Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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My Favorite Fantasy, by Phillip Hoyle

In my junior high and senior high school years while listening to LPs I directed orchestral and choral music before the mirror in the front room. I fantasized myself back then as a conductor. In my young adult years I fantasized that the children I taught would retain as adults useful information, memories, and impressions that would inform their thinking and provide insightful reading of biblical, theological, and religious experience. I hoped that when they read they would find the religious landscape familiar. I hoped that they would realize they had learned skills in childhood that were still informative and not a block to their continuing growth. Such educational fantasies I entertained. As for the adults I taught, I simply hoped they would find new perspectives rather than insist on the same old ideas! For the past fifteen years I have fantasized that my massage clients in the sessions would relax deeply into the relief the therapies provide and from our work together would discover the ability to change postures or otherwise improve their day-to-day movement. But these days those fantasies serve me little, for now I am facing retirement in which I will sever my formal work relationships, a retirement that in its anticipation is engendering a whole new fantasy world.

Last week I received a retirement package from Heather, my daughter-in-law, a kit that includes a children’s book titled The cat with two homes Text by Tim Henley, illustrations by Jo Burroughs. Reader’s Digest Association Limited, 1989). Heather told me she has read the story to dozens of children and thinks it may help me prepare for my retirement. She wants me to meet the main character named Olly who she is sure will help me conceptually. She suggested I become a part-time vagabond somewhat like that cat. Of course that means I make longer visits to Mid-Missouri to see the family, play cards, work, live on the farm, and have long creative conversations. I’m imagining that but hope trips there wouldn’t include milking the goats.

Heather also sent watercolor and pastel paintings made by two of my granddaughters. I’m inspired by Rosa’s works and entertained by Ulzii’s. I framed one picture from Rosa to hang in my studio. Soon I hope to work with a teacher to learn watercolors. That means buying MDV boards, attending a class, and more. I already purchased a portable kit of paints that has brilliant colors and have a fine set of watercolors in tubes. I’ve got the other goods too: tape, paint, papers, and brushes. Now it’s time to learn how to use them with greater effect than I have been able to produce on my own. I’ll start the work soon.

During trips to my Missouri farm home, I imagine sketching plants and animals as well as buildings in towns and the countryside. I can make Artist Trading Cards galore from the new images using my watercolor supplies and techniques. I’m sure to have a wonderful time. I can send cards to my artist friend Sue who can trade them in Denver on my behalf.

I’ll also take my laptop and write a book. That will require more time than I have ever given myself in my trips there. Surely I can arrange to write in one of my vagabond homes. Oh I’ll have to find a nice coffee shop nearby, preferably one that has a resident cat, wonderful scones, and only the best coffee. I am pleased at these fantastic details. I’ll carefully plan my trips at the best times of the year. I’d hate bad weather to mess with my sunny fantasies unless clouds should provide interesting subjects, colors, and shadows for my anticipated watercolor works.

Heather also wants me to join my granddaughters and grandsons in art and music making and perhaps to get them summertime coffee house bookings in Denver, making way for their first interstate tour. This fantasy goes on and on, and all of it arising from one short letter and a small book about a cat who not only had two homes but also disappeared in the evenings to places even the storyteller didn’t know about. I’m finding that my life anticipating retirement is good; details flourish in this my favorite current fantasy.

© Denver, 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Scarves, by Phillip Hoyle

I started wearing scarves when I lived in New Mexico. The mild winters there when compared with the previous nine seasons of harsh weather in mid-Missouri made it possible for me to wear a jacket, scarf, and gloves and be plenty warm most of the time. I liked the light-weight effect. Of course, keeping track of scarves presented a new challenge to me. I lost several when upon leaving coffee shops I failed to put them around my neck.

Actually scarves and their care were the least of my complications in those days. I started doing quite a few different things during my Albuquerque mid-forties years and now realize that in addition to a change of scenery and culture, the exit of our children from the home had a lot to do with my adaptations. For the first time in my adult life I had freedoms I had longed for but had never exercised. It seemed like the challenges of my homosexuality were not going to be overlooked. Wearing scarves was the least among my new behaviors although not unimportant.

Looking back on it all I can say that scarves significantly symbolized a feminizing of my life, a simple step of my living into my girlishness fostered by being reared with four girls and by my personality that I now identify as gay, or at least as the gay part of it. I wasn’t at all surprised. I had long wondered how I got through childhood and youth without being beat up for being a sissy, a weakling, too girlish, somehow not a man. I wondered but thought happily about my enduring good luck. And then, in my middle-age-moving-toward-old-age, I could flip a scarf around my neck without a care. For me, scarves were a bit like umbrellas, things most men I knew had no truck with. Still, I had learned to use umbrellas in Missouri where it often rains, and then in arid and mild Albuquerque I sported scarves.

