Tag: Life Stories

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A Visit to the Doctor and Nurse by Michael King

I think the first time I had a severe swelling reaction was in Duluth in 1964. I woke up one morning and my face was so swollen that I couldn’t open my eyes. After a few hours the swelling subsided enough for me to go to the base medical clinic. No one knew what it was, why it was and nothing was done. The swelling went down and the mystery was unsolved.

I’m not sure how many times I had these swelling occurrences but they were always in a different part of the body.

The last one was the most dramatic. I woke up with a terrible need to urinate, a greater need than at any other time in my life. I was in terrible pain and unable to pee. My wife drove me to the emergency room. I remember the doctor stated that it was unusual for this to happen to someone so young. I was around 37 I think. My urinary track was swollen shut and my bladder was close to bursting. In another hour or so it would have. The doctor thought at first that it was an enlarged prostrate. It wasn’t. I had never had a catheter and felt totally violated as it was being inserted. The nurse appeared in front of me with a bucket and when the tube finally entered the bladder the force of the urine was too much for her bucket. It was knocked out of her hands. She was doused from head to toe and the wall and door across the room was generously sprayed.

I had to use the catheter for some days until the swelling totally subsided. The doctor was concerned that next time it could be my heart or at least a more serious place if and when I would have another swelling episode. He had no idea as to the cause.

As I have done in the past I pulled a Jimmy Carter and sat in a chair in the living room and declared that I wasn’t going to move till I had an answer as to the cause of these swelling episodes. Jimmy Carter did something similar with the Rose Garden during the Iranian hostage crisis. Almost instantly I had an answer. A memory of my ear swelling some years before when I wore a cheap earring popped into my consciousness. It was nickel plated. Therefore I must have an allergy to nickel. My dermatologist said there was no such thing as a metal allergy. I knew better and since then the medical profession acknowledges and treats metal allergies.

I eliminated all aluminum cookware, foil and used only glass, iron and stainless steel cookware, avoided restaurant food (they cook in aluminum almost exclusively). There is often nickel in aluminum products. The amount varies as aluminum is often recycled. I have not had a swelling episode since.

There were many other times I ended up in emergency rooms, but I think seeing that nurse get doused is one of my most vivid memories when it comes to a visit to a doctor and a nurse.

© 24 May 2013

About
the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Sorry , I’m Allergic by Lewis

The first naturally-occurring object that comes to my mind when I think of allergies is the cat. It’s not that I’m OK with house dust, pollen, molds, and serums derived from horses, such as the old tetanus serum, it’s just that my cat allergy has most inconvenienced my friends.

I even had a pet cat once. Or, perhaps, it was just a stray cat that hung around our house a lot. I don’t remember it ever being in the house or sitting in my mother’s lap or feeding it.

Unfortunately for the cat, I was an only child. As I had no younger siblings upon which to take out my frustrations, it was the birds, insects, and other living creatures in the neighborhood who suffered the brunt of my repressed anger. The cat fell into this category. Perhaps I also blamed cats for the ringworm that had scarred my scalp a year or two before.

Anyway, on this particular summer day, my job was to expunge dandelions from our rather vast–to my four-foot-tall way of thinking, anyway–lawn. The appropriate implement for this task was a long-handled dandelion digger. Perhaps I was contemplating how it was that the dandelion got its odd name when this particular cat made an appearance in our front yard. Naturally, I associated the word “cat” with “lion” and wondered how effective the dandelion digger would be as the means to rid our property forever of this furry intruder. With my make-shift spear raised over my head in the fashion I’m sure I had seen some aboriginal hunter use in spearing fish on the pages of National Geographic, I began to chase the cat across the lawn. Just as the cat was about to round the corner of the house, I let fly from about 20 feet away. The “spear” went exactly where the cat had just been a second before but instead of a cat, the spear embedded itself in the trunk of one of the shrubs that formed a hedge along the edge of our property.

I was instantly struck by the lethality of the act I had just done and how awful I would have felt had the weapon found its target. Instead, I felt elated at how nicely things had turned out. “Cool,” I think I said to myself.

Forty plus years went by before I gave much thought to cats again, that is, aside from the allergy shots and antihistamines that kept my symptoms, from a myriad of sources, in some measure of control. That was when Laurin came upon the scene. Laurin loved cats. Living alone in his “Hobbit House” outside Flint, MI, he had two of them. One day, he found one of them dead, apparently of a heart attack, after its claws became tangled in the fibers of the shag carpet on his staircase. He was broken-hearted. I don’t remember what happened to the other one but, obviously, he had to get rid of it before he could move in with me.

