Tag: The Wisdom of LGBT Identity

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The Wisdom of LGBT Identity, by Phillip Hoyle

Cecelia started it when she told me about a book she wanted me to teach. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was no ordinary book but, rather, a spiritual process of self-examination, exercises, and disciplines to help the reader overcome barriers to self-expression as an artist. The content and activities were meant for writers, visual artists, performers, and just about anyone who wanted to explore his or her own artistic bent. I was skeptical, but Cecelia was persistent. Agreeing to share the task of facilitating the thirteen sessions, we settled on an approach that seemed well balanced.

A group of writers, poets, painters, illustrators, sculptors, musicians, and educators—all members of the church where I worked—assembled that first night. They received their copies of the book and listened patiently as we explained the process for both the group and the individual participants. The work focused daily on the infamous “Morning Pages,” periodically on completing short writing and art exercises, and weekly on “Artist Dates.” Oh, we read the book, too, and met each week to share our work, objections, pains, elation, pasts, and dreams.

What Cecelia knew and I hoped would happen did occur. We changed our views of ourselves, our appreciation of one another, and our ability to engage in creative work. Due to our weeks together, our lives have continued to change to this day.

For example, some seventeen years later I am still writing my three hand-written, first-thing-in-the-morning pages. I have been writing and painting on a regular basis. I know others have as well. Since that time I have led several other groups through Cameron’s process, often sharing the leadership with others as Cecelia taught me. People are still changing. But the most unexpected change occurred in me, and it wasn’t directly related to seeing myself as an artist.

The child, the inner child, a concept with which I was familiar, showed up prominently in The Artists Way. I had always been slightly put off by the concept, not because it made no sense, but because I heard it used so trivially so often. I read Cameron critically and did not find her explications very enlightening, but I did respond to her process. As a teacher I had pledged myself to engage fully in the process the book proffered. I answered all the questions the author posed, made all the lists she asked for, and on Artist Dates took my inner child to the museums, through parks, down streets of mansions, to mountain meadows, streams and caves, into paper shops, hardware stores and artist supply companies just like the writer instructed. During our times together I recalled many childhood scenes. Somehow Cameron showed me that my inner child is not just some kind of memory of past events but that I am still all that I have ever been at whatever age: confident or afraid, victorious or at a loss, praised or put down.

So I got reacquainted with my inner child’s hurt even though the idea seemed corny. Then I wrote about my fifth grade teacher who derided my Purple Cow illustration but offered me no help with my drawing. I was embarrassed and convinced I couldn’t draw. Two years later I enrolled in seventh grade woodshop instead of the art class I really wanted. But in shop I discovered I couldn’t do the projects very well not being strong enough to control the awkward tools I had to use. My only really fine work that year was the design I burned in the wooden bookends I made. I wrote about these things in the exercises and in my Morning Pages and grew more and more to love my hurt inner artist child.

The more Artist Dates I went on the more artistic and the more gay I got! That’s when I remembered the comment a gay friend of mine said about my work in religious education. “It’s more like art than education,” he observed. I trusted the judgment of this fellow minister, educator, and artist but felt confused. Looking critically into my own experience I finally realized what was right about his analysis, that my play with religious ideas, symbols, and characters was enacted through art forms. And then I started to wonder if my fifth grade teacher was wrong. I quit planning art processes for children and began doing them for myself.

Cameron’s process expanded. She wanted us to costume on our Artist Dates wearing artsy clothes—surely black outfits with berets and scarves. She encouraged us to hang around with other artists. She suggested we introduce ourselves as artists. In so doing, she opened my imagination by encouraging an identity. In my response I discovered that not only was the artist child wounded in me but the gay child as well.

Then the goofy New Age intruded. Cameron wanted us to make affirmations, to write over and over certain sentences. I did so even though I hated doing it. But how else does one learn? I still write one of these sentences, still slightly irritated because, I’m sure, I hear a writing teacher saying not to write in the first person and because to me the affirmation seems exaggerated, not exactly true. Stifling my objections I write: “I, Phillip Hoyle, am a brilliant and prolific artist.” The first time I encountered it, I simply filled in the blank with my name, first and last, just as she instructed. Then I started writing it at the end of the Morning Pages sometimes as an additional page of mantra-like affirmations, at other times to fill out the third page when I felt like I was running out of time or ideas to write.

What I learned through identifying myself as an artist transformed me. I sought out other artists. I laughed when I dressed in black like our church organist. I continued the artist dates long after the thirteen weeks ended. I continued to write the Morning Pages. And the more I did all these exercises, I found my artistic intertwined with my gay. I was doubly identified. My hurt artist child was always an artist and was always gay. That’s me.

My mantra now included this: I am Phillip Hoyle. I am an artist. AND I am gay. I was always an artist, and I was always gay.

The advantage of this identity? I was able to change my life knowing a community of acceptance, understanding, and living. A way to see myself. A structure of self-acceptance and understanding. A way to find friends. The wisdom of LGBTQA coalition identity. Something more than politics. Rather the creation of a world-view of inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, relationship, and growth within diversity.

© 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.”

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The Wisdom of an LGBT Identity by Phillip Hoyle

Cecelia started it when she told me about a book she wanted me to teach. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was no ordinary book but, rather, a spiritual process of self-examination, exercises, and disciplines to help the reader overcome barriers to self-expression as an artist. The content and activities were meant for writers, visual artists, performers, and just about anyone who wanted to explore his or her own artistic bent. I was skeptical, but Cecelia was persistent. Agreeing to share the task of facilitating the thirteen sessions, we settled on an approach that seemed well balanced.

A group of writers, poets, painters, illustrators, sculptors, musicians, and educators—all members of the church where I worked—assembled that first night. They received their copies of the book and listened patiently as we explained the process for both the group and the individual participants. The work focused daily on the infamous “Morning Pages,” periodically on completing short writing and art exercises, and weekly on “Artist Dates.” Oh, we read the book, too, and met each week to share our work, objections, pains, elation, pasts, and dreams.

What Cecelia knew and I hoped would happen did occur. We changed our views of ourselves, our appreciation of one another, and our ability to engage in creative work. Due to our weeks together, our lives have continued to change to this day.

For example, some seventeen years later I am still writing my three hand-written, first-thing-in-the-morning pages. I have been writing and painting on a regular basis. I know others have as well. Since that time I have led several other groups through Cameron’s process, often sharing the leadership with others as Cecelia taught me. People are still changing. But the most unexpected change occurred in me, and it wasn’t directly related to seeing myself as an artist.

The child, the inner child, a concept with which I was familiar, showed up prominently in The Artist’s Way. I had always been slightly put off by the concept, not because it made no sense, but because I heard it used so trivially so often. I read Cameron critically and did not find her explications very enlightening, but I did respond to her process. As a teacher I had pledged myself to engage fully in the process the book proffered. I answered all the questions the author posed, made all the lists she asked for, and on Artist Dates took my inner child to the museums, through parks, down streets of mansions, to mountain meadows, streams and caves, into paper shops, hardware stores and artist supply companies just like the writer instructed. During our times together I recalled many childhood scenes. Somehow Cameron showed me that my inner child is not just some kind of memory of past events but that I am still all that I have ever been at whatever age: confident or afraid, victorious or at a loss, praised or put down.

So I got reacquainted with my inner child’s hurt even though the idea seemed corny. Then I wrote about my fifth grade teacher who derided my Purple Cow illustration but offered me no help with my drawing. I was embarrassed and convinced I couldn’t draw. Two years later I enrolled in seventh grade woodshop instead of the art class I really wanted. But in shop I discovered I couldn’t do the projects very well not being strong enough to control the awkward tools I had to use. My only really fine work that year was the design I burned in the wooden bookends I made. I wrote about these things in the exercises and in my Morning Pages and grew more and more to love my hurt inner artist child.

The more Artist Dates I went on the more artistic and the more gay I got! That’s when I remembered the comment a gay friend of mine said about my work in religious education. “It’s more like art than education,” he observed. I trusted the judgment of this fellow minister, educator, and artist but felt confused. Looking critically into my own experience I finally I realized what was right about his analysis, that my play with religious ideas, symbols, and characters was enacted through art forms. And then I started to wonder if my fifth grade teacher was wrong. I quit planning art processes for children and began doing them for myself.

Cameron’s process expanded. She wanted us to costume on our Artist Dates wearing artsy clothes—surely black outfits with berets and scarves. She encouraged us to hang around with other artists. She suggested we introduce ourselves as artists. In so doing, she opened my imagination by encouraging an identity. In my response I discovered that not only was the artist child wounded in me but the gay child as well.

Then the goofy New Age intruded. Cameron wanted us to make affirmations, to write over and over certain sentences. I did so even though I hated doing it. But how else does one learn? I still write one of these sentences, still slightly irritated because, I’m sure, I hear a writing teacher telling me not to write in the first person and because to me the affirmation seems exaggerated, not exactly true. Stifling my objections I write: “I, Phillip Hoyle, am a brilliant and prolific artist.” The first time I encountered it, I simply filled in the blank with my name, first and last, just as she instructed. Then I started writing it at the end of the Morning Pages sometimes as an additional page of mantra-like affirmations, at other times to fill out the third page when I felt like I was running out of time or ideas to write.

What I learned through identifying myself as an artist transformed me. I sought out other artists. I laughed when I dressed in black like our church organist. I continued the artist dates long after the thirteen weeks ended. I continued to write the Morning Pages. And the more I did all these exercises, I found my artistic intertwined with my gay. I was doubly identified. My hurt artist child was always an artist and was always gay. That’s me. 


My mantra now included this: I am Phillip Hoyle. I am an artist. AND I am gay. I was always an artist, and I was always gay.

The advantage of this identity? I was able to change my life knowing a community of acceptance, understanding, and living. A way to see myself. A structure of self-acceptance and understanding. A way to find friends. The wisdom of LGBTQA coalition identity. Something more than politics. Rather the creation of a world-view of inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, relationship, and growth within diversity.

© 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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The Wisdom of LGBT Identity by Ricky

Why should we expect any kind of “wisdom” from anyone who self-identifies as a member of the LGBT community, considering the extreme persecution of male homosexuals over the past few thousand years? It just does not seem very wise to risk public ridicule or hatred. Yet, over the centuries, thousands of men taken in the act of sodomy were/are punished in various ways (depending upon the society involved and the era of the occurrence). Punishments commonly used were death (by hanging, downing, decapitation, and burning), amputation of genitals, life imprisonment, pillorying, banishment, self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution, and ostracism.

It has been said, that “bisexuality” itself is but one stigmata of genius; which in itself is an interesting observation considering all the famous “genius” level homosexual men that have lived and advanced science, art, and literature over the centuries. Does it not follow then that the stigmata of non-bisexual lesbians and gays is “super genius?” Of course, many of us “geniuses” never fully develop our gifts, talents, and genius abilities, which appears to show a lack of wisdom.

In recently past centuries, homosexual men of great gifts and talents have through their poetry wrought great changes in public attitudes and social norms over time.

Shakespeare, Byron, Shelly, and others wrote tender poems of love to male youths disguised as sonnets and verse to women, and our present culture would be poorer, had they not been written even though disguised as they were. Thomas Mann’s work of Death in Venice is an example of how one can in slow stages fall in love with the natural beauty of a youth of the same sex. In all these examples, which are but a few of hundreds, the common denominator is “love.”

The slow outing of “love” between people regardless of sexual orientation is what over time has changed society’s view of gay relationships; views which ultimately forced the government out of bedrooms. England did not decriminalize homosexuality until 1967. For the one hundred years before that date, conviction of sodomy carried a life sentence and prior to that, a death sentence since 1533.

When Byron began studying the Greek classics, Plato’s writings were not available in his school. Plato’s Symposium was so full of homosexual content (labeled Greek Love) that homophobic England would not allow it taught to English schoolboys so as not to corrupt them. When other English scholars decided to translate Plato, they changed the text where they needed to, replacing male references to either female or “friend” or “servant,” etc. to hide the truth; a process called bowdlerization (a new word for me). At one point in his life, Shelly translated the “Symposium” himself, but so great was the homophobia remaining in England, that even he “toned down” the references to avoid public outrage. Sadly, after his death, the publisher and Shelly’s widow made changes that are even more egregious; the translation not published until 150 years after Shelly’s death; long after the need for “toning down the references” was necessary.

Since extreme homophobia existed in England to the point that England’s poets disguised the male object of their love poems as female and classic works of philosophy were deliberately “sanitized”, have you ever wondered if the King James Bible translation team (using original documents in Greek) altered their translation of the Bible to inflame or conform to society’s view (the king’s view) of homosexual behavior?

With extreme homophobia and persecution of the previous centuries now behind, perhaps the wisest thing about the LGBT identity is what continues to evolve from the Stonewall Riots; acceptance and recognition that love between two people is a beautiful thing and is no one else’s business or legitimate concern. Acceptance and recognition are the unanticipated consequences of bi and gay poets of past centuries openly expressing their love for another male in the only way available to them; camouflaged as love for a woman.

Sometimes, fear of negative consequences can cause one to make wise choices that still carry one’s message but generate praise.

© 3 December
2012


About the Author



I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.


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The Wisdom of LGBT Identity by Michael King

Wisdom seems so often be something we notice when we look back on where we’ve been and compare it with where we are now. For me it now seems that had I made different choices earlier in my life I would have taken different paths and would have lived a very different life. Where I find myself now is probably in the best place I could be. And short of winning the lottery and having lots of money I could ask for nothing more than the life that I now live.

I have it all, a loving and totally accepting family, the most kind and loving companion and lover, opportunities to write, paint, travel, cook and explore the antique and junk shops. My health is good. I have many wonderful friends and am constantly involved in activities. I have peace of mind and feel blessed. I am thankful.

As my life unfolded I guess that I was always moving closer to having a gay identity, however I felt there was no need to identify myself as gay until I actually had a gay lover. If someone had come into my life earlier that I loved, I’m sure that I would have told the whole world. I had experiences with both men and women and decided that it was the person, not the plumbing that mattered. I just didn’t meet anyone with whom we had a mutual loving relationship until I was seventy.

When I finally had my first boyfriend, he was introduced to my family and I let everyone I saw know that I was in love. Our relationship lasted all of two months. I was still glad that I was identifying as a gay man and even though my relationship with Sheldon didn’t work out, I gained so much from the experience.

My youngest daughter describes the way I live my life as authentic. I am now in the best place that I’ve ever been and I see the wisdom of being the best me that I can be which finally includes being a flaming queen, free to be me in any way that feels right knowing how much I am blessed.

In reflection, the path that I rather blindly followed was probably the wisest. Everything came together as I matured step by step. I was following my path not knowing where it would lead. I tried to sincerely live each day as honestly and as well as I knew how. I felt I was getting direction and guidance although it often seemed to take a long, long time.

Perhaps the key to wisdom is to look inside, follow that gut feeling and trust that eventually everything will work out and come together while growing and watching the almost magic of life unfold.

I feel closer to the truth, the goodness and the love that comes from the inner awareness of my connectedness with being on an adventure into eternity. And now as a gay guy who is so happy to be me.

© 3 December 2012




About the Author



I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Details by Colin Dale

The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood
that I’ve seen and walked through years on end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.
     
      Lady Luck.  Serendipity.  Fluke.  Whatever you want to call it, when I found my idea for today’s story it was a remarkable moment.  And thank god I sat down to look for something a few days ago and didn’t do what I usually do and wait until Monday morning.  Looking for an idea, I checked my Bartlett’s, but was unprepared for the coincidence–the GLBT coincidence–I’d find.
     
      Under details, Bartlett’s had only two citations: the first, God is in the details, by Anonymous, and the 5-line poem with its: I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,/with so many incidents, so many details.
     
      The poet is gay icon Constantine Cavafy, known today in GLBT circles for his homoerotic poetry.  To be fair, though, only a portion of Cavafy’s work is homoerotic.   Virtually unpublished in his lifetime, Cavafy is today regarded as one of the great European poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
     
      Constantine Cavafy died in 1933 at the age of 70.   Born to Greek parents in the Egyptian port-city of Alexandria, Cavafy lived the entirety of his life closeted.  His poetry was introduced to the English-speaking world by his friend and then equally closeted writer E.M. Forster.  Forster, though, who died in 1970 at 91, managed in his last years to emerge some from the closet.  Cavafy, dying 1933, wasn’t so lucky.
     
      A prolific writer, Cavafy drew heavily from classical history, Greek and Hellenistic.  History, and Cavafy’s home Alexandria with its own rich history, serve as metaphor for the whole of the human experience.
     
      First this–to make today seem a little less like a grad seminar in poetry:
     
It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust –
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.
     
      This is not Cavafy.  This is another of my heroes: Leonard Cohen.  Cohen transformed Cavafy’s poem, The God Abandons Antony, into a somewhat autobiographical love song, changing Alexandria to Alexandra.  In the Cavafy poem …
       
      Anthony is Marc Antony, Cleopatra’s lover. The story goes when Alexandria was besieged, the night before the city fell, Antony dreamed he heard an invisible troupe leaving the city.  He awoke the next morning to find that his soldiers had in fact deserted him–which Antony took to mean even the god Dionysus, his protector, had abandoned him.  The poem has many layers of meaning beyond the historical.   Most say it’s about facing up to great loss: lost loves, lost dreams, lost opportunities–ultimately, of course, life itself.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with cowardly pleas and protests;
listen–as a last pleasure–to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
     
      I’d wondered whether a poetry sampler was appropriate stuff for Storytellers.  It’s hardly run-of-the-mill memoir (“Then in 1988 this happened to me … “), but as a taste of some of the poetry I like, it qualifies, I think, as memoir-light.
     
      But, you’re thinking, what about those homoerotic poems?  I’ll give you a sample of two of Cavafy’s shorter homoerotic poems.    Now, neither one is going to make you go, Oh my God how could someone write that? –but consider when these were written.  Cavafy’s homoerotic poems, mild as they may seem to us today, do evoke the stifling repression that made emotional cripples of men like Cavafy and Forster.

He lost him completely. And he now tries to find
his lips in the lips of each new lover,
he tries in the union with each new lover
to convince himself that it’s the same young man,
that it’s to him he gives himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
He wanted, his lover said, to save himself
from the tainted, unhealthy form of sexual pleasure,
the tainted, shameful form of sexual pleasure.
There was still time, he said, to save himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
Through fantasy, through hallucination,
he tries to find his lips in the lips of other young men,
he longs to feel his kind of love once more.

      Tame, no, by what we’re used to?  But the works of kindred spirits like those of Constantine Cavafy and E.M. Forster–written only a few generations ago–remind us of how much we’ve to be thankful for today.
     
      That last poem is called In Despair.  This:
     
At the Next Table

He must be barely twenty-two years old—
yet I’m certain that almost that many years ago
I enjoyed the very same body.

It isn’t erotic fever at all.
And I’ve been in the casino for a few minutes only,
so I haven’t had time to drink a great deal.
I enjoyed that very same body.

And if I don’t remember where, this one lapse of memory
doesn’t mean a thing.

There, now that he’s sitting down at the next table,
I recognize every motion he makes—and under his clothes
I see again those beloved naked limbs.
     
      I’ll end with a cut of one of Cavafy’s best-known poems Ithaka.  You can find a YouTube video of Sean Connery reading Ithaka.  “Since Homer’s Odyssey . . . [and I shoplifted this from a Cavafy website] . . . Since Homer’s Odyssey, the island, Ithaca, symbolizes the destination of a long journey, the supreme aim that every man tries to fulfill all his life long . . . “
     
As you set out for Ithaka
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensation
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so that you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would have not set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

About the Author

Colin Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center. Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre. Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center. For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel, and memoir.

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The Wisdom of LGBT Identity (Living Outside the Box) by Nicholas

  Gay is code. The word “gay” was used by generations of gay men to refer to a lot more than a state of happiness. One could say one had been to a gay party over the weekend and most co-workers would assume it was a pleasant get together while some would know the fuller and more specific meaning. Not only was this clever code, it denoted that you were a clever person—smart, witty and gay—and you went to interesting, unusual, maybe ever artful, parties. Gay set you apart not only as a sexual minority but as a lively, quick-witted, sophisticated individual.

  It’s a good thing to be born outside the box or to be thrown outside the box and have to imagine your own life because you have no standard guideposts to lean on. That, to me, is the heart of the wisdom of being L, G, B and T. Imagination is required for each of those letters. And your reward for each imaginative step you take is that you are blessed with more imagination. Gay liberation simply took that quality beyond cocktail hour. Being gay means one accumulates imagination, one develops the colorful side of the brain—right, left or both, maybe. You just make it up as you go along.

So, here are some points I have learned as I have made it up and watched others make it up as we go along.

        1.) Life is about more than money in this money obsessed culture. Life choices are not always made just on the basis of good career moves (although coming out these days can be a good career move). There are other values to live by, like integrity, satisfaction, wit, intelligence, selfhood, fun.

        2.) Life is not always fun. Sometimes you have to upset the apple cart and put yourself and those you love through some stress. The road to happiness can have some bumps along the way but happiness is still to be found at the end of the journey.

        3.) Life is not always fun, part 2. There are consequences. You take care of those you partied with or marched with or worked out your identity with. You do not abandon the needy, the sick and the dying.

        4.) Still, however, when you’re having fun, really do it. Don’t just have fun, make it fabulous fun. You want to give—or go to—parties that will become legends.

        5.) Question authority, all authority, especially the highest authorities. Defy standards everyday—it is, after all, the little things that count. Most lives aren’t lived in historical epochs but on a day-by-day basis with daily resistance and daily creativity.

        6.) Life is not all about just being young. As we grow older, we grow richer in experience and feeling. Having re-invented youth and masculinity, having restored a number of city neighborhoods, having shown America another model for compassionate, community-based health care support, we are now busy re-defining old age.

        Yes, there’s still that urge for the fabulous. There won’t be pastels in any nursing home I go to.

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.