Tag: LGBTQA

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Three Loves: Three Losses by Phillip Hoyle

I tell of Ted, Michael, and Rafael.
I tell of Kaposi’s sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and Hepatitis
C.
I tell of the loving effects of all on me.
Ted’s illness eventually became the focus of my
relationship to him, a kind of maturing friendship that clarified my need to
take care of another person who was dying. I wanted to attend to him at the end
of his life and realized I’d willingly take a leave of absence from work to do
so. This seemed a great change for me. It also clarified my anger at the church
and society for their often callus response to gay folk in general and
specifically to those living with and dying from HIV-related diseases. It seemed
that in our society to debate long-held fears was more important than to
support people—the real places of life and death.
I found meaning as well as satisfaction in letting Ted
teach me more about the issues and about myself before his death. The last time
we were together—a several-day stay at his home in San Francisco—we visited San
Francisco General Hospital, and I walked around Pacific Heights while he met
with his psychiatrist. We heard Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” together, and he
taught me how to smoke marijuana.  He
told me that when his KS lesions so distressed him, he complained to his HIV
physician. “I just can’t stand to look at them.”
“Then don’t,” she responded. “Wear long pants.”
Ted wore long pants but was not doing well on that last
visit. I wanted to return to be with him. Although I volunteered, I wasn’t
called in at the end, which frustrated me. Still, I was able to attend his
memorial service, an experience of balloons, tributes, music, and love.
After I moved to Denver I gave massages at Colorado AIDS
Project as a kind of memorial to my long-time friend Ted. There I met Michael,
a man who came to me for massage. I noticed that he was noticing me. He wanted
more massage. When later he came to my home studio to receive one, I was
pleased and served tea at the end of the session. Then he wanted more than
massage. We began seeing each other socially. Of course, I knew he was HIV
positive. What I didn’t know was that he was losing weight rapidly and that his
numbers were going in the wrong directions. When I realized these distressing
trends, I suggested that at his next medical appointment he show the swollen
lymph nodes in his neck and groin and insist that someone touch them. He did so
and the tests that ensued pinpointed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I started spending
most nights at his place when he started chemotherapy and discovered just how
much I had come to love him in our short time together. As he sickened I did
more and more of his yard and housework. I wanted him to be comfortable and I wanted
to enjoy his company.
Michael taught me some rather genteel approaches to
breakfast, to eating out, and to living with another man. I was an avid
learner. He also was the occasion for me to see the down side of some gay relationships
particularly as relates to family complications. When his brother and elderly
mother were coming to see him after his chemotherapy had to be discontinued, he
asked me to move back to my apartment during their stay. I was confused but also
realized we are what we are: he was who he was, I was who I was, both imperfect
when coping with the extremities of life. I made sure I dropped by to meet his
family, to be for them one of Michael’s friends. I never knew what they understood
of our relationship.
I did for Michael in his last weeks what I couldn’t do
for Ted: made him comfortable, showered him with my love, sat by him while he
took his final breaths. My sadness mixed with love at his death. I was so
pleased that I had cleaned up after him, prepared his food, and loved him in
the most practical ways possible—the work of family and of gay lovers in the
face of AIDS. In it all, I came to appreciate the effective work of Denver
Health’s clinics and staff. I appreciated the attentions of other friends of
this lover of mine. His memorial service brought together a wide variety of
folk who celebrated his life, friendships, and love.
Some months later I met Rafael at a bus stop. We talked;
we liked each other. Eventually we got together after a frustrating courtship
characterized by my wondering where this cute man was. We came together with an
emotional intensity that surely would have entertained both Ted and Michael and
that surprised me. It also thrilled me to my innermost gay self that I was
still discovering.
Rafael told me he was HIV positive some weeks into this
intense relationship. I said that was fine and told him about Ted and Michael.
We set up housekeeping, but in a few weeks he was growing ill. He too was a
client at the Infectious Diseases Clinic at Denver Health. I warned him I might
cry when we went there because of my memories of going to the same kind of
appointments with Michael.
I felt somewhat like a veteran and told him I wanted to
meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. That didn’t happen. I met
his brother in his room at Denver Health. Later I met his parents and sister at
the same place. I stood by him and helped his family as his illness worsened. We
waited during a surgery on his aorta, made visits to the Intensive Care Unit, the
Intensive Care Step-down Unit, and other floors where he was treated. Finally,
a diagnosis of full-term hepatitis C emerged. Two weeks later, after a one-day
home hospice attempt, the Hospice of St. John took him in. There he died.
I liked that at the end he was surrounded by family. I
was pleased to be included. He had told his parents they’d not be welcome in
our home if they in any way excluded me. This frail man of indomitable spirit
took care of me with his family as I took care of his daily needs. Our love’s
intensity sustained and wrecked us both at the end. I let go gently, deeply
saddened, and with startlingly grateful respect for this man’s life and death.
But I was also afraid of the effect the loss of such an intense relationship
would bring. The resulting low I experienced was as intense as the heights of
the love we shared. I survived. I felt as if Saints Ted and Michael attended me
in my adoration of the beautiful and strong Rafael.
This awful disease with all its science, social ramifications,
and family trauma and drama continues to affect my life daily. Friends and
clients still live and die with its effects. Memories seared deeply into my
brain and body accompany my every move. I continue to hate the disease while I
love those with it, both past and present. 

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.”

