Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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The Energy Drain, by Phillip Hoyle

I had been worrying over what I called an energy drain and presented my concern to my doctor along with my generally feeling off, itchy, and lethargic. I said, “I wonder if one of the two prescriptions I’m taking could be to blame.” Dr. Elango picked up his smart phone and started punching at it. I assumed he was connecting with the HMO’s website. The room was silent as he concentrated, his face expressionless like a student in a library. He frowned, then smiled at me and said, “Neither of your meds have those side effects.”

“Good,” I said, “because they seem to be helping me.”

The doctor asked, “Phillip, don’t you take some supplements?”

“I’ve quit most of them but still take a multi-vitamin and a single Saint John’s Wort capsule daily,” I said.

Doctor started poking at his phone again. “The symptoms you described are all possible side effects of St. John’s Wort. You know,” he looked up, “even supplements have side effects.”

I agreed to quit taking that pill even though I had an extra bottle not yet opened. I so wanted to feel better that practicality lost. Still, the next morning as I prepared to get rid of the pills, I hesitated since I had begun taking the herbal anti-depressant years before when my partner Michael died. Back then I didn’t want to slide into some emotional morass due to the grief I was experiencing. With the pill I seemed to do just fine. About two years later when Rafael died, I upped the dosage to two capsules a day mindful of a character in the TV show “Will and Grace” who finally admitted he’d been taking eight capsules daily. I didn’t want to be like him. Even though I had doubled my dosage, I found my grief more intense that time as if I were experiencing grief on top of grief. Eventually I returned to one pill daily and seemed just fine. But the fine effect apparently failed after fifteen years and gave me the group of symptoms I described to my doctor. I quit and have nothing more to say about the episode except that when I followed my doctor’s advice those symptoms disappeared.

But now some months later I am worrying over a slight feeling of anxiety I cannot seem to overcome. I’m tired of how I feel, but at least I’ll have something to say to my doctor at my next physical still seven months off. I feel worked up and have less energy than I want, but I don’t have those age-related unrealistic desires like returning to what I was at age thirty-five. I just want more pep so I can accomplish more things with the time I have available. I am open to advice from friends but most of them think I’m already too busy. I don’t want more social responsibilities or more leadership in any programs. I have plenty of that to keep me at least half awake, and some nights way too awake or awakening from some responsibility dream or worse yet some date I had made but hadn’t put on the family calendar. But to call any of this actual worry or actual anxiety—you know of the clinical type—doesn’t seem warranted.

Doctor did give me some great practical advice about one of my symptoms, dry skin. He said, “Get some lotion and put it on every day.” I had been using sunscreen for many years but hadn’t considered adding just plain old lotion. I didn’t want to begin smelling like a rose or a lily so I bought lotion for men. Even so, a friend embracing me one day said, “You smell good.”

Like a good queer I said, “Well thank you,” but just at the last second stopped myself from saying, “I try.” You see I’m a self-respecting queer. So surely I will get over the energy drain quickly enough. And I’ll begin wearing enough lotion the rest of my life for the wind not to cause unnecessary friction and enough for anxieties to slide right off my shoulders. At least those are my goals. “Energy drain, be gone.”

© 28 November 2016

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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Main Street Kansas, by Phillip Hoyle

I moved into my apartment on Capitol Hill soon after reaching Denver in my fifty-second year. There I lived in the third block south of Colfax Avenue, that old highway that has claimed to be the longest main street in America. Not owning a car, I walked everywhere, but was surprised when a friend asked, “Aren’t you afraid to walk along East Colfax?”

“No,” I immediately answered. “It’s just like the main street in the town where I grew up.” I wasn’t freaked out to walk down an avenue with bars, tattoo parlors, Army surplus stores, small groceries, gas stations, two-story buildings with markets below and apartments or offices above, theatres, people of various races, even drunks on the street. Strolling along Colfax always reminded me of my hometown Junction City, Kansas that was located adjacent to the US Army Base, Fort Riley.

