RFD 197 Spring 2024

Number 197

Issue 198 / Summer 2024

TRAVEL & COMMUNITY

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2024

www.rfdmag.org/upload

Summer means travel. Travel originally came from “travail,” to struggle. As we enter into summer time, we’re asking you, dear reader, to look at your travel through community. As you head off to your dream vacation, or your home away from home, or your sexy snuggle zone, ponder how community is created over distance and how we come together, close differences and distances to be in community together.

Packing up for a journey means choosing to leave things behind, pack new items, unravel new outfits and places for ourselves as well as bringing along that piece of vintage that everyone will ogle over. How do we bring these experiences into our sense of building and being in community?

We’re as ever interested in how you, our readers, interact with your world, places you are traveling to— what challenges did you face, what gifts did you bring, what new dreams did you pick up along the way? Part of being alive is lurking into our experience to find the best postcard from the trip. Tell us, show us, your favorite postcards from your journey into creating community.

We all come from diverse places and experiences and we welcome hearing from everyone. We also welcome hearing about experiences in other parts of the world, from other voices that you know might want to be heard on our pages as well as you perhaps reflecting on what you learned from being a traveler.

We’re also happy to hear about the traveling that is happening in our own backyards, places that need to be explored more fully, a community story that needs an update for our readers and to also reflect how the challenges to community have been fruitful, evocative and ripe for change.

Photo by Thirdman from Pexels

Issue 199* / Fall 2024

Repairs Finally Done

FIFTY YEARS

Submission Deadline: August 15, 2024

www.rfdmag.org/upload

Between the Lines

In the autumn of 1974 RFD launched from Iowa, setting us on a journey from one coast to the next over the next fifty years. We’re asking you dear readers, writers and artists who may have contributed, read or were amused, informed or evoked by something on our pages these past fifty years to consider sending in your reflections, responses and appreciation for RFD, it’s readership and help us celebrate what makes RFD special for you.

Each issue of RFD is filled with your contributions, ideas and spirit. We appreciate your engaging with our readers and in this issue we tackle the idea of doing it for yourself. Facing a project, acquiring life skills, knowing where you belong, all take us to believing in your own innate skill to survive, be, and share with others.

Our lovely readers have as usual graced us with their experiences from bee keeping, picking up life skills from family, the possibility of a Tinseltown career, using art as a way into one’s desires, finding one’s gay god, letting go of inner shame, and many wonderful images that evoke self-reliance and tending one’s self, the Earth and others.

As always we welcome your ideas for future themes, and as ever we celebrate all of our readers on their journey. Please consider sharing and shaping the experience.

If you yourself sent in your first poem, you attended a gathering after seeing a listing, or you helped in crafting RFD please send in your memories. If you know someone who helped shape RFD who is no longer with us please share their story.

As we enter into our fifth decade, we warmly appreciate all of the hands and hearts that helped RFD itself, a true Do-It-Yourself enterprise sustain and survive all these years!

If you have any interest in helping RFD celebrate it’s five decades and are interested in helping delve into our back issues for a anniversary book, please be in touch with Rosie (rosie@ rfdmag.org) to plug in to the small dedicated crew working on that project.

We’d also love to hear about how RFD shifted your approach to the gay community over the years. What part of RFD’s initial “back to the land” ethos sticks with you and how has its attempts to bridge divides and explore commonalities and celebrate difference matters to you as we take in five decades together.

*Since 1974, RFD missed production of just one issue, which is why the 50th anniversary issue is number 199 rather than number 200.

—the RFD Collective

Cover of the first issue of RFD.

Submission Deadlines

Summer–May 15, 2024

Fall–August 15, 2024

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. To read online visit www.issuu.com/rfmag.org. Visual Contributors Inside This Issue Artwork not directly associated with an article. Back Cover "DIY!" by Denison Beach Irina Tall ................................

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD Press, PMB 329, 351

Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press, Inc., with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive RFD four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Northampton, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press, Inc. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. Production

Come visit us at the Rainbow Book Fair, April 20, from noon to 6 pm at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011. Rosie will be tabling with recent issues of RFD and copies of our recent books (below). For more info visit www.rainbowbookfair.com.

https://a.co/d/2ePmYo6

The drawings and written material for this book were produced during the years when Jackson was a gay activist concerned with the growing AIDS epidemic. Sparked by the fear of contracting AIDS, he sought help from a Jungian trained therapist. He hopes the drawings encourage the creative exploration of fear and anxiety, and that this book improves understanding the complexities of dreams and imagination.

Available now from Amazon: https://a.co/d/6J7uoHG

Michael Mason was a poet, a gay man, and a Radical Faerie. Born in 1954 in the mountains of North Carolina, he came of age in the 1970s, in the midst of the exciting first decade of what was then called “gay liberation” (now the LGBTQ movement). This volume collects his poetry and writings, from a life lived to the fullest. Curated by Charles Simpson.

Gathering Guide 2024

Below you’ll find our annual gathering guide for the year. We’ve tried to include all of the listings that we available before press time. Our humble thanks to each community and sanctuary which has provided information about their events. We especially want to thank www.radfae.org for it’s centralized listings of most gatherings on this list.

We urge all readers to check the websites and contact each community beforehand to get details and confirm dates. A few communities didn’t have updated information on their websites—contact them directly for gathering information.

Amber Fox, McDonald’s Corner ON, Canada - www.akaamberfox.ca

California Community of Men - www.calcommen.com

Faerie Camp Destiny, Grafton VT - www.faeriecampdestiny.org

Faerieland – New South Wales, Australia - faerieland.org

Kawashaway Sanctuary – Northern MN - www.kawashaway.org

Short Mt. Sanctuary, Liberty TN - www.radfae.org/sms

Zuni Mountain Sanctuary, Ramah NM - www.zms.org

Faerie Sex Magick – www.faeriesexmagick.org

Greenwich, NY www.eastonmountain.org/events/onsite Beltane Gathering Apr

5 Ternuay-Melay-et-St-Hilaire, France www.folleterre.org/ Beltane Gathering Apr 27-May 4 Wolf Creek, OR www.nomenus.org/calendar-2/ Fantasy Spring Festival

Apr 27-May 12 France fanfarm.org/english

Beltane Gathering May 7-17 Glastonbury, England albionfaeries.org.uk/gatherings/ Butch Palace Work Gathering

May 7-17 Ternuay-Melay-et-St-Hilaire, France www.folleterre.org/ Gay Spirit Visions Spring Retreat

May 10-12 Highlands, NC gayspiritvisions.org/ Utah Dance

May 17-19 Utah danceforallpeople.com/calendar/ Spring Fae Gathering

May 17-20 Vancouver, BC bcradfae.ca/

2025 Gatherings

In Wolf Creek / Figure with Bathers by Adam Kuby.

The Bee Gum

by David Milley

Warren barges in from the back yard. Its storm window just removed, the screen door slams. I look up from my keyboard. “Fetch your camera!” he says, “Come see this!” My thought interrupted, I sigh, then smile: “Gimme a minute, I need shoes.”

I get up and pull a pair of socks out of the dryer. I snag my sneakers on the way back to the living room, where I sit and bend first my left knee, then my right, to apply sock and then shoe to each foot. I stand and walk over to the shelf with the camera, but with another careless slam, Warren is already outside again.

Wandering out back, camera in hand, I walk past the greenhouse.. I find Warren standing beneath the old cedar tree that was already enormous when we moved here forty years ago. He beckons me closer, then, with his left hand shading his eyes, he points with his right to the top of the tree. Dutifully, I lift the camera and hit maximum zoom. Following his pointed finger, I find the swarm of honeybees nestled in the top branches, too far away to hear their buzz.

a freezer there, stocked from his garden and my quarterly run to the butcher.

This year, six sets of wooden boxes stand a few feet outside the barn door, set two per hive on wooden pallets. Each hive has a deep super on the bottom, a box nearly ten inches high, about nineteen inches long and sixteen inches wide – the actual measurements are more precise than that. They must always be correct, since the hives are sized from the inside out, as multiples of a honeybee’s body and the spaces the bees need for moving about inside the hive. Four of the hives have two shorter boxes on top, the honey supers that contain the frames of wax the beekeeper will extract. One hive has a stack of three shallow supers; the last towers over the others, with six. This fall, Warren will extract enough honey to last the year, and enough more to brew mead over the winter. *

“Do you plan to hive ‘em?” I rub my beard, wondering just how he’d accomplish it.

“No. They’re too high up to catch.” * * *

Warren still keeps a few hives at the back end of our yard, by the shed he built there in the 1990s. The size of a small house, Warren built it, complete with foundation, floor, attic, and electricity, even a room for extracting honey, all sided in forest green. He is proud of his shed, calls it “the barn.” Warren’s barn serves as machine shop, cold cellar, storage unit, and hideaway. There’s a feeding station for our yard cat, any strays looking for a handout, and the occasional opossum, skunk or raccoon. He keeps

For nearly twenty years after the mid-1970s, honeybees were a good business. Warren started then, just before we met, with a couple of hives he bought from one of his firewood customers. Year by year, he built up his bee yards, while he kept making his living delivering cord wood around southern New Jersey, while he also cooked at the Alpine, a local restaurant and bar. With time, he was able to put his apron away, then his chainsaw.

By the end of the 1980s, Warren had built his stock up to more than two hundred hives, spread among four different bee yards: one in the middle of a blueberry plantation, two beside farmers’ fields to fertilize crops, and one at his parents’ house near the highway and the pine woods and all the wildflowers growing there. Warren’s father spent his final years selling honey on commission out of their front yard.

But cheap imports from overseas drove down the price of honey, and waves of new, invasive insect pests and diseases made keeping honeybees alive a harder proposition and more expensive. By the turn of the century, Warren was putting more into keeping the hives going than he cleared. Warren’s father died; so did the owner of the blueberry plantation and one of the farmers. Warren drew his stock down to a single bee yard at his Mom’s house and, when she passed away, Warren, by then sixty years old himself, retired. He stacked the dozens of remaining bee boxes into one end of the honey room in his barn.

In the summer of 1978, beginning our second year together, we moved into our first apartment in Philadelphia. Every day, Warren drove over the Walt Whitman Bridge, back to his work in south Jersey. He spent as much time as he could roaming the woods, looking up into the air for feral honeybees, down at the ground for edible mushrooms and casting his gaze about for anything he could gather to use or sell.

One day, scouting for feral swarms by a dusty access road few miles down the highway from his

folks’ place, he spotted bees flying in and out of a knothole about ten feet off the ground, in the side of a hollowed-out white oak.

Warren had hived swarms that were hanging off tree limbs before, so he had the equipment ready in the cab of his truck: an old sheet to cover the ground, a small hive full of honeycomb to set on the sheet to welcome them, and his bee smoker to discourage stinging. As always, he had his chainsaw with him, so if the swarm was just beyond reach, he could cut a pole to shake them off their branch. He even carried a wheel cover and hammer he would bang like a gong to induce a high-hanging swarm to drop. When a swarm fell onto the hive, he would check to make sure they were pointing their bodies to the queen inside, then he’d pump smoke over them, and put the lid on the box. He’d let his new hive rest a while before tacking a piece of screen across the entrance. He always trucked his new bees off to his one of his bee yards to make their home and honey there.

However, this was Warren’s first chance at getting an actual bee gum, honeybees in their natural hive in a hollow tree. He drove the truck back to his folks’ place for more supplies, making sure he had

Warren Davy shows off a full frame of honeycomb, fresh from the hive, before he uncaps the combs and extracts the honey. Photo courtesy author.

plenty of pine straw for his smoker. Swarms hanging on a branch have stuffed themselves with honey and so are docile, but honeybees will defend their hive. He drove back to his find.

Once in the woods again, he donned his widebrimmed, veiled bee hat. He felled the tree in his usual way for cutting cord wood, except he made his felling cut higher than he normally did, not near the ground, but a little less than waist high. Once the tree was on the ground, instead of cutting it into short lengths, he sliced the log toward the root end about a foot from the bee hole. He made another cut about two feet on the other side, making sure he was cutting well above where he figured what would be the top part of the hollow. A small hole appeared under this second cut.

With the midsection of the tree separated from the rest, he nailed a square piece of plywood to the root end of his bee gum. He nailed a piece of window screen across the small hole that had appeared at the other end and another over the bee’s entrance on the side. With furious honeybees trying their best to sting him, Warren pushed the plywood end of the bee gum against the stump. Working from the other end, he lifted, first with his arm, then his shoulder, until the plywood end of the bee

gum was resting on the stump. Grabbing his saw, he felled a small hickory tree – hickory is tough – and fashioned it into a pole more than a dozen feet long and three inches thick, which he propped up on a tree nearby. He removed the screen from the bees’ entrance on the side.

Warren collected his gear and drove out of the woods, leaving the gum still perched on the stump, to let all the bees that were still out foraging find their way back home. Parking his truck at his parents’ house, he drove his white Volkswagen back to our apartment in the city.

For the next three nights, when he came home, Warren told me all about the bee gum, and how lucky a thing it was to find, and how rare, and how much I would enjoy helping him collect it. Since I’d helped Warren cutting wood the winter before, I got the message. Warren needed me to lug something heavy.

The afternoon of the retrieval, he drove us down to his parents’ house, about a mile away from the woods, stopping to get a six-pack of Schmidt’s along the way. We waited on the bench in his folks’ front yard until dusk. We drank one beer each, then another. Clearly, Warren did not want me to back out of this project.

When sunset fell, Warren drove, not his truck,

Warren checks his new charges to make sure they're accepting their new home, a small hive filled with honeycomb to tempt them inside. Photo courtesy author.

but the VW bug, down the highway to the access road that led to his find. “It’ll be easier to load the bees into,” he assured me. When we got there, he parked the car on an access road well off the highway, but it was still a good hundred feet through the woods to the bees. I donned Warren’s bee suit, his white coveralls, hat and veil. I wrapped the long string at the bottom of the veil all the way around my neck, pulled it tight, and Warren tied a snug bow underneath my chin. I unrolled the cuffs of the coveralls to their full length and pulled the tops of my socks up over them. Warren put on a spare hat and veil he’d pulled together and he buttoned his red flannel shirt tight at the wrists and neck. We both pulled on work gloves. I picked my sweaty way through the underbrush, regretting the beer.

Once at the stump, I stood well back. I held the flashlight, while Warren used his bellows to smoke the bees to keep them quiet, and then tacked a small piece of screen over the hole to keep the bees inside. He wrapped rope around the bottom end of the log near the plywood, tied it tight, then made a secure loop about a foot across at that end. He brought the loose end of the rope up to the top and did the same there. He called me over, and together, we tilted the bee gum, then shouldered it onto the ground with the loops sticking up. I watched as he slid the hickory pole through the loops and beckoned for me to pick up one end.

Hickory wood is, indeed, tough and it didn’t break under the weight. But when wood is green, it’s flexible, so the sling bowed when we lifted it. I’m tall enough that I could rest my end on my shoulder, but Warren had to carry his end overhead. He led the way. Mighty hunters carrying our trophy back to camp, we stumbled to the car in the dark woods, scraping the log against the ground. Angry bees behind their screens buzzed displeasure with every misstep.

Warren’s Volkswagen was a mighty good car, but it was compact. Warren never had any trouble getting in and out of it, but I always had to bend myself into it like a paper clip. So, when he opened the trunk of the car – which, for VWs, was in the front – I looked at the bee gum, then at the trunk, then back at the gum. “It’ll fit,” he offered. I said nothing, but stooped alongside him and together we lifted the log and, with some swearing and more sweating, stuffed it into the trunk, plywood end first.

It didn’t fit, of course. Warren grabbed a length of rope, and tied the hood of the trunk down as far as he could, securing it and the log onto the bumper. When he stood back to survey his handiwork, the

massive log sticking out of the front of the tiny car looked to overbalance it and flip it forward. “Get in,” he instructed. To this day, I still think he was checking to make sure my weight would keep the rear wheels down. I folded myself in. He removed his hat and veil and got in, too.

While I peeled off the unendurable veil and unzipped the coveralls, all elbows against windows and dashboard, Warren drove ever-so-slowly down the sandy access road and onto the shoulder of the highway. He made sure the highway was empty first, then we started making our way to his parents’ house. We crept the whole five miles back in that little white VW with Warren standing halfway out of his seat, peering through the very top of the windshield. The bee gum stuck screen-end forward out of the front, a massive dirty horn on a blind rhinocerous.

Mirabile dictu, we made it safely back to the house. Warren parked just beyond the big oak tree out front. I put on the hat and veil again. Warren didn’t bother, he just untied the rope holding the trunk down. We manhandled the bee gum out of the front of the bug, and set it down on a wooden pallet waiting there. I tore off the veil, stomped over to the bench under the oak tree and sat. Laughing, Warren walked over with the last two beers and sat down beside me. He handed me a bottle. I screwed the cap off my beer, peered over at him. Relenting, I grinned. I looked up at the house to make sure his parents weren’t watching us from the porch and leaned into him. Warren glanced back at the house, too, and then he leaned into me for a shy kiss under starlight. * * *

As I lower my camera, Warren points again at the top of the tree. “Look! They’re taking off!”

I peer up again, and see no change. The brown clump of bees still hides on its branch on the shadow side. As I watch, though, I see vibration at the edges of the clump, then the clump dissolves, as the swarm lifts away from the tree.

“They’re off to their new home,” Warren tells me, “They’ll fly at least two miles away before they settle down. Maybe they’ll land on a low branch and someone on the other side of town will get a new colony today. Maybe they’ll find a hollow tree.” I bring up my camera and, pushing it past its limit, take shot after shot as the rising swarm rises dissolves and disappears into the cloudless sky.

City Born, Country Bred

by Two Bears

Like most people these days I grew up in a city…but, I was really raised by farm folk, at least on my mother’s side.

My maternal grandparents both came from farm backgrounds and they pretty much kept to that even though they lived a city life. My grandfather worked at the University of Minnesota’s College of Agriculture where he was the Head Animal Caretaker for forty two years, so in many ways he was still a farmer. He grew up farming in Iowa, North Dakota and finally Minnesota during roughly the first quarter of the 20th century. He knew an age before electricity, telephones and automobiles came to farm living. My grandmother’s history was much the same although she stayed in Minnesota where she was born and raised, the oldest of twelve children, and worked in the cafeteria at the U. of M.

The eldest of their two daughters, my mother, learned a great deal from them and of course had a hand in passing on much of their collective farm knowledge and way of life to me. It also helped that my family home was never more than three miles from my grandparents so we saw them every Sunday for dinner and more often when school was out for the summer. I myself am the oldest

of the five children born to my parents and have become the most senior of my siblings and one cousin, (the daughter of my mother’s sister), ever since the last of those previous generations passed away in 2009. In case you are wondering by now, all this family history is a preface to the Do-ItYourself theme of this issue.

You see, if you lived on a farm in the early 1900’s and something broke, you didn’t call a plumber or a carpenter or a mechanic or some other tradesman, you fixed it yourself. You went to your shed or barn or attic, wherever you’d been storing pieces of pipe or wood or nuts and bolts, whatever you needed, and you gathered your tools as well and you set to work making repairs. If you didn’t have exactly what was needed and didn’t have something that would do in its stead, you probably knew a neighboring farmer who did, or might have it, so you’d go see him. The last thing you ever wanted to do was go to town, because then you’d have to actually spend money on something to get whatever it was you needed fixed, and farming is not nor has it ever been a cash-rich proposition.

You also raised a lot of your own food too. Even if you were a crop farmer growing wheat

Hand drill, Cleveland Museum of Art, unknown artist.

or corn or soybeans like most here in Minnesota, you still kept some chickens, pigs and a dairy cow for all the products to be gained from them. While you may not grind your own grains, although plenty did, you certainly did not buy bread, you bought flour and made and baked it yourself. You milked your own cow, separated the milk and the cream and made your own butter too, you butchered your own pigs for their meat and lard and all the other things you could get out of the animal, and you gathered eggs and pulled feathers and cleaned the skin of your chickens when the time came for all that as well. This is why my grandmother came from a family of twelve…we’re talkin’ a lot of work here!

My grandparent’s city home was built in the early 1890’s. It was a typical balloon frame structure of two floors with an enclosed front porch. There was a door in the floor of the kitchen that led to a root cellar where my grandmother kept potatoes and other vegetables in addition to the canning she did during the summer from her backyard garden. When I was about eight years old or so, grandpa decided to have a full basement dug out from underneath the house and it was there that he put in his workshop. There were cabinets and drawers and wall hooks, even mounting pieces attached to the beams to place things there, all of which centered around a table saw that was surrounded with an impressive number of hand tools. Being the oldest, it was my job to help him make whatever repairs or improvements in his house he saw fit and to help my grandmother in the kitchen whenever needed too.

Just in woodworking alone with my grandfather, I learned how to drive a nail straight and not bend it, to “measure twice—cut once”, and to always use the right tool for any job, mostly because he had the right tool. Yes, he had some power tools, but we only used those when it was a “big job”, as he called it. For most things we used hand tools: hammers, drills, planes, screwdrivers, saws, pliers, files, wrenches, some, much like those pictured here, (left to right: wheel drill, brace, rip saw and table vise)

Many of them nearly as old as he was, all kept in good condition, ready to be put to work at a moment’s notice. He taught me what they were and what they did, and by the age of ten I could run the table saw with ease as well as the band saw and the scroll saw he had too. Often was the time we would finish a project and grandpa would say, “There’s another good job well done.” That always

made me happy, because it was his quiet way to say he was pleased with what the two of us accomplished.

With grandma it was more harvesting fresh green beans and the like for that night’s dinner out of the garden and canning tomatoes or pickled beets or bagging up corn freshly cut from the cob with a bit of sugar and salt and put in the freezer to be had in wintertime. I still remember the worst of all that canning though: that was the horseradish. That was only done outdoors, in summer, and only when you knew there was going to be a cool, rainfree day to do in. Peeling the skin off horseradish is an affront to a person’s sense of smell, the likes of which I am very glad I shall never see again. In raw form like that, it reeks to high heaven! Yet there we were, grandpa and I, skinning root after stinking root of it, hoping none of the juice would get in our eyes, and grating it with a Mouli grater, all so that grandma could have her favorite homemade condiment whenever she pleased. Luckily for one and all, she liked much tastier treats and was eminently adept at preparing them.

There was also plenty to do at my own family home as well. There are four boys and one girl in my family, and fortunately my mother was glad of it. Beginning married life in the 1950’s, when career opportunities for women were to say the least, “limited”, she actually wanted to be a mother and housewife, that was her vocation, and it suited her well. She loved children and she would have had twelve if she would have been able to. Five, as it turned out, was handful enough though. Having four boys, she was bound and determined that none of her sons would ever have to get married simply because they could not fend for themselves. Therefore, she saw to it that my brothers and I would all learn to cook and bake and follow a recipe and dust and vacuum and mop and do windows and dishes and wash clothes and how to sew on a button and all those things expected of a wife and mother of those days… and darned if we didn’t! By the time I was eleven I was responsible for making eggs to order, my brother Chuck fried the bacon, and my brother Mike made the pancakes for every Sunday brunch after church so that our mother had at least one meal off each week. To this day my brothers still make the best bacon and pancakes and we all still enjoy cooking. We enjoy it because our mother enjoyed it, and that she taught us too.

To this day I still enjoy telling how, when I was about seven or eight, one of the neighborhood kids was pining for raised, glazed doughnuts and

how he wished we had the money to go to the local bakery and buy some. My mother overheard him and told us all, “You don’t have to go to the bakery for that.” “Why not?”, he asked. “Because you can make them right here at home”, she replied. “Cannot”, he said, skeptically. “Oh yeah? Come on… we’re gonna go make some doughnuts!”, Mom said. Excited as all get out they jumped up and trouped into our house, which by the way, was where all the kids in the neighborhood hung out anyway, and into the kitchen we went. Mom got out the flour and eggs and oil and everything and there, in the midst of this clutch of young boys, proceeded to hold a cooking class on how to make doughnuts from scratch. Some of them even climbed up on our kitchen chairs so they could see her drop the batter into the hot oil with her special doughnut dropper tool. Most happily, my mother was in her element: cooking and teaching children and feeding them too, all at the same time. And never EVER have any doughnuts tasted soooo good! For days I was the most popular kid on the block, because I had a mom who could

make doughnuts at home! Unfortunately, it didn’t win her any points with the other moms, who were now being pestered left and right by their own kids to make doughnuts for them.

There are more stories too, of course, of more fix-it jobs and annual Christmas baking, (a favorite of mine), and putting things up in jars. They all add up to not just the little this and that’s of handiwork or putting a meal together or even the “how to” knowledge I’ve accumulated along the way. More than that, they are all part and parcel of the confidence they gave me as I grew up by doing all these things with Grandma, Grandpa and my Mom. Bit by bit, one job at a time they built my self-esteem too, right along with everything else. Even though they are all gone now, that confidence and self-esteem are still with me to this day. I like to think I’m passing those things on to others too, which is as it should be. And it’s all thanks to these dear, wonderful farm people who I was blessed to have as my teachers and elders, to whom I am humbly grateful, one and all.

The Day Tom Hanks Bought My Breakfast

by James Magruder

My final angle of repose, in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery, will be beneath a stone marked thusly:

James Richard Magruder 1960-20-Writer

Now It’s All Going to Start Happening for Me

The epitaph refers to the times in my life when I felt just one step away from hitting the American cultural jackpot: prestige, outsized financial emolument, the respect of my peers, critical praise, nominations, visibility, leverage. In my early twenties, this feeling was sometimes occasioned by waking up in the bed of an older man with, or adjacent to, an entertainment career, but acquiring HIV in 1985 put permanent paid to this sort of strategic recreation. Besides which, didn’t Sharon Stone famously say that you can only sleep your way to the middle?

But first: on my sixty-second birthday last month, my husband, Steve, and I attended a wedding for 150 guests at the Visionary Arts Museum in downtown Baltimore. There were two celebrants, and a huppah flanked by eighteen attendants representing every gender. The nuptial theme was soup-to-nuts “rom-com”— from the website to the service to the artisanal glazed frosting cookies at the morning-after brunch featuring iconic screenshots of Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle , Cher in Moonstruck , and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (for starters). That the Baltimore groom, Kenneth Greller, and his family consider me his mentor is flattering; at the age of sixteen, Ken was writing vicious, jawdroppingly mature plays. He graduated from the NYU program in Dramatic Writing in 2014, and to my knowledge, is the only writer ever to be a MacDowell Fellow and a Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow by the age of twenty-five. At the time of his wedding, Ken had wrapped three seasons writing for the tone-bending AppleTV+ series, Dickinson . Groom number two, Christopher James, born in Sacramento, was a Performance Marketing Manager for Fandango, the ticketing company.

Their ceremony, inconceivable to my gay generation, was not dissimilar from a Friars Club Roast. In a roomful of thirty-something TV writers and agents and executives and managers feeling their oats dressed to the nines, I missed a lot of the jokes. Chris and Ken’s vows, and their ring exchange, held up the “rom” part of the promise— guests wept as openly and as freely as they had guffawed.

Small talk, I feel, is part of the wedding guest contract. Waiting for our row to recess after the attendants, I turned to my right and attempted chat with an L.A. Woman whose body was twothirds ink and one-third handkerchief linen.

“Excuse me.”

She nodded.

“Perhaps you could clarify a couple of things I didn’t understand.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“What did it mean when the celebrant said that Ken was ‘Twitter certified’?”

“Verified,” she said, correcting me. “It means he has a certain number of followers.”

I tried again. “What did Ken’s vow to Chris to “only check ‘Erewhon’ twice a day mean?”

“Erewhon is a high-end grocery store chain in Los Angeles,” she answered, then turned back to her wife (okay boomer).

During the cocktail hour, Steve and I slurped oysters in a crowd of creatives for whom everything had clearly started to happen. I had ready a legitimate industry-related question— “What can they possibly do on a third season of Hacks ?”—but no one approached us. In addition to executive-producing the whole megillah, Chris James had somehow found the time to crossstitch eighteen table favors for the reception, one for each of the couple’s favorite rom-coms. Steve and I were placed at the It Happened One Night table, one of those “Where do we put them?”

potpourri clusters at the edge of every wedding banquet, but all of us old enough to have seen Frank Capra’s 88-year-old Ur rom-com, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable.

One tablemate had, like me, recognized Ken’s precocity as a playwright and rued that the New

York theatre scene hadn’t made adequate space for his talent—hence, Hollywood’s gain. He asked me whether I had ever gone West with my pen and laptop.

I shrugged off the question. If we’re talking film, I say, “I think better in words, not images.” If we’re talking television, I might sniff, “The form doesn’t interest me.” If the person knows my health history, I’ll say that cheating Death in my thirties made me resistant to doing what I have no interest in doing, or in what others would have me do. The most protracted response would be to relate the story of my far-off meeting with Tom Hanks, one of those times when I surely thought it was all going to start happening for me.

Lacking a smart phone, I manage and archive my life on paper. My Wayback Machine is fortyplus brown pleather weekly calendars stored in the attic. It was easy to find AT-A-GLANCE 2001 and locate the first scribbled mention of my relationship with Playtone, the film and television production company that Tom Hanks started in 1998 with Gary Goetzman: Monday, April 9 th. “Rent/Watch That Thing You Do! ” Out of the blue I had received a telephone call from a Playtone executive named Diana Choi asking me whether I might be interested in adapting Hanks’ directorial debut, That Thing You Do!, for the musical stage? “Well, yes.” “Great,” she replied. “We’ll be in touch.”

Although I had written the book for a Broadway musical, Triumph of Love, that theater critic Ben Brantley had killed in The New York Times in 1997, Diana never revealed why she had called me . At the time of our initial contact, I had been in place for nine seasons at Baltimore Center Stage as its Resident Dramaturg, an egghead position that is part artistic curator, part in-house critic, and part institutional evangelist. Per AT-AGLANCE 2001, I was also working that spring on a new identity/endowment campaign for the theater; I was weighing in at rehearsal run-throughs of Peter Weiss’ docudrama of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, The Investigation ; I was doing onsite visits for the National Endowment for the Arts; I was teaching Translation and Adaptation once a month at my alma mater, the Yale School of Drama; Steve and I had been together for thirty months, and I had not seen That Thing You Do!

I watched it four times, rewinding the VHS tape over and over to transcribe dialogue exchanges that might work as song moments. Starring Tom Everett Scott, Steve Zahn, Liv Tyler, and

Hanks himself, That Thing You Do! is a charmer that traces the summer of 1964 when The Wonders, a band from Erie, PA, tour Midwestern state fairs under the aegis of their Play-Tone Records manager, Amos White (Hanks), while their onehit wonder, “That Thing You Do,” climbs to #7 on the national Billboard charts. Several Wonders come of age before things eventually crater in Los Angeles, but the drummer (Scott) gets the right girl (Tyler) in the end. A modest success, the film opened at #3 in October 1996, recouped its investment overseas, and its infectious title tune peaked for three weeks at #41 that November.

That Thing You Do! is strong on atmosphere, but light on story. Successful book musicals require the reverse, so I saw my task as bumping up existing wisps of conflict and inventing new ones that would lead to a more climactic decision to dissolve the band. My most radical idea, I recall, was to change the gender of the Tom Hanks character—my Amy White would be an older temptress who generates a romantic triangle with the lead singer. I also envisioned more could be done with the drummer’s original girlfriend, played by an impossibly young and beautiful Charlize Theron, in her second credited screen role.

Zoom, FaceTime, and WhatsApp? didn’t exist in 2001, so when I was ready to talk, conference calls with Tom, Gary, and Diana were set up for May 4 th , May 8 th, and May 10 th. Each time, an assistant named Joel called last-minute to cancel. That’s showbiz. My anxiety mounted during eight subsequent weeks of radio silence. Had they forgotten me? Had they “gone in another direction” with a different writer? I played the soundtrack for luck and, Steve excepted, sat on the news. Scheduled calls on July 17 th and July 23 rd were likewise aborted.

The sixth time was the charm: on Monday, July 30 th at 4pm E.S.T. , I hid in the back office of a friend’s apartment in New York City, and in a yellow polo pitted out from nerves, I listened to Tom and Gary banter like the old friends they were. They wondered whether I had fled Baltimore, because of the sixty-car CSX freight train derailment and tunnel fire that had happened there on July 18 th. (They followed the news! They were thinking of me! It’s really going to happen!) With hindsight, all I had needed to say in that call was a) That Thing You Do! was a great idea for a musical and b) I’d be thrilled by the opportunity to write it. “Well, let’s bring you out,” said Gary, before ringing off. “We’ll be in touch.”

Open sesame! I started telling friends and family about my pending life transformation. The most supportive among them played this measure of music to my ears: “It’s about time, Magruder.”

Two significant events intervened before our meeting. A week after that sweaty phone call, I began a first residency at MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Since 1907, MacDowell has hosted and fostered the endeavors of thousands of artists. The offer of a fellowship is an honor. AT-A-GLANCE 2001 is again helpful: during my five weeks there, in addition to daily hours of writing a play, and joining in the reindeer games every night with the other residents, I read Madame Bovary and White Noise and To the Lighthouse. I stood in a scrum surrounding Philip Roth at his MacDowell Medal award reception. On August 23 rd , I began a piece of short fiction, my first in nineteen years. On Friday September 7 th, having completed a draft of a full-length play titled DunklerRelated Disorders , I called Southwest Airlines and changed my flight. I flew home from Manchester, three days ahead of schedule, four days before Tuesday, September 11 .

should I—bring to the room? Had I sense enough, the six hundred dollars I spent at Nordstrom’s for black monk-strap shoes, brown (?!?!) Dolce & Gabbana slacks, maroon socks with a pattern of textured white nubs, a striped Façonnable shirt, and a forest-green Merino wool zippered cardigan, could have been written off as a business expense.

He asked me whether I had ever gone West with my pen and laptop. I shrugged off the question. If we’re talking film, I say, “I think better in words, not images.” If we’re talking television, I might sniff, “The form doesn’t interest me.” If the person knows my health history, I’ll say that cheating Death in my thirties made me resistant to doing what I have no interest in doing, or in what others would have me do.

In the months that followed the Al Qaeda attacks on New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, it felt a blessing to lack a television, as Steve and I were spared all of that horrifying film and audio footage kept on continuous loop. Playtone was considerate enough to ask me when I felt safe enough to fly. We made arrangements for the first week of November. My attention turned to my outfit. No suit and tie, sure, but how casual are these Hollywood meetings? Sport coat? Dress shoes? How much black? Tom Hanks was so straight . When my voice instantly gives me away, how much gay could I—

I had an early flight. As casual as an avalanche, I ate and drank everything offered to me in First Class, studied my notes, and pondered whether a That Thing You Do! musical made sense in a post 9/11 world. I tipped the bellman five dollars for his trek with my weekender to my room at The Shutters on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. I had dinner that night in Venice Beach at a Japanese restaurant called Chaya with a neighbor who had grown up one street over from me in the same tacky, Chicagoland subdivision. After Harvard Law, Jeanne had become an agent. Filled with buzzing movers and shakers, Chaya bore the same whipsaw performative vibe as the Greller-James wedding would two decades in the future. Before we parted company, Jeanne allowed that Hanks and Goetzman were considered decent, straight-up businessmen in a town waist-deep in cheats and double-crossers.

I woke up on Monday, November 5 th, with hours to kill, but no Internet to surf. I skipped breakfast and channel surfed until the limo came to ferry me the six blocks to Playtone Productions on 5 th Street.

1 pm. PST . Impressions from the meeting: Tom Hanks entering Gary Goetzman’s office, hand extended, and saying, “I’m Tom” with the same sincerity he displayed on screen. Everyone else wearing jeans. Gary’s feet on his desk, the

Pacific surf crashing behind him through the window. A glass of seltzer planted in my hand on my left knee. Encouraging nods from Diana Choi. An assistant named Stan discreetly taking notes. Colin Hanks popping in to greet his father. Easy cross-chat about making a movie versus putting on a show. Never opening my folder or pitching my ideas. No attention paid to the warmongering of the Bush Administration. Gary wrapping up the hour with a mention of a call to my agent.

I floated back on foot to Shutters on the Beach, cardigan sleeves insouciantly tied around my neck. That night I dined with Jilly Morris, whom I had hired out of grad school to be my Dramaturgy Fellow at Center Stage. She had left Baltimore after six seasons to climb the film ladder and was now a creative exec at Disney. Always one of my biggest champions, she was thrilled by my debrief. “It sounds like it couldn’t have gone any better,” she said. “Those first meetings really boil down to demonstrating that you don’t have two heads.”

I eat like a struggling actor, and Playtone was buying, but my psyche must have decided during the night that I should replace my eat-all-youcan scarcity mentality with prandial restraint. I ordered coffee, grapefruit juice, and a bowl of “hand-crafted” granola at the Shutters’ Coast Beach Bar and Café. A suburban boy refractory to Nature, I glanced at the ocean while I spooned my cereal which, given its $26 price tag, ought to have been sprinkled with diamond dust. Then, I sat straight up; this too must change. I must become aware of my surroundings—and my posture—in a mindful, California way. I therefore chose to study the sky and listen to the waves and the gulls for clues about how to re-center my habitus. Steve would keep working at the Wilmer Eye Clinic at Johns Hopkins, so a bi-coastal marriage was in the cards. The money I’d get for That Thing You Do! would pay for a two-bedroom apartment. I’d develop a daily physical regime to match my writing practice. After the success of That Thing You Do!, I’d take on more musical projects. I’d acquire a manager. I’d hire an assistant. The Mark Taper Forum would jump to premiere Dunkler-Related Disorders. I’d write a novel, a dream since adolescence; and once I managed how to use Final Draft, I might consider a screenplay. Here was why my immune system had recovered back in 1996.

I scribbled my room number on the check, then picked my way through the seaweed at low tide in my monk-straps and walked all the way

to the end of the Santa Monica pier, counting my current blessings and calculating fabulous new ones. I turned, still hungry, to face the glittering, sun-swept shore of James Magruder 2.0.

So, it was all going to start happening for me until just before Thanksgiving when Playtone offered me 10K to write the script for the musical version of That Thing You Do!, a figure that scarcely doubled the cost of the first-class flights, and the limos, and two nights at The Shutters on the Beach. It gets worse: my agent, Peter Hagan, explained that the offer was a work-for-hire contract. Ten grand, equivalent to my going rate at the time for a Molière translation, was all I would get, no matter how long the process might take (and musicals gestate longer than elephants) to put the show up. Every Molière production would net me additional royalties, because I owned my work. Hollywood writers do not—or did not—in 2001. Peter and I probably discussed an amount I might accept for the gig, but even if Hollywood had had experience in hiring outsiders to adapt their properties for the stage, I would have made a terrible deal.

Four or five years later, Tony Award-winning playwrights Doug Wright and David Henry Hwang, in their respective negotiations with Disney for proposed stage versions of The Little Mermaid and Tarzan, refused to sign unless they could guarantee The Dramatists Guild in New York, whose founding principle in 1919 was that playwrights own their material, that they wouldn’t accept their assignments as work-for-hire. They were ready to walk until the Guild devised a contact that a) allowed the big studios to retain the rights to their intellectual property, but b) allowed them to maintain creative control of their contributions—and earn royalties. With one Broadway flop to my name, I had no leverage. ATA-GLANCE 2001 bears no scribble of a popped balloon, but Peter must have called Playtone one late December afternoon EST to say that his client would not accept a work-for-hire contract.

Ten thousand dollars from the Land of MegaMillions was so silly, I found it easy to confess to everyone why my hopes and ambitions had, to quote Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, “ just gone up the spout.” At least I’d met Tom Hanks in person was the general reaction. We’d spent an hour in actual conversation, and he couldn’t have been more engaging. That, plus breakfast, would have to do, and it did.

That Thing You Do! concludes with a cast up -

date, so I will too. The fifth-highest all-time box office star in North America, Tom Hanks continues to act, direct, produce, and write. He has been awarded Kennedy Center Honors, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and is a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. Playtone has produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding 1 and 2, The Polar Express, Charlie Wilson’s War, and Mamma Mia!, and for television, Band of Brothers, Big Love, John Adams, and Olive Kittredge. In addition to these Playtone credits, Gary Goetzman’s nonpareil adolescence—waterbeds, pinball machines, and a hilarious run-in with Barbra Streisand’s a cokedup boyfriend, Jon Peters—was captured in the 2022 movie, Licorice Pizza. Diana Choi cannot be traced on www.imdb.com after 2008, but I wish her well.

As for me, I’ve been to MacDowell another four times. Dunkler-Related Disorders has never been produced, but those six sudden pages of fiction I penned in late August 2001 have grown into four published books. Ben Brantley stayed long enough at the Times to kill my second Broadway musical, Head Over Heels, a blank verse mashup of Sir Philip Sidney’s Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1580) and the song catalogue of the GoGo’s that I’d co-written in 2018 . Some projects pan out; others are panned. We move on, all of us, pivoting from the craters as best we can.

What my old pals Jeanne and Jilly might have disclosed at our meals together was that they held three or four of these meetings every day of the week, roughly fifteen meetings a week, sixty meetings a month, close to seven hundred meetings a year. I mean, they have to do something when they’re not on set. The waiter who plunged the French press at breakfast at the Coast Beach Bar and Café could have told me that the odds on That Thing You Do! making it to contract, much less opening on Broadway, were infinitesimal.

At the Greller-James nuptials, I’d stopped at the parents’ table to congratulate Dan Greller, a father of few words who’d made a terrifically wry toast to the grooms, when Ken found me.

“Magru, I want you to meet my manager. This is Jack Greenbaum.”

“How do you do?” I said. “That’s a great tie.” (Always have a compliment.)

“Oh. Thanks.”

“I’ve told you about Magruder,” said Ken. “He’s pretty much responsible for me.”

I made a self-deprecating noise, then said to this dapper gent of Ken’s vintage that it was Ken’s

talent that had taken him to where he was.

“Magruder writes novels, and he wrote that Go-Go’s musical, Head Over Heels. ”

For once, I stifled my standard adjustment that HOH had been a commercial flop.

“Cool,” he said. “Are you still writing?”

(Did I look that retired? I admit that my “Lively” phone is, at my insistence, the dumbest one on the market, with an “Urgent Response” button should I tip and break a hip, but still .)

I hesitated. I could have talked up a book of stories I was finishing. I could have said my most recent novel, Vamp Until Ready, which treated a summer stock theater in upstate New York, was structured like a five-episode, limited television series for a prestige network. But this was a wedding reception, and Jack was just being polite. Timing is everything. Before I could answer him, the deejay got on the mic to announce it was time for the grooms’ first dance: Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I said.

In seeming proportion to my aging process, the world moves at warp speed. Since I began this essay, Elon Musk has dicked with Twitter so extensively that it has a new name. I no longer know whether a talent in full bloom like Ken Greller can remain “Verified” (verified denoting a “blue check” for someone who is active, notable, and authentic.) Using dynamic pricing algorithms, rooms at Shutters on the Beach post from $650 to $1450 per night on www.booking.com. Yesterday, as a favor, Ken followed eight years of email chains on his IPhone 13 Pro Max to estimate that he’s “taken” upwards of two hundred “Does he have two heads?” meetings since 2014. He also writes, “This doesn’t count second and third calls to land a specific job, ‘re-meeting’ people when they get new jobs, networking drinks I’ve set up for myself, and so on.”

Ken also clarified that the Erewhon grocery store in his Silver Lake neighborhood is the place to spot “a niche celebrity, or alternative comedians fingering $18 figs.” Figs and granola. Healthy choices, eternal hopes. The only piece of evidence from my forty eight hours in Santa Monica on Tom Hanks’ dime—a 2001 holiday card from “All of Us at Playtone”—has gone missing, but every great once in a while, I will spot a pair of ancient, dotted socks, their white and maroon coloring faded to buff and dusty rose, on Steve’s ankles, or in the laundry basket.

Life Drawing

by Duncan Hilton

I’ve had many lovers, a few months…a year… two years. That’s is the best I’ve ever done, two years…

I have always been a do it yourself type of guy. At the age of fourteen I started a punk-rock fanzine called Growing (1986). I paid for the xeroxing with the money I earned gardening, and mowing lawns. I even taught myself how to draw and illustrate the pages. By age seventeen (1989), the ‘zine had morphed into an art and literature journal named Papertoadstool. Where I printed my own drawings and poetry alongside many other artists and writers.

I published it up until the age of twenty four (1996) when I was overcome by the pressures of a fulltime corporate job, ironically, as a graphic artist. I remember crying to my mother on the phone, “I feel like a piece of me is dying,” I would tell her. I wasn’t wrong. That’s what around the clock, (and then some) desk jobs will do to anyone who has an essence. Part of your soul dies.

I managed to extricate myself from that soul-siphoning career eleven years later, working as an aide for handicapped adults. Though it didn’t pay as well, I found an intangible reward in the camaraderie between the clients and myself. This “reward” became “wealth” while working with a mildly autistic fellow boasting a wicked sense of humor and an insight into the hilarious. I cherished my time tending to him one on one, or maybe I should call it “playing” ‘cause that’s what it really was.

every week or two. We’d all bring food and wine while someone sat for the rest of us to sketch or paint. He was the guest of honor. While still in pose, his lips issued a steady stream throughout the one hour time limit. By the end, I was smitten

Furnished with a chunk of money saved throughout my aforementioned careers, (unsurprisingly, being an aide to handicapped adults only pays minimum wage). I took a breath to make a calendar depicting my own artwork. Being an illustrator, I managed six very elaborate drawings

of the twelve required for the endeavour when my grandpa fell ill. Taking up the mantle of “aide” once more, I set my pen aside and vowed to see him through the remainder of his life.

Unfortunately, he escaped from the group home one night and walked in front of a train. In hindsight it’s clear his hilarious attitude veiled a series of complex and anguished emotions. Though I continued to work with handicapped adults in various homes, no one could take his place. Despite time’s dauntless passing, his loss remains fresh in my mind.

I kept going on dates, and having one night stands before chancing upon Joe. I met him at a dine and draw, regularly hosted by an old friend

Joe and I were still an item when my grandfather passed. Following the wake he held me all through the night, while my late grandpa’s scent wafted from his bed, and brought me to tears again and again. My grief finally yielding to fatigue, we fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning.

Joe was my longest running relationship. We’d been dating for two years; and while neither of us officially called it off, we began seeing less of each other. By and by becoming strangers, much as we were the day before our meeting two years prior.

I had a one year affair and a couple of two month affairs after Joe, and then I just became

"Kyle" by Duncan Hilton.

tired of dating. All of the interpersonal turmoil wore me out. I began thinking of guys as something to look at, and think about but I consciously steered clear of relationships.

I found most of the erotic enjoyment I needed in drawing nude men. I didn’t go for the Tom of Finland sort of art where everyone has a tree trunk for a dick. I liked to keep my men more modest. It got so that these men became more and more real to me. I could come up with whole histories, and very detailed personalities for them. I would even name them and have imaginary conversations with them. They became my ideal.

Of course I paint, and make collages and do more traditional art because it interests me too, but it has now been fifteen years since I’ve had sex with anyone.

You might say I have discovered a do it yourself romantic world that satisfies me more than my previous flesh and blood relationships. My imaginary boyfriends are very courteous and accommodating. They know exactly when to leave me alone, or when I need a few kind words; and from the tip of my pencil is born a new man practically every week. They never grow tiresome, they never leave a mess and they’re never jealous of the next one that takes their place.

The drawings are just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t even watch porn. My men are far more real

to me than that. In my mind’s eye I can see every nuance of these men. Some are slim, some are fat, some are skinny and some are muscular. Some are young and some are old, some are hairy and some are sleek. Some of them have corporate jobs, and I am here to greet them when they come home from

work and wipe the sweat off their worried brows; showing them that there is a reward for all of their long hours and late nights.

I play at the idea of a real world boyfriend now and again, but I know once the honeymoon phase wears off, it’s all just settling. I have a large group of friends, and am by no means a loner. I simply see no need for the bother of dating when I can see, hear, feel, and taste my own ever growing world of men; where there are no bad dates, or arguments, or cheating unless I want there to be. Sometimes we have heated philosophical discussions. Sometimes we cook dinner together. They always love me for who I am and if I want a little spice, sometimes there may even be a few sharp words between the two of us. After all, nobody’s perfect, just nearly perfect, again and again and again.

Top: "Dustin"; Bottom: "Joe" Drawings by Duncan Hilton.

Top: "Emanuel"; Bottom: "Wood Nymph." Drawings by Duncan Hilton.

Statue of Mithras. Marble, 100-200 C,. Rome, Italy. Photo courtesy British Museum.

Building Your Own Gay God

By Robert D. Mathis-Friedman

INTRODUCTION

It was a few years ago, when I had an interesting conversation with my friend... let’s call him “Owl” ... on the balcony of my apartment, concerning my ambivalence towards participation in his Circle’s rituals. He was a member of Wicca and they tend to revolve around a tradition called the Great Rite, which involves a Priest and a Priestess invoking the power of the God and Goddess, and the energies released by their union. At its core, it’s a Fertility Rite, but it is also used to promote prosperity and other conditions.

“There’s not much there for me,” I told him, and explained that focusing distinctly Heterosexual energies was counterintuitive for me, as a Gay man.

“Well,” he offered, “it doesn’t have to be a Priest and a Priestess... it could be, say, two Priests.”

“Nope,” I replied, “it’s the source, not the actors. They’d still be channeling the sexual energies a God and Goddess, regardless of the genders of the actors.”

This is the problematic heart of the scenario, and the paradigm behind it. Many forms of Neopaganism, including Wicca... especially Wicca... are essentially heterocentric. If Faiths have considered us, they’ve done so in ways that are, at best, rendering us in a liminal space, and at worse, demonizing us.

We’re then left with trying to navigate the Neopagan paradigms and negotiate a space within and around them. Whereas certain groups within the paradigms of the Conventional Faiths (such as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, for example) have been fairly effective, what about Neopagans, Pantheists, and other Alternative groups?

According to “Arianna”, a Wiccan Priestess, the original practitioners of Wicca had fairly strict rules regarding who was allowed within their ranks: only those who were capable of actively engaging in potentially fertile reproduction, or had a history of producing children, were eligible. There were later arguments within the various factions as to who qualified. This jibes with my research. The earliest forms of Wicca...Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions... were very involved in the “strength” of the Heterosexual Union between God and Goddess, and the ways in which they acted, both spiritually

and politically, in reflecting this union (sometimes, literally) in their rituals (Hutton, 1999: 406-407).

Then there is the Feri tradition. A different take on Wicca, founded by Victor and Cora Anderson, which is much more open to a Queer presence in its inception. According to T. Thorn Coyle, a prominent member, with whom I had a dialogue during my research, the Divine Couple is interpreted to be a serpent and a bird, rather than a God (male) and Goddess (female), thus, theoretically at least, sidestepping the discourse regarding heteronormative personification.

Other LGBTQIA+ based groups besides the Radical Faeries have emerged, like the Rainbow Warriors, the Ecclessia Antinoi, etc. Many are designed with welcoming the entire Queer Community in mind, which brings up the question of precisely what entities are the center of focus for them, and how the methods for focusing them are conducted.

Mythology is not entirely bereft of a Queer presence. Much can be gleaned from the sexual and gender fluidity of mythic entities, whether it’s the implied Lesbian relationships of the Amazons and Athena, the Intersex (Atlaniades), drag (Thor), or nonbinary gender (images and early descriptions of angels).

Circling back to my conversation with Owl, it came up that there needed to be a way to interpret a ritual invoking an actual Gay Spirit... an entity that the gay can claim as his own, without qualification or apology. However, mythology has few options in this direction.

Myths involving beings like the aforementioned Zeus and Ganymede, or Apollo and Hyacinth, usually involve themes reflecting the power dynamics of the Bigger/ Stronger/Older (active) engaging with the Smaller/Younger/less powerful (passive). Although there are those who find value in the concept (the leather scene, for instance, where such exchanges of power can evolve into spiritual experiences; Baldwin,1993, and below), the narratives actually reflect:

(a) What my colleague, photojournalist Cornelius Washington, referred to as “incidental homosexuality” (a homoerotic encounter or relationship outside of the character’s usual, heteronormative

interactions), or perhaps generalized as bisexual (which is very useful to those who happen to be Bi).

(b) The cultures from which those myths were derived, where it was deemed acceptable for a grown, established male to engage in homoerotic encounters with youths (or slaves), with the less empowered to typically serve the passive role. Once the Youth achieved Manhood, or if the slave achieved Freedom, then they were expected to shift their position (sexually speaking to Active) and pursue heteronormative relationships (perhaps with his own youth or slave on the side, but definitely doing the Married/Children thing, regardless) (Foucault,1988).

At the end of the day, it can be argued that these types of relationships can mimic the power dynamics of male/female relationships, and, therefore, can be excused by subtly supporting heteronormativity.

There are few Mythic figures that can unequivocally be said to follow a wholly male-identified, gay narrative: Ganymede, Hyacinth, Antinous (GrecoRoman), T’uer Shen (Chinese) and others. The first two, however, fall under the “youth” category. The Emperor Hadrian’s lover, Antinous, who was later deified upon his death, arguably falls into a similar category (although, being an actual, historical figure, he’s a bit more complex than that, and is deserving of his own work).

There are practitioners who find means of negotiating the Neopagan world through a Queer lens in their actual rituals. Christopher Penczak in his book, Gay Witchcraft: Empowering The Tribe, seeks to find various means to reconcile Neo Pagan practices with a Gay/Queer identity, from isolating homosexual narratives in the overall stories of the gods, to integrating duality of genders within the individual for solo rituals (Penczak, 2003).

The Minoan Brotherhood is a Wicca variant focusing on a Minotaur-like deity of the Aegean who is the son of the Goddess. While a specific practice for gay men, the Brotherhood is a secretive group with extensive, and intense, initiatory practices that aren’t for everyone. This leaves one other option.

1. Mythology, Folklore, Neo-Paganism, and Queer Identity

During my experiences at Pantheacon, I encountered highly specialized groups, such as those dedicated to Chaos Magick with the Goddess Eris, NeoHellenic practitioners engaging in rituals honoring the Olympian Pantheon, Asatru (Norse Pantheon), Shinto (Japanese Animism), and groups dedicated

to Loa (Voodoo), Orisha (Yoruba and various parts of the African Diaspora), Vedic, and a variety of others. Of real relevance here are groups that engage in Klingon rituals (in the appropriate language), and other artifices and entities of Pop Culture.

Each year, scholar and author Taylor Ellwood performed a ritual honoring Jim Morrison as an incarnation of Dionysus (the comparison isn’t new: Oliver Stone demonstrated a similar, quite visual, analogy in the film, the Doors). In his book, Pop Culture Magick, Ellwood describes the concept of linking the two in fairly simple terms, indicating that most of us have difficulty, or haven’t the time or resources to delve into the languages or structures of the older paradigm. “But with pop culture magick, you don’t need to learn a language to understand the context of the magick you’re working with. All you need is creativity.” (Ellwood, 2004: 16).

He goes on to say that Magick was once “on the cutting edge” of other disciplines. Having “laid the foundations” for everything from philosophy to STEM-related pursuits, but, in time, its relation to such structures has diminished. Yet, there have been surges, citing “techno occultists” who integrate the two disciplines (Magick and technology) in unique ways:

“These people have pushed the concept of the internet much further than it would otherwise be used” (ibid.: 17)

Guy Baldwin, in his work, Ties That Bind, addresses the idea of BDSM as a form of spirituality by comparing it to other kinds of endurance rites, such as:

“...practices of the Tantrics and the Shivaites[sic] and connect with the role of chastity in religious life, the rites of Dionysus and the rituals of other pagan religious” (Baldwin, 1993: 35).

The upshot to all of this is that it is possible to draw upon one’s own ideas regarding what spiritual representation looks like in the context of one’s own sphere and develop a corresponding symbol set built from one’s personal experience. In this case, a symbolic focus... a personification of an individual’s gay identity, aspiration or even humor... and institute a construct: A Gay God.

2. Basic Building Blocks: The World and the Perspective

The Queer Community is a rich, complex world of LGBTQIA+* individuals and groups, but, for our purposes, I am narrowing the parameters to specifically the Gay Male aspect. Using it as an

example, it’s possible to extrapolate from this template a broader and more varied process. The Gay Community is quite diverse and highly layered, even as it has common points that make up its history and identity…

For example, it is said that the Civil Rights movements had, as its anchor, Black Churches. As a small child, I recall hearing songs about crying for Freedom while sitting in my grandmother’s lap in the choir box. The Gay Rights movement, on the other hand, has its foundations in bars (Stonewall Inn being a linchpin in its origins). Prior to Stonewall, bars and nightclubs were the nexus of the Queer (including Gay) Community for generations. To this day, that scene remains our primary social venue, and impacts the community and how it continues to Evolve. Various subsets of the community, and the identities surrounding them, are intimately connected to the scene (Drag, Leather, western, etc.). Whereas not all Gay men engage in such scenes, and you may find yourself outside of them, the Bar/ Nightclub Scene is, at least for Urban/Suburban Gays in the Global North/West, a vital part of our identity and history as a subculture and might well be taken into consideration when attempting to construct gay iconography for purposes of reverence or, better, channeling.

This brings up the next important factor. Like tapping Pop Culture as a resource, Gay Totemic construction, ideally, could have an element of fun.

In Greek Mythology, there is Momos, a minor deity embodying the concept of Truth To Power. He is, in essence, the “Heckler of the Gods”, and one of the predecessor concepts of Jesters and other forms of insightful commentary on the Status Quo and Dominant Paradigm. It could be said that Momos is the spiritual ancestor to Bianca Del Rio, Lady Bunny and (for you straight folks, out there) Lenny Bruce, Michael Moore and Michael Che. Just as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have a Queer (initially, gay, but has since expanded) spin on Nuns by applying a Drag aesthetic, we can do the same with Totems and Spirits…a Patron(ess) of Drag, or even a “Drag Goddess of X” (Mama Ru notwithstanding). This would be an example of a first step: finding an aspect of local or universal gay culture for evaluation or association. Then compare it to larger concepts and see how they’re handled in Mythology, Folklore or Pop Culture (or preferably, all three).

A significant aspect of Gay Culture is how it is distinctive from Straight Culture. Rather than think in terms of how Gay Paganism fits in as an aspect of, within, or alongside the larger Pagan World, what

is it that makes it powerful and unique on its own terms?

From there, we go to locate the larger concepts... the Ideas to be Personified or represented.

I suggest bringing in classic ideas or archetypes and doing a comparison to/with mythic/folkloric, Pop Culture/literary(general) and Gay-specific variants. For example:

1. Psychopomp (a guide through different... usually spiritual... worlds; often, a guide to the Underworld):

MYTHIC, ETC: Hermes, Legba, Pegasus.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Peter Pan, The White Rabbit, Doctor Who, Willy Wonka

GAY: isn’t it obvious? The Friends of Dorothy.

2.Trickster (self-explanatory):

MYTHIC: Loki, Coyote, Eshu, Sun Wu Kong.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Br’er Rabbit, Uncle Arthur, Q, Woody Woodpecker and, of course, Bugs (who can be said to be a modern version of Br’er Rabbit, and who, in turn, was an update of the African Hare).

GAY: There are so many to choose from. Here’s but the smallest possible sample: Hollywood (from the Mannequin film franchise; Donald Maltby (Brothers television series; look it up, for those of you born after the 70’s); Frank N Furter (who, like many Tricksters, could also be classified under Psychopomp, and is, honestly, already revered as a totemic figure in some circles), Brian Kenny (Queer As Folk/Showtime version).

3. Sun God/Princely figure: The True Paragon of Beauty, Health, Arts and Virtues:

MYTHIC: Apollo, Baldur, Mithra.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Superman, Captain America, any character played by Buster Crabbe, Ken (Thank you, Ryan Gosling), Doc Savage.

GAY: Antinous, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Hulkling, Emmet Honeycutt (same version of QAF, above), Apollo (the superhero, not the god), note that it could be argued that Brian Kenny might also fall under this category, as well...he and Emmet could, depending upon one’s perspective, be interchangeable in respective categories.

4. Adventurer/Explorer: Also self-explanatory:

MYTHIC, ETC.: Ulysses, Rama, Sinbad.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Captains Kirk and Picard, Horatio Hornblower, Huckleberry Finn, Pinocchio, Doctor Gulliver.

GAY: Antinous(again), Aquaman-II (Jackson Hyde), Starman (Mikaal Tomas), the Desert Peach

(look him up).

5.Thunderer: A judge and force of justice; sometimes wrathful, always a symbol of strength.

MYTHIC, ETC.: Thor, Zeus, Lei Kung, Shango.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Thor(again), Raiden, Black Lightning, Static Shock,

GAY: I had to, admittedly, cut deep on this one; some of them remain on theme, but aren’t necessarily thunder/lightning-based: Living Lightning, Lightning Lord, the Ray, Midnighter, Glenda Pedro (of the Shazam Family).

6. Guardians at the Gate: Alternately, protectors of a Realm/culture, and the ritual focus for entering a new or different Realm/Reality; a being presenting the hero/questor with a challenge or test.

MYTHIC, ETC.: Heimdall, Cerberus, Little John, the Sphinx.

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Alex Trebek, The Bridge Keeper from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, The Guardian Of Forever. Glenda: The Good Witch of the North.

GAY: Ru Paul, Urania (as the Muse of both Exploration and the Patroness of Love between Men, Urania would qualify as both a Guardian at the Gates and...at risk of skirting around the concept a bit...Personification of the Straight Female Companion).

7. Antihero: The outlaw who ultimately leans towards honor or justice.

MYTHIC, ETC.: Half of the Greco-Roman Pantheon, Eshu, Herakles (he began his Hero’s Journey making up for murdering his family), Mercury (Patron of both Merchants and Thieves), Robin Hood.

Let’s start with the outside and travel inward, using these questions:

1. What aspect of the Neo Pagan World/Spiritual Culture doesn’t serve you, personally?

The situation involving the Great Rite has been addressed, so that’s an area that can be dealt with. What about other aspects? Are there elements of identity, image or social setting that you need to represent? Do you feel uncomfortable around how others in your group depict/utilize the deity or spirit(s) that your group reveres/worships? Is there a part of Gay Culture that resonate for you that your group tends to ignore in their practices? Are you isolated from your group (or just didn’t find one) because of any of the above?

Returning to my conversation with Owl, he mentioned that his Circle was “gay-friendly” by how they conducted The Chase, a game performed during certain festivals... Beltane (Spring Equinox), for example... where female players are chased by males in a kind of faux hunting ritual as a way of flirting (the chaser can kiss the chasee, if he catches her).

POP CULTURE/LITERARY: Scarlet Pimpernel/ Zorro/Batman (practically the same guy), John Wick, Han Solo, Deadpool, the Punisher.

GAY: Northstar, the Piper, Frank N. Furter falls into this category, as well (very busy character).

Now that the concept of overlap has been looked at, the next step is personalization (the “Your” part of this essay’s title).

“We wear scarves on belts that signify who wants to chase and wants to be chased, and we don’t distinguish between sexes for the game.”

This has, to the average gay man, a fairly obvious flaw...one that Owl never considered: The flags (the scarves are attached to the waist, much like Flag Football) don’t designate who, or more accurately what, the Player is supposed to chase or be chased by. If, say, a chaser chooses the wrong target, the result could be, at best, embarrassing, and, at worst, violent. Owl was stunned at my mentioning it, since it never dawned on him how potentially dangerous it was to “not think it through.”

I sat with Patrick and Cully, leaders of a Circle called the Rainbow Warriors (a group made up primarily of Queer Pagans who have eclectic prac-

tices), as they spoke of an occasion where they had been invited to the Pagan equivalent of an Interfaith gathering. During the event, the coordinator called for the various groups to be gathered together in a circle, hold hands, and evoke the spirits in a healing ceremony. It was a significant moment, with multiple Traditions joining in solidarity… except for the group nearest the Warriors on one side, who refused to touch the Warriors’ hands, much less clasp them.

These are two different ways in which gay pagans had to navigate some of the heterocentric, or outright homophobic, realms of (in Owl’s case, wellmeaning, but in the others’, not so much) certain Neopagan paradigms.

2. Who/what Do You Admire, Aspire, or Wish, To Be Mentored By?

Whether gods, angels, ancestor spirits or animal totems, the proposed Icon works best if they fall into one or more of these categories.

I had a roommate from Japan who visited a Catholic Cathedral. He was Shinto, but found that the combined aesthetic (the art, Personifications, even the smells and sounds), began to resonate with him. I have my own ideas about Catholicism (and Christianity, in general), but it was fascinating to see what I interpreted as the inverse of how a Westerner reacts to seeing a Shinto shrine during one of their rituals. Ultimately, my roommate found it to be just as “exotically beautiful” as the rituals and aesthetics that he was exposed to a few weeks later, when I took him to Pantheacon.

wasn’t alone in this particular practice.

On my personal shrine, I have a figurine of the Indian deity Hanuman next to those of Wonder Woman and Mothra.

Choose an aspect of reality, the environment, etc., that you would like to channel, or evolve into, or be guided by. Are you a soldier, or want to be?

A lawyer? An artist? A lifestyle hedonist? Are you someone looking for an entity to fill in when you ask, “What would ___ do?”

3. What Makes Them Gay?

Once you have an idea of what resonates with you, in general, address its connection to Gayness and/ or Gay Culture/Community. Here are a couple of examples:

A) Paco resonates with edgier aesthetics (Frank Miller, New Order, John Wick). He also isn’t out, due to his upbringing/ profession/local community, and wishes his connection to the Spirit World to reflect that. His most resonant connections might reflect Night Gods, and his Catholic/ African Diaspora-based, hybrid aesthetic leads him to thinking about Orisha/ Saints. He resonates with Eshu, a Trickster figure who acts as a Guardian to the Underworld, among his other aspects (the Underworld, in this case, representing the secret gay world to which he “Travels”), and (in some variants of Brazilian Umbanda/ Candomblé), Pomba Gira, Eshu’s consort and Patroness of the Parlor, and devises a Patron of Those on the Down Low, with a companion, the Divine Beard.

I knew a man who got a Degree in Linguistics, one of the several languages that he spoke was Klingon, which was a reason that he first chose his Major. Another friend discovered that she had a fascination with goddess figures and dressed up her Barbies as various aspects of The Goddess and placed them on her private altar. I learned that she

B) John, a Bear and retired Police Officer, resonates with the All-Father Figure, such as Zeus, Odin, Obatala, or Yahweh. His aesthetic involves The French Connection, PBS’s Nature series, and the NFL. John’s spiritual connection reflects making strong choices and seeing the Big Picture for his Community, John develops a Patron Spirit of the Castro, Christopher Street, or whichever Gay

The portrait of Rama Basohli style, Pahari, c. 1730 Paper, National Museum, New Delhi.

Neighborhood that he interacts with, personifying it in an Earthy, animal-like visual, like a grizzly-headed being on a throne.

C) Aiden’s resonance has direct connections to the Divine Couple, and wishes to find a way to reinterpret it, and the Great Rite, accordingly (see above). Aiden’s particular aesthetic is attached to a specific type of “ritual” (read: sexual practice). Aiden develops the “red-handkerchief Patron of Power Bottoms” and works on details for His Partner.

3. Detail your Icon

The Gay Figure needs more than just a title and conceptual ancestry. They require stronger elements to create a focusing point. Here are some elements to consider:

1. Specific portfolio: What exactly is your Icon going to be a Patron(ess) of? Is there more than one aspect? Apollo is a god of both Healing and Plagues; Ogun, depending on His Followers’ preferences has manifestations as a Sea Captain, a Warrior, a Technician or a Laborer.

2. Items, etc. that are considered Sacred: Bear in mind that objects that are considered Sacred and are viable as offerings are not necessarily the same. Zeus accepts sacrifices of Bulls, but harm an eagle (his Sacred bird and one of his favored symbols) and prepare to dodge some thunderbolts.

3. How reverence is enacted: What does one do to actually revere one’s Icon, get Their attention, channel them, etc.? This covers everything from shrine construction to rituals.

5. Other details, etc.: sacred days, colors, fabrics generally worn, etc.

Finally, I now present to you, a Gay God of my own, personal design:

NORIUS, THE GAY WARRIOR GOD, PATRON OF TOPS, THE DIVINE BEARER OF LINEAGE

The night storms had just abated, as if they’d heralded an approach, then retreated; the cityscape shimmered from the wetness left behind by the rain, reflecting on the streets the image of the vehicle... a black Humvee with mirrored windows and silvery undercarriage lights... as it pulls up to the leather bar.

He steps from the vehicle; glossy, black boots seemingly immune to the waters of the rain-drenched curb... tight, black leather pants, silver-studded black jacket over a short-sleeved safari shirt in similar color/fabric, partially open to reveal broad pecs dusted with dark curls matching his cropped hair and squarejawed scruff. A griffon-shaped charm in obsidian adorning the silver chain at his throat…

4. How they present: Symbols and Appearances: What are Their Symbols? What Do They appear as? The Abrahamic God appeared as a Burning Bush, a Column of Flames, or a whirlwind. Antinous was a beautiful youth, as per Hadrian’s ordered artwork. Sun Wu Kong is an elaborately armored monkey astride a flying cloud (He takes “Wind surfing” to a whole new level). How one’s Icon manifests, or the symbol representing Them, is very important, and says much about the person choosing said representation.

The doorman genuflects as he casually lights his cigar before crossing the threshold.

Norius is a spiritual descendant of such figures as Ogun, Herakles, Bryan Fury, WWE’s The Ultimate Warrior, as well as the many characters portrayed by such Adult Film actors as Dred Scott and Ricky Sinz. Norius is a Patron of masculine energy, power, and animal magnetism. He is a warrior, leader, and representative of hard-won freedom. He emerges from the Underworld while also standing with his back to the shadows, creating the manifestation of a Gatekeeper aspect: the Divine Hustler.

Norius’ favored substances for offerings include tobacco, beer, and hashish. His symbol is a Black Gryphon with silver-trimmings. His garment in his warrior aspect includes studded leathers, while he also manifests in black/silver pinstripe suits with fedora, in one of his less spectacular aspects. His weapon is the studded mace (or studded baseball bat, depending upon his Aspect) and his favored

Sports are Hockey and MMA (he has a connection to the ancient Mediterranean martial art, Pankration).

Norius’ Sacred Days are Feb. 2 (His arrival from the Underworld to Earth), and Feb. 27 (His announcement to the World of who/what he is). His Earthly appearance is that of a dark-skinned, black-haired man with a CrossFit build, tall enough to loom over others, and eyes with an amber glint, like those of a lion. A faint, leonine echo accompanies his voice, and, in his Divine aspect, he drives a chariot pulled by twin Black Gryphons.

Assuming one goes there, Norius is a Top. Priesting a ritual to Norius has the Mortal assuming the same role. A second figure becomes the Favored... a living receptacle for Norius’ “Blessing”, which then becomes spiritually distributed through the theoretical circle (depending on how one conducts the ritual, these two actors could perform a less figuratively, and more, uh, “hands on” variation). For solo rituals, the Practitioner becomes the “Favored One” and through an offering, is granted the endowment of Norius’ qualities.

Norius’ mythic history is that of a former Household god (a family totem), who, when other (in many cases, more powerful) gods journeyed into the Underworld in order to escape Persecution, followed suit. During his time down there, he learned that he was more than the Earthly Realm decided he was supposed to be, and fought his way out, emerging with a newfound strength. He then completed a difficult quest, finally announcing to the world that Norius, Gay Warrior God, has arrived…

This is a foundational construct, with room to further tailor it to an individual’s tastes, aesthetics and philosophical leanings.

4. Conclusion

This is an attempt to address the issues of navigating the Neopagan/Alternative spiritual world within a context or Queerness, using the specific subset of masculine Gay culture as a model for discerning the unique aspects of a given type. And, through analyzing and redefining the ideas of spirits, gods and icons, construct a totemic figure to suit one’s particular needs, as a focusing item for such things as meditation and identity. This can used as a template to be applied to other groups... a recipe for re-thinking what your god(s) and hero(es) should look like, and how they could reflect you, and your world.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make an

offering to Norius…

*NOTE: It’s come to my attention that there is some discrepancy between including or not including the T part of LGBTQIA in the word Queer. This is a subject that I intend to investigate at a later date.

REFERENCES CITED

Baldwin, G., M.S. (Bean, J. Rubin, G. Ed.), 1993. Ties That Bind: the SM/Leather/Fetish Erotic Style, Los Angeles; Dedalus Publishing Company.

Ellwood, T. 2004. Pop Culture Magick. Stafford, UK; Immanion Press.

Evans, A. 1978. Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, Boston; FAG RAG Books.

Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Vols. I-III, New York: Vintage Books.

Hutton. R. 1999 Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Witchcraft, Oxford; Oxford University Press.

Penczak, C. 2003. Gay Witchcraft: Empowering The Tribe, York Beach, ME; Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

FILMS

The Doors (Oliver Stone, Dir) 1991, Tri-Star Pictures.

ORGANIZATIONS

Naos Antinoou.org anderson-feri.org radfae.org

SUBJECTS INTERVIEWED

Thanks to “Owl,” “Arianna”, Patrick &Cully of the Rainbow Warriors, and T. Thorn Coyle of the Feri Trads, and photojournalist Cornelius Washington.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d also like to thank Cornelius Washington, Aaron Raz Link, Chris Beron and Brandon Schmidt for their push, and Matt Baume, as a role model for this project (and to whom I’ve made an homage in my close).

Living On The Land In Spain

by Eduard aka Junis

In 1993 I visited Short Mountain Sanctuary for the first time in mid winter 1993. The water pipes on the land were frozen solid and inside the house wood burning stoves were blazing to keep visitors and habitants from freezing. We had to get up a few times that night to prevent the stoves from going out. That evening we had stepped directly from the pitch dark outside into a dim lit kitchen living space, I could only vaguely spot a few people at a table in the back and one person in front of the stove, cooking. Butt naked apart from a plastic apron. This first confrontation with gay men on the land seemingly freed from restricting conventions and social attitudes was an immediate recognition, it felt like coming to a familiar home. These are my people! At home in the Netherlands I also lived a life low in luxury and with limited comfort, heating my house with a wood burner, growing vegetables, keeping bees, chickens and a dog. Away from city life.

That summer in 1994 things fell into place. Through my friend Matt, I met Habibi, originally from Texas, living in Holland. Through his previous Faerie experiences he again brought me in touch with Running Water in Germany, also already once touched by some Faerie exposure in the States. The three of us got together one day, and soon realized there was not a trace of Faerie sparkle anywhere in Europe.

The time had arrived to invite magic! In 1995 the first Faerie gathering on the island of Terschelling just of the coast of Holland, became a fact. And in the years to come the European Faerie branch really took of, many house meetings to follow and we also kept coming to the island for ten summers in a row. The movement grew and we accumulated enough funds to make a down payment for house and land in a wooded area in North Eastern France. Folleterre was born. Some of us dreamed about a community on the land, but soon this turned out to be rather complicated. No free building constructions in the woods permitted like in Tennessee and also the house dividing in separate living units turned out to be impractical . Better to use it as a home to come to for every visitor than a place for a handful of permanent residents we decided that first season.

The years went by, renovating the house through skill sharing. From installing solar panels, to electric

widening faerie circles

wiring, wood work, like replacing rotten floors and beams. Installing septic and water management. And of course working the land, managing the commercial woods and bringing in more tree diversity though the planting of slower growing oaks and beech trees. Another skill to be learned; working the chain saw! Soon setting up a garden, a place to learn but also to experiment. Next to the many themed gatherings, separate practical gatherings were orga-

nized, attracting many to put in long physical labor days, making firewood and working on the house. As time went on pioneers from the first hours could set a step aside, Faerie spirit and practical matters were carried on. New generations arrived. What had started as exclusive gay men’s circles, with oc-

casional female visitors grew with new gender and no distinct gender variations. The once so new and exciting male to male bonding concept lost importance in changing and more open times where new minorities are demanding understanding and acceptance.

In 2019 I became owner, together with Waitari, of an old farmhouse in southern Spain, almost a ruin. We had met at Folleterre some ten years before. Our nature fascination and shared gardening skills formed the basis for friendship. Here in Spain we run a small scale Faerie household amidst an alternative community inhabiting a beautiful valley. We are around thirty people connected by a network of foot paths, no roads no cars. We are some 800 meters high in the mountains at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. We have been working the land, installing irrigation systems, planting trees and tackling endless house renovating projects, from installing doors and windows to constructing wooden and tile floors. We have built Alpujarra traditional chimneys and natural stone staircases. It is a continuing process of creating and learning, sparked in Tennessee, grown and spread during many Folleterre years and turned into daily routines in Spain. ‘’Emovere’’, outgoing emotions and life forces need

to keep flowing, to stay healthy. Most of the Faerie principles that were so inviting to me at the time are adopted in our valley in an obvious manner, not so exclusive Faerie anymore—more in tune with a natural rhythm, sharing what we grow and taking care of each other, aware of our Mother Earth and embracing her natural elements, coming together in heart circles, or occasionally to dance and sing.

Conflicts everywhere in the world seem so far away here. It is easy to pretend they are not there. But we do pick up a lot of disturbing signs. It already started with the arrival of Covid19, which made a lot of people flee overcrowded places. The country became more popular. Also our valley received more visitors. Basic skills like growing your own food, making compost, keeping animals, working the land are picking up in importance, maybe one day again essentials to survive. Like so many these days I do feel helpless as an observer of war, conflicts, injustice, famine and what more. I can only hope for the best, share my knowledge and plant more trees. They are my children who after I am gone still provide oxygen and life to generations who keep believing in and contribute to the good in our world.

Photograph courtesy author.

I Am Not Your Fagmo

by Edward Jackson

Wait.

That word.

The f-word.

Fag. In the title? Is that appropriate to ever use?

Why would you do that?

You’re just pushing buttons now.

It’s not as harsh as the n-word.

Get over it.

In the last year I had two encounters with the f-word. Not the f-bomb that slips out of my mouth routinely, but the f-word that is used as a slur to humiliate and dehumanize me as a gay man. The word that tortured me in high school. The word that made me spend copious amounts of time planning when and where I could use the restroom out of fear of what would happen to me in my Midwest, mid-sized city in the 1980s high school bathrooms. Would I see that word next to my name above a urinal? Would I get my ass kicked just by needed to use the restroom and I was unsafe in that space?

A word that I saw written on a locker that was not mine in red nail polish. A word a felt relief to see was not on my locker. But that word was a scarlet word of marking for the poor young man who had to use that locker that day. A word that seemed to linger with a bit of opaque lightness even after a custodian tried to clean it off. Worse, that once vibrant red nail polish horrid word painted on the locker was now a shade pink, and pink is worse than red for a gay teen in 1988.

It is a word that causes me fear and panic. I have a physical reaction. It is a word that I’ve been called walking down the street for no reason. A word yelled at me when running on a dirt path in the woods with my dog. The word that was violently yelled at me the time I was mugged. It was even slurred at me on the tennis court in the gayest neighborhood in Atlanta. It was muttered by a man who couldn’t believe he was losing to a middle-aged 5’2" short, gay man. I guess to compensate for his toxic masculinity, calling me a fag made things better for him. It wasn’t for me and when I won, I still shook his hand at the end of the match. Why did I shake his hand?

I believe my issues with this word do not lie solely in the user and use of it. Rather, I spend far too much time analyzing what I do with my behavior when the

word is said, written to, or about me. Quite frankly, I freeze. It’s been almost forty years since the first time someone slurred this word at me and I’m still more in wonderment about my reaction and not the user. Why did I shake the hand of a man who called me a fag because he lost a tennis match to me? What did he do to deserve my sportsman like handshake after fairly beating him? I got no apology, no remorse. Just the lingering sound of the word echoing in my ear for years after that match that I still think about. That is how my brain works. I spend far more time thinking about my reaction, or lack of one, to the word than the person who uses it.

Years had gone by without that word being used to slur me. While that could show progress, let’s be clear, there was a global pandemic that quite honestly limited my interactions with people and their ability to slur me.

Perhaps that is why the use of the f-word in the two instances this last year are so glaring. Perhaps it is because it was used by people I know. Perhaps it is because I still froze when that word was used, and I gave a pass to the user. I was unable to engage. I could say that as a fifty-something gay man I’m simply exhausted. I am exhausted. I’m exhausted with my existence being debated constantly. I’m exhausted with my life being up for legislative debate. I’m exhausted with strangers on social media who slur me with pedo/groomer when they can’t use the f-word since I report them, and their accounts get locked. I’m exhausted that X won’t do anything when someone uses that word. The uptick in pedo/groomer usage on social media is ripe for research I say.

I’m exhausted with the performative “it’s so cute” type of responses when people ask how many years I’ve been married, and I have to reply with a single digit number. The reason for that single digit number isn’t because we are newlyweds. It’s because my husband and I were denied the legal right to marry for the first decade of our shared life. I’ve tried to create a matrix for Queer people in my age range to equate our years of partnership to straight marriage privilege. People who were allowed by the government to marry even though my husband and I had been committed together longer. I give up because when I try to explain it, it comes off as something akin to dog years, and dogs are cute, and then I’m right back to

my marriage being cute to performative allies. That is how my brain works.

The reasons the two uses of the f-word this last year about me was so glaring wasn’t any of the above. It is glaring because I knew the two users of the word somewhat well. It is glaring because of my reaction. My lack of reaction in the moment to be clear. It is glaring because like every other use, I think about it constantly and with longevity. However, context matters and the story of the two uses of the word are important.

The first use of the f-word was an odd encounter to start. A person I’d not seen in over a quarter of a century reached out during the pandemic to rekindle communication. An invitation to visit when the pandemic was over came to fruition and early in this year we met up. After a phone call where the person joked that I sounded like I had a mouth full of semen since it was difficult to hear me on the call, we met in person. The mouthful of semen comment should have been a clue to run back to the airport. What followed in that initial moment face to face was a smile, a hug, a warm greeting, and these words, “Roy, my fagmo.”

My fagmo. Those words stunned me into submission. How does a reasonable person in their fifties think that is an appropriate use of a word in 2023? Probably the same person who used that phrase during my teens and early twenties when greeting me. A person who thought it funny to say I sounded like I had a mouthful of semen. A person who had a biting wit that often made me uncomfortable in my teens and early twenties in the ‘80s and ‘90s. For this gay young man in that time, I struggled making friends. I was so fearful of not having friends that I accepted questionable behaviors from others. I didn’t have gay friends or agency to seek resources as no resources existed for me in that town I lived. I accepted what little was offered and that came with compromises I was willing to make to have friends. That seemed better than being friendless for this young gay man. One of those compromises was accepting fagmo as a greeting by this person. That’s what it was like for this seventeen-year-old young man in 1989. I’m sure this person thinks calling me fagmo is endearing and that they are an ally to LGBTQ+ people. I’m sure this person never thought of how harmful repeated use of addressing me as fagmo hurt and harmed me for years.

Here’s what I know. The person who said this isn’t a bad person. They are a person with feelings and family and struggles just like me. I know this person is not just one moment, or many moments. But there

is more to a person. Just like me.

During this visit with the person who called me fagmo, an incident from our past was brought up, and I sternly and explicitly asked not to talk about it or bring it up again. It was brought up two more times. That behavior to not respect my desire not to talk about a certain topic made me feel there was no point in educating this person on the use of fag when referring to me if my boundaries on uncomfortable past experiences were to be crossed. But when fagmo was used as a greeting I froze, ignored, and moved on. Why couldn’t I just say stop calling me that? I think I know why. I would not get a suitable apology and that would not be the end to the conversation. Like most people, this person would engage in the you know I’m not like that, I’m just kidding rhetoric. I’d not be met with full accountability of harm using this word for decades, I’d be met with come on, you know me, don’t be so sensitive, context matter. In order to avoid an hour of discussion and dissection and education on the word and the use of it. I disengaged. I removed myself internally from the situation and was outside myself.

But the word lingered for days, and weeks, and months in my mind. I’m still thinking about this and why it upset me

After a few queasy meals over that day, I engaged in fight or flight thinking and chose the latter and got home to my husband and adult friends. No goodbye, no lies, no excuses. I just left. A quick text of thanks for the invite, I have to get back early. I did have to get back early to my places and people where I felt safe. However, for months I questioned if I made space for that phrase to be used when referring to or greeting me. I questioned why I didn’t engage and say anything. I blamed myself for my feelings and fears. I told myself I was too exhausted in life to educate someone on a word they should know not to use.

My choice to leave and not engage surely befuddled some people. Some think I was just a snowflake and should have moved past it and enjoyed the visit. Others wonder why I didn’t stand up for myself. I can’t explain it. The anxiety of the word, the memories of the violence and harm it caused me growing up all surfaced and I simply wasn’t willing to risk my mental health at the expense of explaining why that word was so harmful only to hear the justifications from someone. I felt, and still feel, in 2023 it’s not my responsibility anymore to educate someone why calling me a fag or fagmo is inappropriate. I knew I’d be told I never corrected the person. I knew that blame would be repositioned on me. I knew I’d situ-

Fag" by Emerson Gray.

ate myself in a time of my life when it was used so easily against me and accept the blame for not telling someone not to use it. I knew I had reverted back to my teen self in the situation.

I had to move on physically however weirdly it would be perceived by my exit. However, I feel bad leaving when it was the right thing for me to do because I know that it surely made this person feel something. I overanalyzed the entire visit and it still permeates my mind months later.

I thought that would be the end of the f-word in my life. At least for a while. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Just weeks after the fagmo incident I received the strangest text from a friend I’d only known as an adult. A friend who lives in an urban area with a tremendous amount of inclusiveness in their life. The text detailed an encounter they had with a former co-worker of mine. The former coworker expressed happiness that this person was still in contact with me.

This is the moment in the text where I was stunned into submission and passiveness.

Then she said to me, “Oh, you still talk to Roy the librarian?”

“No, Roy the fag,” I joked.

It was jarring, almost worse to read it than hear it. Was I just texted that someone referred to me as Roy the fag? This was how someone described me to a mutual connection? In 2023 this is how I’m described casually. The text went on how this person explained to my former co-worker it was a joke and they knew the word in context of the 70s and cigarettes and they don’t get caught up in the PC of the world.

Ok, I guess if cigarettes are really your context, I wondered to myself. I should have texted and challenged that justification with the fact I don’t smoke. Or was this a justification? Had this person lived a life in London I didn’t know of, and that fag really was a reference to cigarettes? But wait, I don’t smoke so why were cigarettes being connected to me as a person? My head was spinning. I wanted answers and not justifications. I wanted an apology. I wanted to text back and challenge all this.

I didn’t text any of that though. Just thought it. Instead of texting not to ever use that word when referring to me I contextualized and analyzed me. Not the person. Me. I wondered what I’d done to give space to even text that to me. I ultimately gave the person a pass and simply moved on.

However, I labored over this in my mind. I wondered for weeks about this. It consumed me. Here is what I came to. This is a good person with hopes and

fears and family. Just like me. A person whose been kind and giving and gracious over the years to me. A person who messed up and told me. I’ve messed up. Said things I wished I’d hadn’t.

This person didn’t have to tell me any of this. I think this was an apology of sorts. Maybe an admission. Maybe a bit of fear my former co-worker I’d not seen in years would tell me this person said this about me, so it was a pre-emptive move to soften the blow. I thought of reaching out to my former coworker to inquire about this encounter as I sat down to write this and ultimately decided that was giving far too much oxygen to this word. Instead, I want to focus on me. But not me and my physical reaction that is freezing and unengaging to the word and person who used it. Not me who gives a pass to people. I wanted to focus on the history of the word to me and why I react this way.

Why am I so fearful of standing up to people I know who used this word around and about me? Why didn’t I text back condemning the use of the word? Why didn’t I at once stop the person who made the mouthful of semen joke and fagmo greeting? Am I just a chicken? Am I now to blame if these people use the f-word again because I hadn’t given them an education on the word? Why is the onus on me to tell people not to use this word? Why can’t I stand up for myself with this word? I am a loudmouth and stand up for myself more often than not. Ask any of the many opponents on the tennis court I’ve engaged combatively with. I can trash talk on the court with the best of them throwing f-bombs galore. Why did I not trash talk back with that man on the court that day when he called me a fag? What is it about this word that freezes me up so easily?

I think I know why now. As a former school librarian, I’ve spent some time studying representation in children and YA books and the importance of it for marginalized people. I consider myself marginalized as a Queer, cis, white gay man. My existence has, and is, often up for debate. I’ve been denied opportunities and access to legal rights as a gay man.

I thought back to what was my first encounter with representation of my Queer life in books. I used to believe I never had any as a kid. That I didn’t read any representation in books until way later in my adulthood. Then a memory surfaced, and I realized how damaging it was. I realize now why I freeze. I’m conditioned to freeze. I was wrong I’d never seen or heard gay representation as a kid. I’d actually heard and read gay representation early in my life. Representation in a book that was harmful and violent. I didn’t even consider negative representation in

books as representation, but it is. For me and my experience, it’s even more powerful because it was imprinted on me and stayed for decades below the surfaces of my memories. It conditioned my future responses to the f-word.

As a kid I wanted nothing more than acceptance from family. I was a weird, effeminate, daydreamy type of kid who got lost in books. I tried to mask the affect in my voice and mannerisms. I failed more often than not. When I started examining my first encounter with gay, male representation in books it was one of great harm and violence and I believe that may be why I flee the f-word encounters and not address it head on.

When I’m with people my age and we discuss our first encounters with representations in books it is almost always positive. For many cis, white women I know it’s often a Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary book. For a cis, straight, Black, male man I know it’s Ezra Jack Keats books. Gay men I know may mention James Baldwin or Armistead Maupin.

For me, my first, and only encounter for a long, long time with gay, male representation in books is Truly, Tasteless Jokes. This was a series of paperback books that were exactly what the title advertises. I’d forgotten that representation doesn’t mean it has to be positive depiction and unfortunately for me, my first encounter with any gay male representation in a book I was exposed to was one of harm.

Truly, Tasteless Jokes were books that my cousins and uncle would read aloud when I was at their home. They read out loud in front of me from this book. While my cousins were kids and didn’t know any better. My uncle on the other hand clearly could tell his nephew was gay and should’ve known better. Instead, he encouraged the racism, antisemitism, and homophobia displayed in this book. Jokes that were, but shouldn’t have been, acceptable in the 1980s. They were harmful for me in the years to come.

These were books that slurred multiple minorities and were read aloud in the home as if it was the funniest thing ever heard. While this series of books is horrid, the gay section for me is perhaps the cruelest as it so often involves dehumanizing gay men in addition to a plethora of AIDS jokes. I look back and can hear the cackle of laughter, laughter I performative engaged in to fit in with my exterior family. Laughing at myself. I thought of trying to access the books today to see if the jokes are as bad as I remember, but then I think why do that? There is no purpose. Those books that surely many white families like mine sat around on Christmas Eve reading from and rolling with laughter at the

cruelty. Jokes that gave space and conditioned me to believe that gay men are to be humiliated and made fun of. To be clear, there were no chapters that I can remember that made fun of my cousins’ hetero existences. However, as a son of a crip parent, there were chapters devoted solely to humiliating my father that I had to listen to aloud from people I wanted to accept me. While using the term had to is strong wording, as a young kid of 7, 10, 13, I felt no agency to leave a room when this was happening. What was I to do? Out myself and yell stop? No, gay boys in the 1980s had to take it. Had to take those violent words that dehumanized us and made fun of our health and lives.

For me, there was nothing redeeming about these books. I wanted to fit in with my older, male cousin and his father. At times, which meant listening to them reading from this series of offensive jokes and laughing. Laughing at myself who was aware of his sexual orientation at the earliest of age. However aware I was, I feared others knowing it. So, I laughed. Laughing to mask the pain of hearing these jokes read from a book. Knowing that if I ever outed myself, this was the point of reference and worried endlessly that these jokes would be slurred about me. Jokes that used the f-word often it felt. These books and their horrid representation conditioned me to accept a frozen response to the f-word all these years later and laugh at myself. Not the good kind of selfrealization laughing.

Those books conditioned me at a young age to accept and make space in my life for the use of the f-word, for jokes that marginalized me, and created space for people to interact with me inappropriately. It is odd that it took two very strange encounters with the f-word at the age of fifty for me to remember my first encounter with representation of my Queerness in books, however negative it was. Books are dear to me, and I wondered why this memory of a book had been buried. I wondered what made these memories of these books surface at this particular time.

But it gave me the opportunity to explore how my family created the conditions way back then for my response today. It gave me an understanding that representation needs to be positive, and we need to choose our books for our LGBTQ+ youth carefully and have honest conversations so the next generation can appropriately respond and deal with words like the f-word. A word I may still freeze in reaction to in the future. But maybe not. Maybe I am now unfrozen and will respond to a person who uses the word with I am not your fagmo.

Horse Sense

(Days of 1964-65)

When it came clear to him, the college shrink (my first time ever to vent it all), that I had gushy dreams over certain guys and didn’t know how to deal with that, how I was reeling like a greenhorn buckaroo at some ball-busting rodeo, he urged me toward the West Hall lounge to find a girl and go petting, said my head was full of bunk. But a wind through my body told me to saddle up the bronco in my heart, admit his strength and sheen, charge destiny.

—J.R. Kangas

Ochre Rose

Allan F. Acevedo

Maybe I’m a cactus, I guess a short San Pedro.

Renowned for its resilience, thirsty but undemanding, flourishing under full sun, remarkably adaptable. Maybe I’d bloom flowers one day. (a harsh habitat is still a home)

Then I met a real cactus. Arguably dissimilar but our roots knew each other.

And I learned to bloom in my own season, water my own garden.

I am a tall, single rose with a thick stem unforgiving prickle not the classic red actually, Ochre red asymmetrical with wilted sepals and pistils to punctuate the pedantry of otherwise predictable petal pulchritude

The Shape of Desire

I’d wanted it to be soft & delightful like the moment you find the perfect vintage slip in a Parisian thrift store and then afterwards thread yourself like a needle through the streets wearing only the slip over a torn pair of jeans.

And I didn’t fully understand why she wouldn’t text me back

until I checked and felt the shape of my desire and it was sharp like impatience or corners or a sarcastic retort.

But how to soften?

I am not always sharp. I listen to the rain at night. I hang dried roses in my window that faces the sunset. I give my dog a kiss on each one of her spots. I read dog-eared books I’ve had for decades.

But if I can’t be soft for her, then who cares if I’m soft in all those other ways?

I go to ask my bed & pillows for advice, wrap myself in fleece & pop some bubble wrap

puncture the pockets one by one intently with my spiky, pointed, acrylic fingernails.

—Liana Kapelke-Dale

Difficulty at the Beginning

Beginnings threaten to slip away almost as soon as they are born like raw silk from unblemished hands, softly softly slippery as trying to pack a wound with cobwebs and I see the strands of these beginnings start to fly away, falling through my fingers out of my reach.

What happens when those strands are the strands of your hair

I haven’t yet touched

What happens when those strands are the most delicate threads of tissue between us

I know how easily they can rip

I know how these things have ended in the past: shredded silk, shorn hair, grab-handed.

—Liana Kapelke-Dale

Whooping Cranes

I have a whooping crane in my mouth

Her beak forces my lips, my teeth, apart and a call cries out

sorrows that I thought to keep secret

I shower, and the crane calls and calls and though the sound ripples out through the surrounding waterfall

her mate does not come

In the evening, I sit out on the back patio the crane crying within me

I want to comfort her, to tell her that my mate is gone, too, to say that she can stay within me for as long as she wants, but

she’s the lump at the back of my throat and I cannot speak, until

finally I open my mouth find sound amid the silence:

a long, mournful wail so full of sky

I can almost feel the world bend towards me

and when I look up, I see a trumpeting of cranes

swooping down to meet me

—Liana Kapelke-Dale

New Me Now

I used to spend my life in dreams my desire, to be oh-so serene gazing out to sea with a far-off stare I sought ideals while taking in the air but as I wafted down those country lanes to others I must have seemed somewhat insane.

While wandering far and wide believing I was experiencing life from both sides one day I realised that wherever I would go I was leaving no more impression than footsteps in crusted snow; I’d become anathema to myself

and an enigma to others because I kept who I was (inside) in a closet on a shelf; there, in a folder in a box under lock and key in a file labelled “Mystery”.

I finally knew what I had to do stop chasing dreams and pursue the real and when I did that, I started to heal I shut the door on that old file threw away the key and sharpened my knife; I’m a new me now, living a new life.

—Michael Gould

For Me

by Allan F. Acevedo

Before today , everyday I woke up and hoped to see myself reflected in a mirror and think

My Goddess , you are beautiful .

You are brilliant

You are capable

You are kind

You are lovin

You are healthy

You are abundance

You are enou h .

Instead

I wake up and dread a version of myself reflected in a mirror and think

My God , you are dis ustin .

You are na ve

You are indolent

You are e haustin

You are ornery

You are soft

You are little

You are needy .

Today

I did not hope or dread .

I put the mirror down .

Never did I need a mirror to see myself .

I am all those thin s .

The Good .

The Bad . And More .

Still , or maybe because of it all , I ( finally )

Love

Me . - or Me

Reliance

I should have learned carpentry, masonry, or metalwork. Instead, at eighteen, alone in the home goods at Woolworths, I bought an embroidery kit, all threads included, followed the written instructions, finished the thing that then hung on mom’s wall for twenty odd years. Along the way, quilting and weaving and such until I had made every cover still spread on my bed.

I considered creating a business, selling my blankets, but you can never charge truly for what that kind of effort is worth.

I’ve had many odd jobs to provide shelter and bread, have kept myself warm with my craft,

so I’ve no need, really, to think of you every autumn with your felled trees and chainsaw roaring away Sundays, stealing my silence, renting space in my head. I should call the police and report the disturbance, or invite you over for coffee, at the least start you an afghan to wrap yourself in warmer than the heat from your woodstove, quieter, and less likely to burn down your house.

— D. Scott Humphries

"Color of Water: Bariloche, Argentina" by Gregory T. Wilkins (aka Equus).

Mr. Blake At Twilight

by David Weldon

In the years alone, he could not stand the house in silence.

So, there was always something on; he preferred talking on the radio or a recording of speech.

But always something.

He thought, “Perhaps I am too old for the hope of music.”

Then, “Perhaps I am too helpless for the hope in music.”

Always something, always but today everything had been disgusting. He had shut everything off and there was no human sound. No sounds but those of the house existing, growing older and its machinery keeping it alive.

As twilight came on, in its silence he heard chirping. Somewhere outside a young bird was calling for its own. The sound drew him out onto the cold boards of the open back porch. There was no bird. There was the grey sky, the black tree. There were the black trees—the wall of arborvitaes, black and black again in the closing light under the blue-grey sky, the grey-blue clouds which moved, coming on, growing closer and greater and more disturbing. They came at speed, changing course to move more toward him rather than pass to the south. Light was now only a hot glow on the edge of the world. They flew toward the night— soon all would be swallowed by the night, the clouds, sky, house, his life.

He returned into the house, and turned on the television, looked at the meaningless floss and stepped onto his porch to see the last of the light in the street.

Red and the Kid were walking along this Street. The Kid was carrying a paper bag from Goffins with four cartons of Kools in it. They never went to Goffins; it was so out of the way, but there had been a sale and Red needed his ‘dope’. He had been sucking on a fag since they left the store.

Nighthawks had begun swooping through the sky as they came to an old four square where iris bloomed around the porch steps. Red stopped, waved his cig around at the Kid and ordered, “Look how beautiful these are!” The Kid had been thinking the same thing. They didn’t see anyone sitting on the porch but then an old old man, like from the civil war old, appeared there and slowly came down, both hands on a rail, one old foot in an old house slipper, then gingerly another old foot to the same step. Step after step till all three steps were descended.

“Do you like the iris, boys?”

Sitting far back against the house wall, a bit surprised the light was lasting this long, he had heard their every word. Without waiting for an answer, the old boy started telling Red how he had gotten this one and that one from ‘some old woman’ whose mother had had them new before World War I or the depression or was it the flood. The Kid noticed that the old guy hadn’t looked at his ass or Red’s, which the Kid thought was much better than his own. Interesting, he thought, the old boy had to be in the family, and he noted the name on the mailbox —it was unknown to him. Still, he was a bit offended that this guy hadn’t checked out Reds’ ass, the Kid thought there must be something wrong with men who didn’t check out Red.

The old queen, as Red was thinking of him, offered some roots to the lovers, as he was thinking of them. Well, he actually offered them to Red, who was more accessible. Red owned no earth.

The Kid answered, “Sure we’ll take some. Thank you, Mr. Blake.” The old guy brought out a shovel that his grandfather might have used when a boy and dug up a nice clump of his two favorites, a pair whose colors sang together. The Kid noticed a hole in the elbow of a deep green cardigan the old man wore over a thin flannel shirt about as faded as the old guy himself and a bit too large. All his clothes seemed a bit too large. The flannels plaid wasn’t in Sears, it wasn’t even in the Salvation Army. It reminded him of ads in old magazines, the kind of shirt rich guys wore to go fishing in the mountains. He saw, but didn’t register the mismatched buttons on the shirt, but Red had noted them right away.

The Kid emptied the paper bag of cigarettes, stuffing the cartons in every pocket. They carried the bagged roots home with the cartons sticking out of the Kids pockets like broken bones sticking out of your legs. The streetlamps were coming on when they got to the little house, so it was in that light they used a soup spoon to plant the roots along the drive between the side door and the street.

The old man had watched them go, then leaving the nighthawks to their suppers, slipped back into the yellow light of his old house to prepare his own. He was happy. He knew he shouldn’t, but decided to fry some chicken the way his mother and grandmother had done, like all the women who had grown up in the South did. His doctor would have a conniption but

what he didn’t know wouldn’t make his head swim, and Mr. Blake felt like celebrating.

He needed both hands to lift his mother’s cast iron chicken fryer to the stove top, which seemed to get a bit higher every year. He emptied an old bottle of oil and all of a new one to fill the deep chicken fryer before lighting the gas under it.

It would take a while before it would be hot enough for the meat. He had to sit down at the table to get his breath with the raw chicken on a plate beside him. He thought, “I think that fire is a little high,” but then those two boys stepped into his thoughts. Those beautiful

unconscious but just alive on the floor when the fire reached the wall behind the stove.

Acouple years later the flowers bloomed outside the little house. It was the first time they had and Red and the Kid were looking at them, Red in the driveway, the Kid in the doorway. A middle aged churchy-looking woman came along. She stopped, looked at the blossoms.

“Were those your mothers?” she asked. Disregarding the possibility of an answer, she asked what their names were, the flowers’ names; she wasn’t interested

young men and how happy they were together.

“I was never able to have that, they wouldn’t allow it—the thought almost moved him to tears.

The lifetime of hiding in plain sight, of denial, of lies. He was a good boy, an honest man, but what they had demanded! To them life wasn’t a right, unless they thought you were right, one of them.

Then came the thought that then really drew the tears, tears of pleasure that someone was getting what he never had. At last, at last and he got to see it. Like Moses on Mt. Nebo—and such nice kids too.

He heard a pop, another, then saw, the pan bubbling; popping oil boiled over the rim of the chicken fryer, the oil was in the gas flame—burning! He rose straight up from the chair. Too fast, too fast for his thin heart to pump and things turned grey, and he knew he was falling but couldn’t care. He was still just alive,

in the boys’ names.

They did not know the names; they hadn’t been told and they hadn’t thought to ask. And they had never seen that little old man again, only the vacant lot where his home had been.

Red, blew out a lung full of smoke, “Mr. Blake”, he smiled sweetly at her. “What an actor!” thought the Kid and he Kid said, “That’s the lavender one, the purple and yellow is “Our Grandpa”.

Serve, volley, and set for the Gay team, love for the Holy Church.

Hard and impervious as a wooden pew, she asked if she could have some as she had never seen any like them before, and she got a small bit of each, so went off carrying Our Grandpa and Mr. Blake, whom she tucked into a bed side by side.

We Do Not Ask to be Queen

by Claude Chabot

We do not ask to be Queen.

We do not ask to be Queen; it is Our birthright and Our destiny.

For those who regard us as the guarantor of tradition, We bow Our head.

We stand with you and above you. We are the mistress to your lives. We are the embodiment of the state.

We are nothing and We are everything.

Forgive Us. We are everything. We are everything to you.

We do not ask to be Queen. We are propelled thusly.

The Queen will now enter the Realm. ∞

The procession to the vehicle was slow and deliberate. We waved to the stalwart subjects who braved the rain to see their Queen. Our consort Frederick was at Our side throughout.

Touching. Yet, the morning ceremonies taxed Us. The Queen greeted all with restraint. A vague smile teased the lips. We waved from the sedan. It is of the most regal blue. It complements all that We seek to inspire in the subjects.

The subjects were delighted to gaze upon Our royal person. We are unrepentant in pride.

Statements as we greeted the crowd were taken down by Our secretary. The Queen must be recorded. We expressed sentiments of duty and loyalty.

As the sedan re-entered the Palace grounds, We were reminded by our consort to wave slowly with a gesture solely devoted to the hand. The forearm remains inert. The destiny of Our rule is inherent in every gesture of Our hand. The hand that appears to be mounted on Our body. Our hat which appears to be mounted on Our head. It

flourished with an ostrich feather mounted to the hat. Our body appears to be mounted to the Volvo Sedan from which We wave.1981. It cruises with the grandest of rumbles.

Wuka-wuka-wuka-floop. Celestial music, truly. ∞

This morning.

“Lady Olivier, my gown.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Ma’am, the silk Atelier Caito?” Lady Farely asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Hervé Pierre? I think not Lady Farely.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The Queen is not averse to silk. In the Realm, We indulge Ourself of all things. However, We prefer the fabric of petroleum. They dressed Us for Our morning meeting, Lady Farely, of the Pittsburgh Farelys. And Lady Olivier from the eastern provincial Oliviers. Of Pottstown.

Impeccable.

Coco was in attendance in her chambers: she makes do with the broom closet. She waited as ladies-in-waiting do. With magnificence.

We shone as the sun beguiles. Pink Paisley. White hat with feather. Ostrich. Again. The grandest. We are thus enrobed for the Queen’s meeting with Our Council: Sir Bernie the 3rd, Coco, Edie the Great, Master Bo and Pickles. This meeting must take place. We must cement Our status from the Royal Room. We are discussing the problem in the southern fold. Frederick has poured me a stiff one.

There have been rumors that Our royal embodiment is challenged by those on the aforementioned southern fold of the Realm. They object to my imperium. It is Princess Phyllis who seethes on

her pedestal and gets the subjects riled. They may object to Our imperium but We are heir and Our consort is Our rock. The rock on whom We lean. That is the blessing of Our rule. The Queen is thus so privileged.

We are Mary of the Realm and those who pretend otherwise and who doubt are condemned by Our Lord. Princess Phyllis will be admonished and she will be warned. Sir Bernie is watching her and will report her goings-on to Frogmoore.

There are plans devoted subjects! For those who justifiably hang on Our every word as a lifeline, Justice will be done. Justice must be done. It is the Queen’s imperative. The Queen will not be dissuaded; the Queen will not be reduced by the evil-doers. They have no love for the Realm.

Our destiny is inherent. There is no room for pretenders. The Palace moves quickly to suppress. It is divine destiny. God and the Queen. Intertwined.

This evening.

We again chose costume of Our preference. We adore polyester. The dressing gown is of the finest made. That is what We are to all who project their hopes onto Us. The finest made. It was the grand gala ribbon cutting at the astonishingly haute Pizza Plus on Route 6 for which We swathed Ourself in the brilliant fabric made by man and the petroleum industry (Already noted. We are proud of its rigs). The plebians delighted in Our presence. They had that air of astonishment that We encounter amongst the People. The Queen’s brilliance is inevitable.

Following the ribbon snip and magnificent fête at Billy’s Rawhide, We dined with my consort Frederick in Our apartments on the third floor of the Palace whilst We flourished Our pride amongst the royal dinner party. The fish sticks were unforgettable. The Council was there as well as Pinky. And Dixie. A bit tight for the breakfast nook, however.

“Dixie, get the booze!“ Light laughter everywhere. We can be quite the card. The Queen must rule by setting humor as the example. The Queen chuckled She admits. But We must act. The Usurpers are gaining traction. We fear for the Realm.

After c’est typique rendezvous repast with beaucoup bottles of Miller bubblies, which made the very cunning dining room that doubles as the breakfast nook and the passageway to Sir Bernie’s room vibrate somewhat, We reclined in the recessed window overlooking the grand boulevard. We could see Queen Mother bringing out the trash.

We were recalled to royal consciousness by my rock and anchor, Frederick.

“What will we do with the leftovers ma’m?” Frederick questioned.

“Summon the page and We will tote them to the subjects.”

“’Tote them, my Queen?”

“Yes Frederick, get the tote bag. We shall distribute them personally tonight.”

“Enter Pottstown in the Palace Volvo? They will recognize it immediately.”

“That is precisely correct. We will leave the Palace at 1a.m. to bestir the populace with Our generosity. Prepare the Volvo Frederick.”

“Yes, ma’m. It is an honor to do your privilege.”

We are told by the master mechanic of the Realm the sedan has a bum carburetor. Wuka-wuka-wuka-floop. He’s working on it, he told Jimbo. The subjects were subjected to quite the racket. Frederick was instructed to press on the steering disc savagely, announcing Arrival. The subjects, are, of course, vividly inflamed by these impromptu Midnight cavalcades.

We prepared to leave within one-half hour of my decree to grant Pottstown the beneficence of the Queen’s table. Queen Mother was present.

“Blow it out your Bedouin!” Queen Mother muttered, slamming the door of the Royal Room. She is back from her evening out. She reeks.

“Mama, please. You’ll ruin it for everybody. Hitch up your drawers.”

We cannot govern with this woman at Our

elbow. We do wish Jimbo was here. He pumps us up so We can ignore Queen Mother at any time. We admire his zeal.

We await Frederick the Great who is retrieving the tote.

The next evening

Lady Farely of the Pittsburgh Farelys was in attendance. And Frederick.

The imperium, its just dominion, its very administration, is denied by the many idle minds in the Southern fold, and these many are pushed ever closer to revolt and chaos by Princess Phyllis, formerly of Daisy Fresh Dry Cleaners. We have now refused to allow the dry-cleaning of the Palace to be so compromised by the Princess. All ladies-inwaiting are commanded to bring the Queen’s royal wardrobe to Sani-Safe. It is exemplary of its kind.

“Billy get the cattle prod!” consort Frederick boomed. He is the complete consort of manliness to this monarch’s delicate feminine dependency. Princess Phyllis is enraged by his existence and by Our sway over him and the Realm. Meaning Our beneficent rule over the grinding hopelessness of my subjects’ lives. Their middle age is not delightful.

“Where is Sir Bernie? We demand his presence!”

The Queen strode the Palace and discovered Sir Bernie had left his dinner prepared on the hot plate. We are aghast. The reckoning is approaching as he knows only too well yet he withholds his presence from Us and insists on a nibble. We are yet troubled by his evident total disregard for the pork chop ready for the chew. But We digress. We are ready.

Sir Bernie is the key to endless years of Our beneficence for the Realm. We pray for victory.

There is the plan.

It will happen tonight. ∞

“Look, baby, she’s calling it Frogstone or something. I don’t know Betty. She said it’s an estate

back home near where dad and grandma lived a long time ago. In the country. Maybe Frogmoore or something else…Frogmoore Cottage. Isn’t that the cottage on Delaware Bay? Or maybe it’s her aunt’s guest house outside of Philly. I saw a picture. She’s got those little elves and frog lawn statues in front. Yeah, she’s in good with the aunt. Hold it, wait, I’m in this damn pay phone. I’m fishing out change from the bottom of my pockets. They don’t have a phone at the home. Can you believe that? Just a pay baby like the one I’m using from around the corner. What? Like what I said. I ain’t well versed in these things. No…what? I was out to repair the TV at ‘the Palace.’ Yep, that’s what they call it. I listen to their stories for about three minutes and it’s all very interesting and very strange and it just turns out they’re just these little people who dress like they’re rich, sometimes with fancy hats but they’re really on the dole and just crazy out of their minds. The only one who works is Phyllis and she’s a shampoo assistant at Mr. Payne’s Lovely Heads on Marlborough Street. No, she left the dry cleaners. I have to admit I got a thing for Phyllis. She wears one of those funny broad hats that bounces when she walks on her way to Sunday Mass with what she calls her “army,” two little dogs and her four nieces and nephews.”

“Yeah, who knows. I don’t know the Queen’s real name but she’s at The Payne Residence. That’s where she ‘holds court.’ She has two rooms and a kitchenette with a double hotplate; a microwave and a tiny table frig for snacks plus the breakfast nook. Yeah, that’s ‘The Palace.’ She’s free all day. Like I said: on the dole. You know, it’s not always what they say, I think she’s a she. Sandy’s friend who used to work at the drugstore on South Main.”

“What? Who’s Bernie…oh, you mean Lillian’s cousin? ‘Sir Bernie’ to her? Yeah, he’s down here too when he’s not at the garage. What? He works with Jimbo. Oil changes mostly at Phil’s Service. They all have little jobs or they did. They either retired or couldn’t hold down a job no matter how trivial it is and went on welfare or disability or whatever. Like I said, crazy out of their minds. But something’s going on and I think the Queen lady or whatever is going to lose it. If she hasn’t already. She dresses like a Queen or maybe like some crazy person thinks a Queen should dress. I’m surprised no one’s called the police or the

hospital about her.”

“No, not for long. You have to wait outside in the hallway to get ‘audience.’ That’s what she calls it. Audience. Then she has you come in with one of the other crackpots saying they’re Ladies in Waiting and that Her Highness will see you in the Royal Room or whatever she’s calling it. I don’t know. Some storage room she had all gussied up with a wooden rocking chair painted gold. That’s her throne. It’s all so strange, Doris.” ∞

The white slimline phone was ringing. It befits majesty. Lady Olivier has united it with Our grasp. Sir Bernie is on the line calling from the Howard Johnson’s in the southern fold. Sir Bernie is as a Royal as We say he is. He understands the problems of the People. He understands that the problem is that there are the People.

We held the receiver at a distance of six inches as We command the receiver; We do not bow to its neediness for grasp. The Plan was executed merely hours ago. It was destiny that it should be so; destiny that would intervene for Our beneficent rule. Sir Bernie has been integral to its success.

It must be understood that before they return us to Frogmoore Cottage for a triumphant weekend of royal brouhaha that We and Princess Phyllis are aligned in gesture and deed; we are, in fact half-sisters by the King, his grandness now dimmed by age and the delinquent antics of his ditzarina consort Twinkle Haring. We are the fruit of his loins and were destined to rule together; can you be surprised that there is competition? The King’s were manly loins, as proud as the nation. He employed them with great élan. The Queen Mother was consort to his superior brawn. We are their child in mode and model. We are intact beyond Our years. We are the embodiment of youth and elegance.

We thank God that it has brought us the Realm. But again…there is Phyllis. One wishes to forget.

It will all be settled by tonight; We must retreat to Our Royal Room at the Palace before we depart for Frogmoore. It is Our seat and Our basis for audience of those who desire one. There We shall consider. And wait. Wait for the comeuppance.

We laid down Our scepter and We withdrew the

crown from the Woolworth’s hat box where it is emphatically stored in the Royal Room’s laundry bin.

Without further hindrance and befitting majesty with the crown atop Our regal head, We will announce Our fulfillment of the dream of a United Realm free from strife amongst its highest members. The convocation in the Palace yesterday was extraordinary in that it united opinion of which Ours is the only relevant and prevalent one. The Queen is thus delighted.

We espied Vivien the Elder quickly exiting from her chamber. She had probably forgotten something in the dryer. Her brain is no longer. We were often detained together late in the day at the Royal School of the Realm, also known as Pottstown Middle School. Ofttimes, the principal of the school would forget that she was transgressing the rights of a Princess (C’est moi me and me alone baby), and soon to assume the throne. It took great patience. The King Father, of course, was not amused.

As noted, commoners do attend Pottstown Middle as well as that is their due. Those amongst Us were not delightful in their youth which has, of course, morphed into the also not delightful middle age as noted above and careens to disaster in their vividly undelightful Old Age.

The day is dimming. We ordered Coco to bring Our cupcake to the morning room, down a few feet from the breakfast nook. We espied occupants of the room. They bowed to us; could it be otherwise? Did they desire audience? We must speak to Lady Farely about the bookings for the Royal Room. Most tiresome.

Tonight the plan has proceeded to safeguard Our grasp on the Palace. The smile on Princess Phyllis will be but memory.

Sir Bernie the 3rd, Coco, Edie the Great, Master Bo and Pickles anxiously awaited the announcement of the glorious news in the Royal Room. We will not be dissuaded from announcing VICTORY!

We entered the room with time-tested élan. Sir Bernie spoke. He had concluded that there would be a gathering at the Palace to provide Princess Phyllis with a maneuver to save face but perma-

nently preempt her naughtiness.

It will all be settled; We must retreat to the Royal Room. It is my seat and my basis for audience for those who desire one. Our allies’ actions have been stilled as they await the result of this momentous moment.

The next morning.

We fear for Phyllis, the great lady. But not Queen. There is only Our hand on the rudder of the ship of state. It steadies against the flotsam of Phyllis. We stand alone. As Queen. We must stand alone as the symbol of all that will be. As the guarantor of tradition; as the seat of absolute authority; as willing companion to my consort Frederick.

Our rock.

Sir Bernie contacted the wretch Princess Phyllis early that day and she appeared as summoned as We ascended to Our throne.

Princess Phyllis stood before us exposing her burgundy culottes. Though she defies us, We concede that the Princess has excellent taste in short pants. They were cunning. But her misnavigation in royal affairs has had to be corrected and is unrelated to her feminine haberdashery. There are consequences of international scope.

“I’m standing here Mary. I’ve got work to get to. I mean, oopsie, Queen Mary, what’s this all about? Have you called that number I gave you about the doctor? He can see you any time that’s convenient. God knows you have enough free time.”

The Princess dissembles. She must pledge unity to the Palace. She must never challenge this royal personage again. The Queen smiled. One must smile in the face of insolence. A frozen smile, however.

Princess Phyllis has surrounded herself with sycophants who are unable to recognize the true colors of her motivations. That was the report of the very, very Secret Service of which the Palace employs. They are down there on Fifth Street on the second floor of the building, right door next to the dental clinic. The building with the geezer bar. That is what Frederick calls it. A geezer bar. Queen Mother must spend time there, We think.

Grimace. She is everything to us that We wish to dismiss from the imperium. Too bad we can’t just gun her down. But that would so upset the King Father.

We sat down with great élan and waved away the traitor. The wretch appeared surprised and overcome by my firm dismissal.

The Service watches Phyllis. Yes. It will all happen very, very soon. The exultation of the Queen of the Realm and her triumph over the would-be Usurpers is dizzying.

Yes! Moments ago, word has come that the armies that the Princess has employed are now in direct revolt against her authority and have begged, with their swords pointed high in the air, to be able to devote their careers and their lives to the Queen.

Their request is hereby granted. A roar went up amongst that camp of hirsute and muscle cheering the final rout of the enemy, We will surely be so informed. Phyllis is fini. ∞

“I’m telling you. It’s much worse than before Phyllis. My wife told me to call you. Yes the Mrs. Anyway, she’s talking armies and international intrigue and absolute authority. It’s way more than just the Queen thing. You know about her idea that you plan to unseat her? Overthrow? I don’t know the word. No, I know she hasn’t seen Dr. Sparks because she refuses to leave the, uh, Palace most of the time. Now I’m starting to talk that way, Unless it’s for one of those weird ribbon cuttings. I guess people think it’s cute. What? Right, anybody who says they’re a Queen or a clown. They get the same goofy smile.

“It’s like she’s forgetting who she really is, I mean, forgetting, completely, and this is not just pretend. She’s been heard talking about her mama as Queen Mother and the other night her boyfriend, she calls him her “consort,” drove her around town with his horn blaring with parcels of leftover food. By the time she had finished tossing these packages on the lawns of these angry people who had been woken up, the police were called, but she was gone.”

“The stories lately that get back to me. You’ve

got to do something. Phyllis, it’s much worse than before. Emergency services? But what are they going to be told? That she’s a pretend queen who delivers food in the middle of the night?”

The Triumph

We ordered them out of the Palace and onto the grounds of the nearby Food Flair. There is a special on sauerkraut. They arranged for their comrades to join them with filter tips. They displease me; but We are patient and generous with the People, however repulsive they may be. The comrades, not the tips.

The cattle prod will soon be useful should it be needed. We are aghast at the possibility, however. The prod ruffles Our calm.

To aid in the dereliction of Phyllis, one subject was brought before Us. He is a Communist. He neither respects the high stratum We occupy by destiny nor the air of the Realm about me. We spoke to him as one does an innocent. He will be the deviant key to my complete nullification of the upstart Royal.

His name is Ralph.

“They have brought us you. That is the gift of Our Reign. We accept you without question. But, you are not clean. You have been brought before the Queen without bath or shower. You smell to high heaven. You shall enter the steaming stall and cleanse yourself. Coco, the Castile! Pour bleach in the bath. He’s quite pungent, I say.”

The subject designated Ralph stared at us now, scrupulously scrubbed with lemon-scented Cascade Dream Wash and dressed in the finest designer jeans that we could find amongst the Palace lost-and-found. He had been chosen to deliver a message of the tragedy of her failed usurpation to Phyllis. We expected her immediate capitulation. You may wonder why we chose a stranger to extend such a vital communication. Sir Bernie the 3rd, Coco, Edie the Great, Master Bo and Pickles demurred. They claim consequences.

We disdain Palace upstarts. Ralph has departed the Palace for the Princess’s paltry haven in Pottstown to establish the terms of Our rapprochement in the face of her Defeat.

The Delight

The sun sets. But not on the Realm. Not on Mary, of the Realm. We gleam in a sodium-vapor glaze.

There has been complaint that We had once again generously toted Our regal gifts to the subjects under a full moon. The subjects were in awe of Our magnificent munificence as they bespied Our errand-doing in the moonlight. Excellent corned beef and cabbage in tiny cups for the Realm to savor. Awaken all ye of South Knudley Boulevard!

We deposited the regal gifts but those who had been chosen for the Royal bounty simply stared from their thresholds as subjects do, their plebian lives shattered by the view of Our magnificent accoutrements and regal flair as we handed them the pots of lusciousness that we knew they must prize. Often they fled into their tiny homes, too overcome to embrace Our Royal visit.

We returned from this latest Royal Tote to be alone in Our Royal Room, astride the golden throne, quietly contemplating Our complete command of the Realm. Phyllis is vanquished. We are and will always remain Queen. The Palace is once again secure. Tomorrow we will sojourn to a splendid victory assembly and magnificent soirée at Frogmoore. Frederick will escort Us in the Volvo. Wuka-wuka-wuka-floop. Coco has mentioned a lofty physician who will be there to calm Our excited cerebrum. We have assured Coco that We will see that this provider of solace (Doctor Sparks?) to those too excited to reflect, shall engage Us in the wading pool at Frogmoore.

They have promised onion dip.

The People have granted me endless rule in the empire of Our most regal mind.

Mary, of the Realm.

Forever.

"Color of Water: Brisbane, Australia, City River Banks" by Gregory T. Wilkins (aka Equus).

The Day I Wanted To Quit

by Luna

Two days before the appointment with the notary, I got cold feet. Everything was ready to sign and I wanted out.

After more than a year and a half of online meetings, heart circles, vision documents, legal advice, visits to numerous properties and a handful of Faeries coming in and out of the project, six of us had made it to the finish line. The dream of creating the first Faerie house in rural France was finally within reach.

Ahead of the final signing, we all met at an Airbnb nestled in a sleepy French village with just one corner shop and a bar catering to a handful of British expats. The month of February was coming to an end and the days were still gray and cold. We gathered around the fireplace and talked about the community we wanted to build.

The path that had taken us to that moment in time was different for each of us. In my case, I had been a nomad for longer than I had wished to. It is a blessing to travel when you want to, but the freedom to move often comes at the expense of the freedom to stay. Like or not, the day always comes when you have to pack your things and go.

Being a nomad can also be incredibly lonely. I had been spending long periods abroad on my own, but the previous year I had been lucky enough to travel with my new boyfriend. He was supposed to move into a new apartment when his prospective landlord changed his mind and dumped him. He didn’t plan to, but overnight he also became a nomad. Around that time, the world closed down in fear of a virus and those who had a home were instructed to lock themselves in. Nomads had nowhere to go, so we continued to roam like the wild animals who had reclaimed the deserted highways.

Traveling with my new partner kept the ghost of loneliness away, but even in our moments of bliss it was difficult to ignore how thin was our bubble. In my previous relationship, I had tried to live according to the conventional wisdom that says that all a gay man needs is to move in with his boyfriend and relish in the comforts of a middle class couple. I did love my boyfriend of that time, but as years passed I became increasingly disenchanted with a lifestyle shaped by conformity rather than reflection or choice. That gnawing feeling was our undoing, but in the process I realized that the wellbeing of the

couple could not be achieved by neglecting the many relationships that made each of us.

Another way of saying that is that I was looking for community. The same was true for the other five Faeries with whom I was about to buy the house. The concept of community resonated among us in different ways. Community could be a response to the question of how we age as childless queers. Pretty high up in my list was the notion of community as a way to practice solidarity and resilience in the face of ecological breakdown. Not to forget the many joys—and frustrations—in the collective experiment of creating our own reality and agreements.

By the time we met for the final signing, I had been dreaming of the Faerie house for a long time. For me, it all started as a resolution for 2020. After a few years of balancing my nomadism with a distant relationship, my ex and I had finally broken up and I was eager to give my life a new direction. Standing at that strange time portal that each New Year’s Eve opens, I was able to peek into the future and realize that being a nomad would not be sustainable in the long run. Going back to my previous lifestyle— boyfriend, job, apartment in the city—was not an option either. There surely was another way. The first outward manifestation of that yearning was a page I made on Faenet about starting a Faerie house in Europe. The page was not helpful in finding likeminded Faeries, but it planted a seed and gave form to my hazy longings.

That vision lay dormant until the following summer. On the way back from a small gathering at Folleterre made possible by the ease in COVID restrictions, two other Faerie friends and myself talked in the car about the possibility of buying land somewhere. What began as a casual conversation, snowballed into a full-blown project. Soon after, other Faeries joined and we started holding regular online meetings. In the midst of a pandemic that had shattered the illusion of normality, the time seemed ripe for something like that to happen.

The three of us who were in that car had made it to the very end and three other Faeries had joined on the way. In 48 hours we were supposed to seal the deal and become owners of a property of fifty acres in a depopulated part of France. And that’s when I had my meltdown.

The moment everything became real, it also

became too much. I felt overwhelmed by the list of unknowns. I loved and knew most Faeries in the group from before, but I had never lived with them. Was that going to work? Signing those papers was as much about buying property as committing to a long-term relationship with those five other people. Though probably not crossing the line into sexual, it was going to get very personal and intimate. Were we ready to trust each other at that level? And then there was the money, of course. The moment I became a nomad, I stopped making a living and survived out of my savings. Was it wise to put those savings in a house in the middle of nowhere, far from any income opportunities? I felt I had just one shot at making the right decision and I became paralyzed by the fear of blowing it.

I was mortified by the thought of telling the others that I was out, but I did. Considering the poor timing, they would have had good reasons to be upset. My revelation, on the contrary, was received with a mix of sadness and concern. The room went quiet and at that moment I realized that similar fears had been assailing my peers. I could have been the first domino to fall. The other Faes gave me twenty four hours to confirm whether my decision was final. I think that a few of them needed that time as much as I did.

My boyfriend had always been skeptical of the Faerie house project. He was happily living in Paris and was not enthusiastic at the prospect of me settling hundreds of miles away. He was also aware that joining the house meant that I was going to enter into a close relationship with five other Faes which, on a different level, would also involve him. His concerns were understandable and if he had ever wanted to talk me out of it, those twenty four hours were his golden chance. Instead, what he did was to remind me how much I had wanted that house to happen. In his soft voice, he encouraged me not to let fear make the decision for me. The following morning, the other members in the group had had enough time to

digest the news. Each on their own, had decided that they wanted to continue regardless of what I did. That came as a relief, not only because I didn’t want to wreck the project, but also because being witness to their determination was inspiring.

There is a well-know factoid that nine out of ten intentional communities collapse within a year of their creation. On March 2nd we celebrated our first anniversary and although there are moments when the old fears creep back, I am grateful for the love

and support of my boyfriend and community, which allow me to feel those emotions without giving in to them. Only the very wise and the very crazy are able to face risk and uncertainty without ever being afraid. I am neither of them, but I reckon that those are the ingredients of any adventure and, dare I say, of a life worth living.

"Classical Greek Sculptures" by Craig Martin Getz. Paris 2010.

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Issue 199* / Fall 2024

FIFTY YEARS

Submission Deadline: August 15, 2024

www.rfdmag.org/upload

In the autumn of 1974 RFD launched from Iowa, setting us on a journey from one coast to the next over the next fifty years. We’re asking you dear readers, writers and artists who may have contributed, read or were amused, informed or evoked by something on our pages these past fifty years to consider sending in your reflections, responses and appreciation for RFD, it’s readership and help us celebrate what makes RFD special for you.

If you yourself sent in your first poem, you attended a gathering after seeing a listing, or you helped in crafting RFD please send in your memories. If you know someone who helped shape RFD who is no longer with us please share their story.

We’d also love to hear about how RFD shifted your approach to the gay community over the years. What part of RFD’s initial “back to the land” ethos sticks with you and how has its attempts to bridge divides and explore commonalities and celebrate difference matters to you as we take in five decades together.

*Since 1974, RFD missed production of just one issue, which is why the 50th anniversary issue is number 199 rather than number 200.

Cover of the first issue of RFD.

a reader-created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity