Tag: Hepatitis C

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Eye of the Storm, by Phillip Hoyle

I must have entered into the relationship through the eye of the storm. Our connection was pacific, even inspiring at the beginning, but somehow the eye passed and I found myself caught up in a hurricane of problems.

The calm beauty of our first nights together featured a sexual exploration like I had never before experienced, the two of us touching, responding, initiating, enjoying a reciprocal openness and delight. That second morning when I had to leave early—well 3:00 a.m.—to feed my visiting family, he again said, in a childlike voice, “Don’t go.”

“I have to go, but the kids leave today. I’ll meet you after work; we’ll have the whole night together. I’ll fix you breakfast.”

“I want to fix you breakfast,” he insisted.

That third night turned out like I’d hoped, and we basked in one another’s presence, held onto each other, actually slept in his bed. And then I was introduced to his skill as a cook, that breakfast the first of many meals we shared in following months.

But within a few weeks I knew he was HIV positive, was in deep legal trouble facing a third degree sexual assault charge, had twice tried to kill himself, had serious financial problems, was just newly out to his parents, was getting medical attention through Denver Health, had recently been in the hospital, had decided he wanted to stay well, and wanted me to move in with him right away. I also found out he was college educated, creative, funny, sweet, and made my heart pound extra fast whenever he showed up—always late. I was hopelessly in love with this guy in a way I had never experienced before. He said he was in love with me as well.

The storm brought many trips to the hospital and clinic for tests, imaging appointments, surgical procedures, examinations of new symptoms, introductions of new medications, and more. Fortunately the intensity of these problems was matched by the intensity of our enthusiasm for one another. Our days provided new revelations of our pasts, experiments of intimacy, delight in giving ourselves to each other through conversation, touch, laughter, dance, and food. Our storm was not a fight but rather an accommodation to delights that we hoped would have a long future. But as the weeks went on the specter of failure kept trying to get through the door that had been left ajar in spite of our love. We watched the building intensity of the storm, the complications of treatments, the appearance of symptom after symptom, the confusion of diagnoses. We were both wearing down, not in our love or commitment, but in our imagination of a future. And there were other challenges: work, exhaustion, and fear. Fear was my largest challenge. I had lost too many people from my life in the prior six years: parents, my marriage, a good friend, and the too-recent death of another lover. My grief over that loss had not sufficiently subsided. Still I was not thinking of running away. We were tight Rafael and I. But I wished I weren’t going through all this again, especially when I had never had such feelings of love with another human being.

My lover’s parents lived in Mexico. They had little English; I had little Spanish. I had wanted to meet them before another hospitalization. That didn’t happen. I met them as my lover’s condition complicated, as his death neared. The storm ended then, at least the main part of it. Yet a storm lingers in me. Fifteen years later it still roars on occasion.

The ancient Etruscans believed that once grief visits it never goes away. I have many joys, and in my old age can list grief after grief. Now I work hard to welcome grief as a friend, even when my losses do not feel particularly friendly. I keep looking for the eyes in new storms I encounter and appreciate the ways their calm equips me to live with acceptance and supports my overall joy in life.

© 9 July 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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Tears, by Phillip Hoyle

I’m writing a memoir about my too-brief relationship
with Rafael Martínez who provided me my first experience of falling deeply,
hopelessly in love. Part of my preparation has been to study what writing
teachers say about memoir and, just as important, to read several memoirs. I
read Frank McCourt’s ’Tis, Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind,
Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, several excerpts from other memoirs,
and am currently reading Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time.
I began the Rafael project years ago but realized I
was not yet ready to deal with organizing and writing about the experience of
love and loss. The grief was too keenly edged for me to be honest about myself
and fair to everyone else. The events took place fifteen years ago.
Two years ago I started readdressing the project. About
three weeks ago I started reading Monette’s AIDS memoir, a book I had read
years ago. I hoped I might learn a lot. A wealthy gay couple living in southern
California, Ivy League educated, driving around in a Jaguar, an attorney, a
Hollywood film writer living a rather high life seemed like a lot to take in. I
wondered if this story would even touch me.
By contrast, Rafael was HIV positive and poor, helped
a lot by Colorado AIDS Project. His doctors estimated he had about eight years
to go, but what they didn’t know was that he had full-term Hepatitis C. It was
diagnosed only three weeks before it killed him. Monette, while not my favorite
gay writer, skillfully took me to their home, clinic after clinic, test after
test, all experiences I knew too well for I went to such places with two friends
and with two lovers—just not in a Jaguar. Writing about Rafael while reading
this book opened my tear ducts, and I wondered: did I not cry enough fifteen
years ago? It seems likely.
My early weeks with Rafael showed how much we loved
one another and how practical and romantic we could be. I told him I would like
to meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. I was earnest though we
laughed. We thought we had time, but we were wrong. Too soon he was in the
hospital. There I met his younger brother, a very nice Mexican man who came north
on behalf of the family. The parents had learned that Rafael was gay and HIV
positive only six weeks before this hospitalization. The family’s life was in
crisis. Rafael got out of the hospital but then went back in with another
problem. Eventually more of the family arrived. I was caught between my lover
and his family; between Rafael’s insistence that they treat the two of us as a
family of our own, they being guests in our home, and what I saw so clearly in
his mother and father, the needs of shocked parents facing an illness they
didn’t understand and the possibility of losing their son altogether. In short,
I was pushed into an interpretive role of supporting both my lover and his
parents and siblings. I walked that tightrope, one that my ministerial experience
had so well prepared me to walk. And I was helpful. I cried but not much; there
were too many other people needing to be consoled and reasoned with and their
English was so poor and my Spanish functionally nonexistent.
We made it through. I helped them as Rafael was dying.
Still Rafael was strong and helpful and insistent. I was so proud of him. He
took care of his family. He reached out to nurses who were having difficulty.
He reached out to me. And of course, I cried, but not very much, not enough I now
am sure.
I’m carefully reading Monette’s scenes of bedsides,
hospital corridors, tests, last minute trips to favorite places, accommodation
to losses. I read; tears gather and fall.
I’m crying now.
© 16 Oct 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 
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Hospitality, by Phillip Hoyle

