Tag: LGBTQA

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Gay Music by Ray S.

If I could sing “My Favorite Valentine” to my GLBT lover would that qualify as Gay Music? Last week my friend inquired as to how I was progressing with the very esoteric subject of this week’s story time. In response I allowed as how I was relying on procrastination, presently.
What I was really thinking to myself was what qualifies as Gay Music? Who might have been the provocateur that thought this subject up? It’s been really interesting to hear what all our muses fabricate.

I am reminded of the repetitious beat of gay porn film background music, if you’re not familiar with this genre, think the beat goes on and on. Then there is the highly syncopated rhythm of the music used by drag queens, attributed commonly to the old burlesque theatre–Let Me Entertain You.” Does lip-syncing qualify as gay music. Guess it depends on the performer’s abilities.

Along those lines, we can’t overlook the music preempted by the Gay World of Judy and Barbara. Some of their works almost amount to gay national anthems.

Then their are the naughty “wink, wink” creations of song writers such as Noel Coward, Cole Porter and let’s see who wrote, “Let’s Do It” and the titles of Tin Pan Ally that lend themselves so aptly to parody, like “I’m Just Wild About Harry.”

When it comes to the classics, the LGBT scene was very much alive but not so much musically as was the lifestyle of some of the composers. And of course most of the creative time on the QT.

Belonging to another generation and not into the bar scene. I understand that the popular idioms that pass for music employ a real extensive list of raunchy lyrics–how many could qualify as gay is questionable, but as the old adage goes “beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.”

So, strike up the band and start dancing with of without a shirt on and with or without a partner. After all it’s a liberated but crowded dance floor and who knows what the gay music will produce. For instance, “Do you come here often?” “Can I have your number?” “Sure, bring him along.” “What did you say your name is?” “God, you’re so hot,” and on into the night of gay music.

Denver, February 10, 2014

About the Author

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Four Saturday Scenes by Phillip Hoyle

Days change from dawn to dusk, from cool to warm, from humid to dry. Still we reckon seven days a week but they too are not the same. For instance, the seventh day is sometimes called Shabbat, for the old Hebrew word meaning he rested, an allusion to the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. The day was marked by a tradition of rest that emphasized contemplation and prayer. On my calendar the seventh day reads Saturday, recalling a Roman God, Saturn, to whom I have little relationship. History reminds me that Roman culture and government had a great determining effect on western culture and thus on Christian development. So, the name changed from Sabbath to Saturday, and the time of its beginning and ending changed from sundown to midnight. Even its purpose changed for most Christians although the mythological symbol of a day of rest persisted. For the majority, Sunday gathered the resting and worshipping to itself to create a Sunday Sabbath. Saturday stayed the same work day it had been under Roman law.

In my own life, Saturday’s meaning has shifted. Originally my Saturdays were structured around the needs of my mother: a time to have help with the kids so she could shop and keep her weekly hair appointment. A grandmother would sometimes watch us, but as we children aged, Mom would take us to the library just upstairs from the hair salon. We’d check out our books and then join her towards the end of her appointment. But that one fall Saturday was singular in that I had decided I was tired of trying to keep up with the older kids on my tricycle. My sisters and some neighbors were riding a small boy’s bicycle. “I want to ride it,” I screamed in my high-pitched six-year-old voice as they flew by. They were happy to play teacher. So with their help I got on the big thing, achieved my balance, and took off in a hurry thrilled by the air rushing over my skin and through my hair. But they had forgotten to tell me how to slow down and the corner of the block was fast approaching. I kept my balance as I bumped down the curb into the street and accomplished a turn to avoid the curb across the street, but I was unable to avoid the curb waiting catty-corner across the intersection. I crashed landing on the bar, smashing my genitals. There was a little blood. I must have screamed in pain. Mom came running and took me into the house. She bathed me, explained about circumcision (the only sex-related information she ever proffered, probably to help me understand why I my penis looked so different than dad’s), and told me I was to go with her downtown. She must have wanted me close by in case I really had hurt myself or had decided I needed some extra attention. As we walked the several blocks to the salon, she taught me how to escort a woman in public along with a few other fine points of good manners. Perhaps these items were meant to further my sex education. Turns out I was just fine. Eventually I did learn how to brake and how to avoid accidents. I also continue to this day to heed my mother’s advice about escorting women to the delight of several friends who still find me mannerly.

