Tag: Coming Out

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Culture Shock by Ricky

“Culture” is a word that strikes fear into the world’s families of bacterium as if they know that shortly following the culturing will be an anti-biotic of the lethal type for all or specific families. A situation quite shocking from the point of view of the bacterium.

“Culture” is a word that creates feelings of loathing in the stereotype masses of the American populace. For some reason they feel that quality music in the form of opera, symphonies, and songs where one can actually hear and understand the lyrics is not of any worth. Thus, they vote to stop government support for these enterprises. As for TV entertainment, the masses do not seem to like a broadcast which does not contain lots of violence, sexual innuendo, or cheap humor.

These same masses will support government support for the things they prefer, for example baseball, football, and soccer stadiums. But worse of all is their tendency to label those who do like quality music, songs, TV, screen play, or drama productions as elitists (at best) or snobs (at worse).

“Culture” is a word that creates feelings of joy or happiness in the stereotypical well-to-do (previously referred to as elitists or snobs). This group also tends to view the “less fortunate others” as undesirables for friendships and as a drain on the public treasury. Thus, they vote to cut social programs that support the poor, as the poor are viewed as lazy and uncouth leeches.

Of course these stereotypical views are not totally accurate and there are those of us who enjoy activities and recreations that fall into both camps. Sadly though, we are a minority.

“Culture Shock” commonly occurs when persons from one background encounter persons from another. An example is when “Johnny-Reb” moves into “Damn Yankee” territory or vice versa; or when a “New Yorker” moves to San Francisco; or when anyone from the east or west coasts moves into the mid-west or America’s “heartland” (the “fly-over” parts from which many gay men and women escape and move to either of the coasts).

One example occurred in my own home. My oldest daughter married a man from the Republic of Georgia. After he obtained citizenship here, he arranged to have his parents move to Lakewood and live with me and them. His parents grew up entirely under the authority of the old Soviet Union and its economic and social “values.” Maria grew up on a collective farm and so worked hard as she grew.

One day, my daughter took her mother-in-law to a discount store to buy her a new purse. While trying to decide which of many different styles to buy, Maria began to cry. When asked why by my daughter, she replied that there were too many choices and she could not make a decision. Maria was faced with “culture-of-plenty” shock.

Other “shocking” opportunities occur when military, police, gang, generational, and sexual orientation cultures have values that clash.

I have not experienced culture shock per se. What I am experiencing is culture confusion. Being a closeted gay boy since my young teen years, I lived in the straight world most of my life. When I finally officially “came out,” at age 63, I was gently exposed to the gay “culture” of senior men. Then I learned a little of other sub-groups of gay culture; some of which apparently don’t “play well” together, physically or politically.

So just as Maria experienced culture shock trying to adjust from a Soviet life of “little” to an American culture of abundance, So in my case, I am trying to understand all the subtleties of the elusive gay culture. Since I do not generally expose myself to the sub-groups of that culture, I am not likely to ever comprehend them well enough to form a cohesive or unifying understanding.

© 26 November 2012

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Revelations by Betsy

I have not had very many secrets in my life. Sure, I’ve had my share of the petty little “nothing” secrets that don’t amount to much. And sure, the secret thoughts about the people around me that I don’t like, ugly thoughts that I would be ashamed to admit to having.

As a lesbian I share the one big secret that most glbt people have grown up with. The really big secret that has taken up residence inside my soul and has no intention of leaving. The really big secret that has permeated every cell of my body. The really big secret that I can no longer live with … or without. After all, this secret is about who I am. So its disclosure was a major revelation by me, about me, and for me.

Interestingly, once I disclosed the secret to myself (that is, my conscious mind) and then those closest to me, it became easier to tell others and I became more comfortable in my new skin.

When my secret first started creeping into my consciousness, I didn’t think I would ever reveal it to anyone. After all, I myself had been resisting the revelation for most of my life. But once I obtained some information about the subject and learned a few things about it, I realized there was no reason to keep it a secret.

After myself, the first recipient of the revelation that I am homosexual was my husband. I know he was braced for some kind of revelation because our lives had been in a total upheaval anyway and I think he was simply waiting for some kind of explanation. The fact that my secret was working its way to my consciousness like a bubble floating from the depths to the surface–this fact had caused some disruption in our lives and in the lives of our children who sensed, as children often do, that there was a secret not being revealed.

