Tag: Pat Gourley

Posted on

Choices, by Pat Gourley

A very dear friend has told me for years that my problem is I have too many choices. He is right, and I do realize that it is a privilege to not only have the freedom but the where-with-all to have more than one or even several options available when facing life’s many circumstances. Being a white middle class male in America in 2016 carries with it enough cache to often have more than one alternative when faced with life’s various challenges, and this has been the case for most of my life.

I suppose my queerness and later in the dance my HIV infection have somewhat limited my choices but to be honest when I look around at the rest of humanity I still have it pretty good. It is interesting that these two things, queerness and HIV infection, where not choices but apparently unavoidable realities. I realized at an early age that being attracted to men was not a choice on my part but something very ingrained out of the box.

I am quite certain I was infected with HIV in the early 1980’s before the causative agent had actually been identified. And I am not implying that folks getting infected today are choosing this but rather they assume that they are either not at risk or they are in the short-run choosing pleasure over possible consequences down the road, a very human response in many situations. I am frequently reminded of Jerry Garcia’s answer when asked why people do drugs and he replied, “Because they make them feel good.”

The challenge then becomes how do I best address my choices especially in a culture that worships “more is better.” I read this past week that Americans, in droves apparently, are resorting back to buying large gas guzzlers and fewer hybrid automobiles in the past couple years now that gasoline is cheap again. Depressing news for arctic sea ice and a whole lot more.

One way to tackle multiple choices for a particular problem or situation would be to ask what is “enough.” I stumbled on a parting wish shared by a mother to her daughter right before she boarded a plane and the words spoken were “May you have enough.” And as with more of my philosophical guidance than I care to readily admit to these days this came from a Facebook post. I was though taken with it enough to Google the phrase “May You Have Enough.”

So it turns out this may have originated as an Irish Blessing, author unknown. This seems to fit nicely with one definition of “enough “ and that is “as much or as many as required”. For me personally and my life choices these days I can ask is a bicycle enough for transportation or do I need a car. Are beans enough or is eating chicken or fish really necessary for adequate protein intake. Is Natural Grocers enough or do I need to cop to the much shorter walk and shop at Whole Foods? When I need a break is a short mountain trip enough or do I need to get on a plane to go somewhere. Is my air conditioning set at 75 degrees enough or do I need it cooled to 70? And on and on.

There is though a second definition of “enough” that struck me as very appropriate especially this past week and that would be to indicate that one is unwilling to tolerate any more of something undesirable.

I see a fundamental message of the Black Lives Matter movement being simply “enough.” Enough is enough and no more will be tolerated.

The essence of this is so difficult it seems for many of us white folks to grasp. In part I suppose we can be left off the hook because of the blatantly revisionist history, dating back before the revolution of 1776, that we have been spoon-fed. The root motivators for the American Revolution are much more complex than issues around a tax on tea. The historian Gerald Horne has written extensively on this topic and a 2014 interview with him on Democracy Now is a vital listen for all trying to grapple with the roots of racism and racial tensions in America today. Here is a link to that interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/27/counter_revolution_of_1776_was_us

What the revolution of 1776 was significantly about was protecting the institution of slavery. The Second Amendment was actually about ensuring the preservation of the Slave Patrol Militias, which were early forerunners of out police departments. The term well-regulated militia being actually a shortened sanitized phrasing.

Here is a link to an analysis piece on the connection between the Second Amendment and the need to protect the institution of slavery: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Slavery and the Second Amendment Slave Patrol Militias.htm

If this suggestion seems a bit far-fetched consider the very muted response from the NRA about the recent killings of two black men who were supposedly carry legal firearms. Their panties would certainly be in a wad if this had been “white patriots.”

I am not meaning to put too simplistic a spin on it but slavery is a profound way of limiting the choices a human being has. The ingrained legacy of slavery in America, still to this day, severely limits the number of choices needed for a quality and fulfilling life for many African Americans. Everyone should have the option of too many choices.

© July 2106

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.

Posted on

Queer as a $3 Bill, by Pat Gourley

This is a phrase I can actually personally embrace. It is one that I certainly hope is used to describe me, or my posture in the world, at least once in awhile. Though I am not sure anyone has ever said to or about me: he’s as Queer as a $3 dollar bill. I am however under no illusions that it has not crossed many people’s minds after their first encounters with me.

As I have written about many times for this group I am a strong advocate for discovering and accentuating the differences between gay and straight. That is after all why, now 40 years on, I am still frequenting the LGBT Center of Colorado. I feel our greatest gifts to humanity will involve bringing unique ways of looking at the world through our queer eyes and not groveling to try and show the straight world we are really just like them.

