Tag: Clubs

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Clubs, by Lewis T

I was never a bridge
player.  My parents played bridge but
they never made an effort to teach me how (and I never asked).  Poker, yes, bridge, no.  I seem to remember that clubs were the runt
of the litter when it comes to suits. 
Maybe that’s why the symbol for clubs was the three-leaf clover,
something that constantly gets stepped on, unlike diamonds, hearts, and spades (the
latter of which can be used to uproot clover).
Clubs could also be a
weapon in the olden days.  In fact, they
were the weapon of choice of the cave man and were often used to find a
suitable mate — or, at least, a compliant one.
There used to be
something known as a “club foot”. 
I don’t hear much about them anymore. 
Perhaps they went away as spinach became more popular.
The GOP used to be a
party.  Now, they seem to me to be more
like a club.  Political parties used to
be fairly welcoming, as long as you were old enough to vote and have an opinion.  To join a club, you needed something more–a
characteristic that branded you as an “insider”.  My dad used to be something called a
Kiwanian–a member of the Kiwanis Club. 
Unlike Moose or Elk, Kiwanians did not have to drink a lot of beer and learn
to make strange noises in order to be accepted.
Judging from the list of
potential presidential candidates among Republicans these days, I would guess that
among those traits that make one a stalwart is the belief that conviction is
more important than knowledge.  Texas
Senator Ted Cruz demonstrated this marvelously recently when he made his
announcement as a candidate for President of the U.S.  Raising his right arm in the air and
gesturing toward heaven, much like the Nazi salute but without the starchy
uniform, he said, “Our rights do not come from man, they come from
God”.  I have no doubt that the God
he had in mind was the Old Testament God. 
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Thomas Jefferson’s.  Cruz’s club would not be a safe place for
liberals, gays, scientists, non-believers, intellectuals, philosophers, people
born in the U.S., and members of the middle class.  All others would be luke-warmly welcomed.
© 26 Mar 2015 
About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my
native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Clubs, by Betsy

In 1950 when I was 15 years old our family moved from New
Jersey to Louisiana.
I have often said a comparable change would be moving from
Earth to the moon.
In this case, however, the moon would have been populated
with humanoids who had their own culture and language–very much different from
anything I had ever encountered in my young life. However, I was young and I
had much to learn and experience. 
The first difference that I noticed in my new home was the
blatant discrimination and racist practices carried out against people of
color. I’m not so sure the same thing was not going on in New Jersey. I suspect
I just didn’t see it. It was hidden. In the deep South, it couldn’t be hidden
because of the large population of African Americans.  Almost every household in my new hometown had
at least one black person working for them. These family servants had to have
their own toilet facilities usually outside or in the garage, their own private
glass from which to get a drink of water (never would a white person want to
drink from the same glass!) We all know about the public drinking fountains.
Of course, the schools were segregated as was everything
else. I left the South to attend college in New York State in 1953 never to
return except for visits with my parents.
After federal legislation made segregation illegal in the
1960’s nothing changed much in Louisiana. These southern people are slow moving
indeed.  It was not until the late 1970’s
that they finally were forced to allow black people to use public facilities
such as restaurants. On one occasion when I returned to Hammond for a visit, my
high school friend suggested we go out to dinner. She assured me they had
solved the problem of integration by making the city restaurants into private
clubs. Most whites belonged to all the clubs and there were many of them. We
would have to take our own liquor since it was no longer a public place. The
private clubs could or would not get licenses to sell liquor. 
White folks continued for decades to claim that the culture
of segregation is justified because everyone is happy with the status quo
including blacks. That’s how we want it and that’s how they want it, was the
claim.  People want to stay in their
place and keep to themselves. Keep to themselves, maybe, but stay in their
current place–please!
The last time I visited Hammond, Louisiana was in 2003 when I
attended my fiftieth high school reunion. I had no family there except in the
cemetery in the church yard.
I was happy to see that the public places that had had a
brief existence as private clubs–they had all become public places again,
businesses now open to all people. The college in Hammond–a branch of
Louisiana State University–included many black students, and many higher
paying positions previously unavailable to people of color were now occupied by
African Americans. Change comes slowly but change for the better had indeed
come to Hammond Louisiana albeit at the expense of the lives of many good
people and many hard-fought battles lasting for decades.
It saddens me more than I can say to watch the evening news
and see that racism is alive and well today in the United States of
America–land of the free and home of the brave—and not just in the South.  At the same time, I am happy to see that
public places are not changing into private clubs in order to avoid the law of
the land. The law of the land has made segregation in public places illegal as
it should be. In spite of this institutional racism is prevalent. A young law
abiding African American or Latino male in some locations is suspect simply
because of who he is. Racial profiling is common practice in some areas. Our
prisons are filled with men and women of color in numbers disproportionate to
the population. In recent years, we have witnessed the passage of laws in some
states designed to make it almost impossible for certain people to vote. Those
laws, in my opinion, target low income people of color. 
While being white, I have not had to experience the horrors
of decades of discrimination I have described here. I have, however,
experienced on a very few brief occasions the hatred felt toward a person who
is perceived as being different and a threat to the power structure. We have
seen that progress against discrimination and hatred can come quickly when our
leaders pass laws making discrimination illegal.
I want to believe there is a basic innate goodness in all
human beings on this planet–our leaders, law enforcement officials, even the
wrong-doers and criminals.
Let us step back and consider our place in the universe–so
small, so isolated, so seemingly vulnerable. 
At the same time, we must consider that we are creatures who have the
capacity to love each other and to love this tiny speck of rock we live
on.  Love is the means to peace on Earth,
I believe.  Let us look beyond our egos
and other constructs of the mind. It is our egos that drive us to create clubs
so we can segregate ourselves from each other. Let us all look inside beyond
our egos and awaken to our very core, our being, which is love. I do believe
love is the answer for us humans.


