Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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The Wisdom of an LGBT Identity by Phillip Hoyle

Cecelia started it when she told me about a book she wanted me to teach. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was no ordinary book but, rather, a spiritual process of self-examination, exercises, and disciplines to help the reader overcome barriers to self-expression as an artist. The content and activities were meant for writers, visual artists, performers, and just about anyone who wanted to explore his or her own artistic bent. I was skeptical, but Cecelia was persistent. Agreeing to share the task of facilitating the thirteen sessions, we settled on an approach that seemed well balanced.

A group of writers, poets, painters, illustrators, sculptors, musicians, and educators—all members of the church where I worked—assembled that first night. They received their copies of the book and listened patiently as we explained the process for both the group and the individual participants. The work focused daily on the infamous “Morning Pages,” periodically on completing short writing and art exercises, and weekly on “Artist Dates.” Oh, we read the book, too, and met each week to share our work, objections, pains, elation, pasts, and dreams.

What Cecelia knew and I hoped would happen did occur. We changed our views of ourselves, our appreciation of one another, and our ability to engage in creative work. Due to our weeks together, our lives have continued to change to this day.

For example, some seventeen years later I am still writing my three hand-written, first-thing-in-the-morning pages. I have been writing and painting on a regular basis. I know others have as well. Since that time I have led several other groups through Cameron’s process, often sharing the leadership with others as Cecelia taught me. People are still changing. But the most unexpected change occurred in me, and it wasn’t directly related to seeing myself as an artist.

The child, the inner child, a concept with which I was familiar, showed up prominently in The Artist’s Way. I had always been slightly put off by the concept, not because it made no sense, but because I heard it used so trivially so often. I read Cameron critically and did not find her explications very enlightening, but I did respond to her process. As a teacher I had pledged myself to engage fully in the process the book proffered. I answered all the questions the author posed, made all the lists she asked for, and on Artist Dates took my inner child to the museums, through parks, down streets of mansions, to mountain meadows, streams and caves, into paper shops, hardware stores and artist supply companies just like the writer instructed. During our times together I recalled many childhood scenes. Somehow Cameron showed me that my inner child is not just some kind of memory of past events but that I am still all that I have ever been at whatever age: confident or afraid, victorious or at a loss, praised or put down.

So I got reacquainted with my inner child’s hurt even though the idea seemed corny. Then I wrote about my fifth grade teacher who derided my Purple Cow illustration but offered me no help with my drawing. I was embarrassed and convinced I couldn’t draw. Two years later I enrolled in seventh grade woodshop instead of the art class I really wanted. But in shop I discovered I couldn’t do the projects very well not being strong enough to control the awkward tools I had to use. My only really fine work that year was the design I burned in the wooden bookends I made. I wrote about these things in the exercises and in my Morning Pages and grew more and more to love my hurt inner artist child.

The more Artist Dates I went on the more artistic and the more gay I got! That’s when I remembered the comment a gay friend of mine said about my work in religious education. “It’s more like art than education,” he observed. I trusted the judgment of this fellow minister, educator, and artist but felt confused. Looking critically into my own experience I finally I realized what was right about his analysis, that my play with religious ideas, symbols, and characters was enacted through art forms. And then I started to wonder if my fifth grade teacher was wrong. I quit planning art processes for children and began doing them for myself.

Cameron’s process expanded. She wanted us to costume on our Artist Dates wearing artsy clothes—surely black outfits with berets and scarves. She encouraged us to hang around with other artists. She suggested we introduce ourselves as artists. In so doing, she opened my imagination by encouraging an identity. In my response I discovered that not only was the artist child wounded in me but the gay child as well.

Then the goofy New Age intruded. Cameron wanted us to make affirmations, to write over and over certain sentences. I did so even though I hated doing it. But how else does one learn? I still write one of these sentences, still slightly irritated because, I’m sure, I hear a writing teacher telling me not to write in the first person and because to me the affirmation seems exaggerated, not exactly true. Stifling my objections I write: “I, Phillip Hoyle, am a brilliant and prolific artist.” The first time I encountered it, I simply filled in the blank with my name, first and last, just as she instructed. Then I started writing it at the end of the Morning Pages sometimes as an additional page of mantra-like affirmations, at other times to fill out the third page when I felt like I was running out of time or ideas to write.

What I learned through identifying myself as an artist transformed me. I sought out other artists. I laughed when I dressed in black like our church organist. I continued the artist dates long after the thirteen weeks ended. I continued to write the Morning Pages. And the more I did all these exercises, I found my artistic intertwined with my gay. I was doubly identified. My hurt artist child was always an artist and was always gay. That’s me. 


My mantra now included this: I am Phillip Hoyle. I am an artist. AND I am gay. I was always an artist, and I was always gay.

The advantage of this identity? I was able to change my life knowing a community of acceptance, understanding, and living. A way to see myself. A structure of self-acceptance and understanding. A way to find friends. The wisdom of LGBTQA coalition identity. Something more than politics. Rather the creation of a world-view of inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, relationship, and growth within diversity.

