Tag: Life Stories

Posted on

Will-o’-the Wisp, by Gillian

For the first few decades of my life, of course, my own personal – very personal – will-o’-the-wisp was my attempt to catch and then kill whatever this very vaguely-defined ‘thing’ was which was ‘wrong with me’. But, no, that wasn’t right. I honestly did not feel that there was anything wrong with me; in which case the problem must lie with the boys, and then men, that I knew. If I felt no desire for any of them, either in the role of a quickie or a lifetime lover, then there was something wrong with them! So rather than search for the thing which did exist, what it was which made me different, I switched to chasing that real will-o’-the-wisp, this magical ‘right’ man.The search took me from home to college, from country to city, from country to country. When, in an eventual flash of clarity, the mystery was solved, I was freed from the chase, but by then was married to a man who could never, I finally understood, solve my problem.

The original meaning of will-o’-the-wisp is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travelers into the dangerous marshes. Certainly, in marrying a man when deep in my being I knew I should not, I was following a ghost light into tricky emotional swampland. Having lost my path I hurt innocent people along the way, and I shall always regret that. But on occasion we all find ourselves blundering around in the dark, following strange lights. And I don’t always hear my aunt’s voice warning me,

‘Nay, Lass, tha’s no-but a will o’ ‘t- wisp!’

© March 2018

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.
Posted on

Rolling Thunder, by Ricky


As an 8 to 10-year-old boy living on a farm in central Minnesota, my 3½ year older uncle and I had to listen to the thunder that rolled across the rolling hills during rain storms. Many was the night when we had to sleep with the thunderous noise created by lightning strikes. As if that wasn’t enough, the flashes of lightning played havoc with the time it took us to fall asleep.

We were not overly scared of the lightning and thunder while in bed, or in the house. The farm-house we lived in had six lightning rods along the spine of the roof. My uncle and I slept together in a wire spring frame bed with metal head and foot-boards. We were well insulated from a direct strike to the house. At least, we believed we were safe from lightning. Now the storms that produced tornados, were another matter entirely.

On a side note, when I was 9¾-years old and sleeping in that bed, my uncle and I fondled each other once, two nights in a row. These events showed me the possibilities of male to male pleasurable activities. I am very fond of that bed.

J.K. Rowling receives thunderous applause at her presentations as did the first showing of Star Wars in Rapid City, South Dakota, which my spouse and I attended. As soon as the first space ship appeared traveling from the top towards the middle of the screen trying to escape the even larger ship chasing it, the fans of space movies began to applaud for about two minutes. Consequently, there was some dialog everyone missed.

North Vietnam and Laos received the fruits of Operation Rolling Thunder from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968. The effort was ultimately a failure as it did not achieve stated goals. See operation rolling thunder in Wikipedia for more details.

I have been seated in restroom stalls and often have heard “rolling thunder” from nearby stalls, and in all honesty, from my own as well.

Who can forget the rolling thunder of multiple bowling balls dropping to the lane and the subsequent crashing of the pins as they are knocked about. And, there is also the vibrating air as a railroad diesel powered engine, or two or three and sometimes four, pass by loud enough to be classified as rolling thunder (in my opinion).

Anyone who has witnessed in person the launch of a Saturn V rocket, carrying astronauts to the moon, could never forget the rolling thunder of the powerful engines pulsing across the water to the on-lookers 3-miles away.

© 13 November 2017

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Tears, by Gillian

I saw my father cry three times.

When I was four or five we had a tiny 6-weeks-old kitten. He was all black, and sadly found a shaggy black rug a cozy place to sleep. My mother, no idea he was there, stepped right on him. We heard the terrible sound of crunching tiny bones. Tears were running down my dad’s face as he scooped up the screaming little body to take it outside and put an end to its suffering.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

When our old dog, for years Dad’s constant companion, died, my dad cried.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

For very different reasons neither of us cried. I, even as a child, somehow was playing a part; not being the real me. So, until the time I came out to myself in my early forties, when I did finally become the real me and no longer was simply an actor on life’s stage, I felt very little real emotion. I do not remember ever crying as a child.