After we moved to Denver, we lived in an apartment building that did not permit cats or dogs as pets. One Christmas, I spent some effort in finding a stuffed toy cat that Laurin had suggested he might like. Turns out, it just wasn’t the same thing for him and I returned it.

Now, I actually like the concept of cats. I admire their independence, their cleanliness, their beauty–all from a distance. I find that they are much easier to keep from jumping up on my lap than dogs. Usually, they don’t even try. Perhaps, they are allergic to me, too.

© 4 November 2013

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.

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Eerie by Gillian

Cats.

It’s all about cats.

I love cats, but, face it, they are not completely of this earth. They inhabit a slightly different plane, or at least they see this one very differently. Anyone who has spent much time in the company of a cat knows this. They sit completely still and stare fixedly at something in the corner that none of us can see. They wake from one of a dozen daily dozes to rush off into another room for no reason that we can comprehend.

Growing up as I did in a farming community, everyone had cats. Mostly they were of the marginally domesticated kind who lived in the barns and sheds and fed primarily on the other critters living there. Before the days of spaying, they reproduced prodigiously and the kittens were traditionally drowned as soon as they were discovered.

My mother discovered Delilah with her latest brood, burrowed into a pile of leaves under a hedge, and my poor father was summoned to do the dastardly deed. A gentle, kind-hearted man, he hated this job, which always fell to him. He waited until Delilah had temporarily vacated her position, scooped up the kittens and did the dirty deed. A couple of days later we discovered Delilah, again, half asleep and purring lazily behind a hay bale, curled lovingly around a single kitten.

Had she known what was about to happen? Had she figured one was better than none? And how did she know that not one of us could even begin to think of depriving her of her hidden child? The Mona Lisa look she gave us, an extraordinary yet eminently decipherable mixture of triumph and challenge and love, seemed to answer all our questions.

    
My Mother with Delilah

When I was married we had a huge war-torn, old, yellow cat called FatCat. One day he jumped up onto my lap, nothing unusual, then pushed under the book I was trying to read, lying flat on my chest. He purred loudly, also nothing unusual. He pushed himself further up towards my face, with front paws on either side of my neck, and stared into my eyes.

I couldn’t say why this was so unnerving. There was simply something about the intensity of those eyes peering searchingly into mine as if trying to see something there, or perhaps actually seeing something there. Or yet again, it was more as if he was trying to tell me something. I threw him roughly off me, at which he and my husband both gave me a surprised look. 
“He was staring into my soul.” No of course I didn’t say that. “He was digging his claws in my neck,” was all I actually said, feigning nonchalance.
FatCat gave me a disappointed look like a parent might cast upon a child who has let him down, and stalked off. A few hours later I received a phone call that my mother had died, peacefully in her bed as the saying goes but in my mother’s case it was true, in England. When I adjusted for the time difference, my mom had died right around the time that old FatCat was peering into my eyes.
OK OK it’s all coincidence and a product of that kind of overactive imagination that kicks in around the death of a loved one.

I knew that.

I know that.

But there’s a tiny spark in me that still somehow manages to wonder.

FatCat
© 5 March 2012

 About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Feeling Loved – A Love Chronology by Betsy

I feel loved when I am being cuddled in my mommy or daddy’s arms.

I feel loved when my mommy comforts me when I am sick or unhappy.

I feel loved when my daddy reads me a story.

And when my mommy and daddy keep me safe.

I feel loved when my big brother takes my hand to help me get safely to school.

I feel loved when friends stand up for me and believe in me when others do not.

I feel loved when my husband and best friend of 25 years ever-so-gently but with profound sadness releases me to follow a different life path separate from the one we have been traveling together.

I feel loved when my son calls me on Mother’s Day to tell me he loves me.

I feel loved when my granddaughter and I go on the ski train to WP and play together in the snow.

I feel loved when my grandchildren call me to say, “I love you G’ma Betsy.”

I feel loved when my sister travels half way across the country to help me recover from surgery.

I feel loved when a daughter travels even further to be there when I am having surgery or to share a holiday.

I feel loved when a daughter travels across the country to be with me in time of need or in time of celebration.

I feel loved every night when I go to sleep next to the one I love and every morning when I wake up next to her.

I feel loved when the woman I love marries me

I feel loved when friends want to share our joy.

I feel loved when my life partner wants to grow old with me
and spend the rest of her days with me.

I feel loved when I know that love is who we are.

© 21 October 2013

About the Author

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

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Coping with Loved Ones by Phillip Hoyle

Coping with loved ones is not really my topic although I do face some such challenges, challenges I’ve settled by maintaining distance. Still my experience is not so much coping as simply living away from the people whom I seem so much to bother. I don’t expect them to change in their attitudes. I keep my distance. I have done so for fifteen years.

When I told my sisters that my wife and I were separating, that she was going back to Albuquerque to work and I was staying in Tulsa, that we didn’t know how to solve the difficulty two sexual affairs I’d had with men had created, and that I bore the responsibility for our problems, one of my four sisters was stricken. Sometime later, after I had moved to Denver to live my life as a gay man, I received a letter from her and her family that she, her minister husband, and their two young adult daughters had signed, a letter that separated them from me with its condemnation expressed in biblical language. I read it—a letter her husband had written—and felt sadness. I felt especially sad that they had involved their daughters in the act of rejection. I felt deeply sad for my sister. I did not respond to their communication. I have not seen my sister or her family since then.

Each March I send my sister a birthday card. Each December I send her family a Christmas card. That’s it. That’s enough for me. I feel sad for them all. I did send her husband a get-well card when he was being treated for cancer. I sent him my congratulations when he retired. I don’t know to do more than that. I hope my sister has a sense of peace in all this. That’s my best wish for her.

My other three sisters have been open, loving, and including, whatever their thoughts about homosexuality, sin, and salvation. I appreciate their attitudes. I treasure them all, even the rejecting sister who once had been one of my closest friends. I suspect this story would be more interesting if it had been written by my rejecting sister. She’s surely the one who has to cope. She’s the one who holds out for me to change. She’s the one who believes I’ve committed some unpardonable sin. She’s the one who has to deal with the embarrassment of having a sinfully gay brother who probably does all kinds of horrible things decent people must protect their children from, must rid their society of, and must enact laws to limit. She’s the one who fears that civil freedoms for the pursuit of happiness or simply the right to work, marry, and live in peace give too much to homosexuals. She’s the one who has to cope with too much. So she does cope; she prays every day of the week for my repentance. I keep my distance so she doesn’t have to cope with me close up. Face to face might be too much provocation.

My coping strategies: distance and separation. Perhaps they are too much a habit I’ve cultivated. I see they may present a problem on the horizon. As we age and our health deteriorates, a thing well underway with this group of siblings, I am sure I will need to be face to face with members of the rejecting family. Then I’ll have something more to write about! Then I’ll know more about coping like people in small towns have to cope with their families! In the meantime I’ll send my cards and best wishes for these folk who find me to be so evilly unrepentant.

© 14 October 2012

About the Author


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Hospitality by Michael King

It seems that hospitality is more a commercial term than the cultured warmth and friendliness that one offers their guests. When I was young, maybe 8 or so, I imagined a world so very different than the one I felt I was stuck with. I wanted to live where there was charm, beauty, elegance, love, grace and happiness. I imagined that the surroundings should be comfortable yet exquisite. I had not been exposed to anything like what I pictured but felt that I didn’t belong where I was which had none of the qualities I felt should exist. I remember thinking that the little town of Nashville, Kansas was ugly and the people including my family were ignorant, crude and had no class. It seemed that somewhere there should be a place that was beautiful. When we moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico I had hopes that it might be more attractive and there the people would be more civilized; it wasn’t. I never felt comfortable or trusting in those days. Finally when I went to college I got a few glimpses of the environment that I craved. I also experienced times when those hosting an event created the warmth and comfort and elegance that I came to associate with my definition of hospitality.

Many times over the years I tried to create that feeling when guest attended the many parties we had. I loved having people come over and have an enjoyable time with food and conversation in an attractive and comfortable environment. I tried to make the setting as beautiful as possible. I wanted to make each event as much like my fantasy of my childhood. I wanted to create the hospitality that I felt should exist.

I have experienced on many occasions that kind of unpretentious and sincere hospitality and I have also been where it existed because people pay for it. I really enjoyed the dinners aboard cruise ships. A few times I have attended formal dress up events that were very well done where there was that genuine hospitable environment. Some included weddings, dining at upscale restaurants with friends, holiday parties and a few social events. More often it seems that I have had that feeling at casual parties, pot lucks and outings where either the hosts or the staff obviously enjoys making the situation smooth, comfortable and pleasant.

Finally after almost a lifetime I live in the manner that I so craved when I was little and I am around people who are warm and sincere as well as relaxed being who they are and are at home both giving and receiving hospitality. I experience an acceptance and feel more at home in my relatively newer gay environment than I did in the straight world. My world has more beauty and elegance, warmth and friendliness, happiness and joy, love and kindness, peace and comfort and hospitality than I could have imagined when I was 8 or so or even at 68 or so, And if I won the lottery I could throw a few parties where I could pay professionals to help create some of my fantasies and I could travel where hospitality is included in the package, etc., etc., etc. In the meantime I’m just happy to be living the life I have where everything is perfect.

July 28, 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities: “Telling your Story,” “Men’s Coffee,” and the “Open Art Studio.” I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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A Visiting Doctor by Gillian

Yes, I’m going back to the days when rather than you visiting the doctor, he, or very occasionally, she, came to visit you. Doctors of those days tend to suffer from a certain type-casting. In the old Western movies they are usually gruff, monosyllabic, and the town doctor frequently doubles as the town drunk. In British period pieces, the village doctor tends to be gruff, monosyllabic, usually Scottish, and enjoying a dram, or two, or three, of an evening beside the smoky fire.
My grandmother had fallen into something between a deep sleep and a coma, so my dad walked to the nearest pub where he borrowed the phone to call Dr. MacElroy. Now those of you who have paid attention have met my paternal grandmother before, and will remember that there was no love lost between my grandmother and my mother and me, or even my father, her own son. She showed none of us any affection. All I ever learned from her, as the dog and cat learned even faster than I did, was to stay a walking cane’s length away or I would get a whack from that cane apparently just on principle; I didn’t actually have to do anything to deserve it.

Enter the gruff, monosyllabic and very Scottish Dr. MacElroy, breezing up in his brand-new Austin-Healey Sprite, a zippy little sports car from which my father had great difficulty diverting his hungry gaze. The good doctor shuffled his way up the dark staircase to Grandma’s bedroom, and shortly shuffled his way back down again.

“Aye, she’s deeead.”

All three of us started in surprise and involuntarily glanced up at the ceiling through which sounds somewhere between labored breathing and snores issued.

Doctor MacElroy harrumphed into his scraggly moustache.
“ No’ now!” He glared at us irritably. “But she’ll no’ make it tae the kirk o’ Sunday.”

Seeing that I, in the few years I had so far inhabited this world, had never known my grandmother to go to church on Sunday or any other day, I didn’t find this assertion earth-shaking.

The next day he appeared again, skidding to a halt in a spray of gravel, his brisk driving the very antithesis of his slow, shuffling gait, not to mention his slow, shuffling personality. Again he huffed and puffed his way upstairs and down, only to declare,

“Aye, it’s o’er.”

Not one of us was fooled into looking up towards the stentorian snoring this time, and he departed in another shower of gravel.

The next day when he arrived, all was silent above the living room.

“Aye,” he muttered on descending the stairs, and helped himself to a seat at the dining table in order to complete the death certificate. Over three days and three visits he had spoken a grand total of twenty words. I guess stereotypes are born and thrive simply because so many people really fit them, and Dr. MacElroy certainly fit the bill. I can never know whether he sipped a few shots of single malt by the fire on a winter’s evening, but as perfect as he was in every other way, how could he not?

Denver, 2013

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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The Wisdom of GLBT Identity by Betsy

Here are thoughts of a fourteen year old high school girl in 1950 or so.

Mind you, this conversation with herself never took place on a conscious level. I know, however it took place unconsciously and remained festering in her psyche into adulthood.

“I know I’m supposed to get excited about being with boys but I just can’t help myself. I really want to be with girls especially Ann. Talk about getting excited. My palms get sweaty every time she comes my way. My heart is pounding in my chest. I want to make an impression on her. What I really want is to go out with her. What I really, really want is to go steady with her. She thinks I just want to be friends, and we are friends. But I want so much more. I want to be closer to her than friends.

