Tag: Life Stories

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Choices – Illustrated T-Shirts, by Will Stanton

In many years of my observing
how people dress, especially young people, I have found that they very often
advertise their personalities and beliefs by their choices of T-shirts with
pictures and messages.  Other than
wearing obligatory T-shirts with the logos of the places where some of them
work, peoples’ choices of T-shirts are as varied as are the people themselves.
Maybe it should not be
surprising to me that many young guys wear T-shirts that display bold
profanity, especially that over-used, four-letter word.  I also don’t understand so many people’s
fascination with skulls.  Some of the
images, as well, often are obscene.  Back
in the days when one Neanderthal used to be friends with me, his Christmas gift
to me was a four-panel, boldly colored T-shirt displaying bare butts and four
kinds of farts.  I’m not quite sure why
he felt I would find this T-shirt charming, but it certainly does represent the
way he thinks.
T-shirts with sports logos are
very popular among a certain group of people whose lives revolve around
mega-businesses posing as sports teams. 
Naturally in Denver, I see beer-drinking fat guys and spindly legged
septuagenarians proudly wearing overly-expensive Broncos T-shirts, hats, or coats.  The more cosmopolitan wear international
soccer shirts.    
A certain kind of people seem
compelled to wear clothes with political statements.  At the time of this writing, there appear to
be a large number of people sporting T-shirts and ball-caps stating “Trump – –
Make America Great Again,” which sounds to me to be an oxymoron.
I never have cared to wear
T-shirts out in public.  To begin with,
most of them have no pockets.  I need
places to stow my cell-phone, along with a number of other items that do not
fit conveniently into my pants pockets. 
Still, I once bought a knit shirt with collars that displayed the Gryffindor
emblem; but that was a hundred pounds ago, and I don’t wear it.
My friend John seems to prefer
wearing T-shirts as often as possible, so I found for him one with an elegantly
painted scene of timber-wolves, similar to the picture here.  Also, we both enjoyed the comedy-movie
“Moonrise Kingdom” that included a whole pack of boys who were members of the
fictional “Khaki Scouts of North America;” so I found where he could acquire
one on-line, and he soon was wearing it.
  
 
Some -T-shirts messages
occasionally are clever, such as, “Never judge a book by its movie.”  Then, there were, “I’m a virgin.  This is an old T-shirt;” “I’m not gay, but
$20 is $20;” and “Duct tape can’t fix stupid, but it can muffle it.”  My mother was an English teacher, and she
taught me that I always should remember and use good English.  So, I suppose one T-shirt appropriate for me
would be the one I saw that says, “I’m silently correcting your grammar.”   For those with an interest in Roman history,
there was the one that stated, “I’m being raised by wolves;” and it included a
drawing of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf.
Famous comedy-writer Bruce
Vilanch, who for years was in high demand by many Hollywood celebrities to
write truly funny jokes for them, reportedly had closets containing thousands
of custom-made T-shirts with his original comedic quips.  Another person with a huge number of T-shirts
(but also including regular shirts, jackets, ball-caps) is my acquaintance
Larry who has suffered his whole life with trains-on-the-brains.  I have to admit, however, that many of the
train images are quite eye-catching.  Any
railroad will do, but he especially is fond of anything with Union
Pacific.  There also is a shirt for
frustrated computer-users that states, “My computer beat me at chess, but it
was no match at Karate;” and it portrays an angry user kicking the hell out of
his computer.
     
 
I know people who are nuts
about dogs or cats, and there are plenty of T-shirts with pictures of
them.  To this day, the cartoon-dog
Snoopy still is popular.  I am somewhat
puzzled by how many people wish to display images implying death.  Are these people nihilistic?  I suppose that it’s inevitable these days
that many shirts announce pro-marijuana slogans.  And of course, some people wish to declare
their great admiration for various “rock-noisicians.“
Some people choose T-shirts
with portraits of cultural icons. 
Someone in my book club once gave me a T-shirt with the name and image
of the writer Kafka on it.  I wore it
once or twice when he was around, merely out of politeness.  I’ve seen T-shirts with pictures of James
Dean on them.  Now that’s going back in
time, but he is still cool. 
Going back even further in
time, there still are people, both in 
Russia and elsewhere, who have feelings for the murdered Romanov royals and wear
T-shirts with elegant images of Czar Nicholas II or his son Alexei.  Then, I recall seeing a humorous shirt that
was captioned, “Marx, Lenin.”  In this
case, however, the pictures were of Groucho Marx and John Lenin.
I wouldn’t be surprised that,
within this group, there is at least one person who is a fan of
the Australian hard-rock band
AC/DC.  I saw an inspirationally
conceived T-shirt that states in big, bold letters, “AC/DC.”  Above that, however, are portraits
of the Serbian-American, genius-inventor Nikola Tesla and DC-proponent Thomas
Edison.  I thought this one to be quite
clever.  Of course, AC/DC has another connotation
as well. 
Logically, the vast majority
of T-shirts are created to make money.  Considering that fact, I would think that a
company first conducts market-research to
determine that there is a large enough
market to cover the manufacturing cost
and to make a profit.