Eventually Saturdays moved me into my father’s world. At age 12, after I’d failed to make the team in seventh grade basketball, I began to work on Saturdays at the family IGA store sacking groceries and carrying them to customer’s cars. I now worked in a mostly man’s world with its structure of having a goal, earning income related to hours and usefulness, and working around people who didn’t live on our block. I did more than sack and carry. At slow times I helped dust cans, face shelves, assist in the produce market, and help restock the freezer. I’d take returned soda bottles to the back room and sometimes take a short break sitting there drinking a Coke.

Saturday was the busiest day of the week at the grocery store with ten, twelve, three, and five o’clock rushes when the aisles got as crowded as Main Street. We worked hard; at least it seemed that way to me, a skinny boy and not very strong. All day I ran out into the winter cold carrying bags to the yellow Desoto, the green Chevy pickup, or the purple Cadillac and then ran back into the warm building to prepare the next bunch of groceries. I got stronger and more efficient. Customers liked me.

The family arrangement was informal. We kids paid ourselves out of the cash register on Saturday evening leaving a paper slip with the information of hours and payment. That winter Saturday after I had worked a year and a half earning forty cents an hour, I asked my oldest sister, “How can I get a raise?” She said, “Just start paying yourself more.” So I gave myself a ten cent raise, noting the new amount times my hours on the slip of paper. No one ever said a word to me about the change. A year later, when I began working for my uncle at the family’s other store, I got another raise of fifty cents bringing my remuneration to a dollar an hour. Perhaps by then my work was worth the pay.

Saturday changed most when Myrna and I became engaged to be married. We would travel each Saturday to Glen Elder, KS where she played house and I played church. She’d cook a meal. I’d go to the church office to check on the mail, read the worship bulletin, or make some other arrangement for the Sunday service. Sometimes we’d visit the Spooners at their dairy farm, the elderly Foresters in their gracious home, or someone else with a special need. Then in the evening we’d make out on the couch in the front room of the parsonage as we step by step increased our physical intimacy in preparation for the full disclosure we anticipated on our wedding night. Later I’d drive her over to Ella Neifert’s house where my fiancé slept. One spring Saturday evening when the western Kansas wind blew with extra force, we huddled together on the couch to soothe each other’s chill. We warmed up, further than ever before. Realizing we’d soon be parted for several months while she made preparations for our wedding in western Colorado, I thought we needed to touch each other more intimately than before. So we educated one other about some of the finer details of our bodies. We didn’t go all the way, but we did share ourselves in new ways. The cold-sounding wind howled around the old house as we warmed ourselves with our explorations. We loved our intimacy. We both realized we had to end this session, so we bundled up to drive over to the widow’s house. When we left the parsonage, we were both surprised how warm the wind had turned, or we were just so heated up as to believe it was almost summertime! Thus a spring Saturday helped prepare us for a wonderful marriage.

It was a particular summer Saturday a few years ago, several years after I had left my marriage and ministry and had moved to a big city to live as a gay man. It was a late June Saturday that I experienced with complex delight. My son Michael and his family had come to visit. Our schedule that weekend included the Saturday Buskerfest with its unusual street performances and the Sunday Gay Pridefest with its parade and concerts. On Friday evening I discovered a phone message from Rafael, the man I’d hoped to hear from for two months. I had sometimes walked the neighborhood wanting to run into him but kept missing him. I’d already concluded he’d moved back to El Paso when I finally got this contact. In response I left on his voice mail an invitation for him to join us for spaghetti the next evening. He should call me when he got off work. Now it was Saturday evening. The spaghetti tasted good, at least my family said so before Heather and her three younger kids fell asleep exhausted by the day’s activities and their light sunburns. Rafael called and with several more calls found his way the one block to my apartment. I brought plates of spaghetti with meat sauce to the patio table. We were eating when I noticed his gold wedding band had been turned around to reveal a rainbow flag. I pointed at it saying, “Look at that.” Rafael’s warm and amused smile increased my anticipation of what the evening might mean. My son and eldest grandson came downstairs to meet Rafael. We talked. Our guest asked for wine. I told him I didn’t have any but suggested he and I go to a nearby restaurant for wine and dessert. As we were leaving the restaurant, Rafael said, “Let’s go dancing.” We started walking towards a nearby club.

“Do you have your ID?” I asked.

“I don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do,” I insisted.

He led me to his apartment to retrieve his ID, but we didn’t leave the place, ending that Saturday with a passion I won’t try to describe except to suggest it seemed emotionally perfect as we two came together with open arms and hearts, and with humor, concern, and love.

Rafael died several delightful and sad months later. I live on, wondering what new Saturdays I will experience as my life continues to change and mature. I’ve had Mom’s, Dad’s, a wife’s, and a lover’s Saturdays. What next?

Denver, 2010

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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Favorite Literary Character by Pat Gourley

Anna Madrigal (a girl and a man)

My first trip to San Francisco was in 1979 with a friend named Phil. I met Phil I recall through the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street a few years earlier. His story of coming to the Center was one of the classic coming out stories I remember from those years. He had recently been discharged from the Navy and had wound up in Denver. His home was rural Ohio and his Catholic family very conservative and probably not fond of queers but totally unaware that there own son was one of those people.

Phil related to me some years later that he had first actually seen me at a party and thought I was the butchest thing he had ever seen when I walked in wearing my winter leather jacket – that was, he said empathically, until I opened my mouth and the whole masculine illusion evaporated in a Nellie mist. I loved him despite of this tacky and very snarky story.

Phil had apparently walked around the block at the Center many times before getting up the nerve to come in. There he met several others and quickly became a fast friend and member of our budding community. We remained close until his death in August of 1994 from AIDS. He died at home in the arms of his true love. I had been summoned to get there quickly but walked in just minutes after Phil took his leave.

Our trip to San Francisco was magical in that I totally fell for that City and all its magic. Phil had been there before while in the Navy. I believe several times – Fleet Week perhaps – though that I don’t know that for sure. He showed me all the sights and sounds and we sampled many different tastes.

Marin Headlands (Titled “Oz”)  2012

This year of 1979 was momentous for me for many reasons but one little thing that happened was I was introduced to the work of Armistead Maupin. Tales of the City was published in 1978 and was essentially his columns on life in the City syndicated in the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories consisted of an eclectic cast of characters whose lives crisscrossed through that novel and eight more to follow culminating in the most recent release The Days of Anna Madrigal. Good friends of mine owned the local Gay Book store and I suspect that is how I got turned onto the book.

The novel’s stories and many adventures often revolved around a straight female character named Mary Ann Singleton. She, soon on arrival in San Francisco, was living at 28 Barbary Lane in a large multi-story dwelling on Russian Hill managed by one Anna Madrigal. My initial visit to the City and my budding connection with a few Radical Fairies from the Bay area provided a modicum of familiarity with the characters, adventures and environs described in Tales of the City.

So as it turns out Anna was a male to female transsexual, pot-growing/smoking landlady who was mentor to all who came through 28 Barbary Lane. Her early years were spent growing up in a house of ill repute in Winnemucca Nevada, in an establishment run by her mother.

I was certainly very familiar with and predisposed to like her character from the first book on but this was cemented when the first three books of the series were immortalized in a PBS (originating in the U.K.) and Showtime miniseries in which Anna was played by the flawlessly cast Olympia Dukakis. These are available on DVD and highly recommended if you haven’t seen them, but do read the books first.

I think it is safe to say that LGBT literature and literature in general is bereft of positive, powerful and dynamic Transsexual characters. Though I suppose one could argue that Maupin’s books don’t fall into the category of great literature, whatever the fuck that is, they are much loved, iconic tomes in the pantheon of queer literature documenting our generation. I certainly enjoyed reading them and this was magnified and has been enhanced with my growing knowledge over the decades of the City of San Francisco starting back in 1979 thanks to my friend Phil.

What I would have not given to have my shit together enough to have moved to San Francisco in the late seventies and to then have fallen under the spell of a powerful female mentor like Anna Madrigal. I downloaded the last in the series –The Days of Anna Madrigal – to my Kindle this week and ripped through it in a couple days. Lots of loose ends about Anna get tied up and the ending is really wonderful and plays out in the only place it could really, at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.

I think Phil liked and read Maupin’s books and I am sad that he can’t be around to read the final book in the series. Who knows it might have provided the impetus for a group of us to get our act together and attend Burning Man. We would fit right in and I am quite sure that the entire festival owes a significant debt of gratitude to the Radical Fairies whose influence seems stamped all over the event particularly as it is described in vivid detail by Maupin in his latest work.

Let me close by saying that I think the only real radical juice left in the LGBTQI movement is coming from the T’s. The word radical, as Harry Hay pointed out to me about 10,000 times, means, “to the root.” If the “gay agenda” ever had a truly revolutionary component to it, it was our willingness to turn gender on its head and shake it all up real good and see what would come out on top so to speak. These days many of us G’s, L’s and B’s seem quite caught up in imitating the dominant hetero-defined roles of male and female. Perhaps more Anna Madrigals will come along to finally lead us out of the hetero-dominated wilderness and our true agenda will come to pass.

March, 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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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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A Pulsar of Light by Carlos

We all enact a role upon the stage. In spite of our most polished performances, many of us often look back to the stage on which we have strutted and long for another script. Time and again, my friend Paul and I misconnected. He never asked anything of me. I suspect he felt he had no right to assert himself. Neither did I speak honestly to him for fear of being too forward. Looking back at the roles we played, I suspect that I should never have let him go without offering him the bounty of truth. Yet in spite of my misgivings and ponderings as to what, if anything, we may have been able to create, I am at peace, knowing that in the end, the script was perfect just the way it was.

A few months prior to my graduation from the University of Texas, I found myself leaving the classroom, enjoying the sun on my face and the sweet aroma of the west Texas desert in bloom. Unexpectedly, Peter, destined to become my first beau, approached, gave me a nod, and motioned me to follow. In spite of my trepidation, I followed, anxious to be inducted into a world that I had fantasized, yet feared, for years. I wanted to be held in a man’s embrace, overpowered by his testosterone. Because I was inexperienced, however, rather than becoming a love-under-the-sheets encounter, our rendezvous evolved into polite conversation and gentle hand-holding. Nevertheless, this being my first encounter with a man, my gay card was validated. Of course, I was anxious to learn from him and lie naked in his bed, but being a good Catholic boy, I deluded myself into believing our meeting was a divine act of intercession. Thus, I was determined to win his heart. Therefore, I decided to play my cards in the kitchen. After all, I’d heard the cliché that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. At least that is how I rationalized my actions in my gender-confused world where the game required one partner to be the hunter while the other was the gatherer. A few days later I knocked on his door, having practiced my invitation to cook for him for days. Even now decades later, I can still feel my heart beating like a little boy about to open his first Christmas gift. As the fates would have it, he was delighted, and we agreed to meet a few days later. That week I perused countless cookbooks for direction. I finally decided on a Russian feast to inspire my czar and win his devotion. That Saturday, I arrived at his apartment, ingredients at hand for savory beef stroganoff, buttered noodles, and Cointreau-kissed strawberries Romanoff. Though I was a nervous boy playing at being grown-up, I pulled it off. The dinner was magnificent. Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Festival Overture” provided the auditory punch to an evening filled with sensory delight. After the meal, as we held each other on his sofa, and I felt his heart poetically and impossibly beating to my own, I knew I had bagged my query. I had won him over through my culinary skills and domestic manipulations.