The next recipient of the revelation was my oldest child, who at the time was home on a break from college. I remember the two of us walking home on a cold winter’s night in a snowstorm. It seemed relatively easy to make the revelation to her as I think back on it. I wonder if I sensed that years later she would be making the same revelation about herself to me.

I wrote about coming out to my sister in a piece called “Coping with Loved Ones.”

I timed my coming out to my sister, so that she would not be able to say a word after I made the shocking disclosure. Yes, this was how I coped with this difficult situation, ie, coming out to this loved one. We had been together for a few days and the time came for her to go home. We are at the airport at her gate. Her plane is boarding (this was before the high security days). “Last call for flight 6348 to Birmingham,” blared the public address speaker. “Oh, I do have something important to tell you, Marcy. I’m gay.” I said, as she is about to enter the jetway. “Let’s talk soon,” as I wave goodbye. I’m thinking,”Maybe she didn’t even hear me above all the noise.”

I never had to reveal my deeply-buried secret to my parents. My mother died in 1957 right after I graduated from college. At that time my secret had not yet taken the form in my conscious mind. Although I knew good and well what my feelings were I was not yet willing or able to admit to myself what those feelings meant or what they represented. Sounds pretty dumb, doesn’t? But that’s the truth. I had neither enough experience nor knowledge to understand what my feelings meant. So I never came out to my mother.

My father died in the late 1970‘s before I came out to myself. Just before the upheaval in the family took place–the upheaval that led to my revelation.

I have been out for just over 30 years now. I have become quite well practiced in making my revelation to others whether they be friends, family, or complete strangers.

It seems quite natural really. Like revealing to someone that I am, say, left – handed. (which I am not). But no different than something like that. Being gay is not necessarily mentioned unless it is relevant to the conversation. I have found, however, that when we are having a conversation with someone, we are revealing who we are, disclosing more and more about ourselves–what we think, feel, believe–ie, who we are–and who we are includes our sexual orientation. And so the revelation is often made. Happily revealing myself no longer makes me nervous, anxious, trepidatious, or break out in hives. On the contrary my journey has taken me to a place where I feel quite proud to reveal who I am. It is the hundreds of thousands of such revelations that are made every day that help to change attitudes, correct misinformation, and promote understanding and good will.

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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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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Right Now by Betsy

If there is nothing else that I have learned over the years, I have learned this: be present and focus on the moment, the RIGHT NOW, because it really is all there is. It is all that we have in reality. The past is made up of memories, and memories are, after all, a product of one’s mind. As for the future: it is unknown and thoughts of the future are also a product of the mind.

We have a whole lot of ”right nows” happening all the time in succession. By the time I read this, what I am doing right now will be a memory; that is, a vision I create in my mind.

Right now is the most important time of my life. When I contemplate this I realize that right now IS all that is real. So why not make the most of it.

In a recent Monday afternoon story called My Favorite Place I wrote: my favorite place is wherever I am at the moment. Right now my favorite place is here, trying to sort out my thoughts and put them down on paper so you all can get some understanding of what I am trying to say.

Have you ever been in a place where you wanted desperately to capture the moment and make it last forever, such as a place of indescribable beauty and awe such as the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. Today’s cameras help to do that and make it possible to take home a reminder of that place. But what I cannot take home with me is how it FELT to experience the incredible beauty of the canyon and that awesome power of the falls. The memory is not the same as the experience itself. EkhartTolle speaks of being at one with the universe. Surrounded by incredible natural beauty and power and really taking in the feeling and the peace that it engenders is perhaps the closest I will ever be in my current human form to that connection. This can only happen in the right now.

How many of us have ever completely tormented ourselves over something that happened in the past–a few minutes ago or long ago. Or something bad happens a few minutes ago or long ago and we cannot let go of it. We go over and over and over it in our minds. Both past and future are constructs of the mind, says Tolle. Only the now is real. I like the concept. But yet being human I am flawed. My fragile ego was injured, for example, when I was inadvertently left off a groups’ luncheon e-mail list. A group of which I am a long time member. Did someone deliberately forget me. So I started in with the tapes going round and round in my head. “Why was I ignored? Who did it? Does someone hate me? Why does she hate me? Oh! For Heaven’s sake, Betsy, let it go. It was a simple mistake.” Focusing on the right now has helped me to better manage my vulnerability in such situations. Keeps me grounded in reality.

