Tag: LGBTQA

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Feathers on the Wing by Pat Gourley

“It has been my experience that gay and lesbian people who have fought through their self-hatred and their self-recriminations have a capacity for empathy that is glorious and a capacity to find laughter in things that is like praising God. There is a kind of flagrant joy about us that goes very deep and is not available to most people. I also think that something about our capacity to live and let live is uniquely foreign – that we have learned in the crucible of the discrimination against us how broad our definitions must be for us to be fully human.” 

Paul Monette 
(From an interview in Mark Thompson’s Gay Soul, 1995). 

My what a slippery concept “the essence of GLBTQ” is as I begin to think about it. Much of my gay adult life has been spent in pondering this but pretty exclusively from the perspective as a gay man. It was work with the Radical Fairies where cultivating our difference, our otherness, was often the stated goal. My thinking in this area has been most emphatically influenced by Harry Hay but also by John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, Mitch Walker, James Broughton, Mark Thompson and Will Roscoe along with many other Fairies brothers.

John Burnside, Pat Gourley, Harry Hay, 1983
Photo by David Woodyard

We know we are different, most of us from a very early age, but the questions have always been ‘how?’ and ‘does it go beyond the bedroom?’ Are we primarily shaped as little queer beings in response to societal pressures and oppressions or is their something much more intrinsic? Are we really “born this way” and then of course certainly flesh out individual responses to our otherness in part based on how we are received by parents, siblings, peers and the larger society? This debate today is largely mute as far as the masses of LGBTQ are concerned and occurs if at all really only in rarified academic, queer and mostly University connected enclaves. The take over of the LGBTQ liberation movement by the issues of military service and marriage equality have at least superficially provided us with an escape valve in the form of the meme “we are no different from anyone else and we’ll prove it if you just give us our rights”.

We have as a group largely abandoned pursuing the old Mattachine questions of ‘who are we,’ ‘where do we come from,’ and most importantly ‘what are we for?’ And perhaps this is OK; life does present more than enough daily struggles that can legitimately keep us from philosophizing about our intrinsic natures. The economic benefits alone that can come from marriage equality are real and beneficial for many. However, that we would need the hetero establishment to validate our relationships seems to me to have a bit of a pathetic groveling component to it.

Harry Hay would on occasion taunt those listening to him by twisting around the old bromide of “we are just like you except for what we do in bed” to and I am paraphrasing here “we need to realize that the only thing we have in common with straight people is what we do in bed”.

Hay used to talk frequently about our unique “gay windows” on the world. We see the same world as straight people do looking out of their windows but the view can be very different. This different window has the potential to provide us with outlooks and viewpoints that potentially could be very different in a beneficial way to society.

I think the above Monette quote is a great concrete example as to how that might look. I do not mean to imply that we have the market cornered on empathy as a result of the oppression we have experienced. The world seems to have lots of oppression to go around and I am sure that it can at times invoke great empathy in the compassionately oppressed. We GLBTQ are however uniquely exposed to it often in our own biological families and in our own communities. So often our oppression comes from within our “inner circle” if you will rather than from without. Ironically perhaps this is our greatest gift and can provide us with something “uniquely foreign” to bring to the human banquet, a very broad definition of what it is to be human and the great joy that can convey.

Let me venture far out on a limb with a very sharp saw. Hay had preached for many years that we are actually a separate people but in later years he began to refine this into the possibility that we are actually a separate gender. He began speaking in terms of a third gender. Not intending to piss anyone off here I think we could safely take this and run with it i.e. why not 4th and 5th and 6th genders as well. For a much more detailed and nuance discussion of the “other genders’ concept I would refer to Radically Gay and the section entitled “Our Third Gender Responsibilities”.

In being questioned by Mark Thompson in an interview with Hay published in the 1995 anthology Gay Soul the topic of third gender came up and in one partial response to a question from Thompson, Harry used a metaphor for us that is I think very beautiful and on topic for today.

“…I believe that gays are a specific development of humanity who have a specific contribution to make to the culture. We’re about multidimensionality, among other things. You might say we are the feathers on the wing.” Harry Hay, 1995.

I’d like to close by saying that coming here every week and interacting in such an intimate fashion with you all reinforces for me repeatedly just how we are all the feathers on the wing.

