Merlyn – Sage Telling Your Story

December 2, 2013February 26, 2019

The Essence of GLBTQ by Merlyn

Michael and I get tested every six months at the STD clinic at 17th and Pearl St. We went on Friday after he got of work at The Center’s front desk. While we were waiting for our turn I was watching two young male couples.

I realized how much different their lives are today compared to what my life was like when I was at their age.

Both couples are used to being who and what they are sexually around anyone and they don’t care what anyone thinks.

The youngest couple were in their late teens and looked like the punks you see on the street, both of them were around 5ft 9, 120 lbs, dirty, mated hair, piercings all over their faces and torn clothes. They were making a statement that they were gay both bottoms and they were really nervous about the test results. They were both OK and were very happy when they got the results.

The older couple were mid 20s, 5′ 11″ 190 lbs and in real good shape. They were dressed in comfortable clothes that did not make any kind of statement about who or what they are sexually. But the way acted around each other you could tell they are lovers that have been together a long time and probably act that way anytime they are together.

I can only imagine what it would be like to have the freedom to live your life in a world where you never have to hide anything about yourself and no one cares if you are having sex with a man this week or had sex with a woman last week.

I believe in a generation or two from now most of the labels we have today will only be talked about in the history books.

The world is changing and as the world changes more and more people will not allow anyone to judge or make them feel guilty about who they are.

Denver, July 15, 2013

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

November 18, 2013February 26, 2019

Hospitality by Merlyn

When I think about all of the places I have been the one that made me feel the most welcome was Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. My girlfriend in 1983 and I were on the first of many long trips together. I sold radio cab #32 in Portland, Oregon, paid the rent three months in advance, and hit the road. We were heading east through Tennessee when we heard that we could take a tour though the Jack Daniels distillery. We were driving a ford van set up for camping and we were parking at Kroger stores to sleep. We got into Lynchburg just before it got dark. When we drove past Jack Daniels there was a big camper parked in the parking lot, so we decided to sleep there.

We were still sleeping when someone woke us up by tapping on the window. When I looked out he told us they that had fresh coffee and to come inside.

We got dressed and went into a building with a big lunch room where a guy met us and told us to help ourselves to coffee and donuts. He gave use a handful of postcards to fill out and told us they would stamp and mail them for us. He said the tour would start about 9:30 and would take about two and a half hours.

At 9:30 there were around thirty people waiting. They split us up into groups of five people and told us the guides worked at the plant and took turns showing people around. Our guide sounded like just like Jerry Reed and it was fun to hear him talk. The first thing he did was take a photo of the five of us. It was waiting at the post office when we got home.

Some interesting facts about the distillery and Jack Daniels:

Lynchburg, Tennessee is in a dry county. You cannot buy Jack Daniels there.

There were ducks on the banks of a small stream that were falling down and walking into each other. They would get into the old grain and were all walking around drunk.

We got to go inside a small cabin that Jack Daniels had used for his office. He had a big safe that was hard to get open, one day Jack lost his temper and kicked it so hard he broke is big toe. It got infected and the infection killed him.

They filter the whiskey with charcoal that they make at the plant. Since used charcoal that’s been soaked in alcohol is a fire hazard, a single match will set it on fire, someone came up with the idea of selling it under the name Match Light Charcoal.

After the tour he invited us to a free meal at Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House & Restaurant at 1PM. Mary was in her mid eighties and would make a dinner for everyone even if the Boarding house wasn’t full and we were lucky enough to be invited to one of the best southern meals I have ever had.

We stopped at the only store in town on the way to lunch and were going to come back after lunch and buy some t-shirts but they were already closed when we finished. We did not spend a dime all day.

Most of Jack Daniels whiskey comes out of Chicago today. Lynchburg is still operating and making the most expensive Whiskey the same old way they always did. They have over 250,000 visitors a year.

We had a real taste of southern hospitality that day.

July 29, 2013

About the Author

October 29, 2013February 26, 2019

Coming Out Spiritually by Merlyn

I have never come out spiritually, I look inside of myself, It’s the only place I have ever found the spiritual answers that are so important.

I was born into a family that faithfully attended The United Brotherhood Church in Beach Park, Michigan. Everything we did was a sin so we had to be saved over and over again with tent revival meetings, church camps and temperance meetings.

On Sunday mornings we would all show up at the church, stand up with a Jesus loves me look on our faces and sing the songs, drink the blood and eat the body of Christ, leave the church and start sinning again.

I realized there wasn’t any point in living in fear of going to hell and feeling guilty all the time.

When I was around 10 years old I stopped believing in organized religion, the Bible, God and Jesus. I refused to go to church after I turned eleven. I don’t think I have been in a church more than 20 times on a Sunday morning in the last 58 years.

One of the best things about being a nonbeliever is I don’t have to try to fit any new beliefs in with my old beliefs. I have had a completely open mind whenever I have studied any of the great spiritual teachings that millions of people believe in. I have never found any of them that I can believe in.