We start throwing off clues at a very early age that we are different from our hetero brothers and sisters in so many ways. I am always fond of sharing one of Harry Hay’s favorite stories on difference. I am paraphrasing here a bit but it involved an episode where he was called out by some other boys for throwing a baseball like a girl. Female acquaintances at the time corrected him saying you don’t throw like a girl you throw like a sissy.

Harry was able, eventually perhaps, to recognize this as not a slam on his masculinity but rather an example of how gay boys are not like little girls but rather an entity uniquely all their own.

The straight world with their binary blinders on see things as either masculine or feminine. They very often confuse non-typical behaviors as belonging to the opposite gender when in fact it is a behavior neither female nor male but something totally different, totally other. Perhaps it is an expression of a third or fourth gender?

A recent documentary by the filmmaker named David Thorpe called “Do I Sound Gay” is a wonderful case in point supporting the possibility that we really are different in very intrinsic ways. Here is a link to the trailer for the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R21Fd8-Apf0

The film deals with Thorpe’s own personal journey around wanting to not “sound gay”. The film looks at this phenomenon as it effects many gay men but I suspect a similar though perhaps less impacting version of the issue could be true for lesbians. There is a tone I often subtly identify as a lesbian voice and it is always comforting when I hear it. Comforting even when the voice is calling a basketball game or trying to communicate just what it is going on with female golfers.

This business of “sounding gay” is one of those issues though that I feel is more problematic for gay men. Thorpe’s presentation seems to vacillate between the gay sounding voice being an innate characteristic or rather perhaps learned from older gay mentors and therefore something that can be un-learned. I prefer to think of it as quite intrinsic to who we are and that this simply comes through and is allowed to flower with our coming out and acceptance of our queer identity.

I am to this day frequently mistaken for a woman especially on the phone. Though I do not think the “gay voice” is common to all gay men it is certainly for many. And perhaps those gay men with a masculine sounding voice are simply better actors than the rest of us.

The only recording of my voice from the 1960’s I am aware of is an old tape re-mastered to CD a few years ago of my talk to my senior high school class in 1967 on my return from Mississippi. I was down there with several others on a self-discovery trip about American racism for a group of clueless white middle class teenagers from suburban Chicago. My main mentor arranged the trip in those days, a progressive Holy Cross nun named Sister Alberta Marie. In presenting to my classmates I actually do remember being conscious at the time to speak slowly. Perhaps this was to avoid slipping into “gay speak” and having classmates at least quietly remark to themselves: “well, he certainly is queer as a $3 dollar bill”.

You can check out the recording here and decide for yourself just how gay I sound. In the interest of full disclosure I think I was consciously trying to butch it up especially since this was recorded just a month or so after my first sex with another man. Check out the long “S’s” especially when I say Mississippi, so much for coming across as butch: http://www.pjgourley.com/MississippiTrip1967.php

Trust me I was absolutely not aware of any gay-mentors in my life to learn this queer-speak from!

I am particularly fond of the documentary “Do I Sound Gay” in part because it raises a myriad of issues around accepting our queerness and the often debilitating internalized homophobia that accompanies that journey. The film is available on several platforms including Netflix and also on You Tube, iTunes and several others.

© March 2016

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.

Posted on

Raindrops for the People! by Pat Gourley

“Raindrops” was a topic that I was truly drawing a blank on though thanks I suppose to my Irish roots I love the rain and the more rainy days the better. Perhaps this explains in part my draw to those rainy San Francisco winter days.

I was however rescued on this topic by the impending changes, perhaps this week, in Colorado law around the personal collection of raindrops that fall on your own property and specifically collecting the runoff from your own roof. Believe it or not such collection, i.e. a rain barrel collecting raindrops from your roof’s drain spout is illegal in Colorado, the only state in the Union where this is the case. The exact wording of the current law is as follows:

Although it is permissible to direct your residential property roof downspouts toward landscaped areas, unless you own a specific type of exempt well permit, you cannot collect rainwater in any other manner, such as storage in a cistern or tank, for later use.

Though I realize that many of us LGBTQ folks are urban and live in apartments and therefore this is a truly a moot issue it is a bit of a reassuringly small victory for “the people” that this archaic law is finally about to be changed. I suppose this is more a libertarian victory rather than a socialist one but I’ll take it. Though rainwater runoff could also be easily collected from the roofs of large apartment/condo buildings and go to watering communal gardening space in addition to homeowner’s personal tomato plants.