© Denver, 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.com

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No Good Will Come of It by Phillip Hoyle

Today’s topic—‘no good will come of it’—seemed an apt description of my search for a story even though I started looking for an approach two weeks ago. At first consideration the theme sounded to me like Cassandra’s warning to the good citizens of Troy in the Iliad, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Homer could easily have added, “No good will come of it,” without any change to his character or plot. I didn’t pursue this image, for to view my life as a tragedy didn’t easily fit my personality. I felt stymied by the topic that seemed to go nowhere.

I began my search again on Tuesday morning and found myself wandering through empty hallways of my memory—no furnishing wanted to seat such a saying, no picture offered potential to my storytelling. Still I walked around in the space peeking into corners and around projections, peering out windows and down stairwells, opening doors and slamming them shut in frustration. Finding a story seemed hopeless.

Come Wednesday I considered what I saw as a great contrast between my parents: Dad, who was more of the “No good will come of it” school; Mom, who was more of the “Every cloud has a silver lining” school. I saw easily how I was more like my mom, but the insight offered no story I hadn’t told before. Besides, my parents’ lives were much more than a single contrast. Both believed in the power of learning and education. I’m sure Mom had her challenges that made some days seem just plain gloomy and Dad held out hope that his kids would live meaningful lives.

Surely both Mom and Dad deemed my education effective when in eighth grade I began reading with a voracious appetite, a result of my discovery of historical novels in the junior high library. My interest in American history was spurred on by the dramatic telling and the presence of Native American characters. As a developing bibliophile I supplemented assigned books with stacks of novels throughout high school, five years of college, and over five years of graduate education. I read with a preference for comedy but in the process took in many tragedies, stories from many cultures told from many perspectives. Finally I discovered novels written by American Indian authors and by gay and lesbian authors. Then I read more and more. A Canadian friend sent me books by Canadians such as Thomas King and Annie Proulx. I felt thankful that my vocation as a minister supported the idea that I continue learning in order to be an effective teacher and leader. My library grew, but of course, some books I did not place on the shelves in my church office.

I easily preferred reading a book over viewing a movie, even a cinema made from a book. So when I heard talk that a movie was being developed from a story by Annie Proulx, I went in search of the tale at the library and found “Brokeback Mountain” in a collection of Wyoming-themed short stories. I read “Brokeback Mountain” with interest and then the rest of the stories in the book. One word seemed to describe them all: bleak. Such a mood had permeated her novels. I wondered how this movie would turn out. When it showed at the Mayan Theatre I attended with my partner. I was so moved that at the end of the movie I had to stay through the credits to weep. Eventually we left the theater. Wanting to see just how closely the movie script and editing followed the story, I purchased the collection and was amazed at how accurately it tracked and how freedoms taken in the movie interpreted the story with amazing clarity.

While discussing the show with a minister friend I discovered my view contrasted greatly with his. At the end of the movie I had felt something deeply positive in the survivor’s life, in both the new-found connection with his daughter and a continuing deep love with his deceased friend. His grief had great value that made him reach out to his family. Even that little, undeveloped glimmer of hope which, in contrast to what else he had experienced, seemed to me the promise of eventual fulfillment for the character. My friend Terry didn’t feel it at all, but rather sank into the bleakness of the author’s characters and the setting’s spare resources. He left the movie feeling no hope. Perhaps he really enjoys tragedies while I really want comedy. But more importantly I believe I saw the movie from the point of view of my own gay experience. While I deeply loved a couple of men through the years of my straight odyssey, I also lived a strange, spare realty—one in which increasingly I desired a gay relationship of open shared affection. I wanted to be nurtured by it, by a man. I held onto the images, the friendships I had, the literature I read, even some pornography, but through a sense of self control patiently nurtured my friendships and loved myself. I really wanted more and eventually went to find it.

My search was consequential, but my life was not bleak. Still, deep within there was a Wyoming kind of windblown, cold, lonely world, aspects of which could be seen even in my childhood. Gay boy loses straight friend after years of playing together; their worlds diverged. His same-sex needs persisted but he didn’t find anyone to share them with. As a young adult he found two gay male friends with whom he could share his own sexual narrative, but he didn’t pursue either as a lover. He had other friends but the gay ones always seemed more interesting. He watched other bisexual men but didn’t want their problems. Eventually he changed his life, took the great losses and the attendant grief. He was hurt but not destroyed.

You see, like Ennis Del Mar at the end of the movie, I stood in the trailer of my transience and examined the souvenirs of my life and loves and felt inspired and loved—even if imperfectly—and eventually hopeful. That’s how I saw Ennis. That’s how I saw myself. So, although observers of my not-strong straight approach to life may have been supposing no good would come of it, and although some pointed to the disruption of my vocation and marriage as proof they were right, they had no access in their depressed judgmental view of the deep joy that disruption led me to experience. I found in those changes silver linings and deep veins of golden treasures. I kept my souvenirs while I continued searching for gay love and meaning. I guess I am so much like my mother! I found my story.

