If we live long enough and look beyond the palms, we see the arc of our lives and the hint of a rainbow. We remember where we came from. Who we were. Who we are. How far we’ve come. Our best intentions. Our mistakes. Our progress. Our loves. Our losses. Our lessons learned. The connecting tissue that has made us who we are. All of it.
***
Fifty years ago, in June 1975, I graduated from Affton High School in south suburban St. Louis.
Tom and I travel back to St. Louis tomorrow for a reunion with my class of 1975 mates over the weekend.
I’m excited to see old friends. I also expect a few bittersweet moments.
Either way, the journalist inside me is sure to return with a story or two.
Because I am a writer. That’s not what I do. That’s who I am.
Ollie hated swimming lessons. But it was summer, and he promised his mother Jill that he would commit to one structured activity while school was out.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning in June and July, Ollie packed his swim trunks, towel, and goggles begrudgingly. At 8:55, his older sister Lydia, fresh from earning her driver’s license, dropped him at the curb outside Chaparral Pool.
Ollie wasn’t afraid of the water or physical activity. What bothered him was getting naked in front of the other middle school boys and showering near them when their lesson was over.
To soothe his anxiety, Ollie hatched a plan. He decided to stash one of his tiny butterfly drawings—pink wings, beady red eyes, black antenna, and blue thorax on a white sticky note—in his bag. Then, when he arrived at the pool, he would post it discreetly inside locker 8.
An hour later, when he returned to the locker room after class, he twirled the dial on his lock—16 then 8 then 32—popped open the latch and rediscovered his prized artwork hanging there. This ritual distracted him as he peeled off his wet royal blue trunks, then scampered to the nearest open shower stall.
***
Ollie’s meticulous butterfly drawings covered his desk at home. Each one was unique in size, color, and configuration, but all were Ollie’s creations.
Before dinner one night in late May, Jill passed Ollie’s bedroom door. She knocked, then peeked in to check on her son and his homework progress. Before she left, she declared, “I love your drawings, Ollie! What do you love most about butterflies?”
Caught off guard, Ollie shrugged. He couldn’t find the precise words.
Was it their fragility? Their freedom? Their gentility? Their rare ability to transform from a cocoon and flit about—unfettered—floating above a weighty world that discouraged everyone around him?
Or simply that Ollie’s preoccupation with his art quieted his nerves even as he felt excitement stir in his growing penis?
***
On July’s last Thursday after Ollie’s final swimming class, he showered quickly to avoid contact with Jake. Weeks before, he made fun of Ollie’s oversized beach towel. It featured a canary yellow smiling sun wearing funky sunglasses.
“Did your mommy buy that big, beautiful towel for you, Ollie?” Jake chided.
What would Jake say if he found my butterfly tucked inside my locker door? Ollie wondered.
Undeterred, Ollie wiggled into his gym shorts, threw on his Arizona Diamondbacks jersey, slipped into his flipflops, and folded his belongings in his bag.
Rather than plucking his prized butterfly drawing from locker 8 and bringing it home to cluster with his other creations, Ollie left it hanging there. He left it clinging inside the metal wall for unknown days, weeks, or years.
Ollie left his art—his reassuring beauty—for another boy who might one day appear and appreciate it. For another boy who might feel threatened by a world of ominous clouds that surrounded him and what he didn’t yet understand about himself.
***
Lately, I have been writing short fiction, exploring and developing stories with a social statement that fit within the realm of my reality. It helps me feel I am making a small difference in this country I live in and still love … even as the madness within and outside our borders continues to spin out of control.
Visual prompts (like this photo I captured in July at my community pool in Scottsdale, Arizona) open an alternative world of creative possibilities for me. This is a technique I recommend to participants in my memoir writing workshops. So, in this instance, you might say I am wearing several hats … student, teacher, writer, gay man, concerned citizen.
I’d love to know what you think of this story. How does it make you feel? As always, I appreciate your insights and feedback.
In my memoirs, I’ve written about discovering and embracing my gayness later in life … remembering that horrific feeling of squashing my true self to fit into a prescribed notion of “all-American” masculinity.
I worry about the Ollies in the United States … the poets, artists, visionaries … the young, emerging, gay, lesbian and trans members of our society … all who face growing up in our country that is turning a blind eye toward anyone who isn’t a straight, white, MAGA male.