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Dis-ease by Donny Kaye

Smile.  The threesome posed with an apprehensive grin
as their buddy taking the picture commented on the potential FaceBook caption
he would assign to this particular photo op,
“My buddies waiting to get tested at the STD Clinic”. 
And then, one-by-one each of
the buddies was called into the clinic offices 
for their chance to fill one of those plastic containers, complete a blood
draw,  and finally, meet with the
counselor. 
“Have you had sex in the
past 48 hours?” questioned the counselor. 
“Yes.” 
“24? ”
“24 what?”
“Hours”
‘”Uh, yes.”
“More recent than 12?”
With a grin and a deep sense
of satisfaction, “Yes.”
The counselor then proceeded
to demonstrate, using his finger, how a condom rides down the organ, exposing
the shaft and consequently exposing the base, you know—The BASE, to potential
infection.  It seemed like the lead into
an infomercial for some type of device, much like a garter that could be
attached somewhere on the body to hold the condom in its appropriate location
for $19.95 (and if ordered within the next while, the order would be
tripled).  Just what was needed for the
threesome who had been waiting in the outer office for their time for direction
and instruction in safe sex. 
Upon leaving the Clinic, the
buddies compared the stash of condoms each had been given proclaiming there was
agreement that they were safe for the next while, at least 48 hours. 
A week later at coffee there
was a sense of relief and satisfaction knowing that each of the three had gotten
his tests back.  All was OK. 
“No syphilis,” the first
proclaimed.
“All is clear with me,”
stated another; only to be joined by the third, “I’m clean.”
There was a deep smile and
hug shared by the three, as they raised their mugs to their mouths and cheered
this most recent reporting.  Something
they have committed to on a routine basis.
AIDS, has become the focus
of health considerations for the GLBT community since the early 1980’s when the
death causing syndrome at the time was first identified.  Especially for men, AIDS was thought by some
to be God’s judgment and retribution for “unnatural relationships between men.”  This particular disease for a while ravaged
the bodies and lives of many of our brothers and sisters, as well. 
As a result of the focus on
AIDS since the 80’s, the disease is better managed within the culture.
AIDS has become part of my life.  Knowing that each of us to some extent live
with AIDS daily, even though it is not in my body, it has become part of my
culture and day-to-day existence.  AIDS
exists all around me and I don’t want it in me. 
Understanding how AIDS has
become part of our culture, and my day-to-day existence, I’m also drawn to the
realization that much of my reaction to life actually creates Dis-Ease.  
Dis-Ease
actually occurs within each of us as we experience the contraction that comes
with judgment, be it judgment about something or someone outside of me, or more
commonly, judgments against my own self. 
It has been suggested by some researchers that there is a physiological
reaction within the bodies various systems to the contraction that is
experienced within when judgment occurs. 
 Judgment causes the very cellular
structure to break down.  The cells
within the body vibrate in a completely dissonant way.  There is contraction.  The fluids do not move through the cells as
they were created to move.  The nutrients
do not become transported or delivered to the cells.  The waste matter is not processed
properly.  Everything gets clogged up,
and there is dis-ease.
Dis-ease
exists within me in a very physiological way. 
Its cause may result from actual physical infection or from the
contractions within resulting from my judgments against myself and others.  Certainly there are measures that I must take
to protect myself from external causes of infection resulting in disease, such
as those recommendations of the STD Clinic staff.  Equally, I must pay attention to the
contractions and disruptions to my bodies various systems that occur when I
experience judgments against myself and others.
I entered the office alone.  There were no buddies, no photo op.
“Have you made any judgments
against yourself or another in the past 48 hours?”
“Yes.” (I mean, after all,
do I want that politician representing me as a gay man?)
“24?”
“Yes.” (Well, the person in
the express checkout line had more than ten items.)
“More recently?”
“Yes.  Actually in the moments before sharing this
writing.”  Stated without a grin or sense
of satisfaction.
Oh for an infomercial
offering some type of device that would help me to self-monitor the judgments
that occur in my mind, moment-by-moment. 
The judgments that create contractions and dis-ease within that can serve to be more lethal than
actually contracting some other dreaded disease, such as AIDS.  The remedy?  Hmmmmmmmm! 
The remedy, self
forgiveness.  For each time I am judging
another, even the driver in front of me or the customer in the express checkout
ahead of me, I’m actually judging myself. 
Certainly those judgments against myself about being unworthy or in some
way, not enough; ripple through my body in the form of contraction that
disrupts the various systems within my body creating dis-ease which can be as life
altering as other forms of disease. 
I am learning what to do to
protect myself from dis-ease.  I take my
vitamins, practice safe sex and even wear my seatbelt.  The consideration that begs my attention is Am I as vigilant about monitoring the
judgments that can exist in my life experience in a very inconspicuous way?
 The judgments that are life altering especially
when I withdraw and step aside out of a sense of unworthiness.
Dis-ease.  I live with it silently.  Separately. 
Alone.  
Hey, what was that 800 number
again?

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite.  He has lived his life posing as a
hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that
of a gay male.  In recent years he has
confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding
his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated
life.  “I never forgot for a minute that
I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject
and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime
at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the
stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall
the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the
deepest corners of his memory.  Within
the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of
four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family
and friends.  Donny is divorced and yet
remains closely connected with his family. 
He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with
himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing
integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of
the GLBTQ community.  

