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.
She’s survived another summer in the Valley of the Sun. Living life on the lam.
Climbing walls and trees. Stalking birds, lizards, and rodents. Dodging haboobs, monsoons, and ICE agents. Ducking in and out of covered patios … sleeping on weathered blue cushions melting into wicker chairs outside our front door.
Poly is her given name. Given by me to her. No doubt, she has other assumed names from other presumed cat lovers in our Polynesian Paradise condo community.
I hardly consider her a stray anymore, because we are three years into our relationship … our parlor game of fancy treats followed by quick goodbyes.
In 2022, she wouldn’t get close enough to touch. Tom and I left kibble outside our door in the same chipped dish you see here. She ate quickly, then darted off … back into her Sonoran neverland.
But in 2025 we have reached a deeper level of closeness, intimacy, love perhaps. Maybe she’s been reading the news and needs comforting. I know I do.
Every morning around 6, Tom or I open the security door and look for her. Nine out of ten days, she hops down from that day’s pre-selected chair, meows as she glides and stretches on the mat in our foyer.
She trails around our legs, marks our shoes and furniture with the scent of her furry face, and shimmies up and down as Tom or I (we take turns) prepare her dish of Sheba cuts in gravy with sustainable salmon.
The frequency and volume of meows increase as the dish comes close to the floor. Poly purrs loudly, then polishes that off in less than a minute. Her eyes sparkle with gratitude.
Lately, she’s been staying longer after her meal. Sometimes returning later in the morning or evening for a second round of treats. Dry savory salmon-flavor Temptations for the cat that deserves the best.
On September 1, at 11:13 a.m., Poly allowed me to sit on the floor and give her love. I patted her head, back, and tail as we talked about her morning … our day.
Then, I placed brunch before her and captured this kitty-calendar portrait of Poly, our cagey Sonoran friend, modeling in the kitchen on our new, natural oak flooring.
After she consumed her meal and licked her paws, she glided and sniffed through our bedroom, den, and sunroom.
Poly then departed through the front door, left ajar for her safe departure (she is a free spirit, after all!) back into the wild of intense sun, hissing sprinklers, spiky cacti, and random critters (animals and humans) … all of us living each day, giving and taking what we can, embracing or deflecting each moment as it comes.
On August 25, 1975–fifty years, five decades, twenty-five pounds thinner, and half a century ago–I was a long-haired, idealistic college freshman hustling across campus in the rain.
It was my first day of classes at the University of Missouri in Columbia. (My mother took this photo during college break a year later.)
This naive, relatively-shy-but-often-fun-and-exuberant eighteen-year-old boy (he was not yet a young man but was an aspiring pre-journalism major) knew little about the world or himself.
But he was determined to find his way one hundred-and-twenty-five miles away from his parents and childhood home in the St. Louis suburbs.
Mom and Dad paid for my tuition, books, and room and board in Hatch Hall on campus. I vaguely recall the total bill was less than one thousand dollars per semester.
Looking back, I think I may have spent half that amount on frivolous expenses like pizza, sub sandwiches, and beer.
That money came out of my pocket. From what I earned and saved during the summer of ’75 as a rollercoaster operator at Six Flags. But I could always count on care packages and frequent small checks, which Mom sent in the mail.
John was my roommate freshman year on the fifth floor of Hatch Hall. We were good buddies, close friends from the late 1960s when we were junior high classmates.
Though we had different career aspirations which dictated non-intersecting class schedules (John was pre-med), we were inseparable in many ways from August 1975 until May 1976.
There wasn’t much to our room. Minimal clothes. Primitive, uncomfortable desks and chairs. Single beds and random posters on opposite walls.
John brought his stereo, turntable and speakers. I brought a small black-and-white TV and popcorn popper. I recall us convincing our parents to split the cost of a mini fridge.
Wearing tube socks and denim cutoffs like all the other guys, we tossed Frisbees in the quad under the columns and played tennis across the street from our dorm. Through it all, we made friends of all sorts who lived up and down our hall and across campus.
After a full week of mostly boring, required classes, fall Friday nights included parties at Hinkson Creek (an abandoned quarry mine close to our dorm) where all the kids drank and many swam.
Football Saturdays in the fall of ’75 were fun, rooting for the Tigers in the student section. More often than not, the final score spelled defeat.
We wandered home to our dorm rooms aimlessly to sleep off the beer and prepare for Saturday nights … disco dancing to Donna Summer and roller keggars (drinking more beer while roller skating).
I remember zooming around a rickety indoor skating rink, dodging wooden pillars and puddles of beer. What a mess and what a stupid idea … and I didn’t even like the taste of beer!
By this time, John had a steady girlfriend … Sharon. (They met soon after John and his family moved to the northern St. Louis suburbs before his senior year of high school.) Sharon attended a different in-state college in Kirksville, Missouri.
I dated lots of girls my freshman year … but never for long. I was trying to live up to some ridiculous notion of masculinity that never felt like the true me.
The one exception was Carol. We were close in high school. She was sweet. That relationship lasted into college, but it quickly fizzled. I needed my freedom and time to learn who I would become.
Operating on a protected, fearful level, I remember feeling attracted to many of the cute boys in my classes and at Hatch Hall. But my gay identity and secret desires lived only in my subconscious.
I remember feeling anxious and alone. Constantly.
It would be three years before I would meet Jean at Mizzou. We were both Journalism students. There were sparks between us that developed into love and marriage in 1980 after she graduated.
Underneath it all, the attraction I felt for men grew stronger. But without a healthy avenue for my personal discovery, my depression deepened.
The reality is that from 1975 through 1979–my college years–there was no productive way for me to experiment with my sexuality and date other men. Whatever happened had to come under the cover of darkness.
***
If we live long enough, time, age, mistakes, and transformation … like the constant tumbling of water over rocks … can produce smoother edges and actual wisdom.
In spite of living a closeted, unfulfilled sexual life in my college years, I got a good education at the University of Missouri. I earned my Bachelor of Journalism degree in 1979. It opened many doors for me professionally.
The good news is I eventually found my way personally in my thirties and forties. Tom and I have been together twenty-nine years. I’m proud of the trusting, loving relationship we have created together.
There is irony in all of this. While he was a freshman trying to find his way–at the University of Iowa in Iowa City in August of 1975–I was doing the same a few hundred miles south of him.
We wouldn’t meet until we were thirty-nine … twenty-one years later … but that would also happen in the midwestern humidity of August.
***
Postscript: Next month, Tom will join me on a trip to St. Louis. We will attend my fiftieth high schoolreunion, where I will reconnect with a few hundred of my Affton High School classmates … the class of ’75 … most of whom I haven’t seen for at least thirty years.
My college roommate–John–and his wife Sharon will also join us. Somehow, over fifty years, five decades and more than half a century–we have sustained our friendship across the miles and supported each other in the important moments.
Raising children … and, in their case, grandchildren. Being there for my mother’s funeral at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in 2013. Coming to Chicago for my marriage to Tom in September 2014.
Each time we see each other (now it’s mostly winter visits here in Arizona), John and I are able to pick up where we left off.
Even though our lives have grown and changed in innumerable ways, we have maintained a mutual sense of love, respect, and continuity.
If you read this on August 18, 19, or 20, it is likely I will be here, hiking with my husband at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff, Arizona. (I captured this photo in late July 2023.) Or relaxing elsewhere at approximately 7,000 feet.
When we moved to Arizona eight years ago, I noticed most residents of the Grand Canyon State shorten the name of this town to Flag … an affectionate term, which locals (that now includes me) drop into conversation, before or after they come to escape Phoenix summer heat and inhale pine-scented mountain air (when there are no wildfires nearby).
In the winter, the town attracts a different crowd … skiers. Nearby Snow Bowl ascends to 11,500 feet at the top of Arizona. It is a winter wonderland from December through April or whenever there is snow.
Year-round, Flag is home to Northern Arizona University. So this dog-friendly town has a young, diverse, energetic vibe that includes a fascinating mix of bohemian free spirits, western practicality, and picturesque views of the San Francisco Peaks.
Best of all, it’s accessible from Phoenix via a dramatic climb along I-17 that normally takes just over two hours by car.
You pass thousands of saguaros that stand guard over jaw-dropping landscapes.