On June 2, 2025–as Tom and I returned to Arizona on an American Airlines flight after a blissful five days with family in the Chicago area–I closed my eyes in the semi-comfort of my aisle seat.
I leaned into my husband and said, “It feels good to be heading home.” I was referring to Scottsdale, Arizona. That is where we live … in a kitschy, mid-century condo community. It has been our home now for nearly eight years.
I’m not sure this is the life I dreamed of as a youngster in St. Louis. Or a middle-aged-man in the Chicago suburbs, who earned a good wage, raised two sons, and was fortunate enough to meet a man I would love and one day marry.
Let’s just say it is a warmer, lighter, literary life, which I had hoped for but didn’t imagine I would realize.
***
On June 30, 2017, we had just sold our three-bedroom home in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Handed over the keys to a pleasant couple and their young son.
As Tom and I approached our sixtieth birthday, we were excited about the prospects of creating a new life in the Grand Canyon State. But Illinois still felt like home.
Looking back, I suppose I underestimated the significance of this change … the loss of familiarity even when it wasn’t necessarily positive and growth producing.
If you follow me, you know how difficult our shared sixtieth birthday would be. If not, you should read about our harrowing journey and personal detour in St. Louis. It was great fodder for my third book, An Unobstructed View.
Once we finally arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona, on July 12, 2017, we both needed time to recuperate.
Our two-bedroom condo (which had once been Tom’s grandparents’ home starting in the early 1970s) was comfortable enough … especially after our new air conditioning unit, windows, and exterior doors were installed.
But we decided not to make too many dramatic interior changes right away. That really wasn’t a conscious decision as much as a reasonable one.
Soon we made new friends in our community: through our yoga class in Scottsdale and my chorus connections in Phoenix. With time there were other creative ripples before, during and after Covid.
We each wrote and published books. I wrote three librettos for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus. Tom’s film classes materialized and compounded magically. Spurred by his passion for classic cinema and a library contact from our friend Glenn, that seed has grown into a legitimate, bountiful following.
Somewhere in that mix, we crossed over the tipping point of flux … knowing that we had truly found our new home. Feeling that we had become full-fledged, full-time Arizona residents and advocates.
And now–in June 2025, eight years after we said goodbye to our first home together and spent the past three months painting and remodeling–the interior of our Arizona home is finally a reflection of the color, comfort, and humanity we imagined.
It is–like we are–fully transformed. It is our desert lodge with a decent splash of soft apricot, western warmth, and comfy chairs.
It is our refuge with and without family and friends. It is our nesting place away from triple-digit heat and authoritarian regimes.
“Are you guys going to the protests this Saturday?” Nick wondered last Wednesday via a text.
“No. We aren’t planning to. It’s just too hot,” I responded to my son.
But as the week wore on, I began to regain my energy following three phenomenal concerts with my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus pals.
On Friday, I reconsidered Nick’s question. I told him Tom and I would do it. A few of our chorus friends wanted to join us too at a No Kings protest in Scottsdale.
I should tell you that I don’t consider myself an activist, though I have marched for various causes on several occasions in my life. I prefer to share my voice and perspective through my writing.
But I also recognize the dire state of our democracy. I decided if my World War II veteran father (he defended democracy in Europe with the allied forces during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944) could endure frozen feet in foxholes with his buddies and risk his life as an army sergeant, I could certainly endure the 90-plus desert temperatures in Arizona for two hours, wave my American flag and “We the People” sign, and join forces with family and friends to raise my voice. To make sure it was heard.
So, Saturday came, and we did it … Mark, Tom, Nick, Kim, Dougal, George and one to two thousand others represented democracy in Old Town Scottsdale. We were a dot in a map of some five million in the U.S. and abroad who took to the streets in big cities and small towns. All of us deeply concerned.
Locally, it was an inspiring and peaceful No Kings protest consisting of angry but well-behaved women and men. Young and old. A few children with parents and grandparents. Couples. Singles. Straight. Gay. Multi-cultural. Dogs, too. Dare I say diverse?
At one point, Tom and I chatted with a fifty-something mother from San Diego. She was visiting her daughter who lives in Scottsdale. They took turns chanting “No Kings” while cradling their adorable, slightly overwhelmed dachshund.
The dog’s benevolent eyes seemed to say, “what are we all doing here?” All I could do was shrug and smile. There is no explaining all we have endured in this country over the past six months. Not to mention the previous eight or nine years.
A short while later, I turned to discover a man holding a profoundly-funny-and-literary sign. A parody of American poet Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. I imagine Frost would have loved it, if he had been alive and standing beside me.
I asked the man if I could take his picture. I told him it spoke to my wordsmithing sensibilities. He surprised me by saying he was a math guy.
I’ll likely never cross paths with him again. He’ll never know that my book of poetry, A Path I Might Have Missed, was inspired by my love for Robert Frost’s verses. But on June 14, 2025, we stood on the same page … on the same street corner … on the same shared path.
Together–close friends, like-minded acquaintances, and distant strangers–we proclaimed our desire and hope to rescue American democracy from the clutches of fascism.
In my late sixties, I am more aware of what remains in my gas tank.
Not the fuel gauge on our 2012 Hyundai Sonata. I’m talking about the physical and mental energy needed to maneuver life … while keeping a little extra for the seminal moments.
In the span of one week, I am celebrating Kirk’s and Jen’s (my younger son and future-daughter-in-law) engagement with family in Illinois (it already happened June 1) and taking the stage with my chosen Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus family (June 6 and 7 is our raucous Rhinestone Rodeo show) at Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona.
Both are deeply personal and rewarding.
Seeing my thirty-six-year-old son and his future bride beaming and greeting loved ones on the second floor of a popular neighborhood eatery on Chicago’s northwest side touched me. But there was more to it than that.
Because, there was a culmination of lives … past, present, and future.
Like Tom and me, my older son Nick and his girlfriend Anastasia flew in from Arizona for the festivities … and my sister Diane and brother-in-law Steve were there, too.
Though they live in the Chicago area, they each have difficulty managing stairs. Even so, diligently, they found a way to make the climb to a private dining room inside Zia’s Social. One small step at a time for the sake of a milestone moment with family.
There was another significant emotional layer to the event for me.
Jean, my ex, planned the party. Over the past few decades, we have been in the same room just a few times. At my mother’s funeral. At Kirk’s graduation. Our communication has been sparse at best.
But, at this stage of life, it feels life much of the animosity that existed between us after our divorce in 1992 has dissipated. We have both moved on. We have found vastly different lives with our respective husbands. Ironically, both of them are named Tom.
Bottom line, this engagement party was a joyous and healing experience for me … and I suspect others. There will be another one on August 29, 2026, at Kirk’s and Jen’s wedding. Also, in Chicago.
Now that my Tom and I are back in Scottsdale, I have been rehearsing each night this week. Conserving my energy while putting the smoothing touches on our music.
More than thirty of our Arizona friends–many of them straight allies–will be in the audience this weekend. They will fill the seats you see here alongside hundreds of others.
Smiling. Cheering. Laughing. Crying. Phenomenal music has a way of spurring it all. Touching our hearts and souls in ways we … gay or straight … never imagined.
Make no mistake. The nearly 1,500 who attend our shows this weekend will be entertained by our mix of past and present country western hits … coalescing with our brand of giant gay swirls thrown in for good measure.
Naturally, the pink fringe vest and new black boots I’ve bought for the shows … and will be wearing … will be made for more than walking and singing.
They’ll be carrying me through the two-steppin’ choralography … anchoring me on the top riser (through Pink Pony Club, Ya’ll Means All, Texas Hold ‘Em and much more) with love, gratitude, and pride for a week in June 2025 that will always be dear to me.
Our beloved Brokeback Mountain poster–which Tom and I purchased in Evanston, Illinois, more than fifteen years ago–leans against one of our Scottsdale walls. It waits to see which wall it will grace in our newly remodeled condo.
In a natural sense, it produces turmoil in the Northern Hemisphere … growth and beauty laced with intense storms and wild swings in temperatures.
Of course, those meteorological transitions pale when you compare them with the societal turmoil, which I feel daily living in the United States in 2025.
My only recourse is to try to make a difference in my own way: stay visible, protest beside like-minded friends …”Hands OFF our Social Security” … all the while remodeling my home with Tom, singing, writing, and leading my memoir writing workshops. (Twelve aspiring writers are meeting with me later today in the middle of three workshop sessions at the Scottsdale Public Library.)
It’s appropriate that my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus comrades and I will perform an inspiring arrangement of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ at our Rhinestone Rodeo concert on June 6 and 7 at Tempe Center for the Arts.
Because they most definitely are … and you better start swimmin’, or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times, they are a-changin’ …
On to more personal transitions that fly under the radar. It is the grimy stuff of life. A friend’s mother dies. Another grieves the loss of his wife. A third deals with a cancer diagnosis. I will do my best to continue to be there for all of them.
If you live in the Phoenix area, come in from the heat and attend one of our June concerts. We will entertain and energize you … make you smile, laugh, shed a few tears, too … as we lift our voices.
No one can stop me from being who I am … who I love … who I care for … who I sing with.
When Tom and I landed permanently in our Scottsdale condo, it was an odd year.
Odd in a meteorological sense; when we pulled into our carport, it was 112 degrees outside on July 12.
Odd in a traumatic sense; I had suffered a minor heart attack six days before on our 60th birthday.
Odd in a serendipitous sense; the cardiac trauma happened in St. Louis (where I was born) in the middle of our move.
Odd in a numerical sense; it was 2017.
That year, we did our best to settle into our new life. We focused on the most essential items: buying a new air conditioning unit and creating a new healthcare regimen to rehab my heart and restore some sense of normalcy to our lives.
We were two mid-century guys, doing our best to settle into our mid-century condo, happy to have survived a scary personal experience, grateful for the chance to write a new chapter in a space that had been home to Tom’s grandparents (and, in a more limited sense, his parents) years before.
Sadly, by 2017, they were all gone. Even so, we had an important remnant of their lives to keep us grounded. It was our turn to–slowly–make it our own.
Under more normal circumstances (i.e., not enduring a heart attack in the middle of our move), we might have pushed more aggressively to transform our condo. But surviving together superseded remodeling and refreshing.
With time, I regained my strength. Tom and I both began to breathe more easily. When a little thing called Covid arrived in 2020, it prompted us to rethink our space, because–of course–we had more time to stare at our condo walls.
In 2021– it was odd again — we hired a paint crew to turn both bedrooms green and serene. We replaced the carpeting there. Later that year, we remodeled our bathroom.
Now it’s another odd year: 2025. Odd (as well as disturbing) in more ways than I care to enumerate in this essay. Let’s just say it’s the perfect time to wave goodbye to dingy off-white walls and adorn our living room and sunroom with a splash of two new colors.
With all of that as my preamble, I’m in the mood to tease you a little. Guess which two colors on this palette will appear inside our home beginning next week.
When the work is done (and we have replaced the tired grey/blue carpeting in our living room and sun room, too), I think it will feel like we have finally created the Arizona space Tom and I imagined eight years ago in April.
That’s when we put our suburban Chicago home on the market as the daffodils bloomed on another chilly midwestern day.
That’s when we began to pack up our most important possessions in Illinois for a chance to create a new life of unforeseen friends, books, blogs, stories, movies, and memories in the Valley of the Sun.
It’s late Friday afternoon in the desert. The mockingbird outside our backdoor is singing his or her heart out. It’s a tender, hopeful, pre-weekend serenade … a chirpy, lyrical refrain coming from the top of a telephone pole that connects our heavier world of technology and dissonant news and noise.
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring … ever. But especially now.
Case in point: early this afternoon as Tom and I devoured a few remaining slices of sausage and veggie pizza from the night before, a military jet zoomed overhead.
The sudden surge of decibels jarred our nerves. Though we live near a military base at Papago Park, we rarely hear that intense noise. Only an occasional squadron of helicopters arriving or departing.
We are a nation of divided people living on the edge of time, sound, and sensibility. Each day when we climb out of bed, we are aware of the dismantling of institutions we have come to know and respect.
Each day we are threatened by another batch of edicts tossed out the sidedoor by an authoritarian regime bringing shame and constant anxiety to those of us raised to believe in a country that once valued high ideals over low morals.
I don’t pretend to have the answers. But I know silence will kill us.
I won’t pretend to be someone I’m not. Or as I have said frequently to friends lately, “I’m not putting this genie back in a bottle.”
What do I mean? I spent too many years as a teenager and young adult (of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s) denying my true gay identity, subverting my whole self to try to fit into a predominantly straight, suburban culture.
That caused me (and others in my life at the time) tremendous personal pain. And, on a larger scale, denying the truth kept our society from advancing to a higher plain of equality, freedom, and human possibilities.
Yet now our federal (and some of our state and local government officials, too) are attempting to wipe away the contributions and accomplishments of our “diverse” people from websites and history books.
For instance, native code talkers who–by virtue of their distinct language–were instrumental in helping to bring an end to World War II.
Did you know that recently pages on the Arlington National Cemetery website–highlighting the graves of Black and female service members–have been removed?
These and other efforts are designed to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.
How far will this attempt at whitewashing our history go? I don’t pretend to know. But I do know that the best attributes of our diverse culture exist in the past and present and people need to know about these contributions.
My husband Tom, an aficionado of films from the 1960s and 70s, has been leading a film series this winter and spring at the Scottsdale Public Library, titled “Movies That Matter: the 1970s.”
Each Monday afternoon, between 75 and 100 people attend this free series. The audience is mostly white people who love great films.
Last week, Tom screened “Dog Day Afternoon”. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino, the film–based on a true story that occurred in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1970s–chronicles a botched bank robbery in the heat of the summer.
It’s an intense and sometimes funny film early on. Pacino plays Sonny. He’s desperate to get the money his partner needs for a sex change operation. But we don’t know that until more than half the movie has spooled through what once was a movie projector.
It’s a must-see flick. I won’t spoil the outcome if you haven’t seen it. But the most meaningful and important aspect of this story is that 93 people attended. They listened to Tom’s stage-setting intro for historical context. They watched the film, and then they talked about it. Together.
They talked about what it meant. They examined the techniques employed in the film to tell the story effectively. They existed in that space for three hours as a community of people in a shared experience.
I don’t pretend to know all of the political affiliations represented in that room. But I’m certain they left with a greater appreciation for film and how it can shed light on the differences and pressures–like them or not–that have existed in our American society for decades.
Tom delivers his opening remarks at a screening of Dog Day Afternoon at the Scottsdale Public Library on March 17, 2025. Photo by our friend and neighbor Diego.
When you’re living through a full-blown constitutional crisis–and feeling vulnerable–you need to find ways of coping and caring for the ones you love.
So, I bought two of these beaded rainbow wristbands from the Human Rights Campaign for Tom and me to wear.
We are wrist-banding together.
This is a symbolic gesture. I want the world to know that this gay couple isn’t going anywhere, though it is a period in the United States where some would prefer that those of us who are different would go away.
But I–we–remain visible.
As I write this blogpost, I realize it is number 500 … a true milestone for any writer.
When I began blogging in May 2018, I had no illusions of where it might lead.
I simply wanted to give my books and literary voice more room to grow, more visibility.
For that reason, I suppose it is fitting that today I choose to write about my gay identity and continue to exercise personal aspects of my voice … visibly.
In many respects, the life my husband and I lead is not all that different from any couple.
We shop for groceries together. Go to the gym together. Enjoy quiet moments and meals together. Love and nurture each other.
We do our best to support each other and our family members during highs and lows.
We spend time with our friends. They are young and old, straight and gay, black and white.
We love and respect them, and they love and respect us.
I think it’s accurate to say this about our friends: we enrich each other’s lives, no matter our skin color, religious beliefs, cultural perspectives, gender identities, or sexual orientations.
It is a personal jolt to realize–and read on trusted news sources each day–that our differences are under attack and being eroded in my home country … the country I still love.
I don’t think I’m depressed. But I am definitely sad and angry. Definitely grieving. Me and a boatload of others of all backgrounds and persuasions.
There are times when I want to scream from the top of a mountain. “This is my country, too. How dare you try to take that away from me!” But then I wonder, “Is anybody listening?”
So, I bring this here, instead and I type these words in blogpost number 500.
At any rate, thank you for joining me–possibly even enduring me at times–on this blogging journey since May 2018.
As long as I continue to feel I have something important and relevant to say (to shed light on the topics of the day … to celebrate a literary success or the latest Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus performance … to pay tribute to those I love … to tell a funny story about our stray cat Poly … to observe and honor the beauty of nature … to share a vivid, meaningful memory about my childhood … or to pen a poem that is in need of artistic space and oxygen) you will find me here.
I hope you have been informed or entertained and will continue to tag along with me on this organic literary odyssey, wherever it may lead.
As I walked the treadmill at the gym this morning–on Abraham Lincoln’s two-hundred-sixteenth birthday–a weird, dark, and discomforting question swirled through my brain.
What if we–all the diverse people in this country, all the people of color, all the LGBTQ folks–were gone?
Mark Johnson Stories 