 © 23 Mar 2015 
About the Author 
Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Clubs, by Phillip Hoyle

For me clubs have always been about responsibility: treasurer, president, secretary, vice-president, committee chair, on and on. I am sure I learned this from the outset when we neighborhood boys formed the Ark Club. But that was play, kind of like Cowboys and Indians or Army but with paperwork. Then adults began to organize us in a moral effort to control kids and their activities: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, choirs, and youth groups. These clubs attracted me for their activities but not their group pride, personal recognition, or promised advantages. I don’t say this as a matter of criticism but simply as a description of my introverted preference and deep independence. I liked having things to do if they matched my interests, I got along well with peers, and I was respectful to adult leaders. Often I became some kind of leader although I didn’t seek such leadership preferring simply to help and to enjoy. I didn’t care to beat a drum for attention. I could tolerate
responsibility for short periods of time, but mostly I wanted to learn and to experience.

Around age thirty, my career was on the line demanding of me a choice between doing church work and teaching music history. I gave myself six months to figure out which way I’d go. In so doing, I realized I needed to give the church career a better chance. So I attended some religious education events, first, an intense training program organized by the Regional and General levels of the church and second, the meeting of a professional association of religious educators. Over-all the groups did not do much for me, the former seeming too much related to the status quo of congregational life, the latter seeming just a bit too embarrassing to me to make a strong identification. Still at each of these meetings I met some nice people and at each event a couple of very impressive individuals. Furthermore I observed interactions that attracted me, not relationships I wanted but ones that revealed these leaders were as complicated as I was and as bright or brighter. Certainly some of them were living life rather largely (a term I will not address in this story).

I compared these religious educators with the professors I knew, that other professional group I was observing, and found as much or more creativity among the church educators. Plus for me, I realized, I needed the stimulation of working with people of all ages rather than the small age range of undergrads in college. Church offered more freewheeling educational leadership opportunities. I opted for a career in congregations.

Some years later I was recruited to run for president elect in the professional association, a group that still slightly embarrassed me. Beyond the embarrassment I had friends in the group and annual meetings had become an important time away from work and family. I thought over the offer and realized it came with a four to five year sentence: attendance at annual meetings for running for office, serving as president-elect, serving as president, serving as immediate past president whose responsibility it was to oversee the next elections, and my requirement to show up at the following meeting unlike almost every past president I had known in the group. Did I really want to do this? I thought I saw an opportunity to help the organization become less an in-group and more open to the paraprofessional educators most congregations were hiring to organize and oversee their programs. There were fewer and fewer full-time jobs for seminary-trained educators on the horizon. Still the nomination promised mostly a bunch of work.

I did that work and stayed through my sentence. I didn’t regret it and learned so much during the five years, but I also got too close to the bared emotions of people for whom such a position was seen as a great honor that took them on a power trip. Yuck. This work was important—okay—but to take oneself so seriously in its execution seemed hopeless to me, too much like what I observed in some pastors, preachers, and evangelists. Worse than embarrassing!

Clubs: for the most part, I’m not interested. Still today I am leading a program and attend several gatherings of artists, writers, and storytellers. And I go out with a gang of guys for happy hour every Friday night. But the real attraction in these groups is the interesting people I see and the new things I learn as we write, read, tell stories, and make art together.