I had spent my childhood and early teen years living in the third block west of Washington Street, the long main street that offered in addition to groceries, clothing, theaters, lawyers, and real estate, a variety of beers, tattoos, Army surplus, pawned goods, drunks, and prostitutes. My family lived on West Eleventh Street, but the more colorful array of folks and their bad habits rarely made it that far off the main drag.

Washington Street ran for eighteen blocks from Grand Avenue on the north, the gateway to Fort Riley, to I-70 on the south—well eventually when the Interstate made its way that far west. On the south end of Washington Street our family ate at the Circle Cafe that offered Cantonese and American food. Dad ordered Chinese food, Mom her favorite fried chicken, and we kids our regular hamburger, French fries, and a Coke. Later, when I began working at the store, I had lunch sometimes at the Downtown Cafe where, much to my junior high delight, I discovered chicken fried steaks. I already knew the middle part of Washington Street from walks with Mom when she shopped, but also from visits to the two Hoyle’s IGA stores, both located along Washington, one at 9th, the other at 13th. Then there was the Kaw Theater where we watched movies and ate the homemade cinnamon and horehound candies made by Mr. Hyle, the owner and the father of my Aunt Barbara. Duckwall’s and Woolworth’s stores sat on the east side of the street in the same block as Cole’s Department Store where Mother used to model clothes on occasion. I had seen photos of her as a young model posing on the runway.

I got to know Washington Street. North, between 15th and 16th streets stood Washington School where I attend grades one through five. On occasion I got to be the crossing guard on the main street, wearing the white halter that symbolized enough authority to push the button for the stop light and walk halfway across the four-lane street with a stop sign. No accidents occurred on my watch. The school playground for older students was on Washington Street so I saw its activity from swings, monkey bars, and see saws. Walking down that street one afternoon when our class went on an outing to visit the local potato chip factory seems as real today as it was then. Across the street from the school was Kroger’s, and across the street from our store that Dad managed, sat Dillon’s. I knew these stores to be the competition. Next to Dillon’s was the Dairy Queen where we kids liked to go on Sunday nights after church. I knew Washington Street.

As older elementary kids we neighborhood boys began to walk the street without adults. There we discovered the bars, a variety of shops including the Army Surplus stores where we looked longingly at the gear of soldiers, the barbershop where my best friend Keith got his flattop haircuts and where I first saw professional wresting on TV, and tattoo parlors where we’d choose our future body ornamentation from designs displayed in the windows. From Washington Street, we’d gaze down East Ninth where we knew several houses of prostitution stood. We’d continue on to Duckwalls and Woolworth’s where we loved to look at toys and sometimes swiped them, to the Junction Theater where we ogled the ads for adult films we never got to watch, or to Clewel’s Drug Store where we drank sodas at the fountain where they mixed drinks and I often ordered a grape Coke. Occasionally we’d walk on to Dewey Park where we saw small children dancing at the city band concerts, where a statue of the 19th century Admiral George Dewey with his drooping handlebar mustache stood atop a classical archway, and where large WWII cannons stood sentry. By day people sat there in the shade of huge elms and more than once on hot summer afternoons we waded in the fountain that dominated the middle of the park.

I never entered any of the many bars but was fascinated by their neon lights, dark spaces with cool air wafting strange odors out the front doors. I wondered about the men we saw inside sitting at the bar drinking beers, usually quiet but sometimes with juke box blaring and loud talk and laughter, especially around payday when the GIs came to town to squander their meager paychecks in the dives on Washington Street and the whore houses on East Ninth. The challenging presences rarely made it over to where I lived, but of course, we boys had planned all our escape routes in case we might have run-ins with drunks. Our survival tactics were actually just another form of play; after all we were kids, boys with dreams of self-sufficiency, survival, and strength.

Life changed for me over the decades between my fifteenth birthday when we left Junction City and my fifty-first birthday when I showed up along Denver’s Colfax Ave. My experiences along the unusual Kansas main street prepared me for living in the city. In my fifties I continued to spend time among people of various races and backgrounds. I ate Chinese food, chicken fried steaks, and really nice hamburgers along Colfax. In contrast to my childhood activities, I did go into bars and did get a tattoo. I still didn’t go into whorehouses. In this real, really large city I walked down many streets and greeted many people. I shared a new life with them but still kept my eyes open to possible developing trouble and chose my routes with the wisdom I had learned in childhood walking along Washington Street with my friends. Then I walked unafraid but never unaware. I still do.

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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Favorite Literary Character, by Phillip Hoyle

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

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. I began analyzing short stories; then turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough select one

aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.


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

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

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

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

And I thrill when Will says:

“Only your body can know another body.

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

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

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

© Denver, 22 June 2014

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Birthdays, by Phillip Hoyle

My
fifteenth birthday was a day of celebration but not so much over me as it was
over our family’s move from Junction City to Clay Center. Don’t mistake this by
thinking we were excited to be leaving an army town to go to some idyllic place
in the countryside. Actually we kids were horrified to think we were moving to
a town with only one four-way stop light. We were going out to the sticks in
our minds. Still, the move was a celebration.
Probably
this birthday was the first one I had that didn’t feature a cake with candles,
wishes, and the suspense of wondering if I would get all of the candles blown
out in one breath. The night before we family members went to several
neighboring houses to sleep since all our goods had been packed the day before
into a moving van. Tippy, my beagle, stayed in our garage, the cats on the back
porch of the house. We came back for them in the morning. When we were ready to
leave, we kids went to get the three of them for the trip. I put Tippy on the
leash, Lynn got a good hold on Kissy—her Persian ’fraidy cat—and Holly picked
up Mascot—a reprobate tomcat that one rainy afternoon had come home with our
youngest sister. I said I’d get the car door. Tippy insisted on sniffing
something and then we took off in a run around the west side of the house. The
girls and their cats came around the east side of the house just as Tippy and I
burst by. Kissy clawed Lynn in a desperate and successful attempt to escape. We
got Mascot and Tippy into the car and went searching for Kissy who was nowhere
to be found and, if she heard us calling “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” didn’t care. We
had to leave her and go meet the truck some forty miles away.
During the
drive to Clay Center, Tippy hung her head out the open window, Mascot got sick
in his litter, and Lynn cried over the loss of her pet. Finally we got to the
new town and opened the house to receive our furniture, appliances, and
personal effects. I don’t recall a cake or any such celebration, but I do know
I began to move into my room, one with a large closet, plenty of wall space for
my artwork, and a carpeted floor. The junior decorator in me was a bit
over-excited for already Mom had ordered drapes and such, and we were setting
out to re-do the whole house.
Later that
day, after the van had pulled away and things were settling down, I went
outdoors to set up Tippy’s new home in the garage and eventually to assess the
lawn. The new power mower was due to arrive the next day; I wanted to be ready.
Since the big old house sat on three corner lots, I was trying to figure out
how to organize my attack on grass and weeds. I heard a ruckus in the north
yard and went to investigate. There I found Mascot stealthily marking his new
territory and blue jays in great screaming protest attacking him like protective
dive bombers. Such drama!
We were all
moving in and making our best ways into the future. I would have new
responsibilities, a new school, new teachers, new church, and new friends. I
hoped nothing would dive bomb my attempts to make my way. And fortunately I
found a strong music program, many activities with kids at church, and a new
job. Actually it was the same job—carrying out groceries—but in a new store,
this one managed by my uncle who paid me twice as much as my dad had in our
other store. I felt like I was growing out of boyhood in a rapid approach to
adult life, and I felt ready for it all. While the day’s activities were
exhausting and probably there was not a birthday cake, the whole package was a
celebration of life and of a new future for me as I began the sixteenth year of
my life.
© 14 Nov 2016  
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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GLBT Hopes, by Phillip Hoyle

Growing up
I had no GLBT hopes. I had no idea what those initials represented; no idea
that the concepts and rich human experiences behind them had anything to do
with me. I didn’t feel hopeless. I was simply clueless.
In my early
twenties I came to hear and understand a little about the beginnings of the gay
liberation movement. I had taken great interest in the African American
movements, had begun to read about the feminist movement, and realized I needed
to know more about all such movements. I had very generalized hopes for all of
them, for the securing of civil rights for all Americans under law regardless
of race, gender, sex, education, and a number of other differences that left
them susceptible to many injustices. I saw how churches as well as the general
community were unjust towards minorities. I had hopes for a better America and
for better American churches.
For myself
I had believed in the idea that you grew up, got educated, got married, reared
children, and in my case served churches through your ministry. Since I was on
route to become a minister, I accepted I would have to toe the line on some
things that others in the congregation might not find necessary. Life was good.
Whatever LGBT hopes I had were for others.
At the
point when I accepted that homosexuality was right at the center of who I was,
I hoped that my wife might find herself to be lesbian. We could then work out a
special arrangement to continue living together. It didn’t happen. I assumed I
would always be married and hoped I would never to go too far in satisfying my
homosexual needs. I didn’t want to change the trajectory of my life.
Midlife
took care of that for me. I was changing emotionally. I had no doubt that I
loved my wife or that she loved me. I wanted a man to love me; I wanted to love
a man. When I realized I was going to become the bad husband and a bad
minister, I changed both roles. I was hurting my wife. I didn’t want to do so.
We talked but there was so much emotion—so many emotions—we didn’t know what to
do. Our settlement settled little. We did separate. I bore the responsibility
before our families. We said goodbye with a kiss and tears.
Within a
month I had GLBT hopes. Lots of them: to finish my job obligation; to move to
one of three western American cities; to live openly as a gay man. For twenty
years I had considered myself bisexual. Now I was going to simplify my life.
My gay hope
was to learn just what gay would mean for me. First though some other things
would take my attention: getting work for income, writing, and dedicating lots
of time to the visual arts. I began writing episodes from my life and then
writing about my new work: massage. A new gay hope emerged: to write up my gay
life experiences. Before long I was pleased to find myself loving a man who
loved me. I hoped we’d have lots of time together. He died from AIDS. Then I
grieved a true GLBT grief. During this time I was careful with myself. I stayed
busy with my work. I was still engaged as a gay man. I wrote about the loss of
my gay partner. It was a sequel to one I had written a couple of years earlier when
a gay friend had died from AIDS. (The two pieces may be my best writing to
date.)
Then I met
a gay daydream at a bus stop in my neighborhood. Our love blossomed. Then he
died. I sagged. Still I wrote and realized I would write much more about my gay
experiences. My arts kept me hopeful.
A straight
woman friend of mine told me about the SAGE of the Rockies Telling Your Story.
I attended wondering how my writing would be heard by a truly GLBT audience. It
was like a gay hope come true. From this ever-changing group of storytellers
that offers ever-changing and sometimes emotion-blowing perspectives, I have
clarified my new GLBT Hopes:
I now hope
that GLBT (etc.) folk will all someday take time to hear one another’s stories.
There is no better way to come to know oneself than to hear the stories of
others, no better way to be inspired than to hear the experiences of another
person you know more than superficially. I hope that those stories will also
become of interest to other humans—you know like those who claim to be straight
or heterosexual or some other category. I want this latter so they can see how
little different are all people.
I hope that
GLBTs will always vote mindfully in local, state, and national elections.
I hope that
LGBTs will come to appreciate and respect one another as much as we want others
to honor and respect us.
© 9 January 2017 
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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Clubs, by Phillip Hoyle

For me clubs have always been about responsibility: treasurer, president, secretary, vice-president, committee chair, on and on. I am sure I learned this from the outset when we neighborhood boys formed the Ark Club. But that was play, kind of like Cowboys and Indians or Army but with paperwork. Then adults began to organize us in a moral effort to control kids and their activities: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, choirs, and youth groups. These clubs attracted me for their activities but not their group pride, personal recognition, or promised advantages. I don’t say this as a matter of criticism but simply as a description of my introverted preference and deep independence. I liked having things to do if they matched my interests, I got along well with peers, and I was respectful to adult leaders. Often I became some kind of leader although I didn’t seek such leadership preferring simply to help and to enjoy. I didn’t care to beat a drum for attention. I could tolerate
responsibility for short periods of time, but mostly I wanted to learn and to experience.

Around age thirty, my career was on the line demanding of me a choice between doing church work and teaching music history. I gave myself six months to figure out which way I’d go. In so doing, I realized I needed to give the church career a better chance. So I attended some religious education events, first, an intense training program organized by the Regional and General levels of the church and second, the meeting of a professional association of religious educators. Over-all the groups did not do much for me, the former seeming too much related to the status quo of congregational life, the latter seeming just a bit too embarrassing to me to make a strong identification. Still at each of these meetings I met some nice people and at each event a couple of very impressive individuals. Furthermore I observed interactions that attracted me, not relationships I wanted but ones that revealed these leaders were as complicated as I was and as bright or brighter. Certainly some of them were living life rather largely (a term I will not address in this story).

I compared these religious educators with the professors I knew, that other professional group I was observing, and found as much or more creativity among the church educators. Plus for me, I realized, I needed the stimulation of working with people of all ages rather than the small age range of undergrads in college. Church offered more freewheeling educational leadership opportunities. I opted for a career in congregations.

Some years later I was recruited to run for president elect in the professional association, a group that still slightly embarrassed me. Beyond the embarrassment I had friends in the group and annual meetings had become an important time away from work and family. I thought over the offer and realized it came with a four to five year sentence: attendance at annual meetings for running for office, serving as president-elect, serving as president, serving as immediate past president whose responsibility it was to oversee the next elections, and my requirement to show up at the following meeting unlike almost every past president I had known in the group. Did I really want to do this? I thought I saw an opportunity to help the organization become less an in-group and more open to the paraprofessional educators most congregations were hiring to organize and oversee their programs. There were fewer and fewer full-time jobs for seminary-trained educators on the horizon. Still the nomination promised mostly a bunch of work.

I did that work and stayed through my sentence. I didn’t regret it and learned so much during the five years, but I also got too close to the bared emotions of people for whom such a position was seen as a great honor that took them on a power trip. Yuck. This work was important—okay—but to take oneself so seriously in its execution seemed hopeless to me, too much like what I observed in some pastors, preachers, and evangelists. Worse than embarrassing!

Clubs: for the most part, I’m not interested. Still today I am leading a program and attend several gatherings of artists, writers, and storytellers. And I go out with a gang of guys for happy hour every Friday night. But the real attraction in these groups is the interesting people I see and the new things I learn as we write, read, tell stories, and make art together.

Denver, © 30 March 2015

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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I Have a Dream, by Phillip Hoyle

I was asked to contact Colorado Public Radio for an interview—something related to the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s, “I Have a Dream” sermon. I heard that speech on television. I believe I watched it in Clay Center, Kansas. We moved there in 1962, the summer before I entered my sophomore year of high school. I loved the strongly rhetorical and emotional delivery of this handsome African American preacher. The move from an Army town with integrated schools to a small all-white county seat town made me race-conscious in a wholly new way. The presence of deep racial prejudice against coloreds in that rural setting seemed misplaced. These people seemed more prejudiced in their white society. They didn’t know the reality of working with, studying with, or playing with people of color. They didn’t have Negro friends or acquaintances. Dr. King’s call for an American vision of racial equality and justice rang true in my ears. I truly missed my African American class mates like Yolanda Dozier, Jay Self, Oscar Smith, Harlene Gilliam, and even Von Quinn. I missed packing groceries for the many African-American customers at the store. Like an ancient Hebrew prophet, King was calling the presumably Judeo-Christian America to repentance, to get right with God, to find justice by providing justice in every town from sea to shining sea. His voice rang true to biblical tradition. I was thrilled. A preacher was saying these things with great courage and creativity. He seemed a kind of hero for me.

I admired this man, agreed with his gospel, and had no perspective how this liberation movement would eventually spell freedom for me. Still, his voice alerted me to human potential and the need for social change in our country and towns. But the life of a teen, the day-to-day discoveries, the forging of a fledgling adult identity, the move towards jobs and careers intervened. I knew I had music, knew I had a religious motivation, but knew only one church that while it was not sectarian by intent, was often sectarian in practice. I dove deeply into its tides of education, ministry, work, and identity. Sadly like the county seat town, it too was mostly white, missed the richness of racial diversity and leadership. Still, king’s themes colored my reading, my concerns, my sense of myself, and kept me open to this larger and smaller vision of freedom. So now I am going to celebrate it on public radio. Is this a grand opportunity? It certainly presents a challenge for creativity, heart, ardor, and love not only for me but for America with its growing diversity and wilting idealism.

