Ashes of Time, by Carlos

Having been freshly purified by a
late spring rain, the crisp air sparkled. Although he had better things to do
than go down to the dark, claustrophobic storm cellar, he knew it was time to unleash
the bittersweet longings that with the passage of time had become infected like
a festering sore. The moment had come to whittle out the once sweet flesh that
had gangrened ever so slowly. He had found every reason that morning to avoid
descending into that dank basement, uncertain as to whether he had the mettle
to confront his past. In a sense, he was decidedly hopeful, for he was finally determined
to expunge the pleasures of his youth, pleasures that had morphed into ghostly silhouettes
from a charnel house. Yet, he was afraid, for by finally exorcising the dancing
demons, he remained dubious as to whether blissful light long denied would
shine through.
He unlocked the basement door and
pulled at the storm doors, casting his shadow into the darkened crypt like an
angel with uplifted arms. He bit his lip and firmed up his resolve as
delicious, yet dead, memories deluged him like a wintry blast of Arctic air.
Descending down into the abyss, his fingers brushed the settled dust from the
spines of long-abandoned volumes of prose and poetry. Motes of dust gyrated
like phosphorescent pollen riding spears of golden sunlight that now flooded the
basement. Like tattered Victorian lace, filigreed cobwebs draped down from shelves
that once held sweet summer preserves and briny pickles. Undaunted, he directed
himself to the back of the basement where earlier he had secretly hidden a
solid box. Subconsciously, he must have believed that as long as the contents
reposed in peace, some day they would resurrect like Lazarus emerging from the
tomb. He released the clasp of the small coffin-like box, and was greeted by
the olfactory assault of yellowing paper, air-deprived cloth, and desiccated rose
petals, all fragile to the touch.
As he gently brushed the sheaves of
paper and the other vestiges of his lost past with his fingertips, time yawned
sluggishly as though from a midwinter slumber. He picked up a ribbon-festooned
pack of letters, and as he unraveled the knot, the pages fell from his hand
like wind-propelled maple wingnuts, He read words penned when he was young,
words that spoke of sensual delight, undying devotion and youth eternal. Alas, time
proved false, like a sundial on a moonless night.  Barely decipherable inscriptions promised the
sweet aroma of new mown grass, promises that dissipated with the wind. Then, he
pulled out a time-ravished linen shirt. Worn one memorable evening as the sun
descended at its western horizon, the fabric had once been the repository of
spicy cologne intermingled with musky summer sweat. The aroma was no more;
nothing of that past lingered except for the soft bitterness of slow decay.
Putting down the vignettes of his youth, mirages spiraled before him. He felt
the sinewy arms of the first man who had ever held him in a manly embrace. Deteriorating
photographs of two, smiling luxuriously at each other, peered back. The
pictures catapulted him back like a time traveler to those days when
strawberries tasted of vintage crème liqueur and carnations sported a clove-like
aroma. He smiled knowing that in spite of ruptured dreams, he was no longer
confined by guilty pleasure within a hermetically sealed casket. In confronting
the dark shadows of his past, his former adversarial friend has taken flight.
Placing the contents back into the box,
he picked it up and gently cradled it in his arms. Retracing his steps, he set
his sights on a smoldering fire pit he has previously prepared. Letters and photos
shriveled into themselves as he cast them into the coals. Sparks pirouetted up
into the heavens like light-drenched fireflies. Scissors in hand, he mutilated the
linen shirt and cast the flimsy pieces into the hungry flames. Soon enough, the
conflagration died down. He bide the memories adieu, grateful for pleasures
they had once offered, but no longer burdened by the guilt of unfulfilled
longings. Shovel in hand he entombed the ashes within a mantle of earth,
Blessing himself for having had the courage to walk in the light of a new sun,
he arose. As he walked away, he felt newly restored. He felt a soothing balm
that healed the toxic past to which he had clung. He felt cells emerging from
within him as zygote coalesced into awaiting embryo. He would no longer hold on
to the guilty pleasures of nights that shunned the light of dawn.
© May
2015
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.
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Practical Joke by Carlos

