My Autobiography

You may be wondering why I have written and published my autobiography.

Well... why not?

I suffer no delusions that my life is any more special than anyone else’s. I might think so, but I couldn’t possibly be biased, could I? I hope I’ve impacted a few other people’s lives in some positive way. But so have you. And so have most other people.

I believe everyone should document their life in one way or another. We all hold a special place in some other people’s hearts. You may think that nobody will care much about your life after you’re gone (or even while you’re still here), but I can assure you that’s not the case.

My parents were humble, unassuming people who wanted to live average, simple, and comfortable lives. People of their generation generally sought to conform to societal norms regarding career paths, family structure, and many other ways. My parents blended into the woodwork, which was just how they wanted it.

I gave my parents a book called To Our Children’s Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come. This book contains questions and thought prompts designed to help people recall memories and inspire them to write them down. I asked my parents to write some of the stories from their lives, using this book as a guide.

My mother gave it a good shot. She produced eight type-written pages describing several chapters of her life’s story. Within those eight pages, I learned some things about my mother I didn’t know before. Even for the stories I knew, it was nice to read them in her own words. There were chapters of her life she didn’t get to, but what she wrote was gold. I am so thankful to have what she wrote. It has inspired me to document the highlights from my life, at least up to 2024, for anyone who may be interested.

When she passed away, I formatted her story into a 12-page 8.5”x5.5” booklet with a couple of pictures and printed copies for everyone who came to her memorial service.

My father didn’t write anything, which was no surprise.

Let’s get the factual, demographic information out of the way first.

My full name is David Richard Hughes, although I have preferred “Dave” since third grade. I don’t know why. Maybe it sounded more casual or more cool.

I was born on February 24, 1957, in Springfield, Ohio, to John Herman Hughes (January 1, 1910-January 17, 2000) and Florence Bastress Hughes (June 16, 1918-April 23, 2003).

My father had married twice before. Both previous wives died. My brother John (June 6, 1936-December 17, 2006) was born to his first wife, and my two sisters, Dianne (b. April 29, 1943) and Charlotte (b. December 15, 1944), were born to his second wife. My parents’ marriage was my mother’s first, so I was my father’s fourth child and my mother’s first.

When I was born, my father was 47, my mother was 38, my brother was 21, and my sisters were 13 and 12. The kids being spaced so far apart made for a somewhat unusual family situation. In some respects, my childhood was like that of an only child.

We lived at 139 Kewbury Road, in a house my father purchased in the mid-1940s, around the time my sisters were born. Kewbury was a small dead-end street with nine houses on one side and eight on the other. Technically, it wasn’t a dead-end since an alley at the end connected it to the next street. Nevertheless, a yellow diamond sign at the entrance to Kewbury Road proclaimed it a dead-end street. It has since been replaced by a yellow diamond sign that says ‘No Outlet,’ which I suppose sounds a little less morbid, especially considering there was a retirement home for old ladies at the end of the street.

Our house was small (1,154 square feet), with two bedrooms and one bath, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room on the main floor, an unfinished basement, and an unfinished attic above the bedrooms on the left side of the house. By the time I was born, the attic had been finished and converted into a third bedroom. Before its conversion, it was my brother John’s bedroom. That’s right – he had to sleep in an unfinished attic with no heat or air conditioning.

We moved to Xenia, Ohio, a small town 20 miles south of Springfield, in 1965. My parents kept the house on Kewbury and rented it out until we returned in 1971. They remained in that house until they died – Dad in 2000 and Mom in 2003.

I graduated from Springfield North High School in June 1975 and from the Ohio State University in December 1979.

Here are the places I’ve lived since graduating from college. I will share stories about them in the chapters to come.

1980-1982: Columbus, Ohio

1982-1984: Dayton, Ohio

1984-1987: Gaithersburg, Maryland

1987-1988: Falls Church, Virginia

1988-1995: Annandale, Virginia

1995-present: Phoenix, Arizona; more specifically, the East Valley suburbs of Gilbert, Tempe, Ahwatukee, and (since 2006) Chandler.

My mother, Florence Bastress (no middle name), was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania on June 16, 1918. She was the youngest of three children. Her older siblings were Norman and Helen. Her father, David Gettys Bastress, died when she was a junior in college. Her mother, Alice Spencer Bastress, never remarried and lived in the family house at 568 Lafayette Avenue (one block from the Ohio state line) until she died. I was in elementary school when she died, so I knew her.

We visited Sharon once or twice every year to visit Grandma, Uncle Norman and Aunt Hilda (later Aunt Mary), and Aunt Helen and Uncle Ed. Our trips usually included a visit with Ruth Hipsley (later Mathieson), one of my mother’s lifelong friends.

I remember Uncle Norman’s and Aunt Helen’s houses well. Uncle Norman owned a large white house at 155 Spencer Avenue. It was a split-level house. When we entered through the back door next to the garage, it was half a flight up to the main floor with the kitchen, dining room, and living room. An organ sat in the corner of the living room. I usually asked Uncle Norman to play something, and sometimes he would. Half a flight higher, there was a study over the garage, with a nice desk, a piano, and bookshelves full of books. Half a flight higher were the bedrooms.

The attic was filled with a massive model train layout. Uncle Norman built a platform that covered most of the attic, with barely enough space to walk around the edges. I can’t imagine how many scale miles of train tracks were laid out on that platform, nor can I guess how many locomotives and train cars he owned, but it was a lot! Model trains were his lifelong hobby. I used to beg him to take me up to the attic and run his trains for me, and sometimes he did. As he got older and less agile, the trips to the attic became less frequent. Uncle Norman was a cool guy. He always wore a white shirt and his white hair was combed straight back. He was slightly overweight and always wore a jovial smile and seemed happy. I liked him a lot.

Uncle Norman and Aunt Hilda had one son, Donnie, who I’ll talk about later. I don’t remember when, but Aunt Hilda passed away and he married a woman named Mary.

Aunt Helen was single until age 40 when she married Edward Coulter (shortly before I was born). Uncle Ed was a funeral director. Their house, at 247 S. Oakland Avenue, was a funeral home on the first floor and their residence on the second floor. We stayed with Aunt Helen and Uncle Ed when we visited Sharon after my grandmother died.

Aunt Helen was also an organist and played an organ on the first floor at funeral services. Organs interested me more than piano because you could change the sounds in so many ways. After I started taking piano lessons in third grade, they allowed me to go downstairs and play the organ. Uncle Ed’s inventory of caskets was on display in a couple of the rooms downstairs. I recall one visit when I walked through those rooms alone and was overcome with a scary, creepy feeling. Maybe spirits were lurking there.

Aunt Helen passed away in 1988. I happened to be on a business trip in Cleveland at the time, so I was able to attend her funeral which, fittingly, was held in their funeral home. Nobody played the organ. Uncle Ed was frail and in no condition to officiate funeral services, not that he would have officiated his wife’s anyway. Uncle Ed refused to accept that he had grown too old to run the business, so they never sold it. They had moved to a mobile home on the edge of town so they wouldn’t have to climb steps. The house was later sold and a different business moved in. While writing this, I looked at the house on Google Street View. Sadly, it is now abandoned and the windows are boarded up.

My mother attended Grove City College. I don’t know her specific major, but it was probably Education. She taught school for a few years but then moved on to other things. At one point, she worked for the State Department at the US Consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico. She lived and worked there for six months. I’m not aware that Mom spoke much Spanish, but she enjoyed her time there. She returned with a collection of souvenirs, such as a sombrero and a colorful sarape. During her retirement, she devoted a lot of time to drawing and painting, and sometimes she painted Mexican scenes.

During her 30s, she moved to Columbus, Ohio, and worked for Westinghouse. She was an executive secretary, or administrative assistant as we would call it today. While she lived in Columbus, she met three women who would remain friends for the rest of her life: Mary Lou Parkey, JoAnne Dyer, and Marilyn Peterson. For many years, these four friends got together every three months for lunch, bridge, and chit-chat, rotating among their four houses.

At one point, she was introduced to my father. Since he lived in Springfield and Mom lived in Columbus, I’m not sure how they met, but it was through mutual friends. In any case, Mom and Dad got married on September 17, 1955, and Mom moved to Springfield. She instantly became the mother of Johnny (19), Dianne (12), and Charlotte (10). Although she was their stepmother, she never referred to herself as such or to my siblings as her stepchildren. They were her children. Johnny was already out of the house – first at Ohio State, then in the Army – but he sometimes visited on weekends. Mom’s relationships with Dianne and Charlotte were sometimes challenging, which was to be expected. But they made it work, and once Dianne and Charlotte were adults they got along better.

After I started school, Mom worked as a guidance counselor at Tecumseh High School, a few miles west of Springfield. When we moved to Xenia she got a job teaching typing and other business-related classes at Xenia High School. When Dad retired in 1971, we moved back to Springfield and she retired too.

Mom was the best mother I could ever have wanted. She was kind, loving, thoughtful, and gentle. I was the center of her universe, although (like most kids) I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time.

We lived on a tight budget. Mom was an expert at coupon clipping and watching the sales – a habit I inherited from her. At the beginning of each week, she planned the week’s meals and compiled a grocery list, often taking into account what was on sale that week and what their budget would allow. She purchased exactly what she needed and little else.

She was a decent cook, although our food rarely featured much seasoning or embellishment beyond basic recipes. I was always forced to eat all the food on my plate before I could have dessert or get up from the table. That habit is still engrained in me to this day, much to the detriment of my waistline.

Mom was active at Covenant Presbyterian Church. Before we moved to Xenia, she taught Sunday School. After we returned she participated in one of the women’s social/service groups. She and her best friend reupholstered some of the chairs in the church’s parlor. She had a decent singing voice, and after much encouragement from me, she joined the choir. She did well.

She received piano lessons when she was growing up, as Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen had. She stuck with piano, though, and never switched to organ. When my grandmother died, we inherited her piano.

Mom was a talented artist. She didn’t have much time for art while I was growing up, since working, mothering, and housekeeping consumed her time. After I left home and they retired, she spent much more time with art. She took classes at the Springfield Art Center for years and sometimes displayed her work in member art shows.

Mom was 81 when Dad passed away. During the last couple of years before Dad died she began showing signs of dementia. When I visited shortly before Dad died, he said he wanted me to move Mom out to Phoenix to live in an assisted living facility. Apparently, he hadn’t consulted with her on this. Or maybe he had and she didn’t remember.

I brought Mom to Phoenix soon after Dad died and we looked at an assisted living facility. It immediately became clear that this would not be a workable solution. Mom didn’t want to live someplace where it was always hot, even if it meant being close to me. Plus, she had no friends and knew nothing of the area. She would have been totally lost and confused.

She had lived in Springfield since 1955, except for the six years in Xenia. Springfield was her home. More specifically, the house at 139 Kewbury Road was her home. She knew her way to the grocery store and church. She still had a few friends. Like many other seniors, she wanted to spend the rest of her life in her home.

During one of my visits to Springfield, Mom and I toured Northwood Village, an assisted living/nursing home facility on the north edge of town. It was nice and reasonably priced. Mom recognized that someday she would need to move there, but that would always be “someday,” not today. She believed that places like that were “where they send people to die.” While that’s probably true, it’s not a positive approach.

Several cousins on my Dad’s side of the family lived in Springfield, and they looked after Mom, especially Cherie Donnellan, Suzanne Groeber, and Robert Marcum. I hired a caregiver who visited her several hours a day, five days a week, to keep her company and help with chores like cooking and laundry. The next-door neighbors also kept an eye on Mom.

Finally, we could no longer avoid the inevitable. I had to move Mom into Northwood Village. I enlisted a few of my high school friends to help us move some of her furniture into her new apartment. On the day of the move, she cried bitter, angry tears and said, “This is the worst day of my life.”

She never fully understood that was now her home. Once when I called, she told me she was staying in a hotel and needed to go home soon. “I can’t afford this much longer.”

Six months later, she passed away. Charlotte traveled from Texas and my sister-in-law Juanita and niece Suzanne traveled from Anaheim for Mom’s memorial service. Her service was well-attended by my aunts and cousins, high school friends, and her church friends. Charlotte and I stayed for another week during which we selected a real estate agent, moved her furniture back from Northwood Village, closed her bank accounts, and disposed of Mom and Dad’s possessions.

While Mom and Dad’s house was small, it had a full basement and plenty of storage space in the finished attic. They never bought much beyond what they needed, but they rarely threw away anything. They had accumulated a lot of possessions over nearly 50 years.

Deciding what to keep and let go of was difficult and emotional. I kept a few of Mom’s paintings, and some are displayed on our walls. I wanted to take them all but I realized that would be impractical. We donated them to the Springfield Art Center. I kept a few of their vacation souvenirs and photo albums, their nice silverware set, and some nice dishes. Had I more time and perspective, I probably would have chosen differently. Other than the paintings on our walls, I’ve rarely looked at any of those things.

In hindsight, I should have moved her to Northwood Village sooner. While she was happier staying in her home, she was in no condition to live by herself. If she had moved sooner, she might have been better able to acclimate to her new surroundings. I’m sure others felt I should have done things differently.

I did the best I could.

My father, John Herman Hughes, was born on January 1, 1910. He was the third of four generations of Johns, although they all had different middle names. He was the oldest of five children. His siblings were Elizabeth, Mary, Charles (Chuck), and Helen, each born two or three years apart. Among the five of them, they had 20 children, so I had a lot of cousins on my father’s side and no living cousins on my mother’s.

This meant I had two Aunt Helens – one from each side of the family. After Uncle Norman remarried, I had two Aunt Marys.

He was born in Cincinnati. I don’t know when or why his family moved to Springfield, but it was probably when he was young.

My father never talked about his childhood or the earlier chapters of his life. He rarely talked about anything. I learned everything I know about him from my mother. According to her, his mother was strict and demanding. Their family was not well off, so Dad had to work his way through college. He alternated working for a quarter and going to college for a quarter. He went to Ohio State and graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering.

The stock market crashed in 1929, launching the country into the Great Depression. It was not an easy time for him to work his way through college and then enter the job market.

When he was 24 (in 1934), he married a woman named Anita who was ten years his senior. He was concerned that his parents wouldn’t approve, so they married secretly. He didn’t tell his parents until after the fact.

My brother Johnny was born on June 6, 1936. Two years later, Anita died, leaving Dad to raise Johnny on his own.

Like many men of his generation, my father bought into strict gender role expectations. He believed the man’s job was to earn the money, while the woman’s job was to cook, keep the house, and raise the kids. So he was not well-suited for single fatherhood.

Dad served in the Army, but I don’t know exactly when. He may have enlisted because he had difficulty finding work. I believe he was active during World War II, at least in the earlier years.

Dad remarried in the early 40s, and my sister Dianne arrived on April 29, 1943. Charlotte arrived a year and a half later, on December 15, 1944. His second wife destroyed all evidence of Dad’s first marriage – every photograph, letter, memento, or anything else she could find. She couldn’t destroy Johnny, a living reminder of Dad’s first marriage, but she had no love for him and made his life hell. She imposed strict rules and limitations and punished him whenever he violated them. Dad, who delegated all parenting responsibilities to the mother, did little to intercede.

Dianne and Charlotte’s mother contracted tuberculosis and died. Dad became a single father again, now with three kids to care for.

He met my mother while she was living in Columbus. They married on September 17, 1955, and I was born on February 24, 1957.

I was always Mom’s child. After both of my parents passed, I learned that I was a condition of their marriage. At 37, Mom’s clock was ticking loudly. She agreed to marry my father if she could have at least one child. A year and a half later, I fulfilled that pre-nuptial obligation.

When I came along, Dad already had three kids aged 21, 13, and 12. Before my birth, he had six years until the youngest turned 18 and left home for college or a job. My arrival meant the clock was reset to 0. I suspect the last thing my dad wanted was to have another kid at age 47. But he wanted a wife and mother for his existing children, and I was part of the package.

Dad wasn’t particularly close with any of his children, given his belief that raising children was the mother’s job. He had no skill at dealing with children. Sometimes I wonder if he even wanted kids. He probably felt that getting married and having kids was what was expected of him.

We never felt close or got along well. We didn’t fight, we simply didn’t interact. We were essentially two males living under the same roof. I was a necessary inconvenience. Dad always made enough money to provide for our food, clothing, and shelter. So my physical needs were met but my emotional needs were not.

When I was in first and second grade, Dad and I participated in Indian Guides, a program offered by the local YMCA. In this program, fathers and sons were grouped into “tribes” of approximately twelve. Their motto was “Father and Son – Pals Forever.” Even at 6, I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, right – as if.’ We chose a name for our tribe (Chippewa) and each of us chose an Indian-sounding name. Mine was Logan, but I don’t remember his. Our tribe would meet once a month at the home of one of the father-sons. I don’t remember what we did, except that once we participated in a kite-flying contest. One of the other fathers worked at a printing factory, so he provided some heavy-duty paper from the ends of the giant rolls they used for the printing presses. At one of our meetings, each father-son constructed and decorated their kite. On the day of the event, our tribe’s kites were the most successful. Our kite flew so high I could barely see it.

That was the only time I remember Dad and me doing anything fun or constructive together.

After Dad retired in 1971 and we moved back to Springfield, he did freelance surveying work until he was 70. Sometimes he would require my assistance to go out with him on a survey and hold the end of a tape measure or a pole. These needs were never communicated in advance, always on the spur of the moment. It made no difference whether I had an activity planned. Worse, he never asked (read: told) me I had to go surveying with him – he made Mom do it.

He rarely spoke directly to me. There were times when Mom, Dad, and I were eating dinner at the kitchen table, and he would talk to Mom and tell her whatever he wanted me to hear. It was like I wasn’t even there.

By the time I was in high school, I resented him deeply. Those feelings began when I was small and grew stronger as I grew older.

Dad was an avid cigar and pipe smoker. The living room was usually engulfed in a putrid cloud of bluish-gray smoke. It was terribly unpleasant. I was well aware of the dangers of second-hand smoke. My mother suffered from bronchial asthma, but that didn’t stop him.

He was also an alcoholic. Beer was usually in the fridge, and he kept a bottle of Jack Daniels hidden behind his desk. Sometimes he’d be so drunk at the dinner table that he couldn’t finish saying grace, and what he said was so mumbled it was barely intelligible.

Once, he drove me to a rehearsal for a church band I played in. Rather than driving me directly to the rehearsal, he first drove to the liquor store, which was a mile in the other direction. That made me 15 or 20 minutes late for the rehearsal. He didn’t care. He could have just as easily dropped me off first, then gone to the liquor store.

I understand that Dad had a rough life, at least the first half of it. He was raised by a strict, domineering mother who expected perfection from him. He had to work his way through college. When he graduated the Great Depression had begun and jobs were scarce. His first two wives died, leaving him to raise children on his own. Still, he married my mother when he was 45 and lived to be 90. He had a stable marriage for half of his life. The second half of his life wasn’t so bad – except that he had this one last child he’d have to endure until I graduated from college when he was 69.

After I graduated and started living on my own, our relationship got a little better. For one thing, I was now grown up and gone. It seemed easier for him to relate to me as a grown man than as a child, although he still spoke very little.

When I was 28, I decided to forgive him for being an emotionally absent, shitty father. I realized his life had been difficult. I accepted his cultural upbringing in which he thought raising kids was the mother’s job. I decided that holding onto resentment was unhealthy and pointless, and it was only harming me. So I forgave him. I let it all go. I never told him. I didn’t forgive him for him, I forgave him for myself. And it helped a lot.

While I was visiting Ohio for Christmas in 1999 (three weeks before he died), he was mostly bedridden. One day I went into the bedroom to talk to him. He matter-of-factly gave me instructions for what I should do after he was gone – things like where paperwork was, affairs that would need to be wrapped up, and how I should care for my mother. It was the most honest talk we ever had. It was still very transactional and not the least bit emotional.

The one thing he could have told me during that last conversation was that he loved me, or at least that he was proud of me. But he didn’t. I can’t recall that he ever told me he loved me. Ever. He probably did, but it wasn’t something he could bring himself to say.

As I was leaving the room, I realized that would probably be the last time I saw my father alive (and it was). I debated whether to say, “I love you” to him. I didn’t.

Since I was born on February 24, 1957, I don’t remember anything about the 50s. I don’t remember the 1960 presidential election in which John F. Kennedy narrowly beat Richard M. Nixon. So I’ll start with the 60s.

My earliest memory was being fed jello in the back seat of our car. My mother drove to Columbus four times a year for the big quarterly sale at Lazarus, a huge department store. This store was such a destination that Lazarus operated four parking garages in the adjoining blocks. After my mother parked the car, she fed me jello before loading me into a stroller and pushing me through the store for her glorious shopping day.

During another trip, she accumulated so many purchases that I got crowded out of the stroller and had to walk for the rest of the day.

Lazarus amazed me. It was huge! They carried everything. It was truly a retail paradise. Their sidewalk window displays were festively decorated during the Christmas season. And of course, I got to visit Santa! They had an elaborate North Pole Village on the sixth floor – the same floor as the toy department, Nirvana to a young boy.

My first few years of childhood were happy and trouble-free. I could hardly appreciate it then, but I was the center of my mother’s world. My sisters Dianne and Charlotte were still in high school and they seemed to enjoy having a baby brother.

Another one of my earliest memories happened sometime when I was three. We had a parakeet, and occasionally it would escape from its cage. I remember Dianne and Charlotte frantically chasing it all over the house to catch it.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I was sitting in my first-grade classroom when the PA system started blaring radio coverage of the event. The sound was poor so it was hard to make out what was happening or what was being said. It just sounded like urgent chaos. But we found out soon enough.

We moved to Xenia during the summer of 1965, during the civil rights movement. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964. The Voting Rights Act followed on August 6, 1965. Most of Springfield’s Black population lived in the southern part of town and we lived in the northern part, so none attended my school. Xenia was much smaller, so I had some Black kids in my class. I didn’t think much of it, but I could sense some racial tension as the country adapted to these new civil rights laws.

The 60s were notable for the emergence of rock music. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones took the US by storm. The Monkees began as a TV comedy show about a rock band but soon became an actual band. I was a huge fan. The Motown label brought Black singing groups such as the Supremes, the Temptation, and the Four Tops into the mainstream. Other vocal groups such as the Fifth Dimension, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Association dominated the airwaves later in the decade. It was a transformational decade for rock and pop music.

The summer of 1967 was dubbed the Summer of Love. As many as 100,000 young adults from all over the country converged in the Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It became a huge communal environment of hippie culture, spiritual awakening, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, music, and plentiful sex.

1968 was a year of political and social upheaval. On April 4, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. On June 6, Robert F. Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy and the leading Democratic candidate for president, was assassinated. The chaotic Democratic National Convention in Chicago drew violent protests from people opposed to the Vietnam War.

The decade ended more positively when astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Springfield, Ohio, was a nice place to grow up from the late 1950s to the mid-70s. It was a typical mid-American, mid-sized, middle-class city with good schools, nice neighborhoods, and safe streets.

I could ride a bicycle by first grade. My parents gave me free rein to explore my surroundings as long as I was home in time for dinner. I happily pedaled all over the northern part of town, enjoying my freedom and making a mental note of all my surroundings. We had a chalkboard in the kitchen, mounted at my height in an out-of-the-way spot. In hindsight, I assume my parents put it there so I wouldn’t scribble on the walls and my mother could keep an eye on me. On that chalkboard, I could draw an accurate map of all the streets in our part of town – an area of at least one square mile. I rode my bike to school in first and second grade, a distance of just over a mile. Since I knew all the streets so well, I often varied my route.

I attended Snowhill Elementary School during Kindergarten, first, and second grade. Those were carefree times. I made friends easily and felt included. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Patterson, was a kind, gentle lady who genuinely loved her students. She remained my favorite teacher throughout my school years.

Eleven years later, when I was a senior in high school, I visited Snowhill when a choir I was accompanying on bass performed there. I had some free time before our performance, so I wandered down the hall to my old first-grade classroom. Sure enough, Mrs. Patterson’s name was still on the door. I poked my head in to say hi. She immediately recognized me, despite having not seen me for ten years. I had grown from a first-grade boy to a high school senior. She ran up, hugged me, and introduced me to her class.

My mother and I attended Covenant Presbyterian Church. It was a large, majestic church that occupied half of a city block on the north edge of downtown Springfield. The sanctuary was stunning, with marble pillars, stained glass windows, and a high arched wood ceiling. The services were religious pageantry at its finest, with a huge, thunderous pipe organ and an enthusiastic choir. The entire building was a place of wonder. It had dozens of rooms on three floors, including a few mysterious, out-of-the-way rooms that were always locked.

Only my mother and I attended Covenant. My father was Catholic and my older siblings were raised Catholic. At the time, Catholics were only permitted to marry someone of a different faith if they agreed to raise the children as Catholics. The fact that I was an exception to this rule illustrates that I was my mother’s child for all intents and purposes.

Perhaps the fondest memory of my childhood in Springfield was the summer days spent at the Olympic Swim Club. The pool was 50 meters long (the length of pools used in the Olympics), which was twice as long as most other pools. It was sideways-T-shaped, and the side branch was a 10’ deep diving area with two one-meter diving boards and one three-meter diving board. The pool was huge. It was often packed with people. I took swimming lessons in the mornings. I learned to swim easily and became very comfortable in the water. I spent many hours at the pool most days.

When I was five, they added a gigantic water slide. It wasn’t one of the fancy slides waterparks have today, with twists and turns and covered tubes. It was simply a tall scaffold-like structure with a metal ladder and a flat, straight metal slide that deposited riders into the 5’ end of the pool near a ladder. It was around 12’ tall, which to a 5-year-old kid seemed mountainous.

I was bound and determined to ride that slide. I frequently asked my mother’s permission, but she always said no. Occasionally, she and my father would come to the pool after work. They would swim the length of the pool (always sidestroke, facing each other). At that age, I was limited to playing in the 3’ end of the pool, but they would sometimes tell me to meet them at the 5’ end when they completed their sidestroke lap and I could jump into the deeper water from the side of the pool.

One time, I misheard my mother. She said, “Do you want to go off the side?” I thought she said, “Do you want to go off the slide?” I was delighted! I couldn’t believe she finally changed her mind and would let me ride down the slide! So while they swam down to the 5’ end, I gleefully got in line for the slide.

When they reached the other end of the pool, they looked around but didn’t see me. Finally, they noticed a commotion at the slide. They spotted me sitting at the top of the slide, terrified to go down the long, steep incline. The lifeguard climbed the ladder to the top, set me on his lap, and we rode down together.

Having survived that ordeal, I learned that the big, tall slide wouldn’t kill me. In fact, it was thrilling. (Riding down the slide on the lap of a hunky teenage lifeguard was thrilling too. But at the time I was too terrified to process that and too young to appreciate it.) From that time on, I rode down the slide by myself fearlessly and often.

When we moved back to Springfield after my eighth-grade year, the Olympic Swim Club had been purchased by the city and turned into the Springfield Municipal Pool. The features were the same, but the crowds seemed smaller. There were no memberships; people paid each time they visited. I didn’t realize until later that the Olympic Swim Club, being a private club, excluded non-white people.

During those years, my father was the County Engineer for Clark County. For whatever reason, that was an elected position. I remember seeing Dad’s name on billboards as we drove around town in 1964, an election year. And for whatever reason, elections for city positions were partisan. Mom and Dad were die-hard Republicans. In 1964, the Republican candidate for president was Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. That impacted the down-ticket elections as well. Dad lost the election, so he was out of a job.

He found a job as the County Engineer for Greene County, the next county to the south. It was a hired position, not elected. So we moved to Xenia, the county seat. My parents kept the house in Springfield and rented it while we lived in Xenia. Six years later, Dad retired and we returned.

We lived in Xenia for six years, while I was in third through eighth grade.

While Springfield and Xenia are only 20 miles apart, there was a world of difference for me. It’s hard to pinpoint why, but it seemed more backward and lower-class. When I arrived at Shawnee Elementary School, they were teaching the same things in third grade that I learned in second grade at Snowhill in Springfield.

For whatever reason, I didn’t fit in. Maybe because I was the new kid. Maybe I seemed smarter than many of the other kids and they resented it. Maybe I was obnoxious in some way and didn’t realize it. Maybe some kids realized I was somehow different, even if they couldn’t put a name on it.

Third and fourth grades were the worst. I was ostracized and called names. At times, I was a target for the bullies in the class.

Shawnee didn’t allow students to ride their bikes to school until fifth grade. So while I successfully rode my bike to school during first and second grade in Springfield, I was now restricted to walking. I had to be careful walking to and from school. I frequently altered my route so I could avoid being ganged up on and beaten up.

My parents bought me a membership to the local YMCA. I took a few swimming classes, and in fourth grade, I joined the swim team. My parents joined the Pinecrest Swim Club – another private, whites-only club. So from fourth through eighth grade, I belonged to the swim team at the Y during the school year and Pinecrest during the summer. Swimming was one sport I could succeed in. I made friends on the teams and felt safe there.

In fifth grade, Xenia began busing students to different elementary schools to achieve a better racial mix throughout the school system. Oddly, some of the new kids were also white, but from the south end of town. I was able to make friends more easily with them.

When I turned 12, I got a paper route. I enjoyed that and did well at it. I enjoyed earning extra money, as Mom and Dad gave me a very small allowance. I delivered the Dayton Daily News six afternoons a week and Sunday morning.

Around the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, I asked for and received an Aurora HO-scale race car track for Christmas. This launched a hobby that I continued to enjoy through high school. Racing the little cars around the track was only part of the fun. The real fun was designing the track layouts. For years, I bought more track and created larger and larger layouts. I also got into accessories, like pit stop buildings, grandstands, trees and shrubs, fake grass, etc. By high school, my layouts were scenic masterpieces. My parents let me use the section of the basement under the living room for my layout, which utilized every available inch of a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood, supported by two carpenter’s horses. That hobby brought me hours of fulfillment over many years.

In junior high, my school situation improved again. While I would never be popular, at least I wasn’t ostracized or picked on. I met new kids who had attended other elementary schools. Maybe some kids finally outgrew picking on others.

Still, when it came time to move back to Springfield, I was not sad to leave Xenia.

During the late 60s and early 70s, young people in the United States became increasingly upset about the Vietnam War, especially because young men were being drafted into military service. Protests on college campuses occurred frequently, culminating on May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard shot four Kent State University students at a campus protest. The Paris Peace Accords, a peace agreement that stipulated the withdrawal of US troops, was signed in January 1973. Still, fighting continued until April 30, 1975, when Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to the communists. It was the first time the US lost a war.

During the 1972 presidential election cycle, Republican operatives broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, and stole documents. They were caught, and the incident became known as the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixon won the election in a landslide, but the congressional hearings into the matter captured the nation’s attention and turned popular opinion against him. He resigned on August 8, 1974, rather than face near-certain impeachment.

Adding to the turmoil of Vietnam and Watergate, Arab nations imposed an oil embargo on the United States starting on October 17, 1973, to protest the US selling arms to Israel.

Fortunately, the fantastic music of the early 70s helped the nation endure those difficult times. Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears, rock bands with horns, became popular. Similarly, bands like Earth, Wind & Fire and Tower of Power blended R&B, soul, and jazz with the help of sizzling horns. Miles Davis launched the jazz fusion era with his album Bitches Brew. The side musicians on that album soon formed their own fusion bands. Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke formed Return to Forever, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter formed Weather Report, and John McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Many more artists and bands emerged from these. Carlos Santana pioneered a new brand of Latin rock with his self-named band. I could go on naming significant musicians who flourished during the 70s, but you get the idea. The political times were difficult and the clothing and hairstyles were atrocious, but the music was fantastic.

I’ve heard it said that the music you listen to during your high school and college years will remain your favorite music throughout your life, and I believe it. In this regard, the 70s were a rich decade, indeed. I’ve bought much more music throughout the rest of my life, but I still listen to and enjoy my 70s music.

Once we moved back to Springfield, my last year of junior high and three years of high school went fine. Some of my classmates from kindergarten through second grade were still there.

Soon after I started ninth grade I joined Troop 1, a scout troop several of my friends belonged to. I was 14, so I got a later start with scouting than most kids. But I dove into it and quickly ascended the ranks from Tenderfoot to Second Class to First Class to Star.

Troop 1 was a large, well-run, active troop. The troop had a campsite in a rural wooded area several miles outside Springfield. We camped there one weekend each month, year-round. We took camping and hiking trips to many state parks within a few hours’ drive from Springfield.

The highlight of my Scouting experience was a week-long canoe trip on the Greenbrier River in West Virginia. It was quite an experience to pack a full week’s worth of food, clothing, cooking utensils, and tents and spend a week paddling down a beautiful river.

During the first half of the week, the river was low and we often scraped the bottoms of our boats on the rocks. One of our boats was a wooden kayak, and a rock poked a hole in it. We had to repair it with whatever we had available. Then, halfway through the week, Hurricane Agnes struck the east coast. We didn’t experience much rain, but the river rose six feet overnight. We had set up camp along the bank of the river and had to quickly relocate to higher ground. For the rest of the trip, we battled 3-foot waves rather than river rocks. It was exciting!

I quit after two years, at the end of my sophomore year. The novelty was wearing off and I was more engaged with high school activities. In hindsight, I wish I had stayed long enough to earn Eagle Scout.

My new junior high had a large concert band and an orchestra. In high school, I played in the marching band, jazz ensemble, and concert band. These were immensely enjoyable experiences. The level of musical ability was far superior to the school bands in Xenia. The jazz ensemble, directed by Tom Billing, cemented my love of jazz music.

I was never popular during my school years. I didn’t need to be the most popular kid in school, but I always wished to be less unpopular than I was. This was especially true in Xenia.

Whenever the class voted on something, such as the homeroom representative on the student council, I always ran and always lost. I guess I was a glutton for punishment. Finally, in my senior year of high school, nobody else ran for homeroom representative, so I won. Then, something remarkable happened. When the student council voted for president, vice president, and secretary-treasurer, I was elected vice president. Nobody was more surprised than me.

During my senior year, the school provided an aptitude test to help students decide which career paths they were best suited for. I wanted to major in music since I loved it so much. However, my test scores indicated that my aptitudes were a complete mismatch for a music career. (This test provided no opportunity for me to play my trombone for it, so what did it know?) I was also interested in architecture, but this test said I didn’t have sufficient aptitude for that, either. Instead, the test said I was best suited to be an accountant. I got excellent grades in my advanced-placement math class, so I concluded that I should major in accounting.

My decision not to major in music was reinforced by my best friend’s father. He was a high school teacher and also a skilled photographer. Half of their basement was consumed by a darkroom with equipment for developing photos and movie films. He developed the football game videos for Wittenburg University (located in Springfield) and several local high schools. He won contracts to take senior photos at area high schools. He made as much money with his photography as he did as a school teacher. But he insisted that teaching was his profession and photography was his hobby. He didn’t want to rely on photography to be the primary means of support for him and his family. I took that advice to heart. Besides, I desired a better income than what my band directors earned.

Another friend’s father was a partner at a local accounting firm. They hosted several other students and me for a visit to their office on career day. While this introduction to working at an accounting firm wasn’t distasteful, neither was it exciting. But the aptitude test said this was what I should do. So I headed off to the Ohio State University to major in Accounting.

Covenant Presbyterian Church connected with several other churches in the area to form the Springfield Associated Ministries youth group, or SAM as we called it. Many members were friends of mine at North High School, but some were from other area high schools and churches. We were mostly self-directed, although a minister from one of the other churches usually attended as our advisor. We planned our meetings and activities, met regularly, and took a few weekend trips. Many of my best friends from high school came from this group. I’m still in touch with most of them.

If you’re unfamiliar, The Best Damn Band in the Land, or TBDBITL (pronounced “t’bit’l”), refers to the Ohio State University Marching Band. And it is, indeed, the best university marching band in the country, if not the world. I have records and videos to support my claim, or you can watch their performances on YouTube.

Oddly, I was unaware of this band while I was growing up in Springfield, less than 50 miles away. I knew about Ohio State and I heard they were good at football. But I was not a football fan so I didn’t pay much attention. Similarly, I figured they must have a marching band, but I knew little about it.

I’m not sure why I chose Ohio State for my college education. My mother attended Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania and always spoke glowingly of her years there. During one of our trips to Sharon, Pennsylvania to visit her sister, she took me to see Grove City. It’s a small college with a typical eastern US campus – handsome red brick buildings, plentiful trees, and grassy squares between buildings. It seemed serene, dignified, and scholarly. I was enthralled with it, perhaps because I could sense my mother’s pride in her Alma Mater.

It’s a good thing I didn’t go. I later learned that Grove City is a very right-wing Christian college, and they make no bones about it.

Given our financial situation, attending a state-supported university in Ohio was my best option. I briefly considered attending Wright State University, a 30-minute drive from our home in Springfield. I figured I’d live at home and commute. Again, I’m glad I didn’t. I needed to get away from home and discover life on my own – or at least life in the structured environment of a dormitory and dining hall.

So I chose Ohio State – maybe because it was the next closest state university. Or maybe because my father and brother had gone there. Anyway, that’s what I picked, and I’ve always been happy with my choice.

I learned that marching band tryouts took place during the week before school started. Tryouts? People had to try out to join the band? I had no idea what I was in for.

I found out soon enough. The Ohio State University Marching Band operated with a fixed instrumentation of 224 musicians (192 regulars and 32 alternates), a fixed number of each brass and percussion instrument. (There are no woodwinds in the Ohio State University Marching Band.) Each year, 350 to 375 people try out for the 224 available spots. Many people have their dreams crushed – at least until next year.

My high school, Springfield North, had a decent marching band. I was a good player and marcher. Despite the odds, I remained confident that I’d make the band. During tryouts, candidates were graded three times on their marching ability – on Monday morning, Monday afternoon, and Tuesday morning. They have one musical audition. During lunch on Tuesday, the band staff compiles the scores and eliminates those who are clearly below the standard for marching or playing. After lunch, the people who did not survive the first cut are notified and make their humble exit from the bandroom.

Then there’s one more round of marching grades on Tuesday afternoon and perhaps a second audition. During dinner on Tuesday, the staff makes the final cuts. I didn’t make the final cut. I was devastated. But at the same time, I gained an appreciation for how talented the people in the band are. I had been exposed to the great history and tradition of excellence that is the Ohio State University Marching Band. While I was disappointed, I wasn’t ashamed. I knew I had tried my best, but this band was simply better than me. I vowed that I’d try again next year. I did, and I made the band.

I made the band four more times, for a total of five years. I attended OSU one extra quarter to earn a double major in Accounting and Computer Science – and also for another year of marching band – so I graduated in December 1979 rather than June. In the fall of 1981, I quit my first job and returned to OSU – ostensibly to take some additional classes in preparation for enrolling in their Master's program, but as much to play in the band one more year. (People are limited to five years in the band.)

Not making the band during my freshman year wasn’t a bad thing. I could adjust to college life and focus on my studies without the distraction and time commitment required to be in the marching band. And it led me to better appreciate the years I did play in the band because I knew what it was like to not make the band.

Making the Ohio State University Marching Band is still one of the greatest achievements in my life. It was a wonderful experience. There are no words to describe a football Saturday in Ohio Stadium. The excitement and electricity of 90,000 cheering fans is incredible. Performing on such a stage, even as only one uniformed, anonymous person among 192, is mindblowing. During my years, we went to the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Gator Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the Liberty Bowl. We marched in the Rose Parade. We played at a Cincinnati Reds World Series game (1976) and a Cleveland Browns football game.

But beyond the prestigious performances, the band instilled in me an ethic of hard work and teamwork like no other experience I’ve ever had. The camaraderie and the bonds we formed were wonderful. The parties and the bus rides were so much fun (and, at times, raunchy).

At the time, I believed I would spend the rest of my life living and working in Columbus, Ohio. I’d play in the Alumni Band, which rehearses year-round and performs in parades and summer concerts around Ohio. I’d attend each year’s alumni reunion, in which the alumni perform part of the pregame and halftime shows during the first home game each year. I knew it would never be the same as my experience in OSUMB, but it would be enjoyable and keep the memories close.

But alas, the next job I found was in Dayton, Ohio. Two years later, I moved to the Washington, DC area. The TBDBITL Alumni Band would not be a regular part of my life.

That was just as well. I needed to move on. Some people spend too much energy basking in “the good old days.” In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t become one of them.

Once in a while, I ponder how my life might have been different had I remained in Columbus. It’s a good city and a nice place to live – aside from winter. But I needed to get out and see more of the country, broaden my horizons, and move on to other things. I needed space to grow into myself.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but moving to the DC area was one of the best decisions I have made.

I first realized I was somehow different from the other kids in third grade. We had recently moved to Xenia, Ohio. I had trouble making friends at school, so I felt like a loner and longed for companionship.

There were three boys in my class that I got along with reasonably well. They were kind and friendly toward me but more like good acquaintances than friends. Two of them were each other’s best friends. I wanted to be best friends with either or both of them or simply to have a best friend.

As I lay in bed before falling asleep, I often fantasized about one of them visiting me for a sleepover. We had two twin beds in my bedroom, but they’d be lying in bed with me. We’d kiss and snuggle with each other. My mother hadn’t had the “where babies come from” conversation with me yet. I hadn’t discovered masturbation. I was clueless about sexual feelings or interactions of any sort. Yet, I fantasized about us putting our little third-grade penises inside each other. I had no idea what an orgasm was at that point. It was more of a bonding experience than a sexual one. Since neither homosexuality nor sex of any kind had ever been mentioned to me, I can only conclude that these feelings occurred to me naturally.

There were a couple of times I had a friend over and I suggested that we kiss. They weren’t interested. I quickly learned not to do that anymore.

In high school, I had unrequited crushes on various guys in the band, my classes, or my scout troop. I knew I could never say or do anything. I dated girls because I was supposed to. I secretly hoped I could develop the “right” feelings for the right girl and these other desires would disappear. They never did. I went all the way with two girls I dated. They were pleasurable experiences and both of them were wonderful women. Had I been straight, I could have happily married either of them. But I knew I was only playing a role society expected me to play.

During my sophomore year at Ohio State, I suspected that my roommate might be gay. One day, I discovered a paperback he was reading when he left it out – accidentally, I assume. It was The Frontrunner, by Patricia Nell Warren. It was released in 1974 and, to the best of my knowledge, was the first gay-themed novel to achieve mainstream success. It was the first time gay people saw themselves represented openly and favorably in a book.

I secretly read the book whenever he wasn’t in the room. It fascinated me. I saw characters I could relate to. I mentioned the book to my roommate, hoping to initiate a conversation that would lead us to discover that we had common interests. He mumbled something like, “I found it interesting,” but that was all. We fooled around a couple of times, only going as far as oral sex. But afterward, he felt so guilty about what he had done that he joined a bible study group and immersed himself in religion. We barely spoke for the rest of the year. I didn’t feel bad about what I had done. I enjoyed it. But I felt bad that it caused my roommate such distress and ruined our friendship. He later married a woman.

I still wasn’t ready to admit to myself that I was gay. I still hoped I might meet the right girl.

In 1977, The Joy of Gay Sex was published. One day during my junior year, I discovered it in a bookstore across the street from the campus, in their small Gay & Lesbian Studies section. I had seen the 1972 book, The Joy of Sex (in fact, I bought a copy), so I assumed this would be similar. It was. I visited the bookstore frequently during the mid-afternoon when there weren’t many other people in the store. I wandered the aisles, and if nobody was near I would pause in the Gay & Lesbian Studies section, take this book off the shelf, and thumb through the pages. If another person came anywhere near, I’d put the book back on the shelf and hurry away.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that book when I was home for the summer. One day I went to the mall on a weekday afternoon when it was practically deserted. I stopped in the Waldenbooks bookstore and bought the book. I hurried to my car, praying I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew who would surely ask what I had bought. I made it out to my car, undiscovered. For the next 15 minutes, I sat in the car and skimmed through the entire book, looking at every chapter title and illustration. I finally said to myself, “Self, this is what you want. This is who you are. Quit trying to fool yourself into thinking otherwise and accept it.”

Somehow, I got that book into the house without my parents seeing it.

It would be two years before I went all the way with a guy (at 23), and another two years before I told a straight friend that I was gay (at 25). I slowly began telling my other friends. Most of them were supportive. Three of my friends seemed supportive at first but distanced themselves later. Oh well.

In January 1980, I began my professional working career. I started as an accountant with Columbus & Southern Ohio Electric Company in downtown Columbus. It was a good way to ease into the work world. In comparison with later jobs, it wasn’t difficult or high-pressure. Although I realized in college that I was much better suited to be a software engineer than an accountant, I still accepted my first job as an accountant. It was the best of the three offers I received. I soon realized I needed to steer my career in the other direction. I worked there for a year and eight months. Then I quit and returned to Ohio State, hoping to pursue a Masters degree in Computer Science. I attended one more quarter at OSU in the fall of 1981, which included joining the OSU Marching Band for my fifth and final year.

During the fall of 1981, I accomplished another feat I’m proud of: I ran a marathon.

During my junior year of college, two friends on my dorm floor and I challenged each other to get up early every morning and go running. We started on the first day of spring quarter. It was slow going at first. I had never been much into running before that, so during the first few weeks we alternated between running and walking. But soon, we could run the entire route each morning without walking breaks. We gradually increased the distances we ran.

Sometimes my running partners would take the day off, but I was determined to run every day without fail. For the next three years, I ran every day from the first day of spring quarter to approximately Thanksgiving. The third year, I ran 251 consecutive days.

My running habit continued during my first job. I negotiated with my boss to come in a half-hour early and take a 90-minute lunch so I could run during lunch time. I increased my distances. Sometimes I’d run six or eight miles a day, with extra-long runs on weekends.

My goals for the Columbus Day Marathon were to (1) complete it, and (2) complete it in less than 3½ hours. I completed it in 3:28:57.

I didn’t do well in my classes during that quarter. Maybe I was too occupied with marching band and training for the marathon. Alas, my grades weren’t sufficient to be accepted into grad school, so I was back on the job market.

I enjoyed living and working in Columbus. During college and my first job, I assumed I’d remain there for the rest of my life. But the US was in a recession in 1982 and the job market was not good. Finally, in June, when I was literally down to my last dollar, I received a job offer from NCR Corporation in Dayton, Ohio. I moved to Dayton but still returned to Columbus frequently.

So much happened during the 80s. In 1984, I moved to Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington DC. I thrived in DC’s gay community. I’ll write more about this in subsequent chapters, but it was a pivotal time of growth for me. I grew into greater self-acceptance. I became a homeowner. I met my first long-term partner, David, in 1987. I worked for four different employers.

The 80s was a decade of more great music. The contemporary jazz genre expanded and advanced with artists such as Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour, Diane Schuur, Dave Valentin, David Benoit, Dianne Reeves, the Chick Corea Elektric Band, and many others. I was introduced to Brazilian music during the 80s, and it remains one of my favorite genres to this day.

My connection to Los Angeles grew during this decade. On January 1, 1980, I marched in the Rose Parade and performed at the Rose Bowl game with the OSU Marching Band. I traveled to LA four times in 1984 and several times thereafter.

In November 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidential election. I was solidly Republican up to that point, but I recall not liking Reagan. In that election, Illinois representative John B. Anderson made a strong showing as a third-party candidate. He won support among Democrats disillusioned with Jimmy Carter, liberal Republicans, independents, liberal intellectuals, and college students, including me. I planned to vote for him but at the last minute, I switched my vote to Reagan. I felt I would be throwing my vote away on a candidate with no real chance of winning. Anderson received 6.6% of the vote.

My distrust of Reagan proved to be correct. He and his administration completely ignored the AIDS crisis until the last year of his presidency. He sought to shrink the federal government (he didn’t), exploded military spending, and shifted the US’s economic policy to “supply-side economics” or “trickle-down economics.” This included tax cuts which benefitted the wealthy. The theory was that they would create more jobs, but the only thing it accomplished was a ballooning deficit and the start of a massive transfer of wealth to the upper class. That would continue for 40 years until the Biden administration.

When 1984 arrived, thankfully, the world didn’t resemble the dystopia George Orwell described in his book of the same name. Big Brother was not watching us – yet. The government was not manipulating facts and altering reality to suit its narrative – yet.

As it turns out, George was off by 40 years. Now we have Trumpworld, where truths are lies and lies are truths, reality is distorted, and everything can be altered or fabricated to suit Trump’s narrative. Artificial Intelligence is making it difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. Between tech companies and the government, privacy is nearly impossible. Big Brother is watching – and listening. And his/her name is Alexa.

But enough of that. 1984 was a year of pivotal change for me.

Beginning in mid-1982, I worked for NCR Corporation in Dayton, Ohio. I was reluctant to move away from Columbus, but employment necessitated it. Dayton was ... okay. There wasn’t much to do and I didn’t make many friends. Work was okay, but soon I was itching to move on. One day at work, they showed a video of an event that celebrated and rewarded NCR’s top salespeople. It took place at a lavish resort and everyone was dancing and partying. And, as I learned, they made a lot of money in commissions. I decided I wanted to move into sales.

I applied for a few positions and went on two interviews – one in Pittsburgh and one in Baton Rouge. At that time, I didn’t care where I ended up. I was willing to go wherever the job was. I didn’t get an offer either time. I’m sure the interviewers quickly figured out that I didn’t have the aptitude, experience, or personality to become a successful salesman. And they were right.

Someone suggested that I should look for a job as a sales support rep. That would utilize my software engineering skills and put me out in the field working alongside salespeople, so I would learn more about dealing with customers and how sales really worked. So I found a job at NCR’s office in Rockville, Maryland, and moved there in April 1984. Again, I wasn’t picky about where I went. But as it turned out, moving to the Washington, DC area was the best thing that could have happened.

Twice during the first half of 1984, I traveled to an NCR training center in Los Angeles for a class. A buddy from the Ohio State University Marching Band lived in LA, so I contacted his parents and got his phone number.

The training center was located amid a cluster of high-tech companies on the Pacific Coast Highway south of the Los Angeles airport (LAX). After the first day of class, several classmates and I ate dinner at an oceanside restaurant in one of the nearby beach communities. After we ordered but before the food arrived, I went to the pay phone in the lobby and called my friend. As it turned out, he lived in an apartment half a block up the road from the restaurant and worked in the building next to the training center. We met for lunch one day. Considering the size of the Los Angeles metro area, that was one of the most amazing “small world” coincidences I’ve experienced.

In 1984, gay people had no legal protections and societal acceptance was nothing like it is today. Discretion was strongly advised. Being out at work would have seriously limited my career – if I wasn’t fired, which was completely legal at the time. So I remained closeted. Part of that was due to my internalized homophobia. I wasn’t ready to be out yet.

Moving from Montgomery County, Ohio to Montgomery County, Maryland was life-changing. Washington, DC had a thriving gay community including an LGBT band called DC’s Different Drummers. Rockville had a tiny Metropolitan Community Church congregation (an LGBT denomination), which I joined. A friend in the band formed a lesbian and gay chorus, and I joined. I quickly made friends and soon I had a full calendar. And for the first time, I felt good about being gay.

On Sunday, June 3, DC’s Different Drummers marched in Baltimore’s pride parade. There was almost no one along the parade route. But simply marching in a gay band down city streets was a bold step for me. The parade ended at the festival, which was nothing more than a block party. One block of a downtown street was closed to traffic and several booths and food vendors were set up. A DJ played dance music and I danced with several of my bandmates. There couldn’t have been more than one or two hundred people there. But just being at a city-approved gathering of gay people and dancing with my friends out in the open was something new for me.

The next Sunday was DC’s pride parade and festival. This time, there were people along the streets of the parade. The festival was held at a large grassy field behind a school in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. There were a few dozen booths and a couple thousand people. The band attempted to put on a halftime-like performance on the basketball court. It was lame, especially compared to the Ohio State University Marching Band I had been in only three years earlier, but I didn’t care. I was thrilled to be playing in a gay band.

The next weekend, we traveled to New York City. Even in 1984, their gay pride parade was huge. We started in Central Park and marched south on Fifth Avenue over 50 blocks to Greenwich Village. Cheering crowds lined the streets most of the distance. I couldn’t believe it! I knew New York was huge, but it totally blew my mind that so many people would come out for a gay pride parade. When we turned onto Christopher Street and entered Greenwich Village, I felt overwhelmed by the huge throng of people.

While I was growing up in Xenia and Springfield with my deep, dark, closely guarded secret, gay people were invisible. The subject was rarely discussed, and then only in the most negative way. Like millions of other gay children, I grew up wondering if I was the only one. Even as my closet door creaked open and I ventured outside, I still believed I was part of a tiny minority. But on that day in New York City, I realized I was part of a large worldwide community of nice, happy, worthy, fabulous people who were living the best lives they could. I had arrived.

As if the New York City pride parade and festival weren’t mind-blowing and self-affirming enough, there was no way I could have prepared for what happened the next weekend.

During the last weekend of June, all eight LGBT bands in the country traveled to Los Angeles to participate in their pride parade and celebrate the 15^th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot. But that wasn’t the highlight of the trip. The combined bands performed a concert on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl! I still have a video of that concert and the concert program.

At the end of the 1979 football season, Ohio State earned a trip to the Rose Bowl. The band spent five days in LA rehearsing and sightseeing. One day, our buses stopped at the Hollywood Bowl. We spent a few minutes looking at it and marveling at the magnificence of it all. Then we got back on the buses and moved on. I could never have imagined that four and a half years later, I would be performing on that stage in a gay band!

That was my third trip to LA in 1984. But since I was not out to my parents or siblings, nobody in my family knew about that trip. It saddened me to think that I performed at the Hollywood Bowl and my parents never knew. I came out to them four years later, but I don’t recall if I ever told them about this.

After a few months with my new job at NCR, they wanted me to move to their office in Richmond, Virginia. I was already spending several days a week there supporting one of their clients, so I became familiar with the city. I had no desire whatsoever to move there. It seemed like Dayton, Ohio, only southern. After discovering all that Washington, DC had to offer me as a gay person, and after immersing myself in several groups and making dozens of friends, there was no way I was going to leave. So I resigned from NCR and found a job with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

In the fall of 1984, I was sent – you guessed it – to Los Angeles for a two-week training class along with about a dozen recent hires. We stayed at the Hacienda Hotel, close to the NCR training center. The CSC building was a few blocks away.

I had been to LA twice before 1984. The first time was in the summer of 1971. My parents and I took a six-week cross-country trip in their travel trailer. We visited my brother John and met his wife Juanita whom he had married a year or two earlier, and their young son Bobby, who was 2 years old at the time (her son from a previous marriage). The second time was when the Ohio State University Marching Band went to the Rose Bowl during the last days of 1979. I have many happy memories of LA, and there would be more to come.

So 1984 was an enjoyable, memorable, and pivotal year for me. Moving from Ohio to the DC area broadened my horizons on many levels. I grew personally and professionally. I started living more openly and grew in my self-acceptance. I enjoyed some pretty amazing experiences.

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Although this chapter is about 1984, I would like to include an important event that happened in 1986. In August, DC’s Different Drummers traveled to San Francisco to play in the opening and closing ceremonies of Gay Games II. Gay Games was founded by Dr. Tom Waddell, who had competed in the Olympics as a decathlete. The first Gay Games was held in 1982. Dr. Waddell had initially called these events the Gay Olympics, but the International Olympic Committee successfully sued to prevent them from using Olympics in their name – the only time this has ever happened.

Gay Games II was small compared to Gay Games that would occur in future years. Still, we had a feeling this movement would continue for many years (and it has), and it was exciting to be a part of it in the early days.

While I was there, I felt inspired to get back into running and return to Gay Games III to compete in the marathon. I didn’t, but I did return to the Gay Games much later.

I can’t look back at my life without addressing the huge impact of the AIDS epidemic.

In sociological terms, it was a huge setback for the gay community. During the late 70s and early 80s, disco music brought legions of gay men out of the closet and into the dance clubs. Gay men flocked to vacation hotspots such as Provincetown, Fire Island, Rehoboth Beach, Key West, and Russian River. Gayborhoods in larger cities grew and became more visible. Social clubs, sports teams, bands and choruses, advocacy groups, and LGBT-affirming churches all grew. Even though we still had no rights at all, acceptance of gay people was slowly growing and it felt a little safer to live openly.

AIDS tossed a giant wet blanket over everything. I recall a cover of Advocate magazine that showed the messy aftermath of a festive party and a sad-faced man. The headline asked, ‘Is the Party Over?’ In many ways, it was.

The Reagan administration completely ignored AIDS for years. While they would never say it out loud in as many words, they were happy to see gay people dying off. The tabloids had a field day with it, spreading rumors and stoking fears. Preachers had new justification for preaching against the evils of homosexuality. Politicians had new justification for passing anti-gay laws. We became campaign fodder.

Of course, the worst impact was the thousands of dying people. My first serious boyfriend, Phil, whom I dated for over a year in 1985 and 1986 contracted HIV and died. Thankfully, we had safe sex consistently, or I’d be long gone, too. He didn’t realize he had HIV until after we broke up, but we assumed either of us could have it the entire time we were dating.

I knew another young man named Jeff, whom I met at MCC Rockville. He was handsome, kind, smart, and virtuous. I was strongly attracted to him. We became friends and hung out occasionally. He knew I was interested in him. I think he had some interest in me, but he kept me at arm’s length. He moved back to North Carolina, where he was from, and died a couple of years later. I later realized he knew he had it and wanted to spare me.

During one year in DC’s Different Drummers, we learned that one of our members had AIDS once per month on average. So many died.

On October 11, 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It covered a space larger than a football field and consisted of 1,920 3’ by 6’ handmade panels, each memorializing a person who had died of AIDS.  I will never forget the emotional impact it had on me. I cried. Sadly, the quilt grew much larger during the coming years. In October 1992, the entire Quilt returned to the National Mall. It was over ten times its original size with over 21,000 panels, including panels for Phil and Jeff.

As terrible as the AIDS crisis was, it unified the LGBT community. It caused us to behave more responsibly. It prompted many people to become politically active. Those were silver linings to a very dark cloud.

HIV/AIDS hasn’t gone away. There is still no cure or vaccine. I marvel at how quickly medical scientists came up with a vaccine for COVID, and I can only wonder how much more quickly they might have discovered a vaccine for HIV if only there were the political will.

Thankfully, we have drugs that allow most people with HIV to live long, mostly normal lives. We now have PrEP, which has proven effective at preventing infection. So AIDS has receded from our awareness to a large extent. But it’s still here, and the memories of all the people we lost will never go away.

David Jobe was the first of my two long-term relationships. We were together for 12 years and 4 months.

It was the happiest, most harmonious relationship I could ever have asked for – or so it seemed until the last six months. But I’ll get to that later.

In 1986, I belonged to Metropolitan Community Church in Rockville. Another member, Paul, didn’t have transportation so I often gave him rides to and from church.

For weeks, he talked about this wonderful guy he was seeing named David. When I hosted a Halloween party for my church friends, Paul brought David. Paul was decked out in a Merlin costume. David wore a baseball cap with duck eyes on the front and a visor that looked like a duck bill. That sufficed for his costume. Years later, he told me he wasn’t keen on attending the party.

Other than the duck hat, I don’t have any memories of David from that evening. He didn’t say much. I only remember that I was finally getting to meet this guy Paul spoke about so enthusiastically.

Sometime later, David broke up with Paul.

I was interested in another guy at MCC Rockville named Mike. We got together for dinner once or twice and enjoyed talking with each other, but he wasn’t interested in dating. During our conversation, I learned that he and David had dated for three years.

One of my friends invited me to join a social group he belonged to called Gay & Lesbian Christian Fellowship (GLCF). David hosted a party at his home in Falls Church in March 1987, and I went. By the end of the evening, I felt some interest in him. We went out to dinner the next Friday, April 3. We continued to get together for dinner, a movie, or whatever. Soon it became apparent that we were interested in each other. It’s difficult to remember when we realized we were in a relationship, but we chose April 3 as the start of our relationship, since that was our first date.

In July, I moved in with him. The following year, 1988, we bought a house together in Annandale. We lived there until we sold it in 1995 to move to Arizona.

We got along extremely well. We never fought about anything. We seemed to agree on everything, from where to go out to eat to where to go on vacation to moving to Arizona.

I was one of the founding members of the Lesbian & Gay Chorus of Washington in 1984, but I left in 1986. I rejoined the group in 1987 along with David, who loved to sing. We loved Disney and traveled to Disney World several times. We enjoyed theatre and purchased season tickets to Arena Stage in Washington for many years, along with our close friends Vance and Denny, until we moved.

David was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the middle child, with an older brother and younger sister. His parents and siblings were devout Southern Baptists. Each year at Christmas, we drove to see both sets of parents. We alternated which family would see us on Christmas Day. Some years we drove to Springfield, Ohio first, then to Memphis, Tennessee, then back home. In other years, we reversed the route.

David’s family treated me well. His mother made a stocking for me and I was included in gift exchanges. David had not come out to his family. But considering that we bought a house together and he brought me with him for Christmas every year, it should have been obvious he was gay and we were a couple. But as long as those words were never spoken and those facts were never disclosed, we all got along well. It was the ultimate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Once in a while, I was reminded that I wasn’t as much a part of the family as David’s siblings’ spouses. For example, when everyone gathered for a family photo, they handed the camera to me to take the picture.

When, how, and even if I should tell my parents weighed heavily on my mind for years. Between 1982 and 1984, I lived and worked in Dayton, which is not far from Springfield. I made a few gay friends, but I was able to keep my social life (such as it was) hidden from my parents.

Moving to Maryland in April 1984 was one of the best things I could have done for my development as a gay person. Washington, DC had gay organizations of all sorts, including a gay band. I immersed myself in the gay community and made a lot of friends. It was far enough away from Ohio that I didn’t need to worry about my parents finding out. Of course, I had to be vague about the specific nature of the groups I was in. For example, I told my parents I was in a band, but didn’t mention that it was a gay band.

Still, I knew that sooner or later I should tell them. I read books on how to come out to parents and talked to my friends about their experiences. Every time I traveled to Ohio to visit my parents I convinced myself I would tell them. Every time, I chickened out. I kept waiting for “the right time,” but there was never a right time.

I began my relationship with David in 1987 and moved in with him several months later. When I reported the change of address to my parents, I said I was moving in with a friend to be closer to work. I even brought David home with me for Christmas that year. The next year, he and I bought a house together. Naturally, they wanted to visit and see the new house.

I knew I couldn’t wait any longer to tell them. David and I slept in the same bed. I was not about to “straighten up the house” and make it look like we slept in separate bedrooms. I also didn’t want to wait until they arrived to tell them. I wanted them to know in advance so they’d have time to digest the information or even cancel the trip if they were angry or upset about it. So, two weeks before their visit, I wrote them a letter.

You’re probably thinking a phone call would have been a better choice. But in my parents’ case, it wasn’t. Mom much preferred letters over phone calls. For her, a phone call existed only at that moment, while a letter could be kept and re-read. Plus, with a letter I could be sure I said everything exactly the way I wanted to say it.

They didn’t cancel the trip, so I knew it wouldn’t be too bad. They brought up the subject after they arrived and we discussed it briefly. As it turned out, they weren’t surprised. For years, Mom would ask, “Have you met any nice girls?” with a hopeful inflection in her voice. Or there was the more annoying, “When are we going to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet in your house?” But when I reached 30 with no girlfriends to show for it, she stopped asking.

Mom went through the “where did we go wrong” phase for the next two weeks, but then she got over it. Everything was okay from then on.

In hindsight, I’m sorry I waited so long. But it happened when it happened, and that was okay.

The 90s began tumultuously when Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. After five and a half months of military buildup and attempts at a diplomatic solution by the United Nations, the US and a coalition of many other countries invaded Iraq on January 17, 1991. The nation and the world became quickly consumed by coverage of the war. It was televised around the clock in vivid, shocking detail by CNN. This was the first time people could see the horrors of war from the comfort of their homes. Six weeks later, Kuwait was liberated and Iraq was crushed.

Until 1992, I was a Republican. My parents were Republicans, and like so many other things (religion, prejudices, values), I assumed I should be a Republican. That changed during the 1992 presidential campaign. At one point during Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he promised to be a president for all people. He said everyone was welcome in the Democratic party, and he included “straight or gay” in his list of diverse constituencies. That seems like nothing today, but in 1992 it was the first time a presidential candidate said “gay.” Until then, gay people were pariahs in politics. Nobody wanted to appear pro-gay; they would lose far more support than they gained. There were very few openly gay politicians. But finally, a candidate said “gay” and indicated that we were welcome in the party.

At that time, LGBT people had no legal protections whatsoever. We spent the latter half of the 80s fighting for government funding for AIDS research. Repealing the ban on LGBT people serving in the military became an issue. Same-sex marriage still seemed like an impossible dream. I realized that the prospect of having equal rights as a gay person stood a much better chance with the Democratic party than with the Republicans. I switched, and I’ve never looked back.

I have less memory of musical influences during this decade. I continued to listen to contemporary jazz and discover Brazilian music. The 90s brought rapid growth for CD sales, so record labels re-released many recordings on CD, sometimes in elaborate box sets. They focused more on reissuing music from their vaults than investing in new talent.

In 1990, a local news article announced that a new public-access TV show, “Gay Fairfax,” was launching in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I lived.

Since cable TV is mostly a thing of the past, I should explain public access. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) required each cable company to provide one channel for citizens to submit original TV programming.

The cable company in Fairfax County provided a well-equipped studio and training programs on how to use the equipment, edit segments, etc. They even had a van that people could borrow to videotape events in the community.

Predictably, the announcement about Gay Fairfax sparked an outcry from the anti-gay conservatives in Fairfax County before the first episode even aired. I recall an interview with a clueless woman who self-righteously claimed, “Fairfax is not gay!” I thought, “Sorry to break it to you lady, but 10% of it is!”

Perhaps they feared we would be demonstrating sex acts live on TV. (To them, what is homosexuality about other than gay sex?) Surely, our intent must be to recruit children into our evil, degenerate lifestyle. In any case, they felt such content would be unsuitable for family viewing.

I doubt they even watched the first episode. If they had, they would have seen that their outcry was pointless. The first episode was painfully amateurish and, frankly, not very interesting. But the all-volunteer crew, most of whom were working in television for the first time, honed their skills quickly. The producers and editors polished the show. After a few episodes, they produced shows they and the community could be proud of. David and I watched each episode.

In June 1990, David and I attended Washington’s gay pride festival, as we always did. The Gay Fairfax crew was there with the cable company’s van and cameras, videotaping the entire event. At one point, they interviewed festival-goers and asked them a single question, “Why are you proud to be gay?” I stopped long enough to answer their question. I was on camera for about ten seconds.

That ten seconds became a screen test, even if they weren’t thinking of that then. Up to that point, Gay Fairfax aired once a month. They wanted to start producing episodes once a week, so they decided to expand and create two crews. Each crew would produce two episodes a month. They needed two more co-hosts. After hearing my “radio voice” and seeing my camera presence, they asked if I would be one of their on-air co-hosts. I said yes.

I first appeared on Episode 11 in February 1991. I remained with the program for a little over a year. During that time, I interviewed numerous guests, both in the studio and on location. I learned most other aspects of television production. I edited segments and occasionally operated a camera. I produced field segments on my own or with one other person. And at the next year’s gay pride festival, I took a brief turn as director. I sat in the van and called the shots for the three camera operators who were recording the performances on stage. It was loads of fun. I felt as if I was contributing something to the LGBT community. And I learned a lot about TV production and being on camera.

My favorite interviewees were Romanovsky and Phillips, a gay singing duo at the height of their popularity. I owned all of their recordings. They were openly and proudly gay at a time when that was brave and often career-limiting. Their songs ranged from humorous to poignant, but they all spoke to the gay experience. Aside from being talented and entertaining, their music and their very existence were empowering.

I also interviewed the members of the Flirtations, a gay a cappella group that was popular in the early 90s.

In most markets, the public access channel was buried near the end of the range of channels, in the 80s or 90s. But in Fairfax County, it was Channel 10 – right in the middle of all the major network channels. Viewers passed the public access channel every time they changed channels, so our show got noticed. One day at work (where I wasn’t out), a co-worker brought his son to the office. I heard the son tell his father, “Daddy! I saw that man on TV!”

One day I ate lunch at a Taco Bell near the office, and the young woman who took my order recognized me.

But the most touching moment came one day at home, not long after one of our episodes aired. The phone rang and since we didn’t have Caller ID yet, I answered the call. The timid voice of a boy who I guessed to be around 10 or 12 asked, “Is this the Dave Hughes that’s on TV?” After I said it was, he said something to the effect of, “Thanks for doing your show.” I said, “You’re welcome,” and that was that. It was rewarding to know that some kid who knew he was different learned that there were other people in the world like him.

The last words the co-hosts spoke at the end of each episode were, “And remember to keep the pride alive!” And we did.

In 1991, at age 34, I felt frustrated and unfulfilled in the corporate world, especially as it existed for government contractors in the Washington, DC area. I had worked for Infodata for about 3½ years. Overall, it was a good experience. It was the best job I had up to that point. But the company’s fortunes were sinking and I could see layoffs coming, so I found a job as a training course developer at McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Corporation. They were subcontractors to Boeing, which was a contractor to NASA.

During that period, I thought about starting my own business so I could leave the corporate rat race one day. I searched for something I could develop on the side until it earned enough money for David and me to leave our jobs.

I decided to start a jazz CD and video mail-order business called Shipped Discs.

After viewing catalogs from similar mail-order businesses, I was convinced I could do better. I could offer lower prices, a better selection, a better catalog, etc.

In 1991, the internet was not yet part of most people’s lives. A few dial-up networks provided access to message boards, but only tech-savvy early adopters were doing that. Few people owned personal computers, which were expensive even by today’s standards. AOL (America Online), launched in 1991, drew many new users to the internet, mostly for email, games, and chatrooms. Websites were simple and basic, nothing like what we take for granted today.

 So Shipped Discs operated under the old-fashioned, pre-internet model of mailing catalogs and receiving orders by mail or fax.

We began this enterprise with total naivete. We had no connections in the music distribution industry and no idea what we were doing. But that didn’t stop us.

In early 1991, Jazz Times magazine published a list of every record label that sold jazz – ranging from major labels like Columbia, Capitol, and Warner Bros, to tiny labels run by musicians to release their CDs. I wrote to every one of them, large or small. I told them we were starting a jazz CD mail-order business and asked how to carry their products.

Most of them responded. Some sent samples – sometimes of their entire catalog. I learned that most labels sold their CDs through wholesale distributors and we should order products from them. Some distributors specialized in the major labels, some in larger independents, and some in small and artist-run labels. Before long, we had opened accounts with twelve distributors around the country.

Initially, we had to pay for our orders in cash on delivery since we were two new guys with no prior business experience. But soon we were able to buy from all our distributors on account.

Our biggest hurdle was accepting credit cards. Today, anyone can accept credit card payments using services such as PayPal and Square. But in 1991, no banks or financial services institutions would offer credit card processing services to two neophytes running a start-up business out of their basement. It soon became clear that accepting only checks as payment would throttle our business. We finally found a company willing to open an account with us – but only if we bought the credit card processing terminal from them for around $2,000. This was a greatly inflated price for a device that cost a couple hundred dollars elsewhere. But as the rep explained, that was how they were willing to take on high-risk customers. Their transaction processing fees were in line with everyone else’s, it was only this large up-front payment that was excessive. We felt we had no choice. We paid the price. We felt like we had gone to a loan shark. But once we started accepting credit cards, our business grew quickly.

This business consumed most of our waking hours outside of our jobs. David and I did everything. David set up a database to store product information, customer information, and orders. He created screens to enter products and orders and wrote the program that generated the orders we sent to our distributors each week.

We developed a weekly routine. For some reason, we received most of our orders in the mail on Monday. On Monday night, we entered the orders into our trusty Amiga PC. Then we ran the program that generated the distributor orders and faxed them to the distributors.

We received shipments from the distributors on Thursday and Friday. We logged all the inventory we received into our database. Then on Friday evening we launched the program that applied the received inventory to the open orders and generated the packing slips. It often took an hour to run. While it ran, we went out to eat – often to Chi Chi’s.

After we returned from dinner, we spent the rest of the evening packing orders. On Saturday, we delivered them to the post office in white cardboard rectangular tubs. We had a Pitney-Bowes machine to generate the postage.

We mailed catalogs quarterly. That involved deciding which products we would offer that quarter and formatting the catalog using desktop publishing software. (This was before Word.) We sent the catalog to a local printer. A few days later, a truck delivered two shrink-wrapped pallets with several thousand catalogs to our home. We affixed a mailing label to each catalog and bundled them by zip code to qualify for bulk mail rates. We filled several of those large, heavy gray mail bags.

We became professional post office users.

I forget how many names and addresses we had at the height of our business, but it was several thousand.

In 1994, we achieved almost $300,000 in sales. While that may sound like a lot of money, we netted a profit of only $19,000. In 1994, that was a nice chunk of extra change for a side business. But it was only a 6% profit margin, which was pretty tiny. $19,000 was nowhere near enough for two guys who each earned $45,000 annually to quit their jobs, let alone hire anyone else to help run the business. We were at a loss for how to scale the business up to at least five times its current size. We had no idea how we could reach that many more customers or how we would find enough hours in the day.

In June 1995, we closed the business.

I’m glad we did it, and I’m glad we stopped doing it. It was a tremendous learning experience. For four years, we were part of the music industry. It was fun to get advance notice of new releases and be able to purchase them wholesale.

An interesting side note: There is (or was) an academy that presented annual music awards for independent labels. I think it was called the Indie Awards, but I’m not sure. It was like the Grammy Awards, but limited to labels not affiliated with any of the six major label groups. David and I applied and were selected to be judges in several categories. We received CDs of all the nominees and rated them. So we helped determine who received Indie Awards.

Not long after we closed the business, the internet took off. Online stores began emerging, more people got email addresses, and people became more comfortable with online commerce. I sometimes wonder if we could have reached a larger audience and become more profitable if we had stayed in business and adapted to this new model. We could have phased out paper catalogs, which would have saved time and cost. The ordering process would have been much more robust. Who knows?

David and I weren’t that young – we were 38 – although that certainly seems young now, as I write this.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 11½ years I lived in the Washington, DC metro area. I made many wonderful friends, some of whom I’m still in touch with today. I belonged to some wonderful musical groups. It was an exciting place to live.

During those years, I had a bit of “the grass is always greener” syndrome. While the DC area was nice in many ways, it suffered from heavy traffic, high real estate, and winter weather.

Being from Ohio, I was used to winter. I lived with it for my entire life. But by my mid-30s, I was tired of it. It took only a few inches of snow to grind Washington traffic to a halt. Occasionally a blizzard would shut everything down for a couple of days. I yearned for someplace sunnier and warmer.

Plus, my career wasn’t going anywhere. I worked for five employers during those 11½ years, including two tenures at Infodata. In the world of government contracting, companies hired and laid off people frequently. There were always new jobs being advertised, so people changed jobs often. But each new employer meant learning the ropes and building work relationships anew. I was ready for more stability.

I heard people speak glowingly about San Diego for most of my adult life. In 1982, a colleague at NCR claimed it was the nicest place he had ever been – beautiful, with perfect weather. As I thought about where I’d like to live next, San Diego sat at the top of the list.

In 1990, I had my chance to visit. My employer, Infodata, sponsored an annual user’s conference and that year they held it in San Diego. I submitted a proposal for a training workshop which was accepted. So finally, I got to travel to San Diego. The conference took place at a high-end business hotel on the harbor, surrounded by marinas and sailboats and beautiful views of downtown and Coronado. I was enthralled! At the end of the week, David flew out and we spent another week in San Diego on vacation. We visited the zoo, the wild animal park, Balboa Park, Old Town, and Hillcrest, the gay neighborhood. I loved San Diego. It was everything people said it would be.

It was also expensive and the job market wasn’t that good. I reluctantly crossed San Diego off my list.

Once I turned my attention elsewhere, Phoenix popped up. In the early 90s, Phoenix was experiencing a population and real estate boom. Phoenix was then America’s fastest-growing city. Numerous articles extolled its booming job market, sunny weather, and affordability.

So, in February 1993, David and I traveled to Phoenix for a week to explore this wondrous desert utopia.

In February, Phoenix weather is perfect, with sunny skies, low humidity, and temperatures in the 70s. We toured new homes in shiny new suburbs with prices less than half the cost of houses in Northern Virginia. We did a few touristy things too, but our main objective was to evaluate the area as a place to live.

I was sold. This was paradise! Everything resonated with me. I knew this was where I belonged. Plus, I could fulfill my lifelong dream of owning a house with a swimming pool!

David seemed to like it too, but he suggested we visit in the summer before we committed to moving there. That was good advice. So we visited for a week during August. Until the last few years when temperatures have risen due to Global Warming, the daily high in summer would usually be around 110, occasionally spiking to 115. But during one or two weeks each summer, the temperature reached 118 or 120. We came during one of those extreme heat weeks. It was, without question, hot as hell.

But I was undeterred. I still loved Phoenix and I needed to move there. A blizzard in March 1993 convinced me this was the right choice.

David worked for AT&T since graduating from college. For the next year, he kept his eyes open for job postings at AT&T’s office in Mesa, Arizona. He never found one. But in 1995, AT&T offered a lucrative voluntary separation package, and David took it. After nearly 16 years of service, he received a nice severance package. We put our house on the market and it sold in two weeks. So I quit my job and we moved. We jettisoned many possessions, but we still filled a 24’ U-Haul to the max. We left Annandale, Virginia on October 31, 1995, and arrived at our apartment in Tempe on November 5.

Many of our friends were astonished. Some probably thought we were crazy. We were moving across the country with no jobs lined up. We knew nobody. Several people said, “I would never do that.” But I figured we had enough money saved that we could survive for two years if we had to. Fortunately, we didn’t have to.

December 1995 was a surreal time in Tempe, Arizona. Tempe was about to host Super Bowl XXX in January at the Arizona State University football stadium. It was the first time the Super Bowl was held in Arizona, and the entire Phoenix area made the most of it. Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe was decked out in Christmas lights, from the Salt River bridge to Gammage Auditorium on the ASU campus. Every building was outlined with strings of white lights. Colorful lighted snowmen, reindeer, and presents adorned the medians and other common areas. It was beautiful to behold.

Since David and I had not yet found jobs, we had every day available to discover our new surroundings. Our only job was looking for a job. It was a blissful, carefree time.

In January, I found a job at Anozira (that’s Arizona spelled backward) Door Systems, a local family-owned garage door manufacturer. Since the Phoenix area was experiencing a new housing boom, they had plenty of business. I joined their five-person IT department. My colleagues were nice. I had never worked for a company that small before, and while there were always things to do, it was never stressful.

One day in late 1995 or early 1996, I attended a job fair at the convention center in downtown Phoenix. I dropped my resumé off at some booths and chatted with company representatives. After not getting any immediate responses, I assumed I’d never hear from any of them again.

I was wrong. In April, I received a phone call from someone at Intel Corporation inviting me to a day of interviews for a training position. I had five interviews that day, including someone taking me to lunch. I sent thank-you notes to everyone. For the next few weeks, nothing happened. I figured I didn’t get the job.

I was wrong. About five weeks later, I received a job offer. I took it. I felt bad about leaving Anozira Door Systems after only five months, but this was too good an opportunity to turn down.

These two pictures are from a vacation in the late 90s (probably 1997 or 1998) when my parents, my sisters and their spouses, my niece Kelly, and David and I gathered for a few days in Estes Park, Colorado.

I joined Intel on June 10, 1996, halfway through my career, at age 39.

During my first few years, Intel intimidated me. The heavy workload, multiple competing priorities, tight deadlines, and brutal rating-and-ranking performance review system were more intense than anything I had experienced at my previous employers. Many of my colleagues were highly intelligent people with advanced degrees and Type-A personalities. It was a high-pressure environment, and I felt inadequate. I’m surprised I made it through the first two years without being “performance managed” and possibly fired.

My fear of being discovered as gay only made things worse. I was timid, insecure, and withdrawn. There were plenty of gay people at Intel as I would learn over time, but very few were out.

At that stage in my career, I wanted a job doing software training, as I had done at Infodata Systems and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems. I was hired into a six-person training group in the Assembly Technology Development (ATD) group. I was disappointed to learn that my job involved no actual classroom instruction. I scheduled training for others, developed training curricula, and did some course development.

That changed a year later when our group was reorganized and three of us were merged into a group of statisticians. My two training colleagues and I developed a four-day immersive course called the ATD Methodology Workshop. This course was highly successful and I got to present it numerous times. We presented it both internally and to a few of Intel’s suppliers. Once, I traveled to Taiwan to present the course to a supplier. That was my first trip to Asia. I got to do some sightseeing on that trip too. It was memorable.

After two and a half years, I moved into the Automation group, where I worked for the remainder of my career. I was part of a team that managed a system called Workstream that tracked the progress of product lots through the factory, collected engineering data, and more. It was enjoyable and challenging work, and I worked with some great people.

Starting with this job and for the rest of my Intel career, I experienced the “joy” of being on call. (That was sarcasm.) One week out of every four, I had to wear a pager and respond to a call within a half hour at any time day, night, or weekend. At least I got paid extra. There were plenty of occasions when the pager went off in the middle of the night.

I was open about being gay at only two of my employers: Infodata Systems and Intel Corporation. Both companies included sexual orientation and gender identity in their non-discrimination policies. At Infodata, there were a few other openly gay employees and no one seemed to have any problem with it. Besides, there were so many other colorful and unique people there that the gay folks seemed pretty normal.

My tenure at Intel coincided with a national movement among major corporations to improve the diversity of their workforces. At Intel (and probably most other companies) most of the diversity initiatives were focused on women, African Americans, and Latinos. Intel implemented a variety of programs to improve parity in hiring, promotion, and pay as well as turnover rates. LGBTQ employees and several other minorities were included in these initiatives, although most of the focus was on the first three groups. As part of this diversity effort, these various constituencies formed employee resource groups. A few years before I joined Intel, some LGBT employees formed a group called Intel Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Employees (IGLOBE).

I joined IGLOBE on my first day of work. I attended their meetings and made several good friends. While I struggled to find my way at that large, fast-paced corporation, IGLOBE provided a support group of friends and confidantes with whom I felt comfortable and included. But I was still not out to my co-workers, and the fear of them finding out nearly paralyzed me. I avoided socializing with them for fear of revealing too much personal information.

After working at Intel for about a year, our department was reorganized and I was moved into a new group. My new manager, Walt, was a smart, kind, empathetic, and likable man. During the new team's first staff meeting, Walt asked everyone (about six of us) to introduce ourselves. All of my married teammates mentioned their spouses as part of their introduction. I had been in a relationship with David for over ten years but said nothing about him. I felt like a coward afterward.

Later that year, I took David to my department’s holiday party. It took place in a hotel ballroom, with people seated at round tables with ten chairs. When we arrived, most of the other people in my group were already sitting around a table. Every chair was filled, and I didn’t see any available seats at tables with anyone else I knew. So David and I took the first two seats at a vacant table. Only one other couple joined us – a mixed-race couple who sat opposite from us, not next to us. It was a lonely, awkward evening. Obviously, we didn’t dance.

During the next year, David’s father passed away. I asked Walt for three days off for bereavement leave, which Intel’s policy permitted for parents-in-law. That meant I had to tell Walt I was gay and it was my partner’s father who passed away. He was completely supportive. Since David and I couldn’t get married, his father wasn’t legally my father-in-law. But Walt had no problem with me taking leave.

During that year, we had another organizational shuffle and a few new people joined our team. At our first staff meeting, Walt again asked everyone to introduce themselves. This time, I mentioned that I had a partner named David. Nobody shrieked and bolted from the room or even batted an eye.

During that timeframe, Intel started having diversity fairs. Each employee group was invited to staff an information table at the event. Even though I was still mostly closeted at work, I volunteered to staff IGLOBE’s table. When the day came, I was scared to death. But I did it. As it turned out, most people didn’t even approach the IGLOBE table. One person I knew came to the table and said hi. We chatted for a few minutes about something completely unrelated. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that I was staffing a table for a gay group.

That year, I again brought David with me to the holiday party. This time, we sat with several other people I knew – not people in my group, but people I was familiar with at work. They had no issue sitting with a male couple and included us in their conversations. We felt much more welcome and accepted.

I finally busted open the closet door during a Dale Carnegie class. Dale Carnegie was the author of a perennial bestselling book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. This 10-week course enabled people to develop leadership skills, enhance communication skills, build confidence, strengthen interpersonal skills, and boost personal empowerment. At the time, Intel sponsored on-site Dale Carnegie courses. Managers were encouraged to send their employees whom they felt would benefit, which certainly included me.

The course was transformative for me and many others in the class. Many people experienced breakthroughs. At times, the sessions resembled group therapy as people shared personal information about themselves during the 3-minute speeches we gave to the class.

During my speech at the final session, I came out. Everyone gave me a rousing ovation. One of my classmates was a likable but coarse Navy veteran. He was the only person in the room I thought might not react well to my coming out. After class, he told me his best friend, whom he had known since third grade, was gay, and he’d be honored to be my friend.

As a result of these experiences, I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life. We subconsciously give cues for how we expect other people to treat us. People respond to those cues and treat us accordingly. At work, I began sending cues that I was competent, confident, and worthy of respect. The fact that I was gay was no big deal. And that’s how people treated me.

I heard Tammy Baldwin speak at a workplace diversity conference. At the time, she was an openly Lesbian US Representative from Wisconsin. Now she is a senator. These words from her speech continue to resonate with me:

"If you dream of a world in which you can put your partner's picture on your desk, then put his picture on your desk and you will live in such a world.

If you dream of a world in which you can walk down the street holding your partner's hand, then hold her hand and you will live in such a world.

If you dream of a world in which there are more openly gay elected officials, then run for office and you will live in such a world.

And if you dream of a world in which you can take your partner to the office party, even if your office is the US House of Representatives, then take her to the party. I do, and now I live in such a world.

Remember, there are two things that keep us oppressed: them and us.

We are half of the equation. There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now OK to express ourselves publicly.

We must make that day ourselves, by speaking out publicly – first in small numbers, then in greater numbers, until it's simply the way things are and no one thinks twice."

Our move to Arizona worked out better for me than for David. I found a job sooner, first at a local garage door manufacturer, then at Intel. It took David a while longer. Finally, he found a job on the west side of town (a long commute) that paid much less than he was worth. Later, he found a job at Petsmart headquarters in the north end of Phoenix (a longer commute) that at least paid well.

As time passed, David began working longer and longer hours at Petsmart. Sometimes he worked 12-hour days which, on top of the commute, barely left time for him to sleep while he was home.

Soon after we started dating, I chatted with Mike, who dated David for three years. He was happy to see David and me together but cautioned me about one thing. He told me that David would never say what he wanted. He would always defer to his partner to make decisions and go along with whatever the partner wanted.

Knowing this, I made it a point to always ask David what he wanted. I tried my best to find out what he was really thinking and feeling.

Whenever we went out to eat, one of us would nominate three restaurants and the other would choose one. We alternated who nominated and who chose. At the time, there was a chain in the DC area called Roy Rogers. I liked Roy Rogers! They had a broader menu than many fast food restaurants, offering roast beef sandwiches, hamburgers, and fried chicken along with a variety of side items. Sometimes when I nominated Roy Rogers, David chose it. Sometimes Roy Rogers was among the three restaurants he nominated. Years later, I learned that he hated Roy Rogers.

We enjoyed a harmonious, conflict-free relationship for almost twelve years. Then one day, I discovered he had profiles on several hook-up websites. When I confronted him about it, he claimed he never actually met up with any of the guys he interacted with on those websites. That was hard to believe, but I took him at his word. We went to counseling, and after several sessions, we felt as if we had worked through our issues.

Several months later, I discovered that he was still looking for guys online and he met up with at least one of them. (Probably many.)

The problem wasn’t so much that he had cheated but that he wouldn’t admit it, even in the face of evidence. If he had admitted it, apologized, and vowed to not cheat again, I could have forgiven him. If he was dissatisfied with our relationship or with his situation, we could have talked about it. We could have found a solution if he had only said something.

I believe a successful relationship requires trust, honesty, and open communication. We no longer had any of these, and I didn’t see a resolution in sight. So I ended the relationship.

In hindsight, I realize we never fought or disagreed about anything because he couldn’t voice his needs and desires. He subjugated his feelings and went along with everything I wanted. In hindsight, I can see that I was much more enthusiastic about moving to Arizona than David. He probably didn’t want to move, but he never voiced any objection. I can look back now and see things I could have done better, or at least differently. But at the time, everything seemed great.

David was (and is) a good man in many ways. For almost twelve years, I had what I thought was a perfect relationship. For twelve years, I was happy. We genuinely loved each other.

We remained friendly for several years after our breakup. But when I started dating Jeff, he became much less comfortable around me. I suspect he harbored some hope that we would get back together someday. When Jeff came along, it became clear that wouldn’t happen.

David found a partner named Danny. Several years later, they moved to San Antonio. We exchanged Christmas cards for several years after they moved, but then the cards stopped coming. David and Danny now live in southern Indiana, and I have no contact with them at all.

Technically, 2000 was the last year of the 20^th century and the second millennium. The 21^st century and the third millennium didn’t begin until January 1, 2001, but everyone celebrated on December 31, 1999. That is, everyone except the unlucky people who supported the computer systems that ran everything from the banking industry to airplane travel. They had to be on duty, usually on-site, prepared to fix system failures that could be catastrophic. For many years, the tech industry anticipated the need to convert all date fields to four-digit years. When I worked at NCR in 1984, people were already talking about what came to be known as “Y2K.” But despite years of planning, nobody could be sure that the transition from 1999 to 2000 would go smoothly. Fortunately, it did. There were only a few minor disruptions. No planes fell from the sky.

Surprisingly, I was not conscripted to serve on that night. But I was recently single and had no invitations to New Year’s Eve parties. A friend offered to bring me along to a party he was attending. I knew none of the other people there (all gay men), so I rang in the new millennium with one friend and a bunch of strangers. But I preferred that to staying home alone.

Late in 2000, I began dating a man named Ross. He was handsome, kind, good-natured, and full of love. The biggest challenge in our relationship was his mother. She didn’t like me and did everything she could to throw obstacles in our path. Honestly, I didn’t care much for her either. They lived together and I soon discovered they had a deep-seated co-dependent relationship.  Ross and I dated for almost a year, but I realized it was unlikely that I could extricate Ross from his mother. She would always be number one in his life. And when you marry someone, you marry their family. So I ended the relationship.

On September 11, 2001, members of the Al Queda terrorist organization hijacked four airplanes and crashed two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth plane, which was probably destined for the US Capitol, crashed in Pennsylvania. It was the worst attack on the US since Pearl Harbor in 1941.

As I became more comfortable being openly gay at work, I increased my involvement with IGLOBE. I served as the company-wide president of IGLOBE for four years. In that role, I attended conferences inside and outside of Intel. I met many higher-level managers and a few vice presidents. Through my involvement in IGLOBE, I gained far more exposure across the company than if I had stayed within my job role.

ATD published a weekly restroom reader, a one-page newsletter placed in bathroom stalls and in front of urinals for people to read while they did their business. I wrote a short article for each issue called Diversity Corner. It began simply. Most articles mentioned a holiday that some religion, nationality, or culture observed that week. In addition to my articles appearing in the ATD restroom reader, I posted them to the IGLOBE email list. People on the IGLOBE email list started forwarding it to their organizations. Soon, Diversity Corner was being read across the company, with my name on the by-line. I wrote Diversity Corner for six years. As time passed, the articles became longer, more in-depth, and addressed a wider range of diversity-related topics.

After being an individual contributor my entire career, I was offered a job as a first-level manager in early 2004. I was offered this promotion after I received a job offer elsewhere in the company. I wanted to become a manager for years, so I declined the offer from the other organization and stayed.

