Tag: Life Stories

Posted on

The Interview by Ray S

Q:  “Can I, or may I come over and interview you
for a piece I am doing for the station?”
     Although I’d known
Betsey was on the broadcast staff of the local fine arts FM radio station as
well as a musicologist that did background talks for the symphony, I was at a
loss as to what I had to offer.
A:  “Well, yes, it would be good to visit with
you, but what have I got to contribute to your job?”
     Her response informed
me that she was doing a general interest piece prior to the opening night
festivities in Central City at the Opera House. 
Someone had mentioned to her that a mutual acquaintance had long ago
been an usher or something on the Opera House staff.
     “Local color, human
interest,” she said.
     With the old what
goes around comes around feeling I said, “Ask away.”
Q.  “How did you learn about a summer job at
Central?”
A.  It was my junior year at college and a
sorority sister of my future wife told me I might be able to land a job
starting the end of May.  She was a voice
major and had worked at the Central City Opera box office in the men’s
department of the D & F store on Arapahoe St. in downtown Denver.
Not
looking forward to another sweltering summer in the Windy City, I jumped at the
chance to be in the midst of real live theatre and opera at that.
Q.  “So you got the job.  What did you do?”
A.  Once I boned up on the history of Central and
particularly Opera House, I would have washed dishes or scrubbed the Face on
the Bar Room Floor.  Seemed like the
business manager needed an eager and possibly rational gopher.  I lived in the ushers’ dormitory, ate at West
Matinees “Olde Fashioned” dining room on Eureka St. across from the Teller
House.  Every morning we breakfasted on
Miss Hanah’s  huge cinnamon buns.
My
routine was to drive my boss down to Denver every day to the office in the City
and County Building, run errands all day, and we would return to Central in
time to open the box office at the Teller House.  I couldn’t believe my life had been so
transformed.  I felt like an apprentice
to my employer learning all about what makes the show get going.
Q. “What
was the production that year?”
A.  The board and artistic director had to rile
the old guard by announcing it would be Strauss’s “Die Fledermous,” outraged
that grand opera had been replaced by an “operetta.”  As it turned out after the opening night
performance the house was sold out for the season, showmanship surpassed KULTUR
with a “K.”  Then to add insult to injury
the second 1/2 of the season was to be “Diamond Lil” starring in her original
role, Ms. Mae West.
Q. “I’ve
heard it was a beautiful production. 
What stands out in your memory?”
A.  For me the whole opera scene opened up, it was
a wonderland come to life.  The music is
unforgettable, the singers, from stars to chorus and orchestra, all so genuine,
professional, and talented.
Learning
to know the director and his staff.  Most
all major cast members brought their families so they needed baby sitting
too.  It was one big party in the cast
housing, but strictly business in the theatre.
    The
experience and opportunity to immerse one’s self in this high altitude
opera/theatre realm was like moving into an alternate life. So much happened
that summer in that wonderful old opera house. 
And to me, that I couldn’t believe I had my own voyage through a musical
looking glass. Guess I was forever stage struck and the battery died in Betsy’s
recorder.
     End of Interview!

About the Author

Posted on

Nobody Warned Me about This by Nicholas

          Maybe it was because my parents assumed that their kids
would just know better, I don’t recall my youth being burdened with parental
warnings. There was none of the hectoring others have told me that they got from
their parents about do this or don’t do that. My sophisticated mom and dad relied
on that mystical bond between parent and child in which good and harm are
communicated without words or maybe with the slightest gesture or frown.
          Oh, there were the usual admonitions to drive carefully
when I went out. And once when I was about to head off to college, mom asked if
I knew about homosexuals in an attempted warning that I stopped short. It
wasn’t that I feared I was one and she was going to out me but rather that any
conversation about anything sexual at age 18 with my mother was just too creepy
to let happen.
          Once I sort of asked for a warning. I was testing out my
new independence living away from home at college. Ohio State,
like every college campus in the country in 1964, was rumbling with movements
of change and I as a freshman jumped right in. It was a battle over the rights
of students to hear the free speech of forbidden speakers, namely Marxist
political theorists. Talk was there would be a demonstration with the
likelihood of arrests the next day.
          I mentioned all this to mom and dad in my regular weekly
phone call to see what they would say. Like, no, don’t do it, you’ll ruin your
future. But no such warning came. Mom thought about it and said that I should
do whatever I thought was best. Now, how was I going to rebel with an attitude
like that? I felt almost encouraged to get arrested. Maybe it was a trick. But
mom didn’t play tricks; she pretty much said exactly what she was thinking.
          So much for warnings. How is it then, I wonder, that I
turned out to be, as we used to say back then, one of the people my parents warned
me about. Free thinking, authority questioning, not too impressed with money
for its own sake, experimenter with odd drugs and even odder spiritualities,
totally supportive of people who go to great lengths to shape their lives, and
even their bodies, their way, and, to top it off, queer. It isn’t that I set
out to break all the rules, just the big ones. Perhaps mom and
dad knew that I was destined to break or ignore just about every admonition
they would have given me so they just didn’t bother.
          I joined radical political organizations, didn’t often cut
my hair, refused to join the army when told to do so, picked a pretty useless
college major instead of a practical one, never got around exactly to having a
career (I’ve had a few here and there, actually), ran away to San Francisco
twice, went to all-night dance parties when I was 35, and ended up marrying a
man.
          And in the end, I can say that taking risks and ignoring
even well-meaning warnings almost always pays off. If nothing else, I learned
some things I would never do again. I have sown my wild oats and they have
grown up to nourish me well over the years. I think Edith Piaf sang a song about
that.
          And now, though I went against most parental warnings and
admonitions, spoken or unspoken, I can say that the parents I ignored and shocked
many times are now my role models. We stayed together and sort of grew up
together—me changing and them changing. They too did things their way and they
aged well, remaining active though never failing to take naps, and learning new
things while steadfastly keeping their old familiar ways so that I say, yes,
they are my role models now.
Nobody
warned me that I’d come around to saying that.

About the Author

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

Three Loves: Three Losses by Phillip Hoyle

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

About the Author

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

Posted on

NEVER-never Land by Gillian

I
completely inhabit a never-never land all of my own making.
Growing
up in remote farm country I said I could NEVER be happy living in the city,
and here I am living happily
in the middle of three million people in the Denver metro area.
With
that same rural attitude I said I could NEVER be happy working in some big corporation,
and here I am retired after
thirty wonderful years with IBM.
After
I got divorced I said I shall NEVER get married again,
and here I am after 25
wonderful years with Betsy.
And we know we are married even
if the Government does not.
So
if ever you hear me say I could NEVER live …
wherever,  just look for me there.
Never-never
land seems where I’m destined to be!

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.
Posted on

Neverland by Ricky

           I first went to Neverland in 1953 at the age of 5 when my parents took me to an indoor theater for the first time to see Walt Disney’s animated movie Peter Pan, which begins with the narrator telling the viewing audience that the action about to take place, “has happened before, and will all happen again”, only this time it is happening in Edwardian London, in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury. 
          The movie is an adaptation of Sir James Matthew Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.  In 1935 Walt wanted Peter Pan to be his second film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but he couldn’t get the rights from the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London* until four years later and then WWII interrupted production.  Barrie’s 1911 novelization of the play is titled Peter Pan and Wendy. 
Cover of the 1911 Novel
          1953 was the year that my parents bought me the large Disney book of Peter Pan complete with text and lots of pictures of scenes from the film.
          The next time I remember going to Neverland was in 1955 at age 7, when my family watched the NBC television broadcast of the Broadway musical of Peter Pan; starring Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook, which had earned Tony Awards for both stars in 1954.
          Soon after the TV broadcast, I visited Neverland yet again that same year after the opening of Disneyland on July 18th.  My favorite areas of the park are Fantasy Land and Tomorrow Land.  From that visit on, I have probably lived in a fantasy world and the world of the future; jumping into either one of them alternately and refusing to live in the present reality.  My favorite rides have remained the same over the years; the Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland rides.  Both are fantasy related but to me were the most beautifully crafted and colorful rides.
          The Peter Pan ride begins with one sitting in a small pirate ship flying out the window of the nursery following Peter’s shadow into a nighttime scene flying over the city of London and around Big Ben.  The city below is aglow with lights brought out by overhead “black lights.”  The illusion of flying was most impressive to me.  The ride continues through the night sky until you circle around the Neverland portrayed in the movie.  It then continues through various dioramas from the movie and ends at the opposite end of the starting point.  I loved it.
          The Alice in Wonderland ride is similar but featuring scenes from that movie. In spite of the Queen of Hearts, the ride is beautiful, colorful, and mostly non-threatening except the short part in the scary nighttime forest.  I liked the peacefulness of the ride.
          Another ride in Fantasy Land is the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ride.  I wanted to go on that ride but my parents continued their refusal to ride on what they perceived as a “kids” ride (either that or they didn’t have the money to spend).  I have always maintained that kid or adult rides are absolutely no fun to do alone.  As with the previously mentioned rides, this one began benignly with lots of good music and colors in the scenes from the movie.  The part where the ride goes into the Dwarf’s mine was especially nice with all the multicolored gemstones lining the tunnels.  Then there was the exit, which was suddenly blocked by the evil and ugly witch and the vehicle turned down a dark side tunnel.  Another exit appeared only to be blocked and another turn down yet another tunnel; only this one held a nasty surprise.  Dangling in the dark were black threads, which slid across my face and felt like spider webs.  It didn’t help any that at that moment a large glowing spider appeared on the wall just ahead and to the side.  Well, I lost my joy, happiness, and composure right then.  As the song asserts, “I don’t like spiders and snakes and that ain’t what it takes to love me…”  Mr. Disney.  I panicked and was really scared that there were spiders in the vehicle and on me.  By the time the ride ended, I was crying and ran to my waiting parents, probably yelling something about spiders.  I had forgotten that this was a ride and that everything was fake.
          Looking back on that event all I can think of to account for my behavior is one of two things.  Either I was a “scaredy cat” or my parents’ warnings about the Black Widow spiders (found around the outside of our house) being poisonous had really been taken very seriously.  I still hate spiders and I don’t like snakes.
          From 1958 thru 1965 (ages 10 to 17), I went to Neverland whenever I visited my dad for his one-week-at-Christmas visitation rights.  We always went to Disneyland and I rode my two favorite rides among others.  I only rode the Snow White ride once again when my wife and I went there and I told her the story of my panic.  That time there were no black threads.
          Perhaps the trip to Neverland that had the most impact on my life was in 1960 at age 12.  That was the year my toy box from when I was 7 reappeared in my life and I found the large Disney book on Peter Pan.  When I began to read the book I returned to Neverland.  During the reading I mentally wished that I would not grow up and would stay 12 forever (a version of the “Peter Pan Pledge”) and I internalized the wish. 
The Peter Pan Pledge

“I pledge allegiance to Peter Pan and the Land of Never Never, to stay young in mind, [and] in spirit; to grow old and grouchy never!”
          If you don’t count the opinions of my children, most people who know me really well would say that I’ve done a good job in keeping that pledge.
          In 1953, I went to Neverland for the first time.  In all truthfulness, I never left.
Sir James M. Barrie, 1st Baronet
*  “In 1929, J. M. Barrie donated all rights in Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.  In 1987, fifty years after Barrie’s death, copyright expired under UK law. However, the following year a unique act of Parliament restored royalty income from all versions of Peter Pan to the hospital, which means that very sick children will continue to benefit from J. M. Barrie’s generous gift for as long as the hospital exists.”
© 12 March 2012

Illustration from 1911 Edition



 

Illustration from 1911 Edition



“Never say goodbye, …”

 

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA
Ricky was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los Angeles.  He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA.  Just prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

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

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.  “I find writing these memories to be theraputic.”

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.
Posted on

The Strangest Person I Ever Met by Colin Dale

I’m going to introduce you
to a villain.  I thought of a bunch of good strange people I’ve known, but none
tells you much about me, and telling you about me is what I strive for in
storytelling.  So I’m going to introduce
a villain—but first . . .
I sat there, as we all did,
probably, trying to think of the strangest person I ever met.  Imagining we’ve all lived good, full, rich
lives, and been open to all sorts of experiences, we each can think of, as I
could, dozens and dozens of strange characters we’ve crossed paths with.  Sometimes they were brief encounters, like
the man I met on a broken-down Trailways bus in the Poconos when I was a teen,
the man who was dressed in full 19th century British military garb, the man who
turned to me and said his experience of being on a broken-down bus reminded him
of the Crimean War. Sometimes our brushes with strange people are more prolonged,
like the homeless man—and Donald may remember this man—who, when Donald and I
were in visual merchandising at the Denver Dry, would stare fixedly all day
long into the big display windows, rocking from side to side, taking a break
every so often only to place small balled-up bits of aluminum foil under his
upper eyelids.  He was a sad case.  Nothing funny about  him. 
Then, too, there are strange people who are part our lives from
childhood–oddball aunts and uncles—and others who enter our lives—neighbors,
coworkers, even lovers sometimes—strange people we then spend weeks, months,
and even years trying to get back out of our lives.  I once had just such a lover, Lyndon (I’ll
call him), obsessive-compulsive to a fault, who was impatient with my
normal-guy’s sense of order, who one day thought signposts might help: I
arrived home one night, switched on the lights, to find our apartment a
snowstorm of white rectangles, hundreds and hundreds of them, white adhesive
mailing labels stuck to everything: on the tableware drawer, Forks only this compartment, tongs facing
north; on the floor lamps, Sixty-watt
bulbs only; on the glass-top coffee table, Current magazines go on top; on the toilet tissue dispenser, Paper unfurls from bottom-rear.   That was 30 years ago.  I still have a old bureau in a spare room
that today holds odds & ends; on the top drawer, now faded: Paired socks to the left, folded underpants
to the right. 
Too many strange people to
pick from.  Certainly too many from which
to pick the strangest.  As many of us do
when stuck in neutral, we pop open the dictionary.  Or the thesaurus.  That’s what I did, and I found, among
synonyms for strangest: weirdest, oddest, most peculiar, most uncommon,
most off, most irregular, most unaccountable.  I was happy to see that my thesaurus popping
was leading me away from the merely weird and more toward the disturbing.  That opened up all sorts of fresh possibilities
for title of Strangest.
The first guy I thought of
was Bill Reese.  I nominate Bill Reese
for the Strangest Person I Ever Met.  No,
wait, I don’t nominate him—after all, each of us is running his own contest—I
award Bill Reese the crown.  Not just as
the Strangest Person I Ever Met, but also the Meanest, Most Upsetting, Most Damaging.  Bill Reese—or Dr. William Reese—was my
English Department advisor at City College in New York. Advisors were usually
the youngest among the professors, a chore dumped on them by their
seniors.  Reese was maybe 30, but maybe
not even that.  He had the face of a
cherub, but the voice of high rpm machine long overdue for oiling.  Cocky and aloof, his head pitched to one
side, his eyes never on you, Reese’s delivery was a rapid-fire stream of
“The truth of the matter is . . . ” and “You’d be well advised
to . . . ” and “Among your shortcomings are . . . “.  To my eyes, a kid from a working class family
who had serious doubts about whether he even belonged in college, Reese was
Authority.  He was Judge.   He was Erudition.  Reese was Gatekeeper to a life I wanted but for
which I wasn’t sure I was qualified.
In awarding the title of
Strangest, Meanest, Most Damaging to Reese, I’m doing it not as Ray of 2012,
Ray who’s tested, tried, and pretty much worldly wise, but as Ray of 1962 who
was nervous and naive.  Ray of Today
finds it difficult to believe that Ray of 1962 couldn’t figure out what was
going on when Bill Reese would say at the close of one of our advising sessions,
after he’d turned me into a dishrag of insecurities, “What do you say we
have dinner this Saturday and I’ll explain more of what I’ve just told
you?”, or “I’m sure I can get Dr. Hitchings to up your grade to an
A-minus.  What say we have a drink and
talk about it?  I’m done a 5.”  Ray of 1962: dumb, dumb, dumb!  Needless to say, I failed to see the
obvious.  I never took Reese up on his
dinner offer.  Or drink offer.  I took my honestly earned B-plus and let it
go at that.
Before I finish my story of
Bill Reese, I want to award another crown; this one to One of the Most Understanding
Persons I Ever Met: another professor, this time one of the “elders,”
Dr. Frank Teige, also of the English Department. Dr. Teige was nearing his retirement.  Short, round, with an explosion of white hair
and a beard to match: if you were to phone and ask Central Casting to send over
a Santa, they’d send Frank Teige. There are countless reasons why I would award
the crown of One of the Most Understanding to Dr. Teige; one was the day after
class when, for a reason I can’t explain, I let it all pour out, how I’d had my
fill—nine months’ worth—of Bill Reese’s arrogance and strange behavior.  I remember Dr. Teige letting me vent, then,
after a theatrical pause, saying, “Ray, let me tell you what’s going on
here. . . “
My final meeting with Bill
Reese—I imagine I was pretty rigid, eager to get the year over with so I could
move on to another adviser—Reese leaned back, his head cocked to one side (I
remember this very clearly), saying, “It’s been a year.  A rough year, but you made it through.  I feel it’s my responsibility, at this our
last session, to give you the best possible advice I can.  Advice, not just for next year, but for the
long haul.  (I remember him saying ‘long
haul.’)  If I were you, Ray, in life, I
wouldn’t aim too high.”
I
wouldn’t aim too high.  Had
Reese used a chisel to channel those words into my flesh, he couldn’t have made
a more lasting impression.  That was
1963.  I’ve lived 49 years since, and not
one day have I not remembered Reese’s words. 
And struggled against them. 
Another time and place—in answer to a different storytellers’ prompt—I
could tell you what that struggle was like, but I’ve said enough to explain why—using
strangest in the sense of peculiar, irregular, and unaccountable—I’m
awarding Bill Reese the crown of the Strangest Person I Ever Met.
By the way, the names are
real.  Frank Teige’s name is real because
I care.  Bill Reese’s name is real
because I don’t.   
Finishing up, this has been
an interesting prompt, remembering the strange characters I’ve met in my
life.  Returning briefly to the stage of
my memory: being in a broken-down bus in the Pennsylvania mountains with a
seatmate who was reminded of the Crimean War, seeing again the homeless man I
saw most every day outside the Denver Dry—the deplorable man who placed
aluminum foil under his upper eyelids, and Lyndon, my short-term lover, who
thought mailing labels would prevent me from putting my socks in with the
knives, forks, and spoons. I also met again the damaging, the disturbing.
 What’s odd about this prompt, too: it’s a
one-way prompt: me, looking at all of
them. 
But what about me?  Am I not
strange in some ways?  I’m sure I am.

          This week’s prompt has been—at least for me—the
kettle calling the pot strange.  It’s possible
when I’m toting up my life, when all of the actors will have had their
entrances and exits, if on that day I try to think of the strangest person I
ever met, I may after all decide it was me. 

About the Author

Colin
Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center.  Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a
volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center.  Then and since he has been an actor and
director in Colorado regional theatre. 
Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin
lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The
Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at
RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The
Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most
recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at
the Arvada Center.  For the past 17
years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado
Shakespeare Festival.  Largely retired
from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel,
and memoir.
Posted on

The Fluffo Flotilla Revisited by Pat Gourley

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

About the Author  

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I am currently on an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
Posted on

I’ll Do It My Way by Betsy

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

About the Author

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

How I Learned Some Turkey Anatomy by Nicholas

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

About the Author

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

Posted on

Feeling Different by Donny Kaye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Author

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