Within a few years, however, what had blossomed in the spring. withered and desiccated. We tried to forge a relationship, but because I had been drafted into the army and was away from home, our meetings were few and far in between. Our May-December flame sputtered, for while he had burned his candle at both ends over the years, my light had just started to flicker. Eventually, he recognized that he wanted what I could never offer, children. Thus, within months after I did return home, he dissolved our relationship, convinced our age differences and irreconcilable goals were impediments to the fairy tale ending on which I had been weaned. And thus, I encountered my first dissolution, my first of many failures. The “Russian Easter Festival Overture” became a dirge, its bells no longer heralding the resurrection of love, but rather the mournful eulogy of forsaken love and childish dreams.

Regardless, in those years with Peter, I learned that being gay is a blessing; I learned to embrace and honor myself. Although the relationship did not take root, that meal became a precursor to my entry into adulthood. Thus, I remain forever grateful to our ephemeral dance. Over those years, Paul, Peter’s best friend, was often a guest at our apartment. Though Paul and I were never alone, in retrospect, I knew even then that the sexual and emotional attraction between us was palpable. I suspect Peter felt it, though he never spoke of it. After my first relationship came to an end and I moved out, Paul visited me often. Our encounters were polite and restrained. Paul stood off in the distance, silent, supportive, and stoic. In retrospect, I realize that though he wanted to reach out to me, his devotion to his best friend and to me precluded him from doing so. And thus, the Russian feast I had years earlier prepared for another was never his. And after months of agony and a realization that my first relationship could not be resurrected and that I needed to move on, I left Texas for Denver, hoping to start a life anew. Yet even before I flew away, Paul and I both knew that so much that needed disclosure would remain forever vaulted. I wanted him to give me reason to remain, yet I could not encourage him; he wanted me to stay, yet he could not betray his honor. We were both stuck in a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t’ waltz. And thus, our chosen pathways became the denouement to our Greek tragedy.

And thus, our lives took us in different directions. Because we kept in touch, our friendship blossomed. Though our letters to each other were always warm, it was becoming clear to me that by my running away, I had thwarted a possible bond when he started to close his letters with…Love, Paul. Eventually, he even asked me if I could tolerate him for a brief visit should he find himself in Denver. I let him know that if he took a step toward me, I just might take two steps toward him. But because of his career, he never made it to Denver, and as time progressed, our letters became more infrequent. I concluded we had only forged footprints on a beach. A few years later, I awoke from a dream. Paul hovered protectively next to me, reaching down with his hand to touch my face. I decided enough time had passed between us. Unspoken words needed to be fleshed out. Thus, I called him. To my surprise, a kind stranger answered, and after I asked for Paul, he informed me that he had just passed away. And thus, the last dance came to an end. On my next visit to Texas, I went to his grave, knelt before it, and bide adieu to my friend for whom I should have prepared a feast. I recognized that time had flitted away like a ghost seen only in the periphery of one’s vision. I will always some regret that I did not marry savory to sweet, let the dough rest and rise, or grind the spices between my fingers for Paul. I suspect that my life might have been different had I recognized I am not exempt from the adagio’s last note. I regret my indecision; I regret his indecision. My naivete, my silence, his devotion, his honor, had collided like two star systems pulled apart by each other’s gravitational pull. I will always ponder whether a meal to remember might have scripted a sublime poetic couplet. But regret is a bowl of warm, curdled milk.

My experiences with Paul have taught me that to live life constrained by polite etiquette and fear of risks is like eating strawberries without the Cointreau. The little boy is no more. I have discovered that truth must be honored and life must be lived as though the big bang did not need God. When I look back at what might have been, I honor it, but remain firmly entrenched in what is today, in this Mobius strip of time. Thus, when I first met and recognized the man who a decade later still remains my soulmate, Ron, I turned around l80 degrees and gave him a smile that left nothing to the imagination. And the rest is history. No more retrospective regrets, no more cautious approaches. Life must be lived with a devil-may-care attitude. After all, the last supper is only the precursor to the first breakfast. Thus, I’ve learned to let the dead rest in peace and to keep alive the neutron star that is my lighthouse.

© Denver, 4/11/2014

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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Porn by Phillip Hoyle

The book circulated through the men’s dorm that fall of 1967, a pornographic novel that my roommate claimed was written by a group as an experiment to see if a coherent novel could be written by a committee, each member contributing one chapter. Protagonist Candy’s sexual exploits made up the content, and a different male was introduced in each chapter. It was my turn to read the book.

Did I think the committee’s book worked? Would it fool the editorial world? He asked. Of course, it must have worked; I was reading a printed and bound commercial copy. Was it literary? What a question. Perhaps the holy air of a dorm at a church-related college demanded literary posturing. One must consider that people who desire a book with a convincingly direct and graphically explicit sex scene at the climax of every chapter don’t really care who or how many who’s wrote it. They might count the chapters to see how many times the book could bring them to a climax, to guess how many days the book might last! Editors and publishers might also calculate similarly with an eye on porn rights and profits, especially if such a book could be marketed on the legitimate book list. I avidly read Candy by Jerry Southern.

My very first exposure to pornography, though, was in magazines we pre-pubescent boys stole from Eefie Enzor’s little grocery store on West Tenth Street. We stowed them in a secret place in our hideout. We saw pictures of breasts and probably made lots of stupid comments about them. We reveled in the forbidden nature of having purloined print to go along with the purloined cigarettes and cigars we smoked while turning the pages. My favorite magazine was Adam, a glossy-print rag with photographs and stories. Once, someone lifted a copy of the smaller-format Sexology Monthly that featured informational articles on sex plus a few stories. I began reading porn at age ten.

As a twenty-year-old in a college dorm I read Candy. It had been years since I’d even looked at pornography, for by the time I reached puberty, our gang of little thieves had broken up, and I no longer had access to such magazines. Rather, I discovered the joys of ejaculation with another live boy, one a couple of years younger than I. He didn’t come and we weren’t exactly close friends. At least that is my memory. My sexual development at that time was free of glossy porn. I had sex with boys in a most direct and powerful manner.

Still, I was a reader and as a ninth grader found a couple of sex scenes in a murder mystery in my father’s collection of books. I found another hot sex scene in one of his historical novels. As a tenth grader, I continued reading historical novels. I didn’t find sex scenes very often but didn’t miss them or the porn because I found another boy with whom to have sex. Rather, he found me. We kept busy. After he moved away, I got too busy with church, school, and extracurricular activities, and with girls. Then in college, Candy came to call. I suspect that in reading some of the chapters, I made my first conventional use of pornography.

  • Porn helped me understand my sexual needs. For example, straight porn, as in Playboy, did little for me. Pictures of men and women in sex, as sometimes showed up in Penthouse, I found more interesting.
  • I grew to detest the objectifying of other persons as things or tools to be used either as sex object or in general.
  • I like sex but want it with people; real live, complex folk who interest me.
  • I am more interested in people than in bodies or body types. I prefer smiles to muscles.
  • I like porn as substitute sex; at least I value porn at this level.
  • As a married man I didn’t use porn for I had my wife with whom I made love several times a week. I didn’t want a prostitute, even if only a print prostitute.
  • As my homosexual needs gained my attention, I found gay pornography useful to me. In fact, gay literature and occasionally porn helped me sustain my sanity. In addition to my very nice marriage and my longstanding affair with a male lover, gay literature and pornography gave me a growing sense of identity and an immediate sexual release that contrasted with the rest of my life.
  • Pornography for me was literally what the old word means: writing and/or pictures of prostitution. Eventually porn was my going to a male prostitute for what I otherwise could not get in my other relationships. It was the lifesaver for this married man.
  • I’ve long had friends in literary characters and sometimes in pornographic characters as well.

© 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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Revelation–The Key to Our Revolution by Pat Gourley

Yes, Dorothy, there is a homosexual agenda. It is not, however, fueled by the paranoid fantasies of the homophobic that we are in the business of recruitment. No it is something much more powerful than that. Our true agenda is one of personal revelation and the ripples of awesome change that naturally occurs as a result.

