Tag: Mushrooms

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Mushrooms, by Phillip Hoyle

I read a lot of Carlos Casteneda, his reports and stories of learning about healing plants used by Yaqui healers and magicians. I wondered about the drug effects, but they were not a part of my life in Kansas or Texas, Missouri or New Mexico, Oklahoma or Colorado. But in those same places his ideas and experiences were emulated by others, even by people I knew. I read—I do a lot of that—but I didn’t experience firsthand what these others knew. Oh, I did occasionally use mushrooms in salads or omelets; I ate them on steaks. I liked them but always thought of them as a luxury, a kind of decadent French sort of thing. But of course those were simple mushrooms with no powers beyond pleasing the pallet or filling the stomach.

One of my friends used the other kind of mushrooms for quite a few years. He always seemed on a quest for esoteric knowledge. Once he told me that if he wasn’t drugging, his quest went flat. High he could convince himself that the worlds of ESP, Zodiac, and other mind-bending pursuits and readings seemed wonderful: the Truth. Later, when seriously addicted and then having a cancer removed my friend was scared away from the drugs he had used and abused. Now he uses only prescribed pain killers and some un-prescribed alcohol. He’s calmed down and in his drug-lite life is saving enough money to pay off his school debts. He’s changed and seems unconcerned about special knowledge. He may feel like he’s once again living life in small-town Mid-America. I suspect, though, dancing to techno music with a light show in some cool bar could easily transport him back into the world of visions, but without the drugs he’d still be saving a lot of money. (Perhaps I’m a bit too hopeful and way too practical.) My friend’s doing well now on a path of self-preservation rather than destruction. His mind is keen. I hope he can keep it that way. Still I fear post traumatic stress reactions could become too much.

I’ve never seemed to need any kind of hallucinogen to get my mind rolling with images of the exotic, unseen, and overwhelming excitement. Always a daydreamer, I experience the unusual and incorporate those ideas and images in my teaching, writing, and artwork. I have done so not to escape, not to clutch or control power, not to become extraordinary; I have done so because the acts and perspectives seem to be what I am. Look at my life: I may seem strange.

See me…

Standing there looking at landforms I somehow love, like the relatively flat tops and steep slopes of the Kansas Flint Hills; OR

Dancing like a traditional American Indian decked out in leather and feathers, wool and beads; OR

Frightening preschoolers when I am wearing an African shaman’s mask at church; OR

Looking at a painting in the Denver Art Museum while I imagine that I am riding a horse across the high plains; OR

Dancing in rehearsal to get my middle aged and elder white choir members into the rhythm of an African American spiritual; OR

Standing alone on a hill at age twenty feeling filled with wonder at my body’s sexual relationship with nature; OR

Smoking my annual cigar at a retreat while I take in the act with a sense of exultation; OR

Sipping a beer while I prepare paints at the outset of an art project in my studio; OR

Prancing with wild abandon while I dance with a friend or alone in a techno bar on an urban Saturday night; OR

Standing on a western Colorado escarpment surrounded by hundreds of petroglyphs imagining that I can hear the horses, smell the fires of piñón and juniper, hear the chant of the singers, respond to the beating of the drum and ratcheting of bull roarers, and watching the lines of dancers greet the vernal equinox; OR

Sitting in my room as I imagine bears emerging from their winter caves to begin the seasons of warmth; OR

Seeing hunters track the deer, the sheep, and the buffalo; OR

Watching a poet friend prostrate himself before the dancing Shiva in the temple of his lonely Denver apartment made full, light, and lively by the divine presence.

I feel, see, smell, touch, taste the world, common, daily, and extraordinarily a swirl of life and love.

Guess I’ll forego the mushrooms and simply close my over-active eyes to explore some other part of my mind.

Well, something like that.