My
parents lived truly hospitable lives. As a couple striving to live within the
Christian and biblical tradition, they entertained strangers and travelers. They
knew the stories of heavenly visitors that sometimes showed up asking for a
meal or a place to spend the night. They were familiar with the Old Testament
story of Abraham and Sarah’s visit by angels and the New Testament
interpretation that the same thing could still happen. They read the biblical commendations
of individuals and churches that welcomed travelling prophets and evangelists. In
their own time they lived out the spirit of those old stories and
interpretations.
They
also entertained their children. Of course that idea is not caught up in the
hospitality laws and traditions of Hebraic antiquity, for in Jesus’ teachings
there was no righteousness in taking care of one’s children or parents. Anyone
with dependants simply was responsible for the attendant burdens. Yet when I
contrast my parents’ providence and attitudes toward their children with what I
know happens too often in other children’s families, my parent’s home shines as
a place of true hospitality toward progeny, offspring who were treated as
persons not property. Our home went beyond the ancient values that treated
wives and children as a man’s chattels, for my parents treated one another
humanely and their children as well. They also treated other people as human
beings of value, and thus they related responsively to and responsibly toward
them. Surely such a distinction can be listed as hospitality, extraordinary
hospitality.
I
enjoyed a great upbringing in a hospitable home environment. So did Myrna, my
wife. Upon coming together, we saw our home as an environment for rearing
children and entertaining friends and strangers. Thus we accepted foster children
and “foster” adults into our home. For five years we entertained, as it were,
foster children when we served as a boarding home for the Kansas Children’s
Service League, a group I knew about due to my mother’s long-time support of
them. We also welcomed relatives and friends to live with us while they went to
school: Myrna’s sister who attended medical assistant school, a foster-daughter
of my sister’s who attended cosmetology school, our friend Ted who attended
graduate school, an old classmate Donna who likewise attended graduate school,
and friends of our son and daughter, kids who needed familial support in
various ways. We welcomed a friend of our son’s who as a young adult lived with
us for several months, and we welcomed a slightly crazy woman to live with us
for several more months, a woman who seemed always to be almost one inch from
living on the street. These experiences among many others kept our house lively,
taught the two of us strength, adaptability, and perseverance. Our home became
a crash pad, a loving support, an oasis, a place of cross-cultural learning, a
bed and breakfast, and the center of loving tolerance. The experiences changed
our lives, our perceptions of social reality, and our willingness to take
chances on other persons’ lives.
I
wonder then why we were unable to enfold my homosexuality into such an enduring
relationship and environment. Perhaps hospitality and homophobia don’t mix well
and the antipathy against homosexuality is too well institutionalized in western
society, too highly integrated into myths of otherness, sin, and transgression.
Both my wife and I were surprised at how quickly we moved towards separation
when details of my sexual truth became extrovert. We remain friends and when
together still wonder why we live separately. We are both hospitable; using our
separate homes to benefit others, and we are pleased that our children do the
same. Still the question lingers.
An
elderly minister and I once discussed the injunction in Matthew’s Gospel that
allowed for a church to kick out a member who would not act right. The wise man
pointed out that according to other good news passages such a sinner had to be
welcomed just like a brother or sister. But somehow, when homosexuality enters
the picture, there emerges a deep rift of disappointment, dirt, despicability, disrespect,
and dire detriment, enough so as to rip apart an intergenerational, long-standing
love and hospitality. Obviously marriages are not magic; nor is hospitality
uncomplicated.
Hospitality
must have been very difficult for Rafael’s mother, yet eventually she welcomed
me into her life on behalf of her dying son.
She
had to enter the home he shared with his gay American partner, a man her own
age.
She
had learned of her son’s homosexuality only about three months before when he
was in legal trouble. Then she learned that her eldest son was gay, he was ill
with HIV, and soon after that he was living with an American man.
Rafael’s
father was warm. His brother was warm. His sister was warm. I had to read body
language to understand those things. His mother was not mean, but she wasn’t
warm towards me. Some of what I understood about her I learned from her son.
She was not happy with the situation. It was against the church. It was against
all her dreams for her son and all the expectations she had held for her own
life. Sure her son had fathered a son for her, but he was supposed to stay with
his family, not run off to America and live with some gay man.
Rafael
told his parents they were welcome to stay at our home while they were visiting
him, but I was part of the deal. They were to be our guests. Of course, he
didn’t make it home until we were arranging home hospice for him. Then he
stayed less than thirty hours for when the home nurse tried to insert a
catheter to his bladder, she got blood. He had just been diagnosed with
full-term Hepatitis C.
Cultural
expectations were going to be a problem. I did housecleaning although I knew it
was women’s work. Once his father invited me to come sit with him. Of course we
could not talk. He wanted things to be as normal and proper as possible with
his wife and daughter doing the cooking and cleaning.
I
too was gracious and hospitable.
I
have received the hospitality of strangers.
I
have received strangers into my hospitality.
Home
life and hospitality.
Myrna:
Hospitality and generosity.
OT
traditions, NT traditions.
Users
and the hospitable, the foundation of a prejudice.
Hospitality
and spiritual dimensions of growth.
Pragmatic
considerations in hospitality.
Jesus’
words of hospitality—both to receive it and give it. Holy images.
Hospitals
Hostels
Hosts
Invitations

© 12 Mar 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.com
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Ever Neverland by Phillip

I live on an island at times, one I visit when I need space, need to be away from responsibility, or need to exercise my imagination. I’ve gone there many times, flying away from my peers, my family, my school, and my work. I have been aware of such flight since childhood.

Was I a flighty kid?
Was I lost in dreams?
Was I?
Am I now?

I know my dreams have been important, especially the daydreams that tend to take me away into adventures I could not in any other way experience. But once I entered a dream that endured and became real.

I had a dream of love, a dream of love shared with a man. A dream of love discovered. I shared and cultivated a relationship with another man who also needed and desired the same. A dream of love that transforms to the depths and heights and that still occurs daily, feels grounded, and fulfills common needs. I entered this Neverland holding hands with a man.

There was no map. Oh, if you compared the plats, you might think you were in Denver, but that’s not really where this story occurred. No pirates lived there. Perhaps some Indians did and some lost boys! I loved the place. I’m pretty sure there was buried treasure; I’m sure I found it. The cast of characters: only two mattered then, Rafael and I.

Awaiting the arrival of the No. 10 bus I met a younger man named Rafael. I didn’t ask for his last name as I proffered Phil from my end of the pleasant conversation. (I wonder now if I had, would he have said Martinez or Pan?) We boarded the bus; that’s when we began to fly. We talked together as we rode about a mile, then he—this cute, warm, smiling man—got off to make a transfer that would take him to work. The contact seemed to me so much more than a bus ride. It was more like freedom of movement, even flying as we talked and laughed and studied one another. The experience happened again the next week—same place, same bus, but more information, more smiles, more laughter, more looking into one another’s faces, and less awareness of others who didn’t even seem to be present. A third experience seemed to establish a yearning for more, much more, but my Rafael Pan didn’t visit the nursery of my infatuation. I started searching for him—walking the streets near the bus stop alert to every biped in pants, wondering where this young man could be. Finally I met him again. We talked. I touched him, I touched him again. I gave him my phone number and an invitation to get together. Then two months (they could have been years) of no contact convinced me I needed this man in my life. I wanted his friendship, his presence, his charm, and his love. I would survive without him but kept alert to the possibility of seeing him again in some unexpected place. There and then I wouldn’t be as casual in my conversation. My friends were amused. One thought I was giving the situation over to the universe. I had a different thought. Finally Rafael phoned leaving a message. That next day and for many days to follow we flew together.

We met by happenstance the morning we waited to board a bus. A few months later we connected with a passion that was so total as to make us two the only occupants of my Neverland. Rafael Pan and I played house, played lovers, played sex, played decorator, played god. We came together in our fantasy island with an intensity neither of us had ever experienced.

Rafael was living alone when I met him and not doing very well. He was always late, always short of cash, always in crisis. His crisis was much larger than he could imagine. He was dying from hepatitis C, a disease that had reached full term (over fifteen years) and that was having a devastating effect on his liver, spleen, and brain. Already it had ruined his life. Already it had robbed him of much of his cognitive function. What I met was a dying man out of control, a beautiful, sweet man with a funny voice and endearing misuses of English who seemed to like me, a younger man who was lively, conversational, warm, loving, needy, sweet, open, vulnerable, and who became an obsession for me.

I lived there in Neverland with a double life. So did my Pan. We both worked daily but found great relief when we got home at night. Rafael greeted me with open arms then as if we had never before met but had known each other for millennia. Some of my friends got to meet my charmer, eat his cooking, and enjoy his warmth. For awhile life seemed good.

Although life in Neverland thrilled me, it wasn’t perfect. Its ATM was flat broke. There were money problems, clinic appointments, and a court appearance for a problem that only slowly revealed its true parameters. The clock inside Rafael’s bad-health crocodile kept ticking away towards its pursuit of dominance. But Pan transformed it with his own enfolding heart. In the extremity of his life I watched as he reached out with strength and love to a nurse, to his parents, and to me, his lover.

I worked through it all knowing I needed to keep a passable bridge between my worlds, knowing someday I would have to leave this fantasy place. I spent a huge amount of time helping his family cope with his homosexuality and eminent death. Finally I lost Pan who flew away from our love nest on the summit of the Hill. Unable to fly, I trudged home along the streets of Denver, the city to which I had moved in order to rebuild my life. Of course, I was sad, sad, sad as I reentered the life I had never really left. The going there now seemed difficult, the letting go painful. Where did my Pan go? Of course I don’t know, but he left me with a fantastic treasure of love I keep warmly nurtured in the innermost sanctuary of my heart. Our brief life together changed me, and I am determined to keep alive the treasure I discovered forever in Neverland.

Denver, 2012

© 23 November 2012

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