In my well-compartmentalized life I had already known scarves, actually worn them. They were present in our house due to having two older sisters who sometimes wore them when the bop was popular, poodle skirts and saddle oxfords reigned on the dance floor, and scarves in complementary colors were worn around the neck. Now I couldn’t wear them to school dances, but I did wear them when dancing at powwows. They were a standard part of my straight dance costume with its roach headdress, old fashioned bustle, beaded and mirror rosettes, trailers, apron, sheepskin anklets, bells, and moccasins. I preferred dark blue scarves and wore them in this other cultural compartment of my life. But when I left home for college, I left those costumes packed away in two suitcases and a few boxes wondering if I’d ever wear them again. They were stowed along with memories of childhood sex with boys, a nine-month affair with another teen, my love for doing artwork, and the like.

By the time I got to Denver a few years after leaving Albuquerque, I was wearing scarves almost every winter day. I also learned to pull a scarf into my sleeve so I wouldn’t have to remember it when donning my jacket. I now prefer plaid scarves although they often clash with my plaid shirts. I have even encouraged my partner to wear scarves and have noticed now he wants to tie them in a more girlish fashion like some kind of off duty drag queen! Oh, did that just slip out? Well, you can see that I have learned a lot but probably have a lot more to learn about myself. I wonder what else I may discover in those old suitcases of lost dreams.

Denver, ©23 March 2014

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Preparation, by Phillip Hoyle

So many years of schooling
So many books to read
So many papers to write
So many exams to take and pass

So many programs to plan
So many choirs with anthems to know
So many sessions to prepare
So many hymns and responses

So many family things to do
So many trips to plan
So many changes to embrace
So many needs to understand

I had learned to make all these preparations for school and work and family, but nothing prepared me for being gay. One would think with so many institutions and people in my life I’d have been prepared. Education? Church? Parents? No help anywhere. The man who sexually molested me said I wouldn’t have to masturbate after I got married; even homo-he didn’t have a clue!

My parents told me nothing. I don’t know what they even knew about homosexuality let alone transgender and intersex, but I suppose my dad knew something given his over-emotional reaction when one of my sisters pointed at a guy we passed on the street and said, “He’s a queer.” Well I guess I did learn something from the event: watch what you say around your parents. But I had already learned that from years in school and church and as a result already sported three English vocabularies appropriate to various settings.

I don’t know how old I was when the queer word was spoken although I’d heard its old-fashioned usage as odd like my grandmother said and I had heard it in its pejorative use in school—well on the playground there. But the truth of the word’s meaning was obscured by silence and anger. What did I imagine? I don’t know. I was probably a sixth grader at the time.

Norms of behavior were taught everywhere. Fortunately for me, my family accepted, affirmed, and tolerated unusual persons, but their conditions were like being uneducated, of another race, from another country, in a less than honorable profession, developmentally challenged, blind, crippled, or of different religious commitments. There were no GLBT persons. The guy who my sister called queer was developmentally disabled, the second child of a family living in poverty. Who knows if he was actually homosexual or not? Perhaps he was. I never heard anything about it. The two developmentally challenged boys from that family were called any number of things, but my dad gave them rides home from church and treated them with respect.

My only preparation for my inevitable encounter with GLBT folk or culture was to emulate my parents: to be kind, to “do unto others” as the phrase goes. In my case it was also to discover that even though I generally fit in well with my peers, I myself was other. Eventually I realized my only real preparation for gay life was to love myself, to do unto myself as I had been taught to value and love the others.

Hebrew tradition explicated in ancient documents how to treat strangers within the community. The code was based on the notion—really an ethnic memory—that we were once strangers. Thus we treat others like we wish we had been treated. It’s a powerful image for social reform, one I didn’t hear a breath of in the first presidential candidate debate the other night although I heard lots of religious posturing and self-righteousness. From the point of view of being an outsider, this treatment of strangers serves as the fulcrum of ethics—at least for me.

I wonder what would have happened when my sister said queer about the kid if I had piped up and said, “So am I.” I didn’t say anything and nothing happen, but I did learn the major lesson that prepared me to successfully live a gay life: keep your ears open to language and feelings, both blatant and nuanced. It is a lesson of safety and eventually of self acceptance.

I’m pleased I came from a family that did not harbor many fears, thus my ability to appreciate and embrace others different than I and especially those different like I am different, and just as important I learned to clarify that difference within me. Lucky me, to have learned a use of an ancient and religious value that opened me to love rather than to judge others and myself.© Denver, 10 August 2015

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Tat, by Phillip Hoyle

I
had proven myself the occasional social drinker and social smoker, but there
was to be more. I became a social tattoo wearer. Not the temporary tattoos, not
henna patterns from the subcontinent, not painted designs like kids wear at festivals.
No, I got a tattoo, a permanent crescent moon with its old man looking
thoughtfully on my life: its constancy, its changes, and its crises; a July
blue moon that arose that summer night twelve years ago and still shines on my
left calf.
My
tat caught the attention of the security guard at the Denver Public Library the
other day. He asked if it had any particular meaning. I said it didn’t, but
went on to tell him about the crazy choir member from Tulsa who, when I was
planning to move to Denver, said she was coming out soon to visit her daughter
at CU Boulder and we were going to get tattoos. “Oh we are?” I asked. “Yes,”
she affirmed, “and I’ll have my daughter call you with the name and number of
the guy her friends have been going to get their tattoos.”
I
moved here, got the information, called the artist, set the appointments, and
thought: what would I indelibly mark my body with? I had already decided I’d
get my ears pierced; I could always remove the posts or hoops, but a tattoo
seemed different. What design was I willing to sport around town for the rest
of my life? I chose a crescent moon, and when the artist asked what kind of
expression I wanted the man in the moon to have, I quickly responded,
“Thoughtful.”
So
the moon has been looking on, watching my life with its important changes from
married to single to partnered, from minister to masseur, from kind of straight
to kind of gay. He’s watched my continuing generous style, and my life’s
plentiful crises over finances, relationships, and losses.
I
got my moon. My friend got a ladybug on her ankle. A few months later I
arranged for more tattoos for her and her husband but declined to add more to
my body. I’ve grown so used to my moon that am surprised when someone asks
about it. My man in the moon smiles thoughtfully as if to provide me a sense of
calm, determination, and love, all three feelings I inject into all my social
relationships whether drinking, smoking, or otherwise fitting in.
© 17 Sep 2010 
About
the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 
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Teachers, by Phillip Hoyle

Teachers: I’ve had a lot of them. Some I recall for their
names, others for their engaging communications, still others for the lack of
impact they made on me. From grade school I recall Miss Weenes whom we second
graders called Miss Weenie, although not in class, and Mrs. Schaffer who read
“Treasure Island” to us, my first novel; there were others whose names escape
me, but I do recall the woman who taught us cursive writing in fifth grade leaving
me with a rather readable hand and the rather effeminate man who taught music
in fourth and fifth grades introducing us to Bizet’s “Carmen.” From junior high
I recall Mr. Moon who at the board always pointed with his middle finger and
who told memorable stories about science, Miss Oliver who taught Latin not only
to me but to my older sisters and to my mother, the effective algebra teacher who
also taught my mom and started geraniums in the windows of her classroom, and
Miss Costello who sent home a mustard plaster recipe when too many students got
colds. From high school I remember Mr. Martin the choir director, Mr. Snodgrass
the band director, Miss Perkins the Latin teacher and drama coach, and Mr. Unruh
the football coach and government teacher. In college, I remember Dr. Van Buren,
President Lown, Mr. Secrest, and Professor Jamie Morgan; in graduate school,
Mrs. Kiesgen and Dr. Lee; in seminary Dr. Duke, Dr. Routt, Dr. Hoehn, and Dr.
Rowell. But that’s only the beginning of the list. I also had music teachers in
piano and voice studios, art teachers at the Oklahoma Art Workshops, leaders of
numerous seminars and workshops at hotels and conference centers, and informal
mentors whose revelations and advice paved the way for a rich life of learning,
work, and enjoyment. Trying to list all my teachers indicates I learned many
things from many different instructors over a long life. I owe a lot to these
people.
Mother taught us kids to respect our teachers although she
well knew they had feet of clay. She supported them through her tireless work
in the PTA but also challenged them when their behavior overstepped their role
of teacher and nurturer of young people. So when I heard harangues from the
pulpit that some faithless people scandalously thought of Jesus as only a
teacher, I felt unsettled. Mom taught us that being a teacher was one of the
very best occupations anyone could pursue. Of course, those preachers were
defending the orthodox doctrine of the divinity of Christ. I was not concerned with
orthodoxy and thought if Jesus back then or as a spiritual presence could teach
anyone, he could be my teacher as well and earn my deepest respect. Like Mom, I
liked my teachers. Two, though, stand out as the most influential: the first
for inspiration, the second for technique.
I knew Dr. James Van Buren by reputation long before I got
to school and took his demanding class, “Survey of Biblical Literature.” After
that there were other classes in biblical studies, philosophy, theology, sociology,
and literature. Studying in a small college, I got to make a rather thorough
study of this professor who was both the hardest one to get good grades from
and the one who opened worlds of knowledge most widely. I can say confidently
that Dr. Van taught me how to run successfully on the liberal edge of
conservatism. By ‘successfully’ I mean not only getting beyond political
hurdles but also doing so while maintaining theological self-respect and
integrity. He taught me to read broadly, to think openly, and to communicate
creatively. For instance, he lectured on Christian humanism, Christian
hedonism, Christian stoicism, and Christian Epicureanism insisting that
Christian thought was not a complete philosophy in itself but a base from which
one examined and utilized perspectives of the ages. He taught humor as an
essential ingredient in the most serious communications and sex as a broadly
celebrative dynamic of life. In Dr. Van’s approach God as the creator and
approver of creation served as the starting point and essential part of a
healthy approach to life, morality, and ethics. He insisted that creative and
playful thinking stands as a necessary component in one’s life and insisted
religion should never become a wooden legal transaction or set of rigid laws.
He taught an appreciation for beauty through arts, literature, science, and everyday
interactions with fancy and plain people. Poetry, storytelling, drama, and
lively insights transformed theology into a process for living. The arts
pointed to dynamic creativity in the name of the Creator.
This overweight professor rested a little notebook on his
stomach as if it were a lectern. This enthusiastic professor lectured from the
book of Job on the dances of whales in the ocean, leaping about like one of
them himself. This insightful professor opened the way to Shakespeare, Milton, and
Whitman. This scholarly professor had been granted a DD and then earned a PhD
in English Literature, his dissertation an examination of Old Testament Apocryphal
references in John Milton’s poetry. This superlative teacher supported in me my
love for books and libraries and my proclivity toward creative thinking in
matters of education and religion. I continue to think about Dr. Van Buren’s
advice, knowledge, and approach whenever I try to solve problems or speak from
my own heart.
I knew Dr. Karen Bartman years before she was conferred a
doctoral degree in piano pedagogy. She served as the church’s music coordinator
and organist where I worked as associate minister and director of the Chancel
Choir. We made music together for several years before I studied in her piano
studio. I recall this teacher for both her pianistic and pedagogical techniques—carried
out with consistency, musical depth, and always the encouragement to keep
making beautiful music. I’ll never know if I could have learned piano technique
at an earlier age, but I did learn it in my late thirties under her tutelage.
When I approached my 40s crisis (a la Goldberg and Sheehe), I became
“angry with the gods of literature” as my friend Gerald put it and went on a yearlong
book fast. I joined Karen’s studio to learn to play piano, knowing I’d have
about three hours a day to practice, time I would not be reading books. I
remained a student in her studio for two and a half years. Since childhood I had
played—my father said banged—the piano but always with great limitation. Gerald
once said I was quite musical but had no technique. After two years of Karen’s
discipline I played a piece for my dad. He declared, “She’s a miracle worker;
you’re not pounding.” Even Gerald seemed impressed at her work and my response,
and Dr. Bartman said what she appreciated about teaching me—an adult—was that I
always played musically.
This physically fit teacher sat at the keyboard with
perfect posture and insisted I do so as well. This enthusiastic teacher with
beautifully strong hands didn’t just give me scales and arpeggios to strengthen
my hands but showed me how to execute them in ways that engaged listening,
phrasing, and trusting that my hands would know where they were on the
keyboard. This insightful teacher showed me how to ground myself at any point
in a phrase, a measure, or a beat giving life to the composition in
performance. This scholarly teacher helped me know Bach, Mozart, Brahms,
Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Mompou, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev in
ways I had never grasped even after extensive graduate study in musical style
analysis. This superlative teacher inspired me to practice with confidence that
I could play effectively and beautifully. Eventually I quit piano instruction
and returned to books and writing. Still, I continued to practice and put to
use my grasp of her technique when I played. From her I learned the value of
technical proficiency. Her consistent teaching encouraged me to continue to
develop as an artist and to bring artistry to bear in all my work.
In summary, Dr. Van Buren taught me to love life and the
arts, Dr. Bartman encouraged me to find consistent techniques for any creative
work I undertook. My life as a learner continues inspired and enabled by these
two great teachers. There have been plenty more teachers, loads of learning,
and lots of creative outcomes that today I celebrate along with this litany of my
teachers’ names.
© 1 Nov 2011 
About the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 
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Parental Warnings, by Phillip Hoyle

A sunny day with warm air at the municipal park; picnic weather for sure. I was eating a sandwich when my dad said with some feeling, “Phillip, don’t move.”

“Why?” I asked nervously fearing a snake might be coiling ready to strike.

“It’s a bee. It’s landed on your shirt,” my dad said calmly. “I’ll get it.” And he did, swatting it away.

That experience was about as urgent as my parents’ warnings ever got for we lived a very calm life. I’m sure they asked me to watch when I crossed the street and the like, but there were no dire warnings that I remember. I just lived through my nineteen-fifties’ childhood in a kind of Eden. All seemed so stable.

Although my parents didn’t preach much at us kids, they did discipline. There were spankings. Surely these originated as hand slaps on tiny butts, but were administered through the clothing. I do recall mother’s house slipper once when three of us kids were getting to be too much. We had been fighting among ourselves. Perhaps the noise level had got too high, so the three of us were instructed to lean over the couch cushion, our hinies in the air. I whispered to my youngest sister not to cry. We both knew our other sister would cry to high heaven. We tittered to one another and in so doing we realized the slipper didn’t hurt all that much anyway. I suspect mom had to suppress her laughter as well. I don’t remember her ever spanking us again as if she realized the hopelessness of it all.

My dad was another matter. He was larger, stronger. Sometimes he used his belt. The only spanking from him I clearly remember was when I was just a little too old, maybe twelve. I had been acting up in front of his parents and may have embarrassed him. He was angry, took me to the next room, pulled off his belt, and let me have it. I deeply resented this spanking, the last one he ever gave me. I suspect he embarrassed himself by giving it. Perhaps his dad told him I was too old or he just figured it out himself. All the spankings were immediate responses to small infractions and rarely were attached to rants or sermons.

From my parents I received no dramatic warnings about the larger issues of life. I suppose they were watching us five kids and wanted us to avoid problems, but they may have been more concerned for the other four, my sisters. Being a boy, I got away with more with my parents, but of course not with my sisters. Perhaps the folks were just saving their breath. Although I don’t recall any overt warnings or sermons, I realize I got some anyway. Mostly these were realizations from what I experienced at home.

* Don‘t exasperate others with your behavior.

* Don’t embarrass people in power in front of their superiors.

* Don’t embarrass your children with your discipline.

One result was that I didn’t give warnings to my kids except those common ones to pay attention while driving, and so forth, the same ones my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive.

Other teachings I got came from the established and predictable schedule of family life. For instance, take sheets off the bed each Monday morning and drop them over the banister onto mom’s head when we called her. Other responsibilities I was expected to perform included doing yard work, carrying out and burning the trash, cleaning up after meals, keeping an acceptable level of personal cleanliness, participating in family activities, and keeping up grades in school. It was as if not to do these things would somehow bode ill. Still, such warnings were never preached.

I credit my parents. For whatever reasons, they did well tolerating one another and five kids in a small house and later in a larger one. They gave independence to five rather independent-thinking offspring. They doled out simple immediate punishments in predictable and appropriate ways. Mostly they lived consistent lives and reared five children who also have found it easy to accept responsibility, to provide appropriate leadership, to like themselves and others, and to enjoy the many opportunities life proffers. And my parents did it all without leveling dire warnings and with a mainly calm style and loving attitude.

I sometimes got advice when I asked but it wasn’t preached. They gave me insight into problems and people. They gave me skills for dealing with life. They gave me the stability to live my own life. I remember when Dad drove me to the eye doctor to get my first prescription glasses, and I still wear the rosy-tinted pair my mother provided me.

© 1 April 2012

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Being Gay Is … by Phillip Hoyle

For me being gay started out as a tricky process. My childhood explorations of things sexual left me clear that I liked sex with male peers. Oh, I liked girls a lot—quite a few of them—but then I was living into societal, cultural, and biological norms that sought something more than friendships between males and females. I assumed I would take a wife, and luckily I found a superb one. Still, I knew that I was sexually somehow needy in a way my wife would never approach. I was dedicated to the marriage and to our two children and knew they would remain at the center of my life concerns

After age thirty I knew for sure my homosexual urges were not a side issue or a shadow self, but that the urges related directly and powerfully to my emotional and physical needs. I realized I was walking a rather perilous path with marriage, parenthood, career, and who knew what else at stake. I also knew I was in love with another man. So I opened myself to a bisexual world of my imagination and through a single male to male relationship and loads of reading began looking at what it might mean for me at some point in my life to live openly gay. Some years later—some twenty years later—I did just that.

Thinking that I should be living gay seemed a choice, yet the fact that I considered it and desired it seemed in no way a choice. So in essence, one might say, I am homosexual, and now in my existence I am gay. Perhaps that distinction seems inadequate, even a bit cant. I know many folk who would simply shake their heads no. But I think in this way in order to describe my experience, not to normalize or moralize it in any way.

I chose to be gay (my definition of a lifestyle) because this life most nurtures my needs. I find ironic the fact that I entered this full-time gay existence toward the end of my life, but I knew what I was doing and realized I had to do this in a loving way. My only regrets? That my life and choices have sometimes hurt other people. But my knowledge of life shows that such pains always occur in human relationships. My wife and I had a long run, produced and reared two fine and interesting people, and we all remain loving and supportive of one another.

My idea serves only as a simplistic background to what I want to tell you now—the really important things!

For me, being gay is:

          A great relief
          A real hoot
          A dubious mark of distinction I wouldn’t trade for anything
          The most sensible thing I have done in my life although I have done many sensible things
          A connection with a vast and varied community
          An experiment in life quality, and
          A beautiful, heartfelt experience.

© Denver, 2014

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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My Favorite Role Model by Phillip E. Hoyle

For many years my gay life was lived in literature. I read story after story, book after book, seeking to discover just what a gay life might look like. I read to find out more about and build an understanding of the lives of my gay friends. I read to find myself somewhere in that literature.

There I found many disappointing characters. I don’t mean that I didn’t appreciate their stories, but what they did in their lives was not what I would choose to do were I living as a gay man. Still I wanted to understand and kept reading, sometimes re-reading, sometimes discussing what I found with a gay friend. In this exploration I found an alien world filled with people I didn’t especially want to be like. Early on I read works of Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopalian priest. I was impressed by his book of poetry Are You Running with Me Jesus? and realized he was open, perhaps homosexual. Then I read a book by Rev. Troy Perry who started the Metropolitan Community Church. I didn’t like his theology but did think he was doing something very important. I read about the lives of characters in Patricia Nell Warren’s many novels. Some of them were nice people but their experiences of life didn’t really lead me into a world I could easily identify with. I read autobiographical novels of Edmund White and Felice Picano. In these I felt a kind of kinship but still wasn’t interested to live their lives. I kept looking as I read Forster, Vidal, Baldwin, Renault, Isherwood, Puig, Holleran, Maupin, Kirkwood, Rechy, Monette, Kushner, and many more. I appreciated the writing and sometimes identified with a character up to a point, but I couldn’t place myself into their episodes.

It’s plausible that I was looking for a role model although I didn’t or perhaps couldn’t think in those terms. I read the lives of characters in gay novels and stories like I read the characters in stories by the Nigerian Chinua Achebe or the Brazilian George Amado or the Osage Indian William Matthews, as if their characters were from another world or even galaxy. But there was something more important that I did appreciate. I liked especially the scenes in which two men really liked one another, deeply desired one another, and shared their thoughts, feelings and even secrets. I loved when two men lay together in Leaves of Grass. That I could imagine.

In those days I wore a beard because I wanted to; now I wonder if I was somehow emulating Walt Whitman. I visited many people in hospital; was I still Whitman? I cannot answer that question very well. I don’t think so. But I did feel a strong connect with Bud in Ethan Mordden’s series Tales of Gay Manhattan. Often Bud observed his gay friends. Often he was befriending folk who came off the street. He was all around Manhattan and Fire Island with his friends telling their stories. Eventually he lived with a younger man somewhat at the insistence of his group of friends. He seemed surprised at how satisfying it was. Now that I did identify with, even wanted. I suspect at an emotional level, Bud was my bud, my gay role model even though our lives were mostly different. I have made many gay friends in ways similar to his friendships. Like him I have written about them. I have lived with younger and older men. I have built a successful gay life and consciously have connected it to both the character Bud and his creator Mordden. So I guess I have had two or three favorite role model even though I had difficulty naming one.

Denver, ©23 February 2015

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Extreme Sport, by Phillip Hoyle

This weekend while at a bar I saw an extreme sport on TV. Ice skaters raced at absurdly high speeds on a down-hill ice-covered course with sharp corners and jumps. “Absolutely foolish,” was my thought. I feel the same way about climbing high mountains, scaling rocks, deep sea diving, riding down white-water rivers in kayaks, on and on—all challenges of the hardy-body and hardly-wise from my scaredy-cat point of view.

Still, a realistic review of all sports-like extremes in my life sees me canoeing over a waterfall, but that was accidental, certainly not my intention, and I’ve already told that story. Such a review also sees me riding down a road on a snow mobile towards a big white-face bull, but I was not the driver, just a rider involved in that accident. The bull lowered its head and stopped us cold. I recall lying there in the snow unable to move thinking, “And now the bull is going to come over to trample and gore me.” I felt like a goner. I never expected that sport to become so extreme as to cause a number of trips to a physician and years of pain. But really my list of such extremities is short. I’ve already told these stories. I really don’t do anything extreme except sometimes entertain strange and extreme thoughts.

The things I have consistently done that are closest to extreme sports include some extreme reading and a few encounters with what seemed to me extreme piano pieces. For instance, in undergraduate school and in graduate seminary I read several New Testament books—the Gospels of Mark and John, and the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. What made the readings extreme was that the text I read was in Greek! Fortunately I benefitted from the tutelage of fine professors of the language. In undergraduate school, on my own and without a teacher, I read in English Tolstoy’s War and Peace with its long Russian names and rather philosophical essays. I read the first volume in a month, took a month off, and then read the second volume. I recall almost none of the story and certainly not even one name except the author’s. You see, I don’t claim to be good at my extreme reading sport. I just engage in it.

Out of personal interest I read Victor Frankel’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning, the most difficult book I had read up to that time. I did not undertake practicing his logotherapy, not even on myself, but I do still recall one story he included and at least one general premise. More recently I read My Queer War by James Lord, a non-fiction account of Lord’s participation in the US Army during the European conquest. The story was not so challenging except in this reader’s ability to have faith in any military operation, but the main challenge was the author’s vocabulary, which led me to reread the book, list and look up all the difficult words I couldn’t readily define, and send the list to a friend who I knew would appreciate my making the list and why. I will mention that I have read books, many of them frankly, that have been a challenge in their stories, the scenes portrayed, and the values proffered, after all, I’ve been an avid reader of novels since I was in eighth grade and have read non-fiction endlessly, especially in anthropology, theology, music history, philosophy, sexology, and any number of specialized topics of my current interests. As a result I’ve stumbled through genetics while understanding only the barest of its meanings, philosophical abstractions that left me clueless, and logical conclusions that ran counter to my grasp of what the author had been saying all along. I’ve sometimes felt as if I were falling off a cliff, crashing into barriers, or caught in an avalanche. Oh well, I suppose I’m just being dramatic. Still, I remind myself of a couple of years in my thirties when I read at least five books a week, a practice that eventuated in my going on a book fast for a year.

During that year I attached myself to a piano teacher who liked my musicality and determined to teach me musicianship. Thus, using all my forsaken reading time to practice, I learned to play and memorized a number of extreme piano pieces, for instance, a Capriccio by Brahms, a prelude by Shostakovich, a short dance by Bartok, and several three-part inventions by Bach, and I played them in juries and music contests. Although I embarrassed myself in performance, I did love the challenges of the music. I also marveled at the real talent and technique of many accomplished pianists who, while they may have found the same pieces challenging, could actually play them in public with confidence and pride.

In short, for me extreme sports seem more based on their potential source of extreme embarrassment rather on my extreme coordination and ability. Thus while I have operated effectively within a limited field, I have risked only in order to participate in rather safe activities which have served to satisfy my almost missing need for adrenaline rushes. So while I accept that some folk may need to risk even their lives or to give everything in the development of a skill or to compete all their lives long, those conditions have had little appeal for me and have no real place in my life. I admire what it takes to do extreme sports, but at some very basic level I fail to relate to it. I don’t need to climb high mountains, don’t need to win in the race, don’t need somehow to be the best or to live on the edge of physical annihilation in order to be happy. Not me.

Denver, © 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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From Bell to Cell, by Phillip Hoyle

A personal history of the telephone

In 1876, some years before my birth, Alexander Graham Bell changed the world of human communications when he received the patent for the acoustic telegraph now called the telephone. Soon after my father was born, someone improved it with the rotary dialing system. That was in 1919, although rotaries didn’t make it out to our part of Kansas until sometime in the 1950s.

My first memory of the phone was a black rectangle affair with a combined ear and mouth piece on a cloth-covered cord. It hung in the breakfast room and had a very small number printed on it, our number that I no longer recall. The phone seemed magical but not so much as the older model at the farm. Watching Grandma Pink on that phone excited me so much I wanted to join in the fun, waiting for the neighbors on the party line to quit gossiping, then cranking away on the handle on the side of the old wooden box, and finally yelling into the mouth horn, “Central, Central.”

We, too, had a party line in town but one with fewer phones connected. We never had to wait so long as Grandma. Of course, young people today would be scandalized to learn that people, namely your neighbors, could listen in on your calls. Where is the right to privacy?

Then we got a rotary phone and a private line. The new wall phone looked much the same as its predecessor, except the black box now had a dialing apparatus with numbers and letters and in the middle was posted CE (for Cedar) 8-2533. I can remember Mom going to that phone to call Santa Clause when we had misbehaved. My favorite memory though, is of my sister Holly who at mealtimes sat with the phone immediately behind her. She was used to answering it during meals. But that day she was just ready to say grace when the thing rang. Picking up the receiver, she began her prayer: “Our Father in heaven….” When she realized what she had just done, she turned red, nervously laughed, and said, “Who is this?”

We still had to dial “0” for the operator to make a long-distance call, but before too many years automatic dialing of long distance became a possibility and with it the introduction of Area Codes. The prefixes tell the rest of this story for AREA CODES began to indentify the important places and phone events in my life.

913 Junction City where I grew up, Clay Center where I went to high school, and eventually Manhattan, KS where I went to college all had the same Area Code. The college dorm had a pay phone in the hallway downstairs. When Myrna and I married our apartment had no phone. If we needed to contact anyone, we walked one block to a convenience mart where we could use a pay phone if we had a quarter.

316 Three years later, we moved to Wichita, KS where I had my first full-time job. There we owned our first phone and began paying Ma Bell for the convenience. From its 316 number we made such announcements to the family as: “It’s a boy.” “It’s a girl.”

817 Some years later we moved to Ft. Worth, TX where I attended seminary. From that area code I eventually asked: “Ed, could you come to my ordination?” I wanted Ed, the minister who had influenced me to attend seminary, to deliver the ordination prayer.

314 One afternoon I received a call, my first one from Area Code 314. Jack in Jefferson City, MO asked many questions about my work in religious education. The congregation where he was senior minister extended a call, and we moved there to join him in ministry. Some seven years later I received another 314 from Jack’s wife. “Phillip,” she said at 4:00 that summer Sunday morning, “Jack’s had a seizure that knocked him out of the bed. The ambulance is here. I don’t think he is going to make it.”

505 A couple of years later there were many 505 calls to and from Albuquerque, NM. We moved there to a good job in an excellent church. But one day my good friend Ted called with news related to his AIDS illness. He told me, “Dr. Gold says it’s now a matter of months or weeks.”

970 Before too many months passed I began making calls from Area Code 970, Montrose, CO where we lived briefly to help out my aging in-laws. There I talked with editors, friends from many places, and eventually with the minister of another church where I would work.

918 Tulsa, OK. Months later, when we moved to Tulsa, we got an answering machine to go with our push button phone because I needed to know if people were going to miss choir rehearsals.

303 I brought that answering machine with me to Denver, Area Code 303, where it was useful as a tool for fielding massage appointment queries. I’d call my machine from the phone at the spa to see if I needed to get right home or if I could dawdle, shop, or visit the Public Library or Denver Art Museum. Some five years later, when I moved in with Jim, I quit using that answering machine. He and his mother were so private; I didn’t want to have the phone ringing with appointment requests. I bought a cell phone. That was almost ten years ago.

These days I’m beginning to feel somewhat like my partner Jim who long fantasized retiring to his home behind a high fence that would keep out the encroaching world. In my retirement I, too, am cutting off my accessibility related to a group of fine people. It’s not to block them out completely but, rather, to limit what I am available for. At the end of the year, 2013, I’m retiring from my massage practice but not at all from my life. I will be happily social but not available for either instant communications or for massage giving. I won’t have texting but will have a home number and will be on line with Email, Facebook, and Blogs. Surely the loss of the cell phone will spell a quieter, less bothered retirement. I am looking forward to that. Even though I won’t be available for giving massages, I’ll still be up for coffee, tea, or meals with lots of laughs. And I hope never again to change my Area Code unless to 720.

(Note: I never have got rid of my cell phone.)

Denver, © 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot