Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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The Essence of GLBTQ by Phillip Hoyle

For me, the essence of being GLBTQ(Aetc.) is first a recognition of being other, by which I mean being a person whose sexuality leaves him or her on the outside: a sinner, pervert, mentally ill, or more generally put, queer. Second, it means a dedication to some kind of community building within that outsider existence, by which I mean recognizing oneself as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, etc., and sometimes connecting as a couple or friend with others that attract you and who feel somehow attracted to you. Third, it means dedication to improving the lot of such outsiders through coalitions of community-building (as in GLBTetc) through communication, valuing, participation in GLBTetc groups, and sometimes activism related to political process. But I don’t here want simply to write an essay on philosophy. Let me tell you some stories.

I was attending a professional meeting in a Denver hotel in 1977 studying Jungian psychology as it relates to religious education. While alone in my room one afternoon, Jung’s Shadow concept about which I had been writing and thinking took the form of a vision hovering over me, and I realized the shadow experience was in fact my homosexuality.

A year later I was in seminary. My encounters with gay persons and my experience of falling in love with a man caused me to realize that my homosexual shadow was more than the flipside of my sexual self. I was walking down a street with the man when I found myself singing love songs to him. This experience helped me realize my homosexual desire was situated at the core of my sexuality. I then “knew” and came to prize my bi-sexual experience in a new and more essential way. I kept singing!

I studied sexuality; I experienced my bisexuality; I loved myself. My homosexual desire and experiences provided me joy and pain—the joy of feeling one night in a hotel that my heart was going to beat itself right out of my rib cage as I was making love to my male companion, the pain of realizing that same lover was never going to express his love for me in the ways I was willing to express mine to him. Still for years I nurtured that relationship—my smallest gay community—all the while knowing that its existence, should it become outwardly known, could spell the end of my marriage and of my career as a minister because my desire and experience occurred outside the cultural norms of religion (I was a sinner, probably the worst kind), failed to be monogamous (against the law), and beyond the psychological, medical, and psychotherapeutic norms (a pervert or mentally ill to many health professionals).

Eventually I did reveal these things—my alternate needs and complementary community. I paid a high price and entered a gay-male world that opened the way for me to enter into an LGBTQAetc. essential experience. I had know, loved, and supported lesbians. I had known and loved gay men. I had known and loved my own bisexual self. I had not known transgender persons, but in my fledgling practice as a massage therapist I was ushered into such a relationship. My transgender client intrigued me with her story. I saw her generosity and worked hard to adjust my own assumptions. I appreciate to this day her tolerance of my bungling attempts to adjust my language. Too often with her I felt like when I was a seminarian dealing with images of God. My miscommunication then was to address God as Father in the opening prayer of a feminist organizing effort—one I supported and promoted. My thirty years of prayer language resisted. Luckily I giggled aloud at my misstep. But with my transgender client, I did not giggle but realized that her good nature helped me understand that in order to be an LGBTQ, I’d have to concentrate and accept others and myself like never before in my whole life because old images and old language always want to interrupt the flow of love and acceptance. For me, the essence of GLBTQ is plain hard work. That’s what I know about such things.
Thanks for listening! What I most appreciate about being in this storytelling group is that weekly I get to practice GLBTQ essential experience. Here we can giggle together as we learn.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Dance, Dance, Dance by Phillip Hoyle

I have a kind of dance thing. It started early. In second grade I had my first date with a neighbor girl attending a square dance at the Elks Club. I did other folk dancing with the Girl Scouts. I’ve done interpretative dances in therapeutic and religious settings including one in a sermon I gave in a seminary preaching class. I taught African tribal dancing to children. I danced Universal Peace with adults. I danced in traditional Native American style at intertribal powwows and two stepped with an Indian guy at a cowboy bar. I’ve danced to rock music: first the bop, then the jerk, then disco, then new wave, and finally on-your-own improvised dancing to a variety of music, which brings me to this story.

I went down to The Denver Compound/Basix to dance one Saturday night several years ago; went with my friend Tony. I had been a number of times before and especially liked dancing there by myself. The music at the club had provided me some firsts: hearing a club mix with Gregorian chant in it, and then another mix with American Indian singing. The music there seemed to pull together several themes of my life, so my dance responses to the nearly deafening techno music combined barely-disguised choral directing, Indian dance steps, interactions with various friends, sexual movements, and my ever-changing dance steps to the ever-changing music. Dancing had become for me an exultation of life, of my still relatively new life as a gay man. Evenings there combined sweat, music, men, reveries, and always movement enhanced by a light show; an evening dancing on the Basix floor for me an unparalleled celebration. This evening like others seemed a mix of need, allure, and creative movement.

I had noticed a man who danced there regularly on Saturday nights. He stood off to the side of the dance floor, out of the way of other more exuberant dancers. Always dressed the same in cap, tee shirt, Levis, and work boots, he swayed from side to side shifting his weight from left to right, barely lifting his heels, and for several hours never missing a beat. He was there simply to dance. I imagined him as dancing alone with his daemon— perhaps St. Speed or the great god Oxycodon. He never moved toward a partner. He seemed a symbol for my too-solitary self. Would he ever alter his repetitions? Perhaps it was he that one of my friends watched the night he judged the techno music boring! Tonight he was there in his place.

I knew I was different than the solitary dancer, knew I’d move toward someone eventually, would need a human partner to copy, contrast, or complement my dance. Would this night be the one? I didn’t know. I just melded into the crowd as if joining a primal dance of love. A male-to-male mating ritual. A free-form yet stylized communication bolstered by drugs and alcohol (I was in a bar) just like in so many primal cultures. One alcoholic drink sufficed for me to enter the ceremony, released me into the musical exploration of what I could communicate there. I emulated the booted swayer as I moved into the magic of the rhythm. When I felt the backbeats my arms joined in the dance. My feet began to move me out from the wall-flower pose and into the seething mass of the group. Finally my whole body took up the demands of the beat, the possibilities of the night. I danced.

Then I saw him, not the solitary dancer who barely moved, but another guy across the room. He didn’t seem to be dancing with anyone, so I started dancing with him. I’d never noticed him before, didn’t know him, didn’t even know if he was aware of me. I just wanted some kind of relationship with another man, another dancer whose movements I could complement. It seemed a game and a pleasant game at that. For nearly an hour I danced with him at a great distance. I stepped this way and that, always in touch with him in my sidelong glances, my peripheral awareness as I slowly edged across the room to be near him. Eventually he did acknowledge my moves. Then we danced back to back, then side by side, then face to face. Dancing, smiling, moving away, then together. We touched. Shy smiles. Sparkling eyes.

He was not particularly handsome. Dark brown hair neatly trimmed, black stretchy shirt revealing a nice-enough body with square build, black slacks obscuring the shape of legs and more. His dance moves more conservative than mine. As I matched his pace I wondered what was going on in his mind. Was he amused? He didn’t turn his back except to bump. Drunk? On drugs? Didn’t seem to be, but I was not sure. What I had drunk? Probably the Cape Cod I liked to start my dancing nights with, that and water. We were warmed by our dance that winter night, warmed by our responses, our constant motion, the crowded dance floor.

“Gotta go,” I finally said when my friend Tony signaled his need to leave. “Thanks. Oh, I’m Phil. Hey, this was fun. Hope to see you again.” He didn’t object. Said “Bye.”

I rode the bus down to the Baker neighborhood the next Saturday night. He showed up too there across the room. I was pleased. We danced. The move across the floor didn’t take nearly as long. The body to body movements were more direct, not requiring much interpretation. Then it was closing time. “Gotta catch the bus,” I said. I stalled while he got his coat out of a locker. That’s when I saw the pin, knew it was a Trekkie symbol. I politely said “Thanks for dancing” and “Goodnight” and moved away. Somehow his identification with science fiction stood in the way for me. Made him less attractive? Boy. I danced out of there, across the Walgreens parking lot to catch the Number Zero bus back home. I wondered what I had learned about myself, what I had learned in a bar. What was the truth? The reality? Really. What dance was I willing to execute? I admit I was looking for more than a dance partner, but I certainly wasn’t interested in a relationship characterized by going to sci-fi movies and that kind of fantasy. I wanted a dancer that could dance a domestic and somehow romanticized relationship. Me? Romantic? Must have been the effect of living with my wife for twenty-nine years. Or was it the combination of booze and dancing? Thought about these things all the way home. Boy. What we can learn dancing and ponder riding busses.

© 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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Elder Words by Phillip Hoyle

I read this somewhere:

When I turned forty I knew a lot about life.

When I turned fifty every new experience reminded me of a story from the past.

When I turned sixty I thought I was supposed to tell the stories.

Now at sixty-four with croaky voice I say:
Bah humbug.
The next generation is going to the dogs. (Quoting Ovid)
I’m feeling passé.
Moan, groan.
Youth is wasted on the young.
The food here used to be better.
Today I feel like Grandpa Grunt.
Their prices sure have gone up.
I really miss the good old days when things made sense.

Elder words are not new to me. Any number of times I heard them proffering advice, insight, and hope. My folks wanted me to have a good life and somehow to learn from their experience, so I ask you to listen while I tell you their good words.

Words my elders said to me:

Earl Hoyle, my dad: A kind man who wanted his children to have meaningful lives helping other people, Dad was spare in his advice giving. He didn’t select any of his children’s life-work or push them towards a specific career. Yet he did give me two words of advice concerning what I might seek for myself. “For a career,” he advised, “do something you really like to do,” and “Don’t be a musician.” My settlement was to work as a minister in churches leading their choirs and music programs.

Professor Joe Secrest: My main music teacher in undergraduate school, Mr. Secrest encouraged me in many ways providing varied musical resources and experiences. He liked my musicality and dedication to music, and he may have seen that my path into pastoral ministry would be wrong for me. He also may have understood more about my personality and potentials than I ever imagined; after all, he was a musician. At the end of my junior year he proposed: “I’ll stay here another year if you’ll change your major to music.” That was all I needed to hear. I changed my major. It cost me an additional year of schooling but was worth every hour, every book, every measure of music, and every dollar spent.

John Conroe: This handsome and kind man worked in the oil business encouraging folk to sign mineral rights leases. He and his wife lived simply although they had loads of resources. At the church where I had my first full-time job, she greeted at the door and he ushered the center aisle for the eleven o’clock service. They accepted Myrna and me and eventually our children into their lives like they were our parents. One fine day John said this to me: “They should never say of either of us: he worked himself to death.” I agreed with the sentiment and have lived into its easing wisdom.

Rev. Ed, mentor: When I began graduate study at Wichita State University and took on a part-time youth ministry at Broadway Christian Church, I shared an office with a retired American Baptist minister. On occasion Ed and I talked. He seemed interested in my ways of thinking. We read and discussed books on theological and psychological themes. I was amazed at his elder mind, for although the conversations sometimes lagged due to his slower come-backs, he several times recalled the outline of books he had studied thirty years before. I learned from him and was acutely aware of the irony of heeding the advice of a Baptist minister who said: “Go to seminary.”

Dr. Beckelheimer, professor of homiletics: In seminary, at the first meeting of a social ethics graduate seminar, “Strategies for Change” (a kind of Saul Alinsky community organizing course), I realized my real motivation for taking the course was my anger—at the church, at the need for credentials, at the whole world, and at the upset I had caused my family by moving to Texas. I was just plain angry and realized I needed to study something harmless, so immediately after that first session, after I had lied about why I was there, I went to the seminary office to drop that course and sign up for “Principles of Preaching.” The class would be my third three-semester-hour course in homiletics. I’d had two as an undergraduate student and already had discovered I’d be happy to live the rest of my life without preaching another sermon. I took Dr. Beckelheimer’s course and was the first student he ever he gave an “A” to on every sermon submitted. I didn’t like his course, but later in my effort to get out of seminary one semester early, I signed up for another one that sounded better to me, “Experimental Preaching,” a two-hour course in summer school. Again I did superior work that deeply impressed my unimpressive instructor. When I was almost done with my seminary education, Dr. Beckelheimer stopped me in the hallway. In his over-serious although sincere manner, he said: “Be sure you preach.” I did preach some for the next twenty years. As an associate minister I covered vacations and other times away for the senior ministers in several churches. I must have preached about one hundred fifty sermons—addresses I made sure my senior ministers understood I didn’t want to deliver. They liked me for that since I seemed no threat to their position.

Dr. James Duke and Dr. Cy Rowell: In seminary two other professors gave me identical advice. Both seemed impressed by my scholarship. Dr. Duke said: “I’d encourage you to do post-graduate work in church history except there won’t be any jobs.” Dr. Rowell said the same about religious education except that he explained, “There won’t be any jobs; too many people are already lined up getting their degrees.” I appreciated their advice that correlated well with the decision that had landed me in seminary anyway. I had chosen seminary when I realized I didn’t want to pursue postgraduate work in music history.

Rev. Kathryn Williams, a regional associate minister, friend, and mentor: I appreciated many things about Kathryn besides her enthusiasm. She had served as a missionary in the then Belgium Congo and from that experience had unusual views on culture and educational process. She helped me gain a particular approach to childhood education in a church setting, one I employed often in planning events and writing curriculum resources. Besides all that, I just liked her, her accessibility, humor, sharp insights, and constant encouragement. Sometime during the last year of my seminary education, Kathryn said to me: “I know a hundred ministers in their fifties and almost every one of them is bitter at the church. I don’t want that for you.” I thanked her for the wise advice and pledged to quit before I grew to hate my work. Eventually her observation led me to leave ministry.

Geraldean McMillin, school teacher, now retired: Geraldean and I started talking years ago. She taught economics to high school students and so her insights often related to her theories about economics. Growing up in the Missouri Ozarks, she also reflected an earthy common sense. We talked and talked and still do. She asserts it’s the job of elders to be wise. Among many wise sayings she has taught me, I most appreciate this one: “You can’t get a job without experience; can’t get experience without making mistakes.” Her practical approach has helped me deal with my own faux pas and snafu’s.

Ronnie Montoya, friend: I learned sage words from the mouth of a younger person, words that reflected his greater experience, talk that always combined humor and wisdom. He served me as a singular friend, a gateway into Hispanic experience, and a sexual playmate. This short, chubby, cute guy entertained me in Albuquerque. I had met him through my wife who worked with him. The three of us started going out to dance. Ronnie and I started doing more together—playing pool, kicking around, driving here and there, and eventually having sex. A few weeks into our affair, Ronnie warned, “If you get enough man-to-man sex, you’ll want a lot more.” Such truth! I became one of his best-ever students and continued my studies after moving to two other cities. I’m still studying.

Winston Weathers, writer, literary agent, and professor of writing: This elder statesman of creative writing invited me to his apartment several afternoons when I lived in Tulsa. With his partner of forty years we shared wine, snacks, and talk of art, literature, and writing. I didn’t know much about Winston except that he was a retired university professor and that his published poetry and short fiction had gained critical attention. He knew writing and one day told me: “Gay fiction needs more than drugs, dancing, and wild sex.” I am seeking to follow his advice.

Words describing an elder ideal:

Wisdom is knowing what to do with knowledge
Adages distill wisdom
Stories tell the truth
Poetry reaches deeper

© 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.com

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To Be Held by Phillip Hoyle

If “to be held” is a goal, my relationship with the goal was one of slow, slow discovery. I have no memory of being held by my parents. I slept alone throughout my childhood since I was the only boy in the family. When as a little boy I went to my grandparents’ farm, I slept with Grandpa in his big Mission-style oak double bed. I recall he kidded me about having to build a wall of pillows to keep me from kicking him. I now wonder if he built the wall because I wanted to snuggle up to him, something he was uncomfortable doing. I’ll never know. One could say I am from a home in which touch was not withheld; it just wasn’t much of a factor, at least for this child.

In my early teen years I asked girls to school dances. I asked them because I liked to dance having been taught by my older sisters. In the junior high gymnasium we danced the Bop with its spins and fancy steps, the Twist with its aerobic benefits, and sometimes slow dances based on the Fox Trot. My favorites were several line dances the teachers taught us. I liked slow dances, too, for the holding and being held. Sounds pretty normal I guess. Anyway, as we danced, my ninth grade girlfriend rested her hand on my lower back, a fact that others noted and commented on. She was very short, and we danced very close. I had no objections. So we danced a lot that year hanging onto one another. Although at that time I wanted to dance with African American kids in line dances, it never occurred to me to dance with another boy. I had engaged in sexual things with grade school friends but none of my friends danced. I had never heard of boys dancing together let alone seen it. But had I imagined it, I’m sure I’d have wanted to dance with a boy, black or red, brown or white, or any other color of the rainbow.

In my mid-teens a new friend introduced me to a new kind of male-to-male sex that included the intimacy of kissing. I’d never been able to get myself to kiss a girl. I suppose I was still under the influence of my childhood groans during movie love scenes. I had no idea that the fact the hugging and kissing was between a female and a male could have anything to do with my lack of interest. Of course since I am music-sensitive, the introduction of sappy-sounding orchestral strings in such scenes may have really repelled me. But I readily took to kissing with my boyfriend. I didn’t realize that my kissing relationship with him was the kind that felt just right. I didn’t think in terms of either/or, either girl or boy. I just enjoyed what we did together and kept open my search for a girlfriend. In high school I dated several girls. We danced but didn’t fall in love.

Then I met a girl who with my grandmother was visiting our family. We attended a dance together. I danced close with this very sexy and enthusiastic young woman. In the car after we drove back home we held and kissed one another hungrily. She seemed to enjoy that I knew how to kiss even though I hadn’t been able to practice it for over two years, ever since my kissing boyfriend had left town. The next day she returned to her home a couple of counties away. I went off to college. I never saw her again.

I didn’t find anyone I wanted to kiss again for about a year. Then I met Myrna. We held hands. I put my arm around her. On the third date (the appropriate time according to discussions in the 1950s youth group I had attended) I worked up my courage to kiss her. We were parked late at night in the city zoo parking lot watching the lights caused by military maneuvers at nearby Fort Riley. The light show was nice, a novelty for her. Then I kissed her; she bit my ear. I thought, ‘This is something new,’ the effects of it shooting like lightning right down to my groin. I assumed she liked my kisses and maybe me. As it turned out she liked me just fine, but the bite was not a tease or a love bite; she was nervous. She would rather have only held my hand and continued liking her boyfriend back home (whom I never even heard about until years later). She’d rather have gone bowling, played volleyball, and skipped all the sexual, romantic things. But later, when I kissed her in front of several other students, right there in public, she opened herself to feelings she’d heard of in fairytales and assumed she had met her Prince Charming. In short, we married, had kids, and as a couple enjoyed living together with great intimacy—including a lot of touch, kisses, and sex—for years and years.

Still, I sought intimacy with a man. Ten years into the marriage I fell in love with him and basked in our occasional touch, our holding. Twenty years into the marriage I learned much more about my need to be held. My work partner, the senior minister with whom I’d served as an associate for seven years, died a sudden death early on a Sunday morning. I organized elders of the congregation to be at all the doors to greet folk and tell of the death as they arrived at the church. I was cast in the pastoral role for the congregation and realized that all I had learned about grief should be heeded for the whole group as well as for individuals. I didn’t have time to grieve for my personal loss. I bore the heavy responsibility, but I needed desperately to be held.

During the ensuing weeks, my wife and I kept to our normal patterns of intimacy. I held her. That was good. She remained responsive but somehow our pattern didn’t meet my needs. I eventually realized what I needed was to be held by my male lover, a man I’d been in love with for nearly a decade. He called by phone. I was pleased, but he did not come to the funeral. He didn’t come to see me in the following weeks. I didn’t think much about it at the time being too busy tending others. Still, I didn’t get held like I needed to be held. I seemed unable to ask anyone for what I needed. Eventually I did find a man to hold me. In receiving his fine care, I realized I had sought it because I was unwilling to call on my friend whose responses to me had always been unpredictable. I was needy beyond my past experiences.

I survived. I realized I needed a man-to-man relationship that would provide me more reliable and accessible contact. Eventually I found it. Then another. My needs pushed me into behaviors that spelled the ends of my marriage and career. I don’t say this as an apology for my behaviors or as an accusation against anyone. I tell it as description. I don’t expect other people to be more able to respond to life’s challenges any better than I. So I describe these experiences because the events and my responses revealed to me just how strong a need can be and how strong a pattern of behavior can be to prevent one from getting the need met.

I finally realized I needed to be held by the people I loved and who I knew loved me. I’m an old man now having entered a gay world where one can get sex rather easily, but the habits still restrict me; and of course there are the habits of other men as well as my own, habits that define asking and getting. They clarify experience, feelings, fears; mine and theirs. Sadly and stupidly I again find myself getting less holding than I believe I require.

I cannot write an ending to this story; I’m not yet dead! Who knows what the coming years may yet teach me about my need to hold and to be held?
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 “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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A Place Just Right by Phillip Hoyle


In contrast to some other members of my family, I’ve never been over-attached to any one place, for to be so seems somehow contrary to my nature. But one time I found myself living in a place just right. It happened when I moved with my family to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There I discovered a small city large enough to explore, exotic for me in its social and cultural mix, with an Old town that took me away from the day-to-day by offering me a world of fantasy and comfort. A city of visual contrasts including mountains, deserts, volcano cinder cones, lava flows, ancient peoples, Territorial and Pueblo revival architecture, an 18th century church dedicated to San Felipe de Neri, tall modern buildings, US Route 66 running right through its middle, home of the University of New Mexico with its Lobos. A city of museums, festivals, sports, arts, and more, Albuquerque hosted the annual Balloon Festival, but more than that, hot air balloons drifted over the city whenever the conditions were just right and they often were. And Albuquerque was home to the New Mexico State Fair with all the things one might expect from a Midwestern fair plus a strong Native American and Hispanic American presence.

And people just loved living there. And I was there in the right city working in the right church. Close to the university and just a block off Route 66, that church had become more democratic than any I’d ever worked in. A liberal and educated perspective dominated, and I fit in there having found a place and job that seemed just right.

In Albuquerque I could exercise my western and Indian fantasies, view art every day, enjoy mild weather, and eat green chilies regularly. And I moved there at just the right time of my life, when our children were ready to desert the nest and fly away. So Myrna and I were left alone with a wonderland to wander and explore. And we did so: two stepping our way through a cowboy world, running around with several groups of colorful friends, experiencing a diversity of activities and relationships we had never before found. The dynamic of the two of us discovering activities together was a most important factor in my feeling that I was in a place just right.

Something fine happened to me there in Albuquerque, yes something delightful and very costly to the new camaraderie Myrna and I were beginning to enjoy. I turned and turned like a Shaking Quaker until I found a place just right for me on the Kinsey scale. I was no longer worried over the concept of the scale—you know, the science of it all—but began celebrating my position between its #3 and #4 markers. Concepts were still present, of course, after all this is my story. I looked at the scale like a preference of conscious ego states on the Jungian-based Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and in my preferred bisexual place connected with my friend Ronnie and then with another man. The affairs were meant only to be “additions to the report” of my life, certainly not “a correction” to it. But there I was feeling all just right with myself and my buddies. The affairs ended when I left New Mexico but the feelings accompanied me to Colorado and eventually to Oklahoma and pushed me into a life away from my family. I had been to a place just right and nothing else felt like home. Oh, by this I do not mean Kansas where I grew up, not that kind of starry-eyed “There’s no place like home,” but rather, some other place just right, a relationship within me and with the rest of the world. And that feeling continues in various and exciting modes in Denver, my new place just right. And even in this board room at the GLBT Community Center of Colorado where when gathered with the other storytellers each Monday afternoon, I feel just right. Yes, a place just right.


Denver, July 8, 2013

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 “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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My Wife and Six Husbands by Phillip Hoyle

When the issue of same-sex marriage made a headline some six years ago, my partner Jim asked if I’d want to marry should such a law be enacted. I flippantly replied, “Oh, I already did that for thirty years. I guess not.” I thought of marriage as being a non-issue in my relationship with this Taurus-signed man who holds such a different take on ownership than do I as a laid-back Cancerian. I have almost no need for possessions and derive little joy from the fact that I own anything. And early on in our wooing I remember clearly stating this warning: “I can’t be owned.” In my response that day I forgot to ask him if he wanted me to marry him because I couldn’t conceive that he’d want to cede half of everything he owned to me or anyone else.

Then last month, my partner and I were invited to join another male couple who were celebrating their 25th anniversary. They got married officially under New York State law about a year ago, but for them, this May date was their real anniversary celebrating when they first got together as a couple.

Relationships without societal rules make their own sense of things. Surely this simple perception and constant insistence signals something important about marriage, about all things called marriage whether under civil law or religious tradition. When it comes to plain and simple language, marriage, wedding, and union are synonyms. It’s that simple; but of course, it’s never that simple. Nothing is that simple. In so declaring, I realize I have branded myself a liberal, an educated, sophisticated snob, and an ivory-tower thinker—one of those people who tries to confuse meanings in order to destroy the sureties of common life. Well, so be it, but I tell you I learned this way of thinking at a Bible college, a small enclave of rather conservative thinking, yet one dedicated to revisiting ancient documents (particularly the Bible) from the point of view of John Locke’s philosophy (firmly settled within the views of the Enlightenment). This task of finding ancient truth within newer structures of thinking opened a door in my imagination. Eventually I progressed beyond 18th century views opting for more contemporary ones that would present whatever truths could be gleaned from ancient traditions to inform and enrich current expressions of human life and meaning.

But back in the old days, my young adult days, I used to define marriage in this way: go to bed with one other person and you’ll wake up married. I guess back then I thought of marriage as a relationship blending sex and metaphysics. I was never very ceremonial in my approach to life. My casual take on things was almost as simple as a caveman bonking someone on the head and dragging them home to serve as a mate. For me, the issue is neither as tradition-bound with ceremonial oaths spoken before a judge or altar nor as clear cut as many folk would hope to think. Remember, I matured and married in the 1960s where ‘casual’ reigned. Now rather than argue any issues, I will simply tell my story, a story of marriages of several sorts.

At the ripe old age of twenty-one, I married a fine woman. Our personalities meshed. We were both dedicated to life and ministries within the church, which for us was a small denomination that refused to think of itself as a denomination, a non-sectarian, non-creedal collection of churches in which we both were reared. We were excited about the increasing self-revelations our marriage would entail and saved ourselves, as it were, for the marriage bed. (Of course, I had an introduction to sex years earlier from another boy with whom I had practiced kissing and intercrural bliss.) The marriage with Myrna provided satisfying experiences and opened us both to a wide range of interesting people and cultural activities. We loved one another and lived together a life rich in relationships.

Eventually I provided myself a dietary supplement to that marriage in the form of a long-standing affair with another man. I use this expression supplement because my vocabulary didn’t go beyond monogamy, bigamy, and polyandry. I didn’t have words for what I experienced. No one did. I didn’t take formal vows with my man partner but would have had they been available. I did assume responsibility in this new relationship. I deeply loved this man. I already realized what I wanted in life, what I had in my life with Myrna and my children, and honored what he seemed to want by way of a family. I kept our relationship warm but with some important distance. I soon enough realized I didn’t want to live with him. That would have been economically a disaster to say nothing of the costs to our careers, families, and dreams. Still I wanted a deep friendship with erotic communication. So I lived a kind of love that wasn’t simplistic, not love and marriage going together like a horse and carriage. What I wanted was love from him, and persisted nurturing it with him. That love has endured although its nature has changed over the years. All marriages experience such changes.

I didn’t explain all this to my wife who I judged would have found it just too odd. While open to life, she was a bit more traditional than I. Still, we had many levels of commitment to one another. When we moved too many miles distant from my husband, I realized I needed another one, actually several others. A man, who was a friend of my wife, assisted me with a deeply significant introduction into gay sex. We had fun. I had already told him I loved him (I’m sure it came across as simply the statement of a friend), but when he warned me we could play together but there had to be no feelings involved, I happily accepted his rules. Our dalliance would work better that way. I had no thought to leave my wife.

When that affair cooled down, I wondered whether he was beginning to experience too much feeling on his part or if he had already got from me what he had come for. Then another man presented himself. We developed an intensely emotional attachment, one I recognized and initially resisted. My wife noticed this affair with great trepidation. She and I weathered the brief relationship but not without a sense of loss within our marriage. My wife and I moved away to another community; my third husband got a new partner. Emotionally Myrna and I entered a time of uncertainty. We had plenty of work to keep us occupied. I did not find another man to love or play with. Sadly, we couldn’t solve the problems my affairs had raised. Eventually there was a separation. It took me a couple of months to gather my wits enough to schedule my removal from a career of thirty-two years, but that decision led to me having a short fling with a Baby Bear in Tulsa, a man I didn’t intend to get involved with. Now who was playing the games? I never felt the love in this relationship although I did assume some temporary heavy-duty responsibilities.

I escaped to Denver to become a gay man. I was inventing something new for myself although I was still legally yoked to my wife and emotionally connected to at least three other men and had one who felt emotionally and hopefully connected to me. (I was learning that the gay life could be rather complicated, but I’d always thrived on complications.) Eventually I met another man who took an interest in me. Our mutual delight helped domesticate me again. We enjoyed living together, exploring intimacy and playing house. I loved this man; he loved me. We never talked of marriage; we just lived it. He was ill and essentially owned nothing; I didn’t particularly need taking care of. I did take care of him as he died and mourned his passing with deep feeling.

Then there was another man, the one I met at a bus stop, the one who thrilled me, the one who seemed so thrilled with me. We felt deeply important to one another: he the revealer of emotions I’d never experienced, I the provider of a stable love he had never found. He was the homebuilder insisting that my apartment was my office; his apartment our home. We loved one another and built a relationship of great satisfaction. I helped him meet his death and mourned his passing. I felt adrift although I knew I would be okay.

Into the vacuum created by these losses entered my current partner, a really nice man about my age who already had a life and knew how to manage his money, who had worked for many years in his career as a salesman and did own property. He offered a kind of stability for me, the over-tired caregiver. He’s the one who asked the question about marriage. I’m the one who flung away the idea as if it wasn’t important. I’d already had a marriage, a successful one with a most interesting person. I’d already had a separation with all its decision-making and drama. I’d already had a divorce, which was amicable and uncontested (the advantage of owning very little). I had warned this nice man I had no money; I also told him I had no debt. Since he rarely comments on much, I never knew what he thought of these revelations but felt pretty sure both were important to him. We haven’t married. He’s never again brought up the subject. Perhaps living with me all these years warned him away from the idea, or perhaps he was only making rare conversation the day he did mention the topic.

Marriage? I doubt I’ll ever enter into it again formally even though this story already defines the relationship with Jim as a marriage. But in general, I’ve decided marriage seems too much like love. The word never means the same thing to the two people professing it. And the images they pursue are rarely-discussed assumptions that eventually sour the prospects of the happiness they envision. People in a marriage don’t experience the same thing either, yet they persist in thinking they are supposed to or that they want to. It’s all become too complicated for this old man.

© 25 November 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 “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Holiday by Phillip Hoyle

Holiday: an old word arising from the elision of holy and day back in the years of Middle English. Often the word connotes in modern usage a break from the usual, its old religious origin often forgotten. Philosopher Josef Pieper’s essays on Festivity bases holidays as a break in schedule, a change from the norm. The European origin, and probably others, is located in setting aside time and activity in honor of the Gods and in some Christian groups to the Saints who afford access to God.

I can ask: What holy things are found in the American Christmas Holiday? Of course there is always the theme of deified incarnation, the reading of holy stories from a holy book, the cult of midnight mass, Christmas communion, and a vast array of holy songs sung. But I often attend a family Christmas Eve function of my partner’s clan in which not one word of religion or prayer is spoken. There is a tree in each of the houses through which the celebration circulates. There may be Christmas music on the stereo system, but movies watched are not religious in nature. No word of piety is breathed. If there is a religious symbol present, it is the family itself or a bauble on the tree.

My guess is that my partner’s father, the one who died over ten years ago, did lead a prayer before the meal. He was pious in some sense related to his Holiness Methodist upbringing and may have led a prayer with and for his family at such gatherings. When his voice ceased, no son or daughter took up the task.

Well, back to the philosopher Pieper. The clan does leave work and gather on such days as Christmas and Easer. Some of these folk do go to church—two Catholic families, one Lutheran, and one wife in another who is Pentecostal. Most grandkids and great grandkids seem to have no current religious connection. The concept of civil religion seems to have triumphed in my partner’s Scots-Irish derived clan. The day off is sacred in itself; family responsibility rules the gathering; and thankfully, individuals in the group generally like one another.

But this analysis begs the question of our storytelling group. I’m supposed to be telling my story. I do retain a meaningful relationship with holy notions and practices. I attend the annual confab as the gay partner of a son of the family.
They are kind of my family now—well, one of them—these past years.

But what about me, about my Christmas? I pulled away from the church, professionally; a dozen years ago I left the planning, programming, and pastoring aspects of church life. I attended a number of churches after that but didn’t find a home. I began to work on some Sundays. I ended up with gay partners who didn’t attend services or otherwise identify with a congregation.

So Christmas comes. Do I want any part of it? (I analyze so much I can’t stand it), but I do like the gatherings, the giving, and the great gobs of goodwill, to say nothing about the generous portions of food. I like the decorations. I like the specials on TV and radio. I like the music although I tire of its incessant use for sales promotion.

I like the music but don’t believe literally the mythology of births, Santas, elves, Saints, shepherds, kings, and angels. I loathe the content of the well-meant sentiment of putting Christ back into Christmas as if he were a commodity to be manipulated. I laugh at statuettes of ol’ Santa (that means holy) Clause kneeling before a manger that cradles a holy baby. I accept that such symbols may be meaningful, sacredly meaningful, to others, and I don’t sneer publicly. I simply groan inwardly and think how relieved I am that I don’t anymore work daily in the task of religious education!

I want to keep Christmas, so my Cratchet asks Morley for the day away from the office. I want to keep the day holy. It’s in the Big Ten to remember certain days to keep them holy. So I do keep a holiday in which to recall a divine idea that lets laborers and working animals rest as the old myth asserts of the creator who rested on the seventh day.

I try to relax, sing a song, laugh, tell a story, give gifts, receive gifts with gratitude, take stock of the human condition as I understand it, have sex, read a book, tell a joke, hug and kiss my partner’s relatives, and say “Merry Christmas” in a polite and warm manner. 

So on this day of days I say “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Denver, 2010 (revised 2013)

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. He worked in churches for thirty years, and for fifteen years kept a massage practice that funded his art activities. He has retired and now focuses on creating beauty in art and writing. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Coping with Loved Ones by Phillip Hoyle

Coping with loved ones is not really my topic although I do face some such challenges, challenges I’ve settled by maintaining distance. Still my experience is not so much coping as simply living away from the people whom I seem so much to bother. I don’t expect them to change in their attitudes. I keep my distance. I have done so for fifteen years.

When I told my sisters that my wife and I were separating, that she was going back to Albuquerque to work and I was staying in Tulsa, that we didn’t know how to solve the difficulty two sexual affairs I’d had with men had created, and that I bore the responsibility for our problems, one of my four sisters was stricken. Sometime later, after I had moved to Denver to live my life as a gay man, I received a letter from her and her family that she, her minister husband, and their two young adult daughters had signed, a letter that separated them from me with its condemnation expressed in biblical language. I read it—a letter her husband had written—and felt sadness. I felt especially sad that they had involved their daughters in the act of rejection. I felt deeply sad for my sister. I did not respond to their communication. I have not seen my sister or her family since then.

Each March I send my sister a birthday card. Each December I send her family a Christmas card. That’s it. That’s enough for me. I feel sad for them all. I did send her husband a get-well card when he was being treated for cancer. I sent him my congratulations when he retired. I don’t know to do more than that. I hope my sister has a sense of peace in all this. That’s my best wish for her.

My other three sisters have been open, loving, and including, whatever their thoughts about homosexuality, sin, and salvation. I appreciate their attitudes. I treasure them all, even the rejecting sister who once had been one of my closest friends. I suspect this story would be more interesting if it had been written by my rejecting sister. She’s surely the one who has to cope. She’s the one who holds out for me to change. She’s the one who believes I’ve committed some unpardonable sin. She’s the one who has to deal with the embarrassment of having a sinfully gay brother who probably does all kinds of horrible things decent people must protect their children from, must rid their society of, and must enact laws to limit. She’s the one who fears that civil freedoms for the pursuit of happiness or simply the right to work, marry, and live in peace give too much to homosexuals. She’s the one who has to cope with too much. So she does cope; she prays every day of the week for my repentance. I keep my distance so she doesn’t have to cope with me close up. Face to face might be too much provocation.

My coping strategies: distance and separation. Perhaps they are too much a habit I’ve cultivated. I see they may present a problem on the horizon. As we age and our health deteriorates, a thing well underway with this group of siblings, I am sure I will need to be face to face with members of the rejecting family. Then I’ll have something more to write about! Then I’ll know more about coping like people in small towns have to cope with their families! In the meantime I’ll send my cards and best wishes for these folk who find me to be so evilly unrepentant.

© 14 October 2012

About the Author


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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A Letter to My Younger Self by Phillip Hoyle

Note: I write this letter to a 19-year-old me not because I am upset over any decisions I made or over the life I lived subsequent to making them. My life has been fine; still there were a few crises I could have navigated differently. I write this letter from a point of view I could never have imagined, to a person who did not enough maturity of thought, feeling, or experience to have made other choices. In writing this letter, I am only thinking about a what-if that did not occur. I know that at 19 I may not have been able to imagine any of the things I now can at age 66! But, here goes anyway.

Spring, 1967

Dear Phillip,

I heard through your sisters about your recent breakup with your girlfriend. They seem upset about the severing of a growing tie, but I’m not quite sure what all informs their feelings. I do know they really like Myrna for her lively spirit and generosity. Yes, I like her too and am sorry for your loss and whatever feelings you are having right now. I wish I knew for sure what they are! I imagine they are quite mixed.

Breakups are difficult for all the feelings, but they are also opportunities of evaluation of one’s needs and interests. I remember your complaint about other ministerial students in your dorm who list all their requirements for their prospective wives: their looks, personality, musicianship, ability to teach, organize, cook well, get along, and so forth. I applaud your perspective that these lists are both hopeless and actually quite demeaning. I believe growing up with your sisters trained you well to look at women for who they are, not for what they will provide you. I was happy for you when you attached yourself to a young woman who was so independent and lively. I applaud.

One of your sisters told me that Myrna initiated the breakup out of her frustration that the two of you have difficulty talking with one another. I’m sure this reasoning frustrates you for in general you have no difficulty talking. Surely you are meeting with a frustration men commonly have in learning to relate to the women in their lives. We guys like to talk about our ideas, our work, and our activities; we tend to find it difficult to talk about our feelings in the ways many women desire to talk. That’s a plain old problem for most relationships between men and women.

I want to recommend something to you. Write down your own thoughts. Try to make sense of them from all your friendships and flirtations since junior high. List all the people you think might make a good partner for you or you might imagine yourself living with in adulthood—married or not. Erase any assumptions you may have that are similar to your dorm mates’. (You may be surprised to find that you are not all that different from them.) Write down your initial thoughts, those you had when Myrna left you alone in the chapel sitting there on the piano bench. Read and edit your thoughts. Evaluate them. This breakup can help you have freedom in your choices henceforth; it can help you understand yourself and your needs.

I love you, Phillip. I love your music, your artwork, your kindness towards others, your religious motivations, and your imagination. I love how you have learned to work, study, and reason. Please don’t shortchange yourself emotionally, academically, or vocationally. There are many, many ways to be a minister. There are many, many honorable kinds of work. There are many, many opportunities awaiting a person just like you. They are there for you. I hope for you more experience of the world before you make such an important decision about any kind of life partnership.

You will be tempted to run away from or to run back into whatever security Myrna represents for you. Please think deeply and honestly about these matters. Give yourself more time to mature. (I know that sounds awful.) Think about exactly what you want to do with your talents. Your life is right now wide open and your abilities can serve as doorways to many opportunities. Don’t shut too many doors too quickly. Good luck. God bless.

Love,

(signed) Your Self Yet to Be

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Closet Case by Phillip Hoyle

Business was slow, so rather than just sit around wondering where my clients had gone, I got to work at home doing fall cleaning, that work where obsession facilitates doing a complete inventory of one’s possessions and an effective chasing of dirt from one place to another. It served to produce a lightening of the load and a freshening of my domestic environment. I ran the vacuum sweeper, dusted walls and woodwork, sorted randomly created stacks of papers, recycled all those things I had not got to or that no longer pertained, and carried out a ton of trash. I shook area rugs filling the autumn air with countless dust particles, knocked down cobwebs (after all, we didn’t need them for effect since Halloween was over), and even dusted the leaves of the fake fichus tree that so effectively fills one corner of the room. I washed the king-size linens, even the quilted spread, and added an insulated blanket to prepare the bed for the turning weather. With all that work completed, I had used up most of a day and so carried the electric sweeper to the basement.

The next morning I attacked that space making ready for the arrival of company for Thanksgiving. I loaded the CD player with some high energy music I rarely listen to and went to work all in a frenzy. Again there was laundry, sorting, carrying away recyclable materials, getting rid of cobwebs, washing windows, and the extra job of finding more out-of-the-way spaces for stowing my too-many framed pieces of art. The day passed quickly, too quickly, since as shadows lengthened I realized there was still too much work to do. I sat in a chair and stared at the closet door wondering what I’d find in there were I to open it.

Finally, as the room darkened with evening and my mood darkened, I wondered if I’d ever open that door. I felt sure I wouldn’t like everything I’d find there. “Oh, just do it,” I said to myself, rose from the chair, and threw open the accordion door to face the closet with its mementos, out-of-date equipment, and discarded values. I wasn’t surprised to find such things; after all aren’t closets meant to stow things out of sight? But I faced along with them a truckload of feelings, some of them that I had almost forgotten.

Immediately I saw the old LPs; the SONY reel-to-reel and a box of tapes; a stack of boxes of jigsaw puzzles solved last winter; fold up tables and chairs; table games for when company arrives; an old violin that had been in the family for generations and hasn’t been played for eons. I dusted these off, as I’d done annually for almost a decade. Then I turned my attention to unmarked boxes of uncertain content.
In one cardboard box I discovered my Diplomas; for years I’d gone to school, studied, was graduated from high school, college, and seminary. Years and careers ago.

In another box I discovered photos of my marriage, our growing family, and friends left behind in the several places I’d lived. One photograph shows me standing with my new wife by our black and white 56 Chevy one August afternoon at Lands End, a spot on Grand Mesa overlooking the desert that stretches off to the west. I wonder now what marriage even felt like.

Ooh, there are spider webs as well as dust. Do I really want to go any further?

On one shelf sat books, ones I had completely forgotten about since I hadn’t used any of their information for years. First were three large-print children’s dictionaries of the English Language, each one a specialized lexicon of appropriate usage: the first, language appropriate for school and church; the second, language appropriate for home; the third, language appropriate to use with my best buddies. I smiled, realizing that the habit of closeting one’s usage was a strategy of manners and survival practiced even by young children, especially ones of unusual proclivity.

Other books were there, volumes on sexuality, ethics, theology, and philosophy. They, too, hadn’t been opened in years, for when I had emerged from my closet I was no longer interested in their content. Well, not exactly, but my interest took a different turn, served a different purpose. I had considered their arguments, their insights, their potential. I had appropriated what I could and when I finally pushed myself out the door, left the books behind. Still their ideas inform my sense of self as I go about my weekly schedule and bolster my resolve to be ‘out’ when I meet new people and situations. But I quit buying updates of arguments on the same topics, content with my newer identity. Why I’ve kept these few I’m not sure. They represent the intensity of my inquiry into society and my life. I decided I was able to let them go and put them in the pile of things to give to Goodwill. Maybe they’ll help someone else.

Then there are the novels. I realize they, too, helped open me to my then future life as a gay man. I’d read them for decades trying to find myself among their characters. I’d especially searched for myself in gay novels and despaired that I must be so queer as not to appear. But I have kept a couple of them: Ambidextrous by Felice Picano and I Don’t Think Were In Kansas Anymore by Ethan Mordden, the two gay novels in which I did appear. I’ll keep hold of them for their encouragement and sentimental value. I realize that my experience of the closet, while costly, also helped make me what I am. I honor even the hidden part of my past. I also decided to keep the Masters and Johnson volume for its information on STDs—a wise reminder—and one book of feminist arguments about prenatal existence, a good thing to remember when one facilitates a group of LGBT storytellers.

And there was another book: The Craft of Acting. I’d studied this one over and over for while I felt at home with my profession in the church and comfortable with my duplicity/triplicity in matters sexual, I still knew I had to act. One tells a story but has to do so in a way that an audience can hear and perceive what is intended.

With this thought I look suspiciously at two old suit cases of costumes: Indian costumes for dancing at powwows, an African robe and mask for a children’s program I once organized, and a clerical robe with stoles. Even though I rarely dressed up for Halloween, I did have my costumes, my own drag costumes exotic and clerical. By wearing these costumes I defined my difference in socially acceptable ways. I guess I should just give them to my grandkids. Who knows what they may be experiencing, what costumes they may need!

So on that evening of the second day of fall housecleaning, I decided to discard and to keep varying items from my old closeted days. I discarded those things I had learned all too well and kept symbols of the victories of walking from that cramped space in a search for freedom. That seems to be the case with all closets. They bare cleaning and reorganizing from time to time, but may I never forget my past closeted life so I will never think to hide there again.

Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com