Treats come in all sizes and shapes. Chocolate is always welcome, but typically not as intimate or lasting as positive human interaction.
***
Yesterday I completed another memoir writing workshop at the Scottsdale Public Library. It was the fourth such workshop I’ve led over the past twelve months.
I love facilitating these sessions, because it’s a personal way for me to encourage other writers to nurture their creative ideas and momentum.
This one at Mustang Library included twelve writers–nine women and three men–who wrote and shared their extraordinary, humorous, heartful slice-of-life adventures across the table from one another.
During week one of the three-week workshop, I learned a little about each participant. We spent time building trust. As we began to get comfortable as a group, I assured them that the room we occupy is a safe space for sharing their personal experiences through their writing.
By weeks two and three, we developed an esprit de corps. They sent their stories to me in advance. I offered my encouragement and constructive feedback in person in the following session.
Inevitably, there were contemplative moments and a few tears were shed by one writer on Friday.
As she read her story aloud (a touching, nostalgic reminiscence of watching the joy on her mother’s face as she skated across the ice in the 1960s free of her typical parental responsibilities) the flood gates opened suddenly.
I and everyone in the room verbalized their support for this writer. I also offered her a tissue and a pat on the shoulder.
That was just one of a dozen or more seminal moments shared over a three-week period on Friday afternoons.
In a world otherwise ruled by chaos, we were a community of writers banding together, gliding freely above the fray across the ice of our literary pursuits.
***
This morning, I opened my email to discover this early Halloween treat from a creative husband-and-wife team, who participated in the workshop.
“We enjoyed your memoir class so much; due in large part to your enthusiasm, experience and energy! The content was high quality, and the tone you set of trust was palpable… there is no substitute for that among budding creatives. Thank you so much for your time and care; we’ll hope to cross paths in the new year!”
I don’t expect a ringing endorsement for volunteering my time. But I always appreciate feedback whenever it involves helping other writers find their voices inside the secure walls of a library.
It encourages me to keep giving and confirms my suspicion that I have found a meaningful way to make a true difference in the lives of others.
In February 2024, John, Sharon, Tom, and I sat around a half-moon-shaped booth in Phoenix, devouring yummy, syrup-soaked, gluten-free waffles and nursing hot mugs of coffee at Jewel’s Bakery and Cafe.
They had been in town for a church retreat over a three-day weekend and were about to return their rental car to Sky Harbor Airport. Breakfast together was our sendoff before they flew home to St. Louis.
“Oh, did you see Nancy’s post on Facebook? There’s gonna be a Class of ’75, Affton High School, 50th reunion sometime, somewhere next September in St. Louis,” I reported.
“You guys should definitely do it. ” Sharon chimed in. “The four of us should go together! Don’t worry about Tom and me. We’ll keep each other company.”
“Sure. Why not!?” Tom agreed.
“I’m in if you’re in,” John stared directly at me. He and I were close junior and high school pals in Affton, though his family moved north, away to another St. Louis area school district before our senior year.
“Okay,” I concluded. “The journalist inside me is telling me we should go.”
Our scheme–hatched in Phoenix, to be realized more than a year and a half later in St. Louis–was born.
***
The sometime was 5 to 9 p.m. on September 21, 2025. The somewhere? Grant’s Farm, a rambling, forested 281-acre estate in south suburban St. Louis, named for Ulysses S. Grant and owned by the Busch family.
Specifically, our 50th reunion would occur in the Bauernhof Courtyard area there. It’s an old-world community space where–since its opening in 1954–St. Louisans have gathered to sample Anheuser-Busch products, and amble down hallways of vintage horse carriages past Clydesdale stables. It is an iconic St. Louis destination, draped in mid-twentieth-century nostalgia.
With the threat of showers in the air, John, Sharon, Tom and I arrived in the Grant’s Farm parking lot just before 5 p.m. Immediately, I began to spot familiar faces. I hugged Terri and Beth, two classmates I hadn’t seen in decades. We boarded a tram that would transport us through the woods to the Bauernhof. I inhaled the fresh-yet-familiar, dampness of the lush green forest.
The long-awaited immersion into my past Affton High School life–connecting one leg of my past as a seventeen-year-old, long-haired (remember, it was the 1970s), reserved, enterprising, unactualized gay adolescent with the other leg of my present much older, wiser, grayer, gayer, literary self–was about to commence.
When we arrived at the Bauernhof Courtyard entrance, we stepped out of the tram towards an archway. Nancy, our cheerful, detail-minded Class of ’75 organizer, greeted us with hugs.
We formed a line to check in and pick up drink tickets. Affton attendees (in this case, John and me) received name tags bearing our black-and-white high school yearbook photos. Significant others, such as Sharon and Tom, got tags with an image of a cougar beside their names. (The cougar is the Affton High School mascot.)
John and I proceeded through the line with our “cougar spouses” toward the courtyard. A photographer snapped photos as couples and singles entered. In that moment, as I turned to see the line queuing behind me, I spotted someone significant I had hoped to see. Not a fellow student, but a teacher I admired from my high school years. It was Judy Rethwisch, my drama teacher.