© 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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One Monday Afternoon by Phillip Hoyle

One Monday afternoon with a folder of
stories in hand, I made my way to The LGBT Center in the 1100 block on
Broadway, the place with the purple awning that I had visited often to borrow
books from the Terry Mangan Memorial Library. My friend Dianne had looked at
The Center’s website and called me to say they were offering art programs and a
weekly storytellers gathering. She thought I might be interested, and she was
right. For quite a few years I had been attending a writers group, a monthly
gathering of men and women in which I was the only gay, but now I thought I’d
like to read my gay-themed pieces to an LGBT audience to see what response I
would receive. Excited by the prospects I entered the building, climbed the
stairs, registered my presence, and made my way to the library where the group
was to meet.
I knew the storytelling was part of
SAGE, a seniors program, and wondered how I’d compare with other participants.
I was younger except for Jackie who was the group leader. She was quite a bit
younger than I, a graduate social work student at Denver University who had
started the group as part of her internship with SAGE. Jackie’s warm and
friendly personality attracted me, and she was just funky enough and humorous
enough for me to relate to her. Two or three other men attended my first Monday
afternoon with the group. We introduced ourselves to one another and the
storytelling began. Since I’d never attended before, I had no story about the
topic, but I did have a couple of stories about my experiences as an older man
who came to Denver some years earlier to live his life as an openly gay man. Two
participants told stories extemporaneously, sharing interesting events in their
lives. Jackie read her story, something about one of her boyfriends back in New
Jersey. The other participant read his story in a thick Alabama accent.
I knew I had come to the right place. Thus began my tenure with The Center’s
SAGE of the Rockies “Telling Your Story” group, a storytelling relationship
that has endured over three years.
The next Monday afternoon one of the
extemporaneous storytellers surprised us and himself by reading a story.
Somehow the experience of putting his feelings on paper moved him deeply,
reading them aloud nearly devastated him, and hearing them read nearly devastated
the rest of us. What was this group? I suspected our times together might
become more than any of us anticipated.
Over the ensuing weeks—April through
June—we told our stories to one another; sometimes asking questions for
clarification, sometimes responding with our own similar experiences and
feelings, and always appreciating the candor and depth of the sharing. But
Jackie broke into our satisfaction by announcing the end of her internship; she
had received an assignment at another setting for the final months of her
academic program. Michael piped up to say we already had our next leader. We
looked around the room and then a realization hit me. I felt like I was again
in church; I was being volunteered. When the truth of it was clarified, I
agreed only to consider convening the group. The Center would be closed for a
month while the programs moved into the new facility on East Colfax Avenue. I
suggested that on the first Monday afternoon of opening week we come together
with stories on the topic “Beginnings.” In the meantime I would confer with
Ken, the acting SAGE director, about the possibility of leading the group.
I did volunteer to lead the group, an
experience of great importance and meaning for me. Prior to accepting the
responsibility I had gone nearly twelve years without leading any kind of
group. In fact, I had rarely attended any meetings for over a decade. I
reasoned perhaps it was time I re-entered group life and asked the participants
to brainstorm several topics we could use for the next meetings. We did so and
since then have generated so many topics we’ll have to meet weekly for
several years to use them all. The LGBT makeup of the group has presented no
particular challenges because of the personalities of group members and their
dedication to building community that features a broad spectrum of human
experience. But the most important thing I discovered in assuming this
leadership was that the group barely required any leadership, barely needed it.
It’s the easiest group I ever led, and I had led many, many of them in a church
career that lasted thirty years. Also, I never before led a group with such a
high average IQ or so much creativity and talent, both raw and trained. And
still after many months I never can imagine what to expect each week. Such fun,
such humanity, such diversity, such community. It all began for me one Monday
afternoon.
© 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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Wisdom: I Do Not Assume the Role by Phillip Hoyle

Wearing my mother’s housecoat and slippers, Lady Wisdom spoke to me. She sat there at the breakfast table listening to my complaint about Andy, a new student at college, a boy from a small eastern Colorado town, who seemed to assume he knew more than anyone else, who in the mid-sixties to me epitomized that worst 1950s trait of being stuck on himself, who demonstrated no humility. I really didn’t like him. Lady Wisdom listened as I described this young man, a whole year younger than I. Finally, from somewhere deep in her experience, she proffered these words: “Maybe he’s having a hard time dealing with all the new things he’s encountering living away from home, in a dorm, in another state, surrounded by other people who don’t always sing his praises. Maybe he’s just scared and so presents a confidence he doesn’t really experience.” I was amazed by her words. I had thought I was speaking with my mother, but the wisdom of centuries made their way through her mouth. Mom, as the slogan of the Kansas Association for Youth advised, took the long look and urged me to do the same. Her concern was to bring peace to her family, to her larger community, and to teach her children to do the same.

Wisdom is the theme of the cartoon of a person climbing a tall mountain to seek the insight of some hermetic guru. It is the watchword of international negotiations along with the secondary value of tact. It is a meditation that examines not only the content of knowledge but also its application in daily life, not just to know but also to know how to do. Usually personified in ancient times as a woman, Wisdom appeals to the more feminine side of human need, a need for tolerance, contemplation, and ultimately service to the common cause.