I have lived in several single-family homes and collecting run-off rainwater for my often-thirsty gardens always had appeal. I never got around to breaking the law on a cistern level but I do confess to collecting the occasional bucketful most often during a late summer downpour and them dumping it on my tomato plants. Once more the immortal words of the Jefferson Airplane come to mind: “We are all outlaws in the eyes of America”.

It is my understanding that HB16-1005 has passed the Senate and will be signed into law this week by the Governor freeing up raindrops for collection by the people. Now if we could get this same Governor, who is a super-delegate to the Democratic convention, to realize that he is not bound to cast his vote for Hilary Clinton. He could instead acknowledge and respect the wishes of the significant majority of caucus goers in Colorado and switch his vote to Bernie Sanders. Oh, what am I thinking? Why should access to a few raindrops make us get all uppity and think we actually live in a democracy. We are being told I guess to sit down and don’t rock the boat and just be happy with a few more raindrops.

© April 2016


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.

Posted on

Purple by Pat Gourley

The first chapter of Judy Grahn’s wonderful tome Another Mother Tongue from 1984 deals extensively with the color purple and its historical meaning and connections to gay people. She posits both current and ancient connections to the color for us as a people.

Whether or not there are legitimate historical connections to the color purple and queer folk it certainly has appeared repeatedly throughout the ages in association with those of us often seen as “other”. For example we have continued to own and quite liberally use the word lavender, with lavender of course being a pale shade of purple.

I was involved with a project of the LGBT Center of Colorado called Lavender University in the late 1970’s. Interestingly one of the more successful gay male hook-up Internet sites is called the Lavender App first appearing recently in 2015. There are many other examples of the use of the word lavender in describing our organizations and us.

The color purple can be created mixing shades of red or magenta that have a more feminine association with blue and its male connotations. Though I prefer to view us as a distinct phenomenon rather than a hybrid of the straight male and female I can live with purple being attached to us as an expression of the ambiguity and mystery we present to the larger hetero society. It is to our advantage to keep them guessing as to who we really are. It is of course also a color historically associated with power and royalty. For years I had a wonderful flouncy silk purple shirt I would wear for special occasions that required that I appear as royalty.

Sadly it was the color purple in the form of skin lesions that began to strike fear in many gay men at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The rather sudden and mysterious appearance of purple skin lesions on gay men over 35 years ago quickly became a dreaded hallmark of the disease. I am referring of course to the lesions of Kaposi Sarcoma (K.S.) which we now know is caused by a herpes virus, the acronym for it being HHV-8, human herpes virus 8.

I would add that the lesions appear most purple on white skin. When K.S. lesions are an issue for darker pigmented folks the lesions can still appear purple but also often have a reddish or brown hue.

K.S can cause problems other than just skin lesions with the sarcoma able to involve internal organs as well. It was the facial lesions though that I personally feared the most. If one wanted to be on the down low with your HIV infection it was often hard to mask the facial lesions. I was never one to be shy about my HIV but I was certainly vain enough to fear a lesion on the tip of my nose. There are limits after all to ones love of the color purple.

HHV-8 is most commonly transmitted through saliva. There was apparently a fair amount of this virus among sexually active gay men in the 1970’s and as HIV began to spread, and severely compromise immune systems resulted, HHV-8 was able to take advantage and in many the result was Kaposi Sarcoma. Fortunately with the advent of effective AIDS drugs that restore pretty good immune function this virus, though certainly still around, causes dramatically less K.S.

HHV-8 can now I suppose be viewed as just one more little virus that uses us humans as transport media but kept in check if our immune systems are in good working order.

I’ll end with an interesting antidote I heard Sunday at the gym watching television coverage of Nancy Reagan’s death. She was a close friend of Rock Hudson. It was apparently a photo taken of the first couple that also caught the back of Rock’s head while he was visiting the Reagans in the White House that showed a suspicious lesion on his neck.

As incredulous as it might sound the photo catching this lesion supposedly alerted Hudson to the fact that perhaps he was also at risk for this new and devastating illness. Being quite familiar with how AIDS would present and progress I suspect there must have been some major denial in old Rock’s life to not notice any other symptoms before a K.S. lesion showed up on the back of his neck. Or perhaps it is just one more validation of the strength of the color purple, a hue capable of often grabbing one’s attention.

© March 2016 

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.