There are some things that a man who
has carried a weapon into battle never shares with others, keeping it confined
perhaps out of fear that to unlock it from his soul will unleash a tragic truth
about himself.
When I was a about ten, my uncle, a
veteran who had lost his innocence in World War II and later in the Korean War,
took me to see Pork Chop Hill, an
enactment of a battle fought during the Korean conflict. I hated the savagery,
the brutal, bestial violence. I emerged from the theater angry at my uncle for exposing
me to such a film, one that I later realized had a potential to leave
psychologically scars. It wasn’t until I learned to think like an adult that I
realized that my uncle, who never ever spoke of the carnage and butchery he, no
doubt, had experienced, had attempted to share with me his painful past, a
secret he could never  entrust to an
adult. In retrospect, I understood why over time he chose to drink himself to
death. As for my biological father, who also fought in the Pacific front during
the Second World War, he too never ever spoke of his experiences as a sailor
out at sea. When he returned from action on the frontline, he floundered
aimlessly, angrily. Years later, he married my pregnant mother a day shy of my
birth, no doubt in a guilt-ridden attempt to legitimize me, and maybe himself.
When my mother died, at her request, he summarily relinquished me to his
parents. I can only imagine what goes on in a woman’s mind when she cannot
trust her child to his father. Though I would meet with him on occasion when I
was growing up, I hated those awkward, silent moments, punctuated with heated rants.
He was so temperamental, so unrefined, that I subconsciously decided to slough
off any residual part of him, endeavoring to be everything he never was. Again,
it wasn’t until later that I learned compassion, recognizing that the ghosts of
his past haunted him every moment of his life. I haven’t heard of him in years.
When I last saw him, he was a frail, disappointed man; who knows, perhaps he
has finally found peace in death. Interestingly, I learned only a couple of
years ago, quite by accident that I was named Carlos after my uncle; as for my
middle name, Manuel, I also learned it is my father’s middle name. Thus, as a
symbol of new beginnings and hopes, I bore the names of two men who shared a
common core, a source I too would someday encounter. As for the parents who
raised me, being that they were undocumented Americans, they felt more
comfortable cocooned in the Spanish-speaking barrios of west Texas.
Nevertheless, believing in the American dream and realizing that their two sons
had had little choice of a future, all their dreams were placed upon me
becoming an educated man, a man who could pick from the sweetest fruit on the
tree. They never attempted to dissuade me from what in retrospect were obvious
gay inclinations, my poetic nature, my love of gardening and cooking, my
relative lack of male-centered interests. I was never cautioned to be anything
but myself, the antithesis of what my uncle and father had been, products of a
war-burdened society.  No doubt, they
must have been devastated when I was drafted during the conflagration of
another war. I considered only briefly the thought of dodging the draft by
declaring my homosexuality, that aberration that was still viewed with disgust
but which would have provided me with a different hand with which to play.
Instead, I answered the call to duty, mostly out of a misguided belief that to
fail to answer was inconceivable to the men in my family. Thus, once again, my
parents managed to bestow a blessing to another son whose destiny was thwarted
by a different war where young men were sacrificed for old, rich men’s egos. My
parents’ only solace was that God would be merciful and that their prayers to
the saint-of-the-month would be answered as they had been answered before.
However, the practical joke was on them since each son returned transformed by the
cesspools in which he had trudged. To this day, I am very selective of sharing the
details of the endless nights holding onto the earth out of fear that if I
didn’t, she would gather me in an intimate embrace. Suffice to say, that I proved
myself as an American, perhaps more so than some, regardless of whether I wash
my face or not.
During basic training at Fort Ord on
the Monterey Peninsula in California, I learned to meditate, to embrace my
surroundings even as I was transformed into a hesitant warrior. By encasing
myself into my poetic chrysalis, I sought to keep my keel intact, ensuring that
I would not lose myself as my uncle and father had a generation before. I
followed the rules of the game, practicing at playing soldier while nurturing a
yet indefinable core within me. We were frightened young men, a microcosm of an
America of the time seething with rage due to inequities of race and class.
Most of us suspected, though we never admitted, we were fodder cast into the fire
pit, expendable. Some, a few courageous souls I prefer to believe, chose to
swallow spit and reject the attempt to mold them into combatants. Of course,
I’ll never know whether they were self-actualized men who chose to act on their
convictions or defeated boys who weren’t up to the task. Regardless, they were
summarily dishonorably discharged. For days before their departure, however, they
were made to sit in front of the barracks facing the platoon in formation
before them as though they were on trial for crimes against humanity; it was
part of the psychological charade to which they, and we, were subjected. It was
an attempt to portray them as pathetic, emasculated boys unworthy of another’s
compassion. Nevertheless, I would look at them with respect, acknowledging that
every path has a puddle. When we were compelled to run with full gear, to the
point that I felt my chest heaving with pain, but didn’t want to be singled out
as the runt of the litter, I would look at the thick carpet of invading ice
plant thriving on the sand dunes and find solace in the tenacity of their being,
and I would keep running. When instructed on how to use the M-16, I would cast
glances across the bay and its icy waters and remind myself that someday I
would have to wade into the ocean to be restored. And when I was compelled to listen
to marching chants pregnant with vile racist words in an attempt to dehumanize
the VC, I prayed we’d all be forgiven.
Years later, upon completion of my
tour of duty, I returned back home to Texas. On the bus home, ironically I was
asked for my identity papers by an immigration inspector in New Mexico in spite
of my being in full dress military uniform. I guess, my face was still a little
dirty. Later, my fellow veterans and I were stigmatized by some of our
countrymen as rapists, My Lai baby killers, addicts, and pawns of the
establishment. Thus, I chose to silence my voice and deny my past. I managed not
only to survive but to thrive in spite of those moments and the moments that
followed. Because I was gay, a poet, a former soldier, I learned from fallen
warriors before me. Unlike my uncle, I’ve never been self-destructive; unlike
my father, although I have my moments of melancholy, I am essentially whole.
And unlike my parents, I don’t hold my hands in my lap and ask the saints to
intervene when a force larger than myself confronts me. I discovered it is
easier to control the amount of salt that goes into a dish than to try to scoop
it out when the dish is oversalted. I’ve learned that though there are some
things a man who has carried a weapon into battle never shares with another, he
must find the resolve which can only come from within himself to approach those
time bombs and diffuse them, thus turning the tables on the practical joke of
fate.

