After DADT's Demise, Part II

I did have a bit of decent news yesterday in an email. The day before, after contacting the Air Force through their website, I also contacted the Servicemen's Legal Defense Network, SLDN, leaving them a message about what I had learned. (They help with legal issues involving gay and lesbian service members.)

Yesterday afternoon, I got a reply that I should contact one of their lawyers between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM Eastern Time. It was too late to contact them Friday, so I will do so next week.

They said they are working with many DADT-discharged veterans, in addition to those discharged before DADT. So, perhaps they can help me with my quest to return to the Air Force.

Twice before in my potential and current Air Force career, all was almost lost. When I first applied through my AF recruiter whose office was in Huntington Park, CA, I was told that my scores on the AF exam were not high enough. A few months later, after I'd left Marine OCS, I got called by the same AF recruiter and told that my scores were now acceptable, so I reapplied.

A few months later, when I was at AF Officer's Training School (OTS) at Lackland AFB, I had failed the Flight Screening Program to become a pilot. I had no other options. My flight commander came to me when we were playing one-pitch softball and said my discharge paperwork had arrived and I would be discharged the next day. In the afternoon, however, we learned that the Air Force was sending recruiters to talk prior service personnel into switching to missile careers since there was a critical shortage of missile officers. I and a couple of others went over the club where they were meeting to volunteer. We were not encouraged by what we were told.

The next morning, in class, our squadron commander showed up. My fellow flight members told him of my plight and desire to remain in the Air Force. Impressed that so many of my fellow officer trainees were on my side, he told my flight commander to hold up my out-processing paperwork until he explored all the options. It took weeks of waiting and little news, but a few days before graduation I did learn that my application for missiles had been approved. I finally had an Air Force career.

So, I suppose I am not always totally discouraged by bad news relating to the Air Force. Where there is hope, there are always possibilities.

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After DADT's Demise

I was intending to drive out to the sole USAF Recruiting Station in the Denver area later today (14187 E. Exposition Ave., Aurora, CO, 80012) to find out if the repeal of DADT also had provisions for the thousands of us who were separated before DADT took effect in 1993. But I figured I'd use the Air Force's website to find out as much as I could before making the drive.

When I input all of my personal information and submitted it, the Air Force computer declined my attempted application:

"09/22/2011

To: Gregory Sanchez

While we are excited to see that you are considering a career in the United States Air Force, based on the information you have provided, you are not eligible for the following reason:

You are over the age criteria for the program you selected."

They also have an effective chat function which I then utilized. "Dale" told me that I was not eligible for the Prior Service alternative because it has been over six years since I last served. Heck, DADT alone ate up approximately 18 years.

Obviously, these two responses were quite discouraging. After waiting 32 years for the military to allow gays to serve openly, now I am told I cannot reapply. When I was a missile combat crew commander at Minot, and an instructor of English at the Air Force Academy, I didn't need to be in the kind of shape I was in then. However, I have continued to stay in shape for the past 32 years, and I am in at least as good a shape as I have ever been in my life, and likely in better shape than many currently serving in the Air Force. If I had been allowed to take a physical, and had I not passed that physical for any number of valid reasons, I would not have an effective complaint. Had I been discharged under DADT in 1993, regardless of my age, instead of under a different system in 1979, I would be able to reapply.

There may be some out there who were discharged in 1992, just before DADT came into effect; but they will also not be able, under this repeal, to reapply. They are in the same situation as I, sadly.

As I said, if we were allowed to apply anyway, and take the required physicals, then we would at least have been treated fairly, given all that we lost in past and can now never get back.

This feels very much like it must have felt for the freed slaves to be told that, yes, after so many years in abject captivity, they are free but are not entitled to the forty acres and a mule compensation they felt they were promised when they were finally free.

Freedom without the means to directly benefit from that new freedom rings just a bit hollow for those of us who are not allowed to return to serving our country as we were once able to.

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Gay Theater in Denver, Part IV

What I did not know until I spoke to Steve Tangedal at length a few weeks back was that Theatre on Broadway garnered significant funding throughout their successful run because of, you guessed it, Bingo! Ticket sales alone would never have gotten the sheer number and quality of the productions they put on from the early 1990's until approximately 2005.

What killed the golden Bingo goose for them came from an unlikely source: the legal end to smoking in public places. When the law took effect in 2005, the Bingo players who smoked stopped coming, and there must have been a good many of them. Monthly income from Bingo plummeted, Steve told me. Effectively, it killed TOB.

TOB had successfully expanded, too, before the end came. In addition to their regular site at 13 S. Broadway, they opened the Phoenix Theatre and staged plays there from approximately 1999 until 2007. They also staged productions at the Denver Civic Theatre until 2007, as well.

Steve provided me with lists of plays they put on in addition to the ones I attended (I did see Psycho Beach Party at some point. And it, along with Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Jerker or the Helping Hand, and Two Boys in Bed on a Cold Winter's Night, were successful as late night gay theatre.)

Here are the ones he remembers:

Shakespeare's R & J
Naked Boys Singing
Laramie Project (created at the Denver Center, becoming one of the most produced titles in the country for quite some time)
Making Porn
10 Naked Men
Ruthless! The Musical (which launched the Broadway career of Annaleigh Ashford)
Crumple Zone
Pageant
Parallel Lives
Torch Song Trilogy
Gross Indecencies: The Trials of Oscar Wilde (which I may have seen at the Phoenix Theatre)
Dirty Blonde
Last Summer at Bluefish Cove
Stop Kiss
Southern Baptist Sissies
Sordid Lives
Corpus Christi
Gertrude Stein and Companion
Laughing Wild
Kiss of the Spiderwoman
The Eyes of Babylon
Some Men
The Sum of Us
Porcelain
Dying Gaul
Lips Together Teeth Apart
Beautiful Thing
Varla Jean Merman's Under a Big Top
Snakebit

It's an impressive list using any criteria, and I am sorry I missed almost all of them in the final years of TOB.

Fortunately, Steve is now working to create a new gay theatre production company at a venue right at Five Points. We can all wish him good fortunate because if he attains even a portion of the success he gathered at TOB, he'll have another remarkable run.

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DADT Has Ended

Interrupting my look at Gay Theater in Denver, at 12:01 AM earlier this morning, DADT ended. At my age, it may be difficult to get back in; however, I still intend to try.

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Gay Theater in Denver, Part III

After a couple of conversations and email exchanges with Steve Tangedal, I realized that I saw Ten Percent Review and even The Boys in the Band at Theater on Broadway's first venue, 135 S. Broadway. That was likely 1991, the first year I lived in Denver.

In addition, I got in on the first gay play in the new venue, 13 S. Broadway, Breeze From the Gulf by The Boys in the Band creator, Mart Crowley.

I was also there from the start of their "coming out" first gay season with the following productions:

Six Degrees of Separation
Raft of the Medusa
Jeffrey
The Boys in the Band

Obviously, I got hooked and made TOB a regular visit whenever a new production was mounted in the following years:

Love, Valour and Compasion
Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly
Howard Crabtree's Whoop Dee Doo
Poor Superman
Party
Execution of Justice
Cabaret
A Perfect Genesh

Steve informed me that he flew to Howard Crabtree's farm in Buck's County, PA, to load up the original off-Broadway costumes designed by Crabtree himself for TOB's production of Whoop Dee Doo. For When Pigs Fly, TOB had three different revivals.

That was the '90's. Unfortunately, and I cannot explain why, I never attended any performances after the late 1990's. In my next post, I will list the many productions that I missed, as well as finally explaining the "Bingo!" reverence.

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Gay Theater in Denver, Part II

Bingo!

I will explain that remark in a later post on this subject, but the most long-lived and consistently entertaining Denver gay theater company was Theater on Broadway (TOB).

Located at 13 S. Broadway from approximately 1991 until 2006, it was awarded the "Best Season for a Theatre Company" for three different seasons. It was presented with the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1998.

Theater on Broadway did not start out quite so grandly nor at all gay. It had its humbler beginnings in Lakewood, of all places, as the Lakewood Players from 1972-1978, performing in several venues all over Lakewood. Steve Tangedal, my source for much of this information, joined the company in 1979. They were then performing at the Green Mountain Recreation Center up until 1988, with support from the city of Lakewood that, unfortunately, diminished as the Greed Decade continued.

With financial support from the city of Lakewood all but gone, the company moved to the DU Studio Theatre until 1989, when they actually became The Theater on Broadway by relocating to 135 S. Broadway for two years. In 1991, they moved one day, in the middle of a successful production, to what would become their most successful location, the one depicted above and mentioned earlier, 13 S. Broadway.

It was there that I became aware of TOB from the very beginning of its gay phase, after the passage of Amendment 2 in 1992, an event that injected an unintended, though serious, dose of reality and gay pride into many aspects of Denver gay life.

Not only did several gay organizations rally to successfully fight Amendment 2 on the streets and in the courts, mentioned as a backdrop and additional motivation for my writing the Rainbow Arc of Fire series, it energized Steve Tangedal to evolve TOB into a venue for gay plays and musicals almost exclusively. The Denver annual pride parade and festival in 1993 expanded significantly in length and size and attendance. It was the first time I actually marched in the parade.

TOB was already performing Six Degrees of Separation, a play with a significant gay character and a hilarious nude scene, so it became an easier transition to All Gay All The Time!

Many of the original players and participants from the Lakewood days had already left the company. Now, located in Denver, it was easier for Steve to recruit gay and gay-friendly actors and assistants to help with the transition.

 

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Gay Theater in Denver, Part I

My good friend Roger back in the late 80's had read about a play that was being performed in Denver at Jack's On the Platte theater on Platte Street, a half block north of My Brother's Bar. The theater was on the second floor of the building, and the theater company was the Hunger Artists. There is still a coffee shop on the first floor, but I am not sure the theater is still there.

The play was called Breaking the Code about the British mathematician and wartime code breaker, Alan Turing. After a robbery at his home by a man with whom he had had sex, his admission to the police branded him as a homosexual, still a crime during post-war Britain, no matter the contributions of the law-breaker. This was the same law that had entangled, and eventually also broken, Oscar Wilde fifty years earlier.

The play was both powerful and sad. Roger and I had stuffed ourselves on fajitas and hot fudge Sundays at Racines restaurant earlier in the evening. We had driven from Colorado Springs to Denver to see the play and, of course, had the hour-long drive back afterwards. But in those days, few of us who lived in the Springs thought of the distance as any impediment since we drove to the bars in Denver almost weekly.

That was my first experience seeing a gay play in Denver, but it would certainly not be my last. The next play was a bit more hazy to me. Eastern Standard was a sophisticated look at the relationship between people of privilege and those who were not well off in New York in the 1980's. About the aptly called "greed generation" of the Reagan Era, this play looked at the consequences of those years upon those who suffered from the excesses, either those who had benefitted or those who had been crushed. The theater could best be described as a belfry of a church a couple of blocks west of Broadway. I later saw the same play in North Hollywood where one of the lead actors had played the on-again, off-again gay son on Dynasty.

During the 90's, many gay plays turned up all over Denver in venues as varied as the plays themselves. Ten Percent in Maple Grove ran for several months in the same theater, Jack's, as Breaking the Code. There was also a four-actor (two men, two women) musical called Ten Percent Review that was performed at the original Theater On Broadway venue at 135 S. Broadway. Later, in the same theater The Boys In The Band played. I do recall that Lonely Planet ran for a time in a former movie theater somewhere along S. Ogden St., well past I-25. Later, at the Acoma Theater, a former church on Acoma and 1st Street, just a couple of blocks north of the old Racines location just off Speer, the two parts of Angels in America debuted, along with an actual bat in its belfry during at least one performance that I attended. The Acoma Theater and Industrial Arts company also premiered Take Me Out, a baseball-themed gay play.

Not to be outdone, the Denver Center also provided several gay-themed plays throughout the late 80's and well into the 90's: Torch Song Trilogy, Angels in America, Lily Tomlin's Search for Intelligent Life, and Forever Plaid. Obviously, the last two were not specifically gay, but the performers and creative talent behind the two productions were as gay as one can get. I met a few of the actors in Forever Plaid over the two different, lengthy runs of the musical. The last time I read the CD insert, one of those same actors was still performing in Forever Plaid in Las Vegas. (I wonder how much longer he can play any of the characters because he's got to be getting a bit long in the tooth to still be a member of an early 60's boy band, temporarily resurrected.)

In a much smaller venue at the Denver Center, now the location of the gift shop along 14th Street, premiered more intimate plays such as Five Card Stud and a pair of plays by a Texas playwrite and actor who performed his own one-man pieces. At Five Card Stud my friend Frank and I sat so close that we could have played a hand with the actors and also could see the ice in their glasses slowly melt over the course of the play.

Of course, the most consistent and long-lived venue for gay-themed plays throughout the 90's and early 2000's was Theater on Broadway. But I will save that discussion for the next blog.

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DADT Final Repeal September 20, 2011

Sixty more days left.

My 62nd birthday takes place on September 23rd. DADT's final repeal is on September 20th.

On my 30th birthday, in 1979, I was informed by my Air Force attorney that my (forced) resignation had been approved. I had taught the first female-inclusive class at the Air Force Academy the previous academic year, but I had to resign simply because I was gay. In two months, no longer will someone be forced to resign as I was simply because he is gay.

How many men and women have been forced to resign over the years that not just DADT was in effect but all of the other excluding policies were official policy? How many of those men and women are no longer with us, to experience the quiet satisfaction that I am feelilng now with this impending repeal?

Whenever I began to doubt that this despicable policy would never be overturned in my lifetime, I thought of the lyrics by the late Sam Cooke: "It's been a long, long time coming; but a change gonna come. Oh yes, it will."

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It All Goes By So Fast

Yesterday, I spoke on the phone with a woman I have known for thirty years. Barbara was the librarian at Kaman Corporation in Colorado Springs on Garden of the Gods Road. My job sometimes required that I go to the Kaman library for research. On other occasions, I simply went there to waste time while I was waiting for information that I required from an engineer in my capacity as a technical writer for the Displacement Measuring Systems division and, later, the Radiation Monitoring Systems division.

Barbara and I soon became friends, maintaining contract even after I left Kaman after the Radiation Monitoring Systems division was sold to a company that eventually moved to South Carolina. Even her division was sold off as Kaman ceased to exist at the plant site on Garden of the Gods Road, where it had been built in the 1950's.

When I moved to Denver in 1991, I began calling her once a week as we kept in touch, just to trade stories or to learn what had happened to other employees whom we had known at Kaman throughout the 1980's.

She and I often speak of our playing the Colorado Lotto. She began playing when the Lotto first began in 1989. I started playing in 1991, after I moved to Denver. Twenty years later and we still lament that neither one of us has won any more than $35 to $48, getting only four out of six numbers correct at any one time. That's as close as either one of us has gotten after all these years. But playing has always given us both some slight sense of comfort that, just maybe, some day one of us may win. (A brother of a friend of hers and his family actually won several years ago.)

In more recent years, though, besides discussing the Lotto, we've talked about getting older. She's been in her 60's for a few years now; while I, of course, am now 61. Neither of us has been in much of a position to get any retirement beyond social security. And what we've spent on the Lotto wasn't that much, either, to have diverted into a retirement fund and felt comfortable.

For the first time that I can recall, she expressed her concerns about retirement being so relatively close. She used to say that she'd retire when her head hit the keyboard of her computer as she noisely passed away at work. Now, she even admits that she'd have to retire if the company she works for eases her out of the door at some point.

Barbara also admitted that she is amazed to realize that I am also in my 60's. When I worked at Kaman, I was in my 30's, my early 30's for much of the 80's. She admits what most of us concede at our respective ages: it all goes by so fast. It seemed like only yesterday that we worked at Kaman. But so many of those whom we knew there back then have retired some time ago. Several others have also passed on.

And I suppose that's what we also really are concerned about: that we're much closer to death these days. Even if we live another decade or two, we're probably closer to passing on than we are to when we worked together at Kaman those 24 to 30 years ago. Those are, obviously, sobering thoughts. She reminded me that her grandson is now in his early 20's. She used to tell me stories of when he was much younger and she would take him Trick or Treating at Halloween.

I don't call her nearly as often as I used to. Sometimes, a few months have gone by and I feel compelled to call even if not much that is new has happened to either one of us. All of our parents are now gone. We are, I suppose, in many ways next in line.

One day she may realize that I haven't called in quite some time, far longer than usual. Or I may call and learn that she no longer works in the security section (long ago, the company dispensed with the need for maintaining a library, much as IBM did the same where I work years back).

We're simply working people. The jobs that we do, while important to us as income and a livelihood, are not of critical importance to the functioning of the planet or the nation. Someone will take our places at some point, or our jobs will merely be eliminated. Our few coworkers may remember us for a time and then eventually forget us. Or they will be replaced by others who never knew we existed or did what we once did for the same company they now work for. Or the facility will, like Kaman so many years ago, close.

When I worked for Kaman, I had vacation time and sick time. At Christmas the plant site would shut down from Christmas Eve to the day after New Years, depending upon the day of the week upon which the holidays fell. So, for the few years from 1980 until 1988, when my division was sold and I went back to school, I got the holiday season off. We'd sometimes have a luncheon with our coworkers that final day, and then we'd drive off, heading home until the New Year began the work and holiday cycle all over again.

Because I typically made so much less than I had when I was in the Air Force, teaching at the Academy, I worked all day at Kaman. Then, I would teach two-to-four evenings a week for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson or Peterson Air Force Base. Sometimes, I would teach a seminar on Friday evening and all day Saturday. Working that frequently made the time, and the years, go by so fast. Then that phase of my life came to an end and I was forced to move to Denver for work in 1991.

Will either of us ever win the Lotto? Probably not. Neither of us has ever gotten five numbers out of six, so six numbers out of six seems impossibly remote. But it keeps us going until the day we are forced to retire because of age or infirmity. And should social security end because the Republicans finally suceeded in terminating it so that they can get larger tax breaks for the wealthy, I am not sure what either Barbara or I will do.

Perhaps we might have to go back to working, no matter how old we are. Perhaps that is what scares us the most about retirement. It's filled with even more uncertainties than we experience now.

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Category Six Books, Part II

Category Six Books was named for the term "a perfect Kinsey Six," meaning totally gay.

By the 90's, Jim the owner had hired a young, dark-haired employee named James Dovali to run the store. I had always dreamed of having my first book signing at the store on 11th Street; however, the landlord intended to raise the rent so much that Jim decided to move elsewhere. South Broadway appeared on the verge of becoming a mini-gay-mecca by the mid-90's, what with The Blue Note Cafe and Theater On Broadway, as well as Heaven Sent Me and a couple of other gay-owned restaurants anchoring the immediate area. Jim decided to move into a store front at 42 South Broadway to join this burgeoning group. Unfortunately, it never quite worked out as well in the new location, though it was not from lack of trying. I would, in fact, have my first book signings at Category Six Books, but at the South Broadway location instead of on Capitol Hill.

After a couple of years in the new location, James optimistically bought the store from Jim. James was always very generous with me and my books regarding promoting them and allowing me to have book signings there at least twice a year. We typically had signings on the Saturday of Denver's Gay Pride weekend in June and, even more significantly, the weekend before Christmas, a big time for last minute shoppers. I brought cookies and donuts, brought in a coffee urn and filled it with apple cider and spices. James always had the store decorated for the holidays.

Sadly, though, as the decade wound to a close, the store could not compete against the large brick and mortar outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. Then, of course, by 2000, the Internet also was taking a huge chunk of business from all the small, independent book stores such as Category Six Books. Even more unfortunate, best selling gay authors such as Maupin and many others simply stopped being directed to Category Six Books by their publishers and handlers, opting to do their one local signing at a Barnes & Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore in Cherry Creek.

The few local Denver gay writers such as myself were the only ones to remain loyal--Category Six Books' survival meant our survival. I used to show up at the store most Saturday mornings to chat with James and see how my books were doing. Too often I could see what James saw daily: most patrons were no longer interested in buying books, neither fiction nor non-fiction. They would enter the front door, nod in his direction, and head to the back where the porn magazines were kept on display. James loved books and discussing literature and music. Sadly, he more than anyone knew that it was the porn sales that kept his store barely afloat so that he could still sell books, his singular passion. He maintained a prominent shelf of his store's weekly Top Ten bestsellers. Periodically, one or more of my books would be on display there, helping sales a bit more. But, as those few years passed, we could each see that between the chain stores and Internet book sales, his store was inexorably dying. He gave it a couple more years and then he'd be forced to close, he would explain. Also, young people, whether gay or not, no longer seemed to be reading books. What patrons he did maintain became progressively older, not younger.

Before that happened, an older couple, two of his better patrons, continued to query him regarding how much he would ask if they were to consider buying Category Six Books from him. He tried repeatedly to warn them off, that they were wanting to buy a dying business that had no hope of recovery. They were not to be deterred. Finally, he named a price and they agreed to pay it. Before the sale was finalized, he gave them some valuable advice: don't sign a new lease with the landlord because the location was part of the problem. The area never did develop as the next Denver gay mecca. The Blue Note closed. Theater on Broadway also folded. He also advised them that they not rename the store either. Everyone knew about Category Six Books even if they didn't often shop there. To change the recognized name made little sense.

They didn't heed his sound advice on either of those two issues. In fact, they didn't listen to his advice on much at all. They bought new equipment like a cash register, an unnecessary expense; they changed the store's name; and, worst of all, they signed a new lease with the landlord who sold the property to another landlord not long after. The two also remodeled the interior in such a way that it looked like some old lady's living room, Norman Bates's mom's living room. Nothing trendy or hip for them, nosiree.

Rather than recognizing that Category Six Books had only been sold and renamed, word mistakenly got around that the store had instead closed, not the kind of word of mouth new owners want to cultivate within the community. Sales of my own books at the store plummeted after the new owners took over. They later tried to promote several of us local authors, but it was too late. Even after The Book Garden, the local lesbian bookstore, closed and they began carrying books for the entire GLBT community, including women, sales did not pick up.

After they had owned the store for about a year, we all learned that James Dovali had died of liver cancer. After suddenly falling ill, he entered the hospital and died shortly thereafter. He may actually have died of AIDS-related complications, but liver cancer was what everyone was told. In the months after he sold the store, he had tried a couple of different careers, but nothing seemed to work out for him. He appeared to others to be rudderless.

I never saw James after the other two took over the store and changed everything. I definitely missed our Saturday morning discussions, and especially the twice-yearly book signings that we enjoyed so much. A couple of years before he moved on, I had given James Schnozz's old, beloved, carpeted cylindar when I had moved to my condo and had less space. James had found a stray kitten one morning outside the back entrance to his store. He named the striped kitten Slim Shady. Shady loved the cylindar, James told me, taking up immediate residence. After James died, I heard from his boyfriend. He'd inherited Shady but could not keep him since he himself periodically lived on the streets after that. He assured me that he'd given Shady and the cylindar to an older couple who had known James in happier times. Shady again had a loving home.

relativelyWilde, the store's new name, died sadly, as well, about a year or so after James passed. The new landlord intended to remodel the storefronts of it and the space he owned beside it. Business had been bad enough in the previous months, but the thought of their few remaining patrons having to clamber over and around construction apparatus and debris just to get inside made the two realize that their days as proud bookstore owners were about over. The landlord would not let them out of their lease to allow them to move elsewhere, so they put everything inside up for sale over a few short weeks' time and then closed the door when the entire contents, including the relatively new cash register, were gone. Before the end, they told me to come and get my books before the sale since they knew I always had my novels there on consignment rather than have James pay me in advance.

I suspect that James would have been mortified at the thought of downloadable books. He also bought music CDs, so even downloadable music would probably have been strange to him. He was not a man for the digital age. The era of Category Six Books and other gay book stores like it all over the country has certainly passed. They were havens of gay culture at a time when there were few other places to go. The gay person behind the counter could steer you in the direction of gay authors like Armistead Maupin and others and to gay books like Tales of the City. They opened up whole new worlds for many of us, and Rainbow Arc of Fire would not have existed had those stores not existed.

Not a Christmas season or Pride weekend goes by that I don't think fondly once more about James Dovali and his gay bookstore. A few more than 20 years passed since the store first opened on Colfax Blvd., and then it was all gone for good.

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Category Six Books

Most large cities had at least one, if not two, gay or lesbian bookstores, typically founded sometime in the 70's or early 80's..

I first became aware of Category Six Books in Denver in the mid-80's when it was located on 11th Street, near Downing. (I was told that the store had originally started out on Colfax.) I road up to Denver one fine, sunny spring day, possibly 1985, with a friend at the time. We parked near the store and hiked around the corner and up the front steps..

Once inside, I noticed carpeted stairs that led to the top floor of the building--they were modestly blocked by a rope that prohibited climbing them to the living quarters above. To the immediate right inside the front door was the checkout counter. On either side of those interior stairs were the two halves of the store. Fiction and picture books and magazines were located on the right. Non-fiction books and other, miscellaneous items such as pins and flags and CDs were to the left. My friend had a good friend who was a flight attendant but who also periodically worked in the store when he wasn't flying the Friendly Skies.

On one of my early visits to Category Six Books it was this guy, upon learning that I had never heard of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, who walked over to the main shelf, grabbed the first four volumes (the next two volumes were yet to appear), handed them to me, and sternly advised, "Do yourself a favor and buy these books.".

An avid reader of histories and biographies, I didn't see how I would ever find the time with my part-time evening teaching for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base during the week, and sometimes on Saturdays, as well as my full-time job at Kaman in Colorado Springs during the day, to read this series of novels. But I bought them anyway because the covers were colorful and they were "gay books," something I had not previously owned or even been aware of..

For many of us in the 80's, or definitely the 70's for that matter, it was only in these specialty independent gay book stores where we could find gay books (the Internet as we know it today was years in the future). This was also a few years before the chain stores began to feature a specific, typically small, GLBT section. In addition, whereas you might not be comfortable buying a gay book or magazine at Barnes & Noble, most of us had no problem buying from a store that was usually gay-owned and gay-operated. We were among friends in those stores. They became comfortable hangouts, possibly even pickup places if the mood were right and the stars properly aligned..

My good friend Bart worked for a guy whom he was roommates with in Colorado Springs. Bart's roommate owned a porn book store on Platte Blvd. But that was porn, straight and gay. While Category Six Books also carried gay porn magazines in the back, their primary mission was to provide an outlet for GLBT writers and books that had few other places where they weren't marginalized, if they even were carried at all..

Category Six Books was also located in a prime area: Capitol Hill in Denver, the gayest part of The Mile-High City. Most residents could simply walk to the store. It was there that I bought Maupin's last two volumes in the series (at that time). In fact, I drove to Denver when Maupin was doing a book signing for Sure of You, the final volume, at Category Six Books. When my friend Dino and I arrived, the line to meet Maupin snaked around inside the small store and out the back door. There was sweet and welcoming atmosphere inside the store (I was told the owner sold dozens and dozens of books that night). Perhaps some of us were particularly sad since Maupin had announced that those six books would be all that he would write about the delightful denizens of 28 Barbary Lane. One woman ahead of us in line actually wept openly when he confirmed that there would be no more tales..

Toward Dino and me, Maupin was particularly friendly and confirmed that, if we went to San Francisco, Macondray Lane was the setting he envisioned for Barbary Lane. (Four years later, we would fly to San Francisco, rent a car, stay at a local gay B&B, and find Macondray Lane, the highlight of the trip. We even heard that we had just missed Maupin, who had been in the Castro a couple hours before we arrived there.).

This synchonous relationship between gay bookstore and GLBT authors was what kept each afloat and financially viable for several years. And it was the existence of such stores, as well as my enjoyment of Tales of the City, that stimulated me to write my Rainbow Arc of Fire series. The night that we met Maupin and attended the book signing made me realize how special, how significant, was the relationship between these authors and those specialty book stores..

Sadly, though, that relationship wasn't to last. I think our communities, such as they are, or such as they have become, are the poorer for that lasting change.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part IV

As with Miranda, Sneezer experienced problems visiting the Vet during his sunset years. When he was there to get his teeth cleaned and one removed, the breathing tube damaged his throat while he was knocked out. We didn't discover what had happened until the next morning when he came by the bed to wake me up and ask for food--uncharacteristically, he hadn't jumped up on the bed. I looked down as he followed me into the kitchen, and I noticed that the entire front half of his body was puffed up to about twice its normal size. As he breathed in, air was filling up his body cavity alarmingly. He could easily have died.

Fortunately, the Vet was open and I rushed him there that Saturday morning. She put him in some kind of enclosed device--an incubator perhaps--for 24 hours. But then she advised me over the phone that I should take him to another Vet in the Tech Center of Denver for the next couple of days since her facility would be closed and no one would be there to watch over him. It was at her expense, so I bundled him up in the Vet's office and drove him there. When I began to carry him inside that next evening, he instantly realized that this was not home and he meowed pitifully. Like any reluctant patient, he had obviously expected, and wanted, to go home.

Two or three days later, I was able to pick him up. They'd made a couple of incisions in either side of his body, to let much of the air out. It had worked well enough so I could then bring him home. I know he wasn't sure where he was headed in the car at this point since the two previous drives had not led home. After I parked the car in back and carried him toward the front porch, he realized immediately that he was home and struggled to break from my hold. I carefully set him down, and he deliberately hiked up the front steps and then through the front door under his own power. It was as if he knew he was home and would make his own way inside, thank you.

He also, briefly, developed a tumor, possibly also from the rabies shots. But his was on his side. The Vet removed the small one, though another one soon took its place. That second one was also removed and no others came back, unlike with Miranda. The Vet advised that neither cat ought to be vacinated again, though for Miranda it was too late.

Sneezer was king of the condo, of course. In warm weather, when the front window was left open, if another cat ventured near, even in the middle of the night, I would hear this furocious, almost blood-curdling yowl as he sought to get at the offending tresspasser. There was a neighborhood black cat that used to sit just outside the window and torment Sneeze with its presense. One time, it sat on the front porch and calmly began grooming itself. It did not realize that the front door was open. Sneezer slowly crept toward the unsuspecting adversary and then lept. Instantly, there was black and then gray and then black and then gray as the two tumbled over and over in their tempestuous, swirling struggle. I tried reaching in to separate the two, finally grabbing a mass of gray fur and held fast. The black cat immediately took off, having been thoroughly bested.

Sadly, the inevitable course of old age finally began to take its toll on Sneezer. During one visit to the Vet, I was shocked to learn that he had lost so much weight that he was down to just over six pounds. He wasn't eating any regular cat food, a sure cause for concern. I had to buy canned chicken instead--that was all he would eat. Soon, he would only slurp up the juices of the chicken. Then, he would only drink water, large amounts of only water. Clearly, the Vet told me, his kidneys were failing. I would have to buy rubber bath mats to lay in front of each litter box and then place old towels and rags over the mats because Sneezer would no longer use the boxes but stand in front and pee.

After Miranda died, but before Sneezer's health began to fail, I was told by a sister of a co-worker that she and a friend had rescued an adorable kitten from a grain bin at Coors Brewery where they both worked. She asked if I wanted the new kitten, and I readily accepted. He was adorable. I took him to the Vet and he was given the usual shots. Fortunately, she discovered that he was carrying bacteria that would have killed him had it not been caught in time and cured.

I soon named him Pudge. I kept him in the bathroom until Sneezer became familiar with a new cat in residence. But this was going on for days and he seemed no more likely to accept this latest competition than he had Miranda, whom Pudge resembled in fur pattern (though he lacked the orange splotches). One morning, though, when I was speaking on the phone with a friend, bemoaning the fact that they may never get along, I glanced down and much to my surprise, Pudge and Sneezer were eating side by side off the same plate on the floor. I realized that Pudge had figured out how to open the folding bathroom door and had gotten out. Sneezer simply accepted his presence and that was it.

One evening before Christmas in 2005, Sneezer lay beside me on the couch as I watched my usual string of Christmas shows on TV. I looked at him and wondered if he would make it to the next Christmas and how much I would miss him when he was gone. Sadly, he didn't quite make it.

In early December of 2006, although he had not done so in several months, Sneezer walked from the station he had taken up beside the toilet in the bathroom, laying between the toilet and the cabinet and rarely moving--only drinking from the dish I had set beside him. I was shocked and saddened when I looked down and realized that he was walking on the joint of his right leg rather than on his paw. He had probably experienced a stroke. In his confusion, he had returned to his old ways of hiking to the kitchen for his breakfast even though he hadn't eaten anything solid in weeks.

I knew it was time. I tearfully called the Vet that day and explained that I would bring him in that afternoon when I got off from work. I wrapped him up in a large towel. I carried him to Pudge on the couch to say goodbye. I even stopped beside his favorite bush out front so he could take in one last sniff of these familiar surroundings before placing him in the car. I knew he was ready to go because, during the entire mile drive to the Vet, Sneezer never complained. Not one sound of protest was uttered even though he always did so previously any time he had to ride in the car.

The Vet and the staff were helpful as the assistant carried him to the back room to install the shunt in his left leg. She brought him back and she and I petted him as the Vet inserted the needle into the shunt. In a moment it was all over, and I cried like a baby.

They asked me if I wanted to stay in the room with his body for a few minutes, but all I could tearfully murmer was, "No, he's already gone," as I walked away in sadness, glancing back one last time at his inert form on the counter where we had ended his pain. I cried most of that day when I thought of that gangly cat that emerged from the cardboard box from the Denver Dumb Friends League so many years before. Sneezer was already six when Frank rescued him in 1992. He was nearly 21 when I took him to the Vet in late 2006. He had outlived both Schnozz and Miranda by several years each. The three tins that contain the separate ashes of each cat sit together on a shelf in my condo.

At the end of my own days on this earth, I hope we are all buried together on some high ground somewhere peaceful and serene, along with Pudge and Tabby, my current two cats. Each has given me devoted love and affection in his or her own way over the years since I was exiled from the Air Force over 31 years ago.

Is there a happy place where we can all be together once more? I suspect not but I always hope so.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part III

One evening, a friend of mine called and said he was going to take me by my new condo. (His presumption was that I would buy it after I saw it.) I'd not owned anything since I sold my house in Colorado Springs a few years before. It was now 1997, and my job was likely to continue indefinitely (I'm still working on the same project).

I came, I saw, I soon bought. Miranda had no problem with the move. Sneezer, once again, took up station under my bed when he arrived.

He never liked to travel by car anyway. Each trip to the Vet would elicit many long, low and pathetic-sounding, Yeows. Perhaps he thought he was being taken back to the Denver Dumb Friends League. Perhaps he thought he was being farmed out yet again to a new owner. Fortunately, the drive to the new condo was just three and a half blocks. But a new residence was daunting enough, no matter how close.

After a few days, he finally appeared and began to tentatively explore his latest, and last, new surroundings. I like to think these were the happiest times for Big Sneeze. Unlike the Park Humboldt Apartments, he was able to explore the immediate surroundings of the house on Franklin Street. He never ventured too far, and there was a shady bush near the front window where he would lie underneath and sniff the air (see the green bush on the lower right side of the photo above).

He could also lie on the back deck and enjoy the warm sunlight. And there were windows in the bedroom, bathroom, living and dining rooms that he could sit beside and watch the world go by outside. He would always wait by the front window for me to return from work. Once I appeared, he'd let out a glad, clipped "meow" and jump down to the couch and then the floor, to meet me inside the front door to my unit. He would sleep beside me in bed, under the covers if it were a cold night.

In 2000, when I began to hold my annual Pride Parade Parties because the Denver parade in June surged out of Cheeman Park and coursed along Franklin Street right out front, he would mingle with the many guests and enjoy the constant attention.

He would also lie beside me or be cradled in my arms whenever I lay on the couch, watching TV. Miranda was not quite so fortunate in the new house. In late 2000, she began to develop terrible, aggressive tumors on the back of her neck from the semi-annual rabies shots. Her unfortunate reaction was rare; but even after three extensive surgeries, her time was near the end. The Vet could not close up the opening after the third surgery and nothing had stopped their incessant growth. In early October 2001, I called the Vet to come over and ease her pain for good. Miranda waited in the front garden amidst the flowers and undergrowth, her favorite spot, until the Vet arrived.

Sneezer, again, disappeared under the bed.

I had first met Miranda when my friends Dino and Larry lived in an apartment near the Governor's Mansion in Denver and got her as a little kitten. She used to jump on me when I slept on their couch whenever I visited them but was still living in Colorado Springs. When they bought a house in Thornton, CO, she moved there with them. They eventually acquired three more cats before they bought a triplex in Denver on Capitol Hill. But after they bought a dog, the cats were soon farmed out one-by-one to new owners. I inherited Miranda after Schnozz was put to sleep.

I always felt sorry for Miranda since she had been tossed about almost as much as Sneezer because my friends weren't allowed to keep her in their apartment after the landlord discovered she was living there. So she spent a number of months staying with Larry's parents until he and Dino bought the Thornton house. Not only had she endured the intense suffering from the tumors and the three surgeries, one time she was given a shot by the Vet's assistant in a front paw. The next morning I saw that it had puffed up to three or four times normal size. She had to spend time with the Vet until it got back down to normal.

Before she was put to sleep, I had to tape a sock around her open neck wound so she would not keep scratching it. Even with the sock taped around her neck, she would still attempt to scratch. The sound was a distinctive one because of the masking tape. A few nights after she was gone, I awoke to that same distinctive sound, coming from the kitchen where Miranda spent her last couple of weeks, sitting atop the counter by the refridgerator where warm air would make its way around to where she lay, trying to sleep despite the pain.

I would have attributed hearing the sound in a dream if it were not for the fact that Sneezer, laying beside me in bed, already had his head up and his ears turned toward the kitchen. I could see his distinctive silhouette in the light that reflected off the far wall. The light was emitted by a night light I maintained in the kitchen. (Being Calico, and predominently of white fur, I could see Miranda's form even at night; but Sneezer was gray, and I would often walk right into him without at least a nightlight to expose his presence on a dark carpet.)

Perhaps her spirit never left the house when she was put to sleep in the living room. I have no sure idea about such matters. All I know is that I heard the familiar scratching sound, and so did Sneezer.

---

My Cat, Sneezer, Part II

Sad to say, the only solution that I could come up with was to find Sneezer another home. If they were fighting at night, they were likely fighting during the day when I was at work. I soon gave him to a guy who lived upstairs in my apartment building.

He seemed a nice enough sort who would enjoy a large, lovable cat. Unfortunately, the guy discovered he had a terrible allergic reaction to cats, so I took Sneezer back. My friend Ramsey's brother had a dog but thought he could give Sneezer a good home. However, a week later I was to learn that Sneezer simply sat in the basement all day and night, as if profoundly unhappy with his new surroundings, and would not even come upstairs at all. I bowed to the inevitable and soon took Sneezer back. He'd always had those big, sad eyes that looked pathetically into yours and seemed to ask for love and affection unquestioningly.

Fortunately, he and Schnozz seemed to quickly declare a truce and the fighting stopped. I bought a second carpeted cylinder so that each cat would have one to sit atop in the small bedroom and look outside at the alley below and watch whomever or whatever might pass by.

This new apartment wasn't nearly as nice as my first, small, one-bedroom apartment. That one was along the front of the middle building and looked out at a tree and down to the front sidewalk below. But after several months living in this new unit under crowded conditions--I now had more and larger furniture after living in the large one-bedroom apartment with Frank--that when a tenant moved from the two-bedroom unit at the north end of the building, just two doors down, I grabbed at the chance for additional space.

However, I never realized how attached Sneezer had become to the cozy one-bedroom apartment, now that he had had a permanent home, until a friend and a buddy of his helped me move. Schnozz took to the new, much larger apartment instantly, exploring the entire length including each of the two bedrooms and the large living room/dining room. She was immediately content, being far more adverturous.

Since that move was a success, I then carried Sneezer to the new apartment and set him down, hoping for the best. Moments later, though, he sneaked back into the old apartment; and I soon found him, head forlornly down on the carpet in the bedroom, not wanting any part of the move or the new place. I just left him laying there until we finished moving everything else out. He spent the next few days in the new apartment hiding under my bed.

When need of food became pronounced, he finally ventured out and began to explore his new surroundings. Since his carpeted cylinder was against the window in the first bedroom that I mainly used for storing my CDs and laser discs and other less-needed items, he could sit atop it undisturbed and watch people walking their dogs on the sidewalk below, as well as keep an attentive eye on squirrels in the trees along 10Th Street.

But when I would leave the front door open, and Schnozz would climb the stairs to the deck above the third floor to watch birds pass overhead, just out of reach, I would find Sneezer sitting in front of the door to the old apartment, almost quizzically looking up. Perhaps he was wondering why he couldn't go home again. Perhaps it was also because, in that apartment, I had also maintained a dry-food dispenser where Sneezer could eat at will all day and night long. He normally weighed in at a studly 17 and a half pounds whenever I took him to the Vet for his regular checkups and shots. However, being able to graze at the food dispenser at any time, he began to pack on the tonnage, becoming a very robust 23 pounds at one point. He had become one, ginormous lap cat. There was no doubt about it, he had to lose weight. About the time we moved to the larger apartment, the food dispenser was immediately dispensed with and he was given food on a strict schedule.

It was in that apartment where my Rainbow Arc of Fire self-publishing career really took off. Most of the first six books in the series arrived there from the printer in Canada. Sadly, too, it was there that I had to put Schnozz to sleep when the Vet discovered that her colon was riddled with cancer after 13 years on the planet. I wrote about her passing in Worlds Beneath Us. When the Vet arrived, Sneezer, sensing trouble, hid under the bed and remained there until long after the Vet left with Schnozz's body.

It was there, also, where I was given Miranda, a high-strung Calico. Sneezer did not take to her at all in the beginning--yowling and chasing after her relentlessly. He simply did not like other cats. This was a pattern I would discover from that point on. Another cat was competition for food and attention. With me, he was as lovable and friendly as can be; toward other cats, however, he was ruthless and defensive. "Live and let live" was not his motto regarding another feline, even one in residence. But, eventually, he declared a truce with Miranda, as he had with Schnozz before, and we all settled into a routine those final months that we lived in the Park Humboldt Apartments.

---

My Cat, Sneezer

It's almost Spring and, somehow, my thoughts often turn toward the best cat I ever had, Sneezer.


Sneezer was an over-sized, heavy, Silver Tabby who wasn't really my cat to begin with, though I paid for all his fees when my live-in boyfriend at the time brought him home in a box from the Denver Dumb Friends League one afternoon in early Spring.


Frank and I were living in a small, one-bedroom apartment in a three-building complex called the Park Humboldt Apartments on Humboldt Street, one block away from Cheesman Park in Denver, CO. It was 1993, I believe; and since I already had a cat, Schnozz, from my years of living in Colorado Springs, Frank wanted one of his own.



One afternoon, he set a large cardboard box on the small living room floor and opened it up. Out came the largest and most gangly looking feline I had ever seen. At first glance, I wasn't even sure I thought Sneezer was particularly attractive or especially lovable. Schnozz, specifically, wasn't enamoured of him at all. She'd always been an only cat and didn't tolerate competition very easily. But there he was, and we'd all have to make the best of an awkward situation.

Frank didn't have a name for the cat yet, but we noticed very soon that Sneezer, well, sneezed a lot. He seemed to have a runny nose from the very beginning. "Great," I thought, "a cat with allergies." It seemed natural enough, though, to call him Sneezer.

Frank consulted the Vet and was told to try and give him an antihistamine tablet to deal with the runny nose and sneezing. It only made Sneezer act highly irascible. Frank, an abusive sort I would soon discover, attempted to bend Sneezer to his will, which only made the cat even more cantankerous and he then yowled. In short order, Frank was all for taking Sneezer back to the Dumb Friends League instantly. However, I cautioned, "He's never acted like this before, Frank. It's probably the antihistamine that's freaking him out. Those things always caused me to act funny."

Even though Sneezer was not my cat, I suppose I saw something in him even then and wasn't about to let Frank take him back to the shelter. So, he stopped giving him the pills and Sneezer quickly began to return to normal.

With the two of us and the two cats, the small one-bedroom apartment was simply too crowded, so Frank eyed a larger, one-bedroom at the end of our floor when it opened up. Soon he convinced me of the need to move and we all packed up and set up residence there, where Frank had painted the living room wall and had me buy new furniture: a sectional sofa and a dining room table.

Unfortunately, our stay in this larger retreat didn't last long. Not only was Frank hostile toward Schnozz, he didn't have any genuine feelings for me, only having moved in out of necessity when he had no job and no place else to go. One night he came home from a party to which I was not invited, with a woman, no less. He was drunk, and because he offered to have her sleep on the sofa, he returned to our bed, a place where we had not slept together in many weeks.

When Frank was drunk, I discovered that he could be extremely belligerent. He decided to take out his deep hostilities on Schnozz, who was always afraid of him. In terror that night, she scratched him when he tried to grab her from under the bed. He retaliated by trying to hit her with my bike helmet, which he damaged. When that failed, he chased her into the living room, grabbed her and threw her against a wall, twice. (The young woman on the couch soon fled.) I started trying to get him to calm down, but he quickly turned on me. Since I started crying at the sight of this now-drunken monster, his response was to bounce my head against the wall with the palm of his hand.

I quickly grabbed Schnozz and fled out of the front door. (I later learned that the neighbors had thought to call the police but did not. This wouldn't have been the first time Frank would have been arrested for a domestic disturbance--he'd gone to jail overnight after a fight with the first boyfriend he'd had when the two had moved to Colorado several month before.) I had no time to think of Sneezer that night as I took off for safety.

I spent the night on the couch of a friend in the south building of the complex. (We lived in the middle building.) Schnozz just sat on the floor, ignoring Ramsey's cat, clearly traumatized. I would also later discover from the Vet that Frank had caused a hair-line fracture in her back when he'd tossed her against the wall, so she must have been in some pain that night, as well.

Unfortunately, I had to fly to California that next day because my mom was undergoing open heart surgery (something Frank was fully aware of). My sister met me at the airport to tell me that things were not going well. Our mom had had an adverse reaction to one of the medications during the surgery and might not make it.

We stayed at a hotel next to the hospital. My mom's two sisters and their husbands were also staying at the same hotel. The next morning, although it appeared that mom would survive, California was hit with an earthquake which shook us quite a bit in the old hotel. Later, a second earthquake, not an aftershock we would discover from watching the news, also struck.

After that extended weekend in California, I returned to Colorado and promptly moved out, leaving Frank and Sneezer behind in that large one-bedroom apartment. I moved into another small, one-bedroom unit in the north building of the complex, knowing that Frank's time there was limited because he still had no job and no income. I would make certain that Sneezer had enough cat food, but Frank's situation was no longer my concern.

Eventually, when he was on the verge of being evicted, I offered to buy him a one-way plane ticket out of town--to anywhere he wished to go. He decided he would fly to Virginia to stay with a lesbian friend he had there. I took him to the airport and wished him well. I then moved what was left of mine from the old apartment, including the couch. (I sold off the dining room table and chairs, having no space in the small apartment.) Of course, Frank couldn't take Sneezer to Virginia, so I picked him up, as well, and carried him to my new place in the north building, to rejoin Schnozz.

From their very first night together again, they began to fight; and I realized this was not going to work out at all. Something was going to have to be done.

---

Bombs Away, Part III

My father died in 2002, at the age of 81. I suspect that of all of the 142 Student Officers of Bombardier Class 43-11, few, if any, are still with us. Many may have lost their lives during the war. But of those who like my father survived the war to return home and live a full life, many would have been in their later 20's or older when the war ended in 1945.

Had he lived, dad would have been 91 this year. Others in his class probably were older than he. This Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw aptly calls them, had endured the Great Depression and WWII. A few may even have fought in the Korean War. So, if any in dad's class is still alive, I would be surprised. The one piece of information that is lacking in the booklet is the age of each individual Student Officer, where and when each was born.

As tough as it is to imagine any of these young, smiling faces killed in action, it's even tougher to imagine any of them as old men on their death beds, as I saw my father toward the end.

His doctor had told my sister Ann and me that there was nothing from the top of his head to the tips of his toes that was not failing or had already failed. Nothing could be done to keep him alive. We also discovered that he had signed a living will that requested no extraordinary means be used to keep him alive. So we then had the staff remove the breathing apparatus.

He continued to breathe on his own for a few more days, though never returning to consciousness. I had to return to Colorado after that weekend, but I had done what was needed. I had agreed, along with the family, to accede to his wishes and let him die honorably rather than be artificially kept alive. I also could not return for his funeral or burial. But those rituals are more for the living than the dead.

All these years later, I have this testament not only to my father but to the many other men who trained, and served, along with him so many decades ago, six years before I was born.

Had he not survived the war, I would not have been born.

I would not have served in, nor been discharged from, the Air Force all those years ago for being gay. Nor would I have written the ten Rainbow Arc of Fire novels.

Now that DADT is going away and we can serve openly, I may very well take up President Obama on his offer to return. Perhaps the President didn't imagine a 61-year-old veteran taking him up on his offer to serve again; but if I can, I will return. The repeal is a vindication of how I felt 31 years ago. I will make the most of any second chance if I am able.

---

Bombs Away, Part II

I can only imagine how hot it must have been in those cramped trainers at the height of summer in the high desert of California, learning to become bombardiers.

The American bomber offensive against Germany had begun a year earlier, in August of 1942. The British had been bombing German targets since 1940, but had soon shifted their attacks to less-accurate night bombing because their initial daylight attacks had produced appalling losses in aircraft and crews. Without fighter cover deep into Germany, the Americans would suffer the same appalling losses in that first year.

Yet throughout the souvenir booklet, the overall tone is upbeat, even jovial and light-hearted. Two cartoons were featured on the "Eleven Arrives..." page, discussing their first sight of the base: one was of the bus that brought them, with an officer gesturing for them to line up outside, with an overheated jackrabbit in the foreground and a lonesome cactus in the background. The text above emphasized that these trainees "were tired and hot". The adjacent cartoon is of a cadet with a small suitcase in one hand and the cord to his duffel bag in the other, asking, "Where's Da' Bombsight?"

Besides the cartoons, the text itself specifically defined their overall mood as the training continued: "They called us eager from the sidelines, and we were. Day after day, we became more and more determined to get through and earn those wings and bars.... We lost a few by the wayside, but to the end they were there trying."

Nineteen Forty-three was the year that Allied losses in the war were slowly beginning to turn into victories all over the map. But American losses were still heavy, especially during daylight aerial bombing. Hundreds of crewmen and dozens of bombers would be shot down during each mission.

One-hundred and forty-two student officers' smiling faces grace many of the later pages of the booklet. They came from all over the nation to this base in California: Garden City, New York; to Columbiana, Alabama; to Seattle, Washington; to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and many other states, cities, and small towns in between.

Remarkably, beside each smiling photo was not only the name and hometown of the student officer, but there was also a brief, highly personalized description of each man. For instance, E.Z. Tucker, Jr. of Greensboro, North Carolina: "Z for Zodiac, meaning lady-killer. Doesn't care to be room orderly, but likes C. Q. duties, WACs and furloughs."

My dad's description reads: "Good at spinning endless, pointless yarns. He seems to be healthy but always complains of his aching back." My mom used to tell me that dad was like that. Even at parties, he'd go off on some verbal tangent that would soon bore anyone he was chatting up. And even I remember him saying as a generic complaint in the 50's: "Oh, my aching back."

These young men might soon be lying dead in the wreckage of their B-17, B-24, or B-25 bomber in North Africa or Europe, or be rounded up and hauled off to a P.O.W. camp after they'd parachuted out of their damaged plane, as happened to my father after a Ploesti raid. But here, in stark black and white, each man not only had a face, name and home town but also a distinct personality. Each was somebody, a unique individual.

There were, of course, no Asian-American or African-American faces in the class. (The Japanese internment camps were in full operation and segregation was fully prevalent in the Armed Forces of that time.) But there were many English and Italian and German names sprinkled throughout. (My father's was the only Hispanic name that I found.) A few of the men were obviously married, and many more were described in one way or another as skirt chasers -- straight or trying very hard to appear straight in that oblivious-to-homosexuality era. Two students were described as the first and second papas in the 43-11 class, married guys whose wives had given birth while they were in training.

(more later)

---

Bombs Away

For the past couple of months, I have been watching the series VICTORY AT SEA and then THE WORLD AT WAR on Blu-ray disks. Often, I do something for which later a reason or justification becomes clear.

I found out what that was during a visit to my sister Ann's home in Indio, CA, from 30 December 2010 to 2 January 2011. The day I arrived, she handed over a wide, spiral-bound, modestly thick booklet that she'd been given by our sister Lorri.

The cover said BOMBS AWAY, 43-11. Upon further inspection, I realized that this booklet was from my dad's WWII Bombardier training class in 1943, at Victorville Army Air Field in California.

He would eventually become a bombardier on a B-24 that was forced to ditch after a raid on the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti where the Nazis got most of their oil during that horrific war.

At Victorville they trained in much smaller, even antiquated, AT-11 twin-engine light training bombers, and then B-25's, the same planes flown off the aircraft carrier Hornet by Jimmy Doolittle's raiders over Tokyo the previous year.

The booklet was filled with B&W photos of the base, the training and administrative staff, and all of the bombardier trainees of class 43-11, including my father. Born in 1920, he was about to turn 24, while he was learning to drop bombs on an enemy far away.

Tucked inside the booklet was an ID card, as well. This was issued on July 31, 1943, and his birthday was coming up on August 5th. It says he was 5' 8", 150 pounds, with brown eyes and hair. He was a second lieutenant, the same rank I held when I was in training at missile school at Vandenberg AFB, not that many miles from Victorville, CA. That was in 1974, 31 years later. I was 24 years old, and 6' tall and 160 pounds, with brown eyes and hair.

Toward the end of his life, he and I had had a significant falling out over my being gay. In fact, we never spoke in those final years, though I would be there in the emergency room where he lay, unconscious and likely unaware of my presence, though my sister Ann told him I was there.

Neither of us could easily recognized him, so changed was his mortal form. He looked like some concentration camp victim, his skin having become translucent, his weight significantly reduced. He looked very much like a man who was about to die, as he would soon do, only five days later.

(more to come)

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Merry Christmas

With DADT going away at some point next year, I have much to be thankful for.

Who knows? I may see what the requirements are to rejoin and try to get back in. I would enjoy nothing better than to be back teaching at the Air Force Academy. I only got to teach for one year before I was forced to resign.

I wish everyone a joyous new year.

DADT now significantly closer to ending

The Senate voted 65-31 to repeal DADT. Two more Republicans voted to repeal than voted to end the filibuster. This was pretty definitive and far better than I anticipated.

We should thank the U.S. Senate for doing what was right and long overdue.

There are many of those whom I knew years ago who were forced out but who died in all those many intervening years. I choose to believe they were here in spirit and certainly are here in my thoughts.

There are two more major steps: the President needs to sign the bill and then "the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won't hurt troops' fighting ability. After that, there's a 60-day waiting period for the military."

This is going to be a very happy holiday season for me. After waiting for 31-years, this was long anticipated. However, that does not diminish my joy at this significant moment in history.

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