Posted on

Queer — A Defining Word, by Pat Gourley

It is quite amazing to me
really how little of my childhood years I remember beyond vague, though some
significant, generalities. I suppose I could view this as suppression of lots
of terrible stuff but I really think it is more a matter of not much out of the
ordinary or worthy of sublimation ever happening. Lord knows my rather intense
at times Catholic upbringing and schooling might have been a source of great
consternation and resulting psychopathology, but for whatever reason I think I
sailed through those years queer as a three dollar bill and largely unscathed.
As I have written before
(my apologies for the repetition) one episode though that has stuck with me was
when I asked my mother what the word “queer” meant.  I think I was about 12 years old when I first
heard it used. She said it was a bad word and I should never use it. I then
went straight to the dictionary but the only definition provided that stuck
with me was that it meant “odd”. I went back to her with this piece of
information but she persisted that it was not a word to incorporate into my
vocabulary. I suspect that I or someone near me had been called a “queer” and
being totally oblivious to any homosexual connection with the word thought this
to be a weird choice especially delivered in less than loving fashion.
Queer
to this day remains a loaded and offensive word by some LBGT folks, despised as
much as the “F” word. The “F” word being “faggot” of course and not “fuck”. I
could have written about “Faggot” as a defining word but thought I had enough
to tackle on my plate with “Queer”. And I actually thought for a fleeting
minute of writing on the word “fuck” one of my favorites but decided to keep it
closer to home. And besides other than this little phrase I ran into on Facebook
the other day I don’t have much more to say about “fuck”: “I have been told I
am going to hell for my excessive use of the word FUCK. I have rented a bus if
any of you fuckers need a ride.” From Fsensitivity Web Site
Back to Queer. Certain
words used to describe us are ones that we have simply and innocently appropriated
like “gay”.  Others are words that have
been used to denigrate and belittle us, some of which we have reclaimed and
others not so much. The use of language to offensively describe some folks as ‘other’
has often been used as a means of control. Though for a minority struggling for
self-definition and empowerment the re-appropriation of often-derogatory words
is I think a legitimate exercise that can enhance identity and liberation. And
such is the case I believe with the word “Queer”.
In looking for the
origins of the word I kind of fell down an Internet rabbit hole. The use of it
as a derogatory term aimed at homosexual folks may well date back to 16th
century Scotland. The actual roots of the word seem perhaps lost to time.
However, my go to person, for meaning of the Queen’s English if you will, remains Judy Grahn and her seminal
work from 1984 Another Mother Tongue. Grahn
states that the original word was “cwer” (c-w-e-r) without directly attributing
any tribal or national origin to that word. After an hour or so of floundering
around the ether a possible source for “cwer” I stumbled on is that it was old
Welsh in origin. However, don’t take that to the bank.
Let me quote Grahn’s take
on the possible meaning of this descriptive moniker:
“
‘Sinful,’ ‘of the devil’ and ‘evil’ are all expressions that have been used
very effectively against gay culture, as has ‘queer’, which derives from cwer,
crooked not straight, kinked. Perhaps the difference between queer and straight
originated very simply with the difference between the straight-line dance of
male/female couples and the Fairy round dance”. From Another Mother Tongue. Page 276.
So perhaps it was a word
used originally to acknowledge that we were different from straight folks in a
rather kinked or crooked sense and that the evil or sinful associations were
added later. Maybe we were the ones who preferred to dance in circles rather
than in straight lines and this bit of nonconformity was one thing I hope,
among many, that set us apart. And of course anyone set apart from the norm was
often then fair game for ostracism that could become nasty.
I suspect there is a rich
history to this word “Queer” that is lost to the mists of time. I am choosing
to reclaim it as a defining word, one that helps set us apart from the
hetero-hordes. A word that hints at our uniqueness and the valuable
contributions we bring to the human tapestry by way of our otherness.
© 19 Feb 2016 
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.
Posted on