If that is the case, I am surprised
by the apparent popularity of
the T-shirt I stumbled upon that sports a
large symbol of the 12th
Hitler-Youth Panzer Division. Do boys actually buy and wear
those T-shirts?  They either don’t care what people think, or they are
demonstrating that typical teenage
irrational boldness. 
There are some remarkably
creative images that some T-shirt-artists have come up with.  For example, I found an image of one that
appears to eliminate the stomach section of one’s torso and replaces it with an
image of just a section of spine, a little creepy but very
effective.  
Good music is a particular
passion of mine, so those T-shirts with music-related pictures and captions
have captured my attention.  There was
one of Beethoven with his quotation, “To play without passion is inexcusable.” 
Then there was the rather cute
one for members of boys’ choirs.  Printed on it was a musical treble clef, and
below it the caption read, “Here comes treble!”
I mentioned once before in an
earlier piece that, some time ago, I met a waiter whose musical passion was the
more obscure and currently less popular genre of Baroque
opera.  His father was an opera-tenor; and he, too,
was unusually passionate about Baroque vocal
music. Their greatest opera-hero was the
superlative soprano-castrato Carlo Broschi, stage-name
“Farinelli.” 
He very much wanted to have
some high-quality T-shirts printed up with
Farinelli’s portrait.  When he told me the caption that he
wished to print below the picture, I concluded
that it took first prize for irony: “It take
balls to be a castrato.”    
So, those were only a few
examples of T-shirt choices. For fun, I really would like to look into Bruce
Vilanch’s T-shirt closet.  I could take
pictures of some really funny images and captions. 
Also, I suppose if I were to
wake up tomorrow morning to find that I had turned into some teenage kid, I
might consider wearing T-shirts.  That’s
not likely.  I’ll stick with boring
shirts with pockets, buttons, and collars.
© 07 May 2016 
About
the Author 
I have had a life-long fascination with
people and their life stories.  I also
realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or
fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual
ones.  Since I joined this Story Time
group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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The Big Bang, by Phillip Hoyle

I
don’t easily relate to the expression “The Big Bang” because it sounds too much
like a public relations title for a military campaign, religious movement, or
rock group. It lacks the respect that my theistic background would deem
necessary for anyone’s cosmological explanation. Ironically, the idea was first
conceived by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and scientist Georges Lemaître. Other
scientists kept working with the idea that eventually was called the Big Bang
by some distant relative of mine, Fred Hoyle, for a 1949 BBC radio show on
cosmology. The theory was denounced by most American fundamentalists as
atheistic. Eventually Roman Catholic and protestant proponents of a variety of
creative evolution approaches offered more sanely conciliatory ways to view the
Big Bang idea. There’s much more to it, but I’m not here to philosophize;
rather I’m here to tell a story—the story of my own Big Bang.
In
contrast to the Big Bang of science, mine did not begin at birth (although my
mother may have had a conservative view of my life as beginning at coitus). My
big bang took place in a San Antonio motel room when I was thirty-two years
old. That night I for the first time got posteriorly assaulted. But do not
mistake my use of the verb assaulted. I wanted it to happen.
My
primordial homosexual atom showed itself present a long time earlier, if not as
early as my mom’s experience, certainly when I began to respond to men as a
sexual, emotional, and relational necessity. My awareness began to take form
when running around with my childhood best friend and learning to kiss with my
male teenage lover. It matured when I experienced what I supposed were
extraordinary attractions to men in my young adult years, feelings that went
far beyond the pangs of sexual desire toward some fuller kind of love like that
described in a poem of the biblical hero David who at the death of his adult
friend Jonathan lamented, “your love to me was wonderful/passing the love of
women” (2 Samuel 1:26 NRSV). I had a quite fulfilling life with my wife and
kids, but still I knew I was missing more, a missing that felt fundamentally
important.
That
night in the motel I came to understand something more I needed. That night I
had kisses and the open male-to-male sex I wanted with an adult. The man, a
really bright, educated minister and a passionately expressive lover introduced
me to the complications of gay life I had read about and was in that motel
experiencing. I was thrilled and fascinated. Apparently it was something
different for him as well—not the sex of it—for he had lived in New York City
as a young man and I’m sure there he learned or at least practiced up on the
ways of gay sex. He had settled into a straight life with gay sex on the side.
But the night of my Big Bang he also experienced something extraordinary that
prompted him to say, “I think I could fall in love with you.”
Like
in the scientific theory, the bang set off an unending series of results. I was
quite taken by him, especially when he followed up later with a contact to see
how I was doing. His care seemed more than pastoral. I would fantasize much
more from our connection but in a couple of subsequent phone calls I heard in
his voice the workings of guilt feelings. At that point I cut off our potential
affair. I wasn’t going to mess up my marriage and developing career to run
around with a guilt-mongering and perhaps paranoid person even if he was male
and sexy and smart. Besides I already had a man I loved and who loved me
although we didn’t have sex.
The
Big Bang opened me to a world of gay complication, something both like and unlike
the Eden preached by heterosexual-championing, marriage-normalizing clergy and Sunday
school teachers, to say nothing of American culture and law. It taught me that
all life occurs in an expanding universe that is potentially as treacherous as it
can be satisfying. That universe continues to move me into much more life and
imagination. I don’t say this as a slogan, but it has been a never-ending
process of expansion since my big bang night. That expansion is the truth I
continue to live.
© 22 July 2014 
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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Purple, by Gillian

Purple is passé, or so it seemed to me as I
trolled through my brain for thoughts of it for today’s topic. It’s the color
once worn by the rulers of the Byzantine and later the Roman Empire, both long
gone. Purple was once the color associated with royalty, but most royal
families are now long gone. Queen Elizabeth struggles on, God love her. Not a
fashion statement at her best, her carefully matched purse which she
unfailingly carries appears to be of the same style she favored in the 1950’s.
But even one as traditional as she, does not wear purple excessively.
When black was no longer
absolutely mandatory wear for funerals and periods of mourning, purple crept in
in its stead, here and there. But those days have also gone. There are no
longer rules, even unwritten ones, telling us what we must wear to a funeral;
anything goes.
Way back in my youth
there was this ridiculous song Purple People Eater, I imagine most people in
this room remember it well. It was #1 on the pop charts in 1958. Why,
for God’s sake?
A song about this
one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater? Were it to make a comeback
today, which I cannot envision, it would doubtless be taken as innuendo and
much made of eating purple people. But back in the innocent ’50’s most of us
sang along without a thought. One more piece of purple now extinguished, and I
certainly cannot say that I regret it’s passing.
Another purple horror is
purple prose. It’s a term used for flowery, over-descriptive writing,
especially that filled with euphemisms with reference to sex. This abounds in
romance novels, especially those set in the past when no-one ever spoke aloud
of intimate body parts and acts.
I found a wonderful online article about it, in which Deb Stover warns all writers to use it sparingly.* She talks of breasts being referred to as ‘mounds’ and erection as ‘arousal’,
of a penis as ‘his sex’, or ‘his love tool’. Wait for it, it gets worse. She cites
such examples as, ‘the raging beast of his desire’, and, ‘the raging monster of
his lust’!  Good Lord! No wonder
Victorian mothers told their daughters just to lie on their back and think of
England!
All in all, I’m not
coming up with much to mourn in the passing of purple. And let’s not confuse
purple with violet. Violet is OUR color. Violet is a ‘real’ or spectral color
with it’s own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light. Purple, in the
strictest sense of optics, does not exist. It can only be produced, apparently,
as a composite color by combining red and blue.
One purple tradition
which I would love to see disappear for lack of need is that of the Purple
Heart presented to those in the military who are wounded or killed during their
time of service. This includes all those from the time the U.S. entered WW1 to
the present, and numbers over two million. Next year will be exactly a century
that the Purple Heart has been in existence. I sincerely pray it may be
abolished, or at least used rarely, in the following century; not because I
wish not to honor our war dead and injured, but simply because I want it all to
go away. I want the wars to end. I want us all to live in peace. But you have
all heard my peacenik rantings before so I’ll end right here and take a break.
Then I think I’ll
practice up a bit on my purple prose.
*http://www.debstover.com/purple.html
© 7 Mar 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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Strange Vibrations, by Ray S

Muse, where are you now? I couldn’t sleep last night when we
were in bed together because you refused to be still. Now you want to play hard
to get.
Quickly like the dawn of a new day my tardy Muse returns
upon our decision to go to the basement storage locker in search of some long
forgotten item that has suddenly become indispensable.
Muse distracted me from my mission by a strange change in
the atmosphere of the room. No, lights didn’t dim, floors and walls didn’t
creak, and there certainly were no vibrations. Nothing so spooky and corny,
just a compulsion to look into some old boxes filled with three generations of
family memorabilia, treasures and trash. Some best left to rest in dusty peace,
but the decision to dispatch some of it, as always it is, is more convenient to
ignore the stuff—out of sight out of mind.
A high school diploma, class of 1943—the prize from
surviving four traumatic years at four different high schools.
A 100-year-old, or so it seems, photo album with many faded
sepia photos labeled by my mother identifying people I never knew.
A picture of my father with some of his army buddies at
camp, pre-World War One. Looking closely, I could hardly recognize this pretty
young boy, but it was reassuring to have met this man in his early days.
Then a letter addressed to my mother from a dear friend
expressing her condolences when learning of my parents’ divorce. It was an
intrusion on my part to have read the letter to its conclusion, especially when
the friend indicated that the woman my father later married had been a mutual
acquaintance of all of the parties. Sometimes you learn more than you needed
to, but it did answer some questions and left more to remain unanswered—which
is just as well.
Reminiscent of this bit of drama, up from the depths of
another musty file of memories came the vibrations of the summer two weeks that
conveniently located me at YMCA camp, circa 1939. Oblivious of nothing more
important than trying to avoid getting knocked down with a mouth full of Lake
Michigan sand while playing King of the Hill, my parents took the opportunity
to drive up to camp for an unannounced visit whereupon they broke the news of
their decision to divorce. And this was the beginning of my new life as a kid
raised only by his mother and without the presence of a father to show him how
to be a man or something other than the pansy they were blessed with.
Hindsight being the disaster that it is, the vibrations of
all these many years have had their good vibes too. After Uncle Sam’s
contribution to my higher education, the ensuing attempt at a good middle class
married life with a wonderful wife and family, followed by my very own debutante
coming out part and joining the real GLBTQ world, the boxes can continue to
mustier or be more musty until little old Muse and I make another trip to the
strange and scary land of TMI [Too Much Information – ed.].
So much for the strange vibrations that result in too much
navel gazing and self-indulgence; it wasn’t fun while it lasted.
Fini.
© 23 May 2016 
About the Author 
Posted on

Right Now, by Phillip Hoyle

Right now I’m packing my bags to make
a road trip to Mid-Missouri, there to celebrate Christmas with my children,
grandchildren, ex-wife, and probably a few old friends.
Right now I am closing the massage
practice that I’ve sustained for fifteen years.  
Right now I’m cleaning out the massage
studio, distributing furnishings and equipment, and packing up too many things
to take home. My partner is happy for me but not keen on my bringing more
things to the house. Due to the trip, I need to clear the room by Saturday
afternoon if at all possible.
Right now I’m finishing my Christmas
preparations, all of them that I can remember to do.
Right now I’m tending to new
responsibilities related to the co-op art gallery I’ve joined within the past
month.
Right now I’m dealing with feelings
related to my retirement that will occur along with the closing of my practice.
Right now I’m reading a story I
barely found time to write.
Right now I’m tired but hopeful.
All this activity alongside today’s
theme—right now—reminds me of feelings I experienced in my late twenties. I had
left one position in an up-and-coming congregation in order to attend graduate
school. Although I was receiving a nice grant for my studies, I still needed to
supplement my income with a part-time job. I secured one at another church
where I served as a youth minister. In my four years at the prior church I had
learned quite a lot about my work style, both its good habits and not so good
habits. In my new office right above my desk I hung an all-caps note that read:
DO IT NOW. This represented my attempt to overcome a habit of procrastination
especially in tasks that I didn’t relish. I thought I would simply make the
phone call ASAP and become much more efficient. I needed to be efficient. I was
going to school, working (no church job can ever really part-time), and living
with my wife, two children, and sometimes other adults or foster children. My
life was full, busy, exciting, and demanding. I couldn’t waste any time
worrying over some phone call, recruitment task, or arrangement. Do it now seemed wise. It helped
somewhat. Right now is good advice for over-busy folk.
Last Saturday I talked with my friend
Sue about my complicated “right now” feelings. I told her that I wonder how the
loss of intimacy that for years has been provided almost daily through massage
will affect me. I then contrasted the feelings of closing a private practice in
order to retire with those of leaving ministry. In my leaving a congregation some
congregational members may have felt sadden, but they still had their church, a
minister, and their community. By contrast my massage practice is not a
community for the folks who visit me. It’s a service, even if in some instances
a kind of emotional relationship emerges. Even if a client and I continue to
see one another socially, the relationship without the massage practice will be
changed. Individually they must seek massage services. I am not leaving them in
someone else’s care, and I am not leaving Denver. Since I have never done
anything like this before, it feels different.
This made sense to Sue and gave her
more insight into my feelings of pressure and upset. The problem has to do with
schedule—too many things needing resolution in too short a time! RIGHT NOW. Of
course I assume I will survive. I know I will enjoy my trip, and I am looking
forward to the automatic deposits of money into my bank account. Right now I
remind myself how good life is, even for this tired old man. I assured Sue and
myself that I am celebrating my life. I always do. I do so right now with you.
© 17 Dec
2013 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
Posted on

Bicycle Memories (Parts 1 & 2), by Lewis

                                                    Part 1

I have already covered a
couple of my “bicycle memories” in past stories, including that of lying on the
front lawn of my house waiting for Sears to deliver the bicycle that my
grandfather had bought for me and having an allergic reaction to the tetanus
shot I received after being unintentionally cut off by an older boy while I was
still a novice and sailing head-first into a ditch.
Having saved the best for
last, I will now relate the tale of my “near-death” bicycle memory.  I was about nine-years-old.  I don’t remember whether I was riding home
from school or just out for a “cruise”. 
I was at the corner of Washington Street and 26th Avenue in
Hutchinson, Kansas, riding south.  The
intersection was not regulated by stop or yield signs.  Unseen by me, a panel delivery truck was
approaching the intersection from my right. 
We collided.  I have no memory of
being struck.  When I came to, several
strangers, including the truck’s driver, were bending over me looking quite
concerned.  Apparently, I had struck my
forehead on the curb.

To say I was lucky would
be an understatement.  The driver must
have slammed on his brakes in time to slow to a great degree.  I was able to ride my bike home.  I have no memory of seeing a doctor or even
informing my parents, although I believe they did receive a phone call from the
police.  I’m sure my mother was relieved
to know that I required no care from her.
© 30 May 2016 
Part 2 
[Because
the chosen topic for today, “Public Places”, carries very little resonance with
me and my story from last week on the subject of “Bicycle Memories”, while
focusing on my “near death experience” on a two-wheeled conveyance, omitted two
other two-wheeled adventures that, while less serious, are nevertheless forever
emblazoned in my memory.  Taken together,
they offer a clue to as why I have not sat astride a bicycle for nearly ten
years now.]
The first misadventure
took place in August of 2001.  My late
husband, Laurin, and I were fond of taking bike rides around our neighborhood
in Dearborn, MI.  On this occasion, we
were heading back to our apartment building on a public sidewalk when I took a
spill.  I can’t remember the exact
cause.  I only had a slight scrape but it
shook me up enough that I walked my bike the last three blocks home.
Within a few days, we
were on our way to Montreal for the Gay Pride Day Parade.  We hung our new bike rack on the decklid of
our car crossing our fingers that everything would remain secured for the
entire journey.  Having arrived without
incident, we thought it would be fun to drive our car to the top of Mt. Royale
and ride our bikes down the long, steep hill. 
It wasn’t long before we had attained a high enough speed that I noticed
that all was not right with my front wheel. 
It had a noticeable wobble.  I
nearly lost control.  I had no choice but
to walk my bike to the bottom of the incline. 
The street there was lined with shops and I was lucky to find a bicycle
shop nearby.  Within a couple of hours,
all was fixed but the seed of doubt had been planted once again that perhaps
bikes and I just don’t get along.  (Some
of you may remember the story I told a year or so ago about being cut off by
another boy as a novice bike rider and sailing head-over-handle bars into a
ditch where I cut my forehead on a rock and ended up with an allergic reaction
to the old horse-derived tetanus serum.)
But the “Bicycle Memory”
to top them all occurred ten years ago almost to the day.  Laurin and I were simply going out for a
nice, easy pleasant ride around Capitol Hill. 
We needed to air our tires, as they had gotten rather low in storage.  We stopped at the Conoco station at 8th
Ave. and Downing.  They must have had two
air hoses because I remember both of us filling our tires simultaneously.  I had just completed the job when I heard a
loud “BLAM”.  Laurin had over-inflated one of his tires and
it had blown out.  So, we took turns
riding my bike and walking his to Turin Bicycles at 7th Ave. and
Lincoln St.  The blow-out had bent the
rim on his bike and they needed a day to make the repairs.  We headed toward home with just my bike.  I rode a few blocks down 7th Ave.
and then offered my bike to Laurin.  In
those days, 7th Ave. sidewalk crossings were not graded for the
handicapped.  For some reason–perhaps
related to his incipient but undiagnosed Parkinson’s–Laurin did not stop in
time and ran into the rather high curb. 
He ended up flying over the handlebars and now my bike, too, had a bent
rim.  My visions of what the guys at the
bike shop would say or think haunted my every step on the return trip.
Well, they were very
diplomatic about showing any disbelief or contempt (after all, we were now
repeat customers).  The walk home was
very long but we both saw the funny side of the entire affair.  I was extremely relieved that Laurin was
hardly scratched from his fall.  Later, with
both repairs having been completed, we immediately set about finding a buyer
for the bikes from Hell.  From then on,
we would trust our lives to walking shoes, which are guaranteed never to blow
out or get bent.
© 5 Jun 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 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.
Posted on

Where Do We Go from Here?, by Gillian

Waking
up in my bed that cold, wet, typically English, morning, my first day as a
student at the University of Sheffield, did I wonder where will this lead?
what will happen? where do I go from her? If I did, I don’t remember. I
certainly don’t remember how I answered myself.
Surely
I must have asked myself some questions along those lines on another cold wet
morning, lying in my bed on my first day as a college graduate. I was
unemployed and apparently likely to remain so. Jobs were thin on the ground and
many of my friends were leaving for miscellaneous spots around the world which
all had one thing in common; on our schoolroom wall maps of the world, they had
all been colored bright red. Why wasn’t I a part of this mass exodus to take up
opportunities offered by our erstwhile Empire? Inertia, I guess. Idleness. A
certain unwillingness to make decisions. Rather, I would drift, worry-free,
wherever the currents took me.
A
few months later these currents deposited me on the ocean liner Queen
Elizabeth, heading across the Atlantic. Waking that first morning in my
rolling, heaving, bunk, did I lie there contemplating my future? Where do I
go from here? I think not. I staggered to the breakfast room to chase an
erratically sliding plate around a pitching table, giving my future arrival in
New York, with no job and nowhere to stay, little space in my head.
Every
twist and turn in my life feels to me to have followed a similar pattern. The
ebb and flow of life somehow deposited me into my bed on my first morning as a
married woman, and some years later in another bed, my first morning waking up
as a divorcee. Then waking up as an out lesbian, followed by my first morning
to wake up beside Betsy. Suddenly, or so it seemed, I found myself waking up on
my first morning as a retiree, and still not really knowing how I got there.
Life’s waves had simply deposited me on yet another shore. I had never, as far
as I can remember, asked myself the question, where do I go from here?
Waking
up in a hospital bed, however, which I have done a couple of times in recent
years, tends to concentrate the mind! Where do I go from here? becomes a
vital question. Can I go home? When? How? Will I be in a wheelchair? Will I
ever be completely better? Or the very worst, will I die here? And that brings
up the really BIG where do we go from here?
Now,
as old age creeps quietly upon me, I occasionally do find myself asking the BIG
where do we go from here? in my own bed on a drowsy morning. It
no longer takes waking in a hospital bed to nudge such thoughts awake. I
wouldn’t say it worries me, simply that I chose to contemplate it once in a
while.
I
cannot say I believe …. anything. On the other hand there is little that I
positively absolutely refuse to acknowledge is possible. The exception to that
would be a Biblical Heaven with angels and harps, and a fire and brimstone
Hell. Other than that, I just don’t know. It seems to me that when my body
dies, some energy must be released. The world needs balance, so that energy
must be used elsewhere. But how that works, what form it takes, is beyond my
imagining.
As
far as it goes, it fits nicely with various theories of reincarnation, about
which I keep a basically open mind. But I have a hard time getting my head
around it. I find it almost impossible to imagine a scenario where some future,
reincarnate me, is aware of past multiple me’s, simply because energy from the
present me is put to use elsewhere. Especially as, if I get into this transfer
of energy thing, I come to the belief that all energy is the same so mine is
not confined to human form. If mine returns as a nice shiny apple growing on a
tree in New Zealand, I fear it will not be visited by any ghosts of Xmas past.
Just
as I seem never to have given much thought to my destination at different
junctions in my life, I expect that without too much anxiety I can let the
tides of death deposit me wherever they will, and wherever that is, I shall
never know.
But
maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Some morning perhaps I shall wake up dead, and at
that moment know all the answers to all that ultimate question, where do we
go from here? I just hope there will be strong rip tides and currents and
monster waves to wash me along to wherever I have to go. I don’t want to have
to start out my next life making decisions.
© 4 Jan 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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Puzzling People, by Will Stanton

People puzzle me. In fact, just about everything regarding human beings puzzles me – – – emotions overriding rational thinking, beliefs that defy fact and reality, faulty decision-making, taking irrational high-risks. Such thinking and behavior can result in harmful consequences, such as my young friend thinking he could leap from a cliff and safely catch a vine just like Tarzan (that actually happened; he fell and broke his back) to starting World War I, a devastating and totally unnecessary war that permanently disrupted world-order, killed millions, and ended up resulting in World War II.

One type of puzzling behavior that I have witnessed has taken place during dangerous storms. Mother Nature often can be quite dramatic, wreaking havoc upon people, their homes, and the land around them. Some people must feel that they are special, that they are invulnerable the dangers and immune to possible consequences of not taking shelter. They see harm to others portrayed on the TV news, but that just won’t happen to them.

I recall on one occasion sitting inside a café having coffee. It was an old-fashioned, converted mercantile store. A tornado warning-siren went off, and several of us descended into the basement for safety. After waiting for the tornado to pass, I returned upstairs only to find that several people, apparently curious about tornadoes, had remained standing right in front of the plate-glass windows. As it turned out, the tornado, albeit only an RF1, had come straight toward the building but, at the last moment, had risen and skipped over the building.

If it had not, there could have been broken glass and bleeding people all over the place.

The all-clear signal went off, and I headed back to my office, already having been delayed by the tornado. As I dashed out the door, the first person I came out to was a colleague coming in. He had a strange expression on his face, and his eyes looked like saucers. He explained that he had been in his car in the parking lot when the tornado went over, and the air pressure was so strong that it nearly pulled out his windows.

Later, a friend who worked in an office-tower in the business district nearby told me that many of the well-dressed businessmen, who had offices on the top floors, had stood by their windows to watch. I could just imagine, had the tornado hit their buildings, pin-stripe suits could have been flying all over the sky.

I witnessed a second episode when overly confident people ignored a tornado warning and thunderstorm. One day, I was sitting in my livingroom looking out the window at a torrential rainstorm. Sheets of rain were pounding down, and the flooded street overflowed up over my lawn. Suddenly, a tremendous boom sounded with a simultaneous flash. I don’t recall moving a muscle, but somehow I think I levitated several inches off the couch. I dashed to the window to look out and saw that the old pine tree directly across the street was blown away. And only a few feet away from the lighting strike was a jogger, running in the storm. Now, I admit that this is an example of dedicated exercise; however, it must be an example of lunacy as well.

Then the tornado warning-siren went off. I extricated my dog from behind the couch and headed downstairs to a basement-closet. We stayed there for twenty minutes, and it was just as well that we did so. I learned later that a tornado had come up from the southwest, touched down at Broadway and Evans damaging some businesses, and then headed straight for my house and the park across the street. Again, fortunately, the tornado lifted up somewhat and skipped over my house and the park. It continued northeast to Monaco Parkway and took out a whole swath of grand old pine trees. One man lost all the trees around his house, but he was lucky not to have had damage to the house.

Once the storm passed on beyond my house and the park, I stepped out to my front porch to take a look at the destroyed tree across the street. The first person I met coming out the door was my neighbor who was about ready to push my doorbell. He said that a branch had knocked down his electric and phone lines; he had lost his power and phone, and he would like to use my phone. As I was about ready to come back inside, we both looked across the street at the park, and we saw a group of tennis players standing under a tree. How wise was that? They were very lucky not to have been harmed. Only a few years later, three people stood under a tree in the middle of the park and were struck by lightning. Two were badly hurt; the third did not make it.

Just what were all these people thinking – – – that they were immortal, that harm comes only to others? Yes, people puzzle me, and this was only one type of behavior among many that I don’t understand.

© 12 February 2016

About the Author

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

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Preparation for Grief, by Phillip Hoyle

There is no prep work for grief. Still we can discover resources to assist us in adapting to and recovering from grief. For instance, ritual, conceptual, and relational props of congregational life surrounded me as I grew up. Of course, my perception of them changed greatly over the years of my life. I knew something about death due to losing pets and finding dead animals. These we buried beneath the forsythia bush in the backyard. I don’t remember ceremonies, but we kids may have said something. Because my dad was a church organist I grew up hearing of many funeral services and had attended those of my grandfathers and a grandmother. Emotionally our family was not very demonstrative, so scenes from movies in which people let loose to sob and scream, seemed terribly over-played and somehow inappropriate. I didn’t understand it but did accept that some people made a show of their emotions. Then, in what seemed like a few short years, (I was twenty) I was leading those services but with little personal perception of grief’s dimensions.

Being aware of the dynamics of dying, of doctrines that may comfort, of meanings attached to rites and rituals prepared this minister for dealing with a parishioner’s death, but that preparation did not serve so well when I myself faced grief. Around age fifty I really came to know the feelings that accompany deep loss. In short order I lost a long-time friend to HIV; then I lost my father to an automobile accident that also left my mother bedfast. I realized I was going to leave my marriage to a fine woman and leave my ministry in a fine church. My mother died. My father-in-law died. I did separate from my wife and then left my career. I was learning about the personal dimensions of grief quickly, too quickly.

In Denver I learned even more when I gave massages at a free AIDS clinic. There I learned a new grief related to when a client no longer showed up for appointments, a grief of uncertainty. Had the client moved away or died from the disease or found another, better therapist? I tried to find out information but the protocols of the organization did not allow the release of such facts to volunteers in the program. I also realized that the organization didn’t always know as much as I did. In churches, by comparison, there was always a supporting community, always access, always information in the organization even if its responses were sometimes inept. I had to imagine my way into experiencing grief without ceremony or formal community.

With clients in the clinic I was only an occasional touch point in what was still widely perceived as a death sentence. The realization that these persons were sometimes alone grew as I heard too often that I was the only person who touched them. I did my work but knew the important touch of massage couldn’t relieve their fears of dying or do much or even anything at the end. I wasn’t there to touch and love and reassure. I was neither called nor available. Such is life, but I had to learn to deal with my grief in new ways.

Grief changed again with my lover Michael. At least I had the dying person with me and got to trace his whole dying process, right to his last breaths. Then too soon it happened again. Within two and a half years I had lost two partners, two men I tended to as their bodies betrayed them. I touched, caressed, cleaned up after, talked, kissed, and otherwise loved them throughout their final months. Then I wept, wrote, and weathered my own losses.

In the process I saw the truth of so much that Kuebler-Ross analyzed in her clinical theory of dying and grief. I already knew so much theory but got even more insight thorough my direct experiences. The doing was most helpful for me, serving my lovers in myriad ways. But still there was the being over, being alone, just being itself, being myself.

Live. I heard the word, its challenge, and believed its possibility.

Yes. I am alive. Now I must forgive myself for not always understanding. I must continue on: laughing at death’s often ugly face, laughing into life, getting back into life’s dance. But getting back into the light fantastic is never easy, not even for one like me who is sometimes perceived as somewhat light in the loafers. I know I will again and again face grief, yes unprepared and often unanticipated. But life and the music go on whether one feels prepared or not!

Denver © 17 August 2015

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

Posted on

When We First Knew, by Nicholas

At first, we laughed. That was how the years of fears and tears began.

It was a cool, breezy but sunny day in San Francisco as we took our lunches out to Union Square. Scattered high clouds and wisps of fog flew across the sky but not enough to dim the sun or block its warmth. Lloyd, Bill and I worked together at Macy’s and loved to spend our lunch breaks on a grassy patch in the busy park, the center of SF’s retail district. The elegantly turned out ladies who shop swirled around us. From Macy’s to Saks to Magnin’s to Neiman Marcus, they pursued their perfect ensembles. Meanwhile, tourists hurried about trying to catch a cable car ride up Powell Street over Nob Hill to Fisherman’s Wharf.

As we munched our sandwiches, Lloyd, I think, read a little item in the San Francisco Chronicle recapping a report in the Los Angeles Times about “gay cancer.” We chuckled at this latest concoction of the flourishing gay lib movement. We had our own newspapers, book stores, bars, choruses, churches, and clubs, so, of course, wanting nothing of the straight world, we would have our own cancer. We laughed.

That LA Times report told of the strange coincidence of young and otherwise healthy men who happened to be gay contracting a rare form of cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma which usually appeared only in elderly Jewish men. A cluster of these cases had shown up in Los Angeles. Nobody had a clue as to why.

We threw away the newspaper and went back to work.

Lloyd, Bill and I had by chance one day walked into a temp agency, not knowing each other. A staffer there said there were three openings in the back office at Macy’s receiving, sorting and distributing expensive fine jewelry and watches for 19 Northern California stores. We all said yes.

We got to know each other a little on the walk from the agency to Macy’s. Lloyd was a former theater major and loved disco. He and his lover Steven were regulars at Trocadero, San Francisco’s top disco in the 1980s. Bill had just moved to SF from Boston to get away from his family and to take part in the punk rock scene. He loved the B-52’s. And there was me. Recently arrived from Ohio, returning to the city I loved from a decade earlier, and hoping to start of new life, a real life, in this dynamic community with its combination of dramatic flash, earnest politics and organizations of every kind.

The three of us—me in my early 30s, Lloyd in his mid-20s, and Bill in his early 20s—hit it off from the start. We were all sassy then and made up for the routine job with a running repartee. Every morning we re-hashed that day’s episode of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, a serial in the Chronicle whose characters parodied prominent city figures. Guessing what was true to fact and what was made up kept many a conversation going for days. After work many times we went out together to a cabaret. And we went dancing at the glitzy, all-night disco parties at the Galleria. I remember one Halloween when Lloyd used his theater skills to deck us all out as Renaissance princes. I danced all that night in tights and a velvet doublet with puffed shoulders, a flouncy beret and feathered mask. I found out what fabulous really meant that night.

Through 1981 and ‘82, reports of “gay cancer” continued to grow and generated deep fear in the community. Suddenly, cases popped up in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and other places. It seemed to be a contagion that rapidly turned young men into withering, festering old men but nobody knew what or why or how it happened. Or who would be next. Then gay cancer grew into other diseases and came to be called Gay Related Immune Deficiency—GRID. Sexual transmission was believed to be involved somehow. Or maybe those disco queens just did too many drugs. Or too much alcohol and too much sex. Or a poor diet. Or not the right vitamins. Or not enough exercise, as if flinging yourself around a dance floor to a frantic beat isn’t exercise.

Bill, the youngest of us, was the first to get sick. He kept complaining of just not feeling well though his ill feeling didn’t match anything he knew, like flu or tummy ache. I told him that these weren’t days you didn’t want to be feeling well and urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t know any doctors, he said. So, one day I took him to see my doctor. I don’t know what the doctor said or did, but Bill seemed to get better. We even went dancing sometimes.

But then he didn’t feel like dancing. And some days he didn’t show up for work. And then stopped working. Soon he felt too weak to do much of anything. A few months later, he went back to his family in Boston. I lost touch with him but heard he died not long after that. He died before they could even name the disease that killed him.

Then Steven, Lloyd’s partner, got sick. Then two other guys in our little dancing circle. And then even Lloyd, whom I was closest to. It was like a stalker picking us off one by one. Pretty soon I was dancing alone. Suddenly, those corny, wrenching, kitschy disco ballads became desperate pleas longing for love and life.

I think back to that breezy day when we laughed and went on laughing until it was impossible to laugh and then some of us wondered if we would ever laugh again. I think back to the days of not knowing and then getting a phone call that let me know that I did know, did know another one sick and that I had come that much closer to it and maybe I’d be making the next phone call.

Wayne, a former boyfriend whom I’d dated for a few months, called one night. We exchanged the normal chat about how we were each doing but he hardly had to say anything to explain to me why, after months of not seeing each other, this call on this night.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I was diagnosed with…,” something or other, the exact name of the obscure ailment escapes me or maybe I never even heard it. The word “diagnosed” told me enough. I had now, if I hadn’t already, definitely come into direct contact with whatever it was that caused this illness or combination of strange illnesses—nobody ever seemed to have just one thing going on.

I asked him how he was doing and feeling and he said he was doing pretty good. He was getting his support network together. Count me in on that, I said. Anything you need, I’m here. He said he was determined to beat this thing, an obligatory statement that everybody made back then not knowing if it had even the slightest chance of coming true. I said I hoped I could help.

“Maybe we should get together and go out for dinner or a movie,” I suggested. About the most anyone could offer then was hugs and hand holding. He liked that idea so we made a date. We got together a few times and I cooked a dinner for him sometimes. Wayne was lucky. He had lots of friends and we all made sure that he almost never had to be left alone. But each time I saw him, he was thinner and weaker and then he started getting seriously sick with high fevers, no ability to eat, and wasting away. His own body was killing him. He died six months later.

It would be a few years before science figured out anything. Eventually, a name was given this strange syndrome that turned healthy young men into withering, festering old men overnight. That name was Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. And AIDS was about to dominate my social, romantic, political and professional life for some years to come.

© 2016

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.