Denver, July, 2013

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 Interview by Nicholas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Author

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

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The Strangest Person I Ever Met by Nicholas

One day she walked into my office and sort of collapsed down into a chair and said, with a mixture of patient weariness and eager anticipation, “I just can’t wait till I get my tits.”

Rebecca (not her real name) was a volunteer at the GLBT Community Center where I worked and she frequently tossed off quips about where she was in her transition.

“You’ll get them,” I assured her, “and they will be beautiful.” Like, what do I know about boobs, I thought.

I really didn’t think it very strange that Rebecca would announce to me such a private anatomical detail. We were always chatting about something at The Center. This was just real life the way real people lived it. No more “strange” than if she’d said, “I need to buy a new car.” Though a good deal more personal. But then one cannot transition in private so why be secretive about the process.

That was her attitude and I was always impressed by Rebecca’s ability to be open and light hearted about her life and its changes when so many others seemed to carry theirs around like a heavy stone on their backs. Rebecca seemed not only determined to make her life her way but to enjoy it along the way.

I didn’t find that so strange—actually, more admirable than strange. But it occurred to me that there are people in this world whose eyes would have bugged out at a statement that, to them, would have been as strange as if saying she was from Mars.

I don’t really know strange people. At least I don’t think so. I once knew a guy whom I would call strange, as in weird. I assume he’s long dead since he looked like a walking corpse when I knew him in San Francisco in 1969—where knowing strange people was a daily occurrence. Frank lived in the flat below me and his full time and sole occupation seemed to be smoking pot and doing probably any other drug he could find in the dark confines of his room. One day he emerged into the sunlight and showed the most sallow and droopy skin I’d ever seen on a body still alive. Now, that’s strange, I thought, and not very appealing. I stayed away and always have from “strange people.” Weirdoes just don’t interest me.

But then some people would say that my life is pretty strange and full of weirdoes—faggots, dykes, radicals, mystics, people of integrity and ethics, animal lovers, even. I know a woman who once took a squirrel she’d hit with her car to a vet to try to save it. Now, that’s strange. I’d never do that.

One of my best friends is beyond the beyond, as the Irish say. He’s intersex. Now, we’re totally outside the binary, as he puts it. Pronouns don’t even apply here though, since you have to check one box or the other, David has always identified as male. With intersex people we have not just men, women and those transitioning, but suddenly the biological permutations are near endless. He used to have tits but lost them when forced into more male-inducing hormone treatments as an adolescent. He tells me he misses his tits and the fine soft skin he once had. He’s taught me a lot.

So, no, I don’t like “strange.” But in a way I require some strangeness in my friends. Strangeness is, after all, a very subjective judgment. What some call strange, I call interesting, unique, human, being alive, maybe even fun. Life is strange enough all by itself. And if you’re not even a wee bit strange, you need to fix that. Take a flight on the astral plane, listen to those voices in your head, drop everything and go on a meditation retreat, paint your toe nails purple, sit down and read a book. You know, weird stuff.

To some people, I suppose, I might be the strangest person they’ve ever met.

© 22 July
2012

About the Author 

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


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The Swim by Gillian

I have never been one to be really “in the swim of things,” an expression much used by my mother but not heard so much today. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms defines it as “actively participating, in the thick of things,” and explains it’s origin from the term “swim” used in the 1800’s to mean a large number of fish in one area.

No, I have not for the most part been one of those many, but more one aside. Perhaps it was to some extent an inevitable result of being an only child, learning of necessity to be perfectly content with my own company, but it was also the result of other circumstances.

When I was about four my parents and I moved to a remote farming area on the border of England and Wales, to live with and look after my paternal grandparents of whom I have already told you quite a lot in various stories. This part of the world had a dialect all its own, so that set me apart from everyone else from the start. When I began school I learned, as children swiftly do, to adopt the right words and phrases, to talk like the other kids, and fit in well enough, but was never really “in the swim.”

Besides, they were all farm kids and I was the teacher’s brat, so that left an inevitable space between us. Furthermore, in remote areas like this, people were only just beginning to travel outside their immediate surroundings and so for many generations had been intermarrying.

It seemed as if every one of my friends was related to all the others whereas I had no family in the area except my immediate one of parents and grandparents.

It was not that I was lonely or unhappy, just not “in the swim.”

Then, of course, as I grew older that subconscious subliminal gay thing was always there.

Even though I didn’t even recognize it consciously, let alone do anything about it, it definitely kept me out of that “swim!”

And now I have recognized it, and done something about it, and am completely “out,” I still wouldn’t say I’m firmly “in the swim of things” as far as gay culture, whatever that is, goes. Yes, I suppose being with a same-sex partner in a committed relationship for twenty-five years does put me solidly within the “gay” circle, but I don’t find myself “in the swim” of gay culture.

Sure, I’ve read some gay books and seen some gay movies, and would probably do more of both if there were more really good ones. I’ve done my fair share of dancing and lesbian bars but once I found my beautiful Betsy those rather lost their appeal.

I am here, a participant in this wonderful group, which I acknowledge as one of the best things to have come along in my life, so clearly I do participate in gay things with gay people,

But in general I have to say that I don’t feel participation in gay culture to be a big part of my life.

No, not in the swim!

Or am I? Surely being completely at peace with whom and what you are is just about as much “in the swim” as a person could ever be.

© Sept. 10th 2012
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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The Essence of GLBTSQAHZICAEUC? by Will Stanton

I’m baffled.
“Essence: the quality of a thing that gives it its
identity.”  “The Essence” sounds
singular to me, one essence; but “GLBTSQAHZICAEUC?” sounds like a lot of
different kinds of people.  So, how can
there be one essence?  I imagine  that we can argue logically that there is an
essence supposedly common to all human beings, but I doubt that the person who
suggested this “GLBTQ”-topic meant all of humanity.  Somehow, he meant to speak to a singularity
applied to people of various orientations or persuasions.
Over the years, I have had time for rational evaluation of
human sexual orientation, and long ago I came to the well supported conclusion
that there are no true categories. 
Sexuality is fluid and covers a wide spectrum.  Orientals such as East Indians have known
that for centuries.  I’m not sure that
all members of Western psychological professions have managed to come to that
realization.  For the longest time in the
West, professionals were convinced that human sexuality is binary, male and
female; and any deviation from those two categories was supposedly
abnormal.  Awareness to the contrary and
consequential studies in this area have been belated, although there has been
an increase in research that has revealed much information, assuming that
people are truly interested in learning about it.
Contrary to my undergraduate studies during the Dark Ages of
psychological debate, when, for example, one of my professors denied the slightest
influence of genetics upon how one thinks, feels, and behaves, we now are
obtaining through modern research-methods an astonishing quantity of
information confirming and, to some extent, explaining genetic influences upon
human development.
Despite these scientific revelations, some people still
engage in a false debate of “nature vs. nurture,” that is, is a person
the result solely from how he was born or what he learns?  The premise of the argument is false. Instead,
humans are the result of nature with nurture.   The myriad of factors forming an
individual’s personality and sexuality seem too complex to speak of one essence.
Considering physical development alone, researches have
discovered that there are at least one hundred genetic influences in the womb
that contribute to more than thirty physical intersex states.  We now know also that genetic influences upon
brain and  endocrine system development
have a discernable impact upon how one feels and thinks.
So, how to approach this topic?  I suggest that “GLBTQ” is too limiting, just
too few choices to place all gay-ish people into one of those categories.  And with this topic, what was meant by
“essence?”  I can image that, in the
1970s and 80s, “The essence” could refer to patchouli.  I sure smelled allot of that essence when I
was around gay people during  that time.
Let’s start by looking at some of these lettered designations.  I suppose to be an “L” one must be female, or
at least some semblance of female.  Then
there is “B” for  “bisexual.”  That sounds biological to me.  Do people mean instead that a person is an
“A,” ambisexual, like a baseball switch-hitter? 
 If that person claims to
be straight but has gay encounters on the side, is that person “heteroflexible?”
Then there is T for “transgender.”  That term is imprecise and does not clarify
which way the person was reassigned.  Also,
it certainly does not refer to that minority of “Ts” who changed and then
attempted to change back again.  I know
of some cases like that and also have talked with one such person.  Would that person be a “TT?” 
How about an “S?”  I’m
particularly baffled by those thousands of young guys and  teenage boys who inexplicably have a
compulsion to take massive doses of female hormones yet have no intention of
ever surgically completing a full transition. 
They develop large breasts, wide hips, and round butts, but they still
possess their original equipment.  Some
even prefer to be the dominate partners in sex. 
A whole new term has been created to refer to this group, “shemales.”  So, I guess we need an “S” for them.  Robin Williams refers to this hybrid of many
sexual parts as “The Swiss army-knife of sex.” 
If you like Robin’s term, “S”  would
work for that, too.
Now for “Q.” I hope that no activist who has become habituated
to using the term ”queer,” chooses to be offended by my questioning its
use.  What in the world qualifies someone
to be “queer?”  Could that term be
referring to Dennis Rodman?  Does an
overabundance of tattoos and piercings make a person look queer?  Is Dennis’ palling around with North Korea’s
Kim Jong Un queer behavior?  Or, what
about the reclusive, elderly woman who has seventy-five cats inside her smelly
house?  Could she be queer?  I can not imagine encountering a person in
the figure of a president, a general, or an astronaut, and calling him or her “queer”
simply for having a same-sex partner.
Do we require an “H” for hermaphrodites?   True hermaphrodites are extremely rare.  More frequently, some varying level of
physiologically intersex state is found. 
I think we need a letter “I,” too. 
Some such individuals choose, or have been persuaded to choose, “apparent-male”
or “apparent-female” and have surgery to approximate the
appearance.  Contrary to that choice, I took
notice of a young Harvard student who was intersex.  People demanded to know whether the surgical
choice would be “male” or “female,”  The
reply was, “Neither.  I am who I am.”  That impressed me.
What factors contribute to a person being asexual?  Is it personality?  Something physical?  Lack of opportunity?  Old age? 
Do we have to come up with another “A” for this person?  Or maybe we need a “Z” for “Zero” to prevent
confusion with the other “A.”
For several hundred years throughout Europe and beyond,
there was a pervasive custom of emasculating thousands of prepubescent boys so
that they could preserve their soprano voices yet benefit from the
extraordinary physical development unique to those individuals as adults.  Many of them continued to have sex with
females, many with males, and some with both. 
There even is a small minority of males right here in the U.S. who
choose the procedure simply for psycho-sexual reasons.  Creepy, but true.  Upon what personality traits would we base
categorization?  How should we call  them? 
“Gay?”  “Straight?”  “C” for “castrato?”
What if everything is lopped off a male as has been done for
centuries with East-Indian hijras?   It is estimated that there are approximately
two-and-a-half million hijras in
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, and elsewhere even today.  They dress like women, but they are neither
women nor men.  Should we come up with an
“E” for “eunuch?”
There probably are several more letters that we could come
up with, but let me suggest just two more. 
How about “U” for “uninterested,” someone who is not truly asexual but,
for various other reasons, just does not give a damn about sex anymore?  Maybe some guy was just divorced for the
fifth time and has given up on women (or men), especially now that he has moved
out of the house and is living in a tent.
And last but not least, how about “C?” for “confused?”  In other words, “Just what in the heck am
I?”  I bet there are allot of people out
there who simply are confused.
Well, I may not be a confused “C?”, but I am
baffled.   I just don’t know what to make
of  GLBTSQAHZICAEUC?.  Are we now obliged to come up with separate
restrooms?

© 20 April 2013   

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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My Bi-Sexual Soul by Terry

My friend Ann, my college buddy, bridesmaid, and now Facebook Friend and I were just yesterday in the midst of a Facebook debate when she reminded me how we used to have “knock down drag out” arguments, forty odd years ago, the favorite topic having been religion. Still a loaded subject.

Atheists don’t believe religion is reality based, some adamant having suffered at the hands of hurtful and or bigoted leaders and their followers. Some denominations or nondenominational churches point fingers at each other, claiming to be the only ones who will avoid hell and other forms of outer darkness because of their particular beliefs and practices. My church welcomes LGBT people, where we are respected as equals and there is no problem with marriage or who uses what bathroom.

My soul, I believe, is probably an average soul. I find painting and writing and helping others to be its best nutrients. Of course, a community of kind people falls in that category.

In the early seventies I remember that gay and lesbian people were walking out of churches in the middle of sermons in protest of their being set up as sinful horrible and lesser than.” The churches took longer to realize that there were bi-sexuals in their world, so it seemed to me that the others wound up paving the way, or at least beating down some of the resistance to gay ways.

There are still many hostile and bigoted churches, though educating individuals seems to have helped in some quarters.

I get annoyed when I hear about pools of burning phosphorus, as though God didn’t have better things to do than to barbeque unruly, misbehaving, or simply “bad” individuals.

There are the metaphysicals and the mystics. I suppose I fall somewhere in that category, god being more of a mysterious metaphor.

There is obvious corruption and downright evil in some religious groups and factions. Some are distressingly ambitious to take over the American Government so as to enforce their beliefs and way of life on everyone else.

I find what is nourishing to my soul (which is another kind of metaphor to me) among friends and kind strangers. As far as coming out spiritually I am just not into a lot of openness. For me it would be just wrongheaded to inform people who I do not know or have reason to trust. Coming Out is unquestioningly spoken of as the only way of life that is valid, healthy and wholesome in the LGBT Community. As a pure benefit. For me, some know and some I don’t bother to inform.

I wish there was some way out for the LGBT young people abandoned by their parents to try to survive on the streets. It is shocking how many there are, who came out or were outed to awful parents.

When the minister of my hometown church found out I was not heterosexual, he did not have any problem with that. In that church we had talk back sessions where anything could and was intelligently and respectfully discussed after the sermon and main service. Free thinkers were not chastised or excluded.

I wish we didn’t have all this bad blood between some atheists and some religious people. Religion, is one of the ways ordinary people can be divided against each other, especially when manipulated by those powerful officials who have a vested interest in keeping civilians weak and easy to control for their own aims, enrichment and ambitions. In fact, as is described in “Genocide, A Problem From Hell,” the root cause of genocide is the purposeful manipulation to drive people against each other. Using religion as well as race, and class. Hitler was especially adept at creating this type of divide between Germans, within their citizenship and between the Germans and those from countries that he wished to attack and conquer, kill, and enslave.

I haven’t really told a story. Maybe there is too much patchwork to my spiritual development.

At twelve I decided that I did not believe in talking snakes and naked people in a garden, much less naked people getting kicked out of a garden for eating an apple. Thus, I declared that I was not going to church any more, and was given the ultimatum that I would have to spend the day in my room, which I did. Nothing could shake my resolve and eventually my parents gave up and just let it go.

I eventually came to a more sophisticated interpretation.

© 2 July 2013 




About the Author  

I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.

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Vulnerable Gay Me by Phillip Hoyle

     A minister I had met just that day asked me, “Should we kiss now or later?”

     “Now’s fine,” I flippantly responded wondering if he was kidding. He wasn’t.

      He pushed me against the wall, pressed his body against mine, kissed me full on the lips, stuck his tongue in my mouth. He seemed to be boiling over with passion while I had been expecting a laugh or a nice, gentle kiss. Perhaps he sensed I would end up getting more than I had agreed to and wanted to make his claim. I wasn’t asking for anything from him, but I did get quite a lot. 

     That morning three of us, including a regional minister, a pastoral minister, and I, an associate minister, traveled together. I was excited about the trip to a city several hours south of where we lived. Since we travelers wanted to get to know one another better, we all rode in the front seat. (Obviously the events occurred before bucket seats became standard.) Being the youngest, I sat in the middle with my feet on the hump. A few miles down the road the muscles of my lower back started to tighten. There just wasn’t enough room for both feet to be comfortable so I placed my right foot in the well next to the pastoral minister’s feet. My leg rested against his. I was able to relax and was pleased that he didn’t pull away. So I rested my leg there much of the way to the town where we were to lead religious education workshops the next day. I was slated to room with this same man. 

     We checked into the hotel and had a short break before dinner at a nearby restaurant where we would join other workshop leaders. As we waited, the minister and I talked freely about his work as pastor and my as an associate. From our conversations on the way down, I knew of this pastor’s singular work in communications and education and of a literature program in the congregation he now led. I clarified some questions about his programming and also got a feel for his personality. As we talked, he complimented me on my personality and intelligence and said how much he thought of the minister I worked with. A few minutes before leaving the room to meet the other leaders, he asked if we should kiss. After we kissed, he indicated he had liked my leg next to his and took it to be an invitation for us to do more together. I knew our touch could be interpreted in that way and realized that I may have actually hoped to be accepted thus, but still I felt shocked by his passion. I may have said something corny like, “Thank you.” At least, I should have.

     I didn’t like the live music in the restaurant. It was too loud and not one of my favorite styles. After dinner we took a walk along the riverfront but due to the cool air soon returned to our room. There we opened up to one another even more, much more than kissing. There was massage and, eventually, sex. He took the lead but the next morning told me he had never shared sex with another man who was so active. I guess he thought I should simply play a role of passive bottom for him, but I was too creative, too excited by the things we were doing together. I was the most top-like bottom he had met. He told me, somewhat prematurely I thought, that he was pretty sure he could fall in love with me. 

