Tag: Life Stories

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Resist, by Pat Gourley

In one of my recent
meanderings through Facebook, which sadly has become something I do multiple
times a day, I happened on the following little ditty posted and credited to a
web site named sun-gazing.com:
“I’m too old for
this shit
I’m too tired for
this shit
I’m too sober for
this shit
I don’t have time
for this shit”
sun-gazing.com
My initial reaction was
that this was a funny and perhaps poignant statement from someone on the current
state of America and the seemingly endless political nightmare we find
ourselves in. Something though slowly began to bother me, especially the last
line: “I don’t have time for this shit”. 
I decided to check the web site and clicked on their “About Us” page,
where right at the top was the following sentence:  “The Sun Gazing Community was born out of a growing awareness that
suffering is an optional state of being”.
Let me go on record
calling “bullshit” on this unexamined bromide and suggest that perhaps the
authors have gazed at the sun a bit too long or have way to much privilege
coming out of their ass. There is no way I can distort the image of this little
boy’s suffering into an “optional” choice on his part or even perhaps more
perverted “God’s will”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/world/middleeast/syria-omran-photo-children.html?_r=0
The above statement that
suffering is something that is optional to me smacks of smug privilege. In
looking at my own attempts to ‘resist’ the Trump regime I need to carefully “resist”
personally falling into the trap of complacence. I have my Social Security and
Medicare and enjoy many of the benefits that seem to effortlessly fall on many
white males in America even many of us queer ones.
Can I just sit this out
for four years of Trump with the perhaps sad realization that my life may not
change much at all? Is it enough to assuage my conscience, as last Saturday
night’s Louis C.K. SNL skit pointed out, by sitting on the couch and posting
and sharing anti-Trump memes on Facebook or adding Black Lives Matter to my
profile? The obvious answer in this great piece of satire is that it certainly
doesn’t cover one’s sad attempt at ‘resisting’.
One of the things you
sometimes hear these days is “we survived Nixon and Reagan and we will survive
Trump too”. I have a couple observations on that statement. It may not apply to
the 55,000 Americans that died in Vietnam to say nothing of the millions of S.E
Asian lives lost during the Nixon presidency. And it behooves us to remember
how gay men fared during the Reagan years. This is poignantly brought home in
this photo of the small handful of members of the San Francisco Gay men’s
Chorus who survived the worst years of the AIDS epidemic in that City.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154952908052457&set=a.480735837456.252618.518017456&type=3&theater
Even if I personally may
get by the next four years relatively unscathed many will not. My personal call
to resist needs action to go with it or it is just self-indulgent masturbation.
This was brought home to me very directly with a sign I saw at the Women’s
March in San Francisco this last January, it was being carried by a frail and very
elderly women and read: “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit”. A
much different sentiment than “I don’t have time for this shit” don’t you
think.
© 10 Apr 2017 
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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Raindrops, by Lewis Thompson

·       The
following are my favorite images and impressions recalled by the thought of
rain—
·       A
steady rain beating down on the leaves of a deciduous forest.
·       Rain
pattering on the roof of my tent.
·       Hard
rain on a tin roof.
·       Catching
raindrops with my tongue.
·       The
tiny craters made by rain on a smooth, sandy beach.
·       That
brief, fleeting moment when I must turn on the car’s wipers or else miss seeing
a hazard in the road ahead.
·       That
first drop of cold rain as it dashes against my bald head and runs thrillingly
down behind my ear.
·       Rain
on my eyelashes.
·       Rushing
to bring the clothes in off the line before they get soaked.
·       The
indescribable thrill of that first clap of thunder.
·       The
smell of the air after a gully-washer.
·       Sliding
under the bedcovers with the window shade fully up and lightning flashing
outside.
·       The
way the world looks so freshly scrubbed after a thunderstorm.
·       Carefree
lovers kissing in the rain at night.
·       Cats
running for shelter.
·       Dogs
shaking off the water.
·       Me
cleaning up the mess my dog has made in shaking off the water.
·       The
sound of water dripping off the eaves after the storm has passed.
·       The
first rays of sunlight piercing the clouds after the storm.
·       Catching
raindrops in my mouth and complaining when they land in my eye.
·       The
eager children who can’t wait to go outside into the freshly washed world.
·       Driving
from Winter Park to Empire on U.S. 40 with out-of-state friends and seeing a
double rainbow near Berthoud Pass.
·       Standing
on our balcony with my beloved Laurin watching a thunderstorm roll in from the
west washing across Cheeseman Park.
© 4 Apr 2016 
About
the Author 

I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Hunting, by Gillian

The
first game I remember playing in my life was ‘Hunt the Thimble’. My mother
introduced me to it when I was, I suppose, about three. The thimble had
originally belonged to my great-grandmother, and was made of silver worn almost
paper-thin by generations of use. To me it seemed the most wonderous,
brilliantly-shining object I had ever seen.
I
loved it, and was consequently brought to tears when Mum told me she had hidden
it and I had to find it. The glorious object was gone; the responsibility of
having to find it too great. No doubt puzzled at my reaction, she set about
joining me in the supposed search, and in no time we found it. We did it a
second time, together, after which I had grasped the concept. I willingly
covered my eyes for the third time of hiding, and said something like, No!
Me! when my mother made to join me in the search. I was into it now. The
game was on.
We
played that game endlessly, until I was in fact much too old for it – 25 or 26.
No, no, just joking, more like 5 or 6, but still an age by which I probably
should have outgrown it. Looking back, I rather think I had but my mother had
not.
After
a couple of days of my being the lone seeker, she suggested I hide it
for her to find. Ooh, fun! Thereafter we alternated hider and seeker,
she being every bit as thrilled as I to hunt for and eventually find the
gleaming beauty.
She
loved either role, exhibiting as much excitement when I neared the hiding place
as if I was approaching the end of the rainbow with its proverbial pot of gold.
We both played our own games within the game. Sometimes, the hiding place was
too easy. Almost immediately I started the hunt, I caught the gleam of
highly-polished silver from behind Mom’s tea cup. I feigned blindness and faked
a continued search for some time, so as not to curtail my mother’s pleasure.
Once or twice, my search went on too long, the hiding place too clever, and I
became irritated. Then Mum would say she had forgotten where she put it and
would join me in the search, and it was fun again.
I
grew tired of ‘Hunt the Thimble’. We, just the two of us, had played it too
often for too long. But Mum so enjoyed it. How could I disappoint her? It was a
small price to pay. I continued to play; to fake the challenge of the hunt and
the thrill of discovery.
And
so, with this innocent toddler game, began two things. It was the start of the
strangely reversed role I had, for the rest of my life, with my mother. I took
care of her needs, rather than the reverse. Even as a child I read to her, I
let her win at card games, I made her tea, I tucked her up in bed. I was the
parent; she the child.
Another
pattern began with ‘Hunt the Thimble’. 
As I outgrew the game ahead of my mother, I began my acting career. I
pretended emotions I did not feel, desires I did not have, and continued to do
that extremely well for the next 40-odd years of my life. That innocent bit of
‘pretend’ in a childhood game grew into an ability to fake a completely
artificial heterosexual identity for decades. Such mighty oaks from tiny acorns
grow. The reversed roles shared by my mother and me were never to be corrected.
They were too deeply entrenched. But at least I eventually managed to retire
from acting to live, finally, happily, as the person I was born to be.
© September 2016 
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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years.
We have been married since 2013.
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Don’t, by Betsy

My mother was not big on “don’ts.”  I cannot remember either of my parents
issuing constant “don’t do this’s, don’t do that’s, don’t forget to’s…,
etc’s.”  When they did, it was usually
for my safety: “Don’t climb too high, don’t jump off the roof, don’t swim out
too far.” 
In spite of the dearth of don’ts uttered by my mom in my
younger years, it changed as I grew out of childhood into adolescence and young
adulthood. As I grew older, I heard one “don’t” on a fairly regular basis: “Don’t
get pregnant.”
I’m not sure why my mother was so fearful of this one aspect
of my behavior. I had never given her cause to worry about my general
deportment in the past.  I had been
anything but a wild child. I usually stayed in line. But when I was dating boys
in my later high school years and into college, my mother was definitely
worried about my virginity. Perhaps she was projecting the feelings she
remembered having when she was the same age. 
Little did she know, her daughter had no chance of losing her virginity
as long as I was dating “nice” boys. There was no chance I would lose control
and “go too far.”  I suppose I could have
reassured her, but we, my mom and I, never talked about such topics especially
topics involving feelings. This was not uncommon in those days just as my mom
probably never talked about feelings with her mom a generation before.  Perhaps if my mother and I had been
comfortable talking about feelings, just maybe I would have known more about my
inner self earlier in my life. Perhaps I would have understood better who I was
really instead of proceeding simply according to the standards I knew.
I also know that my mother was concerned about appearances
and how her family looked to others. I think this was common in those
days.  And her eldest daughter becoming
inappropriately pregnant certainly would not look good.  I sometimes wonder which my mother would have
chosen had she been given the choice: You have a daughter who is unmarried and
pregnant, or you have a daughter who is a lesbian. Either would have
unthinkable to her I’m sure.
I am not being critical of my mother. This was a cultural
characteristic. My scanty religious training did not promote the peeling of the
onion skin to reveal secrets about ourselves, especially secrets having to do
with our sexual proclivities.   In my
experience religious doctrine, the ultimate standard upon which we all based
our conduct, not only did not promote introspection, but discouraged it.
I did not do much better as a mother with my daughters. After
all, like my mother, I had never been taught the importance of, or more
importantly HOW to talk about personal and intimate subjects with my children.
Also, children by nature certainly are not comfortable revealing deeply held
feelings which often they are reluctant to admit even to themselves that they
have.
In my old age I find myself in a continual process of sorting
out that which should be spoken from that which must simply be accepted and
from which I must detach—detach with love, but detach— and go on my own
way. 
BTW, on the very, very outside chance that anyone especially
children or grandchildren and more especially in-laws—should anyone happen to
ask me for any advice or even just an opinion, I will be glad to offer the best
I have to give based on my long experience.
© 5 Jun 2017 
About
the Author 
Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Workout, by Ray S

It was about 7:35 pm when the house lights began to
dim. From somewhere in the almost-filled theatre a voice made the usual request
to silence your electronic equipment and warned that no cameras or recording
devices are permitted.
The house was now dark and the audience settled down
in readiness for what soon was to become a 2 ½ hour long (with no intermission)
revival of the 1975 Tony Award winning musical production “A Chorus Line.”
And what a production with a capital P it was, a
marathon, a superb dancing and singing and stagecraft marathon. As the story proceeded
I could only think what a workout is was for the entire company. Truly I was in
awe of what I watched and heard going on that stage. There is something that
gets under your skin when the score beings to punctuate your every breath, and
you imagine that you might be up there on the stage with that dancing crew.
That imagination is pretty powerful when it comes to erasing 70 or 80 years.
The storyline follows the tryouts each applicant who has
come to the theatre to maybe get a job in an upcoming Broadway musical.
As they are put through their dancing workouts some of
them let you in on who they are, where they came from, and why they want to
dance. Of course, the major reason being they want a job!
But, beyond that the interviews reveal other parts and
secrets of their lives. They are like all of us humans with unrealistic wishes,
happy and sad baggage that comes to the surface at different and strongly
unwanted times. Somewhere, one of the boy dancers steps out to tell a very
moving coming out story which brought tears to my eyes and thunderous applause
from the house. The scene was a show stopper.
So, I and they just keep on doing what we know best
how to do—just keep on dancing.
As the show comes to its climax the audience (that
includes me) is rewarded with a dazzling finale that makes everyone feel
good—but that’s show business folks. You gotta experience it.
© 11 Sep 2017 
About the Author 
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Flowers, by Phillip Hoyle

1915
I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so
slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
August, and yellowing Autumn, so
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,
And you’ve been everything.

Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack
In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books,
Music, the quiet of an English wood,
Beautiful comrade-looks,
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,
And Peace, and all that’s good.

Robert Graves
I
was never sure why the romantic tradition never set well with me. I read poetry
in high school and college that usually left me simply wondering what the poet
felt and meant. I didn’t really like romantic sections of books or movies; they
seemed like an interruption to a good plot. I had friends I found interesting,
boys who intrigued me, girls I wanted to date. For school dances I bought
flowers for the girls. For my girlfriend I bought a necklace with a fiery opal.
She was thrilled. But I knew I was following a form I had learned rather than a
feeling that called me into a world of romance. My deepest feelings were for
boys rather than girls, but of course, that attraction didn’t proffer any
romantic images. They just weren’t there; at least I couldn’t find them. In
those days I’m sure that had I read this Robert Graves poem “1915”, I would
have missed the “beautiful comrade-looks” he cited; for in the world in which I
grew up romance, such as was described in poetry, was meant for a special
relationship between a man and a woman.
My
introduction to Walt Whitman was given no homosexual slant. It was interpreted
by a minister/scholar whose enthusiasm for the poet’s work took a theological
slant, one that celebrated all creation. It was the first poetry I could
honestly admit to liking—well besides James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphan
Annie”, Henry W. Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha”, and Vachel Lindsay’s “The
Congo”. It took years to open myself to the idea that Whitman was talking about
romance between two men, like comrades at arms or friends lying together in
leaves of grass.
I
married at age 21. I deeply loved my wife and was so pleased to be entering the
life we chose together. But even after living together, I realized the gifts I
offered her were to her something quite different than they were to me. Her
view of our relationship was romanticized. Mine was enthusiastic and generous
and celebrated love, a la C. S.
Lewis’ writing, especially his book Basic Christianity. I found it so
helpful but eventually I came to realize his view was inadequate, the old Don
speaking long before he had the experience of falling in love, a thing that for
him came late in life.
At
age 30 I fell in love with a man. Then I began to know a bit of what romance
was about. But being such a late blooming flower in that field, it took
twenty-five years more for me to fall deeply in love. For that experience I
thank the most beautiful male flower I ever encountered, Rafael Martínez, whom
I deeply loved in every practical and romantic way the two of us could imagine.
He amazed me one night when he said, “You’re so romantic.”
Using his best English, Rafael wrote in a
card: “My sweet love; I can’t express in
full sentences what my soul and heart feel. My whole life has been changed and
you made everything spin around in me. I am overwhelmed.
“When
I express out and loud I love you, you don’t have any idea of how much I mean
it.
“I
am not just glad to have you. I am extensible and sensible over you (and deeply
in love).”
I
thought that card was better than any love lyric I had ever enjoyed or any bouquet
of flowers I had ever seen. And I too loved Rafael.
© 13 Feb 2017 
About
the Author 
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his
time writing, painting, and socializing. In general, he keeps busy with groups
of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen
in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He
volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Anxious Moments, by Pat Gourley

If you get confused just listen to the
music play
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you’re gonna harvest wind
A
few lines from Franklin’s Tower. Grateful Dead (Garcia/Hunter/ Kreutzman)
Let me just
repeat that last line for emphasis: “If
you plant ice you’re going to harvest wind”.  More on that further on.
Writing about “anxious
moments” in June of 2017 now 7 months into Donald Trump’s presidency presents
itself as a herculean task. I mean where to start? For me perhaps it is best to
start with a bit of self-examination of what may be causing my anxiety.
If my privilege allows me
to simply weather out the storm of the next four years with little or no
personal damage, and sadly that seems it might be the case, I must say that it
is very tempting to just put my head down and go about my daily routines.  That would be much less anxiety provoking I
think.
I have Medicare and not
Medicaid.  Paul Ryan and his bunch would
certainly like to get rid of both but Medicare seems a reach to far politically
even for that crowd. Medicaid on the other hand serves a much more vulnerable
and powerless group of Americans. The strong and largely elderly voting block
represented by Medicare recipients is somewhat of a bulwark against Republican
intrusions – Medicaid not so much.
I also get a small Social
Security payment and a pension from the City and County of Denver. Both of
these are fairly solvent entities that I expect to last for my remaining years.
That is perhaps delusion on my part but rather than get “anxious” about it I
prefer to just blithely skip along. I acknowledge this view may really be from looking
out on the world from my relatively privileged window. There is of course any
number of ways the whole really fragile edifice could come crashing down on all
of our heads. So I am choosing to resist
on many fronts anxiety provoking or not. 
Let me relate a very small, and perhaps even a silly way, I am
resisting.
Significant marijuana tax
revenues going to Colorado coffers are adding to the overall financial health of
the State and our City in very major ways, indirectly helping keep my City
pension solvent, a tax tide sort of floats all boats. I am choosing to do my
part by exploring marijuana edibles in earnest purchasing recreational rather
than medicinal and paying the larger tax. 
I could of course legitimately play the HIV card and get a medical
marijuana license but for now I can afford the higher tax on the recreational
herb. Taxes really are the cost of living in a civilized society and it would
only add to that civility I would think if a significant portion of us gets
stoned on occasion.
So what else, other than
getting high, am I trying to do to counter the toxic miasma of the Trump
presidency enveloping us all? Well I am trying not to ‘plant ice’ and by that I
mean I am acknowledging that nobody is wrong 100% of the time (thank you, Ken
Wilber). Well that may not apply to Trump but I am willing to give nearly
everyone else on the planet a pass.
Without getting too deep
in the weeds and stretching the metaphor to death you can simply think of the
phrase “if you plant ice you’re gonna
harvest wind” as another way of saying don’t be an asshole. That behavior often
causes anxiety for others and yourself eventually, adding however small to the
anxiety burden of the planet.
A recent personal example
of my regrettably ‘planting ice’ was when I encountered Human Rights Campaign
(HRC) solicitors out in front of the Trader Joe’s near my house. It was a warm
day and I suppose I was cranky from the heat but I decided to give these young
20-somethings a bit of crap around HRC’s early endorsement of Republican Mark Kirk
over Tammy Duckworth in the Illinois U.S. Senate race last fall.  HRC switched to Duckworth a few weeks before
the election supposedly due to nasty things Kirk had to say in a debate about
Ms. Duckworth and her family but the damage had been done in my mind.
Initially I felt mildly
righteous for sticking up for my longstanding belief that the at times too
conservative HRC was not my Radical Fairie cup of tea. By the time I got home a
couple blocks away I started to feel somewhat anxious about the interaction
though albeit it was pretty tame, no stone throwing or cursing had occurred. I
began to worry, a great hallmark of anxiety, that maybe I had not made myself
queerly obvious and they thought I was some old homophobic jerk. So I put my
groceries away and walked back down the street. After assuring the two I was
not stalking them I explained further my issues with HRC and threw in a few
other things to firmly establish my gay cred. They listened politely, nodding a
lot and I am sure hoping this crazy old queen would soon move on. I ended by
saying that I appreciated and admired their being willing to be openly and
politically queer on a public street. Not something I would have done in my
early twenties.  This proved to be one
more instance in my life where I realized if I were going to plant ice I would
soon be harvesting wind.
© 11 Jun 2017 
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.
Posted on

Fitness is a Piece of Cake, by Nicholas

Fitness is one of those things that you are better off having
than not having. But fitness is also something I love to ridicule and that is
because some people—gay men among them—take it to absurd extremes.
Fitness can be hard to define and has many meanings. One
man’s fitness can be another man’s piece of cake. The cake of course has to be
organic and with a carrot thrown in so it’s healthy. I find if you put enough
cream cheese in the frosting, however, you can overcome any health benefit from
the carrot. Health and fitness don’t necessarily go together. I was never so
fit as when years ago I used to dance all night after doing the right drugs,
the kind that make you dance all night. I had a waist so small, I could hardly
even measure it. But health wise—I don’t recommend it.
For me, true fitness is an elusive optimal state of health. Right
now, in mid-summer, I see myself as being in peak condition. I have for over a
month now been bicycling 50 miles each week and have reached a kind of plateau
in strength and endurance. My diet has shifted as well to a summer feast of
fresh fruits and vegetables, many of which I pick in my own backyard—basil, kale,
summer squashes, tomatoes. My summer weight is ten pounds less than my winter
weight. Summer means fitness.
Balance of course is key. So, I balance the fresh stuff with
a cold beer before dinner and ice cream after. I wouldn’t touch a health shake
or a protein bar unless I was starving. Fitness is one thing; health nut is
another and I am not a health nut. Optimal means somewhere between energetic
and relaxed. I’ll never be accused of overdoing it.
I know some guys who are into what is called cross-fit
training. Cross-fit is to fitness what sack cloth and self-flagellation are to
religion—a chance to be mean to yourself and feel self-righteous and brag about
it. It isn’t fitness or health, it is punishment. Cross fit is ruthless with its
extremes of running, jumping, doing push ups and pull ups, lifting weights, and
forcing your body to do things it doesn’t want to do and probably shouldn’t.
You might ask: What is all this fitness for? So, you can type
faster on your computer? So, you can look prettier on your computer? So you can
measure up to the high standards of Grindr. Since muscles have no intrinsic
health value, why all this body building? The desire for muscles seems to be in
inverse proportion to the need. Having no practical value, I guess that those built
up bodies must be for display purposes only.
Physical fitness is good for you but I think we should pay
more attention to mental fitness and on that scale our society is pretty
flabby. We don’t exercise our minds and feed it constant junk food. Showing
intelligence is regarded as just showing off. No wonder some Americans want to
get rid of access to health care. And others can’t figure out that that’s a bad
idea. Instead of intelligence—or mental fitness—we get the mental equivalent of
cross fit training—lots of training to navigate complicated computer programs,
for example. But no smarts.
Fitness is for those who have a lifestyle and I gave up a
lifestyle ages ago. Nevertheless, I try to stay fit.
© 30 Jul 2017 
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.
Posted on

Men and Women, by Gillian

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. 

Katharine Hepburn

If I remember rightly, which seems increasingly unlikely these days, we went through a phase a few decades ago when we were supposed to believe that men and woman were really not so different. It was probably a ’70’s thing. Then in the early 1990’s along came John Gray’s best-seller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and accepting our differences became OK again. He wrote a sequel, Why Mars and Venus Collide, in 2008, so clearly he sees no reason to back down! And for all that George Carlin responded with,

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”

I must confess, I’m with Gray.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have loved, and do love, a number of women and men; some family, some not. I always worked with a lot of men, but when I retired, long out as a lesbian, I entered an essentially female world. I found myself actively searching out ways to be around men. I had always had men in my life. I missed them. But missing men and loving men in no way suggests that I see them as some alternate version of women. Men are different. They make me different. I interact differently with them, I feel differently about them, I expect and want different things from them. Indeed, if women and men are in fact NOT very different from each other, I will make them so; at least in my own mind.

But to me the differences are glaringly, blaringly, obvious. You only have to watch groups of little girls playing, versus little boys. Surely most of us have seen it in our own families. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, are different not only because they each have unique personalities, but simply by virtue of their gender. Sure, some of it is nurture, the established norms of society, but I believe it is also, overwhelmingly, nature. If we are all basically the same, why do transgender people feel so compelling a need to be ‘the other’?

Years ago, our neighbors had two little pre-school girls. Being extremely liberal parents, they determined not to channel their daughters along any pre-established gender lines. They bought them toy bulldozers and trucks to play with in the sandbox. And there they lay, rusting and abandoned while the girls played happily indoors with dolls and tea-sets.

Take one, admittedly very negative, example. Violence. Of the 12.996 murders in this country in 2010, over 90% were committed by men. Over 90% of ISIS member are men. Almost 90% of the domestic violence cases in this country are committed by men. Looking back, just in my own lifetime, at violent leaders: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pot Pol and the Khmer Rouge, those responsible for the Rwanda genocide, Jim Jones and his Temple, Timothy McVeigh. All men. Not one of all our horrific school shootings was done by a woman. Nearly 90% of victims of domestic violence in this country are women. A statistic on this issue which I find truly horrifying – the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766. That’s nearly double the amount of casualties lost during war. And of course it’s not just women who suffer. Just look at our history of male violence against people of color and native peoples. Surely there is something other than nurture responsible here?

Testosterone springs to mind as the easy answer. But that begs another question. There is little evidence that gay men have less testosterone than straight men, so why are gay men, on the whole, not so given to violence? At least, I believe they are not, although statistics are hard to come by. Gay men, indeed, are much more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. Dictators historically have consistently destroyed their gay populations. ISIS tosses them off roofs and stones them to death so I doubt gays are flocking to join their cause.

I have never in my life been abused personally. I have never been a victim of any kind of violence. But, tragically, that leaves me one of few outside of the straight white male population of this country, and most of the rest of the world, who can say that. I look forward to a world led predominantly by women and gay men. I truly believe it would be a better place. Unfortunately, I don’t see it coming any time soon.

© May 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Dancing with the Stars, by Betsy

For what reason I do not know, but this topic brings to mind images from my childhood. We can all remember being outside in the dark of night, lying on the ground on our backs looking up at the stars. If you look at a group of stars long enough, they start to dance. At least they look as if they are dancing-jumping from here to there in a very lively fashion. Of course we know the stars are not dancing, rather our eyes or brains are playing tricks on us. But I felt that vision from the past deserved space on this page.

Another image from childhood relates to dancing, but certainly not with any stars. In about the 6th grade in my homogeneous, non-diversified community of Mt Lakes, New Jersey, a suburban very small enclave within commuting distance of New York City, most of the boys and girls in my class at school were enrolled into dancing classes at the local community church.

The dances that were taught were the fox trot, the waltz, the rhumba, and the jitterbug. This was about 1946. Perhaps our parents’ motivation for sending us to dancing school included their belief that young children should be distracted from the news reports coming out of Europe in the aftermath of the 2nd world war revealing the horrors and the reality of the conflict.

More likely our parents sent us to dancing school not so much to learn to dance well, but to prepare us to enter the social world and to learn the proper decorum and social graces needed for high school years and beyond. Anyway, it was the thing to do and all my friends attended with me on those Saturday afternoons.

This was strictly ballroom dancing of course. So equal numbers of girls and boys were needed. My partners usually were Tom Brackin and Mousey MacMillan. STARS—they were not. I preferred Tom to Mousey, but somehow I always ended up with Mousey. I never did know what his real name was……

During college and early adulthood I mostly danced with the man I eventually married and who was the father of my three children. I can’t call it dancing as I think back on it, however. It was more like a shuffling of the feet, in place, more or less, or not at all, in time with the slow, dreamy music while in a bear hug type embrace. As for the jitterbug neither one of us ever felt confident enough to do it in public in spite of the dancing lessons of earlier years.

During the two decades of raising my children, I don’t think I danced much at all. I probably didn’t even think about it. So there was a huge gap of time between the pre marriage dancing and entering the world of dancing that the lesbian bars presented.

When I came out, never mind I was middle aged, dancing became very important. I was looking for some stars. If the dance floor was the place to find my star, then on the dance floor was the place to be. In the excitement of finding myself and my new life it seems at first I was somewhat blinded —not by the stars I danced with but by the ones that were in my eyes.

As the next several years raced by I learned a lot, stuff that I had been rather sheltered from in my youth. As a fledgling lesbian, dancing was an important part of my life. This is one of the few places where, I learned, we go to meet women—places where you dance—the Three Sisters, Divine Madness, Ms. C’s.

It was at Divine Madness one night that I did in fact meet the love of my life, the one with whom I would spend the rest of my life. It was not so much the dancing. She had other qualities and characteristics that attracted me. But dancing with her was fun. Thanks to the Mt. Lakes Community Church dance classes and Mousey McMillan, I could be waltzed around the dance floor as long as she was leading and she didn’t mind that I counted under my breath—1,2,3,1,2,3— rather than trying to converse. The conversation could come later after the dance. “This woman is very special,” I thought.

“Can you do the Two-Step?” she asked one Saturday night. She, being a lover of country music was a fan of this lively jig. The only two step I had ever known or heard of was the Aztec Two Step, some unpleasant digestive ailment I picked up while traveling in Mexico one summer.

“I’m not familiar with it,” I said, “but I’m game to try if you lead and don’t mind counting aloud for me if I need help.” Yes, I did need lots of help, but somehow it didn’t matter. I was dancing with a STAR—my star— and we’ve been dancing ever since.

© 23 July 2017

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.