Tag: Gay literature

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You Don’t Want to Go There, by Phillip Hoyle

Believe me. I’m wary of “You don’t want to go there,” something that always sounds like unsought advice. It doesn’t take me seriously enough. But there are situations when the warning should be taken seriously. Just what kind of adventure do you think you successfully can confront? What kind invites you? What danger stimulates your imagination?

Some years ago I read a book that intrigued me, The Brothers Bishop, by Bart Yates (Kensington Press, 2005). I was interested to read about the lives of brothers since I had four sisters and no brothers. Here’s something that got my attention, a kind of “You don’t want to go there” incident. Tommy and Nathan the brothers had a rough upbringing. Tommy was the golden child, Nathan the control freak. Some years later Tommy returns for a summer break at the family cabin. I wondered why did Tommy dove into the ocean at a dangerous spot without his brother Nathan trying to stop him. There had been an argument, a warning, and a “no.” But no fight, no restraint. I reasoned perhaps Tommy had never been restrained. Perhaps his brother would have done the same thing and so wouldn’t interfere. Perhaps he believed Tommy, like usual, would luck out. In the scene, both brothers were deeply upset. Neither was thinking sanely. But should someone have said, “You don’t want to go there”? So much of the strength of the story comes from not having everything explained. The writer asked the reader to think.

I thought about how I didn’t have a brother story of my own, but we neighborhood boys often challenged each other to do daring, sometimes stupid feats. I did many of them but, like a real young queer in training, refused to jump off the neighbor’s garage roof. Not me. These childhood experiences did help me identify with the brothers in Yate’s book.

To some people, “You don’t want to go there,” seems an invitation to fun, even if the place will cause trouble. While I don’t like the phrase, I am not one of those adventuresome people except when “there” stands for a word choice or a concept that is under scrutiny or an argument. I’m always looking for the exception in almost every discussion and sometimes wonder if this un-recommended place will provide me the perspective I am searching for. I did that sort of thing in college and graduate school papers hoping that my writing might win the day even if the concepts did not.

I am not a daredevil but I go to places in my mind that seem quite bizarre. I have memories of intense experiences that many would have wasted their breath warning me against. Life does need daring. But just because someone says, “You don’t want to go there,” doesn’t mean you have to do it or have to pass it up.

© 30 April 2018

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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My Favorite Role Model by Phillip E. Hoyle

For many years my gay life was lived in literature. I read story after story, book after book, seeking to discover just what a gay life might look like. I read to find out more about and build an understanding of the lives of my gay friends. I read to find myself somewhere in that literature.

There I found many disappointing characters. I don’t mean that I didn’t appreciate their stories, but what they did in their lives was not what I would choose to do were I living as a gay man. Still I wanted to understand and kept reading, sometimes re-reading, sometimes discussing what I found with a gay friend. In this exploration I found an alien world filled with people I didn’t especially want to be like. Early on I read works of Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopalian priest. I was impressed by his book of poetry Are You Running with Me Jesus? and realized he was open, perhaps homosexual. Then I read a book by Rev. Troy Perry who started the Metropolitan Community Church. I didn’t like his theology but did think he was doing something very important. I read about the lives of characters in Patricia Nell Warren’s many novels. Some of them were nice people but their experiences of life didn’t really lead me into a world I could easily identify with. I read autobiographical novels of Edmund White and Felice Picano. In these I felt a kind of kinship but still wasn’t interested to live their lives. I kept looking as I read Forster, Vidal, Baldwin, Renault, Isherwood, Puig, Holleran, Maupin, Kirkwood, Rechy, Monette, Kushner, and many more. I appreciated the writing and sometimes identified with a character up to a point, but I couldn’t place myself into their episodes.

It’s plausible that I was looking for a role model although I didn’t or perhaps couldn’t think in those terms. I read the lives of characters in gay novels and stories like I read the characters in stories by the Nigerian Chinua Achebe or the Brazilian George Amado or the Osage Indian William Matthews, as if their characters were from another world or even galaxy. But there was something more important that I did appreciate. I liked especially the scenes in which two men really liked one another, deeply desired one another, and shared their thoughts, feelings and even secrets. I loved when two men lay together in Leaves of Grass. That I could imagine.

In those days I wore a beard because I wanted to; now I wonder if I was somehow emulating Walt Whitman. I visited many people in hospital; was I still Whitman? I cannot answer that question very well. I don’t think so. But I did feel a strong connect with Bud in Ethan Mordden’s series Tales of Gay Manhattan. Often Bud observed his gay friends. Often he was befriending folk who came off the street. He was all around Manhattan and Fire Island with his friends telling their stories. Eventually he lived with a younger man somewhat at the insistence of his group of friends. He seemed surprised at how satisfying it was. Now that I did identify with, even wanted. I suspect at an emotional level, Bud was my bud, my gay role model even though our lives were mostly different. I have made many gay friends in ways similar to his friendships. Like him I have written about them. I have lived with younger and older men. I have built a successful gay life and consciously have connected it to both the character Bud and his creator Mordden. So I guess I have had two or three favorite role model even though I had difficulty naming one.

Denver, ©23 February 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

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John Burnside–Sweetness Personified by Pat Gourley

I was first introduced to John Burnside in the 1978 classic queer film The Word is Out. John was Harry Hay’s loving companion from 1962 until Harry’s death in 2002 with John to follow him in death in 2008. The documentary is still available in DVD format today and for those not familiar with the movie it is a series of talking head interviews with twenty-six gay men and lesbians that are very brave, raw and captivating in their honest presentation. What struck me the most about the movie was the segment featuring Hay and Burnside. They were interviewed at their place of residence at the time a compound nestled in the San Juan Pueblo in Northern New Mexico. The image of the two of them walking hand-in-hand through a meadow along the banks of the Rio Grande has stuck with me since first seeing it on film thirty-six years ago.

At that time I don’t think I knew that Harry was the founding spirit behind the seminal queer Mattachine Society decades before in Los Angeles. One had to be quite the earnest, independent, gay historian in those days to get to this piece of history. The roots of the modern gay movement just weren’t taught in American history classes much in those days. The film’s images of these two older very political gay men obviously in a loving relationship for years was startling to me and I thought I need to meet these two. Thanks to a powerful lesbian woman named Catherine I knew through the Gay Community Center in Denver at the time I was able to connect with them and the rest is history.

My first impressions of John at my house on Madison Street in the fall of 1978 were that he was the most gentle, fey person I had ever met. His dedication, unwavering support and love for his partner Harry were at all times evident. The meaning of ‘fey’ often conjured up these days I think is effeminate but the definition is really “other worldliness”. This quality seems to best be summed up by his own words. A short bit of poetry from John:

“Hand in hand we walk, as wing tip to wing tip
our spirits roam the universe, finding lovers everywhere.
Sex is music.
Time is not real.
All things are imbued with spirit.”

John and Harry were at the time I met them deeply involved in the creation of the phenomenon that would become the “Radical Fairies” along with a couple other souls named Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker. Planning for the first Radical Fairie gathering in the Arizona desert was already roughly taking shape and would happen the following September in 1979.

John and Harry were an amazing couple. Amazing in how different they seemed yet how wonderfully they melded almost into one. Harry while almost always spouting very right-on analysis of almost any situation could be at times intimidating, combative even and most certainly prickly though a real teddy bear under it all. John on the other hand was always flashing the warmest and most welcoming of smiles that often belied the acute insights he could bring to almost any dialogue on a wide range of subjects. And boy could he talk, often well into the night long after I was able to hear and absorb much and I am sure rudely nodding off in his presence.

For me personally John was often great at taking Harry’s more erudite and dense pronouncements on the state of gay men and their liberation and translating them in very warm and understandable ways. Sort of like taking raw queer theory and serving it up as warm apple cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it, mmm good, yes I want more of that, please.

John’s power was on display for me personally on several occasions when Harry would get himself into meltdown mode and John would quietly and skillfully step in and make things all right again. I mean you could not have the father of modern gay liberation be non-functional for too long, he was needed. John knew this and was always available to provide the salve to whatever wound had just been ripped open.

One small example of this comes to mind around the trip the three of us took to Chaco Canyon in the late 1980’s. We were in separate vehicles since they planned to head back to L.A. after we visited Chaco. Their truck broke down along highway 285 just a few miles outside of Denver and this threw Harry into a major non-communicative funk, probably because it was a frequent occurrence for their 20 plus year old Datsun pick-up. John stepped up immediately and had me driving him down to a Napa auto parts store for the fix needed that he had very skillfully diagnosed. This all done by a man without a driver’s license and someone I never in over thirty year had seen behind the wheel, but was always quietly and firmly in control.

I have reams of correspondence much of it hand written from Harry but only a couple of letters from John. One I received just a few short months after meeting them here in Denver and it was John very kindly reaching out to me about a frustrated love affair I was involved in at the time we met. The bottom-line for me was I should have avoided a relationship with a closeted Mormon E.D. doctor with a bad cocaine habit but live and learn. John however approached my torment with loving advice based on his obviously complex and mercurial relationship with Harry and a couple of their New Mexico friends who as he described them were a foursome but without shared sex beyond the two dyads involved.

I won’t quote from the philosophical part of the long hand written letter but rather share a bit of the queer theory he laid on me towards the end of the tome:

“Heterosexual false assumptions are based on taking their beliefs about themselves (mostly false, for them, in truth) as absolutes. We Gays start with a different set of possibilities and the power to deal flexibly with our feelings and hopes. We must not allow ourselves to become frozen when those hopes are frustrated.” John Burnside-March 15, 1979. Sage advice from a great gay Sage.

I seriously doubt the Radical Fairie movement would have come into being without John Burnside’s loving and continual ongoing massage of the message. Not to be too trite here but if Harry brought the ‘radical’ piece to the trip then John certainly brought the ‘fairie’ piece. I’ll end by quoting Bob Dylan: “I like my sugar sweet” and John Burnside was certainly sweetness personified.


© July 2014

About the Author

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

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Cavafy – Gay Poet by Louis Brown

Prompt: Poetry

Consider the following:
(1) Constantine P. Cavafy, 20th Century gay Greek poet
(2) Alexander the Great
(3) New York City Civic Center: poetry reading of Constantine P. Cavafy poetry
(4) Our golden age in ancient Greece.
(5) Sappho, ancient Greek Lesbian poet; the Amazons
(6) Modern Era Lesbian poet was Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays.
(7) Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud; in the American ‘60’s, Alan Ginsbergh.

When I was at SAGE New York, I looked at the Community Bulletin Board, and I noticed that there was going to be a public reading of the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy. I guess over the years we have heard some mention of gay poets, Alan Ginsbergh, and in 19th Century France, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. I wonder if Sylvester Stallone knows that his character Rambo has the same last name a gay French poet?

When I saw the ad for the reading of Cavafy’s poetry, I said to myself that an insightful gay libber did a good deed in trying to popularize Constantine Cavafy’s poetry. Right now for our community, he is the most interesting gay poet, the hottest potato, for several reasons. Like the work of 19th century homophile writers John Addington Symonds in America, Magnus Hirschfield in Germany, Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis in England, Cavafy’s poetry has a specific reference to ancient gay history.

Briefly, ancient Greece was our golden age. To read between the lines, the deal back then was heterosexual men and women got a “deferment” from military service. They stayed home, made babies and took care of them. Gay men were expected to become soldiers. They ran the military both in Athens and Sparta. As a result, gay men also ran the original Olympic games, they were in charge of the academies and all the sacred temples. Same sex love was considered a more refined, a more noble form of love-making. It was public policy. My guess is this all came about because of Alexander the Great (whose military boyfriend was Haephestus). Also much was made of women becoming warriors, remember the Amazons. The most noted ancient Lesbian poetess was of course Sappho. That was the other side of the coin.

When the Italian Renaissance came along in the 16th Century, thanks in part to liberal Pope Julius V, there was a renewed interest in Graeco-Roman history. Remember Leonardo DaVinci, Michaelangelo Buonaroti, Sandro Botticelli, I think it is safe to assume that same sex love in antiquity was an important contributing factor to the interest of the patrons of the très gay Italian Renaissance.

Constantine P. Cavafy; [1] also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes; Greek:  April 29 (April 17, OS), 1863 – April 29, 1933) was a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria and worked as a journalist and civil servant. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. His most important poetry was written after his fortieth birthday.

He wrote in Greek; scholars will have to vie to become the best translator of his work.

“Ithaca”

When you set sail for Ithaca, 
wish for the road to be long, 
full of adventures, full of knowledge. 
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclopes, 
an angry Poseidon — do not fear. 
You will never find such on your path, 
if your thoughts remain lofty, and your spirit 
and body are touched by a fine emotion. 
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclopes, 
a savage Poseidon you will not encounter, 
if you do not carry them within your spirit, 
if your spirit does not place them before you. 
Wish for the road to be long. 
Many the summer mornings to be when 
with what pleasure, what joy 
you will enter ports seen for the first time. 
Stop at Phoenician markets, 
and purchase the fine goods, 
nacre and coral, amber and ebony, 
and exquisite perfumes of all sorts,
the most delicate fragrances you can find.
 To many Egyptian cities you must go,
 to learn and learn from the cultivated. 
Always keep Ithaca in your mind. 
To arrive there is your final destination. 
But do not hurry the voyage at all. 
It is better for it to last many years, 
and when old to rest in the island, 
rich with all you have gained on the way, 
not expecting Ithaca to offer you wealth. 
Ithaca has given you the beautiful journey. 
Without her you would not have set out on the road. 
Nothing more does she have to give you. 
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. 
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
 you must already have understood what Ithaca means.

Historical Poems 
These poems are mainly inspired by the Hellenistic era with Alexandria at primary focus. Other poems originate from Helleno-romaic antiquity and the Byzantine era. Mythological references are also present. The periods chosen are mostly of decline and decadence (e.g. Trojans); his heroes facing the final end.

Sensual Poems
The sensual poems are filled with the lyricism and emotion of same-sex love; inspired by recollection and remembrance. The past and former actions, sometimes along with the vision for the future underlie the muse of Cavafy in writing these poems.

Philosophical Poems
Also called instructive poems they are divided into poems with consultations to poets and poems that deal with other situations such as closure (for example, “The walls”), debt (for example, “Thermopylae”), and human dignity (for example, “The God Abandons Antony”).

If only our community could get its act together and promote lesbian and gay cultural history in more depth and popularize it; that would be progress.

30 June 2014

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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Memorial to a Friend by Phillip Hoyle

I worked up enough courage to send my manuscript of nine short stories to Winston Weathers, a professor of creative writing retired from Tulsa University. He already had read a couple of the stories and had offered the suggestion that I might write a collection stories about my character Miss Shinti. He thought they could be illustrated with ink drawings. Now I wanted to hear his response to the whole collection I’d worked on for over two years. I looked forward to more advice from this man who graciously encouraged my writing efforts.

I met Mr. Weathers back in 1997, introduced by Roy Griggs, the Senior Minister of the church where I directed the music and fine arts programs. Griggs wanted me to meet him because of my writing, and besides Weathers and his partner of forty years and I and my wife of nearly thirty years lived in the same building. The introduction was a spur-of-the-moment occasion, the two of us stopping by Weather’s condo just minutes after Griggs had phoned him. I met the professor who was also a William Blake scholar and a published poet and had taught generations of writers beginning in the 1960s. The conversation was friendly and revealed an older man, short in stature, with grey hair, horn rim glasses, a full beard, and genteel ways. He greeted me with humor and warmth.

A couple of weeks later Winston invited Myrna and me to come down the two floors to their condo for afternoon tea. We did so and enjoyed his hospitality and conversation, and received as a present his book on Angels that he told us had been reprinted several times and had been translated into several languages. A few months later my wife and I separated; a few weeks after that I received another invitation to tea. This time I met his partner Joseph Nichols, a retired IBM engineer, and glimpsed a fine relationship that had grown rich with age. The men told of their current project of taking a photograph of the sunrise each day for a year. I saw the tripod on their east-facing balcony on the fourteenth floor. They showed me their recently acquired computer and TV service that allowed them to change back and forth from one to the other without even getting out of their easy chairs. I thought about the advantages of partnering with a computer expert. For Winston old-age convenience wasn’t the only advantage. His partner had published the poet’s many chapbooks. I came away from this afternoon tea with one of those chapbooks in hand.

Then there was another invitation for afternoon wine. This time I came home with a volume of short stories and a story about the book. In 1970 Weathers’ collection of short stories, The Lonesome Game, was reviewed in the Literary Supplement of the Sunday New York Times, an honor that is still considered one of the most important things that can happen to a writer. The story about the book was that not one person on the faculty at Tulsa University even mentioned their colleague’s good fortune, not even a comment from the Dean. Winston was sure the lack recognition stemmed from homoerotic references in the book. I read the eleven stories. The homosexuality was so delicately presented that no one in the 1990s would even raise an eyebrow.

Some weeks later I returned to the apartment downstairs. This time Winston congratulated me on my article about a friend who died with AIDS, a short piece that had been published in the church newsletter. A few weeks later I moved to Denver.

Winston and I corresponded. A couple of years later I sent him a manuscript. He responded encouragingly, saying it was publishable as is, suggesting a publishing house, bemoaning that he no longer knew the editors there (a problem of retiring and growing old I assumed), and warning me not to spend the profits before the checks arrived because most deserving manuscripts never get published. Getting published comes from a stroke of luck in timing, he told me, and explained how the process works. He also said he’d be pleased to write a piece for the cover if the book did reach publication. I felt honored and followed his advice sending the manuscript to agent after agent. I spent none of the anticipated income. None ever arrived.

We wrote more, he telling me about illnesses, new projects, and art displays seen at local galleries and museums. I told him of my work, writing, and new experiences. He was the one who told me to turn one of my memoirs into a short story. It had reminded him so much of the kind of stories the New Yorker used to publish. I again followed his advice and turned my focus toward short stories. Eventually I sent him the nine-story manuscript Miss Shinti’s Debut, humorous stories of a miniature poodle who loved to dance.

About a month later the package was returned by his sister with the sad information that her brother had died. The package included a copy of an article written about him. Although I felt sad at his death, I was even more distressed that the obituary didn’t mention his survival by Joseph, his partner for nearly fifty years. I realized how fortunate I felt not to be living in Tulsa. Apparently Winston knew exactly what he had written in his book of stories The Lonesome Game.

In the following months I thought a lot about this man who had so encouraged me and I reread the letters he had sent. In one of his last notes he told of a textbook he had written, An Alternate Style: Options in Composition (1980, Boynton/Cook Publishers), that after nearly thirty years of being published was going out of print. I thought: I want that book, so I inquired at a used bookstore in my neighborhood. Online they found the book and another one. The one I wanted was going for $165; I bought the other one for about $15. (Now the former book new is $568.) Still I searched shelves at second hand stores and the catalogues of libraries. Even though I couldn’t find the book, I Googled his name and found plenty of references to it. I learned that Winston Weathers had introduced what became known as “Grammar Two” and came to appreciate much more about his notable influence on writing and on the teaching of writing. From my searches I gathered ideas for my own literary experiments.

I wonder how I would have responded to him and his advice had I known that he was much more than the nice man downstairs who engaged me in conversation, served me tea and cookies, encouraged me to write, and gave me literary presents. I could have dropped his name in my query letters had I also known he for years had been a literary agent. But would I have redoubled my effort to be a better writer? I worked at that anyway, but surely I would have asked him more questions. I hope he never thought I was uninterested. I continue my life and my writing life always mindful of and deeply influenced by this fine man and neighbor. Far beyond the composition of these few lines about meeting and barely coming to know Winston Weathers, I want all my writing somehow to honor him.

Denver, 2013

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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Finding Myself by Phillip Hoyle

A search began when in my twenty-seventh year my friend Ted introduced me to the gay novel. That first book was Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner (NY: William Morrow & Co., 1974), and Ted claimed it had just about everything in it. I took this to mean every gay theme. Reading it I discovered several topics and scenes of interest but was unable to find myself in the story. My own story included a life-long sexual response to men that lived peacefully alongside my commitment to a marriage and a largely conventional heterosexual life. The day I finished Warren’s book, I undertook a literary search for my gay self.
     
I read Robert Ferro, Edmund White, Paul Monnett, Richard Nava, Ethan Morddan, and many other authors of gay fiction over many years. Eventually I read Felice Picano’s book Ambidextrous and found myself. It wasn’t actually me, but the book described bisexual experiences and feelings similar to some I had as a child and teen and, thus, brought me relief that I wasn’t alone in the world. I was at least barely recognizable among gay males and no longer wondered if I was an outsider in this outsider existence. 
     
I was elated to find commonality with a writer who described the book as autobiographical fiction. I read more of his books including Men Who Loved Me and realized my sameness with Picano was limited. While I enjoyed his sense of spirituality and his vigorous personal searches for love, his stories included drugs—lots of them; mine was drug free. I continued to read Picano and other gay novelists who were being published in ever-increasing numbers looking for other glimmers of my life, hoping for a light to lead me into an unknown future.
     
My friend Bill told me he found himself in Paul Monnett’s Becoming a Man. He had been deeply moved by the book and felt it affirmed his experience. I read the book with interest for it allowed me a glimpse into the lives of the author and of my friend. I assumed that most details of Bill’s life differed from those in Monnett’s book, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t connect with the book very deeply although the beautiful, effective writing seemed very important as a gay statement. It simply wasn’t my story. I kept reading but mostly felt like I was still an outsider in the gay world that so fascinated me.
     
Then my life changed radically. I separated from my wife and then left my profession that I had found growing too gay-unfriendly for my taste. I began to live as a gay man and to write on a regular basis. In both, I set out to explore my life experiences in order to understand more about who I had become. I made interesting and helpful connections of diverse themes that seemed to make sense of my experience. As I wrote, I kept reading but didn’t find myself in these books, that is, until thirty years after reading my first gay novel. 
     
I was stunned and pleased when a few weeks ago I read the chapter “East of Ashshur” in Aryeh Lev Stollman’s The Far Euphrates (NY: Riverhead Books, 1997). Stollman’s character Alexandre tells the story as son and only child of a Rabbi and his wife living in Windsor, Ontario. In this chapter, the protagonist stated for the second time that he was not shamed by his homosexuality. I had heard the statement loud and clear at its first occurrence rather early in the book. Then in this chapter the sixteen-year-old Alexandre entered a period of study structured by his religious tradition. He embraced the practice but not its traditional goals such as becoming holy or knowing God. He moved himself into a world related to the Hebrew calendar and sought self-knowledge in the light of the moon. Daily standing before the mirror, he combined physical self-examination with intense reading of anatomy and physiology. In these twin ways, physiological and philosophical, he sought self-understanding. The statement’s repetition occurred toward the end of his year-long intense self-examination that included much more than Alexandre’s sexual feelings and led him to the affirmation of his sexuality that he could see might pose difficulties. Still he felt unashamed. 
     
My experience also has left me unashamed. Early on I knew I liked boys (eventually men) and understood it as a part of my life that I might outgrow. I did not reject it in my teens, and some fifteen years later I didn’t feel shocked when I fell in love with a man. During those intervening and following years I made an intense inquiry into the nature of human sexuality with a focus on homosexuality. I wanted to understand. My attempt was not carried out in a formal retreat like Alexandre’s. In making my inquiry I realized other folk were not interested or at least not at ease over my quest, for instance, my wife fell asleep when I wanted to read her the most interesting things I thought might be helpful enrichments to our sex life and others seemed afraid of my interest. So I did retreat into the relative privacy of my office, late night reading, library research, and internal thought. My reading spanned social science, sexology, biology, social ethics, philosophy, theology, literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and journalism. Like the teenager Alexandre, I observed myself and read about things I thought, felt, and experienced. Like him, my thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and like him, I was unashamed. 
     
My inquiry had begun way back in childhood when I started reading about American Indian culture, life, and history not aware I was studying myself. Then I added theology, then sexuality (my overt self-examination), then music history, and always exhaustive reading of novels—international works in translation, gay novels, Native American novels, murder mysteries, and more. 
     
I continue my reading quest, but most important, now I write to know myself, somehow to be true to my own self. Through my personal accounts and fiction I am seeking to express what I have learned and know. I write my childhood sex and friendships. I write my teenage fascinations with girls and boys. I write my marriage, one in which I dearly loved my wife while I became more acutely attentive to my homosexual needs. I develop characters who speak of my sexual values, reflect on my thoughts and feelings, and by their own adaptations, lead me into new perspectives about myself. I develop characters who do things I have only dreamed or never dared to dream, and in the writing become more aware of my needs and desires. I write how my life affects my work. I write how my self-knowledge creates tensions in my family and vocation. Still though, I see myself riding bikes with my best childhood friend as in Ambidextrous. Still, I stand before the mirror of self-reflection unashamed as in The Far Euphrates. The searching and finding continue as they surely will for the rest of my life.

Denver, 2011

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com