We all have known people who “live” in the past or “live”” in the future. I can understand how a person could fall into this behavior. When I retired from my job, for an instant I panicked. “ Who will I be? Maybe I will no longer have an identity. I’ll be a nothing,” etc. etc. Fortunately that thought was only fleeting. I immediately shifted gears, found other activities and interests, and established a new identity as an active retired person–a sports enthusiast, a community volunteer, etc. So for me, adjustment to retirement took only a week or so.

Coming out of the closet I had many moments of doubt about what I was doing at the time. I had left a very comfortable marriage and entered a world of insecurities and unfamiliar territory. I had never really lived alone. At the time it was not easy to find, much less join, a community of which I knew little; and on occasion finding members of that community with whom I could hardly relate. This produced moments of anxiety when I longed for my old familiar, comfortable situation I had left–my old, familiar past. But right now, I then said to myself, I know that past was intolerable and that is why I am doing this. I struggled but coached myself to stay grounded in the present.

During the months and years when I was in that marriage but starting to question whether I should be there, I started living in the future. Talk about having your head in the clouds–imagining what it would be like to be in a relationship with a woman and envisioning life as a lesbian. It seems clear that we all need to plan and to dream at times in our lives. But living one’s life and identifying with the future all the time can be dangerous. Would it not be terrifying to wake up one day and realize you’ve missed out on all the right nows and there are none left.

We do get ourselves into trouble, and we do ourselves a disservice when we anticipate not only that a certain something will happen in the future, but also we envision how we will feel about it. We may be setting ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment.

When I first came out I had much to learn about life and about people. And that is not because I was young. Well, compared to now I was young. But I was not a youngster. I was in my late forties. Yet I had lots to learn. So I experienced a couple of stormy years and stormy relationships and had many moments of doubt about the steps I had taken to change my life. Yes, I was a lesbian, but was this the life I wanted? At first I had many moments of disillusionment with my new life.

The future is not right now. What we think about the future is a contrivance of our thinking mind and not a reality. Does the future therefore deserve any of our energy in the form of anxiety, concern, worry, trepidation. Or on the positive side does it deserve premature visions of happiness, joy, calm, peace, etc. I do believe it does to some extent. Half the fun of a trip, or a party is the planning of it, right? For me it is. And planning for the future is a necessity, no doubt about it. But planning is a useful action done, when? In the right now. What does not deserve our time and energy is wasted worry and anxiety about the future.

In my dotage I am learning that life requires adjustments, sometimes just fine tuning, other times big changes all along the way. I have recently learned that I am having to cut back on many activities that I don’t want to cut back on. Some fine tuning is necessary. If I stick to the right nows, I should be able to make that adjustment easily and positively. I’m finding that being and staying in the right now helps me to do that. No doubt about it. The NOW is a good place to be.
So, what am I doing right now? I am getting ready for another right now.

December 16, 2013

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Self Labeling by Ricky

Interestingly enough this topic is so two sided in the sense of positive and negative labeling (three or four sided if you consider the options of secret labels or deceptive labels). Perhaps a better way to describe labeling would be: uplifting, destructive, or even empowering. I leave it to each of you individuals to discover or categorize labels into whatever groups you desire.

When I was serving as an officer in the military in the position of a Flight Security Officer in charge of 40 enlisted nuclear missile security guards, at one point I was assigned to lead a flight of personnel who were not pulling together to get the job done smoothly without interpersonal problems. I was not the typical air force officer so, I did not impose “severe punishment” for trouble makers right off the bat when I took over. Instead, I did the following to defuse the problems by emphasizing the similarities between everyone.

