Tag: Writing Your Story

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One Monday Afternoon by Michael King

Almost every Monday afternoon I go to the GLBT Center for the “Telling Your Story” activity. There are from twelve to eighteen men and women who write or tell a story based on a topic. The topics may be very unusual or fairly mundane. I have been involved now for about three and a half years and have found that this program has been for me very therapeutic. When I first started attending it didn’t seem to make a difference what the topic was, some past suppressed painful memory would come to mind and It would be all I could do not to choke up and break down in front of the group. Most were of almost forgotten childhood traumas that I hadn’t thought about for 60 or more years. I wasn’t aware that I had so much baggage but afterwards I felt a relief and a freedom. This process continued for a couple of years but seldom occurs now.

Now I am challenged to write whatever comes to mind without preplanning and I just let the story unfold. I’m getting to know myself more each week and sometimes have fun just being silly with the story. Other times I am exposing myself in ways I wouldn’t have even weeks ago. I’m seldom concerned what other people think which could never have been the case up until a couple of years ago.

There have been Mondays that I recall the dynamics of the group when someone’s story particularly stood out. Cecil’s stories often are very captivating as are numerous others. I think that Cecil with his accent and Donald with his shy approach, Ray’s theatrical voice, numerous others with wit and humor along with the incredible variety that always happens every week makes for one of the best programs I have ever experienced.

For me one Monday afternoon stands out more than all the others. I wrote about an experience that had occurred during the week before. I was told later that stories shouldn’t have a surprise ending. The story was particularly emotional and personal. The topic for that week was “The Interview.” I wrote it in July and later submitted it for the blog. It was put on the blog on November 7th. I have reread it several times and not only do I still get choked up, but I also think it’s the best story I have written. I can still feel the electricity (for lack of a better term) that went through my body and soul as well as the effect on the others in the room when I read the last sentence one Monday afternoon.

Denver, March 2013

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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Writing My Story by Ricky

I suppose that everyone else has some or most of the same impediments to writing their story as I do when writing mine.  Between all authors of course, there are the differences of skill, vocabulary, imagination, and life experiences from which to draw inspiration. I am referring to the hindrances brought about by the so-called “writers block” and “the muse isn’t musing” and a lack of “passion” for the topic.

Only rarely do inspiration and passion combine to motivate me to write on a topic earlier than five to eighteen hours in advance of its presentation to our Telling Your Story group. A procrastinator all my life, (influenced by all those before-the-sun-comes-up farm chores while living with my grandparents) I seem to be my best when faced with a rapidly approaching deadline. This writing is well within those time limits as I began to type it at 8:15 this morning after having it in my subconscious mind for over a week. Even after all that passage of time, no ideas on how to approach the topic for writing presented themselves until Sunday morning between 1:30 and 3:00 AM.

While looking for some photographs I could place into my stories on my blog site to jazz-it-up a bit, I found a box of photos labeled “John & Deborah.” As I perused the contents, I began to travel down the memories invoked by the images. Suddenly, the muse attacked and I knew what to write about this week.

Actually, the writing about part is really the same-old-thing; it’s about me. I am writing about my life’s story not just any story (as most of us do in this group). What makes the topic most difficult for me to write about, is my desire to include my dealings within in the context of how I interpret the meaning of the topic. I guess that is the “Drama King” or ego part of me wanting the story to be about me. But then again, that is the premise of this Telling Your Story group, so maybe I am not being a drama king or an egotist; just following the premise.

Now you might think that I am done with this topic as this is an easy place to stop but you would be wrong. This story is really about the effect the photographs have on me because the muse attacked me with that idea. Therefore, this is the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.

There were several photographs of major interest to me. Especially enjoyable are the ones where either my spouse or I had written some information on the back. Then there were those where nothing is written but I knew all the people and the background indicated the place if not the exact year. Then there are the mysterious ones where again nothing is written on the back and I knew at least one person in the photo but the background does not provide any memory jogs to time or location.

I found three black & white photos of me as a little boy of at various ages. One shows me sitting on a new Schwinn bicycle in front of the Christmas tree. I was five or six-years old.

Another photo shows me standing at the curb waiting for the school bus for my first day of 1st grade at the Hawthorn Christian School.

There are two official school photos of first and second grades. I really cannot tell which is which. There are very slight changes in my facial structure and one slight difference in the school uniform I am wearing, but I am not sure which one shows the younger me although I made an “educated” guess.

1st Grade
2nd Grade

Yet another shows me at 5-years old crouching on the front porch of our home. The expression on my face made me think that I was looking at a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio at 5-years old. In contrast, Donald thinks I look like a young Buddy Ebsen, which I can’t see any resemblance.

I have seen a photo of my mother, stepfather, and my 3-year old brother and sister taken on Easter Sunday in 1962. I know I took that picture but always wondered why there wasn’t one of me. Well, I found my equivalent photo in the box with all the others through which I was rummaging.

Me and my dog, PeeWee.

That photo and another one taken at high school graduation made me re-evaluate my life-long self-image.

HS Graduation

 Even though it will make me appear to be vain and egocentric if not an egomaniac, I must say that depending upon age I have always been very cute or rather handsome. (Perhaps not vain or an egomaniac as this is supposed to be a story about me.) This next part might be though. I was good looking enough that every pedophile within 50-miles of me should have had me on their most wanted list. Why they did not I will never know. Perhaps I was not all that attractive in reality.

So now, you know what struggles I have with writing my story and what goes through my brain as I do it. I hope it is not an ugly or frightful sight. 

©
16 July 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in 1948 in downtown Los Angeles.  Just prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grand-parents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce. 

When reunited with his mother and new stepfather, he lived one summer at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children.  His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.  He says, “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.
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Mayan Pottery by Colin Dale

What can you tell us about Mayan pottery?

Well . . . as a politician might say . . . I’m glad you asked me that question. Before I answer it, though . . . as a politician might say . . . let me say a few words about the question.

The question is a ruse. A feint. A curveball. If I thought for a moment I had to tackle it verbatim–to actually say something about Mayan pottery–I’d be at a total loss. A question like What can you tell me about Mayan pottery? is not meant to send us running to the library. Or to Google. It doesn’t expect we know much at all about the Mayans, let alone about their pottery. I’m reasonably sure the Mayans had pottery, but to come up with a story for today, I didn’t check. For that matter, they may have had Tupperware, but I didn’t check that either.

Yesterday afternoon (right after the Broncos beat the Ravens) I sat down at my laptop but was completely idea-less. All I felt reasonably sure of was . . .

Ruse. Feint. Curveball. That’s what this topic Mayan pottery is. It’s a prompt, that’s all, Mayan pottery, a prompt to get me thinking–to get me thinking creatively. I’m not a Mesoamerican anthropologist, not even an armchair one, so I might as well, I figured, go off on some fun romp with this topic Mayan pottery.

So, after supper last night, Sunday, I started playing around with anagrams. Pretty quickly I discovered that the two words Mayan pottery do not lend themselves to a mother lode of good anagrams. Twelve letters. Six consonants: m, n, p, t (twice), and r. Four vowels: a (twice), o, and e. And y (twice)–a sometimes vowel trapped inside the body of consonant.

Using the twelve letters that make up Mayan pottery, I started recombining them this way and that, hoping I’d find at least one good anagram–and, in doing so, find an idea for today’s story. Before too long I came up with A Petty Romany, so, I thought, I could make up a story about the lack of generosity among gypsies, about how small-minded gypsies can be. But, without being able to do a lot of research–something, at 9 pm last night, I didn’t have time for–I couldn’t possibly today tell you today much about gypsies, about how stingy or small-minded they are.

So, I looked for another anagram. Trying more rearrangements of the twelve letters of Mayan pottery, I came up with Many Are Potty. I thought, well, rather than saying something politically incorrect about gypsies, I could write something about to how addlebrained most of humanity is. If you’re going to be politically incorrect, you might as well spread the insult around.

Now, you might be thinking–as I was last night–finding the word potty inside of Mayan pottery, couldn’t I come up with an anagram that suggests the other definition of the word potty? Believe me, I tried, for a good half hour, but I came up empty handed. It did cross my mind–even though it wasn’t going to help me with a story–that back in the days before flush toilets, Mayan pottery and Mayan potty may have been synonymous. I could imagine a Mayan guest getting up from the dinner table and saying, “Excuse me, but I need to use your pottery.”

By then it was after 10 o’clock and still I had nothing. I was ready to give up on anagrams, but just as I was about to close my laptop and go off to read a good book, I spotted one last anagram–one that seemed almost too perfect for us: a pretty man. My first thought was: a pretty man, this is too good not to use. But Mayan pottery: twelve letters. A Pretty Man: ten letters. I had two unused letters: a vowel: o, and that questioning letter (sometimes a consonant, sometimes a vowel): y. Only two possible arrangements: y-o: yo. A pretty man, yo. Or o-y: oy. Oy, A Pretty Man. No good. I went to bed.

This morning–only a few hours ago–as I was again sitting at my laptop, I got a phone call from a friend who happens to be a poet and she suggested I look at rhymes for inspiration. I said thanks, but as soon as I was back at my laptop I tried thinking of a rhyme for Mayan pottery. Nothing good popped to mind yelling, Me! Use me! But I had told my friend I’d give rhyme a try and so I went to my rhyming dictionary. There were some close rhymes to pottery, but nothing was perfect. Of course, it was now nearing 9 a.m. and I knew if I had any hope of having a story by 1:30, I had to give up on perfection.

Strawberry? Mayan strawberry? Did I want to write about Mayan strawberries? But as I turned the pages of the rhyming dictionary, I quickly discovered that strawberry, along with a few other three syllable berries, was about it for close rhymes. I began to look at some not close or slant rhymes, but to be honest, nothing said Here’s the makings of a story. The best I’d been able to squeeze from the rhyming dictionary were Mayan capillary, Mayan stationery, Mayan dromedary.

So, I junked rhymes. Knowing the morning was wasting, I went back to my first thought: the topic Mayan pottery is just a prompt. I had license to go nuts with it. I didn’t need to find something inside of the prompt, like an anagram or a rhyme. Or tougher still: real Mayan pottery. I could go outside of it. In one online group I’m in, we give each other daily prompts–just as we do with our weekly topics–writing warm-up prompts, often off-the-wall suggestions, weird phrases, nonsense words, journaling caffeine–mind-candy to tempt us out of the comfort zone. A few of these recently have been:

Last Tuesday: The history of whispers.

Last Wednesday: We kept it in the basement.

And just this past Saturday: Peeling an orange.

Coming up tomorrow: What washed up on shore.

I had used this go-nuts license to go outside of the actual words only last Monday with our topic details. Last Monday morning I had been just as lost for an idea, when I found the single word details in a poem by a largely unknown Greek poet–who just happened to be gay–and built a story on that.

But this was today. And it was now mid-morning. I had two, maybe three hours to get something on paper. Yet I was still stuck. Anagrams weren’t going to work. There wasn’t time to research gypsy small-mindedness. Rhyme was no good. Did Mayans even have dromedaries? I began to write just how lost I was feeling–which is what I’ve got here in front of me, what I’m reading. When I typed Did Mayans even have dromedaries? it was, by my stove clock, 9:51. I did a word-count: 1,151 words. That’s a normal length story for me. I realized, at 9:53, that in writing about not being able to come up with an idea for a story, I’d come with one–not only come up with one, I’d written it!
I’d succeeded in talking about something–by not talking about it.

Just like a politician.

And that’s where I began, with the politician and the question: What can you tell us about Mayan pottery? Well . . . as the politician would say . . . I see the red light is flashing, which means I’ve no time to answer. But if you’ll go to my website, you’ll find my 54-point plan on how we need to deal with Mayan pottery.

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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Writing Your Story by Peg

          A few years ago I decided to write my memoir, a project that soon occupied most of my conscious thinking. I would write for hours, often till two or three o’clock the next morning. A friend who was writing a fictional account of her family invited me to join a writing group she liked and for a year or so I attended their twice-monthly meetings. What I learned from those meetings was that my writing was not very good; my writing had no depth and didn’t hold the readers attention. A memoir, I was told is probably the hardest form of writing because it can speak from only one voice, a singular perspective and in a case like mine, a very narrow view of the world.

          I was asked to include the words of observers, the thoughts that friends had of our interactions to include the world we lived in from their perspective as well. But how could I, when this story was of a secret that only I knew and was too confused about to share with anyone, even my very best friend. I had no other perspective from which to write.

          As I continued writing a catharsis settled in, I wrote about things I had long ago put behind me, but as I saw those words appear on the screen, I began to better understand decisions that resulted in missed opportunities, and prevented essential understanding of the world and my place in it. I wrote about someone who was more an observer than participant, a boy who had to watch and learn how to act; I learned to fake my way to get along, without exposing my confusion about much of what was happening around me.

          I read about a small, safe, and risk free life. The world I devised was kept small because I had more control, I could better protect my environment and if I felt that my ignorance regarding what other boys were doing, saying or things they already knew that I didn’t know about would be exposed; I could find some excuse to leave.

          Writing my story opened up many doors, giving me a second look at a life that once seemed to have no place for me, and no one else to connect with in a healthy way. I saw a lonely over protected ignorant boy, the older I got, the more naïve I was socially, the farther I fell behind the other boys the more I secluded myself.

          Leaving High School was a great relief for me, I was able to start over, meet new people, men who were my dad’s age and my new role as their only apprentice gave me a secure position free of competition and an opportunity to express new skills and develop a realistic sense of self that I didn’t have while in school.

          While learning a trade, or wearing the uniform of an airman, and surviving in the macho military environment, forced me grow in spite of a continuing ignorance of what I was supposed to be, and how I was to act. Somehow I found strength, a toughness that I had not known before, I learned that I did have a self after all, that I did have individuality. I created a person who could fit in, some of that new me was genuine; some was a copy of others who I admired.

          I married and together we raised our family, two boys who are and always will be the grandest accomplishment of my life. Seeing both of our sons grown and finding their own passages in life. One raises his own family, while the other explores new knowledge with his research in far away London, each in his own way has given us great satisfaction.

          I wrote a memoir that was much criticized and after many changes, rewrites and re-arranging I wound up with a jumbled up mess. I still have what is left in a large folder, standing in a corner of my closet. When the time is right, I may try to put it together again. Who knows; perhaps someday someone will dust it off and read it.

          That written story has already succeeded in putting me at peace with myself. It helped me understand an uncommon life but hopefully it has been useful in educating some who never understood that Gender is not a nice neat binary package. There are many genders, a hundred different ways to express who we are, and different ways to couple and love one another.

          I long ago departed from religion, but I did learn much from my exposure to it. Something I learned is how many people miss the meaning in a popular prayer. It is not just about receiving gifts from God, but a charge…. To first give love before expecting that gift to be given you. “Thy WILL” (my wish for you) will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. These are directions, not suggestions.

          My own warning to the believers; what your build here, you will be building for your future experience… Willful ignorance? Discrimination? Bigotry? Build it here; know it there.

          All of us; Gay, Lesbian, Trans, Bi or Questioning have a story; I wish we could all shine a bright light into the corners of fear and ignorance that still drives the beliefs of narrow minds. I hope that each story we tell will open at least one heart, one mind that had otherwise been closed to a much wider world.

          Writing my story….I’m glad I did it.

About the Author

I was born and raised in Denver Colorado and I have a divided history, I went to school, learned a trade, served in the military, married and fathered two sons. And I am Trans; I transitioned in 1986 after being fired for “not fitting in to their program.” 18 years ago I fulfilled my lifelong need to shed the package and become female. I continued working in my trade until retiring in 2006. I have been active in PFLAG Denver and served five years on the board of directors, two years as President of our chapter. Living now as a woman has let me be who I always knew I was and I am genuinely happy.