LGBTQ+

DOUBLE TROUBLE
boomer memoir

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Late in the summer of 1976, I stood on the landing outside of my building while the telephone rang and rang in my back-garden apartment. As soon as the front…

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902 373 My Messy Ol' Gay Life
Potential Human
Spirituality

Potential Human

When I arrived in California in 1973 at the height of the gay liberation movement, many San Franciscans were turning their attention inward as a robust Human Potential Movement became the newest revolution to sweep through the Bay Area.

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Too Much Me
Uncategorized

Too Much Me

A red bandana held my long black hair away from my soggy face as I hurried to finish my shift. I couldn’t wait to get to Potpourri, a nearby gay bar, to reunite with Colton.

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Twilight of Sundown Soldier
Dysfunctional Family Musing

Twilight of Sundown Soldier

“Dad’s got cancer.” Barbie’s voice quivered between fear and indignation.

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Green
christmas Spirituality

Green

When the holidays rolled around that year, I was a thirty-year old, sober gay man living alone in a studio apartment perched on top of a Victorian in Presidio Heights. My picture window faced westward and looked onto a teepee of green lights atop the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Building about a half-mile away.

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Three Dollar Bill
Uncategorized

Three Dollar Bill

After suppressed memories of my father surfaced a few years ago, I began to wonder if PTSD was the only thing that he brought back with him from the war.

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512 213 My Messy Ol' Gay Life
COMING UP … COMING OUT
LGBTQ+ Sexuality

COMING UP … COMING OUT

This is the story of my coming out. In telling it, I have tried to recreate the voice of the eighteen-year-old Ralph whose formative years were steeped in an alcoholic home. Although I was insecure and scared, I projected a cocky, superior persona to the world. Before college, I had successfully avoided facing difficult feelings and, despite my cynicism, I was a romantic at heart.

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IN SPIRIT
Musing Sexuality Spirituality

IN SPIRIT

Whenever Easter comes along, my thoughts return to my spiritual upbringing, mainly how lucky I was to be a kid who didn’t have religion rammed down his throat by his family, or by his church.

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Tragedy Queen
Uncategorized

Tragedy Queen

Unlike Willy and Sandy, my parents’ friend Brodrick Westcott did not live in the closet because he was yanked out of it. During a routine police raid of the public men’s rooms in a park in St. Louis, he was discovered having man-on-man sex, arrested and thrown in jail under the prevailing sodomy laws. Word of his transgression spread quickly among his peers in the elite West County suburbs and, within a short time, he lost his his marriage, his child, his livelihood, his friends, his reputation and eventually his life.

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Gorgeous
story

Gorgeous

My generation of gay men came grew up in a time devoid of any context for being gay. Long before puberty, I sensed something different inside of me, but I had no visual models to provide a framework or mentors to give me validation for this feeling.

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Why I Write
Uncategorized

Why I Write

News Flash: Loneliness is at epidemic levels in the United States. In today’s divided, tribal environment, it is easy to forget that finding and joining one’s tribe has not always been a bad thing. It has been especially important for the gay men and women of my Boomer generation. Real connection with previously invisible LGBTQ people has been a powerful antidote to isolation and loneliness over the decades.

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