They suddenly vanish near a town called Bumblebee to reveal high desert plants and ponderosa pines.
Up in Flag, storms roll in, over, and around the San Francisco Peaks in every season. Unannounced. That natural spontaneity appeals to me, too.
If it didn’t snow in Flag, I could see us living here. Instead, we opt to visit for a few days each summer.
However, if the summers keep getting hotter in Phoenix, we may find ourselves spending larger blocks of time here.
Whenever Tom and I visit Flag, it ignites my sense of artistry. So much so that I have written previous essays here, as well as two or three short pieces of unpublished fiction (that include Flag characters).
They exist on my laptop in various stages of development, waiting for additional inspiration.
Maybe being “up” here again in the thinner air (Flag’s altitude is 6,910 feet as compared with Phoenix at 1,086 feet) will captivate my creativity once again.
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.
I wrote most of my first book ten years ago. I was consumed by the project … in a purely positive way. Connecting the dots of grief and my family’s writing DNA spurred my energy and creativity.
As late summer 2015 approached, my daily creative output accelerated. Chapter after chapter emerged From Fertile Ground.
We didn’t have a printer at home but lived near a FedEx store. Whenever I completed a new, sizeable chunk of my manuscript, Tom and I walked there to print the updated version. Holding my evolving story in hand gave me a sense of pride and tangible proof of progress.
Now, in late summer 2025, I find myself at a vastly different place in the arc of my literary life. As I look back over the past decade, I feel a tremendous sense of creative accomplishment. … knowing I have produced four memoirs, a book of poetry, three librettos, a litany of essays, and a memoir writing workshop.
Yet I feel adrift.
Part of it is an energy thing … or, more accurately, a focus thing … or, even more pointedly, “maybe-this-is-what-it-means-to-be-68-and-a-compassionate-human-being-and-living-in-the-United-States” thing.
Okay, I’m not being totally transparent. I’m trying to avoid the trauma in our country. I’ve turned off the news. My husband and I are helping each other stay sane. In addition, I have been developing occasional pieces of flash fiction and nonfiction essays for literary contests.
I also have written several chapters for a “how to write a compelling memoir” manuscript. And there is another writing opportunity that is percolating … but it’s premature for me to spill those beans.
Anyway, I don’t feel all that jazzed about any of it … at least not on the scale of my first-born book in 2015. The one I felt like I was meant to write.
Is it weird that I’m getting more energy from writing this blogpost than the projects I mentioned a few paragraphs above? Probably not, because I’ve always enjoyed the raw, immediate-but-winding personal connection that comes with this territory … with this writing forum.
So that’s where I am right now … treading late summer metaphorical waters in the desert … bobbing along in a sea of episodic literary possibilities … exercising four or five times a week to keep my heart strong … taking more naps than I used to … longing for the next big wave of creative energy … gazing back to the distant shoreline of past successes and bittersweet memories … squinting ahead (like many of you) into nasty flames of deception, betrayal, and planned confusion that threaten my country’s future.
In the latter half of July, Scottsdale transforms into a forgotten destination for many, who escape triple digits. But this blistering period is my refuge. A few clicks on the calendar beyond another birthday. A quiet space between the high of choral performances and planning for upcoming literary endeavors.
At sixty-eight now, I need this time to recharge and replenish. To submerge body and soul in Chaparral Pool’s cooling waters. To pause for a brief stroll and acknowledge that the rugged scenery and tangerine sunsets where I live are pretty cool, even when summer’s forecast and reality are ridiculously hot.
Wednesday night–in this July–actual raindrops fell from the Arizona sky. They pinged–hypnotic, soothing, and steady–on the roof of our metal carport.
Our mini monsoon was enough to wash away the dust and scrub the air, but not Thursday’s dastardly news of puffy politicians selling unfortunate souls down the river.
Away from the madness, Poly found a dry patch of concrete beyond the storm and platitudes. She rolled side to side, then flicked her tail, as if to say:
“I may be a stray, but I’m not stupid. I know how to get by. I know when to stop by your door. When to come in out the heat. Stick with me. You and I are survivors in this and every July.”
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.
Mark Johnson Stories 