I suppose I should know something about wisdom, but it seems to assume too much, by which I mean it wants me to be responsible. I recall the week two highly contrasting massage clients responded to a jazz lyric playing in the background, “That’s exactly what I need, someone to watch over me.” Yikes I said silently to myself. Don’t expect that from me. I just rub away aches. I cannot run your life. I cannot live with you. I cannot be your husband. You see, by becoming a massage therapist rather than a minister I was trying to simplify my life. I didn’t want to advise or to live with exaggerated expectations for miracles and other such responsibilities. I wisely, though, kept my mouth closed and kept rubbing.

Today I want to say something important about what we are doing in our Sage of the Rockies storytelling. Wisdom is usually linked with age, the Sage or wise one with experience. For years I read gay studies and gay stories. I was trying to find out from others what my gay life could be. That related to my personal needs. Now as a GLBT I am telling stories to serve a community need. While we have seen huge changes, seen the gathering of identities and power among GLBTs, we still need to keep alive past experience—even the perspectives of hiding and fighting, hurting and coping. Changing laws and increasing acceptance of us and our ways in the general society do not erase memory. We have to tell the stories for not to do so in some new way dis-empowers the unsuspecting and sometimes ignorant GLBT populations of the future. We need more words of wisdom from our experienced gays. We need more stories of true life from our lesbians. We need more clarity from our bisexuals. We need more advice from our Transgender brothers and sisters who are still experiencing the terrifying isolation and focus of hatred—more than Gays, Lesbians, and Bi-sexuals. We need all these stories to remind us of our own.

We need to proffer wise council—not in order to be right but rather to keep alive perspectives and memories that could easily get lost in a media-crazed and Madison Avenue world—especially when huge money manipulates huge portions of the population and an informal popular base seems lacking in public democratic life. So, let us tell the stories, our stories, in all their beauties and pains. May we be clear, candid, and clever in our accounts for we tell the story of a life and of a community.

Oh, about Mom’s wise words concerning Andy: for me they were very helpful and still are to this day since Andy married one of my sisters.

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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Forbidden Fruits by Phillip Hoyle

I asked myself a silly question about this topic “Forbidden Fruits.” Am I a fruit? I answered it easily. Of course I am, but I still didn’t have a story to tell. I wrote a very long paper exploring different approaches but found myself arguing with an ancient story of origins way back there in the old book. I kept telling myself to write a personal story that in some way connected. If what follows fills the bill, good. If it doesn’t, enjoy it anyway.

I didn’t need a prohibition to make the fruit attractive. No one slithered my way to tempt me, at least not anyone I was very interested in.

As a child I liked sexual games with friends, especially those with other boys. As a teen I was open to the advances of an acquaintance, a boy a year younger than I. When the ensuing months of sexual play ended (he moved away) I didn’t find anyone to relate to in what I was discovering was an experience with social sanctions against it. I went on living my life, realizing more and more about difference (sexual, social, racial, and cultural) and grew more fascinated by the array of perspectives related not only to my sexual desires but also concerning common habits (for example, eating), pallets (such as favorite colors), sounds (like in musical styles), even reality (including visions cultural, philosophical, theological and anthropological). I came to know the great variety of religious values held sacred and true by peoples around the world and even in a single country town. I learned about prejudice and grew to appreciate my parents’ values as they were demonstrated with other people, society, and the world.

Although my mother was a prohibitionist as relates to alcohol, she still taught an open attitude toward life and allowed great freedom for her children. Both she and my dad had personal standards that they chose to teach through their consistent practice rather than judgmental and manipulative badgering. Although we kids really liked each other, we bickered a lot. Some activity might be judged inappropriate by one of us prompting a pointed finger and the words ‘shame on you’ just like a national politico may do today over a personal misbehavior of someone in the opposing party. I realized that the very voice that said ‘shame on you’ one minute in the next chanted ‘finders keepers; losers weepers.’ Oh the world I discovered and loved revealed itself in ways quiet varied and often inconsistent.

Of course, my parents and siblings were not the only teachers. The culture with its lore and assumptions, history and laws taught much more and powerfully. I keep thinking about the dynamics of the second Genesis creation story, that ‘just so’ tale that still defines so many peoples’ attitudes toward men and women, toward animals and earth, toward sin and salvation, toward action and consequence—that truly ethos forming mythos (Genesis 2:4b-3:24). The word temptation seems defined by that story, but the temptation is impossible without the forbidding. The story’s power comes from its heavenly array of a very human god, his angels, his creations, his prohibitions, his curse which focused only on the snake, and his explanations of consequences related to behaviors he as the assumed creator made possible in his plants, animals, and new people. It’s a story of guilt mongering. To say so may sound cheeky. So be it.

What eventually gets to me is the misogyny of the whole scene. The god Yahweh is too human meaning way too male with too much power. He, this desert god, is too egotistical. Of course, this was eons before Moses and other prophets started training him for international diplomacy, eons before the Greeks insisted he be consistent and perfect, before they demanded that if he was going to insist on a purity code for his creatures, he act that way himself. By the time I met whatever was left of that footloose deity, he’d become so pure and abstract as to seem missing. Eventually I learned more about how the prophet Jesus undid purity laws and taught a justice based on consistent standards that sought a dynamic goodness honoring the spirit of law rather than a legalistic adherence to wooden rules.

AND so much more had occurred that I would never know of but that still informs the cultural understanding around and even within me. One thing I escaped in all this was the feeling of guilt. I don’t know if such a proclivity in me was related to the home and circumstance in which I was reared or arose genetically or developed for some other undefinable reason. I did see the beauty of some men, an unconventional male beauty not based on Greek-like muscles or shape of face, not based on the accrual of power and influence and money, but something more elusive and simple. I liked that attraction and wondered when it would become consequential for me. I knew I could not resist it out of some feeling of prohibition or guilt. It would be like my experience of finally finding a piano teacher who succeeded in establishing a technical approach to the keyboard, or a voice teacher who actually helped focus my voice away from the throat tension that had compromised its fluidity, or finding myself in my best job of a lifetime, or working in a church I actually loved—all these what I call do-not-expect-a-repeat experiences. So at age thirty I fell in love with an unlikely man. At fifty-five I had another such experience that went far beyond the one a quarter of a century earlier. I tended these relationships both against convention and as acts of love. Of course, in conventional sin-and-redemption, prohibition-and-disobedience terms, I am just hopeless.

But where in all this was I in line with the powerful Hebrew story? It seems to me it was in the VERY IMPORTANT FACT that I was not egotistical in my acts. I was not trying to have the same powers as God. I was not vaunting my own importance. And in the desires and acts of love with these other fruits in God’s great garden, I was discovering new aspects of the ultimately loving God—trained as he was by generations of prophets and philosophers. I found so much love as to transform me into a useful vessel of the eternal and lively divinity. Surely there’s no shame that.

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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Signposts by Phillip Hoyle

Ted grew up on a large farm in southwestern Kansas, near Liberal. Ted seemed to have inherited his musical ear and talent from his mother, a fine pianist who accompanied her son’s solos throughout his childhood and teens. Ted’s clear, resonant, and lovely voice and his ability to interpret songs came from somewhere. His mom? His dad? I didn’t know them well enough to judge. Ted did seem to have inherited from his dad his tall frame, his good looks, his organizational ability, and his alcoholism. Ted sang in church and school choirs and pranced down Main Street and around the football field as drum major of the high school band. He was also a straight-A student.

When Ted was fifteen he attended the Fred Waring Choral Summer Workshop where he learned a lot about music and had sex with a man. When he got home, he asked his mom if he could see a psychiatrist. “You need a psychiatrist like I need a hole in my head,” she responded. That ended the conversation but not Ted’s worry over his life and its direction.

Ted attended college at Wichita State University as a music education major with vocal and choral options. One of his college teachers told me Ted was brilliant, not just smart, perhaps the most brilliant student she had ever taught. I figured she might know something about that since she had taught grade school, high school, college, and graduate courses. While an undergraduate student, Ted ably led the choir in his Wichita church. Upon graduation he began his music career as a vocal and choral instructor in a small church-related college in north-central Kansas. That’s where I met him during my last semester.

Ted and I seemed very much alike yet at the same time quite different. I had been married about a year and a half; the summer before we met, Ted had terminated his engagement to be married. We did share our love of vocal and choral music. We both had been directing choirs. Somehow I also knew that like me he would be open to sex with another man. He too may have known that about me, but we didn’t move toward that kind of relationship. Rather we became good friends.

Ted’s musical brilliance was supported by his tremendous organizing skills and natural gift as a teacher. He made musicians of his students. A couple of years into his work at the college, he tried again to court and to marry but in so doing pushed himself into an emotional and mental breakdown. His high-school self analysis had been too accurate.

By then, my wife and I lived in Wichita. Ted entered the graduate music program in voice at WSU. On weekends he’d stay with us and our new baby boy. One weekend he came out to me and seemed a little angry with me when I told him I’d realized he was gay the very first time I met him. When he lived with us a couple of months the following summer, Ted’s homosexuality revealed itself to be as intense as his brilliance, musicality, musicianship, and ability to organize. He and I stayed with our chosen friendship, yet he told me many, many things about his life, including some of his sexual experiences. He seemed a little disappointed as well as relived when his psychiatrist and counselors at the mental hospital where over a number of years he received care told him they were not treating his homosexuality; they did not consider it an illness. We continued to become even greater friends. Ted was a friend with my wife as well and an uncle to our son.

Ted left college teaching and followed his voice teacher to Texas where he studied music at Trinity University. I visited him in San Antonio, saw the university, met teachers, observed his great choral programming at a church where he was music director, sang with him, and more. On that trip Ted became my gay educator interpreting such phenomena as gay bars, drag queens, gay language (verbal and non-), gay people, and the emerging gay literature; and he told me many more stories from his own experience.

Eventually Ted moved to San Francisco where he plunged into a gay scene not imaginable in Wichita, San Antonio, Houston, or Dallas. There he sang in the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, organized and led the SFGM Chorale. He taught voice at a community music school, led other ensembles, and sang professionally in a Catholic Church choir. On one visit I went to mass with him. The organist and all the singers seemed to be gay. But even more than all these things, and in a very personal way equally important, Ted became an A-List masochist. He contracted HIV, doctored at San Francisco General Hospital, and became an AIDS activist. Ted showed me the photo of himself at a party wearing his mother’s mink stole and explained he was exploring his feminine side. He told me stories of unrequited love. When we walked around together he made comments about beautiful men we encountered. I must add this: Ted lived at 944 Castro. Do I really need to say more? I’m sure Ted was the gayest person I ever met.

Ted died from AIDS-related conditions. I attended his balloon-crowded memorial service at First Congregational Church, heard spoken tributes by a number of his gay friends, listen to his beloved chorale sing, and enjoyed a gay party after the service. When I came to Denver to live as a gay man, I dedicated myself to giving massages to people living with HIV/AIDS in his memory. Ted was and continues to be my gay icon.

 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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The Sweetest Touch by Phillip Hoyle

Given my sweet tooth I certainly would recognize and appreciate anyone who personified sweetness, but for some reason I have no recollection of ever meeting such a person. Although I cannot recall anyone, I have experienced sweet moments with special people. I recall what follows ever so clearly.

All the busses with their crisscross routes in my Capitol Hill neighborhood and the fact that I knew schedules well enough to judge which one to catch fascinated my nine-year-old grandson Kalo. We’d be ready to go downtown and I’d wonder aloud if we should wait for the Number Ten—an every 20 minute bus along East 12th Avenue—or catch the Number 12—an every 30 minute bus along Downing that in those days, some eleven years ago, turned toward downtown on 16th Avenue—or walk three blocks to catch the ever-interesting Number 15—an every 15 minute bus on East Colfax with both local and limited busses that stopped at Downing. Kalo thought his granddad quite intelligent and looked longingly at every bus that sped by.

When Kalo was ten years old he told his parents he wanted to go to Denver to paint with his grandpa Phillip instead of attending summer church camp. Calls were exchanged and a date agreed upon. For years I had programmed summer educational experiences for children, but now I faced a new challenge: to plan a weeklong art experience for one child with one ageing granddad as the solitary staff. I called my one-week plan the “Young Artist’s Urban Survival Camp” and looked forward to the week. I knew the time would require many and varied art projects and for my grandson travel around the city by bus! Finally the day dawned and Kalo arrived. I met him at the airport gate. We rode the Skyride from DIA, took the Shuttle to Civic Center Plaza, and transferred to another bus to go up Capitol Hill. Our week was off to a great start; he loved the transportation!

That week the two of us did a heap of artwork. We visited museums, galleries, an outdoor arts festival, and the annual PrideFest. Probably just as important for Kalo, we rode busses. On one of our outings we transferred to the Light Rail. Also we walked. Since Kalo was from a small city and had lived most of his life in the country, I was a bit cautious when we were crossing streets. I’d give instructions and sometimes take his hand until I was sure he was alert to what could happen. Then one afternoon on an outing to the Denver Art Museum, when we rode the Number 10 down to Lincoln and were getting ready to cross the busy intersection at 12th Avenue, Kalo grabbing my arm cautioned me about the traffic. “Grandpa, be careful.”

I thought how sweet this changing of responsibilities was—one of the sweetest interactions of our ten year relationship. I who had long cared for people in a thirty-year ministerial career, who in my five years in Denver had watched over two partners during their deaths, who had given countless therapeutic massages—many to very ill persons—was in Kalo’s simple, thoughtful act being taken care of by a precocious ten-year-old grandchild. I received his act of kindness and thoughtfulness as a sweet moment. Of course, I also saw the act as a portent of what happens between generations: someday he and others would take care of me.

We had a great week on public transit, a mountain hike, and watching the PrideFest parade; and did artwork that had us painting, constructing collages, and making rubbings. But my favorite experience was receiving Kalo’s sweet and practical gesture for the safety of his grandpa.

Yesterday a young-adult Kalo with his younger sister Ulzii, their dad, and two friends, came to Denver. We have begun lots of talk. Perhaps I’ll remind him of this sweetest moment!

© 30 March 2014 – Denver

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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Endless Joy by Phillip Hoyle

The minister’s wife from the church my wife and I attended one year while going to college was a joy addict. By that I mean that she emphasized joy all the time. Her gifts featured the word joy. Her correspondence addressed the topic. Her conversation seemed always to include some idea or experience concerning her take on joy. Joy seemed to be in her every thought.

My wife loved it and took up the theme for herself. It suited her perfectly: the positive, energetic, loving Myrna. She embodied joy; still does! To this day any card she sends to the minister’s home shows up announcing JOY. The word also became for Myrna an emphasis in gifts to others, letters to anyone, even messages on her answering machine, a usage that has persisted for decades. With both women, the minister’s wife and mine (now ex-), you can assume they are talking about joy, about endless joy, and that they are living endlessly joyful.

The lovely three-letter word almost requires a smile to pronounce it. Something about the shape of the lips to make the initial sound, to form the “o,” and to end with the “e” just looks joyful, especially if one’s eyes twinkle at the same time as the utterance. JOY, like in the Noel “While by their sheep” that says of the shepherds in Luke’s nativity story, “How great their joy!” and then in an ascending scale and increasing volume repeats it three times: “Joy, joy, joy.” Just can’t get enough of this word or of the feeling it represents. While I’ve never attended sheep on a winter’s night or encountered a troop of angels who were singing “Glory to God in the highest,” I do know something of the emotion, and in my imagination it far surpasses the feelings experienced while, say, opening a surprise package from under the Christmas tree or a small box that proffers an engagement ring or even the realization that one didn’t die from the last dread disease! Joy is just plain good in my book.

I like Joy’s feeling of excitement, elevated heart rate, infectious smiles, sense of well being, and its general love of life. I hope to experience it endlessly although I may not quite have enough strength for that. Oh, do I need to define my words? I don’t believe so, but I am aware that my life has provided many, many joyful occasions. This new year I celebrate these:

Being in junior and senior plays,
Singing a solo atop the singing Christmas tree,
Going to college,
Being married to Myrna,
Rearing children in our home,
Going on choir tour,
Conducting my own choirs,
Directing a musical play,
Writing curriculum resources,
Having intense relationships with several men,
Showing and selling quite a few of my paintings,
Completing thirty years of ministry in religious education and music,
Completing fifteen years of giving massage therapy to people in pain,
Reading hundreds of books as well as writing several myself, and
Telling my story to grandkids and sages.

My life has provided almost endless joy when I take time to think about it. May these experiences continue giving me more such emotional riches like the Noel’s, “Joy, joy, joy” in ascending, crescendoing repetition.

© 6 January 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.com

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Favorite Literary Character by Phillip Hoyle

For me to choose my favorite literary character seems as impossible as to choose my favorite activity from a three-week road trip. I’ve never been able to select just one because I usually prize too many memories. So when I consider that in first grade I began reading about Dick and Jane, in the fifth grade was introduced to the novel when Mrs. Schaffer read us of Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver in Treasure Island, in eighth grade read my first novel which I checked out from the school library, James Fennimore Cooper’s The Spy with its Betty Flanagan and Harvey Birch, and after that never quit reading book after book to the point that in my mid-thirties I was reading five books a week—most of them novels—I’m hard pressed to choose any single character as my favorite. There have been so many!

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. I began analyzing short stories; then turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big tasks is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I recall a voice teacher who seemed friends with a woman character Natasha Rostova in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace while I couldn’t even recall or pronounce the name of any character from my reading of that monstrously long novel. I recall in December my daughter-in-law reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the umpteenth time. She said “It’s like a new story,” and she just loves Jane Eyre, probably her favorite literary character. Now I read Bronte and enjoyed the characters but never developed such a relationship with any of them. I just don’t get into character friendships, at least not easily.

Still I really have like some characters. First, Natty Bumpo in James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales although I don’t recall if I respected him; second, Johnny in The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter although I may really have been more interested in his Shawnee Indian cousin; third, the first-person narrator in Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children by Felice Picano although I didn’t really like him so much as I recognized in him a character who as a child was bisexual like I was; fourth, Bud in Ethan Mordden’s stories, again another first person narrator who as a writer seemed as much the author of the story as its protagonist; and finally, Will in City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer although very much like in the cases of Picano and Mordden I may have liked the author as much as the character. Still Will became my literary friend because he came from an uncertain past, made creative adaptations to his surroundings, felt enamored of Native Americans, accepted into his life persons whose values widely differed from his own, worked hard, and introduced me to more exotic worlds of gay America, meaning in many important ways, more realistic descriptions of gay life.

But since I ended my list with Will from the Spanbauer book, I’ll say a few things about him who certainly has become an important character in my life if not a favorite (and be warned I’m speaking as much or more about Spanbuaer as I am about his great character Will). Will trusts people. Will does not try to fool himself. Will reveals his faults as well as his ideals and dreams. Will eats with sinners. He survives in the city, thrives there, values important aspects of his life, idealizes some individuals and loves them when they are too real to be idealized. He ekes out a living, is taken advantage of, finds friendship, and in general, builds a meaningful life in a hard and rough city.

And I thrill when Will says:

“Only your body can know another body.

“Because you see it, you think you know it. Your eyes think they know. Seeing Fiona’s body for so long, I thought I knew her body.

“I’ll tell you something, so you’ll know: It’s not the truth. Only your body can know another body.

“My hand on her back, my hand in her hand, her toes up against my toes, Fiona’s body wasn’t sections of a body my eyes had pieced together. In my arms was one long uninterrupted muscle, a body breathing life, strong and real.” (In the City of Shy Hunters, p. 184) Will is really real; his friends are real. I am his friend.

© Denver, 22 June 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.com

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A Meal to Remember by Phillip Hoyle

One crisp March morning twelve years ago I caught the faint aroma of a meal I will never forget. I was standing over on East 12th Avenue talking with another man who, like me, was waiting for a bus. That first sniff came accompanied with a rather high-pitched, scratchy voice that I thought was cute. With it came a beautiful face with big smiles and startlingly warm eyes. I could feel my hunger mounting with these first glances and a few simple words. Twelve years ago I began seeing Rafael, his presence then like an appetizer promising the delight of an entrée, a dessert, even a feast! Twelve years ago I began living in a relationship that, when most clearly expressed, seemed a protracted meal. And I was one hungry guy.

