Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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The Choir, by Phillip hoyle

For most of my life, choirs were my life. They were the musical thrills of my childhood and much of my adulthood. They were the place I felt most at home. They were the groups I most enjoyed being with. They were the main medium of my musical life. They were the focus of my extra time. They were the preoccupation of my auditory mind. They were the organizations I most effectively led. They were my access to a sense of worship. They were the most fulfilling aspect of thirty years of my ministry in the church. Choirs made everything else tolerable. They were the artistic center of my life.

I got my first choir when I was eighteen years old, a small group of volunteer singers who rehearsed one hour on Sunday evenings in preparation for the very simple needs of the First Baptist Church, Wamego, Kansas. But my relationship with choirs reached back to my first weeks of life, for I am sure I was present at church the first Sunday after my birth. Surely mom sat with me cradled in her arms in the second pew on the west side of the sanctuary while Dad played the organ for the service and my two older sisters sang the hymns. I’m sure I heard the choir sing and wonder if the harmonies were fixed in my ear from that first weekend’s experience. I wouldn’t be surprised for I could hardly contain my excitement when I joined the junior choir at that same church some years later. Although I was a good all-around student, my favorite times in school related to music class. There I learned songs. There I sang. There I played rhythm instruments. There I learned my first solo and when I had finished singing it for the PTA members, turned around and conducted the rhythm band in a Saint Patrick’s Day repeat of “McNamara’s Band.” My first solo, my first effort at conducting; I was so pleased.

Choirs took me to more than PTA and church. They took me to music festivals, to competitions, on tours, and they introduced me to many people. Choirs gave me opportunities to sing a wide variety of music: age-old classics, modern jazz arrangements, long works with orchestra, anthems with organs, motets unaccompanied, folk song arrangements, and unusual hymns. They introduced me to the musicianship and leadership of many choral directors from around the United States.

Leading choirs balanced my work needs. In my ministerial career I always had many more responsibilities in addition to the music. I looked after hospitalized folk, planned educational activities for groups of all ages, organized Sunday schools, trained teachers and leaders, encouraged youth workers, met with the staff of several congregations, supported the work of Senior ministers, directed residential summer camps, developed curriculum plans and wrote the resources, listened to people’s problems, handed out food to the needy, on and on. As an associate minister, I often administrated programs that were more related to other people’s ideas and visions rather than my own. The choir gave me a mid-week balance, for during rehearsals I could tell people to sit up, stand up, sit down, turn to page two, start singing at measure 36, modify their vowels, make lots of noise, sing softly, or completely shut up. Whatever needs I had to do things my way got satisfied during those mid-week rehearsals. I worked with the singers’ pitch, rhythm, sense of meter, phrasing, and general understanding of the music we performed. I elicited musicianship and artistic satisfaction from people who often didn’t have that much to offer. I sought always to make my singers better musicians. I helped them understand the needs of liturgy in a non-liturgical church. And I had fun. We had fun as artists together. Working with musical ensembles—whether made up of children, youth, adult, or seniors, whether signers or bell ringers, or the musical cast of a drama, or duets, trios, or quartets—brought me deep joy.

They also became my personal monitor. I had enjoyed a long, joyous, creative ministry in churches but knew it was time to quit when I started not wanting to go to my choir rehearsals, when I was no longer satisfied with those two or three in-tune measures or phrases, when I was no longer thrilled at the stumbling attempts of my earnest singers, when I was worn out rather than wafted on the wings of a dove. I continued working hard for a few months more, making music up to the last minute, then left.

I didn’t know what my life would be when I quit just before my fifty-first birthday, but I moved away from church music. I still like the sounds. I still can feel some kind of inspiration when hearing choral music, organ voluntaries, and massed choruses with orchestras. I still float along well turned phrases and salivate over delicious mellismas. I have the feelings; I just don’t need the work. Choirs still move me though now I rarely hear them perform. It’s the result of a change in life, but one I don’t regret. The choral spirit still abides in me, so much so that if this reading were the end of yet another choir rehearsal, we’d stand, sing an Amen, and go home.

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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Coming Out Spiritually, by Phillip Hoyle

I started revealing my gay self in a religious context subtly when I suggested in a church course on sexuality that we might want to think of bi-sexuality as the conceptual norm for our inquiry. That would make good use of Dr. Kinsey’s scale arising from his 1950s research into American male sexuality and would give us as a group a more flexible way to read the books we were going to consider. I had structured the group on a seminar model providing a small library of books from which each participant could select to use as a source in our discussions. To me it seemed like I was opening the closet door just a crack. It made sense in the church where I worked, a broad church in that it gathered conservatives, moderates, and liberals together for worship, study, and service, a congregation that historically hired moderates and liberals for their ministerial staff. We talked together for those weeks trying to understand ourselves, our kids, our society. We kept the peace as we did so. My wife participated in the study.

A few years later I wrote for our church’s publisher an adult study piece that included varying spiritual perspectives. I made sure there was a gay presence in that manuscript as well as many other points of view and experience. In another congregation I wrote a discussion guide for an adult group studying the book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (HarperCollins, 1994). While there I also edited a study paper on homosexuality prepared by a group in our regional church. Throughout my years of ministry I thankfully accepted homosexual musicians into our choir lofts and worked with several gay and lesbian organists. Thirty years into my career, when finally I attended the annual meeting of the Association of Disciples Musicians, my wife feared our marriage might be over. Whatever I believed I was doing, she seemed sure I was coming out.

Eventually our marriage did come apart, and soon after that sad experience and while in good standing in our denomination I left active ministry having dedicated many creative years to the work of our local churches. I was going to live an openly gay life and chose to do so as a lay person rather than clergy. I assumed I’d find a nice liberal congregation somewhere near my home on Capitol Hill in Denver and started attending services—church shopping as it were—something I’d observed many lay persons do. While searching for an apartment, I had walked the neighborhood and noted what churches were there. I decided to look away from the denomination rather than within it.

One Sunday I walked down to the First Baptist Church with its beautiful brick Georgian building featuring sturdy brown granite pillars on the façade and a very tall spire on top. I liked their location right across from the State Capitol building and near my home. There I found a worn out building in which gathered a nice group of worn out people who seemed to be tolerating their rather average rock band that asked them to sing songs they barely knew. I watched and listened to everything and decided not to return mainly because they were in an interim period between Senior Ministers. I’d suffered too many interim ministers during my career and couldn’t see how suffering theirs would promote my spirituality.

I went to St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral with its soaring rock towers and magnificent stained glass windows, a virtual symbol of a life of prayer. There I was rather thrilled with the organ and choir music but seriously put off by the sin and redemption language of the liturgy, ideas I had long ago set aside. Furthermore, in my move to Denver, I had got rid of most of my fancier clothes and realized I really did not want to fit into a dress-up social group. I knew it was not what I was looking for, besides I just didn’t have the kind of ritual liturgical need to which Episcopalians and many gay men respond in such churches.

The next Sunday I decided to visit the mostly-gay Metropolitan Community Church. I knew the history of that movement and realized that while it might be too conservative for me, it offered an open social environment. I was pleased with the organ music, entertained by the presence of a couple of drag queens in the choir, responsive to the tone and style of the sermon, and even received communion at the altar. I loved the enthusiastic singing of the congregation (couldn’t say the same for the choir even though I tried hard not to be a musical snob) and I especially liked being surrounded by gays, lesbians, transgendered persons and, I assumed, a bunch of bi-sexual folk. Knowing I was way over-loaded with needs and experiences related to my many recent changes, I decided to attend that nice group for a few weeks wondering if it might be for years. Week after week I smiled, laughed, felt sad, shed tears, and eventually found a kind of spiritual equilibrium that was helpful as I began living more deeply into my life as a gay man, a massage student, a friend of new gay and straight acquaintances, an artist, and a writer. When within a few months I quit crying in church and then began to be irked by the language of the little bit of liturgy they used there, I realized I had more things to deal with in my spiritual coming out. Long had I been displeased by the language of most churches and with doctrinal constructs that pervaded the worship, even that of the Disciples of Christ with whom I had worked. I hated the exclusionary aspects of words that were used, innocently and thoughtlessly too often. I realized my relationship with the church had now become more receiver than giver, and I didn’t like what I was receiving. Still the sermons sparkled, but the song texts, anthem lyrics, and weekly-repeated words of the communion service were becoming onerous to me. I had failed to become an official member of the congregation—it seemed somehow too soon—and realized I needed to look further into the church community to see what I could find.

I began attending the First Unitarian Church and found one of their preachers really communicated to me as she spoke from a liberal, open, Christian point of view and seemed herself to be working on the same kinds of spiritual and theological themes and experiences as was I. The rest of what was happening around me in that congregation I found neutral and uninspiring. Even in that most liberal atmosphere I stumbled over language, like when the choir sang an anthem of Anglican origin (one of my musical favorites) that ended with a very Trinitarian blessing, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.” Etc. The words had been rewritten but they were still Trinitarian in their form and actually in their meaning. I knew choir directors and singers were rarely theologians, but to hear barely de-Trinitized words in a Unitarian service? It seemed too corny to me. Since I couldn’t attend weekly due to a part-time job, I missed quite a few weeks in a row. When I returned on an Easter Sunday (of course, it was not really Easter at a Unitarian church) I found that their sparkling preacher had left and a nice but bland interim minister was now in place for several months. I didn’t relate to anything said in that service and chose not to return. Certainly I was not going to be spiritually nurtured there.

Now I know that others cannot make one spiritual. The ultimate responsibility for spirituality is located in the experience and imagination of the individual—you see ultimately I’m very Western, very American. I saw clearly that my own sense of spirituality, quality, and meaning was going to have a tough time being met within any church group. Of course, I was not un-used to that having been who and whatever I always have been. I thought about this a lot and within a year or so realized that my new spiritual congregation was made up of a group of friends with whom I drank coffee and occasionally went out and of my group of massage clients whose aches and pains—and often confessions—I dealt with as I rubbed into their skin oils, lotions, and love. The focus of my spirituality changed due to my participation in my new major community made up mostly of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual people.

© 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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Writing Your Story — Writing Our Story, Phillip Hoyle

Obviously “Writing Your Story” stands as a subtopic under “Telling Your Story,” for writing them is a modernized version of an ancient practice that persists today around kitchen tables and campfires, and in conversations over cups of coffee. Even though I write, I stand in awe of anyone’s ability to extemporaneously tell their story with clarity and humor. They’re like the best preacher I ever heard who made his sermons sing with stories of his early years in Mississippi. He’d take his listeners back into a past of childhood feelings, wise sayings from his elders, and rich relationships that made sense of some esoteric idea he was pursuing. Of course his deep southern accent helped. As I write my stories, I keep in mind that the best written stories derive their strength from what is called a strong voice.

I learned to write because I wasn’t very good at conveying my emotions except those that warranted screaming, kicking, slamming doors, or crying. With age those went out of style. By my college years I was much more interested in written communications than oral. I tried but failed to become a preacher, but recall that even in homiletics classes we were warned that if we were to undertake difficult or controversial topics, we should write out what we were going to say and then stick to our manuscript. The preacher might need the written document to substantiate what was said rather than what might have been misunderstood. One’s job might be threatened.

My unsure feelings not only made me uninterested in preaching but also ill at ease when my girlfriend and then later she, then my wife, wanted “to talk.” When I had to say something that I didn’t trust, I’d rely on writing. Twenty some years into our marriage, when my wife realized how tenuous our relationship might become and sought to enrich it, she proffered a notebook in which we could write to one another hoping it would give me the medium I preferred—writing. I now realize that by then my feelings had become way too complicated and, I assumed, even more unacceptable than in my younger life. I could never remember to write something to her in the book so ended up disappointing her even more. By then what I needed to say wouldn’t promote her purpose. It was a sad time although a productive one for my professional writing projects! I wrote to stay afloat but not in “our” secret book. Rather on my Word Processor I was writing resources for a publisher to print and with body parts other than my fingers, sexual messages to other men.

Now, some seventeen years later, I am writing my story. It’s contained in a growing volume I call Family Portrait: Self Portraits. I suspect the manuscript will remain firmly relegated to becoming a posthumous revelation like another book I have yet to write, that one called Ministers Who Loved Me. I am writing my story because writing is my best way to tell it.

In this storytelling group, I have come to realize that collectively we are writing a gay or queer story no matter what details or themes we approach. An ancient image from one of the Christian gospels asserted that what had once been whispered in private would someday be announced from the rooftops. That’s our storytelling task, one that promises to liberate us as storytellers, as a group of citizens searching for rights, and as a group of leaders in the wider community. We announce our love no longer hidden. There’s great freedom to be found in those tasks.


© 1 Apr 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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Scars, by Phillip Hoyle

I’ve been lucky to live 68 years with almost no scars. As a result of that I don’t much relate to this topic even though after many years think I can still identify the scar Jeanetta Olson left on the back of my hand from a fingernail cut. I don’t recall the occasion except that it happened in the car during one of our families’ many trips to Topeka to see Dr. Peuzit. Jeanetta and my sister Christy both doctored with him due to polio. The scar now may be obscured by an age spot.

For some years I sported a scar on one of my fingers due to a cut I got from wrangling with a 16mm film take-up reel when I was working as a student minister at Central Christian Church, Wichita, KS. My wife Myrna was helping me to stop the flow of blood from the cut. When Dr. Parrish, the senior minister, came out of his study to help with a bottle of Witch Hazel, we saw Myrna sink to the floor and almost faint. I held my own paper towel bandage while Dr. Parrish worked with her. After that I was always properly careful around projectors and aware that Myrna might easily faint in any medical situation.

I do have stretch marks in the skin around both of my knees, scars due to having dislocated them. I always felt they seemed like nothing when compared with my wife’s proud stretch marks for having born two children.

In my psychic life I have suffered little pathos, so I have little of that kind of scarring. Still, I have become aware of a price I paid due to the many years of living in the closet. I also am aware that if I stay in this storytelling group for another five years, I may uncover scars of various kinds, even if it is only a callus on my right middle finger from writing stories so intensely every morning to have something ready to read. Also I am aware of the slight possibility that I may have so many scars on my feelings so deep that I cannot distinguish touched from untouched. There are a few scars from medical procedures of the last year and a half. Probably from now on in my ageing life I will be able to add a scaring episode or two from these kinds of new experiences every year. Perhaps I will eventually have a book out of them. I hope not.

Denver, ©22 June 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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Doors, by Phillip Hoyle

Two doors controlled the comings and goings in our early 1940s Cape Cod house in Junction City, Kansas: the front door and the back door. Both were wooden, both had latches and locks, both greeted and debarred. The front door was made of oak, the backdoor of fir. The front door opened onto a stoop where in summer Mother tended flowers in planters; the back door opened onto a screened porch. A second back door to the porch was a frame with screens and a simple hook latch at about adult eye level. I liked the way the screen door whacked like a gunshot when we’d let the spring pull it closed from a full open position. The doors must have been quite strong for they withstood the abuse of two adults and five children, a dog and several cats, neighbors and neighborhood kids, all of whom provided a kind of Grand Central Station feel to the house. The house was open, the doors seldom locked.

Formal visitors used the front door. Even Santa Clause entered there; we had no fireplace. We kids used the backdoor usually because we played in the backyard, garage, or the yards of neighbors who lived across or down the alley.

Thus it almost seemed a ceremonial moment when Dad locked the front door with his key, a ritual that occurred annually when we went on our week-long family vacation. We’d drive west to the Colorado Rockies to cool off during the end of July or first of August. When we returned he would unlock the door and we’d hurry inside amazed at the size of the small house that now seemed so large, an effect of living for a week in a mountain cabin and spending too many hours in a crowded car.

So far as I know no one ever broke into our house. Perhaps it was the time and place or simply good luck. We all felt safe at home, but I learned more. Mother was threatened once when we kids were small. Dad was out of town. Late at night an unidentified man phoned saying he was going to come and get her and the kids. She was ill, hemorrhaging at the time. Following some home remedy, she got out the bottle of wine someone had given Dad for Christmas from a high shelf in the back closet, Dad’s double barrel shotgun out of their bedroom closet, and sat on the kitchen floor in view of both doors with the bottle at her side and the gun across her legs. “No one came to get anyone,” Mom told the story years later, “but if they had, and saw me, they surely would have fled the crazy drunk woman with the gun.” Of course, Mom didn’t open the wine bottle; just had it in case she needed it. With family stories like that, we kids felt safe at home. No one would ever dare come to get us.

I learned that a good door and attentive parents may be able to keep out unwanted visitors but not necessarily prying eyes. On summer nights when the temperatures soared way too high for comfort, my parents would sometimes sleep on the back porch on a double cot that folded out from the glider. I recall Mom’s story of the night she woke up to see a man staring at them through the screen. She sat up hurriedly, nudged Dad, and yelled, “You get out of here.” The Peeping Tom ran but didn’t see the wires of the clothes line that clocked him in the throat. Choking, he got up and ran down the alley. Dad called the police who located the man hiding in the trees at the high school sports field one block to the west. They identified him by the wire mark on his throat.

One night years later when I was in junior high and things were settling down for the night, Mom wearing her robe ran into the living room from the bedroom where she and dad were dressing or undressing, I don’t quite recall. She threw open the front door and looked out. I was surprised and asked, “What’s wrong?” She replied, “Someone was peeking in our window. I think it was Dinky.” I wasn’t surprised at that detail. Dinky was my rather creepy friend from across the alley who was always getting into trouble. In fact, for years when we kids played Monopoly and landed on the JUST VISITING border of the Jail we always said, “Just visiting Dinky,” who to us looked like the cartoon character peering through the bars. I think we were polite enough not to say it when he was playing with us. That night there was no call to the police, but I suspect my parents were more careful about closing the blinds while they were changing clothes. Still they rarely locked the doors except late at night when we kids were all safely in bed.

© 27 Apr 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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Solitude, by Phillip Hoyle

Little Tony stopped by to save me from my solitude. I actually have a lot of it even though I live with two other people. They tend to be quiet; I tend to go off to my art studio or to my computer, and sometimes I just watch TV alone.

Tony’s text Saturday evening had read, “R u and jim at the bc tonite? I could use a drink or 2.”

I responded, “Sure. What time?”

“I’m almost home. Maybe 15 or 20.”

“Ok probably just me but I will invite Jim. Park at the house. See u soon.”

At the Black Crown we discovered singers doing their best to the piano accompaniment of a player who surely was doing her best, but their bests attracted neither Tony nor me. He suggested a bar downtown, so we drove to it where he drank three mixed drinks to forget the anger a work situation had produced in him the day before. The bar was full of young people. Like so many times in my Denver years I was the oldest patron present. I drank a beer as we talked about a number of common memories.

We left just in time to avoid getting a parking ticket and drove south out of downtown. On Broadway we stopped by a bar where years ago we used to go dancing. Even though the lights were really nice and the music quite acceptable, only one lonely or independent man was dancing. Tony smoked a cigarette, and then we left.

We drove back downtown to the X Bar where I knew there would be lots of activity. The place featured very loud music, video images, and many people dancing. Tony insisted on buying another drink. I said, “Sure, a Miller Lite for me.”

We stood around listening to the music, looking at the young people, mostly gay and lesbian, a few transgender folk, probably undetectable bisexuals as well. Perhaps a few straight couples out for something different on a Saturday night. The energy of the place was high.

We talked swaying a little and finally he began to dance a little, somewhat like years ago when we went week after week to the Denver Compound to dance on Saturday nights. I saw his characteristic moves and began doing my own.

A young Hispanic guy started dancing alongside us, enjoying what I took to be his favorite song. He was cute, fun to watch, moved like the supplest of sinews, and as he danced, smiled with beautiful face and dimples. We enjoyed his movements and beauty. We danced for about twenty minutes. Then a young woman came up to me and began to dance with me, to touch me, to actually feel me up. I thought, uh oh, this one has had too much to drink, but we danced as best we could. Then I noticed my friend Tony was dancing with a young man, someone maybe his own age or close to it. I was so pleased for Tony. He needs to be dancing with someone not old enough to be his father, and he seemed to love it. I had a bit of conversation with the young woman as we kept dancing. Then the guy who had been dancing with Tony came over to me, and we started dancing. The woman started dancing with Tony. I learned some things about them, that she, a single mother, was his best friend, that he was living with his mother in Albuquerque due to the breakup of a 20-year long relationship in New York and to her disintegrating health, that he had driven up to see her and take her out since she rarely has the opportunity to do much of anything besides work and take care of her two-and-a-half year old, that he’d really like to get laid but couldn’t because he was with her, that they assumed Tony and I were a couple, and they wondered how long.

Finally Tony and I told them goodnight, left the bar, and he drove me home. I recall looking at the time as we were leaving—1:39 a.m. I hadn’t almost closed a bar for many years. In fact, I hadn’t been out dancing for several years. I realized just how much I miss the activity. I had danced a lot in my first five years in Denver, almost always the oldest man on the floor. With Tony I learned to be very expressive in the dance. He and I always enjoyed our evenings out.

Tony dropped me off at the house and said he’d wait until I got in the door. What is he? A youngster taking care of the elderly? Anyway, I waved from the doorway as he pulled away.

I hurried to the basement where my computer was waiting. There I began this story of my temporary delivery from solitude and, of course, sat alone as I typed, enjoying being alone just as much as I loved dancing with my friend and the other youngsters.

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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Mom and Her Mom and I, by Phillip Hoyle

Just what are we to think about boys who seem as much girl as boy? I once heard a psychiatrist analyze how Freud’s laying the blame on the parents for the inability of some males to resolve the Oedipus-related developmental challenge in early childhood moved responsibility away from the homosexual child. Freud’s analysis thus called for improvements in therapy for homosexual men. That sounded nice, but then the psychiatrist I was listening to laid more blame upon the doting mother and less on the emotionally absent father. Moms! Poor moms!

I tend not to be Freudian or neo-Freudian, but I am always interested in how domestic upbringing influences any child and particularly with regard to his or her sexual needs and attitudes. So I am curious about how my parents coped with and responded to challenges of rearing me, a skinny boy whose interest in girl things was rather plain to see, whose penchant for the artistic persistent, and whose lack of physical coordination or upper body strength kept him out of sports. So I want to tell three short stories that somewhat address the theme of “Mom” but also keep me wondering.

I

One Christmas my mom’s mom gave me a baby doll as a gift. I named him Andy probably following the lead from the only boy doll I had ever hear of, Raggedy Andy brother, I assumed, of Raggedy Ann. My boy baby doll came with clothing my grandmother had made. I recall a plaid shirt and denim-like slacks. He was one of those babies made of rubber and if you worked hard enough you could pull off its arms and legs and even its head. Then if you worked even harder, you could reassemble the little thing. It was approximately nine inches tall.

Andy looked just like my sisters’ baby dolls except that he had brown skin and black hair whereas theirs had pinkish skin and blond or light brown hair—not wigs, simply hair stamped into the rubber and lightly painted. I don’t recall if the eyes were inserted or painted (probably the latter since I remember them as being black) but I do recall they didn’t open and close like my sisters’ fancier Terri and Terri Lee dolls.

I sometimes wonder what Grandma and Mom were thinking. I never thought to ask either of them. They were very bright women, both educators. Surely they had talked about the present before it showed up under the Christmas tree. I’m sure they had noticed I played with my sisters’ dolls. Perhaps they thought I ought to have a boy doll so I would somehow know I was a boy? I’m sure there was some application of logic in their decision to give me that boy doll years before Barbie and Ken appeared under anyone’s Christmas tree.

I played with Andy but have no recollection when I got him, how long I had him, or when I left off playing with him. I don’t know whatever happened to the doll. Perhaps he was adopted by a nice Black family. I don’t even know if Andy was actually a boy doll or if he was simply dressed as one. I was intrigued that Grandma had made his clothes designing, cutting, and sewing them herself just like she did for my older sisters’ dolls. I don’t know if Andy’s shirt buttoned on the girl side or the boy side, but I am pretty sure there were no boy baby doll clothes to purchase from any store in our town.

II

When Mom was a child, she was taught to sew by her mom. I loved to see mom at work using her portable Singer sewing machine at the kitchen table. I loved even more Grandma’s Singer in its oak console, iron frame, and a treadle that we kids sometimes got to pump. When I was fifteen and we moved into a larger house, Mom got her own Singer in a console that sat in the utility room. It was powered by electricity with a foot control that reminded me of a small automobile accelerator. Grandma came to see us, and I asked her to help me make leggings for one of my Indian outfits. She did it and in the process taught me to cut, sew, hem, and more. I liked sewing and bought cloth and a pattern for a war shirt and a vest. Later I sewed a Cheyenne style dress for my next younger sister and decorated it with imitation elk teeth. When I had questions about sewing, I asked Mom to help me. Somehow playing Indian allowed me to do even more girl things. I never once heard a word of disparagement or caution from my mom or my grandma. I’m pretty sure I didn’t talk at school about sewing!

III

When I was an adult, Grandma told me a story about my childhood. She had been worried about me growing up around all those sisters, but she said she quit worrying one day while she was taking care of us. I had come into the kitchen where she was working. She claimed that by the time I had walked through the house I had all four of my sisters crying. I am not sure I like the story’s idea of what makes for a real man, but it does indicate that in her eyes I had enough ego strength or whatever was necessary to carry on with my life—queer or otherwise. She quit worrying.

I’m happy for her, pleased with my own life, happy I know how to sew; but still I wonder.

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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Remembering, by Phillip Hoyle

I
remember a religious educator from years ago who sometimes surprised me with
his rather creative thoughts. (Of course, I’m still trying to recall his name; perhaps
William something.) He once asserted the main resource anyone has in education
is memory. He illustrated his perspective by the example of having boxes and
boxes, files and files of resources such as books, curriculum designs, manuals,
art supplies, costumes, play scripts, musical scores, recordings, movies, and
so forth, but if you don’t recall—that is remember—what you have put away, you
won’t be able to use them.
I
learn more and more about this perspective every day. Just last week I thought
I would wear a particular sweater, but when I opened the storage box where I
thought it was, the one under the chair in the east alcove of the bedroom, the
sweater wasn’t there. I searched the stack of sweaters I’d been wearing, the
ones I’ve been stacking in the chair next to the bed but it wasn’t there, not
even at the bottom of the stack. I looked through the stack of clothes atop the
little chest of drawers in the closet, the one where I keep my sweat shirts and
a few other items, but it wasn’t there. Then I recalled another storage box
under the bed and pulled it out. There I found three sweaters—one I didn’t even
know I owned, but none of the sweaters was the one I thought I was searching
for. I chose one of them to wear, but as I write this story I can’t recall the
sweater I originally thought I was looking for. Was it brown, red, green, or
blue? Bulky knit or smooth? Solid or patterned? Cotton or acrylic? Pullover or
cardigan? Button-up or zippered? I have no idea, no memory.
So
I conclude my friend was right. Oh I found a resource, but it wasn’t the one I
remembered. The problem I face may be one complicated by old age. In sixty five
years I’ve worn so many sweaters—ones I liked and wish I still had (of course none
would fit, but I’m not talking about that)—so many that now I’m confused enough
that I go looking for resources I know but just don’t recall what decade I had
that box, or in which church I kept those particular boxes, or now even that
there is another box of resources under the bed.
Memories.
I have floods of them and at this point sometimes feel overwhelmed by them. So
last week, when I got tired of wearing to Storytime my four sweat shirts (two
of which appear exactly alike to the casual observer) and my five sweaters (I’m
sure I wanted at least to look different than usual on Monday afternoon in case
my story seemed too much the same old thing), so I remembered a sweater I guess
I don’t even own any more, like the old guy with senile dementia who thinks I’m
his childhood lover or the old gal on pain meds who when I visited her in the
hospital introduced me to her nephew although she and I were the only ones in
the room. And I’m writing this story about memories with the earnest hope I’ll
be able to find it in my computer’s word processor when I need to print it out
and put it in my backpack with the other resources I carry to our storytellers
gathering and remember to put the backpack on my back when I leave the house,
pick it up again when I leave my office, not leave it at the restaurant, and able
to find the story when the session begins.
Of
course, should all that fail—or even if just one cog in the works be forgotten)
I could simply rely on my memory to tell this story or some other one I’ve
forgotten about until this very moment. I guess my friend was right. The real
and essential key to resources is one’s memory.
© 20 November 2012 –Denver  
About
the Author 
  

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

State of Origin, 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. Hoyle, 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.
© 16 August, 2012 – Denver  
About
the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 
Posted on

The City I Left My Heart In, by Phillip Hoyle

I
don’t want to croon this, but “I left my heart in Albuquerque.” At least I feel
that way from time to time. The place was my home for several years, the scene
of important work and changes, and the romantic geographical focus of my
dreams.
In
1990 I left woeful central Missouri with its extreme weather, stressful job,
and joyless culture and headed west on the train to my destination in the high
mountain steppes of New Mexico. The train pulled in five hours late, but my
family was waiting and took me to our new home in the Northeast Heights at the
beautiful Mesa del Oso townhome community. The furniture was already in place set
up by my family who had arrived several days earlier. Folk from the church had
supplied food for the first few days. Their hospitality marked the beginning of
a rich relationship with a congregation and community.
The
church was fine, the first congregation I had ever loved as so many clergy
claim about their churches. Its buildings were Mission and Pueblo Revival styles,
its program diverse, its music-making an important focus, its involvement in
the larger community significant, and its theology and attitude more liberal
than any congregation with which I had worked. I liked the folk who at a
welcoming reception greeted me and my family with Southwestern fare and stood
around talking to us and each other with such intensity and animation as to
seem like the gathering was a cocktail party. These people liked one another. I
liked them, a gathering of professionals from diverse fields. I easily fit in
since, like most of them, I too came from the middle part of the country. Their
liberality seemed to spring from the fact that they had left the Midwest and
set roots far away from the small towns of their origins. They were affable,
tolerant, generous, and inventive. And I liked them and was pleased for years to
work with them in various capacities.
The
city had a different look when contrasted with Kansas, Texas, or Missouri where
I had lived. The look, arising largely from the preponderance of flat-roofed
adobe-style houses, appealed to me. This unusual city sat in the morning shadow
of the Sandia Mountains, sprawling from the edge of the alpine wilderness across
the flats of the Rio Grande River. One of America’s oldest cities, the place enjoyed
a rich history, the diversity of which was reflected in the names of city
streets, last names in the phone directory, and lots of Hispanic and Native
American people living there. My Indian fantasies were constantly fed by
western clothing, Native American jewelry, and tribal pottery. The Arts figure
large in Albuquerque, and I loved living in such an atmosphere. Working just a
couple of blocks from the University of New Mexico, I was surrounded with
creative and bright people in a multi-cultural atmosphere with overtones of
being progressive.
There
weren’t any little cable cars but a huge tram scaled the side of the tallest Sandia
peak. At the top, over 10,000 feet above sea level, I certainly felt halfway to
the stars. From there the city views impressed and the far stretch of mountains
and desert thrilled me. I especially loved the fact that even down below in the
town when one drove the major thoroughfares always there were mountains. To the
west one saw in the mid-ground five cinder cones of ancient volcanoes and in
the distance the snowcapped Mt. Taylor. Driving south one viewed desert
mountains that defined the flow of the Rio Grande. To the north lay high mesas
and distant peaks, including the Sangre de Christos and the northwestern end of
the Sandias. The eastern view featured the massive barrier of the Sandia and
Manzano Mountain ranges.
Old
Town always called to me, especially when I felt frustrated with work or just
plain lazy. I enjoyed walking its unusual streets, looking at its architectural
mix that included the 17th century San Felipe de Neri church, and
strolling through its shops full of curios and artwork, clothing and furniture.
I liked sitting on its plaza and patios sipping a Coke or coffee while watching
the crowds, hearing the variety of languages, and wondering what curiosities
brought people there. In some ways, going to Old Town was like leaving the
country.
My
five years in Albuquerque were rich with relationships. My children enjoyed the
place for several months before they went on their ways into adulthood. Eventually
one returned with his new family! More distant family members visited along
with friends from several states. We kept a very busy house almost like hosts
in a bed and breakfast. We made new friends there among co-workers,
congregational members, and neighbors. Among our closest were white, black,
brown, and red folk (if you will excuse this racial shorthand) who each brought
special gifts of culture and love into our home. We entertained rich and poor,
single and married, troubled and calm, funny and dour. We lived it up with an
array of writers, musicians, dancers, artists, actors, engineers, lawyers,
professors, athletes, teachers, doctors, clergy, plumbers, opera fans, office
managers, and food service providers. We ate a mixed cuisine and danced to a
variety of music. Albuquerque had a lot to offer and we took advantage of its
special blend of entertainments.
In
addition to these qualities and folk, I had my own personal adventures with
friendships, a couple of which became sexualized. They transformed me and
taught me more about myself than I had up to that time realized. They also put a
strain on my marriage. My activities and loves were not overlooked by my wife. We
both learned a lot about me in Albuquerque, and we both have abiding
friendships from there to add to our own continuing post-divorce friendship.
Eventually
we moved, my wife and I, to her family farm to help out with her folks. Then I
applied for another church job, my final one, in another state. I hated leaving
Albuquerque and strongly considered returning there after my marital
separation. Eventually though I realized while the city was wonderful and had
been in some ways the location of my great changes, I needed another even larger
place. So I followed my heart to Denver, Colorado, the place I plan to live out
my years and eventually leave my ashes. 
I don’t know if Albuquerque could ever again be my home, but some winter
days when my knees ache I think I might be more comfortable down there where
the winters are even milder than here.
© 5 January 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