Tag: Phillip Hoyle

Posted on

The Sprint by Phillip Hoyle

Morning Pages excerpt, September 19

… I’m writing my Morning Pages, the daily exercise I’ve employed the past fourteen years. I am at the beginning of Page 3. So here I hope to sprint. Get into racing position. Put pen to paper. Ready, set, go. The gun sounds. I bound down the college ruled lanes filling each line with words, phrases, sentences. Eventually they form a paragraph, but that doesn’t seem so important while I sprint.

It’s speed I pursue, a record for swift writing. I want to write faster than I can process what I’m doing, to get caught up in the action of it, to open my mind, to disconnect through the physical movement, to discover my writer’s second wind as it were, but how can I sprint writing such complicated sentences? So I write. I don’t care about anything but the speed. Write, write, write. This is no texting with buttons to push, no Twitter, no Facebook, no images except written, but I write, ink runs along the track, a wild spewing of images, ideas, even ideals, like the ideal of being the best, somehow perfect in this sprint, a record-setter. Oh well. I have finished this short jaunt. My page is full. The tape has broken. I pant. I am an artist in a hurry. I am doing the work. I write; I paint; I massage. Life is good. My life is good. Yes.
September 20
…I’m having a slow morning with watering the lawn out front, playing cards, stretching, making data entries, eating fresh-baked cookies, drinking coffee, talking with Ruth, and now at this late morning hour (it’s 11:30), writing my Morning Pages. Perhaps I’ll try sprint writing like I described yesterday.
I work in spurts. Always has as far back as I recall. My lack of physical coordination may have contributed to this style or need. Even more influential are the speed of my thinking and feeling and my fast-changing interests, call this last my tendency towards multi-tasking. Or ADD. Whatever.
I’ve been sitting here attending to this writing.
I hope to be bitten by the inspiration bug so I can successfully write about my most Unusual Day, this week’s challenge in my storytelling group. I still haven’t settled on a topic—a particular day—although I have listed several possibilities. I want to write on something I’ve never before tried to describe. The realization that I have fallen in love is my topic now. I’ve worked on it before, but I don’t think I’ve looked at each instance. Somewhere I wrote a list of such experiences. But I don’t want a list; I need to make a decision for a particular experience. 
I’m thinking about Michael O., the two of us looking at each other. I found the realization of his interest quite moving. When I saw him again I thought, “Oh that guy.” I was pleased. Invited him to stay for tea. Pleased when he called to talk. Then to meet for coffee. I recalled my first impression of how clean he was. I heard his nasal voice and thought of Steve, my longtime lover. I wasn’t especially attracted to Michael’s voice, but I liked his offbeat humor. I liked his kind manner. I was confused when another guy answered Michael’s phone. Later I asked. Michael told me it was Chuck. I didn’t understand. He told me they had been partners but that he was in the process of moving out. He had already been searching for a place to live. We had dinner with his friend Frank. Leaving the restaurant I met Chuck although I didn’t put it all together until later.
Michael brought me gifts: lotions and lubes for sex. I was really pleased. I liked the open signal that approved of and encouraged our love making.
My most defended self speaking.
I accompanied him to an eye appointment. I didn’t understand why none of his friends arranged to go with him. 
“I always go alone,” he said. 
“Not when you’re having your eyes dilated,” I protested. I drove the car home. I didn’t like the inattention of his ex-partner and current friends.
February brought bad news. I had information; I observed swelling lymph nodes. I asked him to be sure to have his nurse palpate them. They started tests. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He would have to start chemotherapy.
Chemo started. I agreed to stay at his house on the nights following his treatment but preserved several days to stay at my own apartment. I didn’t want to signal to his friends that he didn’t need them. But I felt manipulated by the fact no one volunteered to stay with him. I realized Michael was unable to ask. Still I defended some of my independence and looked forward to being alone, to have coffee and walks with Tony, and so forth. 
I had worked downtown giving massages that day. It was one of my free nights. I walked home up Capitol Hill. As I turned south on Downing, I realized I wanted to be with Michael. When I got to my place I called. “What are you doing?”
“Not much.”
“Would you like if I came to spend the night?” I asked.
“Yes, I’d love that.”
So I got on a bus and made my way out to his street. I realized on that unusual day I’d rather be with Michael than preserve my precious independence.
But I realize that while I have been writing without stop, it was not a sprint. I actually took time to feel into what I was recalling. Fortunately I liked the topic. I’ll sprint tomorrow or some other time I need entertainment.
I am an artist. 
Life is good; my life is good. Yes.

© Denver, 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

Posted on

Weather or Not? It’s Too Darn Hot by Phillip Hoyle

I recall hearing the same weather adage used in different parts of the country as if it described a particular distinctive in each place. The adage: If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes; it will change. I first heard this saying in Kansas where the wind seemed always to blow. The constant wind seemed to be accompanied by fickle temperatures and varying precipitation, and sometimes even the wind changed by increasing, declining, or becoming a threatening vortex that threatened one’s property and life.

When as an adult I moved first to Texas, then Missouri, then New Mexico, then Colorado, and then Oklahoma, I heard the same claim. I’ve heard the adage spoken about atmospheric conditions in Ontario, Vermont, New York, California, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Surely the same is said in Wales, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. I suspect I’d hear it in Russia, China, and Bora Bora if I were to go to those places and understand their languages. Am I complaining about human complaining and sameness? Not really although we can get really boring.