I had no idea there’d be an outcome to this initial meeting at a bus stop, but I certainly realized more and more about my hungering desire. At the thought of him the aromas of a bakery, of a steak house, of a backyard BBQ, and of a candy shop enticed me. All the flavors seemed delicately balanced. The whole experience that persisted for seven months seemed to me like a Chinese meal in which each bite offered a slightly different combination of vegetables, meats, sauces, and memories. And as I said before, there was beauty in the face of my lover, in the delight I saw in his eyes, in a body language of loving excitement.

When on our third unplanned meeting I touched him, I was afraid. Would I ever again have contact? Would he actually be more than a memory? But the touch intensified my desire as it communicated itself to him. Oh, I was there thinking, laughing, teasing, delighting, feeling. I presented myself openly to him in a way I never before had communicated to anyone. During those few moments, I felt as if my salivary glands were taking over my body, yet I realized there were several more glands at work in my responses to the man I had just touched.

When I finally heard from him again, it was a message on my answering machine. I returned it with an invitation to dinner where he met some of my family and asked if there was wine. I said no, but the two of us would go to a nearby restaurant for wine and dessert.

Eventually we got together—actually starting from that dessert and subsequent evening. And we actually cooked for one another, although he was the major cook. Rafael had heard my stories about Dianne. He said, “Invite her for dinner.” He prepared an Italian meal which we ate with relish. This woman who had spent years living in Europe told him she’d never tasted better cannelloni even in Italy. Rafael always insisted his food tasted good because of the love he put into it.

I fixed breakfast one morning when Rafael was running late: pork chops, an omelet filled with chives and cheese, toast, fresh fruit, juice, and coffee. It tasted good to me, and Rafael said he liked it. The cooking seemed easy enough, so inspired by this small success, I fixed him a French meal and from then on I filled all my cooking attempts with love.

We went to Gumbo’s Restaurant for a birthday party for my friend Frank. Rafael ordered an appetizer of escargot, and we both had entrees and drinks. I didn’t really like the snails all that much—too salty—but I loved the new experiences, especially all the new things I was doing with Rafael. I took Rafael to the Rock Bottom Brewery to celebrate our being together. He ordered lots of food without paying any attention to cost. We ate an appetizer, salads, entrées, beer, dessert, and coffee. Although I was nervous over the expense, we had a good time and appreciated our talkative Okie gay waiter. We enjoyed nice conversation together, Rafael and I, and I knew then I wanted us to have a full and long relationship.

When I got home one September evening, Rafael was sitting on the sofa all nicely dressed up. The dishes were not done. Food was cooking, but it seemed over-cooked. He wanted me to taste his beef molé. After he explained a little bit about how he made the molé, he said we needed some pink wine to go with the dish: White Zinfandel or Rosé. He would show me. While I put the lid on the molé and turned off the heat, Rafael walked around the room talking to himself, a behavior I had never before observed in him. He was speaking in French, not Spanish or English. I got his attention and finally got us out the door. We walked to the liquor store. He seemed fine on the walk although the conversation was disconnected and several times I had to steady him. At the store I kept trying to get him to pick out a wine, but he’d wander off down an aisle looking but not seeming to know what he was doing. Finally he held up a bottle of Pinot Noir that cost $30. I made the decision for another bottle. Finally, back at the house, I set the table and asked him to be seated. I couldn’t believe how good the food tasted. He was the only cook I’ve ever known whose food thrilled me even when it had burned. Still, I was worried when he just kept losing track of what he was doing. His illness seemed to be getting worse.

I met his family when he entered the hospital. Near the end of October I wrote this: “I just saw Rafael. He’s with his mom, who is feeding him. She takes delight in that! I loved the picture of the two of them together. This morning as [his mother] was speaking to her mother on the phone, I heard in her voice many of Rafael’s intimate intonations and expressions. He learned them from his mother.” Perhaps he’d learned cooking from her and perhaps that’s why he was so conscious of adding love to his dishes.

Our whole time living together—from PrideFest weekend into the second week of November when he died—seemed a great feast, a meal to remember, and it featured spicy appetizers, rich entrees, and luscious desserts. Early on in our relationship Rafael said that no one had ever made love to him like I was doing it. He had a great need to be loved with a sense of wild abandon and lots of words. I was pleased to love him wildly and verbally. I had never before experienced such sexual emotions. I felt them because he so obviously enjoyed making love with me. His desire stoked my own. When I looked at him, I wanted to hold and kiss him. I wanted to lie next to him. I wanted to touch him and embrace him. I wanted to have sex in many different ways. I felt like a man I knew who in his childhood had often been hungry and as an adult couldn’t turn down food. I had missed out on male to male love and sex for so many years I just couldn’t get enough of it. Our love feast continued to the end of his too-short life. We washed it all down with great doses of love making and spiced each hour with love. We wallowed like two very excited pigs in a mud puddle snorting, oinking, giggling, rolling around, chasing, laughing, and in general celebrating our love. What a meal to remember.

© 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