Denver, © 30 March 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Clubs, by Will Stanton

Joining a club sometimes can
be a good fit, sometimes not.  DPMC, or
Denver Professional Men’s Club, is a euphemism.   I suppose that, if the club were located in
a more cosmopolitan area with a reputation for having a large gay population,
such as San Francisco, the club might have been named “Denver Gay Men’s
Club.”  Also, to me, “Professional Men’s
Club” sounds rather presumptuous.  All it
really means is that a member is supposed to have enough money to host and
cater large gatherings of around one hundred men, has an elegant home large
enough to accommodate such a group, and money to hire bartenders.
A few years ago, Dr. Bob
persuaded me to join DPMC and sponsored my application.  After all, “Not everyone is suitable for
admission.”  This reminds me of the
quotation attributed to Groucho Marx, “I wouldn’t want to be a member of any
group that would have me as a member;” for I do not have a very large,
expensive home, and I cannot afford to cater food for a hundred men or to hire
professional bartenders.  I did join
DPMC, albeit only briefly.  My rationale
was that I needed to get out more, meet more people, socialize more, because I
had been so isolated living alone and running a home office after the death of
my partner.
I generally am open-minded,
enjoy people’s company, and give people the benefit of the doubt unless proven
otherwise.  Eventually, however, I
realized that I was not particularly happy in DPMC.  So many of the members seemed so full of
themselves.  Everyone stood about,
shoulder to shoulder or occupying the various chairs and couches, chatting to
their few  selected friends to the
exclusion of others.  Most of the members
drank, some drank heavily.  There was
plenty of catered food, although the heavy drinkers often ignored food or
merely nibbled at it.  The gay bartenders
were kept very busy and made a lot in tips. 
I never have been big on alcohol. 
If I ever had a drink, it was only one, and that was for the taste, not
to get a buzz or to loosen up.  One
egotistic member, known to give private cocaine parties and popular with those
who attended, tried to give a recovering cocaine addict some cocaine as a
birthday present.  Those factors alone
set me apart from most of the members.
I made a point of
circulating among everyone, trying to get to know them.  I discovered, however, that the
long-established cliques tended to stay together and were little interested in
getting to know new members.  Also,
although ages ranged from early twenties to, in one case, early eighties, most
were at least a generation younger than I and clearly preferred to remain
within their own age group.  This
certainly was true in one particular case.
Long enough ago when
brick-front stores sold CDs and DVDs, as opposed to generally buying on-line, I
used to frequent Tower Records.  That
large store had a separate room for classical music so that those of us with
sensitive ears would not be accosted by the sound of pounding drums and
screeching pseudo-singers blaring from the speakers in the main part of the
store.  Naturally, I found few, more
discerning shoppers in the classical room. 
That is where I was surprised to find a boyishly-young shopper sorting
through the opera recordings.  We struck
up a conversation, and he mentioned that he was studying opera and sang
tenor.  We found that we had a lot of
interests in common.
I later discovered that this
young tenor was a member of DPMC.  I
found him chatting with a small group of twenty-somethings.  I greeted him and spoke with him for a moment;
however, I quickly felt that I was regarded as an intruder, my being older and
not a member of their clique.  It also
became apparent that another in that group had taken the young tenor as a
partner and preferred not having any strangers talking to him.  So, regardless of having similar musical
interests with the tenor, I did not fit in.
I found that the older
members of DPMC were more courteous and accepting of newcomers, yet I had
little in common with them.  The
eighty-two-year-old multi-millionaire, who made his money in Texas hogs, sheep,
and most likely some oil, lead an ostentatiously flamboyant life, as evidenced
by his owning a pink Rolls Royce, a much younger, former drag queen, and a
large home decorated in a style that would have embarrassed Liberace.  Yes, they were kind enough to invite me to
their Christmas party, but our interests were so different that we did not make
socializing together a regular habit.
The most unusual member whom
I met was Jimmy.  (I am leaving out his
surname.)  I was puzzled by his arrival
at a DPMC party one evening, his appearing to be no more than fourteen-years-old
and in the company of a tall man in his mid-forties.  I dismissed the idea that the older man had
the indiscretion to bring an underage partner, so I wondered why this man was
bringing his son or nephew to an adult party. 
Later in the evening, I noticed that Jimmy sat alone, abandoned,
ignored, and obviously very sad.  When I
witness people feeling hurt or sad, that distresses me.  So, I approached Jimmy to see if I could
cheer him up.
During our conversation,
Jimmy revealed that he had an off-again / on-again relationship with the tall
man, and was living with him.  I sensed
that Jimmy felt that he was being used but had no practical idea how to find an
alternative life.  I was interested to
hear that he loved classical music and owned a grand piano, although it had
been placed in storage because the tall man had no room for it, leaving Jimmy
without the opportunity to play.  He also
enjoyed opera and cooking.  I was able to
observe very clearly that he never smiled, that his apparent sense of sadness
and loneliness were disturbingly deep-seated. 
He surprised me when he mentioned that he was employed.  I also noticed that, contrary to Jimmy appearing
to be too young to shave, he sounded much more mature than a mere
fourteen.  I said to him, “I don’t wish
to be too personal in inquiring, but how old are you?”  He stunned me when he replied, “Forty.”  Trying in my mind to reconcile the dramatic
difference between his age and his appearance, I quickly concluded that he must
be an extremely rare case of Kallmann syndrome, an affliction of the
hypothalamus and pituitary gland that, at the very least, prevents
puberty.  I then understood Jimmy’s sense
of alienation and isolation, his being a forty-year-old man who looked
fourteen.  He being so different, he did
not have a sense of belonging.  
My having been working for
many years in behavioral health, I wished that there were some way that  I could help Jimmy and offered to be
available to talk with him if he desired. 
He seemed thankful and provided me with his full name and phone
number.  The next weekend, I phoned Jimmy
a few times to see how he was doing and if he needed someone to talk with.  I received no answer, and he did not call me
back.
At the next DPMC gathering,
Jimmy again appeared.  I spoke with him,
saying that I hoped that he was OK.  He
puzzled me when he stated that I could have phoned him.  I replied that I had but had received no answer.  About this time, a DPMC member with camera
came around, taking pictures for the next newsletter.  The moment Jimmy spotted him, he bolted from
his chair and hid behind a large fish tank, refusing to have his picture
taken.  The cameraman tried to persuade
Jimmy to come out from behind the fish tank and to have his picture taken, but
he adamantly refused.  I interpreted
Jimmy’s action as having been so self-conscious and unhappy with himself that
he would not allow his picture to be taken. 
I never saw Jimmy after that.  I
wonder what became of him.  I hope that
he has found happiness.
I did not stay in DPMC much
later, either, mostly because I was not impressed with what this club turned
out to be, and I did not find people with similar interests who could become
friends.  Another contributing factor was
that the events coordinator must have thought of himself as a twenty-something,
slam-dancing, hot club-guy; and he arranged events to suit himself, despite the
fact that most of the members were more mature than that.  He arranged for a Halloween party in a huge
warehouse and hired a DJ to play ear-splitting, pounding noise.  Literally, I could not remain in that
warehouse, even though I had stuffed paper napkins into my ears and stood in
the farthest corner away from the towering speakers.  The decibels must have been about twenty
points above the level that causes hearing damage.  I was forced to flee to the parking lot,
finally deciding that I might as well leave. 
There was no way I could go back inside and be comfortable, let alone
protect my hearing.
When I was about to leave, a
long limo with a bunch of queens and driven by a Russian émigré came into the
parking lot.  It just so happened that my
costume was that of a KGB officer, with a KGB general’s hat, black-leather
coat, trousers, boots, and gloves.  The
Russian noticed me immediately, came over, and addressed me in Russian, which,
obviously, I did not understand.  He turned
and walked away when he realized that I was not Russian and that my apparel was
merely a costume.
The events coordinator
arranged another gathering at a bar that was built like a concrete box.  Apparently he had hired the same DJ, who
played ear-damaging noise.  Several of us
fled to the rear of the building and finally left the event early when the bar
needed that area to set up for another event.  
Later, when I politely inquired of the events coordinator why he
arranged extremely loud events, he gave me a very snotty reply.  I increasingly became disillusioned with
DPMC.
There was one annual event
that was supposed to be very chique, the Christmas black-tie
dinner.  Formal tuxes were expected and
an extra fee charged.  I did not
attend.  Friends, who are no longer members,
have told me that they found the event rather artificial and ostentatious.  They, too, became disenchanted with DPMC and
quit.
The very last gathering I
attended consisted of several cliques that clung to each other and ignored
everyone else.  At that point, I finally
concluded that DPMC had almost nothing to offer me.  I let my membership lapse and ignored
membership-fee notices mailed to me.
Since then, I was introduced
to the Story Time group.  Here I have
found people who have something worthwhile to say, who have had interesting
lives, and who are interested in hearing about other’s experiences, thoughts,
and feelings.  These members are genuine
people who share without pretense and who provide a welcome atmosphere of
trust.  These are the people I look
forward to seeing each week.
 © 4 March 2015      
About the Author 
  

I have had a life-long fascination with people
and their life stories.  I also realize
that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too
have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have
derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.