Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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The House by Phillip Hoyle

          We moved up to Clay Center, Kansas, on my fifteenth birthday, two counties away from my hometown Junction City. I was born in that Army town with population of around 20,000, adjoining Fort Riley, an Army post with a similar population, that sat next to another small city, Manhattan, with 20,000 population, home of a state university with about the same number of students. Although we weren’t leaving a metropolitan center, compared with the county seat town where we were headed, with its 5,000 population and one stop light, I felt like I was giving up civilization and moving to the center of nowhere.

          At least we were moving into an interesting house. We’d looked at several, each with strong points that appealed to me. Finally Dad and Mom purchased a roomy place with four bedrooms and a bath upstairs; parlor, family, dining, and utility rooms, entry hall with an exposed staircase that my sisters fantasized walking down in formals or wedding gowns, plus a kitchen on the main level; rough partial basement below and unfinished attic above; and an unattached garage, all sitting on three lots on the corner of Crawford and US 24, just one block east of Highway 15. It was a beautiful old place, built sixty years before for a local banker and his family. As the only boy, I got my own room but also a power mower so I could tend the huge yard. Around the same time as our move I dropped my long-standing subscription to The American Indian Hobbyist and began reading House Beautiful.

          Decorating became my theme. Mom was into the house project ordering drapes for the front rooms, buying an extra couch and slipper chairs for the parlor, shopping for a proper dining room set, bringing home fabrics, pillows, and endless ideas for making this house our home. I, too, started thinking about furniture, fabric, and fancy dishes. So immediately after the move, my next older sister Holly and I began haunting Mrs. Stedman’s antique store. We read House Beautiful and discussed our likes and dislikes. Then we shopped to see what we could find to realize our ideas. For months we saved our change and bought a Victorian marble-top coffee table as a gift for Mom. At the end of that first year my sister went off to college in another town. I still pored over the magazine to find ideas for my room.

          One day I noticed an ad for an art print company in New York City and sent off a letter requesting their catalogue. In a couple of weeks I received the illustrated listing and found myself entranced by a print of a painting depicting the torso of a young man wearing no shirt and the top button of his Levi’s open. I wanted that print but couldn’t imagine how anyone would hang such a picture in their house or room. But there it was in a nationally-advertised magazine in full color like an invitation into another world.

          I ordered several prints although not the one I most wanted. In figuring out what to do with them, I realized I needed frames and returned to the antique store we now called the junk shop. For years I had hung prints on my bedroom walls with straight pins. Now I needed to frame them, a need that has persisted throughout my adult life. I enjoyed my years in that beautiful old house with its fancy woodwork, neat window treatments, and the pictures I’d framed.

          A couple of years later I was moving into a college dorm and then three years after that was living in an apartment with my wife. Over the decades of our marriage we lived in several houses and apartments. Together we decorated creating a blend of our tastes. Often she’d move the furniture; I’d hang the pictures selected from an ever growing collection of framed paintings and prints that represented a diversity of style and content. Still there was no torso on display except in the bathroom mirror.

          Years later, after our separation, I started spending nights with my lover Rafael. He’d invited me to his house after a flirtation of several months. There we made love to one another. I was content to spend night after night in this boyish man’s apartment; he was intent on making a marriage of sorts out of our connection. Finally he said I should bring my clothes. “This will be our home, your apartment your office,” he said. Although I was quite taken with him and our relationship, I clearly saw that his apartment lacked style and ornament. It consisted of a large open room with a kitchen along one wall, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Rafael owned two couches, a floor lamp, a small table with two chairs for meals, a big TV that sometimes worked sitting on a large sewing table, a double bed mattress and springs, a single mattress leaning against the wall, a small chest of drawers, his clothes and several boxes of whatnots. From my point of view the apartment’s best feature was a small air conditioning unit in the bedroom wall.

          Together we sought to make this California-style apartment house unit our home. As we moved the furniture, I recalled my House Beautiful interest, the transformation of that old house in my teen years, my cooperative decorating experiences with my wife, and my continuing fascination with furniture and much more. Rafael and I found a bed frame and a lamp in the alley. From my office, I brought over my great grandmother’s wardrobe for the bedroom, a chair for the living area, and a portable sewing machine for Rafael to use. Then one day when Rafael was at work I brought framed paintings and prints to decorate the walls of this cold apartment. The transformation was immediate. The place finally looked lived in and warm. As I hung a collage of a pair of cowboy saints and other gay-themed art, I recalled the print that had so attracted my high school self but realized that this house didn’t need such a picture, for here I lived with a sexually inviting man who thrilled me in ways much more complex and satisfying than that intriguing image of years ago.

          The apartment finally complemented the warmth of our love. There we fixed Mexican, French, Italian, Spanish, Asian, and American dishes for one another. We entertained each other with stories of our lives. We cleaned, shopped, kissed, and kidded. We lived in that house beautiful a couple’s life of delight.

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.”

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The Gift by Phillip Hoyle

     There are at least two ways to open a gift—at least there are two ways I know. The first one is my preference.

     If the gift is handed to me by the giver, I politely and genuinely thank him or her expressing my pleasure at being remembered. Of course, if the gift giving  should take place on Christmas in a room full of hyperactive children serving as Santa’s understudy elf assistants, I read the tag and shout out my thank you across the room to the giver. And of course, I shout in the most pleasantly nice way possible.

     Then I inspect the wrapping appreciative of the design, the color combination, and the care taken in preparing the package in such a way as to increase my anticipation at what such a beautifully prepared box may reveal.

     Sometimes I try to guess what may be hidden inside considering the size of the package, its weight, trying to remember if any clues were given previously or if something I suggested I’d enjoy matches what is now in my hand. If no one is watching, I may gently shake it to listen for a clue, or sniff at it (I can always detect the presence of chocolate). Finally, I begin to open the present. I feel the texture of the wrapping, untie the ribbons, remove and set aside the bows; I carefully remove the tape and try to slip off the paper without tearing or even wrinkling it. I fold it and set it aside with the ribbons or other ornaments. I comment on how beautifully wrapped I find the gift. Then with all senses alert, I open the box to find the surprise so generously proffered. I feel the gift’s texture, study its shape, smell its fragrance, hold it up to the light, and smile my pleasure. “It’s beautiful,” I exclaim if that response seems appropriate. And I lay the gift to my side, still touching or tasting it, murmuring my thanks. Oh, I am usually such a cultured gift opener.
     
     But on occasion, I have a more impassioned and impatient approach. Then I tear at the paper, rip it open, cast it aside so eager to see what it is hiding. I break the ribbons, claw at the tape, wad up the wrap, throw it away. I pick up my new gift with enthusiasm. I sometimes scream out my pleasure. On occasion, I may get up to dance my excitement. Should that ever happen to you, my gift, just put your clothes back on and join me in my rumba.

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.”

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Grandfather by Phillip Hoyle

    Grandpa Hoyle saved me when I was fifty years old even though he’d been dead for thirty-five years. I was really surprised that this elder ancestor with snowy-white hair and prominent hooked nose, who smoked a pipe while watching the television, would have such an effect in my life for I had always thought of him as being rather proper, emotionally distant, and not so interested in young folk. I’ll tell you how he saved me, but first these things I recall.

     Grandpa and Grandma Hoyle—Elmer and Mable—lived in Junction City, Kansas, just a block from us, so I often visited in their home. When at their house as a very young kid, I mostly liked the mangle, a big machine for pressing laundry in large quantities. I was fascinated when Grandma or Mom used it to press the laundry for the grocery stores owned by the family. The other thing I found engaging in their house was a totem pole I discovered on a shelf in the basement. They must have bought it while on a trip to the American North West, a tourist curio, carved and painted. Some of the bark still adhered to the carving that sat on an orange-painted base. The pole itself was transected by wooden wings near the top. I loved that totem pole. Oh, and I loved the glider on the screened-in porch even though it was metal and uncomfortable; I could really swing on it!

     When I got older, the television became more important. We didn’t watch it much, but I distinctly recall on summer Sunday afternoons watching the Kansas City A’s, my dad’s and grandpa’s favorite team. I was not contented simply to watch the game, so I sat on the floor near the TV, just in front of the shelves of the World Book Encyclopedia. As I watched the game, I perused my favorite volumes of the encyclopedia, especially the one that included the entries and pictures of Indians. I guess I never was much of a sports fan although I liked the idea that lacrosse was a game invented by Indian tribes.

     Grandpa told me about the two umbrella catalpa trees in his front yard, how it requires two trees to make one. The roots of one are grafted onto the trunk of the other. The grafted roots become newly-formed branches making the umbrella shape. I was fascinated by the unusual trees that to me looked like giant mushrooms and seemed somehow magical with their monstrously large leaves and long beans.

     Most stories of my grandfather I heard from my dad. For instance, during the Great Depression Grandpa always laid out a loaf of bread, ends of lunch meat, and sandwich spread in the back room of the store for anyone who was hungry. He fed lots of unemployed folk during those terrible times. Dad told me about Grandpa’s blue spruce trees that grew on either side of the front steps to the screened porch, how Grandpa had brought them home to Kansas from the Rocky Mountains in coffee cans and babied them for years. I loved their blue-cast sharp needles. Dad told me the saying Grandpa used if a guy had to take a leak on the side of the road: ‘If they’ve never seen one they won’t know what it is; if they have, it won’t make any difference.’ Dad told me with wonder of Grandpa’s practice that if he gave $100 to one of his sons to help him buy something, he’d give $100 to each of his others sons. Perhaps this was a balancing act of an old Quaker man in relationship with his three sons, a balancing act my dad didn’t think was necessary. 

     My sisters and I learned not to ask Grandpa how he was doing. If we forgot, he’d bore us with descriptions of pains, aches, and illness, yet Dad claimed he’d never been sick one day of his life until his eightieth and final year. We learned to say something like, “You’re sure looking good, Grandpa.” When adults asked Elmer how he was, he’d declare: “I think one more clean shirt will do me.” 

     My Hoyle grandparents went to the same church we attended, First Christian Church, on Eighth at Madison. I didn’t see them there often since I went to the early service to attend the children’s programs and they attended the second service in which the adult choir sang. They didn’t often attend Sunday nights (I was always there), and for many years they had been reluctant to become members of the congregation. 

     In general, Grandpa was a good man who somehow didn’t connect with me on an emotional level. He always seemed rather formal, likely a result of his Quaker upbringing. He didn’t kid or delight me like Grandpa Schmedemann, but he did come to my rescue when many years after his death I was facing some life-changing decisions. I was approximately fifty years old and saw my life falling apart. 

     I had heard a story about Grandpa when taking a college class taught by W.F. Lown, who years before had been the minister of our congregation. After church one Sunday morning during which Lown in his sermon had told a story that hung on the use of old Quaker language with thee’s and thou’s, Grandpa said, “I really liked your story, Brother Lown. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could use Bible language all the time?” Lown thought a moment and replied, “I guess we’d all be speaking Greek and Hebrew.” Grandpa apparently thought about Mr. Lown’s perspective and within a few weeks joined the church and immediately began tithing. Lown said he’d never before or since met a fifty-five year old man who made a change anywhere nearly as significant as that. I treasured the story about this ancestor I had never got to know very well. 

     The story served me as an anchor for handling my own changes. Grandpa Hoyle’s decisions set the stage. At age fifty-five, he made a major religious realignment and with it a redirection of his resources. I was mulling over my own situation when I realized Grandpa’s three sons had all made important mid- and mature-life changes. At age fifty-five Earl, my dad, left the grocery business that he really had loved to take on the responsibility of pastoring a church, a work he carried out creatively and faithfully until his retirement at age sixty-five. Ellis, my uncle two years older than Dad, sold the grocery business and set up an insurance agency he ran until he retired several years later. Eldon, Dad’s younger brother by ten years, left the grocery business in his early forties to pursue a real estate career. These solid, model-citizen men made major changes in their adulthood. I likewise could do the same even though my changes were a contrast. The religious dimension of my decisions was to leave a thirty-two-year career in ministry; the personal dimension was to leave a twenty-nine-year marriage. I did the former with elation and relief, the latter with reluctance and great care. I also knew I would be able to make both changes following the leadership of these man-ancestors.

     Grandpa’s practical approach helped. His thoughtful changes were a challenge for me to be likewise responsible towards the people I was leaving behind. So in my mature years I found my most reserved grandpa advising me and loving me in ways I’d never before experienced. If I ever seem reserved, even cool, it’s probably just that old Quaker in me showing through. 

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.”
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Three Loves: Three Losses by Phillip Hoyle

I tell of Ted, Michael, and Rafael.
I tell of Kaposi’s sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and Hepatitis
C.
I tell of the loving effects of all on me.
Ted’s illness eventually became the focus of my
relationship to him, a kind of maturing friendship that clarified my need to
take care of another person who was dying. I wanted to attend to him at the end
of his life and realized I’d willingly take a leave of absence from work to do
so. This seemed a great change for me. It also clarified my anger at the church
and society for their often callus response to gay folk in general and
specifically to those living with and dying from HIV-related diseases. It seemed
that in our society to debate long-held fears was more important than to
support people—the real places of life and death.
I found meaning as well as satisfaction in letting Ted
teach me more about the issues and about myself before his death. The last time
we were together—a several-day stay at his home in San Francisco—we visited San
Francisco General Hospital, and I walked around Pacific Heights while he met
with his psychiatrist. We heard Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” together, and he
taught me how to smoke marijuana.  He
told me that when his KS lesions so distressed him, he complained to his HIV
physician. “I just can’t stand to look at them.”
“Then don’t,” she responded. “Wear long pants.”
Ted wore long pants but was not doing well on that last
visit. I wanted to return to be with him. Although I volunteered, I wasn’t
called in at the end, which frustrated me. Still, I was able to attend his
memorial service, an experience of balloons, tributes, music, and love.
After I moved to Denver I gave massages at Colorado AIDS
Project as a kind of memorial to my long-time friend Ted. There I met Michael,
a man who came to me for massage. I noticed that he was noticing me. He wanted
more massage. When later he came to my home studio to receive one, I was
pleased and served tea at the end of the session. Then he wanted more than
massage. We began seeing each other socially. Of course, I knew he was HIV
positive. What I didn’t know was that he was losing weight rapidly and that his
numbers were going in the wrong directions. When I realized these distressing
trends, I suggested that at his next medical appointment he show the swollen
lymph nodes in his neck and groin and insist that someone touch them. He did so
and the tests that ensued pinpointed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I started spending
most nights at his place when he started chemotherapy and discovered just how
much I had come to love him in our short time together. As he sickened I did
more and more of his yard and housework. I wanted him to be comfortable and I wanted
to enjoy his company.
Michael taught me some rather genteel approaches to
breakfast, to eating out, and to living with another man. I was an avid
learner. He also was the occasion for me to see the down side of some gay relationships
particularly as relates to family complications. When his brother and elderly
mother were coming to see him after his chemotherapy had to be discontinued, he
asked me to move back to my apartment during their stay. I was confused but also
realized we are what we are: he was who he was, I was who I was, both imperfect
when coping with the extremities of life. I made sure I dropped by to meet his
family, to be for them one of Michael’s friends. I never knew what they understood
of our relationship.
I did for Michael in his last weeks what I couldn’t do
for Ted: made him comfortable, showered him with my love, sat by him while he
took his final breaths. My sadness mixed with love at his death. I was so
pleased that I had cleaned up after him, prepared his food, and loved him in
the most practical ways possible—the work of family and of gay lovers in the
face of AIDS. In it all, I came to appreciate the effective work of Denver
Health’s clinics and staff. I appreciated the attentions of other friends of
this lover of mine. His memorial service brought together a wide variety of
folk who celebrated his life, friendships, and love.
Some months later I met Rafael at a bus stop. We talked;
we liked each other. Eventually we got together after a frustrating courtship
characterized by my wondering where this cute man was. We came together with an
emotional intensity that surely would have entertained both Ted and Michael and
that surprised me. It also thrilled me to my innermost gay self that I was
still discovering.
Rafael told me he was HIV positive some weeks into this
intense relationship. I said that was fine and told him about Ted and Michael.
We set up housekeeping, but in a few weeks he was growing ill. He too was a
client at the Infectious Diseases Clinic at Denver Health. I warned him I might
cry when we went there because of my memories of going to the same kind of
appointments with Michael.
I felt somewhat like a veteran and told him I wanted to
meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. That didn’t happen. I met
his brother in his room at Denver Health. Later I met his parents and sister at
the same place. I stood by him and helped his family as his illness worsened. We
waited during a surgery on his aorta, made visits to the Intensive Care Unit, the
Intensive Care Step-down Unit, and other floors where he was treated. Finally,
a diagnosis of full-term hepatitis C emerged. Two weeks later, after a one-day
home hospice attempt, the Hospice of St. John took him in. There he died.
I liked that at the end he was surrounded by family. I
was pleased to be included. He had told his parents they’d not be welcome in
our home if they in any way excluded me. This frail man of indomitable spirit
took care of me with his family as I took care of his daily needs. Our love’s
intensity sustained and wrecked us both at the end. I let go gently, deeply
saddened, and with startlingly grateful respect for this man’s life and death.
But I was also afraid of the effect the loss of such an intense relationship
would bring. The resulting low I experienced was as intense as the heights of
the love we shared. I survived. I felt as if Saints Ted and Michael attended me
in my adoration of the beautiful and strong Rafael.
This awful disease with all its science, social ramifications,
and family trauma and drama continues to affect my life daily. Friends and
clients still live and die with its effects. Memories seared deeply into my
brain and body accompany my every move. I continue to hate the disease while I
love those with it, both past and present. 

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.”

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Queer, Just How Queer by Phillip Hoyle

      I love to use the word queer, the term brought into gay prominence in political and academic queering movements of the 1960s through the 90s. I also like it for the memories it raises of my grandma Pink, who in old fashion used the word for anything odd. I like it for its political symbolism and for making positive a word too long used as a pejorative. I like it for its strength. I like it for its inclusive quality covering the bases of LGBTandQ concerns. I like it for its exclusive quality, as in not too many people I run into want to be called by this moniker. I especially like the discomfort its use raises among some of my gay friends! It’s a word of wide potential and great humor. So just how queer am I? It’s a fair question. I’ll try to answer it once and for all.

     This morning I looked through the photographs on my digital camera that included those I took last summer at Pridefest Denver 2012. I was surprised to find there quite a few more images, ones I thought had been erased when I uploaded them into my computer. I flipped through frame after frame and saw so much of my life there, even photos from Pridefest Denver 2011. First I saw a photo of my partner’s 90-year-old mother, sitting at the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee. I often kid her about all her gay sons although only one of her offspring turned out to be gay. Her multiplicity of gay sons is made up of all of Jim’s and my gay friends. I call them her growing family of gay kids. She smiles for me and takes delight in these others who bring her presents of chocolate, humor, and unaffected affection. She represents in this picture a nine-year connection I have with her son and the growing numbers of her other gay sons. The photo reveals layer after layer of queer experience and relationship, but it’s just the beginning. I did mention two sets of photos taken at Pridefest, but I haven’t yet told of the hundreds of photos of the family of plastic pink flamingos that live in our yard shown standing alone and together among a variety of ferns. I took these and many more in the past couple of years, the queer obsession of a queer artist! I also haven’t mentioned many photos of flowers, of my artwork, of self-portraits, of extreme Christmas decorations at a local gay bar, of the bunch of men I run with at parties, in restaurants, and on the street. I haven’t told you of pictures of an art display, of drag queens, of small, large, and supersized lesbians, of gay architects and engineers, of employees of Chipotle restaurants, of young people polling for the Obama campaign, of great arches of rainbow colored balloons, of a guy wearing fairy wings, of a barely-clad muscle man standing by a muscle car, of the model in a platinum blond wig and red bikini sitting in a red convertible advertising At the Beach, of a parade on-looker smoking a huge stogie, of people dancing, of a young drag queen posing sexily for me, of a young man in shorts sitting on the curb with his little dog watching the parade, of political signs urging the election of sane officials, of leather studs, of a drum and bagpipe band in their smart kilts, of religiously motivated anti-gay protesters, of two young guys in interestingly revealing slacks, of Senior Citizens doing a dance routine with their walkers, of youngsters calling attention to Rainbow Alley, of the prominent landmark The Center makes along the route, of the partiers on its roof sometimes watching the parade passing by below, of the poignant reminder of the ongoing presence of AIDS among us, of wild hairdos, of the Imperial Court, or of the leathery Uncle Sam who stopped to ask me, “Where’s the free beer?” I haven’t said a word of many other pictures of musicians, dancers, activists, on and on. These photos are my people whom I celebrate with my little digital camera as passionately as Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century celebrated the democracy of America, the endless variety of life, the human body, his own body, and his sturdy comrades with whom he liked to lie in Leaves of Grass. 

     So just how queer am I? Really, really queer. I’ve been trying to tell you just how queer in my stories! In summary of all I’ve said to you in the past, hear this: 

* I’m as queer as the little boy who wanted to wear both cowboy and Indian costumes in public.
* I’m as queer as the boy who donned his great aunt’s wig and sister’s skirt and went to the family grocery store to show himself to his dad.
* I’m as queer as the teen who used to lie in bed next to his dad, not only to read alongside him but also to smell him.
* I’m as queer as the teen who bragged to another boy about marking his friend with hickies.
* I’m as queer as any teen boy singing in the school choir and more than most of them.
* I’m as queer as the high schooler who looked forward to each issue of House Beautiful.
* I’m as queer as the boy who ordered prints from a NYC art print company and treasured the company’s catalogue with its variety of homoerotic images.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered the striking 
International Male ads and catalogue.
* I’m as queer as the young man whose first male friend in adulthood was homosexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who read all the homosexual-theme books in the public library.
* I’m as queer as the young man with wife and children who at age thirty fell in love with another man.
* I’m as queer as the young man who reveled in the idea he was bisexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered that his homosexual proclivities lay at the center of his sexuality.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who had sexual affairs with other men.
* I’m as queer as the writer who when he was asked to include cultural diversity in an adult religious education resource anthology quoted gay writers and HIV-related themes alongside many other cultural writings.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who left his wife to live as a gay man in a large city.
* I’m as queer as the old man who snapped photos at Pridfest knowing he was as queer as anyone there and loved the notion and the reality of it.

     I am the old man who says all these things proudly and with love, deep love for all my companions:
* Male and female
* Educated and uneducated
* Professional and worker
* Wealthy and dirt-poor
* Crazy and sane
* Chic and tasteless
* Laughing and crying
* Hale and exhausted
* Living it up and overwhelmed
     
     So, how queer am I? Pretty darn queer and happy as a lark about it.
     And now, if you’ll pose, I’ll take even more pictures with my camera, snapshots of the folk who add so richly to the queerness of my existence and the joy of my gay life. 

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.”
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Buddies by Phillip Hoyle

     Last week I visited my family, the one related to my long-standing marriage with my ex-wife, the one that produced two interesting children, the one that has graced me with ten grandchildren. That family has extensions: my family of origin with four sisters and their husbands and, for three of them, children; my ex-wife’s family of origin with three siblings and their families; an informally adopted child and his wife and children. My week seemed both long and short, long in that I was away from my Denver family of Jim and his mother, a group of close friends, and other important relationships with storytellers, writers, artists, and neighbors. But my stay was also short in that the whirlwind of Mid-Missouri card playing, discussions of writing and art, politics and theology, observations of life at my son’s new farm, graduations, parties, trips to coffee shops, supporting my daughter when she heard her partner had been arrested at the Mexico-USA border, grandkids going to new jobs, two little girls who still drive me crazy, and themes related to my nine years of residence there when I served on the staff of a local church made the time fly by like a Kansas storm. At the end of the week I was tired. Upon returning to Denver I was united with my urban family of gay friends that sometimes reminds me of one of my favorite books, Ethan Mordden’s Buddies.

     Philosophy and science work hard at defining concepts and terms. The words of sexuality get such treatment and with them an assignment into moral categories, behavioral norms, psychological perspectives, and the like. The author of Buddies (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1982) seems also to have been on a search for definitions, particularly of gay and straight. In telling his stories, Mordden played with the feelings and sensibilities of readers. Bud, the writer-protagonist of the book plays similarly with the feelings and sensibilities of quite a few of the other characters, some of whom argue with him about the meanings. Mordden’s meanings arose from the emerging gay life of Stonewall and post-Stonewall Manhattan and proposed a new kind of relationship characterized by sexual freedom but not without norms.

     When back in the 1980s I stood in a mid-Missouri bookstore reading the novel during several consecutive noon-hour stops there, I was most taken by the chapter “Hardhats” in which Mordden tells a story of ironworkers, a tale that provides a glance at their social profile, extremely macho lives, blended in with an instance of homosexuality or bisexuality. (Mordden didn’t like bi-sexual, didn’t believe in it.) But his language of friendship paired with the need for a sexual component made great sense to me. The picture Mordden provided of homosexuality among the most macho of all macho construction workers surprised me with a world that contrasted with that of artists found in most of the gay narratives I’d read up to that time. The privacy of the ironworkers’ gay experience—or the closeted character rarely uttered—engaged me. I liked other Mordden characters as well; the ironworker who was friend to the homosexual worker but didn’t have sex with him or even realize he was homosexual, the school-teacher gay, and the hooker gay young man who had little interest in work, and a 20s something kept man with great and odd creativity. Mostly, though, I liked this plain ironworker who drank too much but who, on occasion, could express his love through sex and sexual words. He seemed a homosexual who didn’t make a career of his sexuality. I may have liked his story so much because I experienced a similar yet contrasting closeted experience. I sought a discrete homosexual relationship that wouldn’t destroy the rest of my life. Standing there reading the new book, I saw that novel-writing gay critic Mordden understood and valued that kind of life. He also showed how it wasn’t gay in the Stonewall sense of gay—an existence with the social demand for recognition, tolerance, acceptance, and civil rights for homosexual persons. 

     Still, Mordden urged closeted folk out of the closet even while he accepted that homosexual ironworkers could never be openly gay. Their understanding of faggot was different. They separated men from fagots by their build, muscles, costume, etc., but they couldn’t fit in with the 80s macho gay crowd. Mordden concluded that their distinction was ultimately cultural, not sexual.

     Buddies examines family of origin with siblings and parents, theatre (especially the American musical), social class, language, defining ethos of work, writer/storyteller, friendship, romance, families of choice (although I don’t think he uses that jargon), personal perspective, and more. This work reminds me a lot of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales although Buddies does have a bit more discernable plot. If Bud is the protagonist, he really has no evil antagonist. His quest is observation and storytelling for the purpose of definition. His friends and subjects are his only antagonists in that they resist his categories and argue with him over his whole project. This gay family gathers around Bud and his long-time friend Denis Savage who live in the same building. Stories occur in their apartments, in others around the city, on streets, in bars, and often on Fire Island. 

     I have my gay family, too. I don’t care so much about definition since I’m not trying to define Gay life in Denver, but like Bud, I too make some of my friends nervous. Will they end up as characters in one of my stories? They sometimes wonder. And yes, they will be in stories even if effectively camouflaged. But this family is more for me, also including folk I know from an annual retreat, massage friends, and clients. 

     So yesterday I attended a birthday party held at the Denver Wrangler Sunday beer bust. There I was surrounded by that solidarity (at least many guys had solid physiques), and I was there with my family of the five guys I’m most often with and saw others I knew who are related to the annual retreat I attend. I laughed, hugged, and felt comfortable with this nutty, sometimes nelly, crowd of like-minded, like-inclined gays. I felt at home and knew my feelings connected with Mordden’s as I stood there with my Buddies.

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.”