Denver, © 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Mushrooms by Betsy

In ancient Egypt it was
the food of royalty forbidden to the common man.  Food that is capable of producing super human
strength and mystical powers. These were some of the qualities that have been
attributed to mushrooms.  Although their
consumption dates back to ancient times mushrooms were not commercially
produced in the U.S. until the late 19th century. 
They are very
nutritious but are probably valued mostly for what they do not contain: low in
calories, no fat or cholesterol, no sodium, no sugar, and no gluten. (N0 fun)
Personally I dislike
mushroom soup, but I do use raw mushrooms. They are a good vehicle for getting
warm artichoke dip or some other yummy sour cream based dip to my mouth.  Someday I may try making mushroom soup.  It’s the canned kind that I dislike.  It’s something about the flavor. I hated
mushrooms as a child, but am quite fond of them as an adult; that is, when they
are sautéed in plenty of butter with onions. One of the best pizzas I ever ate
was called a wild mushroom pizza.
According to Wikipedia
there are 14,000 species of mushrooms. I have never tried to learn to identify
them and so have never gone hunting for edible varieties. Something tells me
not to eat the kind commonly known as toadstools.  Those are the ones that look like umbrellas
that crop up in my lawn. I have heard the horror stories of whole families
being wiped out after eating a meal containing poisonous mushrooms. Interesting
to me how one variety of a food can be a delicious, nutritious addition or accompaniment
to a meal, while another is a deadly poison. 
Technically I suppose those are different species, not different
varieties.
There are thousands of
mushroom recipes.  This one recently got
my attention.
BAKED MUSHROOMS CONTRA
COSTA
12
large white mushrooms
1
clove garlic, minced
4
T lemon juice
2
T minced onion
2
T olive oil
1
t black pepper
2
T minced parsley
2
– 4 T dry sherry
Wash mushrooms and
remove stems. Sprinkle lemon juice on each cap, and set in 9X13 baking dish.
Mince stems and sauté in olive oil.  In a
medium size bowl combine sautéed mushroom stems with remaining ingredients.
Spoon stuffing generously into each mushroom cap.  Cover and bake at 350 degrees for fifteen
minutes.  Serves three to four.
And there it is.  I do not have a lot to say about mushrooms.
© 12 September 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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Mushrooms by Ricky

          Why are mushrooms and
children so different yet still in the same Kingdom?  Why are children and mushrooms so alike but
not in the same Phylum?  Does it really
matter?  Yes, it does.
Similarity #1:  Mushrooms are Fungi which thrive in dark and damp places
often sticking their heads up into the sunlight to examine the world above the
soil and to scatter their spore.  Kids
stay in the shadow of their parents, then ever so slowly peer or venture out
into the world beyond their home seeking greater light and knowledge.  Adolescent male children prematurely scatter
their “spore”.
          Similarity
#2:  Mushrooms feed upon
smelly decomposing organic compounds predominantly in the dark.  Children are kept “in the dark” about many
things and accuse their parents of feeding them smelly decomposing organic
compounds.  Yet some parents do “feed”
their children’s minds a steady diet of “BS”, by continually espousing concepts
of bigotry, hate, and homophobia.
Parents unwisely keep their
children “in the dark” to protect them from information which theoretically might hurt or damage the child
or which is too embarrassing for the parent to talk about.  Not talking about sexual matters early enough,
but waiting until the child has already obtained a rudimentary knowledge which
is often wrong and incomplete is not good for the child.  Thus, a child who feels “different” for some reason
has no one with which to discuss their feelings, because the parent has closed
or not opened the door to such information or discussion.  This has a disastrous impact on the child’s
mental health, life, and is hazardous to their adult future.
Parents often struggle with
and wonder why their children don’t remain active in the parent’s church in
which the children have been raised since birth.  I suspect that years of lying and supporting
the myths of Santa Claus and Elves, the egg-laying Easter Bunny, the Sand Man,
Frosty the Snowman, and the Boogeyman finally carried over to the stories of
Jesus.
Parents keep forgetting that
children are NOT STUPID.  They are smart,
cunning, and bear considerable watching. 
Continually lying to them, even if it is a white lie like Santa Claus is
not setting a good example.  There must
be a discussion early on in a child’s life of the difference between a fictional
Santa and a real Jesus – a wise parent will ponder and prepare for that discussion very carefully
or be forced to admit that they
don’t know if Jesus is or was real.
Difference #1: 
Mushrooms
are Fungi.  Children are not Fungi.
Difference #2: 
People
eat mushrooms for flavor or recreational purposes.  Mushrooms only eat people after the coffin is
sealed, and often for the same reasons.
One day at our dinner table,
we were eating spaghetti with the sauce provided by a jar of Prego. 
This particular version of Prego
contained small pieces of mushrooms. 
Partway through the meal, my oldest daughter (7) proudly announced to
everyone that in school she had learned that mushrooms are poisonous and she
would not eat them anymore.  Instantly,
her sister (5) and brother (3) stated that they would not eat them either.  No matter how their mother and I explained
only some mushrooms were poisonous and they had been eating mushrooms in the
spaghetti sauce their whole lives and not died; no argument or fact could or
ever did change their minds or behavior. 
Sometimes, children really can be less smart than a parent wants to
believe.
What is the point?  The two questions that opened the mushroom memory
story are totally irrelevant to my point except as a literary device to get you
to read this post.  The question of “does
it really matter” is important.  It
matters because too many youths are still killing themselves over sexual
orientation bullying and parental homophobia. 
THIS MUST STOP!!!  Open and honest
dialog between parent and child must begin before age 5 and continue throughout
their lives.
So called Christian
ministers who preach hatred and homophobic sermons ARE NOT CHRISTIANS and
should be discharged and shunned until they repent and teach correct Christian
doctrine.  In my opinion, these ministers
could be prosecuted for some form of “breach of the peace” or “inciting
violence”.  They definitely are causing
discord and not preaching Jesus’ Gospel of love and harmony.
I am someone who believes that
every life matters. 
Every youth suicide represents a lost national treasure.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is
a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
– Poet John Donnes, 1624.

