Tag: Pat Gourley

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Aw Shucks: The Politics of Pizza and Wombs, by Pat Gourley

The phrase “aw shucks” implies to me a bit of ‘good ole boy’
perhaps false naiveté with a layer of self-consciousness around something or
the other. That is a phrase I really do not relate too. I am much more likely to
be heard exclaiming: ‘aw shit’.
The past week has provided me with ample opportunity to be heard
uttering, “aw shit”. Much but not all of this angst has centered on the
kerfuffle around the Indiana Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and all the dust stirred around that. Besides
having a strong queer political interest in this I was also further drawn to
the story by the fact that I grew up a few short miles from Walkerton, Indiana
on the banks of the Kankakee River. Walkerton is of course the home of Memories
Pizza and the owners of said establishment who plopped themselves into the
middle of the storm by saying they would never provide pizza for a gay
wedding. As has been pointed out countless times over the past ten days queers
are capable of great weddings but these events rarely if ever include serving
pizza.
The indignation directed at these pizza merchants though
understandable really did just create martyrs for the cause of intolerance. They
are basking in the glow of many tens of thousands of dollars sent their way
mostly in small donations by like-minded very fearful folks who, for reasons that
are really inexplicable, feel their world is actually threatened by gay
marriage.
Rather than posting and commenting on the sad ignorance of
Indiana pizza proprietors and giving them an undeserved platform, we need to
perhaps re-focus on what got us to this wedding in the first place. That would
be the millions of us all across the country who have come out as queer and the
profound rippling, change creating effect that has had on society. The coming
out process repeated over and over again is the fuel for the really remarkable
change in attitude towards the LGBTQ community in the past few decades.
The changes in social attitudes well underway even in rural
Indiana can only be further fueled by the coming out process by those folks
known as son, daughter, brother, sister, mother or father to these pizza shop
owners. The personal knowledge of queer loved ones almost always trumps the Bible,
or at least gives one pause before withholding the pizza dough. I hope and
actually know for a fact that my personal coming out has had an impact on at
least some of the folks I grew up with near Walkerton, Indiana some of whom
still live near there.
My real “aw shit” for the week though focused on another sad
tragedy that occurred in Indiana last week and that was the sentencing of a
woman named Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison. This is a complex story and I am
providing a link to one of the better stories on it I read on-line from Common Dreams which I would encourage
all to read: 
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/03/boycott-indiana-imprisoning-woman-who-miscarried
The long and short of it is that this woman was convicted
under an Indiana fetal homicide mandate along with a charge of neglect on her
part around the pregnancy. So this woman is facing twenty years in prison for
what seems most likely to be a late-term miscarriage or stillbirth. The actual
facts in the case remain somewhat murky however the larger issue does not and
that involves reproductive freedom and the control women should have over their
own bodies.
The right-wing assault on a woman’s right to have control
over what goes on in her own womb the past few years in particular is
absolutely stunning and breathtaking in scope. The closing of Planned Parenthood
clinics and abortion facilities in many states is only the tip of this
insidious iceberg. I think it very sad that these issues do not seem to have
received the attention or focused outrage that the denials of cake and pizza
have for us queers.
I realize we are fighting for more than cake but it really is
not the only issue that deserves much more of our attention. Obviously many
lesbians in particular are all over these encroachments into the womb by most
often white, right wing, male zealots and the spineless politicians who pander
to them. I do think though, speaking to my queer brothers here, we need to be a
bit more vocal and involved in what is truly a war on women and their
inalienable right to control their own bodies and reproductive choices. It is
all the same struggle whether it involves cake, pizza or someone’s womb.
© 6 April 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.
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A Piece of Cake, by Pat Gourley