What I am interested to say today is that I’ve learned more about myself by observing the weather in contrasting climates. For instance, while living in Mid-Missouri, a place with high humidity, wide seasonal changes in temperatures, and the same number of contrasting hot and cold fronts as the rest of the country, I would get headaches when the barometer plunged. Eventually the headaches became intense enough I would leave work, go home, take ibuprofen, and lie down to sleep. Within an hour I’d be just fine and return to work. A few years later I moved to dry, dry Albuquerque. I quit having the headaches, but eventually I noticed I’d have a change in mood when the barometer plunged. I was more fascinated than concerned. I’d never noticed any change of mood in my whole life being mostly sunny and hopeful and silly and laughing. The mood swing would last about one hour. For that I was thankful and eventually connected these events with the old headaches I’d had in Missouri. Finally I realized that in Missouri I constantly had sinus and Eustachian tube problems. The barometric change caused the headache that probably masked a mood change. In the dry air of New Mexico I liked having a simple mood change because I didn’t have to interrupt my work. I learned to take the ibuprofen anyway and within an hour or less my mood went back to generally sunny.

The new experiences did raise a question for me. I had observed my father’s increasing difficulties with depression as he aged. Was I in for the same? Thankfully, I have not yet experienced what he did, something I suppose relates to inheriting my mother’s positive outlook which surely arose from her brain chemistry. My dad’s health often challenged him; his heart attacks, the rare tic douloureux (trigeminal neuralgia) pain disease, spinal meningitis, and eventual stroke made life difficult. Depression was not surprising. Now I too have experienced depression, thankfully at a sub-clinical level. I take St. John’s Wort to good effect and when the barometer drops, sometimes double my dosage.

I have another weather query though. How does climate change affect the weather? Will global warming change the weather and one’s experience of its power? My experience suggests that one still suffers the weather wherever one lives; I say suffer because one has no real control of the weather. I also found that a change in my life from straight to gay seemed like a move to a much better climate. Overall, my life seemed enriched and often more fulfilling. My life seemed more authentically ‘me’ bringing thrills, insights, and a sense of rightness. Still the headaches, mood changes, and general challenges of life moved with me into this new authentic-feeling climate. You know what I mean; in summer it can still be too darn hot even if your baby is the same brand of gay as you!

© Denver, 2012

About the Author


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen practicing massage, he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists and volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot


Posted on

Little Things Mean a Lot by Phillip Hoyle

My granddaughter named ‘Little’ stands tall and makes herself known through dance, poetry, music, painting, academics, personality, and stature. When she was born I was amazed that anyone would name their child Little but then recalled the first child in that family had names, Samuel Evan Isaac Grove Hoyle, his moniker a virtual family history. The second child held the unmatched name Kalo Bushy Hoyle, unusual enough to suggest to one grandmother that it could have been chemically induced. So, why not Little Rosamond Hoyle? But Little was a large child. As she grew tall I envisioned hearing the local Mid-Missouri sports broadcaster during a high school basketball game saying, “And down court at six-foot-two comes Little Hoyle for yet another layup.” But she doesn’t play basketball. She’s a ballerina, a lifeguard, and a singer, and she is studying molecular biology. Perhaps she will grow to see how little things really mean a lot, the tiniest building blocks supporting a huge structure or a life.

Before my first child was born, long before there were thoughts of grandkids, large or small, my eldest sister and I began a correspondence. Our writing got underway when she and her husband moved out of the country. We wrote during the seventeen years they lived in South America. Lynn filled her notes with incidents in marketplaces, coffee bars, and jungle sandbars. (Her husband liked fishing in tropical rivers). She entertained with incidents related to having a cleaning woman who wanted to run their lives or meeting interesting folk like the shaman who floated in his canoe to the sandbar having heard of a woman—my sister—who wanted to meet the local holy man. Some of her short letters described side trips to Europe, books read, and projects undertaken. Once she enclosed the score of a samba she composed and another time told of a book she was helping translate into English. She regaled me with language complications, illnesses, and the continuing love affair with her spouse. In turn I told some incidents from my own rather pedestrian life to this always-interested sibling and friend. I was in my mid-twenties when our writing began, but the correspondence continues to this day, forty years of posts, and twenty-some years since she returned to the USA. We still write several times a year asking after one another’s lives and work, and sharing our interests in art and music, our involvement with unusual people, surprising books. Since we both follow the example of our mother who organized life into projects, we briefly detail our endless undertakings. The letters tend to be short and simple and full of love, but the long-enduring habit of sharing our lives in little notes has meant quite a lot to me. Enough of little things certainly means a lot.

A related little thing I appreciate is to open a letter and find enclosed a clipping of a report or pictures related to Native Americans. I first received such gifts when I was a teenager, articles sent by my grandmother Schmedemann. These days, two women still remember me in this way—my oldest sister who often sends me photos and articles of petroglyphs clipped from magazines and a local friend who brings me Indian-theme magazines and the occasional newspaper article. Just three months ago my friend gave me an article from the Littleton newspaper about some Arapahoe folk she knows and my sister sent two more interesting clippings picturing petroglyphs near her home in southern New Mexico. These little remembrances remind me that other people share my interests or simply are interested in me. Such little things mean a lot to me.

One more thing I want to mention. Twice across a crowded bar Michael, a young man who had registered an unusual interest in me, acknowledged my presence with a wave. His little attentions please me, stupidly thrill me. In fact, several younger men have recently asked me if I have a partner. Although I know they are probably asking this question out of their need for support, I still am moved by their choosing me to ask. Sometimes that pleasure seems on the edge of being crazy, but I enjoy it anyway. What keeps it from becoming too crazy is that I tell them I have a partner. The scene has repeated itself several times in my 65th year, and the latest wave across the room came only last week. Young men may need older men in their lives; older men certainly seem to want younger men in their lives. It may be just a little thing, but it means a lot. I prize the attentions of older men as well, so don’t forget to wave to me. It means a lot.

© 25 November 2012, 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 

Posted on

Gay Alien by Phillip Hoyle

I fell in love with an alien, an illegal alien, a gay illegal alien, a Mexican gay illegal alien. I fell hard into a new experience. I had never loved a Mexican man: that task had always been left to my daughter. I had never loved a Mexican gay man, so I had a lot to learn about how Mexican culture tends to evaluate gay men and how people there often choose to deny the existence of such men especially within their families. I had never loved an illegal alien and in this relationship came face-to-face with the issues the whole country is now trying to solve. I had never loved an alien—well now I’m lying, but that’s another story. The big story was this: I had never fallen in love so conventionally, so thoroughly, so openly, so obsessively, so delightedly, so…, so…; the words flee at the prospect of being employed, as if they know the impossibility and my ineptness. Some nine years later I can hardly understand what happened to me, let alone describe it, but I fell in love with a Mexican gay illegal alien, his name Rafael. 

My alien had an accent as well as a small, expressive, high-pitched, scratchy voice. He almost squeaked at times, a sound that surprisingly didn’t irritate but, rather, attracted me. It was so cute just like he was so cute. His English was passable in that he could communicate well enough to have a sales job in an electronics shop. His often fresh approach to the language endeared him to me. I liked having to listen carefully, to fret out meanings, to solve the communications like a crossword puzzle. 
My illegal alien saved me from too much information. I wondered if he was afraid that I might not like him for being in America illegally or at some angry moment I might call the INS on him. Later I realized he may have been protecting me from knowing anything that would make me an accomplice to his illegality. I had no idea he was already in trouble with the law over some other matters as well as his immigration status, and quite frankly, I didn’t care all that much. 
My gay illegal alien touched something deep within me even when I didn’t know if he was gay or not. When I met him, he wore a wide gold wedding band. Still, the connection from our first three meetings was so compelling to me that I determined if he weren’t gay, lived here with his wife and kids, or was supporting them in another country, I would befriend him and relate to him as the best friend he’d ever have. I didn’t care if he was not gay although I did realize my developing attraction to him then might call for great restraint. But I’d lived almost all of my fifty-plus years as a straight man, a closeted bisexual male, who made friends easily and took loyalty seriously. I wanted to be his friend—at least that.
My Mexican illegal alien looked more alien than most Mexicans. Pakistani and Indian customers where he worked spoke to him in Urdu or Hindi assuming he was one of them. For me his exotic looks of indeterminate origin added to his attraction, that plus his dark eyes that snapped with delight when we were together and his warm smile that stretched across his face whenever he looked at me. He registered as much enthusiasm upon seeing me as I felt upon seeing him. 
One spring day I was on my way to do volunteer work and left home a few minutes early so I could stop by an office supply to flirt with another man who seemed interested. The sun was shining so intensely I was ready to cross the street to where some large trees promised shade. Just as I was deciding, I looked down the side of the street I was on and saw, about a block away, a black-haired man pulling a two-wheel grocery cart. I thought I was the youngest man in my neighborhood to pull one of those things in public and so had to see who was challenging my place. I continued toward the man who as it turned out was quite a lot younger. He was Rafael who with his cart was bringing home food from a Mexican grocery. I was astounded at my good fortune since I had missed seeing him for several weeks. I shook his hand. This time as we talked, I impulsively touched him several times more knowing if he wasn’t gay, I’d probably never see him again. Finally I gave him my card with my phone number asking him to call me and offering to take him for breakfast or coffee. I finally had to hurry off to my volunteer work and forgot all about the other guy. 
Then the big wait began, one that showed me new things about myself. He didn’t call. I walked the neighborhood at night hoping to see him get off the bus. Still he didn’t call. I walked the neighborhood in daylight watching out for his black hair. Three weeks passed. I looked up and down streets, made a grid search of the area. Surely I would find him; he rode the same bus as I. But where was he? 
A good friend who knew me well was amazed that I was both so focused and so relaxed about it all. We laughed together at the signs of obsession that Rafael had produced in me. It seemed so unlike me. I had fallen in love—whatever that was. I had sung love songs to entertain but had never entertained the idea that they would apply to me. I wasn’t falling in love with love, that old make-believe; I was falling in love with Rafael. The most beautiful sound I’d ever heard was his name. I got him under my skin; I’d grown accustomed to his face; I just had to get that man. 
Six weeks and I still hadn’t heard from my obsession. I was ready to start singing the blues. I woke up this morning and the blues was standing by my bed. I wanted Rafael to stand there. Where was that man? Seven weeks and finally I received a message on my answering machine. The high-pitched, scratchy voice that I had fantasized hearing again said he was well and wanted to get together. I could think of nothing I would like better, so I called the number he left and told his answering machine my kids were in town. We were going to the BuskerFest downtown but would serve spaghetti in the evening. I wanted him to come for dinner. I left my address. “Call me when you get home from work,” I instructed.
That Saturday night he called me. He came over and met my son and one grandson. We ate. Then the two of us went out for desert and wine. I got home in time to catch a couple hours of sleep before fixing breakfast for my brood. From that day my South-of-the-Border gay illegal alien and I slept together every night until he entered the hospital.
The blues did catch up with me in our shared apartment, on the bus to Denver Health, in the AIDS clinic, in the examination room, in the imaging clinic, in the emergency room, in the intensive care unit, in the bedroom the night Rafael established home hospice, and finally at the Hospice of St. John. There, the blue tones were heard in the love shared around his bed, in the Rosary prayed there, in the tears of his Mexican parents, in the stories his Mexican sister shared about this brother she loved and admired, and in his Mexican brother’s eyes as he pondered Rafael’s death.
The blues clothed me in those last days, accompanied me to the park where we left some of my beloved’s ashes, stood with me as I waved goodbye to his mourning family. The blues walked with me to my studio, now again my home, slept beside me in my bed, and supported me for days, for weeks, for months. The blues still hang around some days to give voice to the loss of my Mexican gay illegal alien Rafael whom I loved and whom I still miss obsessively.

© Denver, 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

Posted on

Memorial to a Friend by Phillip Hoyle

I worked up enough courage to send my manuscript of nine short stories to Winston Weathers, a professor of creative writing retired from Tulsa University. He already had read a couple of the stories and had offered the suggestion that I might write a collection stories about my character Miss Shinti. He thought they could be illustrated with ink drawings. Now I wanted to hear his response to the whole collection I’d worked on for over two years. I looked forward to more advice from this man who graciously encouraged my writing efforts.

I met Mr. Weathers back in 1997, introduced by Roy Griggs, the Senior Minister of the church where I directed the music and fine arts programs. Griggs wanted me to meet him because of my writing, and besides Weathers and his partner of forty years and I and my wife of nearly thirty years lived in the same building. The introduction was a spur-of-the-moment occasion, the two of us stopping by Weather’s condo just minutes after Griggs had phoned him. I met the professor who was also a William Blake scholar and a published poet and had taught generations of writers beginning in the 1960s. The conversation was friendly and revealed an older man, short in stature, with grey hair, horn rim glasses, a full beard, and genteel ways. He greeted me with humor and warmth.

A couple of weeks later Winston invited Myrna and me to come down the two floors to their condo for afternoon tea. We did so and enjoyed his hospitality and conversation, and received as a present his book on Angels that he told us had been reprinted several times and had been translated into several languages. A few months later my wife and I separated; a few weeks after that I received another invitation to tea. This time I met his partner Joseph Nichols, a retired IBM engineer, and glimpsed a fine relationship that had grown rich with age. The men told of their current project of taking a photograph of the sunrise each day for a year. I saw the tripod on their east-facing balcony on the fourteenth floor. They showed me their recently acquired computer and TV service that allowed them to change back and forth from one to the other without even getting out of their easy chairs. I thought about the advantages of partnering with a computer expert. For Winston old-age convenience wasn’t the only advantage. His partner had published the poet’s many chapbooks. I came away from this afternoon tea with one of those chapbooks in hand.

Then there was another invitation for afternoon wine. This time I came home with a volume of short stories and a story about the book. In 1970 Weathers’ collection of short stories, The Lonesome Game, was reviewed in the Literary Supplement of the Sunday New York Times, an honor that is still considered one of the most important things that can happen to a writer. The story about the book was that not one person on the faculty at Tulsa University even mentioned their colleague’s good fortune, not even a comment from the Dean. Winston was sure the lack recognition stemmed from homoerotic references in the book. I read the eleven stories. The homosexuality was so delicately presented that no one in the 1990s would even raise an eyebrow.

Some weeks later I returned to the apartment downstairs. This time Winston congratulated me on my article about a friend who died with AIDS, a short piece that had been published in the church newsletter. A few weeks later I moved to Denver.

Winston and I corresponded. A couple of years later I sent him a manuscript. He responded encouragingly, saying it was publishable as is, suggesting a publishing house, bemoaning that he no longer knew the editors there (a problem of retiring and growing old I assumed), and warning me not to spend the profits before the checks arrived because most deserving manuscripts never get published. Getting published comes from a stroke of luck in timing, he told me, and explained how the process works. He also said he’d be pleased to write a piece for the cover if the book did reach publication. I felt honored and followed his advice sending the manuscript to agent after agent. I spent none of the anticipated income. None ever arrived.

We wrote more, he telling me about illnesses, new projects, and art displays seen at local galleries and museums. I told him of my work, writing, and new experiences. He was the one who told me to turn one of my memoirs into a short story. It had reminded him so much of the kind of stories the New Yorker used to publish. I again followed his advice and turned my focus toward short stories. Eventually I sent him the nine-story manuscript Miss Shinti’s Debut, humorous stories of a miniature poodle who loved to dance.

About a month later the package was returned by his sister with the sad information that her brother had died. The package included a copy of an article written about him. Although I felt sad at his death, I was even more distressed that the obituary didn’t mention his survival by Joseph, his partner for nearly fifty years. I realized how fortunate I felt not to be living in Tulsa. Apparently Winston knew exactly what he had written in his book of stories The Lonesome Game.

In the following months I thought a lot about this man who had so encouraged me and I reread the letters he had sent. In one of his last notes he told of a textbook he had written, An Alternate Style: Options in Composition (1980, Boynton/Cook Publishers), that after nearly thirty years of being published was going out of print. I thought: I want that book, so I inquired at a used bookstore in my neighborhood. Online they found the book and another one. The one I wanted was going for $165; I bought the other one for about $15. (Now the former book new is $568.) Still I searched shelves at second hand stores and the catalogues of libraries. Even though I couldn’t find the book, I Googled his name and found plenty of references to it. I learned that Winston Weathers had introduced what became known as “Grammar Two” and came to appreciate much more about his notable influence on writing and on the teaching of writing. From my searches I gathered ideas for my own literary experiments.

I wonder how I would have responded to him and his advice had I known that he was much more than the nice man downstairs who engaged me in conversation, served me tea and cookies, encouraged me to write, and gave me literary presents. I could have dropped his name in my query letters had I also known he for years had been a literary agent. But would I have redoubled my effort to be a better writer? I worked at that anyway, but surely I would have asked him more questions. I hope he never thought I was uninterested. I continue my life and my writing life always mindful of and deeply influenced by this fine man and neighbor. Far beyond the composition of these few lines about meeting and barely coming to know Winston Weathers, I want all my writing somehow to honor him.

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

Posted on

Four Saturday Scenes by Phillip Hoyle

Days change from dawn to dusk, from cool to warm, from humid to dry. Still we reckon seven days a week but they too are not the same. For instance, the seventh day is sometimes called Shabbat, for the old Hebrew word meaning he rested, an allusion to the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. The day was marked by a tradition of rest that emphasized contemplation and prayer. On my calendar the seventh day reads Saturday, recalling a Roman God, Saturn, to whom I have little relationship. History reminds me that Roman culture and government had a great determining effect on western culture and thus on Christian development. So, the name changed from Sabbath to Saturday, and the time of its beginning and ending changed from sundown to midnight. Even its purpose changed for most Christians although the mythological symbol of a day of rest persisted. For the majority, Sunday gathered the resting and worshipping to itself to create a Sunday Sabbath. Saturday stayed the same work day it had been under Roman law.

In my own life, Saturday’s meaning has shifted. Originally my Saturdays were structured around the needs of my mother: a time to have help with the kids so she could shop and keep her weekly hair appointment. A grandmother would sometimes watch us, but as we children aged, Mom would take us to the library just upstairs from the hair salon. We’d check out our books and then join her towards the end of her appointment. But that one fall Saturday was singular in that I had decided I was tired of trying to keep up with the older kids on my tricycle. My sisters and some neighbors were riding a small boy’s bicycle. “I want to ride it,” I screamed in my high-pitched six-year-old voice as they flew by. They were happy to play teacher. So with their help I got on the big thing, achieved my balance, and took off in a hurry thrilled by the air rushing over my skin and through my hair. But they had forgotten to tell me how to slow down and the corner of the block was fast approaching. I kept my balance as I bumped down the curb into the street and accomplished a turn to avoid the curb across the street, but I was unable to avoid the curb waiting catty-corner across the intersection. I crashed landing on the bar, smashing my genitals. There was a little blood. I must have screamed in pain. Mom came running and took me into the house. She bathed me, explained about circumcision (the only sex-related information she ever proffered, probably to help me understand why I my penis looked so different than dad’s), and told me I was to go with her downtown. She must have wanted me close by in case I really had hurt myself or had decided I needed some extra attention. As we walked the several blocks to the salon, she taught me how to escort a woman in public along with a few other fine points of good manners. Perhaps these items were meant to further my sex education. Turns out I was just fine. Eventually I did learn how to brake and how to avoid accidents. I also continue to this day to heed my mother’s advice about escorting women to the delight of several friends who still find me mannerly.

Eventually Saturdays moved me into my father’s world. At age 12, after I’d failed to make the team in seventh grade basketball, I began to work on Saturdays at the family IGA store sacking groceries and carrying them to customer’s cars. I now worked in a mostly man’s world with its structure of having a goal, earning income related to hours and usefulness, and working around people who didn’t live on our block. I did more than sack and carry. At slow times I helped dust cans, face shelves, assist in the produce market, and help restock the freezer. I’d take returned soda bottles to the back room and sometimes take a short break sitting there drinking a Coke.

Saturday was the busiest day of the week at the grocery store with ten, twelve, three, and five o’clock rushes when the aisles got as crowded as Main Street. We worked hard; at least it seemed that way to me, a skinny boy and not very strong. All day I ran out into the winter cold carrying bags to the yellow Desoto, the green Chevy pickup, or the purple Cadillac and then ran back into the warm building to prepare the next bunch of groceries. I got stronger and more efficient. Customers liked me.

The family arrangement was informal. We kids paid ourselves out of the cash register on Saturday evening leaving a paper slip with the information of hours and payment. That winter Saturday after I had worked a year and a half earning forty cents an hour, I asked my oldest sister, “How can I get a raise?” She said, “Just start paying yourself more.” So I gave myself a ten cent raise, noting the new amount times my hours on the slip of paper. No one ever said a word to me about the change. A year later, when I began working for my uncle at the family’s other store, I got another raise of fifty cents bringing my remuneration to a dollar an hour. Perhaps by then my work was worth the pay.

Saturday changed most when Myrna and I became engaged to be married. We would travel each Saturday to Glen Elder, KS where she played house and I played church. She’d cook a meal. I’d go to the church office to check on the mail, read the worship bulletin, or make some other arrangement for the Sunday service. Sometimes we’d visit the Spooners at their dairy farm, the elderly Foresters in their gracious home, or someone else with a special need. Then in the evening we’d make out on the couch in the front room of the parsonage as we step by step increased our physical intimacy in preparation for the full disclosure we anticipated on our wedding night. Later I’d drive her over to Ella Neifert’s house where my fiancé slept. One spring Saturday evening when the western Kansas wind blew with extra force, we huddled together on the couch to soothe each other’s chill. We warmed up, further than ever before. Realizing we’d soon be parted for several months while she made preparations for our wedding in western Colorado, I thought we needed to touch each other more intimately than before. So we educated one other about some of the finer details of our bodies. We didn’t go all the way, but we did share ourselves in new ways. The cold-sounding wind howled around the old house as we warmed ourselves with our explorations. We loved our intimacy. We both realized we had to end this session, so we bundled up to drive over to the widow’s house. When we left the parsonage, we were both surprised how warm the wind had turned, or we were just so heated up as to believe it was almost summertime! Thus a spring Saturday helped prepare us for a wonderful marriage.

It was a particular summer Saturday a few years ago, several years after I had left my marriage and ministry and had moved to a big city to live as a gay man. It was a late June Saturday that I experienced with complex delight. My son Michael and his family had come to visit. Our schedule that weekend included the Saturday Buskerfest with its unusual street performances and the Sunday Gay Pridefest with its parade and concerts. On Friday evening I discovered a phone message from Rafael, the man I’d hoped to hear from for two months. I had sometimes walked the neighborhood wanting to run into him but kept missing him. I’d already concluded he’d moved back to El Paso when I finally got this contact. In response I left on his voice mail an invitation for him to join us for spaghetti the next evening. He should call me when he got off work. Now it was Saturday evening. The spaghetti tasted good, at least my family said so before Heather and her three younger kids fell asleep exhausted by the day’s activities and their light sunburns. Rafael called and with several more calls found his way the one block to my apartment. I brought plates of spaghetti with meat sauce to the patio table. We were eating when I noticed his gold wedding band had been turned around to reveal a rainbow flag. I pointed at it saying, “Look at that.” Rafael’s warm and amused smile increased my anticipation of what the evening might mean. My son and eldest grandson came downstairs to meet Rafael. We talked. Our guest asked for wine. I told him I didn’t have any but suggested he and I go to a nearby restaurant for wine and dessert. As we were leaving the restaurant, Rafael said, “Let’s go dancing.” We started walking towards a nearby club.

“Do you have your ID?” I asked.

“I don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do,” I insisted.

He led me to his apartment to retrieve his ID, but we didn’t leave the place, ending that Saturday with a passion I won’t try to describe except to suggest it seemed emotionally perfect as we two came together with open arms and hearts, and with humor, concern, and love.

Rafael died several delightful and sad months later. I live on, wondering what new Saturdays I will experience as my life continues to change and mature. I’ve had Mom’s, Dad’s, a wife’s, and a lover’s Saturdays. What next?

Denver, 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

Posted on

Porn by Phillip Hoyle

The book circulated through the men’s dorm that fall of 1967, a pornographic novel that my roommate claimed was written by a group as an experiment to see if a coherent novel could be written by a committee, each member contributing one chapter. Protagonist Candy’s sexual exploits made up the content, and a different male was introduced in each chapter. It was my turn to read the book.

Did I think the committee’s book worked? Would it fool the editorial world? He asked. Of course, it must have worked; I was reading a printed and bound commercial copy. Was it literary? What a question. Perhaps the holy air of a dorm at a church-related college demanded literary posturing. One must consider that people who desire a book with a convincingly direct and graphically explicit sex scene at the climax of every chapter don’t really care who or how many who’s wrote it. They might count the chapters to see how many times the book could bring them to a climax, to guess how many days the book might last! Editors and publishers might also calculate similarly with an eye on porn rights and profits, especially if such a book could be marketed on the legitimate book list. I avidly read Candy by Jerry Southern.

My very first exposure to pornography, though, was in magazines we pre-pubescent boys stole from Eefie Enzor’s little grocery store on West Tenth Street. We stowed them in a secret place in our hideout. We saw pictures of breasts and probably made lots of stupid comments about them. We reveled in the forbidden nature of having purloined print to go along with the purloined cigarettes and cigars we smoked while turning the pages. My favorite magazine was Adam, a glossy-print rag with photographs and stories. Once, someone lifted a copy of the smaller-format Sexology Monthly that featured informational articles on sex plus a few stories. I began reading porn at age ten.

As a twenty-year-old in a college dorm I read Candy. It had been years since I’d even looked at pornography, for by the time I reached puberty, our gang of little thieves had broken up, and I no longer had access to such magazines. Rather, I discovered the joys of ejaculation with another live boy, one a couple of years younger than I. He didn’t come and we weren’t exactly close friends. At least that is my memory. My sexual development at that time was free of glossy porn. I had sex with boys in a most direct and powerful manner.

Still, I was a reader and as a ninth grader found a couple of sex scenes in a murder mystery in my father’s collection of books. I found another hot sex scene in one of his historical novels. As a tenth grader, I continued reading historical novels. I didn’t find sex scenes very often but didn’t miss them or the porn because I found another boy with whom to have sex. Rather, he found me. We kept busy. After he moved away, I got too busy with church, school, and extracurricular activities, and with girls. Then in college, Candy came to call. I suspect that in reading some of the chapters, I made my first conventional use of pornography.

  • Porn helped me understand my sexual needs. For example, straight porn, as in Playboy, did little for me. Pictures of men and women in sex, as sometimes showed up in Penthouse, I found more interesting.
  • I grew to detest the objectifying of other persons as things or tools to be used either as sex object or in general.
  • I like sex but want it with people; real live, complex folk who interest me.
  • I am more interested in people than in bodies or body types. I prefer smiles to muscles.
  • I like porn as substitute sex; at least I value porn at this level.
  • As a married man I didn’t use porn for I had my wife with whom I made love several times a week. I didn’t want a prostitute, even if only a print prostitute.
  • As my homosexual needs gained my attention, I found gay pornography useful to me. In fact, gay literature and occasionally porn helped me sustain my sanity. In addition to my very nice marriage and my longstanding affair with a male lover, gay literature and pornography gave me a growing sense of identity and an immediate sexual release that contrasted with the rest of my life.
  • Pornography for me was literally what the old word means: writing and/or pictures of prostitution. Eventually porn was my going to a male prostitute for what I otherwise could not get in my other relationships. It was the lifesaver for this married man.
  • I’ve long had friends in literary characters and sometimes in pornographic characters as well.

© Denver, 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

Posted on

It’s A Drag by Phillip Hoyle

I go to see Jeff at the bar that has drag shows and meet Twyla Westheimer. Across the room she sits dressed in midi skirt and patterned blouse, with large breasts, big hair, thick makeup, and looking slightly nervous. She’s primly perched on a bar stool sipping a drink through a straw. Although she looks familiar, I don’t know who she is. She stands and approaches me. Jeff, a new massage client of mine, laughs, tickled that I don’t recognize him in drag.

But Jeff isn’t the only reason I’m here. I like drag shows. I see the Denver drag queen who cracks me up the most, Brandi Roberts, a long-time friend of Jeff’s. Taking the stage, Brandi warms up the crowd, makes announcements, and provides one of the most bizarre performances I’ve seen from her or anyone else. If her opening minutes are any indication, tonight’s show will be a winner.

I find myself intrigued by drag queens. This interest began years ago when I first saw a drag show and increased when, in a seminary course about contemporary contexts of ministry, I started asking questions about them. I’m entertained by a good performance, but mostly I’m intrigued by the men who do the impersonations—their psychology, personalities, motivations, and lives.

Brandi always gives a good drag performance, but off stage she lives an even more complicated full-time gender-bending life complete with female hormones and the $5000 breast job she’s telling us about on stage. I feel so rich since I get to be around Brandi on a regular basis. She now styles hair in the same shop where I give massages. In fact, she arranged Jeff’s first massage with me. She appreciates my interest in her life and my attendance at her shows. I welcome her openness and great humor. Brandi may be as complicated a personality as I have ever known; certainly she is exotic in some sense of the word, plus candid, creative, and casual. With her it seems that anything can be said, anything can be done, and anything can be accepted.

Of course, I remind myself that my observations are very limited. I wonder if I find her so intriguing because in her I see none of the defenses that define my personality. I have run into very few of the challenges she experiences and endures daily. But around her I feel like I’m with a combination of several friends from my past: Susie, a very free and funny professional horn player; Dianne, a massage therapist who introduced me to wild life in Denver; Andy, a young artist of great wit and humor; Ronnie, who years ago entertained me with his sexual openness; and Ted, who told me that in San Francisco he was exploring his feminine side. With Brandi I encounter talent, individualism, comedy, good humor, and a passionate engagement with life. I like Brandi. Her life seems the banquet that Auntie Mame was sure most people were missing. The show proceeds.

Crystal Tower, a six-foot-six-inch tall African-American drag queen, enters down the hallway since with her big hair she is too tall for the small stage. I chuckle when her hair piece of huge curls is jarred loose by the door lintel. She keeps her poise and strikes a pose as the musical introduction continues. I’m wowed by her presence: tall, imposing, and important as she stands there in a long-sleeve, ankle length gold lamé dress. Crystal Tower has the stage presence of Nina Simone and delivers a soul piece I’ve heard that segues into a driving R&B piece I’ve not heard. She’s convincing whomever she may be impersonating; I’m impressed. She takes the dollar I wave to get her attention. At the end of her act, she acknowledges the applause with a gracious curtsy.

Scotty Carlisle now enters on stage in a short dress covered with red sequins. Her earrings and large necklace of rhinestones reflect the lights wildly. At age seventy-two, this drag queen shows the legs of a twenty-year-old beauty queen. Scotty looks great and wins the crowd with two torch song impersonations. Red is her color; no doubt about it. My partner Jim and I both approach the stage to give her our dollars. Jim has known her for years. Her saucy, sexy, and scintillating performance pushes along the show.

I sit in a terribly worn-out chair drinking too much beer, and as a result get up to go to the restroom. I’ve already done it too many times and self-consciously wonder what others may think of my many trips down the short hall. But I have to do it anyway. My bladder doesn’t hold all that much. I surely will pay for it tomorrow morning. Oh well, at least I haven’t run out of dollar bills to give the performers.

Finally Twyla comes onstage. I’m pretty sure now I recall her character from some eleven years ago when I met her at a party, a Sunday afternoon ‘I’m-running-for-royalty’ announcement affair. At the gathering Jazz Ann was announcing her candidacy, but Twila, her competition, was there. Jeff asked me if I had voted for Twila. I admitted I did not that year but assured him the following year when he became the great empress of something cosmic I did vote for him. Drag queens have long memories; at least this one does. Whether I actually voted that next year I don’t really remember; my little white lie was probably worthwhile. On stage now Twila wears a different tight-fitting stretchy blouse, extreme miniskirt, blue stockings, high platform heels, and a blue wig (I thought it was going to be chartreuse). Sexy, pouty, and sometimes coy, she’s quite a presence and a great contrast to the man I see in Jeff. Still, he seems sure of himself, and he must be a great planner given his successful career and entertainment hobby. I applaud and whoop and holler enthusiastically as he lip synchs one of his favorite songs that I don’t really know. I am happy to be here; and Jeff is wearing one of Brandi’s blue wigs he tells me as I hand him the rest of my dollars. Jim and I are on our way out to return home. On the short walk, I think of the drag queens and realize that their world despite its name is never a drag.


© 23 November 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

Posted on

HomoFaggot by Phillip Hoyle

I knew my life was changing when my wife advised, “You’d better tell the kids.” I thought about it and realized that to give words to my activity would necessarily change me. The assumption stemmed from a theological concept about the power of words, for in Genesis God spoke into existence the creation and then pronounced it good. Early Christian tradition called Jesus not only the Christ but also the word. I assumed words create, words value, and words move even mountains. I knew that the words I used to communicate with my grown children would have all these powers. I would be creating myself to both them and me. I would be moving myself and them into new worlds of experience and, hopefully, love. I would be testing all the values my wife and I had sought to foster in them.

I decided to describe my actions rather than call myself names. Still, to tell my daughter Desma about my activities would be to out myself not only to her but, because I assumed she would be more entertained than chagrined and not at all ashamed over what I had done, I would be known as homosexual to anyone who knew her very well. She wasn’t a gossip; she was just very open. I didn’t fault her, but I did know I’d be out in the city where she lived and where I had ministered in a congregation for nine years.

I asked my wife if she was sure about my telling them and was surprised at her answer. She didn’t want them to receive the word about my life at the same time they might have to hear that we were changing our relationship. I perceived her wisdom but wondered at her assumption that differed from mine. Still I bit the bullet and called the kids.

From years of reading queer theory, I realized that in telling them this information about myself, I would change in ways I could not yet imagine. I chose not to use categorizing words such as homosexual or bisexual, because I didn’t want to direct their ways of thinking. The main impact would be that my life and the marriage were changing. I also realized that whatever I said to them, I’d be homosexual. I knew that neither straights nor gays were comfortable with the designation bisexual. It didn’t matter that I had for many years understood and valued my bisexuality. It didn’t matter that the latest coalition of queers called itself GLBT. Yes, that B stands for bisexual, a term common in the literature of psychology, sociology, and sexology; that B represents a growing body of knowledge about humans; that B describes well the experience of thousands or even millions of human beings including me. When the story would be re-told, as I assumed it would, the B word would not be used. I would become a homosexual; I would be gay. Although that didn’t bother me at a personal level, the H word did not begin to describe my life. It was just too simple a designation. It was also one that would limit my access to work in the church.

Ironically, homosexual was more acceptable than bisexual in church work due to the possibility of being monogamous as a homosexual and the impossibility of such as a bisexual. A war of concepts and ideals seemed underway, one that would end my career. I didn’t know what I would do, what outcomes I’d find, but I did call my kids and tell them that in New Mexico I’d had two sexual affairs with men. I said their mom and I wanted them to know because we didn’t know what the future would hold. I reminded them that we loved them. My wife and I did separate. Within a year I’d left my ministerial profession and moved to Denver to live as a gay man. These choices seemed the best for everyone.

About four years later Desma heard her two boys call one another faggot. She asked them what the expression meant. Because they either didn’t know for sure or didn’t want to get into heavy trouble with their mom, they told her it meant you were strange. They’d heard it at school. She called together all four of her older children saying they needed to talk. She told them the word faggot and what it stood for: people who love and want to live with others of the same sex. They talked until she knew they understood the meaning of homosexual, gay, lesbian, and other related words. They discussed descriptive and pejorative uses of the terms. Then she said she wanted them to think for three hours, not to discuss but simply think, about people they knew that are homosexual. When she dismissed the children to go back to their play, she called her sister-in-law. “Heather,” she informed, “we’re talking about homosexuality over here. I thought you’d want to know before the kids got together again.” The families lived several blocks apart. The kids were in and out of each other’s homes. And Grandpa Phillip was coming to town in a few weeks.

When she got the kids together again, she asked them and made a list. They talked about what they knew including several homosexual people who were related to their family as friends and acquaintances. None of them suggested Grandpa Phillip. But some of the grandchildren had met Phil’s friend Tony and his male partner. They had walked his dog Shinti and had attended two gay parades with their grandpa. They had seen him greet gays and lesbians near his home. Two of them had met a transgender friend of his who bought them a cookie at a coffee shop. And since then the children and grandchildren have met Grandpa Phillip’s current partner Jim. They’ve met his mother Ruth. Most of them have stayed overnight in our home and have eaten Ruth’s homemade cookies. They have read my stories about Miss Shinti and her gay owner. They know something about their grandpa, information that will change for them as they mature. They also know they are deeply loved, even by their HomoFaggot grandpa.

Denver, 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

Posted on

Visits to the Doctors by Phillip Hoyle

I started going again to the doctors in my late twenties when my life seemed to complicate and I had started feeling stresses of work that caused pain and left me seeking relief.

Oh, I’d been to doctors before. Surely it was a doctor who delivered me from my mother’s womb, a doctor who filled my teeth, a doctor who gave me a physical in preparation for going to scout camp, a doctor who removed my plantar warts, a doctor who checked my dislocated knee, and a doctor who examined my throat and found I had both strep infection and the kissing disease, mononucleosis. These were specialists and my visits all related to crises or organizational demands. I’d go to their sterile offices, talk to them in their white lab coats, open my mouth, drop my pants, and otherwise skirt their world of science and be properly impressed. I needed their expertise I suppose but wasn’t really all that interested in what they had to say or prescribe.

I have a close friend now and who has a different relationship with doctors, whom he visits on numerous occasions for any variety of illnesses—real and imagined. My friend sees at least one or more doctors weekly and often tells me what his cardiologist or his dermatologist or his back doctor or his general practitioner or his internalist or his surgeon or some other specialist has said about his illnesses. It seems to me that beyond his own education in business and bookkeeping he has pursued a medical education in the hallowed halls of hospitals and clinics, a constant search for remedies, medicines, and knowledge to improve his day-to-day well being and treat his several conditions.

I don’t report this kind of phenomenon in my friends and acquaintances without revealing my own preoccupation with specialists for I, too, have sought knowledge from the doctors. I too have been enamored of their offerings, specialties, and diagnoses, but rather than radiologists I have visited musicologists, rather than endocrinologists I have sat at the feet of philologists, rather than chiropractologists I have preferred historiologists.

My manic phase of learning from doctors began in my late teens, reached a huge crescendo in my early thirties, and then quickly diminished (frankly a great relief to my wife at the time). My obsession slackened when I realized I had been in school for twenty-two of my thirty-three years. For more than a decade I had visited the offices, lecture halls, theaters, labs, and libraries of learning about theology, musicology, and biblioraphgy. I read dictionaries, scholarly studies, philosophies, essays, novels, short stories, periodicals, codices, and manuscripts in my pursuit of a wide variety of intellectual topics. My doctor’s names included Van Buren, Lee, Childs, Duke, and Beckelheimer, scholars who led me into the literatures of their specialties. I couldn’t read enough, hear enough, or absorb enough for years.

Finally I had had enough and nearly quite seeing them—doctors of all kinds. My decision to curtail my extravagance wasn’t because I was cured of my need to learn and know. I simply was tired of the institutions that offered the doctors’ advice—the schools with their curriculum plans, requirements, and tests. So I decided to self-medicate my need, to read on my own, to attend only seminars and workshops of interest, and eventually I gave up most of those things in order to begin writing my own essays and my own stories, a change that seems to have become my ultimate self-treatment. Forgive me if I have sinned, but for my penance just promise me not to take away my tablets, pens, or word processor.

Mea culpa.

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