True Colors, by Pat Gourley

“You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
Its hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside of
you
Can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let
them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow.”
Lyrics from True Colors
by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.
Once you read the lyrics
to the song True Colors made a famous
hit by Cyndi Lauper back in 1986 you can see why it has been adapted as a Queer
anthem and especially by certain LGBT youth groups. A great coming out song if
there ever was one.
Steinberg originally
wrote the song about his mother. Later modified by Tom Kelly and picked up,
when offered, by Cyndi Lauper. At the time she apparently felt drawn to it
because of the recent death of a friend from AIDS.
All the gains made by
Queer people in the past 50+ years or so can be laid squarely at the feet of
our being willing to let our true colors shine through. As has been mentioned
many times in this group and then powerfully validated by our personal stories
it is the individual coming out process that is such a very powerful
change-creating phenomenon.
It is this act of true
self-expression that sets us apart from all other minorities and gives us such
power. Also the fact that we are part of and transcend all economic, class and
racial groups gives us a leg up. We are everywhere.
The AIDS connection to
the song brought to it by Lauper has made me wonder about the reason and
implications for recent data on new HIV infections just released last week. In a
story from the Boston Globe published on February 23rd, 2016 they
broke down recent CDC data on projected lifetime risk of HIV among gay men by
race.
The data was sobering to
say the least. Overall risk for HIV infection among Americans as a whole has
decreased. The risk of infection was 1 in 78. It has now decreased to 1 in 99
for the U.S. population. However, per the CDC report the lifetime risk for
queer men is 1 in 6, overwhelmingly greater than for the population as a whole.
That is amazing enough but where it gets truly shocking is in the racial
disparity for gay men. The lifetime risk for black gay men is 1 in 2, for
Latinos it is 1 in 4 and for white gay men 1 in 11.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/23/sobering-findings-hiv-half-black-gay-men-will-infected-during-their-lifetimes-cdc-finds/hT0lGsMsJqqn8OMsXRMZMJ/story.html
WTF! I guess not
surprising the greatest risk for black gay men is in southern states but the
highest risk is in the District of Columbia. As depressing as this news is it
actually reflects an improvement over the past but still unacceptably bad.
In the actual CDC report
certain prevention challenges for the gay African American community were
identified. These were: socioeconomic factors, smaller and more exclusive
sexual networks, sexual relations with older men, lack of awareness of HIV
status and stigma, homophobia and discrimination.  I would hope that these “prevention
challenges” are ones that have been identified by community-based black gay men
themselves and not pronouncements that have come down from on high by CDC AIDS
specialists.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/bmsm.html
So I’d ask what we as the
broader queer community can do to help reverse these dismal statistics? A first
step might be taking a hard look at how significant racism is still a reality
within the queer community particularly and what am I doing personally to
address any latent racism I may harbor.
Does the safe space exist
in a non-threatening manner for the queer black community to develop and thrive
and what is needed from the broader queer community to facilitate this happening?
Perhaps this just involves our ongoing participation in the struggle for peace
and social justice.
We must guard against a
cop-out response to these stats by saying well it is the homophobia within the
broader African American community that is responsible for this. Most of us
have come out of families and communities less that welcoming of our queerness
if not out right hostile. Something else has to be going on here. At the very
least these extremely sobering AIDS statistics need to be a reason for pause
and sincere soul searching certainly by gay white men looking sincerely at how we
might be part of the problem too.
The best HIV prevention strategy
is the creation of a society where everyone’s true colors can shine
through from cradle to grave.
© 25 Feb 2016 
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.
Posted on