The phrase “a piece of cake” usually implies something that
is easy or simple and often even pleasant to do. Often though when this phrase
is used in regards to many different tasks the reality turns out to be
something quite different. For example when told by someone at the hardware
store that changing the leaking parts in your toilet bowl will be “a piece of
cake” when it actually turns out to be several hours of hell and eventually
involves calling a plumber!
A similar meaning phrase that seems to have creped into the
vernacular these days is “easy-peasy”. The use of which seems for some reason
to make my skin crawl and a nearly overpowering urge to slap the crap out of
whoever just said it comes over me.
However, I plan to address this phrase, Piece O’ Cake, for purposes of this Story Telling group by turning
it into a question, approaching it in very concrete fashion and then twisting
into a LGBT call to arms! Which reminds me of a criticism I used to get flung
at me much more in the 1970’s and 1980’s which was “why does everything have to
be political for you”. So here goes.
The issue for me, and most of us aging LGBT folk, is the
cake. The last fucking thing we need in our lives is cake. Specifically the
sugar that comes with the cake to say nothing of the processed flour it is
embedded in.
It is now indisputable that many of our chronic health
problems are aggravated if not directly caused by what we put in our mouths for
what passes as food. Over the ages we queer folk have often been accused of
diabolically putting in our mouths things god and nature did not intend to have
in there. I want to redirect the conversation away from tongues and genitalia
to the real evil shortening our lives and compromising the quality of the
golden years and that would be the sugar we put in our mouths!
The literature and science to back it up on the true poison
of sugar is voluminous. I would refer you though to the writings on diet by a
man named Joel Fuhrman. I need to extend a H/T to Betsy McConnell for turning
me on to this man’s writings about a year ago. I had been a neurotic student of
diet long before being turned-on to Fuhrman’s writings but I currently consider
him to be the last word on matters of food, at least for now!
The first step, and this is true for me, is admitting that I
am a sugar addict. Disturbing research using brain scans has repeatedly shown
that the same parts of the brain are titillated and light up from sugar as they
do from cocaine.
A close friend just sent me a piece from The Sun over the weekend that was an interview with a fellow named
Daniel Lieberman. A short quote from the article sums things up nicely in
regards to the evils of sugar:
“Sugar as a modern,
industrialized product has created an incredible amount of misery, starting
with slavery and the plantation system. Today it is increasing rates of disease
and death because our bodies can’t handle it. But we love it. We are addicted
to it”.
The litany of health problems related to poor diet is a long
one from diabetes to stroke to heart disease to obesity to several forms of
cancer. You can actually without too much effort connect the dots and relate
global warming at least in part to sugar and certainly processed foods. Animal
product of any source is of course a bigger culprit in regards to global warming
but that is a topic for another time.
As with many evils in the world sugar often creeps into our
lives in very insidious ways. The first step for me was becoming aware of the
staggering amount of hidden sugars in our food. Reading labels is a great way
to begin raising one’s consciousness in this regard. Of course as one of my many
health gurus, one Robert Lustig, has emphasized we should be eating real food
and that would eliminate anything that comes with a label on it.
There are no “healthy sugars”. Fruit juice for example has as
much sugar as equal amounts of any soda and your pancreas and liver could not
give a rat’s ass where the sugar comes from, it all has to be dealt with the
same be it O.J. or Pepsi.
I can hear the hue and cry now that there are no bad foods
and if we just approach things in moderation no harm no foul. Bullshit! The
words of the great Texas populist Jim Hightower apply here: “the only thing in
the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead Armadillos”.  And I would guess those Armadillos had type 2
diabetes.
So in my admittedly very biased opinion the LGBT community,
particularly the over 50 crowd, would be much better served in the long run by
moving the issues of diet and climate change ahead of marriage equality and
military service.
This sea change in queer priorities I think would bring us
much more in line with a whole host of other pertinent social issues from
racism to income inequality to the devastation of the planet.  And it would go a long way towards reducing
our unwanted belly fat. 

Eat more fruit and vegetables.

© March 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. 
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My Favorite Queer Role Model by Pat Gourley

Chelsea Manning 

A personal role model is someone whose behavior you admire to the point where you might actually try and emulate it and hopefully use it as impetus for creating change. Chelsea Manning is that queer person for me these days.

Let me briefly re-cap her history and I’ll finish with a bit of her current activities. She enlisted in the army in October of 2007 and eventually ended up in Iraq in 2009 as an Intelligence Analyst with access to classified documents. What transpired as a result of Manning having access to copious documentation of U.S. military and private contractor actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan is succinctly stated in this quote from a piece written by Nathan Fuller in March of 2013 for the Bradley Manning Support Group:

“What would you do if you had evidence of war crimes? What would you do if ‘following orders’ meant participating in grave abuses you opposed? Would you have the courage to risk everything – even your life – to do the right thing? Most of us would keep our mouths shut. Not Pfc. Bradley Manning.” Nathan Fuller 3/2013.

Manning released a very large trove of classified government documents to WikiLeaks certainly as a matter of conscience. Once exposed and arrested she endured months of torture in solitary confinement. Her subsequent trial resulted in a 35-year sentence based in part on several counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. This antiquated piece of legislation is by the way being put to unprecedented use by the Obama Administration to prosecute and persecute whistleblowers.

The prison sentence was handed down in August of 2013 to one named Bradley Manning and the following day she announced that from now on she wished to be referred to as Chelsea Manning and would be further pursuing her transition and hopefully receive appropriate hormone therapy. Last week on February 13th, 2015 her hormonal therapy was approved after suing the Federal Government for the right to receive this treatment.

A criterion I have for my role models is that they cannot be silenced even in the face of great obstacles. This applies to Chelsea in the most remarkable ways. In spite of years of humiliation, months of actual torture and a monkey trial for espionage she is still resiliently standing up for her core values and beliefs. Transitioning is always a great challenge but to persevere with it in a military prison after years of physical and psychological abuse and humiliation in attempts to break your spirit and crush your soul is simply a breathtaking act of courage. I know I will never have the fortitude to be anywhere near as brave.

In any piece I might write today that addresses the brave act of transitioning I cannot forego the opportunity to address the recent comments of Pope Francis on the matter. There are a whole string of his outrageous comments on gender transition I might quote here but I think this one is the most amazing: “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings…lets also think of genetic manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.” WTF! Sorry Pope Francis but your head is way up your ass on this one. Our trans brothers and sisters are not a threat to the survival of the human race but quite to the contrary a true expression of out evolutionary potential.