My mother never got over losing two children, ages two and four, before I was born. She shut down. She refused to let herself feel any more personal sorrow. She did cry, quite frequently, but never over anything personal; anything really in her life. The first time I remember her doing this was when horrific newspaper photographs accompanied the stories of Allied troops liberating Hitler’s death camps; and why not, that was plenty to cry about. But she also cried at sad plays on the radio, or newspaper tales of abused animals or injured children – anything not actually personal to her. The few times I hurt myself pretty badly, as children do, neither of us cried.

But my dad had tears in his eyes when he carried a toddler me home from a pretty bad fall.

The third time I saw my dad actually cry was after I had come out. I was the authentic me. I had been back to England for a visit and when the day to leave arrived, Dad drove me to the train. As it pulled out of the station and I leaned out of the window to wave, I saw that he was crying. One of several things over my lifetime that I would rather not have seen, but you cannot unsee things.

I sobbed all the way to London. How much easier my former life spent playing a part had been, feeling emotions at best superficially.

Now, I cry at so many things, tears of sorrow or tears of joy; though tears do not necessarily flow. I find the feelings to be much the same whether in fact I literally cry, or cry just on the inside. I cried at the sight of The White House lit up in rainbow colors after The Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Marriage Equality.

I cried for the loss of Stephen and Randy, of this group, as I cry for every loss of yet another friend. I even cry when friends’ pets die.

I cry for our country which currently feels like one more loss, as I cry for the planet as we know it, which is another.

But I have no regrets for my tears. Having lived for so long without them, I welcome them. I almost revel in them; celebrate them. They serve to remind me, I am really me!

© October 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.

Posted on

Figures, by Ray S

It’s 6 AM, my eyes creep open, throw back the covers, swing my legs out of bed, checking to see if I can stand surely enough to hit the head.

Ah! I made it and as I addressed the American Standard porcelain I wondered what “Figures” of mine would be interesting to my woman- and man-kind enough to avail them with. I began to list some in my mind. To me the word Figures means the visual arts, Michael Angelo’s David, Winged Victory, the Statue of Liberty in NY Harbor, the acropolis, Mona Lisa, Rodin’s sculptures, something you can see, feel, or imagine.

What about numbers? Well, look how our fearless leader spurts out the “thousands, “millions” and “trillions” at the drop of a twitter, yet stumbles on into one of his own cowpies after another. That’s some American First figure.

Numbers, numbers everywhere, if I could only translate them in my mind into something meaningful. Having limited mathematical skills from a bout of childhood dyslexia, I could visualize the measurements of a yardstick, but talk miles or heights of mountains, depths of the oceans, and those figures escaped me. I was and still am proud that I mastered my 3rd grade times tables.

Today, figures like names of places and people escape me. Is it a sign of dementia or just plain forgetfulness? You know! I just can’t figure all of this out, so I’ll simply continue to count the petals on the daisy and not figure how many there are. Life’s too short, or too large; go figure.

© 5 June 2017

About the Author

Posted on

Time and Preparation, by Phillip Hoyle

The freedoms of college life and schedule demonstrated for me I would have to learn to manage my time, but I took years to figure out how my personality and preferences affected my ability to finish projects on time. At the beginning of a semester I’d study the prospectus of each class and begin figuring out how to approach papers that would be due. I’d go to the library, my favorite space in any school, where I’d search, research, and check out books. I loved digging into books and finding topics and approaches that made sense to me. Still I was writing and typing the piece right up to the last minute. Once I stayed up all night to do so but decided never to do that again. I needed my sleep! I’d just have to start earlier. Still I’d go to class re-reading the paper and changing spelling and even grammar by hand on the typed sheets. I realized Profs would like that I knew spelling and grammar better than typing. None of them criticized my last minute corrections.

One graduate school history project really captured me. I found a short 17th century German pietist theological treatise by August Hermann Franke titled “The Spiritual Affects” (of course in translation). My related paper compared it with a long book, René Descartes’ Passions of the Soul. I hoped to show Franke was not Cartesian. I was pushed for time so hired a neighbor to type the paper for me. As the deadline approached I gave her my introduction, then my first chapter that covered Franke. I was writing the conclusion while she was typing the second chapter that presented Descartes. I started wondering: maybe the old German was Cartesian. My thesis had asserted that he was not, but now that I was done writing, I thought he probably was and at the last minute concluded he actually was Cartesian. Looking again at the introduction and the conclusion, I decided I could have my typist change just a word or two in the intro, and I hurriedly rewrote the part of the conclusion. Somehow the logic of yes or no was a bit arbitrary to my analysis. But it just made more sense (at least ultimately)—a logical sense—a challenge for me since illogic seems as powerful and as helpful to me as logic. I changed the lines. The professor was amazed at the paper and agreed with my revised thesis, and I learned more about my relationship to time and preparation.

Some years later I was introduced to the Myers Briggs preferences inventory and found that I sat right on the line (zero) between thinker and feeler and on the line between judge and perceiver. Maybe that was why I had problems with those old papers. I wanted to read another book! I took another test that measured one’s preferences under stress. Aha. Under stress I become a thinker and an effective judge. That’s how I now do my work, with plenty of time to play around and a deadline to make me finish it. In the 1990s, when writing for a publishing company, I turned in all writing projects on time or even early. I suspect that is why they kept using me. The preparation was never a problem for me, but the deadline pushed me into being enough of a thinker and judge so as to complete the work.

These days I rely on SAGE Telling Your Story’s Monday 1:30 deadline to get my work done although I am still changing sentences, grammar, and spelling while riding the Zero bus on my way to the meetings.

© 29 January 2018

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.” 

Posted on

Ramsey-Scott Fund, by Jude Gassaway

When my senior thesis abstract was accepted for presentation at the Geological society of America Meeting held at Portland State University, Oregon in 1973, my registration fee and airline travel from San Diego State to Portland State was covered by my Geology Department. Other out-of-pocket expenses were to be borne by myself—a graduate student still living at home. Luckily, the family financial stars were aligned in my favor. My second cousin, Sandy Gassaway, was a Professor of Economic Geography at Portland State. Sandy and his wife, Carolyn, were able to provide room, board, local transportation, and emotional support for my first public appearance in the scientific world.

I was set-up in Sandy’s home office with a comfortable sofa. I examined he books in his study. One item of note was a bound copy of his Doctoral Dissertation. Sandy’s fieldwork took place in inland Scandinavia, near Russia, during the Cold War.

Its loosely remembered title had to do with mapping and interpreting routes of reindeer migration as accompanied by Finn-markians.

One fun and interesting item to be checked in papers such as this (where I did not exactly comprehend the vocabulary or the importance of the study) is to scan the Acknowledgments section. Sandy’s thanks were extensive and comprehensive regarding his professors and Carolyn.

There were two items that I had questions about.

The first was a line-long object/word in a Scandinavian dialect that Sandy thanked profusely for careful and attentive and complete watching of him in his travels throughout the country.

“So”, I asked Sandy, “what did that word and the accompanying phrase mean, exactly?” Prior to Graduate School, Sandy had spent time in the U.S. Army, doing air-photo reconnaissance regarding where Paratroopers should or should no land in battle situations. “Some hops fields, with long pointy sticks holding up the crops, would make a shish-ka-bob of a soldier who landed on one,” he told me. He looked older than most college students.

Although his studies involved extensive walking around in the back-country, getting to individual study areas involved long trips in small commuter ships that plied up and down each fjord, with many stops a day. Once on board, Sandy noticed a man dressed in snap-brim Fedora and a long overcoat, the only person so attired. The man appeared to be watching him. So, to test his theory, Sandy approached the man, and asked for a light for his cigarette. The man complied, their eyes met, Sandy thanked the man, and he wandered off to smoke his cigarette.

At the next stop, Sandy watched as his cigarette lighter man hurried off the ship and headed for a dock-side telephone booth. After a short telephone call, the man reboarded the ship. At the next port, Sandy watched as the first man left the ship—apparently being replaced by another man—also wearing a snap brim hat and a long coat. The men did not acknowledge one another as they passed each other. After the ship continued on, Sandy would casually approach the second man, and again ask for a light for his cigarette.

Otherwise boring trips were brightened as this scene got engineered and repeated several times. Hence the acknowledgment of the watchfulness and dedication of the homeland’s secret service. Here is the actual quota from Sandy’s dissertation: “the members of Norges Sikkerhetsjenneste who provided constant watchful protection and bolstered the author’s spirits with continual amateur entertainment during the field period…”

The second acknowledgement that caught my eye was, at the end, “Thanks for financial aid from The Ramsey Fund of Portland, Oregon.”

Now, I knew this was Alexander Ramsey Gassaway himself, my second cousin, and, upon my query, he immediately announced the creation of the “Ramsey-Scott fund”, which “honored and funded students who supported their own filed studies.” Myself (whose middle name is Scott) was now included. And our partnership was set.

Every now and then, I’d hear from Augustus Ramsey (our fictional patriarch, the President of the Ramsey-Scott Fund). Later on, Sandy and I agreed that the Fund’s permanent address be Box 1, Bonita, California (my parents’ address), because I no longer lived there, and it gave distance and plausibility to the existence of actual disbursable funds.

I eventually became employed by the US Geological Survey, and as a beginning field geologist, I noticed that my field work continued to be supported by my own funds, (also known as The Ramsey-Scott Fund). I would get an Official Travel Authorization to do fieldwork on my project. I would be paid my hourly wage (travel time included) while in the field. I could not get over-time because those costs normally came out of Project Funds, and my Project was simply not funded. I drove my own truck and paid my own way.

Promotions at the USGS were considered by a Committee of peers every year. And every year required up-dating and re-writing one’s in-house resume. Once, noticing a blank space on a page, I just added, in the honorable family tradition: “1984 to present: partially funded by: The Ramsey-Scott fund, Box 1, Bonita, CA”. This also tidied up the page.

Several promotion cycles (years) later, a bright-eyed peer noticed my funding windfall, and she inquired regarding getting funding for her own field work. This request came to the attention of the Branch chief who observed, in horror, that one of his employees, a Federal Civil Servant, was receiving financial aid from An Unknown and Un-vetted Source (and had been, for several years).

I contracted to explain this, and after “telling my story” to the Branch Chief, I made a fast call to Sandy—who immediately got some letterhead and business cards printed. Sandy composed an explanatory letter to the Chief. He explained, (in Augustus Ramsey’s clipped British style) “the fund’s continued enthusiasm and support of Ms Gassaway’s important research on silcrete”; he enclosed the business card, and mailed it to the Branch Chief.

I still didn’t get a promotion and based on some other things, I ceased employment there the following year. The Ramsey-Scott Fund is now retired.

© May 2017

About the Author

Retired USGS Field Geologist.

Founding member, Denver Womens Chorus

Posted on

Don’t, by Gillian

My mother was the one who instructed me on the do’s and more specifically the don’t’s of life. Throughout my youth they dropped effortlessly from her lips with great frequency.

“Gillian,” (always a mark of displeasure when she used my whole name rather than the usual ‘Gill’), frequently followed by a couple of disapproving tsk tsk’s,

“Please,” (emphasized to indicate that her severely-challenged patience was near it’s breaking point),

“Don’t do that!”

Mostly followed by,

“What will the neighbors think?” (managing to ignore completely the fact that in actuality we had no neighbors close enough to see me picking my nose or scratching my thigh or hitching up my skirt to straddle the fence or whatever this particular ‘that’ was. No human ones anyway, and the sheep, no matter what you may think of them, are not ones to pass judgement. Had I ever pointed out that basic fact, I’m sure she would have replied,

“Some passer-by then,” managing to ignore the rarity of that, too.

Of course those same fictitious persons must also be protected from hearing the unacceptable.

‘Don’t shout, dear,” she would say, almost in a whisper, thereby proving her point.

“I’m only three feet away. The neighbors will think we are arguing.”

“Do turn that awful noise down, please!” she implored as I turned up the radio volume for my beloved Beatles. “I don’t want the neighbors knowing you listen to that dreadful stuff”

My poor mother, life was simply loaded with pitfalls. If she wasn’t protecting us from the negative judgment of the non-existent neighbors, she was protecting us from the negative judgment of fate itself.

“Oh, don’t walk under there!” she would grab me to steer me around the leaning ladder.

“Stop! Stop!” she would cry out in alarm if a black cat – and there were many loose cats around in those days – threatened to cross our path.

If we saw a lone magpie we would gaze around anxiously for another. Where was it? There must be one! as she murmured,

“One for sorrow, two for joy.”

The only judgement which apparently held no fear for my mother was that from above. She never once even suggested that anything she or I might do would incur any negative judgement from The Almighty. The God she offered me was a loving God, not one of wrath. For that I am forever grateful. In my eyes it more than compensates for any petty fears I still hang on to, such as searching relentlessly for that second magpie. I confess that I still do that, if at least a little tongue in cheek. My efforts remain a bit unsettled because I am unsure of the rules. When does the Statute of Limitations expire on that other bird? Is it actually vital to see both birds together? Or is an hour later OK? What if I successfully spot number two later but on the same day? The same week? Someone once asked me, if I could spend five minutes with my mother now, what would I want to ask her. Crazily what immediately leapt to mind was that damn bird. Quick, Mum, tell me rules of the two magpies.

It was inevitable, of course, that my dead mother was hovering around, peering over my shoulder, when I decided I had to come out to the world. Gillian, what will the neighbors think? Indeed!

No, for all her earthly warnings, I have no concern about any Heavenly fears. If by some remote, as it seems to me, chance that she is actually aware of my life as it is today, she will not condemn, she will not fear, she will not scold. If she knows everything, then she understands and accepts everything. She is free of fear. She is done with don’t. And so am I!

© 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.

Posted on

Leaving, by Betsy

My cycling adventure, an amazing trip across the country in 2005, has given me endless material for story time. Once again I call on my journal to remind me of the many places we found ourselves leaving and the experiences which followed the many “leavings” that took place. Leaving Dog Beach in San Diego, the tour’s place of origin, was by far the most exciting departure from anywhere that I can recall ever making. Reading from my journal: “Saturday, March 20: The first day we left from Dog Beach. We dipped our tires in the Pacific Ocean, rode out of San Diego and started up the coastal range. This was a 33 mile ride. It was a day of city traffic and then climbing. We climbed almost 2000 feet.” There are a couple of places where it was too steep for me to ride, so I had to walk, pushing my bike. This was the first of many such walks on this trip. Cycling clip-in shoes are not designed for walking. They have metal devices installed on the soles that clip into devises on the pedals. Once on the bike, shoes clipped to pedals, one is not stuck in this clipped-in position as a quick flick of the ankle releases you from the pedals. It turns out this is ever so handy when you come to a stop and have to put your foot on the ground.

Back to the journal: “Glenda, who is our oldest member—I thought I was the oldest—Glenda didn’t want anyone to know how old she was. She disclosed her secret to the Fox News people when they were interviewing us at the start of the trip on Dog Beach. Fox News is a bad choice when revealing something you don’t want anyone else to know. I guess she couldn’t resist the notoriety of being the most …whatever.” I remember how cold I was when we arrived at our first night’s stop—a place called Alpine, CA. Our accommodations provided a Jacuzzi which was most welcome. Another memorable departure on that cycling adventure happened a couple of weeks into the trip.

It was Sunday morning, April 3rd. We had been instructed the night before by our leader Susan as follows: “Now ladies, I know we are all tired having just completed a 90 mile ride today. But I want you to be alert enough to remember to turn your clocks back one hour as we switch to day light saving time at midnight. Now be sure to get up an hour early because we will lose an hour tomorrow. We have a long ride and i want everyone in before dark.” Yawning and stretching we all promised we would get with the correct time. We obediently turned our clocks back before going to sleep. Up an hour early in the morning and it’s pitch dark. Now breakfast is over and it’s time to saddle up and leave. We never leave in the dark. But we know we must because our leader told us we would lose an hour today so dark or not, we better get on the road. We LOSE an hour today. Let’s get going. Wait, a couple of the women have tires that went flat over night. That creates a serious delay for several of us. We need about 5 women to hold flashlights while four women fix the two flats. We’re finally leaving and it’s still dark.

It was about mid-morning coffee time, at the first SAG stop. After a few sips of the beloved beverage, it dawned on just about everyone at the same time: we actually gain an hour today. This is spring. Spring forward, right. We were supposed to turn our clocks forward an hour. We could have stayed in bed an extra hour. Where is leader Susan? I want to kill her. Moral of that story. Just because you are paying your leader to direct you, doesn’t mean you turn off your brain completely. We rode across 8 different states. That meant leaving California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi on our bicycles. I clearly remember celebrating our entry into a new state at the end of the day with drinks at dinner. Except for the state’s welcome sign on the road, leaving one state and entering another was more of the same: pedal, pedal, pedal. But it was exciting and satisfying to be able to mark our progress with a huge sign on the road as we rode out of Texas: “Welcome to Louisiana.” This was especially true after pedaling for nearly three weeks as we journeyed through the endless countryside. We thought Texas would never end. Texas was full of exciting encounters, however. First there was the border patrol outside of El Paso. We cyclist were not suspect, but Bo Peep our SAG wagon was stopped and searched. The search took a long time, too. That vehicle was full of supplies. Fortunately nothing suspicious. In Texas we encountered every kind of terrain and environmental condition known to man: mountain passes, magnificent wildflowers, dessert flat, wind, rain , heat, cold, cities, wide open roads with nothing in sight except fields and more road. The scenic terrain of the Texas Hill Country may not have been the longest or highest in elevation, but those hills were definitely the steepest. One thing that remained the same throughout the state of Texas was the rough surface of the roads. This I found to be very annoying and hard on my aging joints. “Chip-seal” they called it. I called it cheap road surface. For this one reason I was thrilled when we arrived at our last Texas stop. Tomorrow we would leave Texas. We were at our Super 8 Motel in a small town in East Texas having our usual evening map meeting to prepare for the next day’s ride. We were told by Susan to be alert when riding in Louisiana, the state we would enter tomorrow just after crossing the Sabine River. “ Louisiana has lots of dogs,” she warned—“loose dogs.

There are no laws requiring people to keep their dogs under control in Louisiana. They love to run out at you and nip at your ankles.” “Oh dear,” I thought. “I think maybe I’ll bargain for more rough road in preference to loose, angry dogs. “Just look them in the eye and firmly yell ‘NO.” was Susan’s advise. Our leader’s counsel did nothing to ease my anxiety at the time, but I found on the couple of occasions when the foreseen event actually took place, the firm ‘no’ worked.

Leaving Texas felt good that time. A few weeks later leaving the Florida panhandle and approaching the Atlantic coast felt different. It was bittersweet. We were all aware this adventure was coming to an end. At this point in Florida I was having trouble focusing on anything other than pushing my pedals. Again from my journal: “It hasn’t fully registered in my head the fact that we have just ridden across the country 3165 miles. I expect it will sink in at some point, or maybe not. It’s a bit overwhelming. No question about it, it was the trip of a lifetime and a most extraordinary experience and a most extraordinary group of people.” Over the 58 days we made 52 departures from locations across eight different states. On those early morning departures, I was never more motivated to leave a place and so totally focused on arriving at the next place. I’m glad I have the day to day journal of the trip. I’m also grateful for the occasional appropriate story time topic to push me to get out the journal and relive some of the magical moments.

© 7 November 2016

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.
Posted on

Hope, by Phillip Hoyle

I moved to Denver determined to live my life as an openly gay man. There is a fifty-year long story behind that statement. I won’t go into it here, but my mind was made up. I knew I needed come out publically. I certainly wanted whatever kind of gay life I could construct in an urban context. Of course, I also had other needs: a job, a place to live, some friends, a connection with a church as a participant (not as staff), and a change of scene to mention only a few of them. I wanted and assumed I would be able to see these needs met to my satisfaction. In less than three months I had enrolled in massage school to learn a trade that would sustain me, rented an apartment, moved in, and started meeting people: students in school, members in the church I had settled on, and eventually in my neighborhood. I did more things such as joined as a member at the Denver Art Museum, got a library card at Denver Public Library, started writing another book for the publishing company I worked for part-time and set up my art studio and massage space in my tiny apartment. I was on my way.
I was having a wonderful time in my new gay world, exhilarated by a sense of freedom I had never before experienced, looking at my day-to-day life with a sense of awe. What would happen next, I wondered. My art matured, my small book went off to the editor, my education changed my perception of the human body, and the city kept opening me to the potential of new wants. I was not greedy, but I did keep myself busy.
Toward the end of my fourth year here, after schooling was completed, my massage practice was proving rewarding, and I was enjoying a number of friendships, I met a man one day at a bus stop, a man who moved me deeply. I wanted to get to know him. I saw him three times on the bus and knew I wanted his friendship. But then he disappeared. For weeks I kept my eyes opened. The season moved from early to late spring. Then I saw him again. I gave him my phone number and encouraged him to call me so we could meet for breakfast or lunch. I really wanted his friendship whether he was also gay or not. I wanted him in my life.
Two months later I heard his voice on my phone. He asked me to call. I did. We began to talk. My want changed. Here’s what I wrote in my Morning Pages the morning after his phone call: “I am pleased, maybe even thrilled. Rafael left me a message. Then I left him a message. Then we talked. [Among other things] he said he wanted us to be friends.
That’s when my feelings changed from want to hope. I wrote: “I want him to touch me. I want to share some kind of love with him. I hope it will work out to be something fine.”
In my usage hope seeks so much more than does want, more in terms of deepest desires, persistent needs, and long-term effects on one’s life. It wasn’t that I quit wanting, but I then began living with an expectation of so much more than any other man had provided me or been able to receive from me. My feelings opened up into a romance the likes of which I had never before entertained. I’d always assumed romance to be a rather hokey and fairy-tale cultural construct but was suddenly living into a dream I had never expected. I had never been so moved and never had received nor given what this new friendship, partnership, love life, and cohabitational thrill that my too-brief time with Rafael Martínez provided. Even though our romance lasted just over four months, its affects and effects linger in my memory, in my body. My mourning his death is balanced with memories of our weeks together.
© 4 December 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
Posted on

Resist, by Gillian

As we get older we tend to deal less well with change. We don’t like it. Unfortunately, at this stage of life, changes are all too frequently thrust upon us by forces we are unable to resist.
But I tend to see myself as someone who has never liked change – very much a status quo kind of person, even when I was younger. Thinking about this topic for today, I am forced to wonder why I see myself that way. I left home and went away to college, I emigrated to another country, I got married and then divorced. Finally, I completely changed my vision of myself by accepting and then embracing my lesbianism, embarking upon a lifetime commitment, and eventually marriage, to another woman. I have had something like twenty different addresses throughout my life. This does not really sound like someone who resists change.
Perhaps in fact what I did was fail to resist change. I didn’t initiate it. I didn’t own it. I simply went with the flow, falling in with the plans of others. It was not until I came out. morphing into the real me, that I truly began to take responsibility for my own life. Coming out in itself was, of course, my first and greatest resistance. There can be little more challenging than pushing back against your very self, or at least the self you always thought you were.
Ever after that sea change in my mid-forties, I have been much more cognizant of, and proactive about, change. Not all change is good, not all change is bad. Sometimes we resist change, sometimes we resist remaining the same. And, inevitably, we can never all agree on which is which. Change can also be very deceptive. The voters who gave the world both Trump and Brexit, insisted they were voting for change. In fact, they were for the most part resisting change, or perhaps hoping for things to start moving back in time, to return to a former world, which is change of a sort I suppose. Trump supporters want to return to a time of high-wage car factories; a land where coal is king. Brexit supporters hunger for the days when the British invaded other countries, rather than the people of those countries surging into Britain. Britain first. America first. In both countries, there are large segments of the population resisting any kind of positive, forward-moving change.
But it all depends, of course, on what your own vision is of positive change. I feel like I have been resisting, pushing back, against changes I thought to be negative all my life. Though, as I said before, in my earlier life I fear I did very little thinking, and more especially feeling, for myself. At least I can say, in my own defense, that I chose those I followed along with, very wisely. All the protests I took part in then are the same ones I would choose now, now I am the real me. I resisted nuclear missiles both in the UK and later in the US. I protested against the Vietnam war for what feels like forever. I marched for support of AIDS victims for another forever.
Now I am resisting as I have never resisted before. And now it is I who resist change. I resist Trump’s evil changes not only in protest marches but with daily actions; phone calls and e-mails dispatched at a rate I never before dreamed of. Since election day 2016 I feel that I am living some awful nightmare from which, every day, I am ready to wake up. I just hope this particular resistance is not yet another of those forevers.
© March 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.