I know a lot of people that will never be able to find peace and understanding because they have so many hang-ups brought on because of their religious convictions.

The only time I ever think about religion is when I’m around other people that bring the subject up.

About the Author

October 16, 2013February 26, 2019

Don’t Touch Me There by Merlyn

I did not like to be touched anywhere by anyone when I was a child. Touching each other was something we did not do in the house I grew up in. It always made me feel real uncomfortable. When a teacher or someone would stand in back of me and even rest their hand on my shoulder, I would want to run away.

People can touch each other in a lot of different ways. Experimenting with other preteen boys it was okay to look and touch each other physically, but I would not even think about sharing any affection with them by holding hands or hugging each other. My emotions would not allow that kind of touching. It would be against everything I was taught up to that point in my life.

When I became a teenager I learned what it was like to share affection and touch each other with one of my girlfriends. From then on I could not get enough. Most of the time there weren’t any limits where we touched. It felt good and we never really cared if someone saw what we were doing.

I was 64 years old the first time I allowed myself to have a emotional connection with a man. I will never forget what it felt like to wake up and realize that I had allowed myself to be relaxed enough to fall asleep in his arms.

Most women welcome a non-sexual hug, and I enjoy giving them one.

With men, I sometimes still have a hard time being natural and relaxed when it comes to non-sexual physical contact.

At this point in my life about the only time that I don’t enjoy having someone touch me is when I can smell and feel their perfume, or when I’m near the #15 bus.

© 22 April 2013

About
the Author

October 2, 2013February 26, 2019

Remembering by Merlyn

I read a story on line a few years ago that made a lot of sense to me. It was about why time starts going faster as people get older. The point of the story is the fact that you only remember things that are new. When you are young everything is new, interesting and you remember everything. Days, weeks and years last forever.

As we get older we get set in our ways. Can you remember the last time you went to the store? Most of the time the memory of the trip just blends into all of the other times we made the same trip to the same store; the time is lost. We fill our lives doing the same things over and over there is hardly anything new to remember. Our lives are boring, we are boring, and life is boring.

The one point I want to make is this:

All God ever does is watch us.

He will kill us when we get boring!

Remember:

We must never ever be BORING!!!

About the Author

September 18, 2013February 26, 2019

The Accident by Merlyn

Most auto accidents don’t just happen. If you study what caused them it comes down to driver error, badly designed highways, sloppy workmanship or manufactures cutting too many corners when they design the cars.

I had a good friend that was an engineer for GM way back in 1974. I got to know him when I was working at a Chevy dealership. He brought his mother’s car in for some warranty work. He was telling me about how he was waiting for the weather to clear up so he could fly up to a small town in northern Michigan to try to fix a Chevy van that the dealer could not fix.

The complaint was every once in a while the driver would have to push real hard on the brakes to stop the truck. Dealers were replacing all kinds of brake parts trying to fix the problem without success. No one knew what was causing it.

A few weeks earlier I had a van come in with a complaint that every once in a while the motor would be racing when he came to a stop. I checked everything and could not find anything wrong; I could not duplicate the complaint so I gave the truck back.

The truck came back in about a week later with the same complaint and this time I got to talk to the owner. He told me the only time it happened was in the morning on his way to work when he got off the freeway.

We kept the truck overnight and the next morning I was able to duplicate the complaint. I remembered that when I had tried to come to a stop the motor was going so fast I had a hard time stopping.

I was able to figure out that someone at the factory had left a little tube out of the carburetor and the only time it effected anything was if you drove at highway speed on a day when the temperature was below 30 degrees.

The engineer called the dealer and told them what to do and the next day he called me to let me know that the part was missing and that he did not have to fly there to find out what was happening.

GM came out with a bulletin stating to check for the missing part if you had braking or fast idle complaints. Over the years I found that part missing on at least 5 other carburetors.

In any industry there has to be enough death or injury accidents to justify a recall.

How many accidents happened when people were trying to stop on icy roads with the motor racing which caused them to lose control of the vehicle? The trucks with the missing part should have been recalled.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

August 30, 2013February 26, 2019

My Favorite Place by Merlyn

My favorite place is where I’m at right now. Michael and I have been together for almost two years, we do everything together with very little DRAMA. I’m in the best relationship I have ever been in my life with Michael.

We both like to travel and we are spending a lot of time right now looking for fun things to do on our next road trip.

We will be gone for 5 to 8 weeks with only two destinations, Niagara Falls and Boston.

We plan to wander, we don’t to have to be anywhere at any given time.

We will be going through about 20 states. If we are having fun we will stay where ever we are as long as we want, if we get bored we will just head down the road.

We are both making lists of things we may or may not want to see or do in each State. Neither one of us are interested in going to a lot of the tourist traps in big cities.

Some of the things on our list so far.

Explore the nude beaches and small towns along the shoreline of three of the five great lakes.

Michael wants to shop at about a thousand antique malls.

We have a list of 15 gay campgrounds that we will be near to on the trip. Two of them have jumped to the top of the list.