If you pull the religious mysticism crap out of the definition of “revelation” what you are left with at the root is “the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge.” It does seem to me that the coming-out process is one of the purest and certainly most powerful forms of revelation.

Another “R” word that I think is closely tied in here with our true agenda is revolution. A lesser definition of this word but one quite applicable to my beliefs here states that revolution is “a dramatic and wide-ranging change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.”

Homosexuality it seems is certainly undergoing such a major paradigm shift in how it is perceived by the larger society. Oh sure Neanderthal pockets of reluctance to accept the inevitable still exist as very dramatically demonstrated by certain members of the state legislature’s of Kansas and Arizona and a couple of African nations to say nothing of the Russian State. The crazies in our neighboring state to the east are certainly being motivated by a sense of desperation. They have to invoke a convoluted sense of victimhood; we queers are impinging on their religious freedoms by asking them to bake us a cake. How ridiculous is that? They can play with poisonous snakes all they want just keep them away from the kids and I’ll bake my own damn cake, thank you.

The desperation of these folks is indicative that they now realize they have really lost the battle. The reason the scales have tipped so much in our favor is very clearly due to “revelation” on our part. I am firm believer that is has been the individual coming out process repeated and repeated millions of times over the past nearly fifty years that has created this tipping point. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the acceptance of gay professional athletes, queers on TV and all the favorable marriage equality rulings are the result not the cause of this dramatic national “sea change”. And let me add I am not speaking about the coming out of the famous sports person, politician, TV or movie personality as the fuel that has sustained this change, but the coming out of the very average queer in every corner of the world. Revealing often with gut wrenching courage their true selves to friends, co-workers and family.

I wrote a piece in August of 1983 titled “Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are”. It can be found in its original form on my web site www.pjgourley.com, in the Radical Gay Politics section. In a moment of laziness this weekend I thought I might just bring that piece to read but I have rested on my laurels perhaps a few too many times in this group by reading old shit and besides I kind of felt the need to rant a bit.

This article from 1983 was a feeble attempt on my part to try and rally the troops if you will and goose along the need for continuing our waves of revelation that had marked the 1970’s in particular. This was the early days of the AIDS epidemic with fear starting to really creep into the core of the gay male psyche; doubts in the minds of some that maybe the homophobes were right all along and nature was finally going to take care of this “homosexual problem.”

My exhortation was not to retreat into our closets but to start coming out in even greater force. I open the article quoting a Gallop Poll cited in Newsweek magazine from August of 1983 back in a time when Newsweek was actually read by large numbers of people. One question asked in the poll was “Do you have any friends or acquaintances who are homosexual?” 26% answered “Yes” while 74% answered “No.” There was clearly still lots of revealing to do on our part. With AIDS just beginning to creep into the national consciousness and no causative agent yet identified, Jerry Falwell was calling for the quarantining of gay men and I quote “like cattle with brucellosis.”

As it turned out though the community didn’t need my feeble cheerleading with the LGBTQ response to the epidemic being in the long run phenomenally community building and empowering, tragic and horrific as it was.

Harvey Milk
Photo taken in SF Public Library in2010

My personal efforts at “revelation” in this area of my own queerness started in 1967 and after several fitful starts and stops really took off in 1976 with my involvement with an organization called the Gay Community Center of Colorado located on Lafayette street just a block and a half from our current location. So here I am 38 years later still hanging out in this local community center. I ask myself what at this stage of the game I could possibly still have to reveal? Well you see my own personal growth and the ongoing ripening of my own queerness continues to be enhanced by listening to all the revelations here each week and sharing a few of my own. Love and hugs to you all!

© February
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.

Read more of Patrick’s blogs at www.pjgourley.com

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What’s Your Sign? by Gillian


I’m a sign of the times.

I am a woman with more freedom than any previous generation in the history of humankind.

I have freedom of expression, and self-determination of my life, which women of the past could scarcely dream of.

I vote, a privilege not extended to all women in the U.S. until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although in Colorado, women gained the right to vote in 1893.

I have complete control over my own property, a privilege not extended to American women until 1900.

I can even purchase my own property, a privilege I was astonished to find not extended to me in 1966. I had a good job and determined to buy a house; a very modest, two-bedroom frame house, the likes of which have mostly become “scrape-offs” in recent years. However, I found that although I could qualify with my income, I could not get a loan. This refusal certainly had nothing to do with my being a lesbian; it would take another 20 years for ME to figure that one out! It was because …. What would happen if I became pregnant? As an unmarried woman I had no one to pick up my debts when I had to quit work. (Hey, perhaps being a lesbian might actually have been an advantage!) Poor innocent little ol’ me. I had no idea that only one in a thousand women (0.1%) owned homes in 1960, but, WOW, by 1970 we zoomed all the way up to a shaky two in a thousand (0.2%). Currently, single women are around 20% of homebuyers while single men account for only 10%.

Just in my lifetime, how things have changed. I own my home, I own and drive my car, I manage my own money. I haven’t worn a skirt since I retired; I am free to follow fashion or ignore it. I am free to follow social mores or ignore them.

I talk about religion and politics, very much verboten in my youth, and, still worse, about sex!

I have lived with my beautiful Betsy for over 25 years. Far from causing us to live in fear, this fact does not seem to faze anyone among our acquaintances, friends, and families. And now, in July 2013, neither does it, according to the Supreme Court, threaten all those straight marriages out there. Which, by the way, are failing at a rate exceeding 50%.

Like many older people, I get a bit curmudgeonly at times, bemoaning today’s world and muttering on about how things are not what they used to be.

How happy I should be that they are not!

I have lived, and am living, in the best possible time.

I am indeed, and delighted to be, a sign of the times.

© 6 July 1913 

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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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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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Do I Have Your Number…. ?? by Gillian

Do I have your number? No, I do not mean your phone number! I use the phrase in the way we say, or just think to ourselves, ‘Oh yes, I’ve got your number!’ meaning ‘Oh yes, I know what you are after, I know what is going on here, I know what you think and what you want; I know what you are about. I know who you are.

So, in that sense, do I have your number? Do all or any of you have mine? We have shared many of our most heartfelt emotions, thoughts, and ideas, over the last two or three years. We have held nothing back. We have laughed and cried together. We have hidden nothing from each other.

Still, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. It makes me wonder if really deeply knowing someone, completely understanding them, is actually possible. Surely very few, if any, family members truly know each other, even those who consider themselves to be very close. After twenty-six years together, and with considerable help and spiritual guidance from such people as Eckhart Tolle, do Betsy and I really really know each other? Of course not. We still struggle to understand each other every single day, with mixed results.

But how can I even dream of a deep and flawless understanding of any other person when I still don’t know my own self? I try. I look deeply inside myself and try to interpret correctly what I find there, but I don’t always get it right. After all these years, I can still surprise, perhaps even shock, myself.

Some time ago our group’s topic for the week was Marriage. Some of you remember that my piece had the recurring theme: “marriage doesn’t freakin’ work!” I questioned why we, the GLBT community, are so determined to jump onto this faltering band-wagon.

Last week came the staggering announcement that the IRS now recognizes same-sex marriages. Perhaps Betsy and I should consider marriage, after all. But only, I firmly lectured my inner self, for purely fiscal reasons. After all, I insisted, we had no emotional need for any such thing. We are as committed to each other and our relationship as any two people could ever be, and we don’t need any official sanction to help us along.

So why on earth did I find myself, close to tears, asking Betsy if she would consider marrying me? In fact, I became so obsessed with the idea that I kept on asking. I guess I couldn’t quite believe the answer. Finally the poor beleaguered woman laughed,

“You’ve asked me three times and I’ve told you ‘yes’ three times. OK?”

Not the most romantic response, but I’ve finally got it; the answer is YES!

I am completely taken by surprise to find myself so thrilled at this that I feel almost sick with excitement, something we do not experience too frequently once we leave the uninhibited emotions of childhood behind us. Suddenly this is all about love and nothing about money; much more peering inside myself to be done!

No, I don’t have your number. I don’t even have my own!

September 2013

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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.