At my first “guard mount” I had the men repeatedly organize themselves into different groups as I called out the categories (i.e., one group over here, another stand over there, etc.). The categories (labels) were: Republicans here, Democrats there, others by me; blacks to the right, whites to the left, American Indians across from me, others next to me; Catholics to the left, Protestants to the right, Jewish across from me, others next to me (and so fourth through…); enlisted vs officers; NCO’s vs non-NCO enlisted; rural vs urban origins; Western vs Central vs Northern vs Confederate states; high school vs junior college vs college graduates; 4 year vs 6 year enlistees vs lifers; 18-20 vs 21-25 vs 26-30 vs 31+; married w/no children vs married w/children vs single vs widowed/divorced; action films vs chick flicks; and so on for about 15 minutes. At the end I reminded them that regardless of rank or position or psychological temperament, we all belong to different groups with different people we work with at one time or another; we all have something in common with others that perhaps we didn’t get along with prior to today. So, lighten up and see if you can’t become friends rather than enemies because we are all “stuck” together in the Air Force on this flight.

I am happy to report that as far as I could tell, all the interpersonal problems became non-issues and the flight became the best performing flight in the missile security squadron. Naturally, it was not all my doing, I happened to have an extremely well qualified Flight Security Sergeant as my second in command and most of the credit goes to him.

So moving on to a more personal level, I was quite naïve about many things dealing with sexuality growing up. I engaged in what has been labeled as “age appropriate” sex play/experimentation with both boys and girls as I hit puberty but the only label applied was “this is fun, but don’t let mom, dad, older brother, or anyone else know what we do.” There was one member of my Boy Scout troop who was my main sex play partner but we never did anything while on scout campouts or events. After he moved and I was in high school, my naivety continued to confuse me and I began to wonder why I was not attracted to any girls. Mentally, I was fantasizing about sex with boys (and rarely girls) but noticed that I was not attracted to any particular girls but I was to a few school mates. I just never thought of or realized the implication.

It wasn’t until I was in the Air Force as an officer that the possibility of being gay crept into my mind on a few occasions, but since I was married with kids, I put that thought out and eventually accepted that I might be bi-sexual. Ultimately, after my wife died and through the years of depression and self-evaluation I realized that I am (or at least have a large percentage of gay orientation). With the acceptance of this dual labeling, the stress in my life (and the confusion that went with it) disappeared and I feel much more relaxed and comfortable in my skin and around other men regardless of their orientation. In other words, I now know who/what I am.

So, some labeling can be damaging if it is “true” but denied and acceptance can be liberating but under many circumstances can still be damaging if one is not living in an environment where “truth” is tolerated. I’m pretty sure many of you have had experiences that demonstrate the accuracy of my last statement. Even if you have not, you must know of others who have had those negative experiences of revealing the “truth” to those who don’t tolerate or can’t accept it.

© 11 September 2011

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Michael King

I was four or maybe five when I asked my grandmother why Aunt Ethel’s son wasn’t at any family gatherings. I knew she had a son but I had never met him and no one ever mentioned him so it all seemed strange to me. My grandmother held her head high and announced, “He is not welcome. He likes boys,”

I didn’t understand but I knew without a doubt that I could never like boys, whatever that meant. Around the same time since I was always sick the doctor suggested that my family find some activity for me to do when I was bedfast. My grandmother taught me to crochet. I liked to dress up, dance and in general I would now consider myself to have been the “sissy” that I was often teased as. I now think that my parents accepted that I was queer. They seemed to be very surprised when I got married.

I have always been naive. I wasn’t influenced by religious fundamentalism, sin, hellfire and damnation. I was instead very concerned with rejection, hatefulness, and not being accepted. I was very curious about male genitalia. I didn’t get to do any athletics because of asthma so I didn’t get to see other guys to satisfy my curiosities. I just knew that it wasn’t OK to like boys.

I did have numerous advances made by older men and a few curiosity jack offs with guys my own age. I chalked it up to satisfying my interests not to liking boys. In the case of older men it would now be classified as having been molested. If ever it had been a satisfying experience perhaps I would have lived a different life. Those experiences were without my consent and uncomfortable, not pleasurable.

Even in college the few times I was having sex with guys I didn’t know how or what to do and neither did they. I did want to get married, raise a family and be like a man was supposed to be. I was also curious about having sex with a woman but had accepted that you waited to get married and then you were supposed to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary surrounded by children, grandchildren and a large and perfect family.

I was introduced to my first wife by an older friend that I met in a summer class. He thought that we would be a perfect match. We met in August and married in December and my first daughter was born in October. I was 20 years old. We did enjoy sex and were living a pretty good and acceptable life for 13 years. My children were very important to me and she neglected them. I couldn’t deal with that so I divorced her and got custody of the children

I didn’t do much about my curiosities. I didn’t even realize how much fear of being unacceptable controlled my life. I seemed to know the rules and had to appear to follow them. I had the fear that if I explored and got caught that the world would fall apart or worse. I still couldn’t like boys. If there was any sex it could not be accompanied with intimacy or affection. I fell in love with a straight guy who was my best friend. He knew it and wanted the friendship but sex was out of the question. That was the closest I came to thinking that I could like another man and have intimacy and love. It took another 38 years for me to meet someone that I could love. I did have several girlfriends after the divorce and enjoyed the sex but couldn’t let myself fall in love. Then I met my second wife. I guess you could say she seduced me. Of course I let her. That was my MO. She came to my place and never left.

I had my three children and I decided that if we were going to live together we needed to be married. We got married. I was more and more aware that men appealed to me but since I couldn’t be intimate with a man I settled into a pretty good 12 year marriage.

I somehow couldn’t come to grips with being gay if I didn’t have a boyfriend. I also didn’t think I could be gay and keep my job. Women seemed to present themselves and I had girl friends but I didn’t have sex with most of them. I just wasn’t interested but I did like the attention and it helped me to live as the acceptable straight image that I thought I had to have. Finally I attended the Gay Pride activities 4 years ago, got involved in Prime Timers and then the GLBT Center and 6 months later had my first boyfriend. It lasted 2 months but I came out, introduced him to my kids and have been a flaming queen ever since.

So what is the essence of GLBTQ? It’s being who you are even if it takes a lifetime. I am happier now than I have ever been. I have the most wonderful partner and my kids all love him too. Could I have found the essence of being gay earlier? Probably not. Through the “Telling your Story” group I have gotten in touch with all those rules and requirements that made being queer impossible. “He likes boys” is the best part of my life. The journey was a wonderful way to grow and mature spiritually as well as emotionally. That maturation process is the essence of being, finding out who you are and being who you are.

July 13, 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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HomoFaggot by Phillip Hoyle

I knew my life was changing when my wife advised, “You’d better tell the kids.” I thought about it and realized that to give words to my activity would necessarily change me. The assumption stemmed from a theological concept about the power of words, for in Genesis God spoke into existence the creation and then pronounced it good. Early Christian tradition called Jesus not only the Christ but also the word. I assumed words create, words value, and words move even mountains. I knew that the words I used to communicate with my grown children would have all these powers. I would be creating myself to both them and me. I would be moving myself and them into new worlds of experience and, hopefully, love. I would be testing all the values my wife and I had sought to foster in them.

I decided to describe my actions rather than call myself names. Still, to tell my daughter Desma about my activities would be to out myself not only to her but, because I assumed she would be more entertained than chagrined and not at all ashamed over what I had done, I would be known as homosexual to anyone who knew her very well. She wasn’t a gossip; she was just very open. I didn’t fault her, but I did know I’d be out in the city where she lived and where I had ministered in a congregation for nine years.

I asked my wife if she was sure about my telling them and was surprised at her answer. She didn’t want them to receive the word about my life at the same time they might have to hear that we were changing our relationship. I perceived her wisdom but wondered at her assumption that differed from mine. Still I bit the bullet and called the kids.

From years of reading queer theory, I realized that in telling them this information about myself, I would change in ways I could not yet imagine. I chose not to use categorizing words such as homosexual or bisexual, because I didn’t want to direct their ways of thinking. The main impact would be that my life and the marriage were changing. I also realized that whatever I said to them, I’d be homosexual. I knew that neither straights nor gays were comfortable with the designation bisexual. It didn’t matter that I had for many years understood and valued my bisexuality. It didn’t matter that the latest coalition of queers called itself GLBT. Yes, that B stands for bisexual, a term common in the literature of psychology, sociology, and sexology; that B represents a growing body of knowledge about humans; that B describes well the experience of thousands or even millions of human beings including me. When the story would be re-told, as I assumed it would, the B word would not be used. I would become a homosexual; I would be gay. Although that didn’t bother me at a personal level, the H word did not begin to describe my life. It was just too simple a designation. It was also one that would limit my access to work in the church.

Ironically, homosexual was more acceptable than bisexual in church work due to the possibility of being monogamous as a homosexual and the impossibility of such as a bisexual. A war of concepts and ideals seemed underway, one that would end my career. I didn’t know what I would do, what outcomes I’d find, but I did call my kids and tell them that in New Mexico I’d had two sexual affairs with men. I said their mom and I wanted them to know because we didn’t know what the future would hold. I reminded them that we loved them. My wife and I did separate. Within a year I’d left my ministerial profession and moved to Denver to live as a gay man. These choices seemed the best for everyone.

About four years later Desma heard her two boys call one another faggot. She asked them what the expression meant. Because they either didn’t know for sure or didn’t want to get into heavy trouble with their mom, they told her it meant you were strange. They’d heard it at school. She called together all four of her older children saying they needed to talk. She told them the word faggot and what it stood for: people who love and want to live with others of the same sex. They talked until she knew they understood the meaning of homosexual, gay, lesbian, and other related words. They discussed descriptive and pejorative uses of the terms. Then she said she wanted them to think for three hours, not to discuss but simply think, about people they knew that are homosexual. When she dismissed the children to go back to their play, she called her sister-in-law. “Heather,” she informed, “we’re talking about homosexuality over here. I thought you’d want to know before the kids got together again.” The families lived several blocks apart. The kids were in and out of each other’s homes. And Grandpa Phillip was coming to town in a few weeks.

When she got the kids together again, she asked them and made a list. They talked about what they knew including several homosexual people who were related to their family as friends and acquaintances. None of them suggested Grandpa Phillip. But some of the grandchildren had met Phil’s friend Tony and his male partner. They had walked his dog Shinti and had attended two gay parades with their grandpa. They had seen him greet gays and lesbians near his home. Two of them had met a transgender friend of his who bought them a cookie at a coffee shop. And since then the children and grandchildren have met Grandpa Phillip’s current partner Jim. They’ve met his mother Ruth. Most of them have stayed overnight in our home and have eaten Ruth’s homemade cookies. They have read my stories about Miss Shinti and her gay owner. They know something about their grandpa, information that will change for them as they mature. They also know they are deeply loved, even by their HomoFaggot grandpa.

Denver, 2011

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

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Solitude by Betsy

The joy and the pain of being alone: for me, a lesbian, solitude is the perfect word to apply to the coming out experience. I suppose one could say coming out is a process–an on-going experience–never ending. But I am thinking of the beginning of the process. The early days.

The pain was all-consuming. The pain was around a part of me that was waking up, like the pain in a limb that has been in a cast for months and then suddenly released. I was becoming conscious of the fact that life as I was living it would be emotionally unsustainable for me. I was waking up to the fact that my lifestyle as I knew it would be coming to an end. Now some people might welcome such a happening, but for me there was a pervasive sadness about it. Because my life had been comfortable, I was surrounded by a loving family–husband and three children–friends, and I had a career which was productive and satisfying. Any and all of these things would be seriously threatened by revealing my secret and coming out of that safe, but dark, lonely place called the closet.

All of my relationships at home, socially, and at work were in perfect order. All, that is, but one. My relationship with myself was out of order, unhappy, downright painful. What a lonely place this is. Lonely because I have a secret about myself and I am the only one who is aware of it. Once I consciously acknowledged my sexual orientation, my true state of being, I found myself in a very empty, uninhabitable space even though I was physically surrounded by people I loved or just enjoyed being with. I did not really enjoy being with myself. I longed for another life so very distant from where I was in time and space it seemed. I had to make the journey to that distant place. My life depended on it. I will have to hurt some people initially in order to get there, but I had to take those first steps. Staying here would eventually be even more hurtful for myself and those I love. This is the forsaken, isolated,negative place of solitude.

Solitude is not always a negative place. In 1985 when I had just started the process of coming out of that lonely closet–I signed on to a leadership course with Outward Bound. The course took the form of a ten-day trek through the wilderness of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah. We would travel by foot a distance of about 25 miles. This would require learning some climbing techniques, orienteering, pathfinding, and hiking some days long distances with heavy packs on our backs. Some of the climbs and descents, it turned out, were life-threatening. But we all made it.

Somewhere in the middle of the trek we were to experience three days of solitude. We were each directed to our own isolated location where we would stay for 3 days and 2 nights with a sleeping bag, tarp, enough clothes to keep warm during the chilly nights, enough water for the duration, the clothes on our backs, and a pen and paper. Nothing more. No electronics, no reading, no listening devises, no food.

It was an experience I will never forget. Looking through the notes I made at the time, I am reminded of the lessons learned from the three days of solitude.

1. Even at the age of 50 something, I can sleep on slick rock and be comfortable enough to actually sleep.

2. I am “lost” for a moment upon rising in the morning when my daily routine is absent. No toothbrushing, no coffee making, the program required that I stay in this spot. All this requires a different mind set. I must think about what I am doing here in this place of solitude.

3. It is worth while occasionally to put myself in a different place, perhaps an isolated place such as this, to think about the meaning of my existence and keep a meaningful perspective on life.

4. Busying about is a way of hiding from things I don’t want to deal with and a way of hiding from myself.

5. Security and comfort do have value, but keep them in perspective. Don’t be afraid to take risks and to be my own person.

6. I have no food and I haven’t felt hungry. Conclusion: it is not the empty stomach rather it’s the stimuli (food) that causes this well-fed person to feel hungry.

7. Three days and two nights of solitude in the wilderness is a valuable and unique experience. Don’t forget it.

I normally do not write poetry, I haven’t been inclined to read much poetry.
But in solitude in the wilderness I was inspired to write this:

SOLO

Solo, stop, sit, sleep
Don’t busy about
Nothing to be busy about
It’s time for a drink
It’s time to think
Our lives are in this canyon land
We will leave them here
We will take a new route
Back to the old

So solitude can provide for a beautiful place offering a positive experience or it can be a dark, painful place of misery. In either case both solitudes had great value for me. The result was that my life improved. The lesson from those experiences for me, a person who does not spend a lot of time alone is: savor and value your time alone and use it wisely.

9-23-13

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Breaking into Gay Culture by Betsy

Not only was I unaware of how or where to break into the gay culture, I was oblivious of the fact that there was a unique culture belonging to the gay community. Moreover, I was unaware that this is something I needed to do for myself when I came out.

One of my very first experiences breaking into the lesbian community was actually at my place of employment. I was working at a non-profit agency at the time and having seen some of the local lesbian literature around I learned that there existed in Denver a Women’s Outdoor Club. I understood that this was a lesbian club and felt it was a group that would appeal to me and be appropriate for me to belong to. I understood that I belonged in such a group in spite of the fact that I was still married, living with my husband, still one child at home, and was definitely “feeling” my way forward into unfamiliar territory (hoping I was moving forward and not backward, but not sure at this point).
I recognized the name of one of the members of the Women’s Outdoor Club as one of agency’s volunteers. I had seen her many times in the office. She knew I was married at the time. The next time I saw her I said to her, “I think I would like to join the Women’s Outdoor Club.” In a hushed tone she replied, “It IS for lesbians.” I said, “Yes, I know, and I qualify.” “Oh,” she said. Come along on our next trip. We’re hiking up in Rocky Mountain National Park.”

The time came for the hike. My husband delivered me to the car pooling meeting place and after the event picked me up. I often think about that day. He knew what I was doing and with whom. There were no secrets. Everything was out in the open. I think he was hoping I would get a taste of the new culture and find that I didn’t fit or didn’t like it. His hopes did not come to fruition. I do not and at the time did not think of this experience as “breaking into” a culture or a group. The reality was that I was doing an activity (hiking) with a number of female nature-loving hikers. This was really nothing terribly new. The difference was there were no men in the group–husbands or otherwise, nor were we a group of women hiking together while chatting about our respective husbands or male companions.

Another introduction to the culture was a visit to the Three Sisters Bar. The place seemed rather “seedy” to me–dark and almost sinister. I had no idea who the women were who were there or what they looked like. It was far too dark to see anything. Seeing the women together was quite exciting actually. I cannot remember how I got there or with whom either. Just that it was the place to go at night.

During my coming out process I learned about a group for married women or women who had been married who were coming out or considering coming out, were gay, or bisexual or thought they were gay. The group was organized and facilitated by a woman in the community who had travelled the same route more or less; that is, she, too, had been married, raised a family, and came out later in life. Perfect, I thought. That’s for me. And it was just what I needed.

One of the meetings included a tour of the then existing women’s bars. We started with our usual support group discussion and following that left the meeting place to visit the bars. This was extremely helpful to me as I had no prior knowledge of any of these places except the Sisters. It turns out there were three or four bars and they were all quite enjoyable when one was comfortably entrenched in a group and not scared to death. I will always be grateful to my mentor and leader for her support group.

Prior to that experience and meeting many other women of my age group, I seriously thought I was unique in that I was married, had been married for a long time, and now, later in life was coming out, changing my life-style completely. But I found that to be untrue as there were many other women just like me.

In those days The Center sponsored a support group for women coming out. All extremely helpful and made the coming out process much less difficult.

I suspect the gay culture is more discernible, more definable, and takes on more importance for those individuals, gay men or lesbians, who are seeking partners, either consciously or unconsciously.

I have to say that after 30 years or so in the lesbian community and almost 30 years in a stable same-sex relationship, I do not feel that there is an identifiable lesbian culture per se. Maybe among some women there is, but to me it feels more like a women’s culture, free from the constraints, real or imagined, imposed by the presence of straight men. There are plenty of straight women who partake of activities for women alone–free of the influence, direction, or guidance of the straight men to whom they are attached. By the same token by sharing a common sexual identity most lesbians tend to relate to each other more comfortably than with straight women perhaps. In my view this does not reflect a lesbian culture, rather women’s culture. Some of my best friends are straight women. Our bonding is more around our common values and our womanhood. I believe this is true in the lesbian community as well.

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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The Interview by Nicholas

It happened one day when Jamie and I were visiting his grandmother who lived in Palo Alto, California with her daughter, Jamie’s mom. We were living in San Francisco at the time, about an hour north, and frequently drove down the Peninsula to visit Jamie’s parents and grandmother. This day was a little different because Jamie’s folks were away so that made us Grandma’s chief entertainers/care givers for the day.

Grandma G was in her mid-80s and totally together mentally. Because she was getting up in years and finding it difficult getting around, Jamie’s parents moved her from her home in Chicago to their rambling ranch-style house in sunny, mild California. It wasn’t a move that she was totally happy with but she seemed to get along well enough and didn’t complain. At least not to me and Jamie.

She was always happy to see us. One day we brought her a piece of this fabulously delicious peanut butter cake with peanut butter and cream cheese frosting from one of the exquisite bakeries in our neighborhood of San Francisco. She loved it and told us that this was her day to sin. What day was that, we asked. Any day I want, she said. We always brought some cake down with us after that.

I don’t know that I would label Grandma G a “character,” though she certainly had plenty of character. She once told us that sometimes she stayed up all night reading a book she just could not put down. She was sharing a secret like a kid who deliberately went against curfew to do what she wanted.

She’d had an interesting career and for a time had had her own radio show on homemaking, complete with her own show business radio name, on a station in Chicago. She had also been very involved in liberal politics in Chicago—one of the first women to do so—and in the Presbyterian church. Grandma G is probably the reason Jamie’s family turned out so solidly liberal and progressive minded. Jamie likes to show a photograph of him and Grandma at a 1980 Chicago rally for the Equal Rights Amendment, the one that would have put gender equality into the U.S. Constitution.

I always enjoyed our visits to Palo Alto where it was usually sunny and warm unlike San Francisco with its chill and fog. I felt like I was actually in California there.

Jamie was busy doing something outside, cleaning the pool or something. Grandma and I were in the family room chatting about nothing in particular when the questions began.

She was curious, in an innocent grandmotherly way, about me and Jamie, her favorite grandson. How did we meet, she asked. I told her the story of friends inviting us both to dinner, meeting at their house and then going out. Jamie and I hit it off, he offered me a ride home and, after talking a while, we made plans to get together.

Did we love each other? Yes, I said, sort of gulping as I wondered just where this conversation was going and where was Jamie.

Did Jamie treat me well? Oh, yes, he does, I said. Very well.

Does he apologize when he hurts your feelings, asked Grandma. Well, yes, I guess, I said. He hadn’t really ever hurt my feelings in the short time we’d known each other but I imagined he would apologize if he ever did so.

I imagine there were more questions, but then Jamie returned to the room. I joked about being grilled by Grandma and the conversation shifted to another topic. I’ve always had a fond memory of that afternoon and my brief interview by the matriarch.

About the Author

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