© 8
December 2013 

About the Author  

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in
Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just
prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.

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Mushrooms by Lewis

I do not eat mushrooms. One of my pet peeves is that they are often very hard to pick out of foods that contain them. Fortunately, they have a rather mild flavor, so if I happen to eat part of one, I barely notice. I also find them interesting to look at in the wild. There’s something about them that is very sensual. When looked at in cross-section, the shape is highly suggestive of parts of both the male and female sexual anatomy.

Unfortunately, that is about the extent of my ability to write about the mushroom without resorting to Wikipedia. Having done so, I would like to augment this written exercise with a few more observations:

* Mushrooms are a fungus, like yeasts and molds. Of course, we know that yeast causes infections in women and mold can make a mess of your drywall.

* We also know that some mushrooms are toxic and others are psychoactive.

* Still others have medicinal properties or can be used to dye clothing.

In short, there are many reasons to be wary of mushrooms, at least, if you’re picking them yourself. You need to know what you’re doing. In my view, eating mushrooms is something like having unprotected sex, except not as pleasurable.

© June 2014

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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Mushrooms by Gillian

I thought of writing about mushrooms the other week when our topic was “Magic” but that led too inevitably to the psychedelic connection, which is far from the kind of magic I personally attach to mushrooms. They bring, for me, a nostalgia for the magic of innocent childhood days.

One of my very favorite things was when my mum and dad and I would go off together into the fields and woodlands to pick mushrooms. My vision of it is my mother with the basket on one arm and me swinging from the free hand between her and my dad. Perhaps this happened for just one instant, once, but you know how it goes. These things from the distant past expand themselves until they occupy vast stretches of time, and in my memory every time we went what we called “mushrooming,” I clasped each of them by the hand and swung my feet off the ground between them. We were not a touchy-feely kind of family and holding both their hands is a thing I cannot remember doing at other times or in other circumstances. It was just part of the magic of mushrooms.