Depending on where we are Labor Day weekend we may want to party in Gibson Pennsylvania at a gay campground with about 400 of our closest friends.

About the Author

August 13, 2013February 26, 2019

One Monday Afternoon by Merlyn

I like to go on vacation the week after Labor Day; the kids are back in school and most of the places we liked to go to would still be open without all the people. We moved into a new place three years earlier and had been busy repairing and remodeled our new home. The only thing left to do was update the laundry room. I had redone the pumping, wiring and replaced the flooring. The only thing left to do on Monday was put the new washer and dryer in place. Load the old ones in the trailer and take them to be recycled. Then get out of town. The weather was supposed to be nice in southern Nevada and Arizona so we were planning on heading that way.

We were still in bed sleeping when the phone started ringing; my girlfriend’s son called to tell to turn on the TV, a plane had crashed into the world trade center. We were lying in bed watching the news when the second tower was hit.

I had been reading stories on line about possible terrorist attacks against us but I had dismissed them.

We spend the morning watching the TV and finishing the laundry room. The news was reporting that all of the planes that were flying were ordered to land at the nearest airport. I had the computer on a site that showed all of the planes in the air anywhere in the country, within an hour there were only a few planes left as one by one they landed and the sky was empty.

Around noon I went outside and was loading the old washer and dryer on the trailer when I realized how quiet everything was. We lived about a mile from the flight path to PDX airport and could always see and hear planes going over. I looked at the sky and realized our country would never be the same.

I went back inside and we watched the TV as we ate lunch and talked about what might happen next. Since no one knew what was going to happen we decided we did not want to be 1000 + miles from home and not be able to get back if the attacks continued.

We spent a week on the Oregon coast and spent the rest of our vacation just hanging around home.

After twenty years we never made a big trip together again after September 11, 2001

P.S. After I finished this story I was thinking about it and realized 911 was on a Tuesday. We were planning on leaving on Monday but the washer was not available to be picked up until Monday afternoon.

About the Author

July 24, 2013February 26, 2019

Writing by Merlyn

I have never been and will never be what I consider a good writer.
Most of my life I made a real good living fixing things
The only writing I needed to use until story time was filling out the work orders,

I was real good at writing the three C’s. (Complaint-Cause-Correction)
I never wanted the people that approved paying me to question what I did to fix whatever I worked on.
I used the least amount of words possible and used just the facts that I knew they needed to know.

I enjoyed working on something that no one else could fix.
Everyone likes a challenge. Some people like to work on crossword puzzles. I loved to work on the unfixable. I would get so wrapped up in what was causing the complaint that the day would fly by until I found the cause.

I had to help a new kid fill out the three C’s once after he had turned in the paperwork.
(Complaint: won’t run. Cause: broke. Correction: replace broken part). He used 6 words but left out all of the facts.

I have been coming to the Telling My Story group every Monday afternoon for almost two years, most of the time I do have a story to share but the words don’t flow from my thoughts to the keyboard. When I first started I would peck away at my keyboard for hours till I had about 900 words in the Document, then I would I edit all the crap out of the story and end up with a round 300 words. I’m getting better, I find it a lot easier to get what I’m feeling into my stories but I can’t honestly say that I don’t enjoy the writing part of Telling My Story. This story has 381 words.

I really come to story time to hear everyone else tell their stories. Almost everyone in the group has been writing all of their lives. When I listen to them tell their stories I can feel the emotions they feel about the subject. I can tell how much thought they put into each sentence as they wrote it and I think they have a lot of fun writing their stories.

About the Author

July 8, 2013February 26, 2019

Exploring by Merlyn

I have always loved to explore someplace I have never been before. The places I have been that I think about the most are the places I have just stumbled on.

We did not see anyone for three days at small lake in Utah. We were parked under a big tree with a cool breeze coming off the water that kept the bugs away from a clearing that went into the clean water. We had the freedom to be naked and do anything we wanted.

Michael and I are planning on taking a couple of trips this summer. The first one will be a short sentimental journey for Michael that will give us a few destinations in places that he hasn’t been to in 50 years. Michael grew up in Truth or Consequences NM; he went to college in Silver City NM and taught School in Artesia NM. We will spend most of our time south of Albuquerque in southern New Mexico

The rest of the time we plan on just wandering exploring places we have never been. Stopping in small towns and checking out the antique stores, galleries, and museums. The most interesting places we found on the last trip was from talking to people, asking them what there is to see and what they like to do in the area.

If everything works out OK we are planning a road trip east into New England in the fall. I haven’t been in DC in 30 years so I want to stop there for a day or so and see the new monuments that weren’t there then. We are talking about driving up the eastern seaboard from Delaware north then back across upstate New York. Michael wants to see Niagara Falls.

The rest of the time we will just wander.

An ex girl friend sent me the article she cut out of some paper and the picture she took of me on a trip we went on together in the early 80s along the Canadian border in Washington.
She called it “All that wander are not lost.”