Tag: Don’t

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Don’t, by Pat Gourley

“ Do or do not. There is no try.”

The Buddha


This quotation, ostensibly from the Buddha, is on my current favorite t-shirt. This is my favorite shirt since it has a long tail and easily covers my big belly. The belly fat is due in large part to two things: my major sweet tooth that seems to primarily kick in between seven and nine PM every night and my HIV meds that rapidly accelerate the metabolic syndrome that leads to abdominal fat deposition. My protruding belly is in stark contrast to my gaunt, wasted looking face that makes even Keith Richards look good on his worst days. I won’t even address the current sorry state of my ass.

The above quote may remind some of you of a line from Star Wars spoken by Yoda. The Yoda version also goes something like this just with more dramatic punctuation: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” The Empire Strikes Back.

Supposedly Yoda lived to be 900 years old but the Buddha still has him beat by living at least several millennia prior so I am going with Buddha as the originator of this famous line. This I suppose could be a phrase comparable to the infamous “shit or get off the pot”. No hanging out on the throne reading the paper. For god-sakes focus and commit to the task at hand or not.

At first blush with this topic I thought I want to be a ‘doer’ rather than responding to the often-harsh command: don’t! Then it quickly occurred to me that there have been many “don’t-directives” in my life that I have to say have proved helpful. A few that come to mind are: don’t play in traffic, don’t own a gun, and don’t eat lead paint chips, don’t pick-up that snake or don’t sashay into a straight bar on Bronco Sunday afternoon and ask, what ya watchin’ fellas? And the one that I saw recently on Facebook, “don’t come out of the bathroom smelling your fingers no matter how fragrant the hand soap was you just used.”

Perhaps I was overly primed to see the following based on today’s topic but in reading a nice long article on Larry Kramer in the NYT’s from last week I was particularly drawn to several quotes by Kramer using the word “don’t”. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/nyregion/larry-kramer-and-the-birth-of-aids-activism.html

I’ll get to the quotes in a bit but for those of you perhaps not familiar with Larry Kramer he first came on the national gay scene in a significant way with the publication of his prescient 1978 novel Faggots. The novel was a rather unflattering though brutally honest look at the wild sexual abandon of gay male life in the later half of the 1970’s. Kramer as a result was persona non grata in the gay world but with the onset of the AIDS nightmare a few years later Faggots took on an air of prophecy.

Kramer also has significant accomplishment’s in the worlds of film, theatre and literature but perhaps in some ways most impacting were his successful efforts around AIDS activism. He was a seminal founder of both the New York based Gay Men’s Health Crisis and a few years later of the iconic and change creating movement called Act Up. I have included a link to this NYT piece on Kramer and highly recommend it as an important historical snapshot of this great gay man and his many accomplishments. He is a consummate example of the real life advice contained in the phrase “don’t be afraid” or to again shamelessly exploit an old Buddhist bromide “leap and a net shall appear”.

Quoting Kramer from the NYT’s article: “I don’t basically have fences to mend anymore. The people I had fights with down the line, some are dead. But even when we fought, I think we were always — I love gay people, and I think that’s the overriding thing in any relationship that I have with anyone else who’s gay. Never enough to throw them out of my life. I’ve never had huge fights with anybody. Much as I hate things about the system and this country, in terms of the people I deal with, I don’t have any.”

I have been keenly aware of Larry Kramer and his many bold and often at times very controversial proclamations and actions since 1978. He has pricked my conscience on numerous occasions shaming me actually to do more than I would have without his kick in the ass but still never achieving his level of fearless integrity. I still today in many ways lamely persist with my own at times crippled activism.

It is 2017, almost 40 years since the publication of Faggots, and as Larry reminds us, at age 81, in his last quote in the article the struggle continues: “I don’t think that things are better generally,” he said. “We have people running this government who hate us, and have said they hate us. The fight’s never over.”

© May 2017

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Don’t, by Gillian

My mother was the one who instructed me on the do’s and more specifically the don’t’s of life. Throughout my youth they dropped effortlessly from her lips with great frequency.

“Gillian,” (always a mark of displeasure when she used my whole name rather than the usual ‘Gill’), frequently followed by a couple of disapproving tsk tsk’s,

“Please,” (emphasized to indicate that her severely-challenged patience was near it’s breaking point),

“Don’t do that!”

Mostly followed by,

“What will the neighbors think?” (managing to ignore completely the fact that in actuality we had no neighbors close enough to see me picking my nose or scratching my thigh or hitching up my skirt to straddle the fence or whatever this particular ‘that’ was. No human ones anyway, and the sheep, no matter what you may think of them, are not ones to pass judgement. Had I ever pointed out that basic fact, I’m sure she would have replied,

“Some passer-by then,” managing to ignore the rarity of that, too.

Of course those same fictitious persons must also be protected from hearing the unacceptable.

‘Don’t shout, dear,” she would say, almost in a whisper, thereby proving her point.

“I’m only three feet away. The neighbors will think we are arguing.”

“Do turn that awful noise down, please!” she implored as I turned up the radio volume for my beloved Beatles. “I don’t want the neighbors knowing you listen to that dreadful stuff”

My poor mother, life was simply loaded with pitfalls. If she wasn’t protecting us from the negative judgment of the non-existent neighbors, she was protecting us from the negative judgment of fate itself.

“Oh, don’t walk under there!” she would grab me to steer me around the leaning ladder.

“Stop! Stop!” she would cry out in alarm if a black cat – and there were many loose cats around in those days – threatened to cross our path.

If we saw a lone magpie we would gaze around anxiously for another. Where was it? There must be one! as she murmured,

“One for sorrow, two for joy.”

The only judgement which apparently held no fear for my mother was that from above. She never once even suggested that anything she or I might do would incur any negative judgement from The Almighty. The God she offered me was a loving God, not one of wrath. For that I am forever grateful. In my eyes it more than compensates for any petty fears I still hang on to, such as searching relentlessly for that second magpie. I confess that I still do that, if at least a little tongue in cheek. My efforts remain a bit unsettled because I am unsure of the rules. When does the Statute of Limitations expire on that other bird? Is it actually vital to see both birds together? Or is an hour later OK? What if I successfully spot number two later but on the same day? The same week? Someone once asked me, if I could spend five minutes with my mother now, what would I want to ask her. Crazily what immediately leapt to mind was that damn bird. Quick, Mum, tell me rules of the two magpies.

It was inevitable, of course, that my dead mother was hovering around, peering over my shoulder, when I decided I had to come out to the world. Gillian, what will the neighbors think? Indeed!

No, for all her earthly warnings, I have no concern about any Heavenly fears. If by some remote, as it seems to me, chance that she is actually aware of my life as it is today, she will not condemn, she will not fear, she will not scold. If she knows everything, then she understands and accepts everything. She is free of fear. She is done with don’t. And so am I!

© May 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Don’t, by Pat Gourley

“ Do or do not. There is no try.”
The Buddha
This quotation,
ostensibly from the Buddha, is on my current favorite t-shirt. This is my
favorite shirt since it has a long tail and easily covers my big belly. The
belly fat is due in large part to two things: my major sweet tooth that seems
to primarily kick in between seven and nine PM every night and my HIV meds that
rapidly accelerate the metabolic syndrome that leads to abdominal fat
deposition. My protruding belly is in stark contrast to my gaunt, wasted
looking face that makes even Keith Richards look good on his worst days. I
won’t even address the current sorry state of my ass.
The above quote may
remind some of you of a line from Star Wars spoken by Yoda. The Yoda version also
goes something like this just with more dramatic punctuation: “Do. Or do not.
There is no try.” (The Empire Strikes Back).
Supposedly
Yoda lived to be 900 years old but the Buddha still has him beat by living at
least several millennia prior, so I am going with Buddha as the originator of
this famous line. This I suppose could be a phrase comparable to the infamous “shit
or get off the pot”. No hanging out on the throne reading the paper. For
god-sakes focus and commit to the task at hand or not.
At first
blush with this topic I thought I want to be a ‘doer’ rather than responding to
the often-harsh command: don’t! Then it quickly occurred to me that there have
been many “don’t-directives” in my life that I have to say have proved helpful.
A few that come to mind are: don’t play in traffic, don’t own a gun, and don’t
eat lead paint chips, don’t pick-up that snake or don’t sashay into a straight
bar on Bronco Sunday afternoon and ask, what ya watchin’ fellas?  And the one that I saw recently on Facebook, “don’t
come out of the bathroom smelling your fingers no matter how fragrant the hand
soap was you just used.”
Perhaps I
was overly primed to see the following based on today’s topic but in reading a
nice long article on Larry Kramer in the NYT’s from last week I was
particularly drawn to several quotes by Kramer using the word “don’t”.
I’ll get to
the quotes in a bit but for those of you perhaps not familiar with Larry Kramer
he first came on the national gay scene in a significant way with the
publication of his prescient 1978 novel Faggots.
The novel was a rather unflattering though brutally honest look at the wild sexual
abandon of gay male life in the later half of the 1970’s.  Kramer as a result was persona non grata in
the gay world but with the onset of the AIDS nightmare a few years later Faggots took on an air of prophecy.
Kramer also
has significant accomplishment’s in the worlds of film, theatre and literature
but perhaps in some ways most impacting were his successful efforts around AIDS
activism. He was a seminal founder of both the New York based Gay Men’s Health Crisis and a few years
later of the iconic and change creating movement called Act Up. I have included a link to this NYT piece on Kramer and
highly recommend it as an important historical snapshot of this great gay man
and his many accomplishments. He is a consummate example of the real life
advice contained in the phrase “don’t be afraid” or to again shamelessly
exploit an old Buddhist bromide “leap and a net shall appear”.
Quoting Kramer
from the NYT’s article: “I don’t
basically have fences to mend anymore. The people I had fights with down the
line, some are dead. But even when we fought, I think we were always — I love
gay people, and I think that’s the overriding thing in any relationship that I
have with anyone else who’s gay. Never enough to throw them out of my life.
I’ve never had huge fights with anybody. Much as I hate things about the system
and this country, in terms of the people I deal with, I don’t have any.”
I have been
keenly aware of Larry Kramer and his many bold and often at times very
controversial proclamations and actions since 1978.  He has pricked my conscience on numerous
occasions shaming me actually to do more than I would have without his kick in
the ass but still never achieving his level of fearless integrity. I still
today in many ways lamely persist with my own at times crippled activism.
It is 2017,
almost 40 years since the publication of Faggots,
and as Larry reminds us, at age 81, in his last quote in the article the
struggle continues: “I don’t think that
things are better generally,” he said. “We
have people running this government who hate us, and have said they hate us.
The fight’s never over.”
© 21 May 2017 
About the Author 
I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised
on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40
plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS
activist. I have currently
returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California. 
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Don’t, by Betsy

My mother was not big on “don’ts.”  I cannot remember either of my parents
issuing constant “don’t do this’s, don’t do that’s, don’t forget to’s…,
etc’s.”  When they did, it was usually
for my safety: “Don’t climb too high, don’t jump off the roof, don’t swim out
too far.” 
In spite of the dearth of don’ts uttered by my mom in my
younger years, it changed as I grew out of childhood into adolescence and young
adulthood. As I grew older, I heard one “don’t” on a fairly regular basis: “Don’t
get pregnant.”
I’m not sure why my mother was so fearful of this one aspect
of my behavior. I had never given her cause to worry about my general
deportment in the past.  I had been
anything but a wild child. I usually stayed in line. But when I was dating boys
in my later high school years and into college, my mother was definitely
worried about my virginity. Perhaps she was projecting the feelings she
remembered having when she was the same age. 
Little did she know, her daughter had no chance of losing her virginity
as long as I was dating “nice” boys. There was no chance I would lose control
and “go too far.”  I suppose I could have
reassured her, but we, my mom and I, never talked about such topics especially
topics involving feelings. This was not uncommon in those days just as my mom
probably never talked about feelings with her mom a generation before.  Perhaps if my mother and I had been
comfortable talking about feelings, just maybe I would have known more about my
inner self earlier in my life. Perhaps I would have understood better who I was
really instead of proceeding simply according to the standards I knew.
I also know that my mother was concerned about appearances
and how her family looked to others. I think this was common in those
days.  And her eldest daughter becoming
inappropriately pregnant certainly would not look good.  I sometimes wonder which my mother would have
chosen had she been given the choice: You have a daughter who is unmarried and
pregnant, or you have a daughter who is a lesbian. Either would have
unthinkable to her I’m sure.
I am not being critical of my mother. This was a cultural
characteristic. My scanty religious training did not promote the peeling of the
onion skin to reveal secrets about ourselves, especially secrets having to do
with our sexual proclivities.   In my
experience religious doctrine, the ultimate standard upon which we all based
our conduct, not only did not promote introspection, but discouraged it.
I did not do much better as a mother with my daughters. After
all, like my mother, I had never been taught the importance of, or more
importantly HOW to talk about personal and intimate subjects with my children.
Also, children by nature certainly are not comfortable revealing deeply held
feelings which often they are reluctant to admit even to themselves that they
have.
In my old age I find myself in a continual process of sorting
out that which should be spoken from that which must simply be accepted and
from which I must detach—detach with love, but detach— and go on my own
way. 
BTW, on the very, very outside chance that anyone especially
children or grandchildren and more especially in-laws—should anyone happen to
ask me for any advice or even just an opinion, I will be glad to offer the best
I have to give based on my long experience.
© 5 Jun 2017 
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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Don’t! by Lewis Brown

When I was in a Methodist Church last September 2016, many people in the congregation were becoming overly excited by the American election events. One of the lady parishioners, Kim, stood up and said “We go to church to worship God, that is we do not [Don’t] put our trust and hope in the princes of this world but in God only.” On one level, I agree with her. Donald Trump, as hostile as he is, is only a paper tiger as Mao Tse-Tung would have said.


Last Sunday I attended the Congregational Meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies (MCCR). The pastor, Rev. Dr. Gail Atchison said they were having severe financial problems. I learned for instance that the large commercial gas oven in the kitchen had “blown up,” so that they did not even have a functioning kitchen for catering and hosting events.

To be realistic, looking around, the only gay businesses that actually have any big bucks is the gay porno industry. And they would love to contribute to gay social agencies but cannot since they are considered, fairly or unfairly, to be moral if not legal criminals. The answer is a clever business man takes the contributions and launders the money legally of course and makes the cash available to our worthy causes. In the past the gay porno industry has contributed generously to AIDS related service and health agencies. Why not a new commercial gas stove for MCCR?

Some of the gay porno companies are Titan Men, Falcon Video, Raging Stallions and Hot House Videos. They have become big businesses.

At the MCCR Congregational Meeting we also discussed the currently proposed Mission Statement which, unlike the previous more militant Mission Statement, did not say “to develop a sense of community and the building up of the gay and Lesbian community.” It did speak of advocating for poor people and the homeless but was not much different from what a Congregational Church would have in its Mission Statement.

The pastor Gail Atkinson also stated that she was trying (I think heroically) to get more parishioners by scouring local community organizations one of which was the Denver Gay and Lesbian Community Center. She said that when she went there, no one had ever heard of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Rockies or of the denomination Metropolitan Community Church. Imagine, the Gay and Lesbian Center’s staff members did not even know that the gay and Lesbian Church was located about 10 blocks away from the Center building. The right hand did not know what the left had was doing. Mind-boggling. The Center staff members were also quite hesitant to promise to refer any young gay and Lesbian people to a “church” or to any church, given the assumed hostility of most churches to gay people.

Consider the Hassidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. They are well organized. Their business leaders have cornered the market on the local photograph apparatus business, including the new digital cameras, and are well established in the diamond trade business, both of these businesses have become profitable. The typical Hassidic family therefore has an income from one of these businesses and lives in an apartment building owned by a Hassidic Jew so that the landlord – tenant hostility is avoided. The landlord wants the tenant to survive and thrive – for religious reasons.

So, when I hear phrases like “organize and empower the Lesbian and gay community,” I think this is what I mean. Organize like the Hassidic community in Brooklyn. They have successfully organized and the whole community has found a way to survive and thrive despite the hostility of our current politicians and hostile politicians of the past.

© 22 May 2017

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Dont!, by Phillip Hoyle

Surely back when I was a kid there was plenty of parental advice given, but I don’t remember much of it, certainly not many precautionary prohibitions starting with Don’t. Our parents trusted us kids—all five of us. We got freedom. A few years ago my youngest sister, Jewel, said of the folks, “They gave us too much freedom.” I was not sure what she meant but I did know that as a kid I had a life my parents knew little or nothing of. Then as a young teen that life was getting less illegal and more sinful. As an older teen it was more deplorable, but to describe my perspective more accurately, the deplorable self lived at peace with the non-deplorable self. I always liked the freedom, the lack of Don’ts, the trust merited or not.

My eldest sister, Lynn, advised, “If Dad gets angry, don’t argue, just listen.” He was mainly pleased with me, but one evening I had to follow her advice. My protracted goodbye at my girlfriend’s door went on too long. Perhaps Dad imagined I was kissing her too much while the truth was that I was trying to get up my courage to kiss her at all. I wanted to but couldn’t make myself do so. I followed Lynn’s advice when he scolded me in the car. He seemed angry that he had to wait on me. I listened and apologized without saying anything about what I was doing or unable to do, just for inconveniencing him.

My reluctance about kissing disappeared a couple of years later under the tutelage of a boyfriend. After going to his school which offered several classes and then his moving away, I finally kissed two different girls. One of them wondered what had got into me; the other expected that behavior from her boys. My second year in college I kissed Myrna much to her surprise. She got nervous and bit my ear. I thought she loved it and knew I was on my way to becoming a real man or something pathetic like that. I really enjoyed kissing her like my boyfriend had taught me and teaching her to enjoy it as well. Finally I understood what someone had written about French kissing: that it was the French answer to the need for birth control. We kissed passionately, and it did fill in for the Don’t factor for the two of us.

I prescribed a few don’ts for myself. Don’t try to answer all the teacher’s questions; doing so will only make other students despise you. Don’t forget to smile. Don’t forget to stand up for your own ideas in discussion. Don’t argue needlessly. Don’t overdress or underdress. But those are not terribly important.

Eventually I advised myself a Do. Do find a guy to do that really fun kissing with, and do it now.

© 22 May 2017

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