     Now I knew about love. I knew quite a lot about sex. I knew even more about myself. And now I’m describing my vulnerability—a sexual vulnerability—a readiness to open myself to a man I didn’t even know but who I saw others trusted. Why was I so ready to kiss him with passion? Why was I so ready to have full-out sex? I was up against a new kind of gay experience like that in books I had read, one that was ready to have sex with almost any available man. Here I was opening up to a discrete, married man who was horny as a goat and who saw me as a delectable younger fruit ready for the picking. But that last perception was to occur to me only later. Here was a man who proposed we kiss. I was ready. I was aware that the kiss could lead to more.

     I had long experienced the tension between being vulnerable and defended in the sexual arena. The year before I had fallen in love with a male friend but had pledged myself not to go sexual with him. After all, he was a newly-wed. At about that same time my wife in frustration said, “I just wish you’d get your sex somewhere else.” Those conditions set me up for what happened, but I’m not looking to blame anyone. There were more contributors, for example, I had not had male-to-male sex since age fifteen. And, of course, that evening I was away from home with a stranger who desired me. I was needy and not shocked by my condition. I was also lucky. This late 70s sex without protection with a man who had lived and worked in large cities did not leave me with an STD. 

     I was vulnerable not only to the sex that night; I was also ready to have an affair. I had heard his words of maybe-love and a couple of weeks later, when I called him, I realized that he must be running scared, even experiencing guilt feelings. That didn’t suit me. I didn’t want the guilt feelings of another to spoil our relationship as it surely would have. My formidable defenses arose. I never called back. 

     Several years later when I saw the pastoral minister at a regional conference, he said, “Let’s go fuck.” 

     I responded, “I don’t have time.” 

     He countered with a smile and a chuckle, “I thought you’d say that.”

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.”


Read more at Phillip’s blog  artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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The Rise of the Guardian Angels by Louis

From September 1962 to June 1966 I attended Flushing High School in Flushing, Queens, NY. There were 3 types of preparation regimens one could follow. First there was the academic or college preparatory. I was in that group. Most of my classmates were Jewish. Then there was the commercial course, consisting primarily of teenage girls preparing to become secretaries. The boys in the commercial course studied woodworking and some English. The commercial course people were primarily white. Then there was the General Course leading to a minimal type of high school diploma. This was almost exclusively black and Hispanic.

The first year I attended, I was assaulted a few times by some white gang members. Even back then they called themselves the “Aryans”. They were mostly Germans from my home town of College Point. Then there were the Amazons, the girls’ gang. They invited me to join their gang. I agreed. They knew I was gay and said I was their type of client. They attacked members of the Aryans, and I was never bothered again. Once the Amazons wanted to attack a certain girl named Monica. Monica was very refined and soft-spoken. The Amazons were heavily made-up and somewhat aggressive. I beseeched them not to beat up Monica. So they spared Monica. Once the Amazons wanted to attack a small-statured Jewish boy, Charles, who read a lot of books. I again beseeched them not to attack him. So Charles was spared.

Once, before I went to high school, I was in the local park, Chisholm Park, in College Point, and I was sitting with my brother Wally, who was reading The New York Times. For some reason this enraged one of the local Aryans, who came over and set fire to the paper with a cigarette lighter. We were more amused than intimidated. We also had an Italian-American friend, Patsy (at home Pasquale), and he liked to read books and poetry. So the Aryans used to bully him too. I guess College Pointers were expected to stay away from books.

Although I was spared being bullied any more, the gangs still made life unpleasant in High School. One of the Aryans told me that, in their meeting, they really wanted to attack the black gang, the Panthers (or what have you), but they couldn’t because the Panthers were too numerous. So they decided to attack the Hispanic gang, well more precisely the Puerto Rican gang, the Borinqueños. Gradually, Flushing High School became a police state. Sections of the school were separated by large metal gates manned by policemen sporting well-displayed pistols.

The friction between the Aryans and the Borinqueños intensified, and a “rumble” was declared. The rumble or “armed” confrontation was planned for a summer evening on Main Street of College Point. The Borinqueños had machetes while the Aryans had heavy-duty chains. The rumble started by both gangs breaking out the front windows of almost all the stores on our Main Street. No gang member got killed, but many were injured and hospitalized. When the police first showed up, they could do nothing because they were outnumbered. Reinforcements did not show up for another couple of hours. By then most of the gang warriors had disappeared. They were particularly proud of the damage they had caused and of the injuries they had inflicted on members of the opposing gang.

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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The Great State of Gay by Gillian

A Limerick

A lightning bolt hit me one day,
It left me with nothing to say.
You’re gay, don’t you know? How can you be so slow?
So I checked out the gay state of play.

Caught up on a runaway train,
I hurtled through darkness and rain.
I had to come out, not a whisper, a SHOUT.
I could not, ever, go back again.

I came out to them, young and old
I don’t know what made me so bold
I stood tall and proud and I shouted out loud.
The spy coming in from the cold.

This action might not have been wise,
I took it against some advice
But there’s nowhere to run, and it’s all been such fun,
Just go with the roll of the dice.

So here I am every Monday*
Caught up in the gay state of play,
I live a great life – even took me a wife
Here in the great State of Gay.

*Monday is the day we have our storytelling group.

The Wisdom of GLBT Identity    11/26/2012

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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Breaking into Gay Culture by Phillip Hoyle

I didn’t break into Gay Culture but rather carefully walked in prepared for my entrance by my good friend Ted. Over many years he had coached me, revealed the ins and outs of much of the culture by taking me to gay bars, introducing me to gay people, teaching me the language both spoken and unspoken, introducing me to gay novels, showing me more of his life than I really asked to see, and talking endlessly with me about gay experience. His tutoring took on a different seriousness when in my mid-thirties I told him I’d made it with another man, a friend of mine he’d met years before. From that point on, Ted simply assumed I was gay whatever non-gay decisions I made. His assumption led him to open even more of himself to me rather than shield me from realities that would certainly become important should I leave my marriage and go gay full time! Ted was my effective educator.

About two months after my wife and I separated I made my entry into a world I had only studied. Three blocks from my apartment I entered a bar named The New Age Revolution, a bar I had seen while walking with my wife and had wondered if it could be gay. Why else would it have such a name in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I had thought about when I would be ready to go alone to such a place, thought about when I’d go there as a gay man. Would I be courageous enough to do so? Of course, I would. After all, I didn’t separate from a twenty-nine-year-long, perfectly fine marriage to an understanding and lively woman whom I adored without intending to live a fully open gay life. I had already begun preparing to leave my profession of thirty-two years, one in which I realized I would not be able to live openly gay. So I glanced in the mirror, took off my tie, straightened my clothes, walked out the apartment, descended sixteen floors in the elevator, waved at the security guard, exited the building, and walked those three blocks down to the bar. I went early, way too early according to Ted’s instruction. He taught me never to show up before ten. I’m sure I was there at 9:00. I suppose it was a weeknight; I had to work the next day. The place was nearly deserted. There was music. A few people stood around talking to one another. I went up to the bartender, said “Hi,” and ordered a beer; I don’t recall what kind of beer but it was in a bottle. While I slowly sipped at my drink, I looked around at the decorations. This place just had to be gay. I couldn’t imagine any other saloon that would display a decorated dildo on the wall behind the bar. I was pretty sure I had made it to the right place.

This was not only the first time I had been alone in a gay bar; I’m sure it was the first time I’d been alone in any bar. I grew up in dry state with a prohibitionist mother and had married a tea-totaller. I had drunk beers on occasion, but had never gone to a bar before I was in my thirties and living away from Kansas. I had rarely even paid for a drink. I thought about a gay friend of mine who said he sometimes went to gay bars simply for the spiritual aspect of it, as a point of identity, participation, and presence. I stood in the bar that night not talking to anyone, thinking about how being there certainly was a kind of spiritual experience, one of great importance to me. I was finally present publicaly as a gay man. There I was beginning my future life as openly gay.

I drank another beer. Finally I nodded to the bartender, left a generous tip (changes must be commemorated with great generosity), and exited the door. I walked thoughtfully up the hill all the time watching peripherally for anyone that might have seen me leave the place; after all I was in Oklahoma. I entered the apartment building and returned to my home. I suspect I played music and messed around with some art project. I thought about making gay saints for my next series of mixed media works. Would I become one I wondered?

That evening I walked into a bar but wasn’t breaking into gay culture. Actually I was breaking out of several important, long-standing straight relationships. My entering gay culture passed as quietly as that first night in a gay bar by myself, and I’ve never regretted that short walk some fifteen years ago.

Denver, 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