I excelled as a manager because I focused on the well-being of the people in my group. People realized I treated them fairly, communicated openly, and looked out for their best interests. As a result, my group experienced low turnover. People worked hard and remained committed to their jobs. Most importantly, I received outstanding scores in the semi-annual Management Feedback Tool surveys.

Many of Intel's instructors came from within the workforce, so I taught some classes during my last ten years. I taught a three-day course in management skills and shorter courses in presentation skills and building trust. These opportunities allowed me to do some training even though that wasn’t my full-time job.

Intel allowed employees to apply for temporary job assignments outside their organization. These could be full-time or part-time assignments, lasting three months or more.

In 2012, I applied for a temporary assignment as Chief Ambassador in the Employee Communications department. Several months earlier, they launched an Ambassador program in which designated employees helped promote new Intel products inside and outside the company using social media influencing, staffed tables at events, etc. The man who created the program was ready to move on with his career, so they sought someone to take over. I was selected. It was a wonderful opportunity in a different organization, doing totally different things. During my assignment, I received a free Samsung tablet with an Intel processor inside, so I could demonstrate it at department meetings and post about it on social media. I traveled to San Francisco for a product launch at the Museum of Modern Art. Most remarkably, I traveled to the Dreamworks Studio in Los Angeles to shoot a commercial highlighting Intel’s partnership with Dreamworks. It never aired, but I got an amazing tour of the studio complex.

In addition to serving as Chief Ambassador and managing that program, I had the opportunity to help develop a presentation skills course and teach it around the company.

When the temporary assignment ended, I hoped I would be offered a permanent position in Employee Communications. Sadly, I was not. They decided to phase out the Ambassador program. I continued teaching the presentation skills class after I returned to my regular job.

In 2013, Intel offered an attractive early retirement incentive package. I intended to retire in late 2017 when I would be 60 years old with 21 years of service. But I felt that my career had stagnated. My chance to move to Employee Communications didn’t work out and I wasn't optimistic that I’d have any new opportunities in my current organization. I could have continued doing my current job for four more years, but I was mentally ready to check out.

I had the entire year to decide whether to take the early retirement package. The most salient benefit was that Intel would put enough money in a sheltered account to pay for health insurance for Jeff and me for the next seven years. That would take me almost to 65 when I would qualify for Medicare. I knew that, financially, it would be more advantageous to work four more years. My financial advisor recommended that I not take the package. I found numerous online retirement calculators that said I could probably make it work if I controlled spending and maybe earned some extra income. I plugged numbers into those calculators frequently during the first half of 2013.

Finally, in August, I convinced myself to take the package. I set my retirement date for December 31, 2013, to maximize the number of paychecks I would receive for the rest of the year.

I made the mistake of telling my manager in August. I suddenly became irrelevant. Within a week, all the people who reported to me were moved to someone else and I reverted to being an individual contributor. (Remember, I consistently earned excellent Manager Feedback Tool scores – among the best in the organization.) Worse, I was given only a few inconsequential assignments to work on through the end of the year. I could come in at 10:00, leave at 4:00, take 2-hour lunches, and still get my “work” done. It was an anti-climactic and insulting way to end my career.

So at age 56 (two months shy of 57), I retired, three and a half years sooner than expected. I’ve never regretted it.

On March 22, 2004, I was scrolling through the profiles of available men on Yahoo! Personals* when one stopped me in my tracks. The headline read, “Single, Smart, and Cute in Scottsdale. Not only was he handsome, but his profile showed he was intelligent, articulate, and had good values. One sentence read, "My life has been rich and I'm full of great stories." Never has there been such an understatement.

I immediately responded. Thankfully, he replied. As so began my journey with Jeff McKeehan. The next three months were ... "complicated."

His profile stated, “I'm a recently widowed GWM (Gay White Male) trying to get his feet wet by making new friends and perhaps casual dating with the right guy. ... I am not actively seeking an LTR (Long-Term Relationship) ... For the here and now, I just need to step back into life again.”

It was clear that I needed to proceed slowly with Jeff. We began by exchanging emails. Soon we were emailing back and forth several times a day. This was before smartphones, so texting was not as common as it is today.

I soon learned that Jeff has a keen sense of humor. For example, in one email I asked him what he enjoyed drinking. He replied with which soft drinks he preferred and explained that he was allergic to coffee. Then he said, “I’ve heard of this drink called ‘Water.’ They say it’s supposed to be good for you, but I think it sounds too medicinal.”

After three weeks of increasingly frequent emails, we had established a good rapport. We were sharing more openly with each other. I decided to suggest the next step: meeting in person.

I suggested that we meet at a park where we could walk his dogs, Missy and Max.

He replied that perhaps it was too soon to introduce me to “Satan’s Hounds from Hell.” (For the record, they were not. They were wonderful, sweet little dogs.)

I countered with an offer to get together for lunch on Sunday, April 11. He agreed, and I suggested YC’s Mongolian BBQ. That was my favorite restaurant, and there was a location in a shopping center between us.

On Saturday, the day before our lunch date, he informed me that his situation had changed. On Friday afternoon, he replied to another guy’s profile (also named Jeff). They decided to go out for a beer after work. Beer turned into dinner. Dinner turned into dancing. Dancing turned into spending the night. The next morning they decided to date each other exclusively.

So much for going slowly. I felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under me.

He said we could still get together for lunch, but with the understanding that it would be as friends, not a date. I liked him enough at this point that I agreed.

I pulled into the parking lot at the agreed-upon time and saw only one other car - his. It was Easter Sunday, and YC’s was closed. It never occurred to me that it might be Easter.

Fortunately, a nearby restaurant was open – Sweet Tomatoes, a cafeteria-style restaurant offering salads, soups, pasta, and muffins.

We talked for two hours! The conversation flowed easily. We smiled a lot and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. We discovered we had so many things in common! For example, we were both hosts of local public access television shows earlier in our lives.

For the next few weeks, we exchanged emails frequently and got together about once a week.

Five weeks later, The Other Jeff dumped my Jeff – by email, no less. Jeff was crushed. At that point, he was in no emotional state to begin dating me and he still claimed we would only be friends. His infamous line was, “You’re a great catch! You’re just not my catch.” Ouch.

On Memorial Day weekend, I drove Jeff up to Sedona to spread his late husband Stan’s ashes. Understandably, this was an emotional event for Jeff. He appreciated my driving and accompanying him for support. Jeff wanted to spread Stan’s ashes and plant a rosemary bush in his memory at the Airport Vortex – one of the strongest and most easily accessible vortexes in Sedona. When we arrived at the parking lot for the vortex, Jeff spotted The Other Jeff with his new boyfriend. Awkward!

On the way home, Jeff seemed much happier. Spreading Stan’s ashes brought him closure. By this time, it had been half a year since Stan died. Jeff seemed ready to look forward to the future; to begin a new chapter in his life. He told me that he was going to “put himself out there” again with the hopes of dating and finding a new relationship. Ouch.

By the end of June, I accepted the fact that our friendship would never grow into a relationship. I would always be just a friend. I was willing to have him as a friend but I gave up hope for a relationship. I let him know.

A few days later, I hosted a Fourth of July pool party for my friends from IGLOBE. I debated whether to invite him, but I did. I had already told my friends that it hadn’t worked out and we would be just friends from now on.

During the party, he was hanging all over me! Everyone was perplexed about what was going on, especially me! I asked him to step inside for a chat. Long story short, by the end of that chat, we were dating exclusively. As Jeff likes to put it, I chased him until he caught me.

Two weeks later, on Sunday, July 18, he invited me to his apartment for dinner. When I arrived, big band music from a music channel on his TV was playing softly. A tablecloth adorned the table. He served a nice home-cooked meal. (Jeff is an excellent cook!) At one point, I complimented him on the delicious meal and mentioned how much I enjoyed being with him. He replied, “So why don’t you marry me?”

I was completely unprepared for that. I sat there dumbstruck. This was only two weeks after we officially started dating! I had no idea what to say. I didn’t want to say no, but by any measure, this was way too soon for us to consider marriage.

Thoughts swirled in my head. But it came down to this: I knew I loved Jeff. He rocked my world. He was the best person to come along in five years, and I knew he was special. I said yes.

At least we had the sense to pick a wedding date over a year away. We both knew we were riding the giddy high of finding a new love, and we would come down from that high sooner or later.

There was one complication. The previous year, on my first Atlantis gay cruise in the Mediterranean, I met a nice guy from San Diego (also named Jeff) who became my “cruise husband.” At the end of that cruise, San Diego Jeff and I signed up for next summer’s Atlantis Mediterranean cruise. We agreed that if either of us found a boyfriend during the year, we would consider having one of us sell our half of the room to the other one.

After Jeff and I started dating in July 2004, I told him about the upcoming cruise with San Diego Jeff. He was none too happy, but it wasn’t possible for him to come on the cruise. In a remarkable act of trust, he said I could go on this cruise with San Diego Jeff. I told San Diego Jeff about my new status and he agreed that there would be no sex on the trip.

Later in July, we went to San Diego for their gay pride weekend. While we were there, we had dinner with San Diego Jeff. Everything went well. Jeff told me later that when I excused myself to use the restroom, he reached across the table, grabbed San Diego Jeff by the collar of his shirt, pulled him closer, and said, “I’m counting on you to keep an eye on my fiancé!” Of course, what he really meant was, “I’m counting on you to keep your hands off my fiancé!” He did, and I was a good boy.

While I was on that cruise, Jeff thoroughly cleaned my house in preparation for a visit from two of my siblings and spouses, John and Juanita, and Charlotte and Cole. What a guy!

While San Diego Jeff and I were on the Med cruise, Atlantis pitched their upcoming vacations. One was a cruise to Alaska in August 2005, which started and ended in Vancouver. Jeff and I had talked about traveling to Canada to get legally married, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for a wedding and a honeymoon. I contacted Jeff and he agreed. I signed us up for the trip.

Our wedding plans fell into place around this honeymoon cruise. Our ceremonial wedding for our friends and family happened on Saturday, August 13, 2005, in Mesa. Our legal wedding happened in Vancouver, BC on Thursday, August 18. We boarded our week-long honeymoon cruise on Saturday, August 20.

We bought the house we still live in today in early 2006. In fact, we accepted the buyer’s offer on Jeff’s birthday, January 15. We moved in on March 6, 2006. As of this writing, we’ve lived here for 18 years, which surprises me in many ways.

In 2016, we went on a Marie Kondo-inspired "tidying" binge. Jeff tossed the black and yellow striped shirt he wore in his profile picture into the pile he planned to give to Goodwill. I said, "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND??? There is no way you're ever giving that shirt away!" He kept it and he wears it now and then. It always reminds me of the day I saw his profile and replied.

---

* Yahoo! Personals no longer exists. It was like Match(dot)com - a site for those seeking relationships, not hookups.

Early in 2004, I learned that a gay swim team had been formed in Phoenix. I joined. Except for a few occasions when I belonged to a gym that had a lap pool, I hadn’t done much swimming since my last summer as a pool manager and swim team coach in 1981.

I quickly returned to about the same level of ability I had in 1981, and I also made some new friends.

Later in 2004, our team, the Phoenix Sunfish, traveled to Fort Lauderdale for the International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics Association’s (IGLA) annual championship swim meet. The pools where the events were held were formerly used as training centers for Olympic swimmers.

In 2006, the Sunfish traveled to Chicago to participate in Gay Games VI. By this time, Gay Games had grown significantly from its humble beginnings in San Francisco. 11,500 athletes from 70 countries competed in 30 sports. The opening ceremonies in Soldier Field attracted thousands of spectators in addition to the athletes.

So while I didn’t return to Gay Games III in 1990 to participate in the marathon, I returned 20 years later to participate as a swimmer.

In 2005, same-sex marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the United States except Massachusetts, but it was legal in Canada. So Jeff and I had two weddings – a ceremonial wedding, complete with reception, dinner, and dancing, in Mesa, Arizona on Saturday, August 13, and a legal wedding in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Thursday, August 18.

We planned our Mesa wedding for almost a year before the event. I listed all the tasks with their due dates, such as selecting a venue, a wedding cake baker, a florist, our invitations, and our wardrobe, and tracked them to completion in an Excel spreadsheet.

Planning a wedding together is a test for any engaged couple. For us, it went smoothly. We had no trouble agreeing upon a venue, a menu, a guest list, our outfits, etc. Same-sex weddings were uncommon then, so we had little to refer to in the way of role models. That gave us more freedom to make choices that suited us rather than adhering to customs. I think we did a great job.

After touring some of the area’s more luxurious, high-end, and expensive resorts, we visited the Windemere Hotel and Conference Center. A friend of ours who was a DJ and had played at wedding venues all over town recommended it. It was located in an older, unattractive part of Mesa. As we drove there, we asked ourselves if this was even worth checking out. But we did, and we were glad. The facility was quite nice and the event manager was a joy to work with (and also gay). We liked the options we were offered for tablecloth and napkin colors, table centerpieces, and room décor, and the vibe of the place appealed to us. We knew that with a gay event manager, we probably wouldn’t run into any homophobia from the staff. (We didn’t – they were great). It was considerably less expensive than the fashionable, upscale places we visited and we felt it was a much better value.

We did a few unique things I’m proud of. I concocted a special drink for the occasion and named it “the Prickly Pair.” It was a slushy lemonade with raspberry rum, Amaretto, triple sec, and Prickly Pear syrup. We ordered souvenir glasses engraved with our names, the date, and the same graphic we used on our wedding invitation. We asked the photographer to take pictures of us with every person or couple who attended. We put those pictures in cardboard frames and sent them to the attendees with their thank-you notes.

It was a wonderful wedding. 75 people showed up, including Charlotte and Cole, John and Juanita, my niece Suzanne and her fiancé (now husband) Bobby, and some of my friends from Washington, DC. We treated all the out-of-town guests to lunch on the wedding day to thank them for traveling and to ensure we could spend more time with them.

Same-sex marriage was a political wedge issue at that time. An anti-equality marriage amendment would be on the Arizona ballot in 2006 and people were already talking about it. A local TV channel contacted us the day before our wedding, asking if they could send a camera crew to record it. We thought about it. On the one hand, we wanted to do whatever we could to advance the cause of marriage equality. On the other, we didn’t want our wedding to become a media circus. We already hired a photographer and videographer, so an additional crew would have been in the way. We had not advised our guests that TV cameras would be present and some might have objected. It would have been a significant distraction, so we said no.

We’re glad we hired a professional videographer to capture the day, rather than rely on a friend with a camcorder. We received a nice professionally produced video. We’re glad we can watch our ceremony whenever we want to, which we do on some anniversaries. It’s also nice to see our guests dancing and talking, rather than just seeing still pictures of them. We hired a professional photographer who was not in the wedding photography business. Wedding photographers can be expensive. We didn’t want a fancy, frilly wedding album loaded with enhanced effects and decorations. We simply wanted pictures. Our guy delivered.

We hired a small company to handle the arrangements for our Canadian wedding. During the years when same-sex marriage was legal in Canada but not in most of the US, many couples in the US went to Canada to get married. Two lesbians and a gay man recognized a good business opportunity and launched a wedding business called Two Dears and a Queer.

They were wonderful! On the day of our wedding, Darryl picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the government office to get our marriage license. Then he drove us to Queen Elizabeth Park. Anne, one of the two Dears, was there with our officiant, a small table, cupcakes, and champagne. It was a beautiful ceremony on a perfect day with just the five of us in a beautiful rose garden. Darryl and Anne served as our witnesses and took pictures. They recommended a lovely restaurant nearby with a spectacular view of downtown Vancouver, where we enjoyed a delicious, extravagant wedding dinner.

After enjoying five days in Vancouver, we boarded an Atlantis Alaska cruise for our honeymoon.

During 2013, as I contemplated whether to take the early retirement package Intel offered, I searched the internet for information about retirement. What was it really like? What changes could I expect? How could I ensure that I’d be happy after I retired?

I found volumes of information about financial planning, how to invest, how much you should withdraw from your investments, and how much money you’ll need after you retire. I found little about how to have a happy life after you retire. And very little of that addressed issues that would be of particular concern to LGBT people.

So I decided to do something about it. I saw an information void, and I decided to fill it. On July 13, 2013, I created a website called Retire Fabulously! and started writing blog posts.

I created a presentation for people who were approaching retirement to share all the information I had researched. My goal was to market this presentation to corporations and financial planners. I hoped this would provide the supplemental income I needed for the next few years until I reached 59½ and could start withdrawing from my retirement savings.

After I retired, I learned all I could about blogging and online marketing. I took online courses on how to write compelling blog posts, attract email subscribers, and reach new audiences.

I learned a lot, but I didn’t attract any interest in my workshop.

I found other similar writers in my genre. Their articles were of varying quality. I discovered that several of them contributed articles to the retirement section of the US News website. So I contacted the editor in charge of that section and pitched my articles.

I didn’t hear anything for a year and a half. Then one day, I received an email from the editor inviting me to become a regular contributor. There would be no pay, only exposure. (That’s a running joke among musicians who are asked to play at an event for no pay, only “exposure.”) But I did it – and I’m glad.

I received tremendous exposure. Some of those people subscribed to my email list. My email list grew substantially. Plus, I became a better writer. I learned to write more concisely because I had to stay within a word limit. I soon learned what elements of my writing the editor would change, and I adjusted my writing.

I received an inquiry from Mark McNease, who runs a website called LGBTSr.com dedicated to educating and empowering LGBT people to age with dignity. He asked if he could repost my articles on his website and I agreed. Mark and I soon became friends, although we have never met in person! He has been a tremendous source of support and advice for nearly a decade.

Several posts rank high on Google search results for certain keywords and phrases. They continue to generate traffic to my website. Someone linked an article I wrote about retiring on a cruise ship on a web forum devoted to cruising, and I got hits for months.

In 2015, I compiled some of my articles into a book. I edited and rewrote them to remove redundancy and make the material flow well. The result, Design Your Dream Retirement, is still my top-selling book.

I followed that in 2017 with Smooth Sailing into Retirement, which was also a collection of articles from my website. These articles focused on the life changes that happen when you retire, from the last few months on the job through the first year of retirement.

A literary agent in South Korea contacted me about translating Smooth Sailing into Retirement into Korean and publishing it in that country. I agreed, and I received a generous advance for the rights. Thanks to that, this book is my most profitable. I received four copies of the book in Korean.

In 2019, I finally got to present my workshop in two places. A longtime fan of my website arranged for me to speak at a state-wide teachers conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A financial planner in tiny Forest City, Iowa, hired me to speak at an annual event she hosted for her clients. Most of them were employees of Winnebago, the primary employer in that town, or area farmers.

In early 2020 I released my third book, The Quest for Retirement Utopia. I wrote it for people who are considering moving after they retire, either within the US or to another country. This book was over twice as long as the first two books and contained mostly new material that was not on my website.

During 2020, I started to burn out on writing content for Retire Fabulously! I felt I had covered all the non-financial aspects of retirement. If I continued, I’d be revisiting old topics and rehashing them. The COVID pandemic provided a few new topics to write about, but I drained that well pretty quickly.

Today I post new articles once or twice a year. Despite the scarcity of new content, my website still gets an average of 100 visits a day. I gain 20-30 new subscribers and sell several books every month. After years of creating a large body of work, it is sustaining itself.

If you had asked me on the day I retired what I’d be doing with my life, I would never have guessed that I’d become a writer. But I did!

But I was ready for something new.

From 2010 to 2015, the LGBT community made considerable progress toward achieving marriage equality across the United States. The decade started badly. Same-sex couples were still reeling from the defeat of California’s Proposition 8, which amended California's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. In 2013, after winning an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, California resumed issuing same-sex marriage licenses. That ruling meant that the constitutional amendments in other states in the Ninth Circuit (including Arizona) were unconstitutional too.

The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits in every state that did not have equal marriage laws, many of which also had amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage in their constitution. After the Ninth Circuit ruling, other state amendments fell quickly. Nationwide marriage equality became the law in 2015 thanks to the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges.

This meant that my marriage to Jeff, legal in Canada since August 18, 2005, was finally legal in Arizona on October 17, 2014, and nationwide on June 26, 2015.

Earlier in 2014, our close friends Aidan and Carl traveled to California to get married. But they wanted a ceremonial wedding in Arizona so their local friends could attend and Aidan’s family could travel to Arizona from Ireland. They asked me to officiate their wedding! To say I was honored would be an understatement. In addition to being a close friend, they knew I had public speaking experience. Their wedding took place at the beautiful Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on Saturday, October 25. They planned that date months before Arizona began licensing same-sex marriages on October 17, and they were already legally married anyway. But the excitement of the recent developments was palpable.

As Jeff and I drove to their wedding, Jeff said, “I have a good feeling about this. I think something more may come from this.” He was right. Another couple among our friends asked if I would officiate their wedding in January – and this would be a legal wedding.

I realized that same-sex couples everywhere would want to get married. Many would appreciate having a gay officiant preside over their wedding. So I visited the Universal Life Church's website and became an ordained minister in the time it took me to fill out an online form. I bought a domain, CeremoniesByDave.com, and created a website. I listed my services on a gay business directory website. Immediately, inquiries began pouring in.

My business grew quickly. I offered quickie “elopement” weddings for couples who had already been together for many years and simply wanted a marriage license. Other couples chose to plan weddings, large and small. I developed a process of meeting with prospective couples to discuss what kind of wedding they wanted and offering them several choices of customized scripts. The couples were consistently satisfied. I listed my services on WeddingWire, a nationwide wedding planning website. WeddingWire was primarily geared toward straight couples, but they welcomed same-sex couples. I asked my clients to leave reviews for me on WeddingWire. Many did, and they were consistently glowing 5-star reviews. So I started getting hired by straight couples too. I was fine with that. After all, I believe everyone should have equal marriage rights.

Over the next five years, I officiated 368 weddings. In 2016 alone, I officiated 100. I truly enjoyed this retirement mini-career. It was a great honor to be a significant part of one of the most special days of people’s lives. I met a lot of nice people. I’ve remained in contact with a few.

This mini-career came at an opportune time. When I took the early retirement package in 2013 at age 56, I knew I needed to earn some supplemental income until I reached 59½ and could start withdrawing from my retirement account, and 62, when I could start receiving Social Security. My original plan of offering presentation skills workshops and coaching hadn’t panned out. My wedding income filled that gap, and then some.

In 2019, I began to tire of officiating weddings. I decided I would officiate weddings only as long as I experienced joy from doing it and treated each couple’s wedding as the special occasion it was. I didn’t want to become a “wedding mill,” where each wedding was part of a routine. In 2019, I started to feel that way. Plus, I wanted some of my life back. The correspondence, consultations, and weddings took a lot of my time. I sometimes missed concerts and parties due to my wedding commitments. I turned 62 in February 2019 and began receiving Social Security, so I no longer needed the income. So I decided to phase out of the wedding business. I honored my existing commitments but canceled my listings on the wedding websites. I remain available to perform weddings for friends and referrals.

Late in 2017, I began toying with the idea of writing fiction. An acquaintance had written two gay young adult novels which I read and thoroughly enjoyed. His books inspired me to try writing novels about gay young adults.

One day (in late 2017, I think), I was sitting in a fast-food restaurant in Phoenix eating dinner alone. At the time, I had a jazz ensemble rehearsal on Mondays from 3:00 to 5:00 at Scottsdale Community College and a rehearsal for Desert City Jazz from 7:00 to 9:00 in downtown Phoenix. It made little sense to drive half an hour in heavy freeway traffic to return home to Chandler, only to drive into Phoenix a half-hour later. Instead, I ate dinner at a restaurant between my two rehearsals. I had over an hour to fill, so I brought my laptop.

One day, a young man sat down at a table near me. He was cute in a boy-next-door kind of way. I guessed that he was in his mid-20s. I began to wonder who he was and what his life was like. Where was he before he stopped at the restaurant to eat? Where would he go next? What did he do for a living? He looked like he was probably college-educated. Was he a native Phoenician or did he move here from someplace else? Was he gay or straight?

Of course, I had no way to answer any of these questions. I certainly wasn’t going to invite myself to sit at his table and interview him. So I made up a life story for him. In my imagination, he was from Ohio, as I am. He played trombone in the OSU Marching Band, as I did. But unlike me, he went to Pharmacy school and was now a pharmacist at the Walgreens across the parking lot from this restaurant. I imagined was through working for the day and had stopped for dinner on the way home to his apartment. I decided that he was single. Was he gay? Hmmm... Perhaps his self-discovery could be one of the main storylines of a book.

He ate quickly, and 15 minutes later he was gone. I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him today.

I started drafting an outline for a novel. I continued fabricating this guy’s life as I developed my main character. At one point, after he ventured out of the closet, he met a guy who swept him off his feet. However, this new potential boyfriend seemed reluctant to talk about his past. As I created a backstory for the boyfriend, it got more interesting and complex. I decided I should write a book about the boyfriend first. The book I started on, in which he meets the pharmacist/trombonist, would be my second book. Eventually, his story grew into three books.

Once I finished developing the stories about what happened to these characters, I had enough material for six novels.

The Chandler Public Library has study rooms that members can reserve for up to two hours a day. So I traveled to the library every day to write. It was immensely helpful to establish a writing routine and write in a place where I had minimal distractions.

I decided not to go the route of traditional, mainstream publishing. That would involve finding an agent to represent me, which could take months. Then it would take more time while the agent shopped my book around the big publishing houses. I knew that as a first-time author with no audience base, I would be unlikely to sell a book through this channel. I submitted my first and fourth books to two LGBT independent publishers. But alas, they declined to publish my books, so I self-published all six books.

Writing novels has been an incredible learning experience. I have learned a lot about book publishing, distribution, and marketing. I have become a better writer. I’ve gained enough graphic arts skills to produce reasonable book covers. I have done almost everything myself.

After my six-book series “Gay Tales for the New Millennium,” and this autobiography, I don’t know what I’ll write next. I’ll probably write something. I’ve come to enjoy it too much.

Music has been a major factor in my life. I couldn’t imagine my life without music.

I know most people enjoy music at some level, even if it’s only having the radio on while driving. But it’s central to my existence – a happy existence, anyway.

It’s difficult for me to remember how I first fell in love with music. I’ve been told I had a cheap compact record player, and my mom would give me 7” kids' records. I had a record with the Woody Woodpecker theme song on it. Mom said I played it constantly and wore out several copies.

When I got older, they gave me a set of 12” albums designed to be an “introduction to music” collection. I also had a Mary Poppins soundtrack album that I played a lot.

My older sisters had a collection of 7" 45-rpm singles of popular top-40 songs from their teenage years. Sometimes they’d let me come into their bedroom and listen along with them. When they left home, they left their records behind and they became mine. So early on, I was introduced to the top-40 music of the late 50s.

When I was in third or fourth grade, I started listening to a top-40 radio station in Dayton, WING. The morning DJ, Steve Kirk, had a goofy, upbeat personality that was inexplicably entertaining. I listened regularly, and before long I was saving up my weekly allowance to buy singles. A small store in downtown Xenia carried the latest records. WING published a weekly top-40 list, and I collected each week’s list. I studied the lists to see how songs moved up and down in the charts from week to week. It was fascinating!

In 1967, the Monkees arrived. I quickly became a fan of their TV show and their music. While I bought 7” singles of everyone else’s music, I bought the full 12” albums of the Monkees. I played them incessantly, sang along, and even figured out how to play some of their songs on the piano.

In junior high, I became more aware of the popular singing groups of the late 60s, such as the Association, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Fifth Dimension. That was good quality music!

In high school, my musical horizons were broadened in several different directions.

First, I discovered Chicago – or more specifically, their albums. I had heard a few of their hit songs on the radio, but when I listened to the full albums, I was blown away! From there, I branched into Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chase, and later, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Tower of Power. Anything with a horn section appealed to me.

Second, I discovered Maynard Ferguson, the legendary high-note trumpet player/bandleader. From there I discovered other big band leaders who were still alive, recording, and touring, such as Bill Watrous, Woody Herman, and Buddy Rich.

Third, there was a jazz record label that was popular in the early 70s called CTI, which stood for Creed Taylor International. A friend turned me on to Deodato and Airto, two Brazilian musicians who recorded on CTI, and soon I learned about other artists on the label such as George Benson, Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Bob James, Grover Washington, Jr. and more.

When I arrived at Ohio State, I discovered several used record stores on High Street, across from the campus. Even the new record stores were cheap. I stopped in Mole’s Record Exchange at least once a week. Used records cost only a dollar or two, so I quickly expanded my collection and my knowledge of jazz. Whatever I didn’t like, I could sell back.

Between my discoveries at the campus record stores, music performed at OSU, and music played on Columbus's jazz radio station, I had an extensive knowledge of jazz by the time I left college. I also discovered more rock and R&B artists I liked, such as Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, Frank Zappa, and more.

In the mid-80s, the drummer in a jazz combo I played in introduced me to Brazilian music. He traveled to Rio occasionally. He made me four cassette tapes as an introduction to some of the musicians he discovered. I loved it! I now had a new genre of music to discover and collect. Brazilian music is still among my favorites today. I have amassed a collection of almost 500 Brazilian music CDs. That’s one genre that Jeff and I both enjoy, so a lot of Brazilian music gets played around our house.

During the late 80s, I worked as a software trainer at a small company called Infodata. I traveled to customer sites all over the US and Canada to deliver training classes. In the evening, I would visit the used record stores in whatever city or town I was in. Sometimes I found some gems and sometimes I came away with nothing, but it was a great way to see the city.

Visiting used record stores remained a part of my life until I moved to Arizona in 1995. There are used record stores in Arizona, but I found fewer records of interest. For most artists I liked, I already had their entire catalog. Shopping for new and used CDs on Amazon overtook visits to record stores.

That covers my evolution as a music listener and collector. Now I’ll turn to my history as a musician.

I remember being in the children’s choir at church during first and second grade. We didn’t read music, we just learned a few songs by rote. In the rehearsal room, there were posters of the instrument families – one each for brass, woodwinds, strings, and percussion. Those posters fascinated me and I quickly learned all the instrument names.

When I was in third and fourth grade (my first two years in Xenia), my mother forced me to take piano lessons. I hated it. In hindsight, I enjoyed the music. I enjoyed learning how to read music and play it on the piano. But I disliked being forced to practice for half an hour every day. I’ve never been disciplined about practicing, beginning with my piano lessons.

There was another reason I disliked taking piano lessons. At that age, it was not a masculine pursuit. In the system of gender roles perceived by elementary school boys in the mid-60s, girls took piano lessons. Boys played sports. I was already uncoordinated and inept at most sports involving a ball and perceived as somewhat of a sissy. Having to practice my piano while the other boys were playing pickup baseball or basketball games did nothing to enhance my image.

Band began at school in fifth grade. After two years of piano lessons, my mother gave me the choice of continuing piano lessons (no way!), choosing a band instrument, or quitting music altogether. I chose the trombone.

To this day, I don’t know why I picked the trombone. Maybe I was fascinated by it when I saw it on the musical instrument posters during children’s choir rehearsals. But I chose it (or it chose me) and I quickly grew to like it. I soon realized that my two years of piano lessons had served me well since I already knew how to read music and count rhythms. I gained some understanding of chord structure. So I could learn to play my instrument quicker than other kids who had no prior musical training. I succeeded in band, and that was one place I made friends.

When I began, Mom rented a trombone from the local music store. But during sixth grade, my Uncle Norman came for a visit. He gave me the trombone that belonged to my cousin Donnie, a talented trombonist who died in an auto accident when he was 19, five years before I was born. I still play that trombone today.

When I was around 12 years old, I entertained fantasies of being a guitar-god rock star. Mom wasn’t keen on me taking guitar lessons, but she let me take them as long as I paid for them with my own money. At 12, I was old enough to have a paper route, so I did that for two years to earn spending money. My earnings from my paper route enabled me to fulfill my desire to take guitar lessons. Xenia’s lone music store, the Band Box, held a sale on George Washington’s Birthday (February 22) and put a few items on sale for $22. So I bought a cheap no-name electric guitar and a tiny amp for $22 each and signed up for weekly guitar lessons. Again, my prior music experience helped. I became reasonably adept at playing chords and melodies, but never got as far as improvising solos. Alas, my rock star dreams faded.

In high school, our jazz ensemble needed a bass player. We had plenty of trombones. Since the four strings on a bass were the same as the bottom four strings on a guitar only an octave lower, and I already knew how to read bass clef, I volunteered to do it. My band director had a cheap bass I could learn on. I became proficient on bass quickly. I took to it more easily than I took to the guitar. Soon, I bought my own bass. My band director even got me some gigs in a dance band that played gigs in small towns in western Ohio. I continued to play bass and trombone while I lived in the Washington, DC area until we moved to Arizona in 1995.

When I arrived in Maryland in 1984, I learned about a lesbian and gay band called DC’s Different Drummers. I’ve written more about that in the chapter titled ‘1984.’

One of the members of DCDD soon formed a mixed (lesbian and gay) chorus and invited me to join. That was the first time I had sung for years, but I enjoyed it and made more friends, including several who remain good friends today.

In 1988 or 89, I saw a notice on a bulletin board announcing auditions for an a cappella group called Take Note! (the exclamation mark was part of the name). I called the number, went for the audition, and made the group. It was a 16-voice group (four each of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses) comprised of young professionals in their 20s. At just over 30, I was the oldest member. Their repertoire mixed doo-wop, jazz, and pop. Most of these people had been in similar groups in the Ivy League colleges they attended but it was new to me. The group was very good (I’m still surprised I made it) and the people were lovely. I stayed in that group for two years. That would be the last time I sang in a group.

My experience in Take Note! led me to several vocal groups whose albums I bought and who I got to see several times in concert. I was already a big fan of Manhattan Transfer, and New York Voices released their first CD while I was in Take Note! I also got turned on to a cappella groups such as the Bobs, the Nylons, the Blenders, Rockapella, and Straight No Chaser, among others.

When I was in DC’s Different Drummers, I learned there was an LGBT band in Phoenix called Desert Overture. But when I moved to Arizona in late 1995, I could find no mention of them. As it turned out, they disbanded in the late 80s. At the time, I was focused on finding a job, finding a house, making friends, and discovering the Phoenix area. So I put playing music on the back burner for the time being.

That “time being” lasted 13½ years. One day, I met Scott Helms at a party. He was directing a new gay band that began a year or so ago as a sub-group of the Phoenix (gay) Men’s Chorus. (They wouldn’t add ‘Gay’ to their name until many years later.) This band was called the Phoenix Metropolitan Philharmonic Ensemble (quite a mouthful!). (We quickly took to calling the band ‘Pimpy’ rather than its 14-syllable full name.) I joined. After not playing my trombone for 13½ years, I was pleased to discover that my abilities came back quickly. In about two months, I was back to the skill level I had achieved when I stopped playing in 1995.

After I met Jeff, I encouraged him to start playing his flute again. He had stopped playing 35 years earlier. His talents came back quickly. We enjoyed having this band as a common activity and made many friends.

Our fledgling band grew quickly. We had some organizational and personality disagreements with the chorus leadership, so we split off in 2010. Jeff and I were among the founders of a new, independent band. I suggested naming the band Desert Overture, in honor of the band that existed in the 80s.

We played in Desert Overture for many years. We served on the initial Board of Directors, with me as President and Jeff as Secretary. I served another two years as President later. I met many new friends in the band, many of whom are still friends today.

In 2015, we formed a jazz big band as a subset of Desert Overture. We named it Desert City Jazz. The initial members all came from within the ranks of Desert Overture. As people quit we replaced them with more established jazz players in the community. The band is now remarkably good. Since its inception, I served as the band manager, handling the business matters, website, marketing, and finances, while the Artistic Director handled all the musical responsibilities.

In 2019 I decided to learn a new instrument. For years – at least since the 80s when I discovered jazz steel pannist Andy Narell - I have loved the steelpan. For years, I thought, “If I ever learn to play a new instrument, I want to learn the steelpan.”

Almost 25 years later, I decided that “someday” would be “today.” I contacted Wes Hawkins, the founder and leader of Rhythm is Life Steelband, and asked how I could learn this instrument. He invited me to one of the band’s rehearsals and put a tenor pan in front of me. We played a few easy songs I could figure out without too much trouble. I loved it as much as I hoped I would! A few days later, I bought my own tenor pan. Mine was made in Trinidad and imported.

As I type this in August 2024, I realize I have mostly neglected my electric bass since moving to Arizona in 1995. I bought a 6-string bass in 2004 but didn’t play it much. I’ve decided to get back into bass playing and learn how to play the 6-string. I signed up for a jazz combo at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

My parents weren’t wealthy by any means. They made enough money to put food on the table, pay the bills, and save for retirement. There wasn’t much left over for travel. We took a one-week vacation every summer. They were very frugal, inexpensive vacations. As a child, I wasn’t particularly aware of that. As an adult looking back, I can see how they traveled on a shoestring. But I didn’t care; we were still going someplace and it was usually fun.

During the summers after third and fourth grade, we spent a week in a cabin near Beulah, Michigan, next to Crystal Lake. One of Dad’s co-workers owned the cabin, and he let Dad use it for a week. I don’t know whether Dad paid him anything for it or not. It was a simple vacation, but it was fun. We canoed down a river one day, explored sand dunes another day, and drove around to whatever other attractions were in the area.

Next, my parents purchased a tent. We took weekend camping trips at various state parks in Ohio and Indiana. Then one summer, after fifth or sixth grade, we drove to Washington, DC. We stayed at Lake Fairfax Park campground, about 20 miles northwest of DC. Now it’s surrounded by Reston, Virginia, but back then the suburbs had not yet grown up around it. Twenty-five years later, I worked in Reston. One day I visited Lake Fairfax Park. The campground was still there.

Dad retired in 1971 when I was 14. That summer, they bought a small travel trailer. We took a six-week-long trip from Ohio to California and back. We visited several national parks including the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone. We stayed in Los Angeles for a week to visit my brother John, his wife Juanita, and their 2-year-old son Bobby. Then we drove north to San Francisco for a few days and visited Salt Lake City on our return trip.

That trip solidified my love of traveling. I loved discovering wonderful new places different from Springfield and Xenia, Ohio. I fantasized about spending my summers during college taking cross-country camping trips with a special buddy – and everything that came along with that. This was at age 14 – seven years before I came out to myself. Alas, it never came to pass. I had to work during those summers.

One summer, we visited Niagara Falls. That was probably fifth or sixth grade. That included crossing into Canada. During one of our trips to Michigan, we drove north to Sault Ste. Marie and briefly entered Canada. Those were the only two times I left the United States as a child. I returned to Canada a few times during my working career – twice to Windsor, across from Detroit, to have dinner and four times to Ottawa on business trips. I wouldn’t enter another country until 1995 when I was almost 38.

By then, Mom and Dad were well into retirement. Because they had saved and invested well, they enjoyed a comfortable retirement. They traveled two or three times a year. For several years, they became snowbirds. They’d haul their travel trailer to Florida during January and February. They established a routine where they’d stay at a state park for a couple of weeks and take day trips, then move to a park in another part of the state and spend two weeks there, etc.

They began taking expedition cruises on small ships. During the 90s, a cruise line called Clipper Cruises operated a few small ships that accommodated around 130 passengers. They were nothing like the large cruise ships with casinos, pools, spas, multiple dining rooms, onboard entertainment, etc. These cruises focused on exploring local, natural sites that larger cruise ships couldn’t reach. They took at least a dozen of these cruises.

They invited my then-partner David and me to join them on a cruise in January 1995. It began in Curacao, stopped in Bonaire, Tobago, Venezuela, and ended in Trinidad. It was a memorable and enjoyable trip! The ship traveled up the Oronoco River to central Venezuela, where we hiked in a rainforest and took a small plane ride past Angel Falls. When we arrived in Trinidad, the Silver Stars Steel Band was playing on the pier. I was already interested in steelpan music, so that was a real treat.

In 1998, I traveled to Taipei, Taiwan to teach a training class to Intel suppliers. I had mornings free, so I visited the National Palace Museum, the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine, and Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall and Square. Taipei was interesting and enjoyable. Plus, I got to fly in Business Class! It was so much more enjoyable than Coach. At the end of the 12-hour flight, I didn’t want it to end!

I took three more trips to Asia during my 17½-year tenure with Intel: Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Chengdu, China. They were all fascinating and I stayed in some of the nicest hotels I’ve ever experienced. They were inexpensive by American standards and the food was incredible.

One of the greatest benefits of working at Intel was an 8-week sabbatical every seven years. During my first sabbatical in 2003, at 46, I went backpacking for four days in Yosemite National Park, spent a week in Provincetown, Massachusetts (a popular gay vacation spot), and visited Europe for the first time on my first Atlantis gay cruise. That 7-day cruise started and ended in Barcelona, with stops in Nice, Rome, Naples, Mallorca, and Ibiza. Between the week in Provincetown and the gay cruise, I certainly had my eyes opened and horizons expanded in terms of all-gay vacations!

Over the next 20 years, I took 13 Atlantis cruises, all but the first two with Jeff. I added 23 countries to the list of places I’ve been thanks to those cruises. Atlantis also offered all-gay, all-inclusive resort vacations in Mexico. Jeff and I attended 12 in Puerto Vallarta and two in Cancun. The week in Puerto Vallarta became an annual tradition. The resort was ideal, and we made many friends we looked forward to seeing each year. Altantis stopped offering the PV vacation in 2019, for reasons that were never communicated and I’ll never understand.

If you’ve only been on straight cruises, it’s hard to describe the difference. The entertainment is different, the atmosphere is different, and the dances/costume parties are wilder. Plus, it's nice to be with 2,000 or more other gay people. For some people, it’s the only time they can truly be themselves.

That said, I’m looking forward to traveling back to some of the countries I've visited to discover more. I want to discover inland places where cruise ships don’t go and spend more time getting to know a place better. In 2025 and 2026, Jeff and I are planning to do this kind of extended travel.

I’m thankful to have visited all the places I’ve been, but I regret that I didn’t start traveling internationally sooner.

I have visited every state except Montana, North Dakota, and Nebraska. I have barely been to New Hampshire, Vermont, Kansas, and Idaho – usually only driving across a corner of the state. I plan to return to see more.

 Countries and territories I have visited (as of late 2024):

Canada	Curacao	Monaco	Tunisia
Mexico	Bonaire	Vatican City	French Polynesia
Honduras	Argentina	Malta	Australia
Costa Rica	Uruguay	Greece	New Zealand
Panama	Brazil	France	Hong Kong
Colombia	The Bahamas	Spain	Taiwan
Venezuela	England	Portugal	China
Trinidad & Tobago	The Netherlands	Italy	Japan

I visited Germany long enough to change planes in Munich.

I have sailed within the boundary of Turkey but have not set foot on land.

I was raised Presbyterian. As I mentioned elsewhere, my father was Catholic and my mother was Presbyterian. Although the Catholic church requires its members who marry outside the faith to raise their children in the Catholic church, Mom took me to Covenant Presbyterian Church with her. During the six years we lived in Xenia, we attended First United Presbyterian Church.

When we returned to Springfield, we rejoined Covenant. I was quite active in the church. My friend Bruce Wilson and I organized the church’s collection of audiovisual equipment and media and ran its AV operation while we were in high school. We served a two-year term on the church’s Board of Deacons, which was unusual for high school kids.

I played in the youth handbell choir and directed it during my senior year.

The church was a large, majestic building on the north edge of downtown Springfield. It was one of the most prominent churches in Springfield. Many of the city’s elite people belonged to the church, even if they only showed up at Christmas and Easter.

Sunday services were quite a theatrical production. The church had a massive pipe organ, and the organist was impressively talented. Each service began with a regal procession of the pastor(s), the choir, and someone carrying a cross, while the organ belted out the opening hymn and everyone sang. Everything about the service was choreographed and smoothly executed. It was religious theatre at its best.

For all the pomp and ceremony, most people who attended didn’t take their religion too seriously. Covenant was not a hard-core evangelical fire-and-brimstone kind of church. There were never alter calls (I didn’t even know what an alter call was until later) or talk about being “saved.” It was rather lightweight and moderate-to-liberal. Most parishioners were intelligent middle-class people. The sermons rarely focused on the evils of sin. They were intellectual, philosophical meanderings I could never follow from start to finish, try as I may. It all meant nothing, but at least people could say they went to church that Sunday.

Up through high school, I never thought much about why we belonged to a church. I attended every Sunday. It was just something we did. I didn’t think much about other religions, even though I lived in a multi-denominational household and had a few Jewish friends.

When I moved to Columbus to attend The Ohio State University, I didn’t go to church. I’d go to Covenant with Mom whenever I went home for the weekend or during the Holidays, but that was all. I realized I didn’t miss it.

During my junior year, an acquaintance I knew from a concert band asked if he could talk with me. He seemed like a nice, friendly guy so I agreed. Long story short, he asked if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. I considered myself a Christian since I regularly attended a Christian church growing up. But according to him, there was more to it than that. To be “saved” and make it into heaven, I had to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior in some act of deliberate, deep personal commitment. But I said yes, we prayed, and from that point on I believed I was a “born again” Christian. I still didn’t attend church in Columbus.

By coincidence (or maybe not), this was around the same time I was coming to terms with being gay. I figured that if God created me this way and was willing to offer me eternal life if I accepted Jesus, then he must have no problem with me being gay.

When I moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 1984, I knew nobody. When I looked for opportunities to meet other gay people, I discovered a Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) congregation in Rockville. MCC is a denomination that ministers primarily to LGBT people, although all are welcome. I decided to check it out.

They met on Sunday evenings in a Unitarian Church. The congregation was tiny. They only set out 12 chairs and not all were filled. An inexperienced part-time pastor led the service. It was a far cry from Covenant Presbyterian Church. It was underwhelming, to say the least. I had no interest in returning. After the service, I chatted with a handsome man named Ken in the parking lot. When we finished talking and I walked to my car, I realized I still had a hymnal in my hand. The pastor had already locked the church and left. So I decided to attend one more time to return the hymnal. I continued attending MCC Rockville for the next four years.

During those four years, the church grew. I met some nice people who became friends. After I began my relationship with David in 1987, we attended together for a while. When I moved in with him in Falls Church, that meant a longer drive to the church. After a while, we stopped going. I have not belonged to a church since. Again, I realized I didn’t miss it.

For many years, I questioned the core premise of Christianity: if you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you’ll have eternal life. Of course, that implies the opposite: if you don’t accept Jesus, you won’t have eternal life and you’ll spend eternity in hell.

It didn’t seem reasonable that people of all other religions in the world stood no chance of getting into heaven.

It didn’t seem reasonable that people who spread hatred, lie, cheat, steal, commit crimes, etc. would still get into heaven if they’ve been “saved,” while millions of good people would not. In other words, once you have your “ticket to Heaven,” you can do whatever you want.

I came to believe there is no Hell and no Satan. It’s a boogieman created by religions to stoke fear in people and persuade them to conform to their teachings.

I came to believe that our souls live many lives. After we die, our souls return to Heaven, or “the other side” or “the universe” or whatever you want to call it. After a while, we reincarnate and live another life. The cycle repeats many times.

I realized that belief shoots down the whole “personal savior / eternal life” thing.

I also realized that all religions are man-made institutions. As such, they are inherently flawed. None can claim to be the one true religion.

I believe in a higher power. But I don’t believe the higher power cares whether we construct beautiful places of worship and gather once a week to sing hymns, recite unison prayers, and listen to some human being’s sermon. The higher power doesn’t care what foods we eat or don’t eat or what other daily, weekly, or seasonal rituals we perform. If anything, the higher power cares how we treat each other, how we treat animals, and how we care for the planet. As a species, we’re doing a pretty shitty job.

Many of the worst atrocities in our history were committed by churches and people acting in the name of their religion.

This is not to say all religions or all churches are evil, nor are the people who believe in them. Churches and their members do many good works too. If you find fulfillment in belonging to a particular faith, then by all means, practice that faith. Who am I to judge? I don’t claim my religious beliefs (that is, none) are more “right” than anyone else’s. Maybe I’m full of shit. I think we’re all wrong about many things more than we’re willing to admit.

One thing I’ve learned is not to give advice unless I’m asked for it. And I’m rarely asked for it, which is supremely disappointing. But looking back on my life, there are times when I could have benefitted from asking others for advice, which I rarely did.

So rather than framing this chapter as advice, I’ll share some things I’ve learned. Some of these are things I did well. Others are things I learned because I could have done better or I missed an opportunity. Some may be useful to you, others may not. But in any case, it will give you a window into my values and beliefs.

 

Save at least 10% of your income

When I started my first job, I opted to have 10% of my paycheck withheld and deposited into a 401(K) retirement account. That is one of the smartest things I have done. My parents always stressed the value of saving for retirement. By the time I graduated from college, my parents were retired for over eight years. I saw the value in this advice. They were extremely frugal and never had much discretionary income, but they saved well for retirement.

Whenever I could increase the percentage of my pay withheld for retirement, I did. The same went for participating in the Intel Stock Purchase Plan. I always maxed out my contributions. I saved 22% of my income during my last few years of working, which allowed me to retire early at 56.

Along the way, I educated myself about investing. I subscribed to Money magazine (which no longer exists) and looked for other opportunities to learn about investing. A few years after I started working at Intel, I hired a financial planner. She introduced me to other investments besides stock mutual funds and gave me broader perspectives.

 

Good communication is the ultimate transferrable skill

This includes both written and verbal communication skills. No matter what you do in your career or personal life, you’ll do it better with good communication skills.

I was always conscientious about writing well. I wasn't a professional writer or author, but I wrote emails and documents with correctly spelled words and complete sentences. In today’s work environment, people will read other people’s emails and documents more than they will hear them speak. I was aware that everything I produced represented me, my intelligence, and my attention to quality and detail.

Verbal communication skills are equally important. This is true for all jobs, not just those that involve public speaking or training. Even in day-to-day meetings, job interviews, speaking at city council meetings, introducing your band’s songs to an audience, or anything else – the better you speak, the more successful you will be.

I never had a fear of public speaking. But once, I had the opportunity to deliver a keynote speech at my site’s annual diversity awards banquet. I thought I gave a great speech until I watched the video recording afterward. I was stunned at how often I said, “ummm...,” “so,” “you know,” and other noise words. My speech went on too long and I tried to make too many points. After all, this was my one chance, so I felt I had to cram everything I wanted to say into that speech.

I joined a Toastmasters club at Intel. It was one of the best things I have done for my personal development. Learning to be a more concise, polished speaker also made me a better writer.

 

Have a mentor – preferably several

I’ve always been reluctant to ask for help or advice. I now realize my career and my life would have been better if I had.

I resisted getting a mentor earlier in my career because I needed to remain closeted at work. Having a mentor involves forming a personal relationship to build connection and trust. So I kept to myself.

A mentor doesn’t need to be formally identified as such. A mentor is a role model or someone you can turn to for advice. Someone described having several mentors as having a personal board of directors.

 

Work to live, not the other way around

I’ve been pretty good about work-life balance. My friends, groups I belonged to, and music usually gave me plenty to engage with outside of work.

For me, being a software engineer was interesting, I did it well enough, and it paid well. But it wasn’t my biggest passion. Music was (and is). My involvement with music kept work from taking over my entire life and identity.

Over the past decade, I’ve learned a lot about how to have a happy retirement and how to transition from work to leisure. I’ve observed that people who lived for their careers had a harder time dealing with retirement. Their job title was their identity.

This quote from Brian Dyson, former CEO of Coca-Cola, resonates with me.

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them Work, Family, Health, Friends, and Spirit … and you’re keeping all these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. It will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.

 

Travel sooner and more often

I wish I had traveled more when I was a young adult. In particular, I wish I had traveled outside the United States sooner. In my 30s, I had friends who traveled to Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. That seemed too big and expensive at the time. Now I wish I had.

Besides seeing specular things, travel has broadened my perspectives. I’ve learned that simply being in a new place has a more lasting impact on me than seeing famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or the Vatican. I enjoy seeing and feeling how other people live. Seeing the art in a local museum or enjoying a meal at a local restaurant lets me experience that society’s culture and way of life. The different architecture and modes of transportation leave an impression on me. That’s more impactful to me than seeing old cathedrals, castles, and fortresses. History is important, but so is understanding and appreciating the world today.

Aside from all that, when I was younger I had more energy. I could better tolerate long airplane rides, heavier luggage, and cheaper accommodations. I have now discovered the benefits of traveling lighter, so that helps.

 

Work constantly on self-improvement

I’ve read many books about happiness, maintaining a positive attitude, and setting goals. I helped myself to a lot of self-help. Dale Carnegie’s books and course, which I took during my early years at Intel, made a positive difference in my life.

Having said that, it’s possible to overdo it. Many seminars and courses promise to offer the keys to a happy, satisfying, prosperous life – for a hefty price. I’ve always been wary of those.

Happiness is a choice. Most people are as happy as they decide to be. That doesn’t mean I feel happy every day, all the time. But I try to appreciate all I have and feel good about myself. Optimism, gratitude, and striving to improve whatever I can have gone a long way, both for myself and my world.

 

I am responsible for everything in my life

Plenty of things have happened (and will happen) to me that aren't my fault. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t do any good to blame anyone else. I may not have been responsible for what happened, but I’m responsible for dealing with it.

As I said above, I’m responsible for my happiness. No one else is, nor am I responsible for other people’s happiness. Certainly, I should do nothing intentionally to cause other people unhappiness. But ultimately, their happiness is up to them and not me.

One time at work, the guy in the cubicle next to me had a sign posted on his wall. I thought it contained a lot of wisdom, so I made a copy of it.

 

I Am Responsible

 

I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my activities.

I am responsible for my choices, decisions, and actions.

I am responsible for the fulfillment of my desires.

I am responsible for the beliefs I hold and the values by which I live.

I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

I am responsible for my choice of companions.

I am responsible for how I deal with people.

I am responsible for what I do about my feelings and emotions.

I am responsible for my happiness.

I am responsible for my life and well-being.

Thanks for reading this far!

As of today, December 30, 2024, I’m calling this autobiography good for now.

At 67, I certainly have more life ahead of me. I hope so, anyway! We never know how many more days we have. At some point, I’ll probably return and add more to this autobiography.

2025 and 2026 promise to be exciting. Jeff and I have agreed to have no dogs for two years and to use that time for extended slower travel. I aim to spend more time in select places better to understand the local culture and way of life. Rather than take a one or two-week trip and cram as much sightseeing into the itinerary as possible, I want to travel for six to eight weeks and spend several days in each place.

Jeff and I discuss the possibility of living outside the United States. It’s hard to know how much damage Trump will do to our democracy during his second term, but it doesn’t look good. If his first term is any indication, it will be worse than we imagine. We fear that some of our rights may be removed. Society already seems like it’s becoming less tolerant of LGBTQ people, and minorities in general. And there’s no escaping the maniacal gun culture that’s so prominent in our society. So some of our travels will be to places we might consider living if the situation in the US gets bad enough.

Aside from what we see and experience during our upcoming travels, I hope it provides rejuvenation and inspiration. Maybe I’ll come up with some new ideas for books. Maybe I’ll gain clarity on what I’d like to do with the rest of my life. I’ll be 70 when these two years of travel conclude.

I’ll probably add more chapters to this autobiography and perhaps more content on TheDaveHughes.com. I may start a blog or Substack to document our travels. Stay tuned! There will be more to come.