The Men in My Life, by Pat Gourley

Good grief where to begin
with this topic? It could certainly be the title of a book with many, many
chapters. As I have written in the past it has been the women in my life who
have had the most profound impact of substance. By that I mean they are the
ones who have most influenced and shaped my intellectual, philosophical and
certainly political bent. The one possible male exception would be Harry Hay.
For this piece though I
am not going to write about Harry but rather a person who has been in my life
for the past 38 years. This is a man who is now in his late 70’s who I first
met I think in the fall of 1978 or perhaps the spring of 1979 that bit of
history being somewhat fuzzy. We met for the first time and gloriously fucked
at the Empire Baths and then got together the next night at my house for a
repeat. That first night at the tubs I had picked him up in the showers and to
be honest it was his quite ample and thick cock that first caught my attention.
I really don’t think of
myself as a size queen and have thoroughly enjoyed many penises of all sizes
and girths over the years and know from lots of experience that it is not the
size of the member but rather the skill of the partner that makes all the
difference.  It is no longer the case but
in my teens, 20’s and 30’s the sight of a large, stiff dick was irresistible
with all caution thrown to the wind and if this appendage was attached to a man
who also knew how to use it, all the better. 
I really most enjoyed unwrapping a package that came with no assembly
required.
Over the next few years
we came to know one another quite well. I learned that he was married and lived
in rural Colorado. And most shocking of all he was a Republican! Amazing how if
the sex is really good party affiliation seems to rarely be an issue.
Our get-togethers were
always sporadic but consistent over the years and I came to truly appreciate
our genuine mutual love and his no strings attached generosity. I did meet his
wife on a couple of occasions. She is a wonderful, dynamic woman who he still
lives with him in a Western, rural and very Republican state. I never asked and
have no idea what she knew or did not. 
From the early 1980’s on, at my insistence, our sex became scrupulously
safe which turned out to be a good idea after I tested positive for HIV in
1985. He was always the top though so any risk to him and or to his wife was minimal;
latex sealed that deal, even with almost all play being just mutual masturbation.
The dramatic difference
in out worldviews and every day life has been a recurrent and at times a challenging
lesson for me. Our truly loving relationship has been a reminder to not take my
own politics too seriously. I do believe if we could get a majority of the
world’s men to lie naked with one another, even just on rare occasions, the
world would be so much more peaceful and less toxic in general.  Ah, the stuff of dreams.
Though I have only an
inkling of how closeted his life may still be I have always been very
protective of his identity and his hetero life. He has described himself to me
as gay but I don’t ever try to deconstruct that too much. As a good San
Francisco friend recently said in describing another queer theorist writing’s
in the Gay and Lesbian Review: “his
ramblings sound like Tourette’s with a PhD”. No need for me to risk being that sort
of analyst with my dear friend.
We most recently got
together a few days ago on a visit to Denver. Most of our time was spent
soulfully chatting about the recent suicide of a mutual friend and deeply
listening to one another grieve and shed a few tears about this loss.
There was a bit of naked
play on this visit, nothing to compare to 30 years ago of course, but still
enjoyable and generous on his part. No, I did not succumb to lecturing him on
the fact that his dick would work much better if he could get the animal
product out of his diet.  We got to the
point years ago where the quality of our time together was not predicated on
the rigidity or complete lack thereof of our hard-ons. Something that seems to
be a real barometer of many long-lasting gay male friendships I think.
Speaking only from a gay
male perspective here I think it worth mentioning the truly amazing and
literally millions of gay male friendship networks that are enduring and often
totally non-sexual that characterize so much of our queer lives. This is
something that truly differentiates us from many of them. Let me close
paraphrasing my favorite Harry Hay quote of all time: “the only thing we have in
common with the straight world is what we do in bed”.
© 27
Mar 2016 
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.
Posted on

Once in a Lifetime, by Pat Gourley

It was in the summer of
1973 and I was living on Elati Street in Denver in a railroad duplex we were
renting from a landlord who I seem to recall lived in Texas. There was at any
one time 3-6 folks inhabiting the place. We had all recently relocated from
Champaign, Illinois. The men all had homosexual tendencies, which for the most
part were still in a state of unactualized potential and a couple of, I
believe, straight women who were fluidly moving in and out of residence.
One of these women named
Sue had recently checked out the hospital a few blocks to the east named at
that time Denver General, now called Denver Health. She came home telling the
mostly under-employed men in the household that the hospital was hiring several
different positions and maybe we should check it out. I was at the time working
down in Englewood at Craig Rehab hospital in their kitchen and having some
minimal patient contact. Having no car it was a bus ride back and forth down
Broadway and I was anxious for a more challenging change closer to home.
In August of that summer
of 1973 I was hired as a hospital attendant at Denver General on the inpatient
psychiatric ward, 4-West. The attendant staff was all male and all my
co-workers conscientious objectors. I had avoided the draft by having a high
lottery number and the good sense to not volunteer and end up possibly coming
back to the States in a body bag from Vietnam.
The attendant staff was
all male I suspect to provide muscle for the all female nurses so I am not sure
why I got the job being all of 145-pounds soaking wet in those days. This turned
out to be my “once in a lifetime” decision that has given my professional life
direction for the past 42-years. I am assuming that something that is once in a
lifetime should have more impact that one’s usual run of the mill life happenings
and this decision to wade into nursing was it for me. The duties of the
attendants did include elements of what I call real nursing i.e. hands on
interaction with clients. No advanced degree was necessary with the ability to
communicate with people in distress being the main requisite of the job.
Back in the early 1970’s
the mentally ill, especially the homeless mentally ill, had a much better
chance of hospitalization rather than today’s all too frequent option of
incarceration. And so began my several decades of interacting with Denver’s
most disenfranchised. I did detour for 10-years to what was then called
Colorado General but in those days they actually served the indigent uninsured
as part of their mission.  That hospital
has also changed its named, moved to Aurora and now has TV ads featuring Peyton
Manning. I find the tone and pitch of these commercials to be very off-putting
but I will not explore that further at this time.
This personal lifetime of
nursing is particularly poignant for me today since back on the 28th
of November 2015 was my last day of work as a nurse at Denver Health. It was a long
very busy 13-hour day in Urgent Care attending to many of the same type of
folks and their issues as I was back in 1973.
I’ll close this piece
with a couple things. First, is that Colorado has the chance to vote on single payer
health care in November 2016. We as a state currently have a very high rate of medically
insured thanks in large part to accepting federal Medicaid support through the
Affordable Care Act. Single payer would though be a great improvement in spite
of this current commendable high-insured rate.
Secondly, I want to share
a series of encounters I had with a homeless fellow I ran across on my walks
into work my last two days on the job. The first occurred at 0600 on Friday the
27th. It was a cold snowy morning and this fellow was under a
blanket on the Cherry Creek Bridge on Broadway just south of Speer Blvd. This is
often a favorite spot for the homeless folks and he seemed bundled up and out
of the wind so I proceeded to work thinking though I might see him later in
Urgent Care.
At the end of my shift
about 7:15 pm I walked home the same way and was surprised he was still in the same
spot but now sitting up and still covered in his blanket. My assumption,
perhaps wrong, was that he had spent the day out in the sub-freezing elements.
I kept walking but after crossing Broadway I turned around thinking this is
really not OK even for a seasoned homeless person.  I cautiously engaged him and he popped his
head out of the blanket. He said he was OK that the blanket was warm. The next
words out his mouth were to ask if I had a smoke. Despite the obvious health
issues related to smoking to lecture him on this under the current
circumstances seemed ludicrous. Instead I gave him the four bucks I had and
encouraged him to walk the one block down to Denver Health where he could spend
the night in the Emergency Department waiting room at least.
The next morning walking
into work again I was stunned he was in the same spot. Still under his blanket,
a thick coat and pretty good hat and rhythmic breathing quite noticeable. He
was not lying directly on the pavement but still this could not have been
comfortable. I have over the years encountered numerous homeless who prefer
even sub-zero weather to the shelters for a variety of reasons. I decided I
would walk home later the same way and if still there I would give him the $20
bucks I had. He was however not there in the evening and I wondered if he had
walked down to the hospital or to a shelter or much more likely just moved on.
He had selected a spot
out of the wind, temperatures in the high teens with lots of traffic and
pedestrians within a few feet and he was reasonably dressed so I never thought
the situation life threatening but if not careful frost bite could have been an
issue for his toes at least. The greatest clothing need for homeless shelters
is socks. I should have brought him a couple pairs from work. Since I walk
central Denver a lot I plan to always venture out especially in wintertime with
an extra pair in my bag.
© December 2015 
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.
Posted on

A Looming Wrinkle, by Pat Gourley

I am going to approach
the topic of Wrinkles with a bit of a
wrinkle and write from a secondary definition of the word and that would be
”snag”. A wrinkle can be a snag rather than the latest distressing line on my
face or ass.
The potential snag I’d
like to address is the slowly emerging effort to take the “T” out of LGBT. I am
linking to a recent provocative piece from The
Independent, a British newspaper, entitled Why it’s time to take the T out of LGBT written by Katie Glover.
Ms. Glover is a transgender woman and editor of the transgender and drag
publication Frock Magazine: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-its-time-to-take-the-t-out-of-lgbt-10493352.html
She starts right out of
the box exposing the myth, quite prevalent even in the LGB community, that
transgender folks are gay. Most are not and in fact the percent that are is
likely no more than the percent of the general population that is gay or
lesbian. Glover goes on to point out that being gay and being transgender are
two very different things that should not be mixed up.
Historically it made
survival sense for trans folks to hitch their wagon to the larger gay movement
where they received at least some modicum of acceptance or dare I use the much
more loaded and perhaps offensive word: tolerance. Times though have changed
and with the transgender closet door swinging wide open and their numbers
swelling a tipping point has perhaps been reached and it’s now time to break
away from the LGB’s.
A poignant example from
Glover’s piece of the confusion that exists in the lesbian and gay community
around trans folks was the recent appearance of Caitlyn Jenner on the Ellen
DeGeneres show. Ellen was quite surprise by Caitlyn’s lukewarm stance on same
sex marriage.  Cait was trying to explain
to Ellen that she was a traditionalist on matters of marriage, though she has
evolved somewhat from the more strident view she held prior to transitioning.
If this movement for the
trans community to severe ties with the LGB’s continues to gain steam it may
prove to be quite the painful wrinkle. One component of why this will be
difficult for gays and lesbians to accept might be the weirdly pejorative views
straight society have foisted on us with terms like sissy and tomboy. That gay
men are effeminate and lesbian’s masculine butch dykes is still a prevalent and
false meme today. This simplistic and totally incorrect view of who we are I
think may have and still is contributing to lots of confusion around gender.
Perhaps I am wandering a
bit into the bushes here but it seems that many, perhaps most, folks who are
transitioning are like Caitlyn Jenner moving towards their true self and that
being one of the two established and traditional genders, male and female.
Maybe this potential breakaway of T’s from the LBG ‘s might prompt us to view
ourselves as third or fourth gender. Here I am of course borrowing from the
thinking of Harry Hay on such matters. 
Harry always encouraged us to view ourselves as other and distinctly
different in very fundamental ways from our straight bothers and sisters.  Only by exploring and discovering these
differences would we get a handle on who we really are.
This may be way too much
to take on these days, that would be third and fourth genders, when we as a
community and society as a whole seem so confused on the two genders we already
perceive. This daunting task aside perhaps we should just start with a
suggestion from the Glover piece again where she states: “LGB’s and T’s are
getting a little too close for comfort. It might be time to cut the cord”.
I would personably view
this breakaway of the T’s as a golden opportunity to once again retrench from
the assimilationist trips of marriage and the military and refocus on the task
of exploring who we really are, where we came from and what we are for. Maybe
we LGB and T’s really are a bunch of wrinkles lending much needed texture and
nuance to the human race, snags be damned.
© 14 Sep 2015 

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.
Posted on

Moving by Pat Gourley

Moving from one abode to another has been something I have done quite a bit of since moving to Colorado in December of 1972. A quick and probably incomplete count would indicate at least 13 moves and different living situations. And as of today I am seriously entertaining the possibility of a move back to San Francisco after the 1st of the year.

Now I suppose this could be viewed as an immature and possibly pathological inability to settle down but I prefer to look at as a chance to cleanse. This was brought home to me in a short comment on Facebook that someone made to a friend’s post about “moving again”. The commenter said he viewed his many moves as cleansing behavior since these changes in locale usually resulted in the jettisoning of fair amount of accumulated stuff.

I suppose if I tried to further rationalize my frequent moves I could put a Buddhist spin on it and think of it as one more lesson in impermanence. Now this lesson of impermanence certainly has come easier to me in my life than say a Syrian refugee whose home has been blown to bits or the Palestinian family who have repeatedly had their homes demolished by the Israeli army. It is even hard for me to imagine the loss experienced by people whose homes in South Carolina that were recently flooded or abodes blown completely away by a Kansas tornado.

When I think about it though my major lesson in impermanence has not been related to any physical moves I have made but rather by the death of my loving companion David in September of 1995. In the last days before his death when he would lay down to try to temper the significant pain he was experiencing and that liquid morphine was only dulling he would ask to be covered in a purple sarong I had purchased at some Grateful Dead concert a few years earlier. It was this simple piece of cloth that somewhat soothed his soul. It wasn’t his nice car, his extensive Haviland China collection, our nice home or the many of his beautiful stain glass creations but rather my foot rubs and then covering him with that shawl.

I still have that shawl now tattered and frayed and it lives on my zafu as stark reminder of my own impermanence. These days as I contemplate a move back to OZ the main driver for this planned relocation is to get back to the strong village aspect to living at the B&B. I have many more friends here but I don’t live with any of them and this is really a bit of a lonely situation. The likelihood of an old wrinkled HIV+ queen finding another partner is slim to non-existent.

I have used my current job at Urgent Care to partially fill this void of being alone and though I like and enjoy the company of my co-workers the seemingly endless stream of folks with abdominal pain, bleeding vaginas, heroin addiction and homelessness can be taxing.

I do enjoy people being in my business on a daily basis in my actual living situation. If I were to die at home now my cat would eat me before anyone would find me. In San Francisco I would have folks looking for me frequently if for no other reason than that they want their breakfast and it would be highly unlikely that they are seeking me out because their vagina is bleeding or they are jonesing bad for their next smack pop.

So once again I will be moving as a way of dealing with my own inevitable impermanence and hoping my last dance is in the company of folks who love me and I them.

Addendum February 18th, 2016: I will not be moving back to San Francisco but rather staying in Denver and making a concerted effort to incorporate even more fully the many friends I have here into my everyday life. Details on this decision will follow in future ramblings.

© November 2015

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.