Let me close by updating you on Chelsea’s current job in prison. She is now writing for the Guardian. One article she authored appeared December 8th 2014 and was titled: “I am a transgender woman and the government is denying my civil rights”. I encourage you to read the whole thing: (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/chelsea-manning-transgender-rights ) I’ll close with just a few of her words from that article:

“A doctor, a judge or a piece of paper shouldn’t have the power to tell someone who he or she is. We should all have the absolute and inalienable right to defend ourselves, in our own terms and in our own languages, and be able to express our identity and perspectives without fear of consequences and retribution. We should all be able to live as human beings – and to be recognized as such by the societies we live in.

We shouldn’t have to keep defending our right to exist”. Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning, my favorite Queer role model!

If you are interested in learning more about this great queer heroine checkout the web site for her support group: http://www.chelseamanning.org

© February 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.

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Horseshoes for the Homeless by Pat Gourley

I have never had a horse in my life with shoes or without. I am aware of the game of horseshoes but this is something I have never played despite growing up on a farm. We never had horses and I never even got a pony for my birthday.

So the topic of shoes for horses is not something I can relate to at all. However, the topic of shoes for people and the feet that go into them are a frequent issue for the clients I find myself serving these days in the Urgent Care Clinic where I work.

Most folks coming into the clinic do no not have specific foot issues but two populations accessing care do. The first and larger group is the diabetics. Uncontrolled diabetes tends to affect not only circulation but in relation to one’s feet, sensation. Many diabetics often have numb feet having diminished or no feeling in their feet. This leads to bangs and bumps, to toes especially, that create small wounds they are unaware of and if not attended to can lead to big problems including infection which along with compromised circulation can eventually lead to amputation. Some of the best nursing advice out there is to look at your feet every day especially between the toes and the soles. If you can’t see down there get a friend to look for you or a small hand held mirror. If you have a friend to take a look you can also then guilt trip them into a bit of a foot rub maybe.

The other group that often has foot problems is the homeless and of course some of them are also diabetic. Living on the street or shelters if lucky often does not lend itself to good management of your blood sugars. This winter we have seen quite a few cases of frost bitten toes. Sometimes, if not too severe, this sort of resolves on its own but it can be bad enough that necrosis sets in and parts or sometimes-whole toes have to come off.

So perhaps one of the most useful interventions I can provide for homeless folks these days are dry socks. I am sure you have seen these hospital issue socks perhaps you have even worn a pair for a while. The current ones we have are grey or green with these raised horizontal racing stripes top and bottom I suppose to create some traction and prevent slips. If we have them I always prefer giving out the green ones, it really is a pretty shade of green.

One of my recent homeless foot issues involved a fellow with some rather significant frost bite that he had been neglecting and so in addition to some rather intense probably foot fungal odor I think there was bit of rotting flesh involved. The smell made my old nurse eyes water to say the least. I drew the short straw and got to try and get him to clean up his feet a bit before hitting the streets again. He was having none of it saying he had been at another hospital the night before and they had tried to clean up his feet and the pain was unbearable.

One technique is to use shaving cream on them, which can be less astringent than most soap. He was having none of that either. His plan was to get his check the next day and a
cheap hotel room where he could clean them up on his own. He wasn’t a shelter guy so the plan was to spend one more night outside. This was mid-week last week with temps in the single digits. The shoes and socks he had were of course wet despite the plastic bags he had lining them. He was definitely not going to part with the shoes which he said were very fine just wet. He did however take a pair of dry socks I gave him, green ones of course. This was the only part of our interaction that seemed to elicit genuine appreciation on his part.

These folks, during inclement weather, can spend the night in the waiting room once we have addressed as best we can whatever brought them in though most prefer to head out no matter what the weather. If they come in late in the day with some issue they feel can’t wait until the next morning they often then miss the cut-off time, usually early evening, to get into a shelter for the night.

So the topic of horseshoes made me thing of one more crazy-ass aspect of life in America in 2015 and that is that our horses often have better foot wear than our homeless. I might start carrying a dry pair of socks or two and on snowy, wet, cold days offer them to folks I encounter on the corner with their signs. A more useful gift than spare change perhaps. Maybe I can appropriate a few of the green pairs and hand them out some wintry nights on my walk home from work.

© March 2015

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.

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The Norm by Pat Gourley

I have for years dreaded being described as ‘normal’.  As queers we are really anything but normal
whether we like it or not and I truly believe that this is our greatest gift.
There is that old Chinese curse “may you be born in interesting times”.  A similar curse for me would be “may you be born
normal”.
I must admit though that earlier on in my HIV diagnosis I
craved “normal” lab values but eventually came to appreciate the fact that one
can live quite a relatively healthy and productive life and still not be in the
‘normal range’. Normal really is something that is not all its cracked up to be.
I suppose too there was a time in the sixties when I was experiencing my great
gay awakening that I wished I could be normal. Fortunately, thanks to a much
older lover, the Grateful Dead and an amazing commie Holy Cross nun I soon got
over that!
Normal is defined as conforming to a standard, being typical
or expected. How boring is that! I suspect the normal ones in the human herd
rarely initiate evolutionary change in virtually any sphere of their lives. I
am in favor of abolishing the term all together particularly when used in
medical or psychiatric settings. A sub-definition of the word if you will is
“free from physical or mental disorders”. Who the hell can honestly claim that
reality?
I was once again reminded of how being outside the norm can
be a very powerful agent for creating change while delivering progressive
political and social messages particularly in the hands of a gay man. This
light bulb of “fuck normal” once again went off in my head when I saw the Keith
Haring exhibit at the de Young museum
in San Francisco this past January. For anyone not familiar with Haring or his artwork
he was a very prolific gay artist who lived in New York City from 1978 until
his death from AIDS in February 1990.
I suppose my first impression of his art that I recall was in
the late 1980’s and I thought how simple, I could probably do that. Ha, well I
guess that bit of self-delusion wasn’t really normal now was it! I have
overtime though come to greatly appreciate the simple complexity and actually
many revolutionary aspects of his immense body of work. Not only was Keith very
openly gay he also was quite upfront about his AIDS and these two realities
permeate much of his later work as do many themes of social justice and the
corporate greed and rape of the planet.
Haring never drew from sketches but rather had the ability to
just start doing it and it happened in amazing fashion. The de Young exhibit also had a short
documentary with it that was quite enlightening into his beautiful soul, his
politics, his sexuality, his AIDS and most amazingly his creative process. Wow,
nothing normal about him. And talk about simple line drawings that celebrate
the penis, often his own, the exhibit was resplendent with many phalli.
 And of course on my
second trip the next day through the exhibit I was reminded that this was San
Francisco and that we weren’t in Kansas. There were dozens of middle school
boys and girls on a field trip viewing the many graphic sexual images and not
appearing to be phased in the least. In fact many were taking notes for class
and actually discussing, and not in hush whispers or giggles, the many amazing
ways fucking and sucking whereon display and at the same time delivering a
strong social and often political message.
For whatever reason most of Haring’s work is not titled. He
as often as not addresses issues of racism, AIDS, climate change and the many
societal facets of capitalist corruption and greed so rampant in our culture
today in his work with simple lines. His drawings also often speak to very
basic human realities of love, kindness, generosity and the constant message
that we are one world and most certainly all in this together.
A short quote form the artist:
“Drawing is still basically the same
as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world.
It lives through magic.”
Thank the universe that there was nothing normal about the
magic Keith Haring brought to the world.
©
February 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

Angels by Pat Gourley

Angels, specifically my own Guardian Angel, were certainly
part of the mythology foisted on my innocent little head in the early years of
Catholic Grade School. The mythology being laid on us actually reached at times
the absurd when we were asked by our nuns in the very early grades to please
scoot over in our desk seats so we could make room for our guardian angels to
sit down. I don’t remember this injunction much beyond the second grade. Perhaps
that was because of a realization on the part of our teachers that with the
existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy going out the window for many of
us it might have been a bit much to keep pushing the idea of guardian angels needing
a break and plopping down next to you.
Catholic teaching, perhaps not the most sophisticated strain
of it even back in the mid-1950’s, taught that all souls get an Angel assigned
to protect and be your guardian if you will. Since I was well on my way to
being a little apostate at the age of eight I always thought the nuns were just
trying to get us to not keep our books next to us on our seats, which we would
frequently push off the seat and crash to the floor.  And of course in today’s age of significant
childhood obesity there would be many kids who couldn’t make room for any Angel’s
butt with their own barely fitting in the seat.
If anyone seriously presented me with the possibility of my
having a guardian angel today I might ask about the 1200 kids under 5 years of
age who die of malaria daily and where the fuck are their Guardian Angels. It
would seem like those angels are being quite the slackers and probably should
be fired. And there are other countless examples of various forms of hideous human
suffering that bring the whole concept of guardian angels into serious
question.
Belief in angels for me personally of course brings into
question all sorts of other queries about the spiritual and ending of course
with the real big one ‘what the hell does happen once we die’. If I play my
cards right will I be escorted into heaven by my own angel or much more likely,
if you buy this horse-pucky at all, will I be given a GPS map straight to hell
with my own guardian angel sadly saying ‘well I tried to save your sorry ass’
and waving good-bye, forever.
Most days I wake up pretty much a dyed in the wool atheist
and thankful for the daily Facebook posts by Richard Dawkins. I do though admit
to recently being drawn back to the writings and recordings of the great
philosopher Ken Wilber, who lives here in Denver by the way.
Wilber is no fan of the new atheists, Harris, Dawkins
Hitchens etc. but he does have a bit more sophisticated take on the possibility
of an afterlife than angelic escorts to the great beyond. I most recently have
listened and am re-listening to a series of over seven hours of CD interviews
with Wilber on the Future of Spirituality
conducted by Tami Simon in 2013, the wonderful lesbian woman who owns Sounds
True in Boulder.
When talking about the possibility of God existing it has
been difficult for me, and I think for Tami also, to pin Ken down on this. He
certainly implies a ‘spiritual’ force moving the evolutionary reality of our
Universe along its way. One of my favorite Ken takes on this is that it seems
highly unlikely that it has been simple chance that has led “from dirt to
Shakespeare”. Though I am still not completely buying this I am back listening
to him and we’ll see where it ends up.
For now I am left with the stark belief and extremely
non-momentous reality of my own impending demise and that that most likely will
be the end of me with no angel involvement happening. At our current state of
evolution it its so very difficult for us to imagine anything else going on
after we are gone. This is such a freaky thing for us to ponder that we have
conjured up Angels and a whole host of other deities and after-life myths since
we left the trees of the African Savannah.
The raw reality of it all is summed up nicely in these few
lines from of course a Grateful Dead song called Black Peter. It is a tune
about a guy dying of something nasty and coming to the following realization
about his own demise:
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it’s just like any other day
That’s ever been
Sun going up and then
The sun going down
Shine through my window.
Lyrics by Robert Hunter
I don’t mean to be a big buzz-kill here so if Angels blow
your skirt up by all means just scoot over and invite them to have a seat.
©
December 2014 
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

Dreams by Pat Gourley

I have always had a very active “dream-life”. It is hard to
actually measure this for sure but it seems that at least half of my sleep is
dreaming. These would be the dreams that I am aware of or can remember in the
morning. The dream recollection process is not something I often bother to do
and I do not keep dream journals and probably never will. I take the same stance
toward my dreams that the Grateful Dead took with their music. The reason they
allowed even encouraged people to tape their shows was the attitude “we are
done with it and you can do whatever you want with it”. An attitude greatly
facilitated by a huge repertoire of tunes often performed with unique
improvisation with each rendition. I view my dreams the same way – well that
was interesting but it is over and I need to get on with the day and besides I
have to really pee.
Though I have always spent a good part of my night from back
to early childhood dreaming a lot these nocturnal adventures seem to be in
sharper focus than ever these days. Perhaps that is due to the recurrent
interruption of my REM sleep with the need to get up and urinate mid-dream.
Usually I am able to go back to sleep easily and it seems I swear that the
dream picks up where it left off. I often think, usually in a dense fog or semi-dream-state,
how exhausting is this to revisit the same idiotic situation, aren’t we done
yet?
 My personal bias is
that most pharmaceutical sleep aides are bad for you certainly if used
frequently and particularly those that actually create an amnesiac state are
not good for a healthy and vibrant dream life and may, at least in a transient
fashion, contribute to waking memory loss issues. I try to live by the old
Buddhist axiom that if you wake up and can’t get back to sleep it is actually a
call to the cushion. Nothing like trying to meditate late at night in the dark
to make you start to nod off in a hurry and for me it can be as effective as
Ambien. The only time I have taken Ambien was on a transatlantic flight to
Paris, which essentially resulted in me waking up in Paris feeling dopey,
anything but rested, wondering at first how the hell I got here and second why
no one was speaking English.
In poking around the ether a bit before writing this I was
looking for a current theory on dreaming and I happened on an article from
Scientific American from a few years back. A few sentences from that piece
seemed at least somewhat applicable to my own dream life:
Dreams seem to help us process emotions by
encoding and constructing memories of them. What we see and experience in our
dreams might not necessarily be real, but the emotions attached to these
experiences certainly are. Our dream stories essentially try to strip the
emotion out of a certain experience by creating a memory of it. This way, the
emotion itself is no longer active.  This mechanism fulfills an important
role because when we don’t process our emotions, especially negative ones, this
increases personal worry and anxiety. In fact, severe REM sleep-deprivation is
increasingly correlated to the development of mental disorders. In short,
dreams help regulate traffic on that fragile bridge which connects our
experiences with our emotions and memories.
Scientific American:
July 26, 2011. Sander van der Linden
It seems to me that there is some heavy-duty
Zen implications implied in this explanation that I will not ruminate too much
on but just say we can’t always control the shit that happens to us but we can
usually choose how we react emotionally to it. Apparently dreaming may be a
great and safe way to address all sorts of unfinished waking business.
Let me relate a few of the general
dream themes I have personally and you are all free to psychoanalyze them or
not. I most often tend to pay them little heed. The closest I come to a nightmare
these days is a recurrent dream I will have about getting to the airport on
time, needless to say I am frustrated at every turn and never do make the
flight.
A dream I had repeatedly, now several
decades in the past, was that I was going to be called on to fill in and play rhythm
guitar for the Rolling Stones because Keith Richards was not able to make the
show or perhaps was passed out back stage with a needle in his arm. I would
awake from this in quite an agitated state just as Mick looked at me to bring
the opening cords of Sympathy for the Devil or Tumbling Dice. Why this always
involved the Rolling Stones and not the Grateful Dead is a bit of a mystery to
me. Oh and by the way I can’t play a single cord on any type of guitar.
The only nasty type of childhood dream
I really remember having involved being chased down a long hallway by some
demon or the other and getting to a door that was always very big and
inaccessible to me. The door of course required a key I did not have. This
would seem to go on forever and never ended well.
The most vivid and intense dreams of
my life followed the death of my partner David in 1995. These dreams reoccurred
periodically for more than a year after his death and always had to do with my giving
away his stuff and that dear old queen left me with a lot of stuff.  I actually was slowly giving his things away
to friends or charity so I suppose I had those dreams coming. He was never
happy with the choices I was making in dispersing his estate.
I would say that overall my dreams these
days are extremely mundane and boring and rarely ever a source of consternation
while occurring or upon awaking. Often they involve very mundane things about
work, like did I give the right drug to the right patient or did I wind up
killing someone. Something that has apparently never happened since I still
have a job. I suppose I should examine for a minute a why my dreams about filling
in for Keith Richards were more disconcerting to me when they were occurring
than making a medication error at work and killing someone.
The closest dreams ever come these
days to exciting are the rare sexual ones. Ironically these always end in a
very frustrating manner with the much anticipated happy ending always just
outside of my reach.  And the age-old
phenomenon of a nocturnal emission never happens. But I guess a guy can dream
can’t he?
© November 2014 
 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.
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Terror by Pat Gourley

I have fortunately never really experienced terror certainly not in any sustained fashion. Anxiety about something or the other that progresses to what I guess could be called a ‘panic attack’ has certainly occurred in my life but even that phenomenon is quite rare these days. I am lucky not to be living in Syria these days, or a young woman in Afghanistan trying to go to school, kids trying to play outside in the Yemen countryside with American Drones constantly hovering above or a black teenager on the south side of Chicago simply wanting to walk down the street without getting gunned down.

None of these situations though are anything more than things I read about and they are far from my life. I have had no feelings of terror with any of the current boogeyman-issues like Ebola or Isis. I suppose though I could put myself into a fearful state of agitation if I spent much time thinking about the upcoming senatorial term for Cory Gardner here in Colorado, but he too will eventually go away or quickly fade into irrelevance hopefully.

Being white, male and middleclass in America has many built-in safeguards that make experiencing any terror short or long-lived for me extremely unlikely. The afore mentioned panic attacks I have experienced were in actuality more my own escalating emotional reaction to something that usually could be brought under control by a bit of mindful focus on the moment and a few deep breathes. I have been very lucky in that regard I guess since I do know some people who do suffer from ongoing bouts of near debilitating anxiety. Certainly not a few men and women who have been in combat in our country’s often fabricated wars experience recurrent post-traumatic stress for example.

I am sad though about how much of the terror in the world is fostered and supported by the U.S. government on so many innocents abroad. It must be terrifying in the minutes or just seconds before you become collateral damage from a drone strike. No amount of mindfulness and deep breathing is going to deflect the incoming missile. War is a great source of terror for those experiencing it firsthand and the simple truth is that the U.S. is far and away the largest arms merchant on the planet. A fire always needs fuel.

I am though these days running into folks some of whom are experiencing what I think is real terror in their lives and these are the homeless I work with in my current nursing job. Being homeless is always a scary challenge but all the more so when the temperature outside is below zero and you can’t get to a shelter or refuse to go to one because your mental health issues make being enclosed with a bunch of strangers more anxiety provoking than facing the brutal elements.

A fellow I took care of last week during the coldest of the current polar invasion is a prime example. This guy was very streetwise and as is the case often with the homeless these days was carting and wearing everything he owns. He was a frail little guy but managed to look twice as big as he actually was because he had no fewer than four large coats on. He unfortunately suffered from a chronic bladder problem, which has resulted in his having an indwelling urinary catheter for over two years. The presenting issue was that he was leaking urine around the catheter and his pants and boots were totally saturated with piss. Now this is something that would be an obnoxious occurrence whenever it might occur but think about trying to sleep outside in 10 degree below weather sopping wet from the waist down and unable to make it stop.

My intervention depended somewhat on where he planned to spend the night with temperatures again forecast for well below zero. He is a fellow well know to the system and having a rather prickly and at times obnoxious, or perhaps just independent, personality he was persona non-grata at several homeless resources, not an easily accomplished record on his part actually but certainly working to his detriment on a cold night.

As it turned out the problem was easily fixed with a bit of catheter irrigation. Like many folks with long-term catheters he had issues with permanent ongoing urinary tract infections with bugs resistant to plutonium including some yeast that could survive a trip to Mars. It was our best guess that these yeasts were what clogged the end of his catheter so it didn’t empty his bladder and the buildup then leaked out the path of least resistance, which was not into his leg bag but rather into his pants, and eventually down into his shoes.

So after fixing the issue, at least for the time being and administering some peanut butter, graham crackers and apple juice and getting a pair of dry pants he was ready to go. He was not going to part with the boots, piss or no piss. I ask if he was going to sleep outside again that night and he said empathically that he was. Always a bit curious about these things I ask where that would be. His response was a bit cagey but rather spot-on I guess when he said it was a “safe but secret place”.

For me personally it would have been terrifying to venture into the cold with wet boots and a catheter in my penis that could get plugged again any time. For this really hearty soul it was just another night and he had only needed help fine-tuning a few things to make it happen and still be around when the sun came up the next morning hopefully terror free.

I have had the privilege of traveling and spending a few weeks in several European cities. Most notably Paris when during a combined stay of over two weeks I only saw one homeless appearing individual begging on the streets and he wasn’t French! I am sure there are many more but I find it depressing that an almost universal observation of European tourists staying at the B&B in San Francisco I help cover regards the sheer number of homeless on our streets. They often relate that the homeless problem was so much greater in the U.S. than than they had ever imagined. Actually I suspect they hadn’t even thought of it until confronted around nearly every corner with someone begging with a sign or asleep or passed out on the sidewalk in an area with some of the priciest real estate in the world. Terror inducing maybe not but it is certainly a terribly unnecessary phenomenon in the world’s richest nation. The issue really isn’t a problem with the homeless but rather the society that creates the situation on the scale we see today. That is the real terror.

© November 2014

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.

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The Women in My Life by Pat Gourley

I have written many times over the years in this group about men and women who have influenced me. The men of course include Harry Hay and Jerry Garcia to say nothing of really countless gay brothers. In hindsight and this is actually current to this day it is the women in my life who have imparted the modicum of wisdom I have today.
It all started with my mother of course and her relentless unconditional positive regard. I was the oldest male in a modest-sized Irish Catholic family (6 kids only!) and therefore could really do no wrong. The closest I ever came to being reprimanded by her was the frequent Zen injunction to please go sit down and be quiet. Oh, and there is the one time I split my brother Brian’s head open with a rock. We had been throwing dirt clods at each other, something farm boys did frequently, and I apparently hurled one my brother’s way that also had a rock in it. That resulted in the only corporal punishment I ever received from either parent and involved a couple whacks on the butt with her shoe.
I also fondly remember two of my several aunts, Dorothy and Alice. These women taught me the fine art of cooking and the joy of gardening and eating fresh vegetables. Lessons that continue to serve me well decades later.

I have wondered on occasion whether or not my mom may have had lesbian tendencies. She did join the WAC’s, as a nurse, in World War II stationed in Hawaii, was an ace softball pitcher; never fond of cooking or housework and always eager to drive large farm machinery. Perhaps it was lucky for me that I was born pre-gay-lib in 1949. The night I was conceived LGBT identities were really not even a twinkle in any one’s eye outside of a few urban coastal enclaves. Options for most Catholic women who might have been gay in the 1940’s were largely limited to the convent or marriage preferably with as many babies as you could pop out. Of the many, many compliments I can pay my mother that she might have had dyke tendencies is right there at the top – loved you mom!

The next woman to come along who had a very profound effect on my development was Sister Alberta Marie my government/civics teacher in the last two years of high school. I owe this woman a great debt of gratitude on so many fronts but most particularly I learned to never be afraid to question authority. I was able to reconnect with her in June of 2013 in New York City where she has lived for decades and worked as an immigration lawyer. To her immense credit she was tossed out of the convent shortly after I graduated high school with a long list of offenses per the local bishop. The final straw I think was bringing renowned Jesuit anti-Vietnam War activist, Daniel Berrigan, to speak to the school’s Peace Club at Marion Central, which she was instrumental in founding.

Next came a group of women who lived communally with us in Champaign-Urbana from 1967-1972. Several of these powerful women helped to shape my budding radical politics and began to impart a feminist analysis to my worldview. One in particular was a frequent LSD tripping companion. We would drive out to a local forest preserve and then take, in those days usually, a hit of something called windowpane and spend the day having religious and spiritual experiences with the local flora and fauna. To this day I think those trips were as close as I have come, despite many, many hours on the cushion and in retreat, to realizing the non-dual nature of it all. It really is all just one taste and one’s personal taste of it often fleeting.

Next up were a group of nurses again all women who I worked with at the inpatient psychiatric unit at then Denver General Hospital. A few months after arriving in Denver in late 1972 I was working on the Psychiatric Unit with a cadre of very strong nurses who I admired greatly and encouraged me to pursue my own career in nursing and that dance continues to this day. They were a feisty bunch who never afraid to put uppity physicians in their place and were totally instrumental in shaping my life-long philosophy of nursing.
By the mid-1970’s I was becoming involved in the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street and being introduced to several potent women best described as radical lesbian feminists at the time. These women helped me through occasional and well-deserved criticism to hone my own political persona into one more effective and definitely more honest. A shout of thanks to Carol, Tea, Britt, Karen, Janet, Katherine, Donna and many others who helped immensely broaden my perception of what it was to be “queer-other” and helping to create a fertile ground that definitely aided in my latching onto Harry Hay and the Radical Fairies. Many of these same women were also instrumental in getting what turned out to be very successful AIDS efforts off the ground here locally.

By the late 1980’s I was exploring spirituality a bit differently, leaving the pagan/wiccan traditions behind and moving to the cushion and re-invoking my mother’s frequent injunction to sit still and be quiet. In the early 1990’s I became involved with a local chapter of the Kwan Um School of Zen. The guiding teacher, based in Rhode Island but a frequent visitor to our Sangha, was a women named Bobbi who had a day job as a hospice nurse and oh by the way she is a lesbian. Another potent mix of female energy I owe a great debt to.
In writing this piece more and more women have come to mind who were and are great friends and persons who had significant impacts on me. I’ll stop though in the spirit of brevity. It is quite frightening really for me to try and even think where I would be today professionally, culturally, psychologically, socially and spiritually without so many dynamic women influencing me along the path.

Sadly as I finish this piece I just received an email about the death of straight woman ally who I had gotten to know well in the 1980’s through her tireless volunteer efforts with the Colorado AIDS Project being on the original CAP Board of Directors. Straight allies in those dark days were very brave and cherished souls. Jill got to spend Thanksgiving with family around her bed before succumbing to a four-year battle with cancer.

Women – can’t live without ‘em!

© November 2014

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.

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Drifting by Pat Gourley

A secondary definition of “drifting” is to be driven into heaps by the wind. This particular definition reminds me of one of my favorite childhood experiences when growing up in Northern Indiana in what is called the Snow Belt. That of course was the several times a winter when we would get snowed in and be unable to get to school, a Catholic grade school about ten miles north of our farm.

I grew up on a farm on a rural country road in a part of Indiana that was the frequent beneficiary of snow squalls coming off the southern end of Lake Michigan. These squalls were often driven by strong winter winds out of the northwest that would gather moisture off the lake and dumped it right on us in the form of snow. The issue with getting truly snowbound often depended on whether or not there was significant drifting. When that occurred it would often take the county plows twenty-four to sometimes seventy-two hours to get us plowed out. We lived in the southern end of La Porte County, an Irish Catholic enclave, and plowing our little country lane was never a first priority it seemed.

This of course suited me, my brothers and sisters and cousins up and down the road just fine. Looking back on those years particularly grades one through eight when I was attending St. Peter Catholic grade school in La Porte I was not a very happy student, particularly after the fourth grade. I had this rather spontaneous and precocious, OK perhaps the adjective should be flamboyant, quality to my personality. For reasons I am now completely unaware of and perhaps was even oblivious to myself back then I learned it was best to tone it down a bit and you would fit in better. Better to drift along with the prevailing current than to turn around and try to swim upstream. I never went crazy though because I had a great mom and dad whose unconditional positive regard was always unflinching.

By the time I had reached eighth grade and my early teen years I was much more withdrawn though considered by my peers and teachers to be a serious young man perhaps headed to the priesthood and a pretty good student. Perhaps this was why in part I was chosen to play the role of Jesus in out eighth-grade Easter week play. We literally read from one of the gospels, not the most creative of productions. Which gospel it was escapes me but it was the Passion of Christ as it was played out in those tomes and dealt with the drama of holy week leading up of course to the crucifixion and resurrection.

For a little gay kid who would later be fascinated and tentatively drawn to the queer S/M subculture I was probably on some level disappointed that the crucifixion part was really skipped over as I recall. No loin clothes or whips for this little Jesus. It was a Catholic school remember and those Holy Cross nuns had no sense of humor or perhaps worse no realization of what sorts of nasty transgressions could really feel good, no sense of the erotic. Some of my best lines in the play though were after the resurrection. I got to be Jesus in large part because I was perceived to be the best little boy in the world.

That I was tormented with a reality that I was somehow very different from the other little boys was something I would have at the time guarded to my death. I do though remember thinking what a phony I was playing Jesus, being the big old sinner I was sure I was. Not that any sort of gay sex had remotely occurred for me yet. The biggest transgressions involved laying naked along the local river bank in the summer with several of my male siblings and cousins all of us sporting hard-ons and talking about how girls got pregnant. Believe me it was not the thought of a penis in a vagina that was doing the trick for me but the sight of other erect penises all within touching distance and what a magical phenomenon that was to behold!

Back to drifting. That really was how I was getting by in those years from fifth grade until my family moved up to Northern Illinois at age sixteen when my whole life changed for the better in ways unimaginable. Just drifting and allowing myself to be buffeted and intimidated by the strong winds that were the Catholic Church and its many minions and their truly perverted worldview. How ironic that it was that a couple of those same minions in the form of a commie-pinko nun and a queer male guidance counselor allowed me to stop being buffeted by the wind and instead to lunge headlong into the winds of change sweeping the whole country in the late 1960’s: something that proved to be much more soul quenching than just drifting along.

© July 2014

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.