©
November, 2015, Denver 

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.
Posted on

Hold off the Salt by Carlos

There are some things that a man who has carried a weapon into battle never shares with others, keeping it confined perhaps out of fear that to unlock it from his soul will unleash a tragic truth about himself.

When I was a about ten, my uncle, a veteran who had lost his innocence in World War II and later in the Korean War, took me to see Pork Chop Hill, an enactment of a battle fought during the Korean conflict. I hated the savagery, the brutal, bestial violence. I emerged from the theater angry at my uncle for exposing me to such a film, one that I later realized had a potential to leave psychologically scars. It wasn’t until I learned to think like an adult that I realized that my uncle, who never ever spoke of the carnage and butchery he, no doubt, had experienced, had attempted to share with me his painful past, a secret he could never entrust to an adult. In retrospect, I understood why over time he chose to drink himself to death. As for my biological father, who also fought in the Pacific front during the Second World War, he too never ever spoke of his experiences as a sailor out at sea. When he returned from action on the frontline, he floundered aimlessly, angrily. Years later, he married my pregnant mother a day shy of my birth, no doubt in a guilt-ridden attempt to legitimize me, and maybe himself. When my mother died, at her request, he summarily relinquished me to his parents. I can only imagine what goes on in a woman’s mind when she cannot trust her child to his father. Though I would meet with him on occasion when I was growing up, I hated those awkward, silent moments, punctuated with heated rants. He was so temperamental, so unrefined, that I subconsciously decided to slough off any residual part of him, endeavoring to be everything he never was. Again, it wasn’t until later that I learned compassion, recognizing that the ghosts of his past haunted him every moment of his life. I haven’t heard of him in years. When I last saw him, he was a frail, disappointed man; who knows, perhaps he has finally found peace in death. Interestingly, I learned only a couple of years ago, quite by accident that I was named Carlos after my uncle; as for my middle name, Manuel, I also learned it is my father’s middle name. Thus, as a symbol of new beginnings and hopes, I bore the names of two men who shared a common core, a source I too would someday encounter. As for the parents who raised me, being that they were undocumented Americans, they felt more comfortable cocooned in the Spanish-speaking barrios of west Texas. Nevertheless, believing in the American dream and realizing that their two sons had had little choice of a future, all their dreams were placed upon me becoming an educated man, a man who could pick from the sweetest fruit on the tree. They never attempted to dissuade me from what in retrospect were obvious gay inclinations, my poetic nature, my love of gardening and cooking, my relative lack of male-centered interests. I was never cautioned to be anything but myself, the antithesis of what my uncle and father had been, products of a war-burdened society. No doubt, they must have been devastated when I was drafted during the conflagration of another war. I considered only briefly the thought of dodging the draft by declaring my homosexuality, that aberration that was still viewed with disgust but which would have provided me with a different hand with which to play. Instead, I answered the call to duty, mostly out of a misguided belief that to fail to answer was inconceivable to the men in my family. Thus, once again, my parents managed to bestow a blessing to another son whose destiny was thwarted by a different war where young men were sacrificed for old, rich men’s egos. My parents’ only solace was that God would be merciful and that their prayers to the saint-of-the-month would be answered as they had been answered before. However, the practical joke was on them since each son returned transformed by the cesspools in which he had trudged. To this day, I am very selective of sharing the details of the endless nights holding onto the earth out of fear that if I didn’t, she would gather me in an intimate embrace. Suffice to say, that I proved myself as an American, perhaps more so than some, regardless of whether I wash my face or not.

During basic training at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula in California, I learned to meditate, to embrace my surroundings even as I was transformed into a hesitant warrior. By encasing myself into my poetic chrysalis, I sought to keep my keel intact, ensuring that I would not lose myself as my uncle and father had a generation before. I followed the rules of the game, practicing at playing soldier while nurturing a yet indefinable core within me. We were frightened young men, a microcosm of an America of the time seething with rage due to inequities of race and class. Most of us suspected, though we never admitted, we were fodder cast into the fire pit, expendable. Some, a few courageous souls I prefer to believe, chose to swallow spit and reject the attempt to mold them into combatants. Of course, I’ll never know whether they were self-actualized men who chose to act on their convictions or defeated boys who weren’t up to the task. Regardless, they were summarily dishonorably discharged. For days before their departure, however, they were made to sit in front of the barracks facing the platoon in formation before them as though they were on trial for crimes against humanity; it was part of the psychological charade to which they, and we, were subjected. It was an attempt to portray them as pathetic, emasculated boys unworthy of another’s compassion. Nevertheless, I would look at them with respect, acknowledging that every path has a puddle. When we were compelled to run with full gear, to the point that I felt my chest heaving with pain, but didn’t want to be singled out as the runt of the litter, I would look at the thick carpet of invading ice plant thriving on the sand dunes and find solace in the tenacity of their being, and I would keep running. When instructed on how to use the M-16, I would cast glances across the bay and its icy waters and remind myself that someday I would have to wade into the ocean to be restored. And when I was compelled to listen to marching chants pregnant with vile racist words in an attempt to dehumanize the VC, I prayed we’d all be forgiven.

Years later, upon completion of my tour of duty, I returned back home to Texas. On the bus home, ironically I was asked for my identity papers by an immigration inspector in New Mexico in spite of my being in full dress military uniform. I guess, my face was still a little dirty. Later, my fellow veterans and I were stigmatized by some of our countrymen as rapists, My Lai baby killers, addicts, and pawns of the establishment. Thus, I chose to silence my voice and deny my past. I managed not only to survive but to thrive in spite of those moments and the moments that followed. Because I was gay, a poet, a former soldier, I learned from fallen warriors before me. Unlike my uncle, I’ve never been self-destructive; unlike my father, although I have my moments of melancholy, I am essentially whole. And unlike my parents, I don’t hold my hands in my lap and ask the saints to intervene when a force larger than myself confronts me. I discovered it is easier to control the amount of salt that goes into a dish than to try to scoop it out when the dish is oversalted. I’ve learned that though there are some things a man who has carried a weapon into battle never shares with another, he must find the resolve which can only come from within himself to approach those time bombs and diffuse them, thus turning the tables on the practical joke of fate.

© November, 2015, Denver

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.

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Intoxicating Water by Carlos

The streets and alleyways behind the
public market in Juarez resembled a labyrinth of third-world sensibilities.
Shopkeepers sat on rickety crate boxes announcing their wares to pedestrians
and bicyclists on the narrow streets, some of them hoarse due to the sing-song
bellowing; others nonchalantly people-watching as though in quiet judgment.
Many of the storefronts intrigued me, not necessarily because of the
merchandise erratically displayed behind the small enclosures, but because of
the world of magical realism that percolated around me. Whereas one shopkeeper
offered sweet sugar-cured yams or pineapples on which honeybees danced, another
displayed little pyramids of toasted sesame seeds, pistachio green pumpkin
seeds, or maroon hibiscus flowers, all necessary ingredients to enrich the
Mexican palate. Across the street, the heady aroma of cured leather wafted
through the shoemaker’s shop while next to him hand-turned ochre cooking
vessels, plates, and pitchers waited like soldiers at military parade rest
awaiting customers. I felt comfortable walking the streets around the marketplace
next to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe with its twin towers puncturing
the fabric of heaven. After all, my grandmother lived only blocks from the
market and the streets were idealized vignettes of typical life south of the
border. I felt I was journeying out into arenas revolving with a maddening pace
with life, akin to a twirling cup-and-saucer ride at a here-today-gone-tomorrow
carnival attraction. My own life in Texas, across the border from Juarez, was
idyllic enough. The Texas downtown area was conventional, broad streets,
stately stuccoed homes, broad stretches of mulberry-shaded parks in which to
play, and the convenience of well-stocked but staid, gray businesses. However, my
world was transformed upon crossing the border of sleepy, lazy life of El Paso
and journeying into a frenetic roller coaster ride of Juarez. There the
mariachi bands played shoe-stomping jarabes
and tapatios. There the enticing
aromas of chile-infused roast pork and
Mennonite cheese stuffed enchiladas simmering in pans and griddles from little
out-of the-way stalls on the streets perfumed the air. There the house colors,
bougainvillea pink and turquoise, Buddhist robe saffron and apricot, made life
in El Paso seem staid in comparison. It was on one of my jaunts into my
ancestral homeland that I learned the most important lesson of my life.
Being a natural explorer, I turned
into a small winding side street that I had never scouted. The shadows
lengthened before me. Pools of stagnant water collected and eddied down the
street. I noted mounds of uncollected garbage strewn throughout, garbage on
which flies twirled as though to a rhythm only they heard. The air was rancid
with decay. In spite of the spectral scene punctuated by the shafts of light
broken by the intermittent dance of dust devils, I plodded on. After all, the
sky above was still blue and the earth beneath was still firm to my footing. I
carried a large plastic cup of icy horchata,
a cinnamon-infused rice beverage that I had purchased from an itinerant water merchant
only moments before. The only sound I heard was the music of the marketplace dissipating
in the distance, the discordant drone of the flies, and the sloshing of ice
against my cup. The thought of turning back crossed my mind, as the brick-paved
streets gave way to hard-packed clay and the crowds of only moments earlier flew
off into the shadows. However, I was young and immune, an explorer out on a
hero’s journey, canvassing the world etched before me. Unexpectedly, to my
left, I noticed a mound of garbage move as though it had taken a life of its
own. I heard the rattling of newspapers and cardboard boxes, sounds made by the
displacement of something within the pile. Intrigued, I stood transfixed, that
is, until I saw a leathery skeletal hand emerge from the pitiful pile.
Momentarily, I saw her face, an old woman enveloped in a black tattered rebozo, and as she lowered the folds of
the rebozo, I saw her face,
desiccated and worn by a lifetime of depravation. Her toothless mouth opened as
she hoarsely whispered to me, her hands beseeching me in supplication, “Mijo, tengo sed. Dame que tomar….” “My
son, I am thirsty. Give me drink.” Out of revulsion, out of fear, and out of
the funereal disquiet that permeated the scene, I ran away from the woman, only
looking back to make sure the cadaverous specter in her rotting shrouds had not
pursued me. And though I soon reached the safe side streets of the nearby
marketplace, the woman did, in fact, pursue me, haunting me and forever altering
the direction that my life would take.
I have been blessed with many people
who have loved me unconditionally, with many mentors and insights that taught
me to be a faithful believer. I have been enriched with untold life experiences,
ranging from the ecstasy of being held in the arms of men who breathed in
syncopation with my soul, to the agony of a heart fractured by the skillful
cleaving of a diamond-cutting saw, yet none has ever managed to reveal as much
of life as one shadow creature in a shadow city, a thirsty soul who asked but
for a drink, a drink that I denied her. Maimonides has written “The risk of a
wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” The words sting me
to the core although I’ve managed to assuage my sin. Even before I saw a good
shepherd reach out with compassion toward one disfigured by Neurofibromatosis,
even before he reminded me to wash the feet of the prisoner, I recognized I had
erred when I allowed my fear to circumvent my actions. I erred when I dared not
look into her eyes; I erred when I dared not touch her head. Nevertheless, I’ve
forgiven myself for my lack of judgment. After all, I recognize that standing
before the portal of the underworld has the power to lead to my
transfiguration.
An incident when I was eight-years-old
compelled me to recognize that reality is outside of the realm of my experience;
life consists of fleeting moments of potential reawakening. It took an old
woman, thrown away by a world ill equipped to satiate her thirst for me to acknowledge
the hallow victory of living without awareness. Although I never returned to
the winding streets that led me to this woman, not a day goes by when I don’t
see and recognize her, specifically in the LGBT community. I see her in the
eyes of those members of our community who have been envenomed by the toxins
spewed out by bigots and homophobes, all in the name of holier-than-thou
morality. I see her, in the desperate looks of gay men throughout central
Africa and the Middle East contemplating suicide rather than face societal
reprisal. I see her in the discarded LGBT youth banished by their conditionally
accepting families. I myself have known that thirst and humiliation; I recognize
in myself the quiet desperation of rejection and ostracism that I have spent a
lifetime releasing as I learned to heal myself. At those moments, I acknowledge
a wake-up call from a woman living at the edge of a garden. At such times I honor
she who once offered me redemption and promise myself that she will never again
thirst.
© 30 Apr
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.

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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.

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A Pulsar of Light by Carlos

We all enact a role upon the stage. In spite of our most polished performances, many of us often look back to the stage on which we have strutted and long for another script. Time and again, my friend Paul and I misconnected. He never asked anything of me. I suspect he felt he had no right to assert himself. Neither did I speak honestly to him for fear of being too forward. Looking back at the roles we played, I suspect that I should never have let him go without offering him the bounty of truth. Yet in spite of my misgivings and ponderings as to what, if anything, we may have been able to create, I am at peace, knowing that in the end, the script was perfect just the way it was.

A few months prior to my graduation from the University of Texas, I found myself leaving the classroom, enjoying the sun on my face and the sweet aroma of the west Texas desert in bloom. Unexpectedly, Peter, destined to become my first beau, approached, gave me a nod, and motioned me to follow. In spite of my trepidation, I followed, anxious to be inducted into a world that I had fantasized, yet feared, for years. I wanted to be held in a man’s embrace, overpowered by his testosterone. Because I was inexperienced, however, rather than becoming a love-under-the-sheets encounter, our rendezvous evolved into polite conversation and gentle hand-holding. Nevertheless, this being my first encounter with a man, my gay card was validated. Of course, I was anxious to learn from him and lie naked in his bed, but being a good Catholic boy, I deluded myself into believing our meeting was a divine act of intercession. Thus, I was determined to win his heart. Therefore, I decided to play my cards in the kitchen. After all, I’d heard the cliché that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. At least that is how I rationalized my actions in my gender-confused world where the game required one partner to be the hunter while the other was the gatherer. A few days later I knocked on his door, having practiced my invitation to cook for him for days. Even now decades later, I can still feel my heart beating like a little boy about to open his first Christmas gift. As the fates would have it, he was delighted, and we agreed to meet a few days later. That week I perused countless cookbooks for direction. I finally decided on a Russian feast to inspire my czar and win his devotion. That Saturday, I arrived at his apartment, ingredients at hand for savory beef stroganoff, buttered noodles, and Cointreau-kissed strawberries Romanoff. Though I was a nervous boy playing at being grown-up, I pulled it off. The dinner was magnificent. Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Festival Overture” provided the auditory punch to an evening filled with sensory delight. After the meal, as we held each other on his sofa, and I felt his heart poetically and impossibly beating to my own, I knew I had bagged my query. I had won him over through my culinary skills and domestic manipulations.

Within a few years, however, what had blossomed in the spring. withered and desiccated. We tried to forge a relationship, but because I had been drafted into the army and was away from home, our meetings were few and far in between. Our May-December flame sputtered, for while he had burned his candle at both ends over the years, my light had just started to flicker. Eventually, he recognized that he wanted what I could never offer, children. Thus, within months after I did return home, he dissolved our relationship, convinced our age differences and irreconcilable goals were impediments to the fairy tale ending on which I had been weaned. And thus, I encountered my first dissolution, my first of many failures. The “Russian Easter Festival Overture” became a dirge, its bells no longer heralding the resurrection of love, but rather the mournful eulogy of forsaken love and childish dreams.

Regardless, in those years with Peter, I learned that being gay is a blessing; I learned to embrace and honor myself. Although the relationship did not take root, that meal became a precursor to my entry into adulthood. Thus, I remain forever grateful to our ephemeral dance. Over those years, Paul, Peter’s best friend, was often a guest at our apartment. Though Paul and I were never alone, in retrospect, I knew even then that the sexual and emotional attraction between us was palpable. I suspect Peter felt it, though he never spoke of it. After my first relationship came to an end and I moved out, Paul visited me often. Our encounters were polite and restrained. Paul stood off in the distance, silent, supportive, and stoic. In retrospect, I realize that though he wanted to reach out to me, his devotion to his best friend and to me precluded him from doing so. And thus, the Russian feast I had years earlier prepared for another was never his. And after months of agony and a realization that my first relationship could not be resurrected and that I needed to move on, I left Texas for Denver, hoping to start a life anew. Yet even before I flew away, Paul and I both knew that so much that needed disclosure would remain forever vaulted. I wanted him to give me reason to remain, yet I could not encourage him; he wanted me to stay, yet he could not betray his honor. We were both stuck in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t’ waltz. And thus, our chosen pathways became the denouement to our Greek tragedy.

And thus, our lives took us in different directions. Because we kept in touch, our friendship blossomed. Though our letters to each other were always warm, it was becoming clear to me that by my running away, I had thwarted a possible bond when he started to close his letters with…Love, Paul. Eventually, he even asked me if I could tolerate him for a brief visit should he find himself in Denver. I let him know that if he took a step toward me, I just might take two steps toward him. But because of his career, he never made it to Denver, and as time progressed, our letters became more infrequent. I concluded we had only forged footprints on a beach. A few years later, I awoke from a dream. Paul hovered protectively next to me, reaching down with his hand to touch my face. I decided enough time had passed between us. Unspoken words needed to be fleshed out. Thus, I called him. To my surprise, a kind stranger answered, and after I asked for Paul, he informed me that he had just passed away. And thus, the last dance came to an end. On my next visit to Texas, I went to his grave, knelt before it, and bide adieu to my friend for whom I should have prepared a feast. I recognized that time had flitted away like a ghost seen only in the periphery of one’s vision. I will always some regret that I did not marry savory to sweet, let the dough rest and rise, or grind the spices between my fingers for Paul. I suspect that my life might have been different had I recognized I am not exempt from the adagio’s last note. I regret my indecision; I regret his indecision. My naivete, my silence, his devotion, his honor, had collided like two star systems pulled apart by each other’s gravitational pull. I will always ponder whether a meal to remember might have scripted a sublime poetic couplet. But regret is a bowl of warm, curdled milk.

My experiences with Paul have taught me that to live life constrained by polite etiquette and fear of risks is like eating strawberries without the Cointreau. The little boy is no more. I have discovered that truth must be honored and life must be lived as though the big bang did not need God. When I look back at what might have been, I honor it, but remain firmly entrenched in what is today, in this Mobius strip of time. Thus, when I first met and recognized the man who a decade later still remains my soulmate, Ron, I turned around l80 degrees and gave him a smile that left nothing to the imagination. And the rest is history. No more retrospective regrets, no more cautious approaches. Life must be lived with a devil-may-care attitude. After all, the last supper is only the precursor to the first breakfast. Thus, I’ve learned to let the dead rest in peace and to keep alive the neutron star that is my lighthouse.

© Denver, 4/11/2014

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.

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I Never Knew — Mutable Facts by Carlos

Did he remember me as I remembered him?

A couple of summers ago, playing on my computer, I typed in his name in a people search website, curious as to where the years had taken him. When his obituary of ten years earlier emblazoned my screen, a darkness of grief blotted out my emotions. I felt a suspension of thought, a resurgence of memories. I never knew.

I didn’t know he had died ten years before. After all, the last time I had seen him was at a very awkward, unexpected encounter where he had paid his respects at my father’s funeral twenty years earlier. I don’t remember what we said, only that I spoke his name for the first time in years; I did, however, recognize the gulf that divided us as he hurriedly walked away.

Interestingly, to my observant eyes, the obituary made only cursory mention of his wife with whom he had shared his final decades, yet it emphasized his ever-loving daughter and even more interestingly, his life-long allegiance to the church where he had served as sacristan, eucharistic minister and lector. How strange it was that as I read the obituary, memories of our shared pasts deluged my mind, memories of love in all its many and varied guises. Since we lost touch after I left Texas thirty years before, I often wondered if he remembered me as I remembered him. And now as I re-read the obituary, I concluded that death had finally effaced the irrational love that had since withered like a spray of once fragrant violets. I pondered whether over time I become nothing more than a sepia memory or whether I had the right to suspect that he had finally won the battle fought over a lifetime to obliterate me from his mind.

We had once shared secrets together, secrets of young love and hopeful futures over several years, as with needle and thread we quilted a covenant we trusted would last a lifetime. But I went away for a span of time and journeyed to foreign shores in distant lands as I fulfilled my obligations to my country. We wrote religiously in the interim, breathing life into our discoveries, distilling hopes like rain water percolating through layers of limestone. And when I returned, we tilled the earth in the backyard, determined to transform a plot of calcified soil into a reawakened garden of erotic extravagance. And for a while the bulbs and rhizomes we planted in the fall greeted us in the spring with rainbows of irises and ranunculi, tulips and daffodils. The sweet scent of arching peace roses and tender green grass enveloped us like a capsulated chrysalis. But he had changed; I had changed. Our improvised dance now seemed staged and amateurish. All too soon, we recognized we had miscalculated our misadventure as we pirouetted in our macabre ballet of fate. He wanted to be a father, dreaming of a little girl to whom he would build palaces of spun filigreed gold topped with silver moon beams radiating outward. I wanted him to love me with a love that was dawn and twilight and everything in between, no longer being satisfied with the love of first sight. Thus, he sent me away; I walked away. Nevertheless, even as I ascended into the skies far from him, I looked behind, hoping against hope that he would restore the primal cord that had been cut with a whetstone-sharpened steel blade.

He married within weeks, to what I believe was a wonderful woman he had known for years, a woman who was able to give him what I could not. Asking me to be his best man, I stood solemnly but tormented at bride and groom shared sacred vows. I wanted to give flesh to our sin before man and God lest we lose each other in the maelstrom of time. But I silenced my voice; I carved a smile upon my polychromed mask, and again, I flew away into the clouds. Nine months to the day, he sent me a letter informing me of the birth of a daughter hours earlier, a daughter he wrote who uncannily had my eyes, my skin, my mouth. Days later, he sent me a picture of him bathing the child, a look of sublime joy on his face. I realized he had discovered the treasure after which he had quested. I returned back to him not long after when he asked be to be the godfather of his beloved…his two beloveds joined in a momentary gasp of suspiration, the child holding her breathe as the pure water dedicated her to God; me gasping with unanswered questions.

And I walked away. Because the cicatrice in my heart kept opening and spewing molten pain that could not be cauterized, I again walked away, but this time I never returned. The moments became eons, and the eons coalesced into eternity. As I re-read his obituary, I hammered nails upon the entombed gyrations that had decimated with finality. I hoped that over time the church that he had so openly shunned when we were one offered him solace. I knew the beloved daughter he had birthed certainly did. I suspect he spent a lifetime trying to deny me, yet I retain a romantic hope, maybe even a vain hope, that maybe, just maybe, he experienced moments when he exalted me, when he honored that part of me that he carried in his heart forever.

And I wondered if he had remembered me as I remembered him.

© Denver
June 2, 2013 



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.

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Captured by Carlos


Captured, caught, entrapped, ensnared…all of these words have negative connotations, and of course, depending on the circumstances, the revelation of oneself to the world can have devastating effects, whether tangible or perceived. I still grimace when a few classmates in high school branded me a maricon, a joto, a mariposa since I could not catch a football or hit a ball with any finesse. After having my identity questioned, I discerned that I had choices to make. Later in life, I was again a casualty when I gave my heart prematurely to men who had no interest or inclination in nurturing it once the adrenaline rush dissipated. Again, I had choices to make. More recently, I found myself under the sword of Damocles when a professional informed me of possibilities of prostate cancer. Being terrified, I forfeited my power. And again I had choices to make. Looking back retrospectively, I’ve recognized that a challenge can, in fact, be an opportunity. Nevertheless, I’ve also concluded that no pain can ever compensate for the outcome.

In my childhood, I valued the identity instilled upon me by my nuclear family. My family never questioned why I preferred to play with my sister’s Easy Bake oven rather than with a baseball glove. My family encouraged me to love poetry rather than to critique it as being too sensitive, too different, too enticing for a little boy. I embraced books over athletics, gentleness over boldness. My parents never counseled me against watching in awe as Loretta Young, bedecked in resplendent gowns of silk and chiffon, sashayed across the screen on our Zenith television. I came to admire her demeanor, her identity, secretly of course, for I suspect that by that time I had learned the rules of playing hide and seek.

Little did I realize that once I stepped outside of my family’s threshold and into the world, my halcyon days would come to an end. The day would dawn when I would be caught red-handed, judged, and summarily sentenced for crimes against nature. When I entered the arena, that stage became gladiatorial combat, victory going to he who could assert his alpha male supremacy over others. Maybe that is why so many cultures have a strong belief in warding off the evil eye with amulets and totems, an attempt to maintain one’s sanctity and humanity in a world that so often hovers between heaven and hell. My entry into the world was fraught with insecurity and pain. Others recognized that I was queer even before I knew it. In order to satiate their own insecurities, bullies needed scapegoats to justify their own failures. Thus, they flung poisonous arrows in my direction. I was pommeled into a terrifying world of youthful competition, of constantly measuring myself against the others around me. I learned to live life in quiet desperation like so many other little boys and girls who drown in anonymity.

Later, when I decided to embrace my, dare I say, God-bestowed identity, and quest after being enfolded in manly arms, it didn’t take long for me to realize that my quest for love would not come easily. I offered too much too early to the advances of a handsome face or mellifluous words spoken in a moment of desire. I had naively expected to find redemption from a fellow inmate; instead I internalized self-induced doubt and condemnation. And the fissure grew into a fracture as I catapulted deeper into the abyss.

More recently, a urologist informed me, in her all-too-professional demeanor, that my unexpected inability to hold my bladder might, in fact, signal a developing cancer. I accepted her prognosis as thoughts of loss of control, youth, and mortality shrouded me like a cosmic black hole capturing light. After all, I was the organism being scrutinized through her lens. Thus, like many of us, I was caught time and time again and condemned to journey into the headwaters of self-loathing and misappraisal.

Many people, especially New Age types, have adopted a pseudo-belief borne from a Taoist perspective that opportunity and danger go hand-in-hand. It’s so convenient to conclude that a crisis can result in an opportunity. I recognize that this feel-good attitude toward struggle may help assuage some of the trauma of dealing with any pain. I recognize that through alchemy, fire does, in fact, transform brittle iron into solid steel. However, I am a living, breathing human being imbued with memories as well as a heart and soul that can be shattered like a fragile Swarovski crystal. More often than not, in extricating the barbs that penetrated my flesh, pieces of me were gouged out. To my credit, in spite of the taunts of my peers in my youth, I overcame. I even learned that it’s perfectly okay for macho men to play with dolls and to treasure poetry. In spite of the men who cast stones at my glass house, I never became jaded in my pursuit for love, and in time unearthed the Lesotho Diamond, the man-of-men whose heart beats in unity with mine. And in spite of an initial terrifying medical prognosis, I learned that sometimes cancer is nothing more than kidney stones. In spite of my having been ensnared, I eventually learned to embrace the man in me, a skeptic but a believer, fractured but whole.

It hurts as the flames devour essence. Picking up the pieces from the ashes is metaphorically like collecting shards of sulfur from fire-belching volcanoes. Of course, I recognize that life by nature can be a journey fraught with suffering. Of course, I realize that tragedy is only tragedy when one gives in to it. Nevertheless, realistically and unapologetically, I still long for a world in which its citizens recognize holistically that we are truly the stewards of each other’s souls. A poet writes, “Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints in our hearts and we are never the same.” The poem implies that our getting caught can be blissful, a journey to Nirvana. Unfortunately, it also suggests that sometimes getting caught leaves lesions that burn acrimoniously. However, it behooves me to recognize that in this world, it is to my advantage to recognize that there are some things we cannot change, but with courage there are many we can as long as we know the difference (Serenity Prayer).
                                            

© Denver 2/3/13 



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.