Mostly we went in autumn, early in the morning, though I think occasionally we went at other times of the day and year. I associate mist with these morning jaunts, though again this might, in reality, have been just once. We looked for the mushrooms in open grassy meadows among sleepily grazing cows and sheep, and in glades of old oak trees where they grew happily on old rotting stumps. I have no idea what kind they were, though the ones from the fields were different from those in the trees. We worried little about accidentally picking poisonous ones, but I have no idea whether we were simply lucky or whether my parents had some learned or inherited knowledge about such things. Even I knew that you never picked toadstools, but they were easy to tell apart from mushrooms. Every child knew that fairies only live in toadstools; never in mushrooms! Though mushrooms do form what we always called “fairy rings,” growing in clear circles on the grass. Even when the mushrooms were not there, the rings still were visible as mounds or depressions in the grass, and as the mushrooms tended to grow again in that same ring, it was always a good place to look. These circles were sometimes just a yard or so across, but some were huge, ten to twenty feet in diameter. No-one knew why they grew in these circles so of course who else was to be held responsible but the little people? Stones the size of a pinkie or a fist or occasionally a football were also sometimes arranged in circles, always called “fairy rings” for the same reason. I loved to imagine these little creatures busily pushing and tugging at the rocks to get them arranged correctly, but was never too sure how they got the mushrooms to grow that way. Perhaps, I thought, they planted the wee seeds in a circular trench, the way my dad planted the potatoes in a straight trench.

For me, mushrooms were all about the gathering. I rather lost interest in them when we got the overflowing basket home, though I enjoyed eating them well enough. Had they been readily available in stores via mushroom farms as they are now, I probably would not have liked them, as many children do not, but back then they were rare enough to be attractive.

These days, sadly, in my opinion, picking mushrooms has, like so many things, lost its simplicity and become hugely complex. For one thing, of course, you can no longer wander freely over your neighbors’ fields and woods and help yourself to anything growing there. For another, mushrooms have fallen victim to TMI. We have way Too Much Information about them, as about most things. Did you know that there are an estimated 10,000 different species of mushrooms in North America; that a mushroom specialist is called a mycologist? Do you care?

On Google Earth, I find, you can see mushrooms from space, honest! Well, not the mushrooms themselves, but the tell-tale fairy rings left by some species. These rings are clearly visible satellite images, so you can select likely fields to visit whilst sitting at your computer. Talk about taking all the fun out of things! How can that possibly compare with tucking cold hands into Mom and Dad’s warm ones, watching the frost turn your breath to fog? How can finding something on the internet bring you memories to last a lifetime? And the rings themselves have some completely scientific explanation to do with fungus, and have lost all their magic. Worse than that, they sometimes appear on a pristine lawn and no amount of digging will destroy them so the Web recommends destroying them with chemicals. The poor old fairies are in big trouble in the modern world. And their fairy stone rings, apparently, are causes by the continuous winter freeze/thaw cycle pushing the rocks, not the little people at all, at all.

In Britain, where of course my childhood memories originate, mushrooms have become big business; not only via mushroom farms where they are cultivated en masse but also the picking of wild ones. Far from the “mushrooming” of my youth, it has now gone upscale and is invariably termed mushroom “foraging.” It seems that in order to partake of this, what at least used to be, simple pleasure one first needs to buy some expensive basket via one of many international online boutique such as fungi.com, (yes, there really is such a place!) along with an equally costly knife, the purpose of which escapes me as we always pulled them up and they exited the wet ground with a wonderfully pleasing plop. One then arms oneself with a variety of books and maps and charts so as to identify what one is searching for, and to identify the best place and time to search for it, so as not to waste valuable time and to avoid the hazard of poisoning oneself, even though only about one percent of all mushrooms can be lethal. And after all that, of course, you’ve run out of time and simply hire a “Mushroom Foraging Guide,” to lead you by the hand, instead. (Yes, there really are such people!)

Just reading about it all on WildMushroomsOnline.co.uk wore me out.

And d’you know what upset me most; the worst thing I discovered in my researches way down in the TMI depths? There is actually no scientific basis for differentiating so-called toadstools from mushrooms. They are just variations of the same thing. Oh no! Haven’t those poor fairies suffered enough? How are they to know where to live? I tell you one thing, if I ever suffered from little people envy, I’m cured. The last place I want to live in these challenging times is down at the bottom of the garden with the fairies!

And so the magic goes; the magic fantasies of fairies and the magic moments of mushrooming. It’s partly my age, of course, and partly the age. The world has changed so very much in the time that I have inhabited it, and I would be the last one to claim that it is all for the worse. Those days gone by were not necessarily better, but there’s no denying they were simpler. I have to wonder where the children of this fast-paced electronic era will find the magic, but I try to keep the faith that they will, and fortunately I shall never know.

© December 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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Mushrooms by Pat Gourley

My experiences with mushrooms have been varied over the years and for the most part quite wonderful with one exception, which I will address further on. I love to cook with them and in the past thirty years my use of these wonderful and diverse fungi has been limited to those legally sold in supermarkets or a couple edible varieties found in the foothills near Denver. The types I have harvested mostly in the hills surrounding South Park have been a variety of Boletes and the sinfully delicious Morels or as we called them when I was growing up in rural Indiana “sponge” mushrooms. Morels in particular are often found in burn areas the year following the blaze and occasionally in the caterpillar tracks left from post-fire cleanup.

My childhood contact with mushrooms outside of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup in a green bean casserole almost exclusively served at Thanksgiving was nonexistent until in my early teens when I started mushroom hunting with one of my uncles. Our trips to the woods looking for these delicacies happened in the spring and the morels we most often found were growing under small shrub-like plants called May Apples. We also harvested in much larger quantities something we called a button mushroom from decaying logs, these may actually have been a forest Bolete of some sort. My uncle would sauté the button mushrooms in butter and serve them in heaping piles on toast. In the interest of full disclosure these mushrooms were fried rather than sautéed, trust me nothing was sautéed in rural Indiana in the 1950’s. The morels were again lightly fried in butter and served alone. Their earthy and very funky taste would later in life come to mind when sampling certain varieties of semen.

Probably my most noticeable and life impacting mushroom experience though involved what most, myself included, would call a bad trip, though in hindsight with a bit of historical revision might be described as a prophetic visionary experience. Needless to say this trip did not occur as the result of eating the buttons and morels of my childhood. Rather it happened in the fall of 1979 with a variety of homegrown psilocybin or as they were known at the time “magic” mushrooms. I was no stranger to hallucinogens by this time in my life and had used mushrooms to very positive effect on numerous occasions though LSD was always my drug of choice. I was perhaps initially drawn to hallucinogenic mushrooms through the music and iconic art of the Allman Brothers Band- sorry, no, not the Grateful Dead.

This adventure also involved the Empire Baths, now known as the Denver Swim Club, and a rather torrid, at least in my own mind, affair with a very sweet, straight-acting Mormon, local emergency room doctor. I had met this man at one of the queer health care provider support groups popular at the time. I am still not sure what my attraction was to this guy but it was consuming. He was my own age and I strongly preferred older men. He was very conservative around things queer, into electronic disco music and in many ways still tied deeply to his large Utah-based Mormon family. There was some reciprocal interest on his part I suppose perhaps an attraction to the exotic, me being a queer rolling in things radical fairie and addicted to the music of the Grateful Dead while living with numerous other eccentric types in a communal situation. It certainly wasn’t the sex, which was mediocre at its infrequent best.

I’ll refer to him here as Hank since he remained tied to those Mormon roots until the time of his AIDS related death in 1991. His death was attributed to cancer on the death certificate I was told by his twink lover at the time and not HIV. I am cognizant after all that the big NSA spy building nearing completion is in Utah and though I expect my hum drum and really boring life is not of much interest to our homegrown extensive International spy apparatus I would not want to risk causing any existential anguish to his large and I am sure still very Mormon family in some indirect and convoluted way.

Hank’s drug of choice was always pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine and snorted in large quantities. A drug I never appreciated, I mean really where was the bang for the buck. Though I must say there was a time or two with another lover who would fuck me with powdered coke under his foreskin that I do have rather fond memories of. This was of course a bit selfish I suppose on my part since the head of his penis would get very numb while I got off a bit high.

Where Hank’s interest in psilocybin came from I am not sure but he became obsessed with growing them in his small Capitol Hill apartment. The spores were actually available for sale legally in head shops at the time. The spores were inoculated onto sterilized rye in quart size mason jars and then coaxed to grow under artificial light in a warm dark closet in his apartment. A much safer and environmentally friendly endeavor than cooking meth would have been. After several unsuccessful attempts, one of which involved an exploding pressure-cooker being used to sterilize the rye, he was able to inoculate the spores into the grain and was able to grow quite a nice large crop. I imagine that apartment may still have remnants of dry rye on the ceiling despite our repeated attempts to get it all off. The harvest was nicely dried in a toaster oven. We never sold any of these but they would make nice stocking stuffers.

Our maiden voyage with these mushrooms was a few weeks before my infamous bathhouse experience and involved a quick trip to the Grand Canyon. There, while hiking to the bottom of the canyon on a full moon night, we nibbled a few each and were as high as kites for the next 24 hours with no sleep that night. We were I think hiking the Bright Angel Trail and our destination was a waterfall that begged for nude moonlight bathing underneath it. Photos were taken but it was only moonlight and we were totally fucked up so little good evidence remains. I relate this merely to establish that the mushrooms were pretty good and not apparently one of the poisonous psilocybin varieties. Our drive back in his little sporty Volkswagen mostly at 100 miles an hour with obnoxious disco music playing was uneventful and for some inexplicable reason I was still very smitten with the guy.

My rather voracious sexual needs at the time were certainly not being met by Hank so a week or so after our return to Denver I decided that a trip to the bathes was in order and it would be nice to do a few shrooms to enhance the whole thing. Now being at the tubs in an altered state was not new to me though I tended most of the time to be a more utilitarian user often going at noon on no substances whatsoever to catch the butch middle age, often married guys, who could be great sex if the stars were right. I was looking for tops so spreading HIV to unsuspecting suburban women never really entered the picture and of course was not on anyone’s radar at all in 1979.

Shortly after arriving, I had dosed before leaving the house on my bicycle, things started to get strange. And to paraphrase the Grateful Dead things only got stranger as the evening progressed. Freaking out while tripping was something totally new to me. The bathes were busy that night and the potential ripe for some great fucking. I was quickly over come though with great anxiety and a sense of dread, my death seemed immanent. I left the cozy, moist and sexy confines and ventured outside to the pool. It was a cool night in late October so no one else in his right mind was out there. I of course was not in my right mind and soon felt the concrete gargoyles on the surrounding walls were threatening me and urging me to get out of there as soon as possible or I would surely die.

I left the bath on my bike in a frenzy to get somewhere to tell anyone I was sure I was dying. Long story short I ended up in an Indian boutique on East Colfax where the family running the business was cooking a curry dish in the back. I was unable to eat any sort of curry for years. Things kind of got lost in translation with the proprietors of the shop. How does one say I took a hallucinogenic mushroom, went to a gay bathhouse to fuck and proceeded to freak out? So when they kindly called me an ambulance they related that I had food poisoning from a bad mushroom.

The ambulance drivers soon discerned this was not food poisoning and that I would be OK soon. In fact they offered, since it was apparently a slow night, to take me home and they would love to buy some of these mushrooms from me. I was incredulous at this and insisted on being taken to the nearest E.D. There I received a lecture from a rather judgmental physician on duty about growing up. I wasn’t sure if the message was to quit taking drugs or quit fucking my brains out in gay bathhouses – probably both.

Dear friends soon rescued me from the E.D. and delivered me safely to my soul mate Don. Don was an expert at helping people calm down in general so he put me in a warm corner with a couple of oranges and told me to peal and eat them and I would soon be OK. About two hours later and only one orange gone I was good enough to leave and head home.

Just to wrap up I did get my bike back the next day from the wonderfully kind folks at the Indian store who kept an eye on it for me. For some inexplicable reason I had been able to securely lock my bike up before entering the store and announcing to all that I was about to die. I also have often thought that the Universe aided by a bit of psilocybin was alerting me that night to the impeding AIDS nightmare and that a gay bathhouse even as early as 1979 was not the best place to be, certainly not with one’s legs in the air. I of course did not heed that advice but doubt I was infected at the bathes but rather in the rectory of a Protestant church in Aspen Colorado about a year later but that’s another story.

December 2013

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 have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.