“Yet I know this is a fantasy. Worse, I can’t tell my parents about my feelings, my true feelings. I know from things I have heard that they would probably not take me seriously, and dismiss the subject, and tell me never to mention it again. They would not only dismiss the subject, they would dismiss me. If I persisted in telling them who I really am, they would probably punish me. They might even reject me. They mean well, but they want me to pretend to be someone I am not. I know that if I do not do just that I will be punished or even rejected. That hurts a lot.

“Telling my friends is just as scary. It is not an option, just as telling my parents is not an option. I won’t tell my friends because I want to be accepted. I want to go to parties and dances. Being an outcast would be unbearable for me, even if it means pretending to have feelings I don’t have.”

This monologue never took place in my conscious mind. I probably did not have enough experience in life to have the insight to know that I was choosing to pretend to be someone I was not. But I did have enough knowledge to choose a path that would ensure my acceptance which apparently was more important to me then than expressing my true nature.

A wise person is a person who has both knowledge and experience AND the ability to apply those qualities in daily life. Lacking the experience ingredient is likely the reason I did not come out until I was nearly fifty years old. As I was growing up and as a young adult, I had the knowledge that to identify as homosexual was unacceptable for me. That is IDENTIFYING as homosexual was not an option. It was years later that it became clear to me that to BE homosexual is not in the realm of choices one makes. To behave or not to behave as such is the choice.

As I grew older I learned from experience that to not identify as that which I am, can be devastating, depressing in the medical sense of the word, ie, causing clinical depression, or a myriad of other health problems to say nothing of the behavioral problems and addictions rampant in our community brought on by denying one’s true identity. By mid-life I had the knowledge and the experience to know that to remain in that state of denial of myself would be devastating to my well being.

The wisdom of identifying as lesbian became abundantly clear.

Today there are still many parents who do not accept their gay children as well as others who are not parents who are not accepting of LGBTs in society. But many parents and others who have increased their knowledge and have opened their eyes are accepting–far more than 60 years ago.

One reason for the great strides that have been made towards this acceptance is that many LGBT people have had the courage and the wisdom to not pretend, and to choose to come out of the closet and live out their true identity publicly and without apology or shame. This attitude has not come easily for many. And for some the acceptance of our own identity has come later in life. But then, unlike our sexual orientation, we are not born with knowledge and we are not born with experience. Wisdom must be acquired over time. Is that not what makes wisdom so valuable?

Denver, 2012

About the Author

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

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The Sound of Silence by Nicholas

I was buying this car, I told myself, so I could get away from traffic. In the summer of 1970, I purchased the first car I ever owned, a 1962 or ‘64 or maybe ’66, golden brown Ford station wagon. Like so many others back then, I was eager to leave the city of San Francisco; I was getting out. Freedom, just like the American myth says, freedom has its own wheels and comfy seats. Gas was only 28 cents a gallon. So, I was on my way.

I headed out across the Bay Bridge, through Berkeley and out east on I-80, past Sacramento and into the Sierras. The mountains. My plan was to spend much of the summer around Nevada City where my friend Keith had a cabin. I wouldn’t have a cabin, though, since I was daring myself to go back to nature in a big way. I would spend my time in the forest hiking and camping. I had my sleeping bag and my dog and other assorted gear and planned to spend days and nights exploring the wilderness of the Sierras. I’d be living out of my car when I wasn’t walking.
The Sierra Nevada are spectacularly beautiful mountains, especially for being so heavily traveled. You can still—at least, in 1970 you could still—really get away. Really find peace and find a quiet that was absolute. It was a quiet that was so complete that it fairly roared with no sound. Oh, there was the occasional buzz of an insect, the call of a bird, a crackling tree branch, but in the heat of the day, not much else. At night, the quiet dark was broken only by the howling of the coyotes as they formed their packs for hunting.
I was alone. Alone at last. Completely alone. Oh, the sweet solitude.
It was crushing. The silence was nothing less than ear-splitting. I could feel it like a weight on my ear drums. I could hear the sound of nothing. I could hear nothingness. I had never before in my life been in a place with a near total absence of sound. There was no background noise. The only noise was the noise of nature and nature usually isn’t very noisy.
And it was scary. In the dark, I was convinced a bear was tramping through the forest to munch on my bones when actually it was a ground squirrel scampering through the leaves and brush on the forest floor.
I loved it. And it was driving me crazy. I found that I loved my solitude but I didn’t care much for being alone. Solitude is something to cherish and an experience that can enrich life. It is also a common form of torture and can eat away a psyche. Solitude can give you strength and it can kill your strength.
And now long after that brave summer, I still value solitude—from time to time, like having the house to myself or meditating on a mountainside or taking a trip to the Shambhala Mountain retreat center to sit before their big Buddha. A bit of solitude is a big help to regaining perspective. But I’m not overly keen on being alone much. When Jamie goes away on one of his periodic business trips, I relish being alone in the house and doing whatever I want when I want without having his schedule to consider. After two days of this, the house gets to be a silent, empty, lonely place.
I actually have found it is possible to capture a bit of solitude—yes, solitude comes in bits unless you’re the desert island type—in a downtown Denver coffee shop where I frequently retreat to do things like withdraw and read or begin writing little essays to read on Monday afternoons.
I’m a city person and like having people around even if I don’t know them or do anything with them. Urban solitude is more of an internal state, a sense of self and a sense of privacy even when you’re in public.
So, I don’t need mountain forests to find respite and retreat. A nice afternoon nap in my quiet basement will do, thanks. Maybe some Tibetan bowls ringing softly to define the quiet while chasing away the crush of silence.

About the Author

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

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Coming Out Spiritually by Michael King

As I reflect on this topic it seems to mirror in many ways the slow and meandering journey of discovering the gay part of me and eventually becoming a gay activist.

I didn’t understand the differences between religious, spiritual, etc. I now have my own definitions however prefer to avoid the various terms. People state that they are non-denominational, new age, protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and the list goes on.

I’ve not felt comfortable with any of those labels. Faiths, creeds and rituals may be a part of being religious but I don’t think of them as being spiritual. There are, I am sure, those who are very much in touch spiritually and still participate in religious practices.

My family seldom attended church or even mentioned anything religious and fortunately left the whole arena fairly free of doctrines, duties, biblical teachings, fear, or guilt. I was grown and away from home by the time I encountered a vague concept of the term spiritual.

I did have an experience, the first of many, that has affected my perspective that I will call spiritual. I had the same name as my grandfather. I have since change my name. The family was present and I stood back by the door when he took his last breath. I was 15 and as far as I know no one else saw what I did. I was very calm and detatched. I had a sense that everything was OK. He and I seemed to have an understanding. I was an observer, and at the same time as I heard the death rattle, a shiny golden orb jumped from his head, wavered, and then quickly departed through the wall behind and to the side of the bed. I had the assurance that some kind of future followed this life.

I tried to identify with many belief systems over the years but couldn’t accept any until after the transforming experience I had when I made the decision to divorce my first wife and remove the children from their mother’s influence. I clearly stated to her, “I don’t give a shit about you or about myself. I’m going to do what is best for the children!” An experience of being in the future in the presence of what I have called a being of light and pure love followed. I’ll not go into further detail but my life changed forever.

I looked for information about my vision as that is what I think it was. I read and studied, attended lectures and workshops, read the Bible from cover to cover and most if not all the writings that were not included in the versions most often accepted. I explored eastern teachings, metaphysical writings and any other potential source hoping to find a better understanding of my experience.

I’ve since forgotten most of what all I studied because I didn’t find the answers I was looking for until one day after we moved to Denver. I was on my way to a bookstore to purchase some books that might have some answers when a voice directed me to buy a particular book. I recognized the voice but that’s another story.

I will say that I not only got the answers to the questions but I also received an expanded perspective far beyond anything I might have imagined. Experientially I am gaining in an understanding and have progressed in some levels of maturity.

When did I come out? That is probably the part that is most humorous. Every time I had an insight or learned something that I thought was profound I tried to share it with those around me. Mistake!!! No one was interested. Everyone has found what they want or have a prescribed approach they plan to take to get their answers. I came out so many times and was ignored just like when I came out gay. Everyone already knew it and some told me they were waiting for me to figure it out.

Among the blessings I have are the love I have from my family and close friends and some that aren’t so close, my rich inner life and the many insights, visions and personal revelations that have formed my present self. I have great appreciation for these blessings.

So long as there is consciousness, expanded awarenesses and new expressions of a spiritual nature can continue to enrichen our lives. I don’t think that coming out spiritually will ever stop.

July 1, 2013

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.