To the young I say listen to the creative, challenging, opening voice within. Never let go of its potential. Let it guide you down creative paths of participation in your personal and public life. Keep open to the way it can inform your decisions in the changing adult experiences related to age, relationships, and social change. Honor the voices of democracy, justice, and love. Recognize the responsibilities of freedom, the partial realization of advancement, the constant tendency not to share, and the ever-present fears. Build communities of loving support but not at the cost of forgetting the larger picture. Always the larger picture. You are in it. It is in you.

The interview brought together a young gay man and an old one (me). Hear it at www.cpr.org/news/audio/two-gay-men-two-different-generations

Denver, © 2013

About the Author

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

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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When Things Don’t Work, by Phillip Hoyle

My marriage to Myrna Kay Vance Hoyle worked very well for
many years. I am sure Myrna was trying to have the world’s best marriage, to
live the dream of being the princess with her prince charming to fulfill the
purpose of her mother’s rather unrelenting discipline that focused on making
her a housewife so she could rear and educate children and care for her
husband. So Myrna approached her life as a wife with enthusiasm and talent and
a wonderful attitude.
I was living into the cultural fantasy of the straight life
even though from an early age I was far from straight. I wanted a family not as
the fulfillment of a dream but as a matter of course. How else could anyone
live? I wanted the pleasures and security of family life and so worked in my
way with good humor, consideration, kindness, and reliability to make it
possible. I liked family life with its endless variety—Myrna’s and my family life
spiced up with children, foster children, unusual friendships, and great
tolerance.
Myrna was interested in home economy and observed I had
little interest in keeping up with domestic bookkeeping. “Would it help you if
I kept the books?” she asked. “Sure,” I replied. I wasn’t into some stereotype.
Perhaps she was since her mother kept the books for the family farm where she was
reared.
My focus was outside the home although I loved my wife and
our children and the other denizens of our house on Volutsia Street or our
apartment on Las Vegas Boulevard or our rental on Bald Hill Road or the
apartment on Ellis Boulevard or our townhouse on Morris Street or the apartment
at Sixth and Lead or our residence in the basement of her parent’s farm home or
the apartment on Boulder Blvd. I came home every night, twice a month happily
turned over my paycheck, occasionally helped solve domestic conflicts, all this
with joy, calm, commitment, and laughter.
My wife and I respected and loved each other. Although we
both worked to lessen or avoid conflict, we certainly could talk through, even
argue our different perspectives and come to a mutually agreeable solution.
Neither of us was selfish although I had a much greater capacity for being so
than she. And I had this longtime nurtured gay self that I appreciated and
loved. I didn’t repress my homosexuality but realized that in order to live my life
as a minister in a church I had to sublimate any number of my urges. Still I
found ways to respect this part of myself, and even satisfy some of it without
hurting other people or myself. I was skilled in my duplicity. I was also
always aware that what was gay about me was certainly not hidden. I knew myself
and I knew that others—at least some others—surely perceived this other part of
me.
Myrna and I had a great marriage, and we reared two most
interesting kids and nurtured many friends and inspired other couples to do
likewise. So why the separation? Why the eventually divorce?
When the children left home and Myrna and I were back at the
one-on-one life all the distractions and responsibilities of rearing children
lessened. Oh we still had others living with us from time to time, but I finally
could satisfy other needs, and without the children present, I did so. I did
worse than break one clause in our marriage vows: “and keep yourself only for
her.” I broke that vow with other men whom I liked intensely. Feeling the
emotional change in me, Myrna finally let herself see what she’d long known.
Finally we talked, but rushing the matter we were unable to resolve the problem.
Emotion can cause such failure, but the real failure was the institution of
marriage itself.
When we divorced some years later, a longtime friend said, “I
wish you wouldn’t. Yours was the only marriage I ever thought was worth all
problems.” I thought about her kind words and finally realized the problem was
that no one had ever developed marriage for bisexual folk. Drat.
Still, Myrna’s and my friendship survived the conflict and
pain, as did our commitment to our children, grandchildren, and many
friendships from our married days. Marriage as a reified institution with a
long history of mythology and law to bolster it eventually didn’t work for us. No
matter how hard we both tried. Still what brought us together in the first
place—friendship and love—continues to flourish between us.
© 8 December,
2014 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
Posted on

A Stroll at the Denver Art Museum, by Phillip Hoyle

Artists sometimes open our eyes to realities and injustices
the society tolerates. Friday at the art museum my granddaughters Rose and
Ulzii took off on their own. I walked with my daughter-in-law Heather, one of
the most intelligent and creative persons I have ever known, also one of the
most open personalities I have ever spent time with. She and I have been good
friends ever since the day my son Michael brought her and her three-year-old
son to our house. She’s highly educated, teaches writing at college and
secondary levels, and with my son has reared a quartet of unusually bright and
talented youngsters: two boys, two girls.
Heather and I sat in chairs in the ‘Matisse and Friends’
gallery on the first floor of the Hamilton Building of the museum while the
girls went their own way. They had become tired of Mom and Grandpa talking so
intensely over the previous two days! Sitting there Heather and I discussed the
art and our two days of visits and interviews at culinary schools, of bus and
light rail trips around metro Denver, of meals and walks, and of her children,
the boys as well as the girls whom we had accompanied the past two days.
Then I suggested we take my favorite stroll through the
museum accessed by riding the elevator to the fourth floor. There we saw mostly
empty walls since most of the area was being re-hung. We walked down the huge
staircase beneath the impressive Calder mobile. At the foot of the stairs we
turned to the installation with grey foxes cavorting in a red café. Heather was
especially thrilled with this work. We walked on through the narrow north
hallway and entered a gallery that usually offers some kind of audio-video
experience. Although I had seen the current installation several times, Heather
had not. She caught the title “Lot’s Wife” and with her deep curiosity took in
the tall mannequin with white skin, white clothing, and long white hair, a
figure that from her meadow-like setting gazed at a projected lakeshore.
Heather read it as a depiction of Lot’s wife after she had glanced back toward
Sodom, the hometown she and Lot were leaving, a glance against Yahweh’s
command. In the ancient story from Genesis due to her disobedience, the wife
turned into a pillar of salt, thus the white the artist selected. Then Heather
noted the thick, muscular neck of the figure, then the very male profile of the
face. The artist wants to push us! Oh my God! Was Lot’s wife a man? Was Lot
homosexual? Was his wife transgendered or a cross-dresser? The questions piled
up. The rationalizations multiplied. The objections flourished. And finally the
truth of it settled on both of us. Gay folk cannot turn away from who they are
even in the face of nearly universal opposition!
I know from a careful study of the ancient text and its
ensuing interpretation that the story’s meaning is not anti-homosexual. It’s a
story about lacking hospitality, but of course these days that sounds too
wimpy. The Hebrew God demanded hospitality to strangers not rejection. That
demand is at the heart of biblical story after biblical story in the Hebrew and
Greek bibles. But our artist, Canadian Kent Monkman, wasn’t worried about
historical interpretations. He, a Cree Indian, is concerned about the deeply
embedded prejudice inherent in our culture and society that fears anything
Native and homosexual, anything queer, or as Wikipedia defines it in its
article on homophobia, anything LGBT! Whoa! LGB and T. Yes.
Heather ‘got it’ as my artist friend Sue would say.
Gods can often seem unfair, especially ancient Gods evaluated
by post modern humans. It just doesn’t seem right that when Apollo couldn’t
resist looking back at Eurydice that she then disappeared and couldn’t
make the trip from Hades to be reunited with her husband. It doesn’t seem right
that when Lot’s wife (of course they left out her name—which in this
interpretative context seems like double trouble!) glanced backward at her
hometown she was leaving to avoid its destruction that she was destroyed
anyway.
The artist now seems to be telling LGBs and Ts to watch out.
Don’t look back at your fears; don’t doubt the truth of your own reality; don’t
get scared at what you are becoming—or you may become a pillar of salt or melt
into nothing. DON’T BE AFRAID.
So my little stroll through the museum challenged me to leave
my own homo fears and embrace this new life, one of possibility, challenge, and
hope.
Watching Heather process the installation gave me hope for
our family of young adults establishing themselves in creative work, of the ability
of the supporting generations to help them, of myself to keep getting over the
deeply hidden fears generated by being so truly queer.
* * * * *
Here’s my testimony!
In addition to being deeply loved by a number of men I have
never been so assisted in this fearless task so much as I have by coming week
after week to this SAGE storytelling group—telling my stories and hearing
yours.
The process of community, sharing, paying attention, working
to express exactly what I have experienced and mean conspire to keep away the
fearsome temptations and to clarify just what I need to pay attention to as I
continue to grow as a truly Queer, truly LGBT person.
Thanks to you.
Thanks to artists like Kent Monkman.
Thanks to a changing social scene that supports even more
changes in the lives of LGBTs as Qs, and more.
© Denver,
Dec 2014 
About the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
Posted on

Alas, Poor…, by Phillip Hoyle

“Alas,” poor Myrna may have said after twenty-nine years of marriage with me. “Alas, my husband is a gay man.”

Surely she said something like that at some point. Before we separated she lived for over two years knowing of my infidelity. Of course that infidelity had been going on many years more. Her first hint of it must have occurred when I was thirty years old and only flirting. The unmistakable certainty came many years later. I know this because around the time we separated she told our daughter, “Your dad is gay, and I’ve known it for twenty years.” I don’t know just what she knew about homosexuality when we were 30 years old, but I assume that she realized that I had experienced a change in feelings and showed a new kind of interest in someone else. Perhaps she assumed I had lost my love for her or I wanted out of our marriage; she feared separation and divorce. My continuing interest in our own sexual relationship during those following twenty years may have led her revise her cry to, “Alas, I have married a bisexual.” When we talked, she said of homosexuality that she had no problem with it. She added, “But it’s not supposed to be your husband!” (I‘m sure the explanation point I’ve used was there in her voice.) Alas.

My own “Alas, poor…” relates to the same matter but from an institutional perspective. I say, “Alas, poor churches…” given the unreality of a common American, rather liberal church stand on issues gay. These churches seem to be saying, “It’s not supposed to be your Sunday school teacher, spouse, scout master, board chairperson, or minister.” Even more curious than that, a number of churches seem to be wringing their hands over their positions on homosexuality by retreating into an assertion of sin as action, relegating homosexuality to be somehow a problem of original sin or something similar if you don’t believe in original sin? You may be homosexual, which in itself they say is not a sin, but you cannot do it, meaning have sex with a person of the same sex. I first read the idea in a United Presbyterian Church statement back in 1978. Since then the statement has appeared in United Methodist papers, sometimes used by Disciples of Christ and others, then surprisingly to me lately adopted by the rather conservative Roman Catholic Church, and even more surprising to me recently touted by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Alas, just what are they thinking? It’s difficult for me to fathom, but perhaps it’s a complaint on their parts. Something like, “Alas, those pesky homosexuals are everywhere.” I haven’t even spent time imagining their comments related to bisexual and transgendered persons. Still I say, “Alas, those poor theologians, scholars, clergy, and committees assigned the task of writing something that can be accepted across the storm waters of their denominations’ theological diversities.” Even the rather theologically liberal National Council of Churches couldn’t figure out how to be nice to the queer Metropolitan Community Church denomination when it requested membership.

Alas, will it ever get better? Can councils respond only to majority votes? You know, It’s not supposed to be your husband; not you wife, certainly not your minister.

I say “Alas, those poor folk who cling so closely to traditions that stifle the change that’s going to happen anyway.” And, of course, that includes me. I am in no way perfect. My challenge has been to provide as much continuity as possible in all the change and do so in ways that embrace both the change and the best potentials from the past. Alas, woe is me in trying to explain such a convoluted philosophy. But let’s just decide to play together anyway and keep seeking joy in one another.

© 2014


Denver, 2015

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