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The Fluffo Flotilla Revisited by Pat Gourley

One evening in the fall of 1978 I was at the Empire Baths. It was a rather slow evening as I recall and I was in the showers thinking I might head out when I noticed a bearded middle aged fellow just my type with a very impressive penis. Shower cruising is of course an ancient gay male art as old as showers themselves and it was always accelerated when taking place in a gay bathhouse. There was no need to worry about offending any straight male sensibilities in such an establishment.
The ensuing sex was great and as was my want on the occasion I tried to get the fellow to reconnect with me soon outside the bath. He was very hesitant but I was at my persuasive best and he reluctantly agreed to come by my house the next evening. And did I mention that the sex was pretty damn good!
I initially assumed, correctly, that he was married to a woman, which was the only option in those days. That however was not the reason for his reluctance. He did relate that he would look much different and when I pressed him on this he said he would have all the hair on his body shaved off when I saw him the next evening.
This turned out to be the case and I assumed it was not a part of a sexual scene at all, especially since I did not do any of the shaving. He said he was going to Texas the next day to take part in some sort of “experiment” in a sensory deprivation tank though I never got many details on this and did not push it since my main interest was getting this man in bed again.
The house I lived in and a couple of my roommates whom he met that night were I think quite foreign to him. We were that rare breed of “queer hippies” into the Grateful Dead and the communal décor of the house was eclectic to say the least, largely furnished with alley cast-offs. I do remember that he made a point of opening a briefcase he was carrying before we went upstairs. In addition to papers and a few personal effects there was a large handgun, which I remember he made a point of making sure I saw.
I elected not to comment on that probably thinking I hope he fucks me before he shoots me. The sex again was great and he was really more naked than a jaybird, not a hair anywhere to be found. He did not spend the night and I did not see him again for many months after that. I recall a few details of our subsequent meetings but they involved the cultivation and nurturing of a loving friendship outside the bedroom that lasts to this day. I learned that he was involved in a business on the Western Slope that ran river raft trips and had a wife and several adopted children. Oh and he was a conservative Republican. Remember though that conservative Republicans of that day were similar to the centrist Democrats of today. There was certainly a mutual sexual attraction but I think he thought of me as truly exotic in many ways other than in bed and I thought of his right wing worldview as quaintly misguided but tolerable.
In the fall of 1979 he persuaded me to come visit and do a raft trip down the Yampa River. I brought along several friends perhaps because I still was not totally comfortable visiting a gun-toting Republican on his turf by myself. The trip was a several day affair and very much fun. I slept in his tent and the rather unbelievable story presented to his crew was that I was his personal nurse and he was not feeling well. No one I think bought that story for a minute. The sex of course remained wonderful though I did learn the hard way that river sand and Vaseline are not a good combination.
The relationship continued albeit sporadically and the next year I met the love of my life, David Woodyard, and he moved in with me in a shared house here in Denver in the Five Points neighborhood. These were peak Radical Fairie years for me but even that level of esoteric queerness did not seem off putting to my western slope Republican friend. He loved being in the company of openly gay men and in the late summer of 1982 organized another raft trip of several days this one involving a larger group of friends. The first trip had been a gentle float but this one involved some real white water rafting through Desolation Canyon in Utah on the Green River.
I was happily partnered on that trip and not having sex with my friend though several of the folks I brought along I think accommodated his needs just fine. Being 1982 AIDS was still on the horizon especially for Denver so this trip proved to be quite the debauched event. My friend loved entertaining a large group of campy queens and there was plenty of fucking, booze, what passed for good food in those days and LSD to go around and though I was off the hallucinogens by that time many others were not.
A running joke amongst the group to the innocent confusion of the largely straight crew centered around a cooking shortening called Fluffo that was used to fry every meal it seemed. I don’t think any of us had heard of Fluffo before but we quickly incorporated it into our ongoing gay banter when we realized it was a cheap knock off of Crisco. Crisco was of course a lubricant of great renown in certain gay male circles at the time.
The final evening of the trip was a big party involving some very bad gender fuck drag and tasteless camp. This event was immortalized on our own return in a large spread in Out Front Magazine in an article called The Fluffo Flotilla accompanied by several photos. It helped of course get this sort of publicity by having the editor of Out Front at the time along on the trip.
Before eating and posing for pictures in our bad drag, and holidng a can of Fluffo strategically in the middle of the photo, my dear friend the raft company owner humored me and helped organized a group reading of selected poems from James Broughton’s just released Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven. To this day I wonder what several of the young straight crew thought of Broughton’s bawdy gay verse celebrating Nipples and Cocks, along with many other irreverent tomes, being read aloud in the Utah wilderness of the banks of the Green River. I would like to think it fostered future tolerance of gay people and perhaps even facilitated a coming out or two.

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 am currently on an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
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I’ll Do It My Way by Betsy

There
are a few issues which are of minor importance to some, but about which I have
remained steadfast in doing it my way.
 Growing up I was not spared from being
bombarded with advertising directed at young women.  Products such as cosmetics–eyeliner,
mascara–foundation garments designed to enhance your breasts and diminish your
waistline, crippling high heels, cancer causing hair removal products, etc,
etc. I decided early on (even before I knew what a dyke was–much less that I
was one) early on I decided these products were not for me.  It probably helped that I did not enjoy
reading “girlie” magazines with their come-on ads sucking in girls who were
trying to hurry up and become women. 
Perhaps this earthy attitude toward life was the influence of my Quaker
grandmother–a very earthy person indeed–and a person I admired very
much. 
Yet,
as a youngster, I had a strong tendency and still have a slight tendency to
want to “fit in.”  It was important to me
to be accepted by most of my peers, especially the popular ones.  I cannot say I never wore high heels–I
did.  I cannot say I never wore
lipstick.  I relented when it came to
lipstick and I still on special occasions put on the stuff.  The point here is that I refused to be taken
over, sucked in, controlled, if you will, by the industry.  Who are they to tell me I need to enhance my
natural appearance?  I cannot say I never
tried some of the products out.  But one
painful pluck of an eyebrow hair, one glance at dripping mascara, one attempt
to run in those spiked heels and I knew none of it was for me. When I came out,
I found that as a lesbian I was much more at home with this rebellious attitude
and stubborn refusal to contribute to Ms. Elizabeth Arden or Mary Kay.
Along
those lines, one other practice that I refuse to submit to is wearing those
tight-fitting, skin-clinging, indigestion-inducing women’s pants with no
pockets. I have to say, in the stores they look great on the manikins, but the
manikins are always holding their breath and never sitting down.  Nor do the manikins suffer the long term
effects of gravity on the body.
 Also, I will not buy a pair of women’s pants
if they have no pockets.  That’s partly
because my way is to not carry a purse. 
It is a nuisance and something to lose, leave behind, or have ripped
off.   How did this purse-carrying
practice come about?  I suppose it’s
because long ago women could not own property, including money, so there was no
need to have a safe place like a deep pocket to carry it.
Here’s
the thing with little teeny-weeny, everyday issues.   I don’t always do this, but I try most of
the time to not let ego or stubbornness get in the way of doing the other
person’s way.  For example questions
like, shall we take this route or that route? 
Shall we travel to this place or that place for vacation?  I have often found that the other person’s
way turns out to be a better way; and besides, if it turns out not to be the
better way, I don’t have to take responsibility for making the wrong choice.
          Then
there are a couple of issues which are of major importance and about which I
have been steadfast, albeit not throughout my entire life.  It was not until I was willing to live my
life honestly that I started doing it my way.  
What
I have in mind here is life style.  Well
actually, not just life style but, living a life according to who I really am,
in other words, being true to myself. 
When I was in my late forties, my children were almost grown and I had
been married for nearly 25 years.  I
finally realized that being attracted to and falling in love with females,
rather than males was not a fleeting, temporary phase of my development.  Instead this was my true nature and was part
of who I was.  I also came to the
realization that sexuality is a huge part of who a person is.  If I was going to ever be true to myself, I
needed to come out. This would not be easy because I had been married to my
best friend, and a good person.  I came
to understand, however, that I would not survive if I did not do it my way and
come out.  That other woman whose role I
had been playing all my life might have survived, but, it would have been in an
unhappy and depressed state and that was not my way.
My
way is to be comfortable in my skin. 
Although it has taken the better part of a lifetime to get there, now I
can say with assurance I am just that–comfortable, happy, content, and at
peace–and that is my way.

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus,  OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for
Change).  She has been retired from the
Human Services field for about 15 years. 
Since her retirement her major activities include tennis, camping,
traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports
Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25
years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and
enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and
most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25
years, Gillian Edwards.
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How I Learned Some Turkey Anatomy by Nicholas

          It was our first Thanksgiving together so we invited a
bunch of friends over to share a dinner. Jamie and I were to cook the turkey
and other people were assigned other courses for a sumptuous meal.
          We got the bird which was frozen but no problem, we knew
enough to leave it in the frig for a few days to thaw out. It seemed to be
doing so nicely and on Thanksgiving morning as I prepared the stuffing and
prepped the turkey, things were moving along smoothly. Turkey in the
oven, we were on our way to a feast.
          The first sign of trouble came innocently enough when Jamie
was talking to his mother about our celebration. I should point out that this
Thanksgiving was a kind of late rebellion on his part. We had decided not to go
to his parents for dinner, even though they were nearby, so we could have our
own gathering with friends. But mothers have that knack for asking questions
that can throw your plans right into the rubbish.
          Bragging about our turkey in the oven, mom posed the
question, “Did you get the giblets and stuff out of both ends of the turkey?”
          What “both ends,” I demanded. Of course we’d pried out a
bag of turkey parts from its hollow innards. But was there more in some other
secret cavity? Was there something stuffed up its ass, too?
          So, we hauled the bird out of the oven and poked around its
backside to find out that not only was there another pouch of miscellaneous
bits but that our future dinner was still, actually, frozen. Well, it did seem
a little stiff when we stuffed it but now we realized we had a still frozen
12-15 pound animal and all bets were off as just when dinner would be served.
          We threw the thing back into the oven and cranked up the
temperature. Nothing much happened. We turned the oven up higher. Still, not
much changed. It was turkey’s revenge—it would cook in its own time and never
mind our plans for dinner.
          Our guests started arriving and our main course was just
thawing out. We had appetizers and wine and conversation while the bird began
to show some sign of cooking. We reversed the order of the meal and served other
courses like salad, potatoes and vegetable and more wine until at long last we
pulled from the oven what we hoped was a cooked turkey. I can’t even remember
what it tasted like. I guess it was good or we were all too hungry to care. Everybody
ate it, nobody got sick. It was a fun time, even though a disaster.
          My first venture into real cooking did not augur well for
pursuing culinary delights. But, as it happens, one gets hungry and has to
repeatedly do something about it. Peanut butter sandwiches as a diet are not
that appealing. So, despite being shamed by a turkey, the lowest form of
conscious life on this planet, I did go back into that kitchen with the intention
of turning food into meals.
          I am happy to report that success followed my persistence.
Hunger is a good teacher and I have come since to associate the kitchen with
many satisfactions and pleasures.
          I love to indulge myself and what higher form of indulgence
is there than food. And food grows ever more satisfying with age. Taste grows
more complex and nuanced with age and taste buds, unlike other body parts,
actually work better as you grow older. Kids can be finicky eaters, it has been
said, because their underdeveloped taste buds aren’t working to their full
capacity with just sweet and bitter dominating their little palates.
          I like food. I like everything to do with food—shopping for
it, growing it, picking it in the garden, preparing it, cooking it, eating and
sharing it with others. I like reading about food and cooking; I like planning
big meals. My favorite store in the whole world is the Savory Spice Shop down
on Platte Street.
Walking in their door is entering a different world full of wonderful aromas
that hint of countless flavors from the dozens of herbs, spices and exotic
salts on the shelves. The variations and sensations are near endless in my
imagination.
          Cooking is now part of my identity. I love to cook. Well, I
just love food. Cooking is now a creative endeavor as I tend to use recipes not
as instructions but for inspiration and as suggestions as to what goes well
together and in what measure. Many times I simply dispense with recipes and
make it up on the basis of what’s in the frig and hunches. The hunches—like
adding paprika and dry mustard to a stew—usually pay off, i.e., are edible, but
sometimes they do not turn out so well. Those I won’t go into.
          Food has its rituals that can be likened to religious
liturgies culminating with the sharing of sacrament. Food is work and joy, is
nourishment and pleasure and connotes special relationships to those you share
it with and to the earth it comes from.
          So, let me officially launch this great season of holiday feasting—my
favorite time of the year—with the words: Ladies and gentlemen, start your
ovens. Let the eating begin!

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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An Ode to a Toad by Bobbi

Oh, Dr. Laura, now you’re
mistaken
I was married but not
forsaken.
I met my first woman-love at
45;
Oh, how good it was to feel
alive.
Now Dr. Laura don’t be cruel
At 14 I loved a girl.
I know that someone gave me
a hex;
‘cause I fell in love with
the wrong sex.
Dr. Laura, I really pouted.
“Fairy, queer” were words
they shouted.
Oh, God, help me because I’m
Jewish
And I shouldn’t do anything
so foolish.
Oh, Dr. Laura, I took some
pills.
Wish you had been there to
cure my ills.
Then I decided to be a phony
And marched down the aisle
to matrimony.
Dr. Laura you’d be so proud
In my white gown and what a
crowd!
As I was walking in that big
room
I was smiling at my …..
Oy vey, it was my maid of
honor, not the groom!
Oy, Dr. Laura it was a
blast,
But the marriage it didn’t
last.
For 20 years I tried
another;
After all a Jewish girl has
got to please her mother.
Oh, Dr. Laura get a clue.
You want families
I do too.
And I’ve got one to name a
few:
Max, Jeanetter, Karen and
Pete, Spencer, Rawls, Goobers and
Beebles, Gary, Daric, Frick
and Frack, Julie and Robert, Todd and Papa,
And my sweetheart of 13
years: Linda, Linda.
And Dr. Laura, We Are
Family!
So, Dr. Laura, get a life,
girlfriend.

About the Author

Bobbi, 82, a native Denverite, came out at age 45. “Glad to be alive.”
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Feeling Different by Donny Kaye

In the poem, Self Portrait, by the Irish poet David Whyte, the verse invites; “it doesn’t interest me if there is one god or many.  I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.  I want to know if you are prepared to live in a world with its harsh need to change you.  If you can look back with firm eyes and saying, this is where I stand.  This is where I stand.”

I don’t think that I started out feeling different but it seems that the world often exists with a harsh message and need to change a person.  To have me be something other than what I am.
  • Men don’t kiss men,  my brother declared when I was ten and he was thirty
  • Don’t sit like that-you’re sitting like a girl.
  • You sissy!
  • Ok, Donny you can be on my team says the leader of the pick-up sandlot game as he selects from the two remaining kids to be chosen, the other being a girl.
I’ve existed with a sense of feeling different since about the age of ten.  I began searching for ways for me to feel accepted.  My interests served to be too much for others, after all, who really cares if it is a ‘55 or ‘56 Dodge Royal Lancer or that the Buick Roadmaster has four holes and not three.

Because of my feeling different, I always worked to overcompensate. I was determined to cover up the differences that were felt.  So, I wasn’t the best ball player, I put my energy into achieving—always working harder for an A or A+ to earn my mother’s praise, which she wasn’t capable of giving me in the way I needed it—other than in a sideways kind of way; always wanting to stretch my performance to be even better.  My achievements only seemed to reinforce my feeling different.

I polished my perfectionistic skills with the intent that the world wouldn’t see my imperfection, after all I was different.  That word I had heard said once too often, you know the one—sissy – yeah that one, I was different.  I felt it inside.  Unfortunately my perfectionism only served to separate me even more, after all who wants to be around someone that strives for perfection to the extent I was capable.   

Feeling different has served to develop some essential life skills.  My sense of being different resulted in a successful career serving others.  An impressive resume and on top of that, I’ve enjoyed happiness and fulfillment raising three children and being Papa to seven incredible grandchildren and as a life partner in a married relationship for  forty-two years.

I also recognize that the truth about me, as a result of feeling different, has been denied and repressed.  It’s interesting at this point in my journey to realize that I owe a lot of my happiness and success to withholding the truth.  It’s typically thought that the truth will set one free—when in fact the truth has served to imprison me.

Feeling different?  Yes, I am—Different and yet the same as any other being existing on the planet.  Before this experience called human life, I came from a place where there was no sense of difference, only oneness.  This life experience has been about allowing me to know the attributes (if you can call them that) about feeling different.  In coming to know different, I better understand not being different, or what I call the quality of unity or oneness with everything.  Not separate.   

The change?  The truth.  Accepting me, all of me.  The good and the bad.  The up and down.  The in and the out.  These opposites allow me to recognize the qualities of just being who I was created to be.  Realizing the longing to not feel different is merely the longing for a return to the place of oneness with everything and everyone.  This seems to be the heart of life’s lesson for me, this sunny day in mid August.  Might I finally be realizing the lesson? Enough with feeling different and into the differences that make me this individual experience called Kent. 

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite.  He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male.  In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life.  “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory.  Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends.  Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family.  He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.  
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Breaking into Gay Culture by Jon Krey

BREAKING INTO GAY CULTURE:  But first a little history.
Gay Culture? SEX was gay culture! It was found in public bathrooms (called tea rooms), dark allies, parked cars on out of town dirt roads,  money paid to hitchhikers for services rendered,  raided bars with entrapment, jail terms, fines, well enforced sodomy laws,  media exposure both in newspaper and TV many times. That was Gay Culture as far as I could see. There were some deviations with similar trappings, like the drunken gay Osage Indians I knew, suicides, gay bashing, murders and disease. I should also mention the guy who “blew” me out of the closet. He was as suggested in “Boys in the Band” one of the many “unhappy homosexuals”.
It might have been different if I had lived on either of the coasts but I didn’t.
I know this is dark but truth is truth and that was the truth then!
I suppose in reality homosexuality did exist in the arts as it always had throughout the world but that’s not what I learned in Tulsa in the late 50s and I wasn’t looking in the arts. No at least initially.
Still my late teen hormones roared; commanded my body to get it on but where and with whom? Danger was foremost in my mind and good ole’ Christian teaching. I wasn’t into sex alone and had a deep seated need for a boy-friend. All the other kids in High School had girl friends, why couldn’t I have a boy friend? Still where could I go, where to find others like myself? I fell for Tab Hunter, after reading the expose’ in “Confidential Magazine. He was one of my early crushes in life and himself a gay icon, I had to do something. I had to find “my people”. But where? Tab was an actor so I thought of the theater scene and found the “Tulsa Little Theater.”I certainly was no actor but thought it a possibility. I joined the fledgling theater; saw a few really effeminate flippant men running around mostly dishing one another; found out by hear-shot who’d blown whom and where. They certainly did notice me, at least physically, in particular a specific bodily area. None had enough interest to really become acquainted with me. I became terrified. I had made my connection but these men were nothing like boyfriend material. Sex, when I engaged in it, was so amateurish it was a constant disappointment. Socially, the theater group, an aloof group with few ties outside and with little interest other than physically.
I officially broke into the physical aspect of gay society when a gay man from the theater group put the make on me, but I never felt any commonality with him or the others. No sense of community existed then that I could identify with. Most were hidden from their families, non-gay friends and themselves! Yes they were gay but it was just for mere sexual expression or better exploitation.  I became disgusted, frightened, disheartened, terrified, filled with guilt and fell into my own internalized homophobia. Being gay wasn’t anything I had dreamed of. No boy-friends’ anywhere to grant me my authenticity, no real friends. Only a few sexual alliances. Most of them highly unsatisfactory. Tulsa gays were marginalized much worse than today. They stood alone, did whatever was necessary then to find, well, sex. It was a get it up, get it on, get off and GET OUT society!! Downright awful. I never participated in any of this, at least as an initiator, and was deeply isolated and lonely.
In the early ’60’s I had one thoroughly devastating LTR, a very bland and abusive scene which prevailed emotionally in me for many years! With all the familial pressure at home, gay bar plus other social exclusion I developed a continuous problem with alcohol.
Eventually around 1974 I left Tulsa for good but here in Denver but found the same. Small splinter groups of exclusionary people. Not many connections for basic sex even if that took place. Certainly no sense of belonging, no love, no acceptance on most levels and certainly no culture. I must have been looking in all the wrong places.
So where was this gay culture of lore? Where was this elusive thing I’d needed for so many years?  For me over five decades had passed, devoid of genuine gay socialization, emotionality and sensuality. I was closeted within; bound by internalized homophobia, feeling forgotten, overlooked, outside of a world I’d never understood nor fully participated in. I didn’t want their two dimensional reality I wanted and needed a three dimensional one. One that celebrated gay life. 
Then came the birth of the first organized gay center in Denver. Still it was exclusionary. Made up of young professionals and activists, and I wasn’t one. But then after some time it all changed. When moved and reopened at 1301 E. Colfax, The Center gave me a sense of ownership of myself, a feeling of pride, of belonging, of comradeship of meeting people like myself as I’d always hoped for.  I was home at last. Thank God Almighty I was home at last. Over 50 years later I was reborn. Though much has still to be I have hope for the future now. Maybe in this new form of Zeitgeist and true friendships a mature loving partnership may still be possible. I certainly hope so against even now in my seventy-second year. At least I’m among my own kind and have a strong degree of completeness. Men and women who do care about me. People like myself in so many ways. People I feel included with, not excluded as in the past. So it’s time to get on with life and bury the past in some other dimension.
I’M FREE AT LAST.

About the Author

“I’m just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they’re an illusion.”
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Life in the Big City by the Bay by Pat Gourley

So
having now been a San Francisco resident for several months there have been a
few observations I have made that make me realize I am no longer in Denver. This
is a town I have visited many times over the last nearly 35 years but being
here for a prolonged period brings into sharper focus some of its
uniqueness.  Though I had gotten to know
the City pretty well over several decades of visiting I was still here as a
tourist really.

I
am going to list just some of the striking images and elements I have come in
contact with in my new home. These are not things I think are necessarily
better than in Denver but definitely different. Stuff that seems to have at
least temporarily left an impression:

1)  
Shortly
after arriving I had to go downtown to the Apple store for some gadget or the
other and on entering the store I was greeted and assisted by a sweet young
Bear in a kilt and very neatly pressed blue hanky in his left pocket!

2)  
I
did participate in the LGBT Pride parade here in late June. It was in most
respects similar to the event in Denver especially the commercialization and
corporate sponsorship that has taken over these Stonewall Riot commemorations.
What was different though was that I was able to march the entire length of the
parade with a modest but very vocal contingent of 25-30 folks in support of
Bradley Manning. Manning of course is the young gay hero currently imprisoned
by the military for supposedly leaking classified documents detailing among
other things potential war crimes committed in Iraq to Julian Assange and
Wikileaks.

3)  
Real
Farmer’s Markets!! The one I go to most often, though they can be found
everyday somewhere in the City, is at Civic Center now three days a week. By real
I mean there is stand after stand of fresh fruits and vegetables and most
vendors focus on one or just a few items: nuts, mushrooms, or eggs with other vendors
selling only organic greens of all sorts, many new to me, and then the melon
and stone fruit dealers and their many free samples. Most markets have very
limited or no non-edible items for sale and no prepared foods. The idea is to
take it home to eat and cook if needed.

4)  
Somewhat
related are the fading green grocers. There are still quite a few corner
markets (no 7-Elevens to be seen) most of which do have fresh produce but there
are still a few that really are green grocers. My favorite being across from the
Safeway on Church Street.

5)  
On
a less esthetic note the recent announcements that the escalators at the BART
stations at Civic Center and 16th & Mission had been closed
having broken down because of excessive fecal contamination in the works! Still
not sure why anyone would take a shit on an escalator? I mean what does one do
if your pants get caught in the works?

6)  
Public
transportation that really functions quite well most of the time goes almost
everywhere and costs less than RTD in Denver. MUNI fare is $2.00 and in a year
and half once I hit 65 it will only cost 75 cents!

7)  
Rats.
The City has lots and a long and checkered history with the varmints.  I brought my two cats out with me and they
are particularly fond of nighttime garden forays and I have no doubt this is
part rat patrol! Though I think they would be clueless if they ran into one up
close. I have just finished a great non-fiction read called The Barbary
Plague by Marilyn Chase. The fascinating tale of the bubonic plague in San
Francisco in the early 1900’s and the amazing efforts of the city’s politicians
and merchants to deny it and when acknowledging it at all to blame it on the
Chinese. Racism that was shocking in its openly, blatant and crass extent.

8)   Mark Twains
frequently quoted observation: The
coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco”. He
wasn’t kidding. Perhaps it’s my Irish roots but I have really enjoyed the
frequently cool, misty, foggy mornings walking to my gym. Most often the fog
dissipates by early afternoon to be replaced by a brisk ocean breezes being
sucked inland by the torrid temperatures just a few miles to the east.

9)   I have joined a gym I
enjoy very much but now find my work out compatriots to be mostly older
Japanese men rather than older white guys. I am a member of a club up near
Japantown and there are plenty of gay folks of all ages and stripes too. I
avoided the gym facilities on Market and SOMA that cater to the sculpted queer
boys.

10)              
 The sight of naked
people, most often male but not always, walking down the street on most sunny
days is still a bit jarring. The locals though hardly ever seem to notice. I am
not well versed in the law but understand that public nudity is not a crime in
San Francisco. The idea supposedly is a celebration of the naked human form but
I wonder if pure nudist philosophy doesn’t cross over to voyeurism for some
when there is a cock-ring involved?

11)              
 I have met very
few confirmed and practicing Buddhists, though I do live across the street
almost from the San Francisco Zen Center. I must say there are more statues of
Buddha in this town in private homes and in various businesses than you can
shake a stick at. Countless different depictions of the Enlightened One everywhere certainly can’t hurt I suppose. There is also
currently a large red inflatable lotus in the public square to the east of City
Hall.

12)              
There are many bicycles on the streets and though I think
this is wonderful and would probably support a total private automobile ban in
the city the reality is you are more likely to get hit by a scofflaw bicyclist
than a motorist. I prefer to walk with both eyes wide open!

13)              
The fog! Oh my I find it, so far at least, to be amazing
in its many forms and permutations and love especially when it races and snakes
into town pushed along by a cool wind. Have I already mentioned my Irish
heritage?

I
expect this partial list of San Francisco life impressions will continue to
grow and be updated and added to from time to time.

Hugs
and kisses from the City by the Bay.

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 am currently on
an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Queer, Just How Queer by Phillip Hoyle

      I love to use the word queer, the term brought into gay prominence in political and academic queering movements of the 1960s through the 90s. I also like it for the memories it raises of my grandma Pink, who in old fashion used the word for anything odd. I like it for its political symbolism and for making positive a word too long used as a pejorative. I like it for its strength. I like it for its inclusive quality covering the bases of LGBTandQ concerns. I like it for its exclusive quality, as in not too many people I run into want to be called by this moniker. I especially like the discomfort its use raises among some of my gay friends! It’s a word of wide potential and great humor. So just how queer am I? It’s a fair question. I’ll try to answer it once and for all.

     This morning I looked through the photographs on my digital camera that included those I took last summer at Pridefest Denver 2012. I was surprised to find there quite a few more images, ones I thought had been erased when I uploaded them into my computer. I flipped through frame after frame and saw so much of my life there, even photos from Pridefest Denver 2011. First I saw a photo of my partner’s 90-year-old mother, sitting at the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee. I often kid her about all her gay sons although only one of her offspring turned out to be gay. Her multiplicity of gay sons is made up of all of Jim’s and my gay friends. I call them her growing family of gay kids. She smiles for me and takes delight in these others who bring her presents of chocolate, humor, and unaffected affection. She represents in this picture a nine-year connection I have with her son and the growing numbers of her other gay sons. The photo reveals layer after layer of queer experience and relationship, but it’s just the beginning. I did mention two sets of photos taken at Pridefest, but I haven’t yet told of the hundreds of photos of the family of plastic pink flamingos that live in our yard shown standing alone and together among a variety of ferns. I took these and many more in the past couple of years, the queer obsession of a queer artist! I also haven’t mentioned many photos of flowers, of my artwork, of self-portraits, of extreme Christmas decorations at a local gay bar, of the bunch of men I run with at parties, in restaurants, and on the street. I haven’t told you of pictures of an art display, of drag queens, of small, large, and supersized lesbians, of gay architects and engineers, of employees of Chipotle restaurants, of young people polling for the Obama campaign, of great arches of rainbow colored balloons, of a guy wearing fairy wings, of a barely-clad muscle man standing by a muscle car, of the model in a platinum blond wig and red bikini sitting in a red convertible advertising At the Beach, of a parade on-looker smoking a huge stogie, of people dancing, of a young drag queen posing sexily for me, of a young man in shorts sitting on the curb with his little dog watching the parade, of political signs urging the election of sane officials, of leather studs, of a drum and bagpipe band in their smart kilts, of religiously motivated anti-gay protesters, of two young guys in interestingly revealing slacks, of Senior Citizens doing a dance routine with their walkers, of youngsters calling attention to Rainbow Alley, of the prominent landmark The Center makes along the route, of the partiers on its roof sometimes watching the parade passing by below, of the poignant reminder of the ongoing presence of AIDS among us, of wild hairdos, of the Imperial Court, or of the leathery Uncle Sam who stopped to ask me, “Where’s the free beer?” I haven’t said a word of many other pictures of musicians, dancers, activists, on and on. These photos are my people whom I celebrate with my little digital camera as passionately as Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century celebrated the democracy of America, the endless variety of life, the human body, his own body, and his sturdy comrades with whom he liked to lie in Leaves of Grass. 

     So just how queer am I? Really, really queer. I’ve been trying to tell you just how queer in my stories! In summary of all I’ve said to you in the past, hear this: 

* I’m as queer as the little boy who wanted to wear both cowboy and Indian costumes in public.
* I’m as queer as the boy who donned his great aunt’s wig and sister’s skirt and went to the family grocery store to show himself to his dad.
* I’m as queer as the teen who used to lie in bed next to his dad, not only to read alongside him but also to smell him.
* I’m as queer as the teen who bragged to another boy about marking his friend with hickies.
* I’m as queer as any teen boy singing in the school choir and more than most of them.
* I’m as queer as the high schooler who looked forward to each issue of House Beautiful.
* I’m as queer as the boy who ordered prints from a NYC art print company and treasured the company’s catalogue with its variety of homoerotic images.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered the striking 
International Male ads and catalogue.
* I’m as queer as the young man whose first male friend in adulthood was homosexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who read all the homosexual-theme books in the public library.
* I’m as queer as the young man with wife and children who at age thirty fell in love with another man.
* I’m as queer as the young man who reveled in the idea he was bisexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered that his homosexual proclivities lay at the center of his sexuality.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who had sexual affairs with other men.
* I’m as queer as the writer who when he was asked to include cultural diversity in an adult religious education resource anthology quoted gay writers and HIV-related themes alongside many other cultural writings.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who left his wife to live as a gay man in a large city.
* I’m as queer as the old man who snapped photos at Pridfest knowing he was as queer as anyone there and loved the notion and the reality of it.

     I am the old man who says all these things proudly and with love, deep love for all my companions:
* Male and female
* Educated and uneducated
* Professional and worker
* Wealthy and dirt-poor
* Crazy and sane
* Chic and tasteless
* Laughing and crying
* Hale and exhausted
* Living it up and overwhelmed
     
     So, how queer am I? Pretty darn queer and happy as a lark about it.
     And now, if you’ll pose, I’ll take even more pictures with my camera, snapshots of the folk who add so richly to the queerness of my existence and the joy of my gay life. 

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.”