The high school version of me would have faded and stepped back, reticent to make a scene or a visible statement. But the confident me–the sixty-eight-year-old gay man with his husband by his side–stepped forward to reconnect with Judy.
“I want you to know what a positive difference you have made in my artistic life,” I smiled and reached forward to hug her. “With you at the helm, I found my peeps in the theatre program at Affton,” I went on. In a flash, I recounted roles I played in productions of Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy under Judy’s dedication and tutelage.
Judy smiled and listened intently as Tom captured a few photos of us locked in conversation. She told me she is still teaching drama. Sixty-one years as an educator. Still vibrant. Still making a difference in the lives of other aspiring actors, musicians, and artists. She asked for my card and told me she is interested in reading one of my books. That was just the beginning of a stream of seminal reunion moments.
I quickly rediscovered a parade of classmates coming and going all around me. Some were fuzzy in my memory. Others, like Jon, more meaningful. He was a good friend in high school, who traveled to Colorado with John and me after our junior year of high school.
Suddenly, I was transported to August 1974. Somehow, the three of us had convinced our parents, that we–one seventeen-year-old and two sixteen-year-old boys–would be safe driving and camping together across country in John’s AMC Javelin, pulling a small trailer.
Yes, we were underage and found someone to buy us lots of Coors beer, which we swilled by the campfire at night. But we survived intact. I recall vividly shoveling down steak and eggs for breakfast in a bar somewhere in Wyoming, while in the corner of the tavern, Richard Nixon, was announcing his resignation on a beat-up black-and-white TV.
Back at the reunion, other male and female classmates trailed by to greet each under the courtyard tent. It featured a beautiful crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the space.
Soon a line formed at a barbeque buffet. We juggled our drinks and grabbed plates, before landing at one end of a long rectangular table Tom and Sharon had secured.
At one point, I turned, and Jeff appeared. He and I were pals, who shared a few classes. We ate together frequently in our high school cafeteria. Honestly, these memories are vague for me. But I remembered his handsome face. It hadn’t changed much, given the fifty-year gap in our connection.
When Jeff introduced his long-time partner Lee to Tom and me, I felt my past and present lives coalesce. Neither Jeff nor I were aware of the other’s sexual orientation in high school. Sadly, that was the norm for 1975 for unrealized, unfulfilled, budding gay adolescents.
But knowing that against the tide of social norms we had each found happiness with our male partners and had independently decided to return to the reunion was physical proof why I had come to the Class of 1975 reunion. I needed to fully reconcile my past closeted self with the authentic gay man I had become.
A little later in the evening, Tom returned to our table and said emphatically: “I can’t tell you why, but you need to go to the dessert table right now.”
Of course, I listened to my husband and followed suit. When I arrived there, I discovered Nancy and Jim (the reunion organizer and her husband) had brought two of my books–From Fertile Ground and Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator–to display there for all to see.
I don’t know that I gasped, but it felt like I did. To be appreciated for my writing that way, left me speechless in the moment. It was a lovely gesture, authored by Nancy and Jim. Another phenomenal moment, which connected one leg of my life with another.
Before the reunion came to a close and we boarded the tram, all of the Class of 1975 Affton High School classmates–about 120 of us in attendance–stood on a wobbly set of risers for a group picture. (Earlier in the evening, a large poster bearing the names and photos of our forty-nine classmates who have passed graced a corner of the same stage.)
Certainly, the wrinkles and gray hair for those of us who have survived into our late sixties were apparent on the evening of Sunday, September 21, 2025. But the smiles and fun-loving community spirit superseded all of that. Our hearts were full.
***
After treating John and Sharon to breakfast Monday morning, Tom and I had a few hours on our own before we needed to make our way to the St. Louis airport for the trip home to Arizona. There were a few loose ends for us to tie together.
First, we drove to Left Bank Books in the central west end of St. Louis to browse the stacks. It’s a renowned, LGBTQ-friendly, independent bookstore we had planned to visit on the morning of our shared sixtieth birthday. But after I suffered a mild heart attack that day–in the city where I was born–our lives took a vastly different path. Fortunately, we survived that experience together.
Appropriately, our final stop in St. Louis was the Gateway Arch. In the late 1970s, during my collegiate years, I was a National Park Service history interpreter there. Giving tours of the Museum of Westward Expansion, welcoming visitors to the top of the Arch, and–from time to time–introducing a fascinating documentary film about the construction of the Arch, called Monument to the Dream.
The film chronicles the beauty and simplicity of Eero Saarinen’s winning design, but also the herculean effort required for a diligent crew to erect the monument through all sorts of weather conditions.
On a warm autumn day when the Arch was completed–October 28, 1965–the crew sprayed a steady stream of water on the south leg, which was expanding in the heat, to allow the capstone–the final piece at the top between the two legs–to be wedged in and joined permanently.
In a symbolic sense, that is what this later-in-life St. Louis reunion with friends and family means to me.
Call it the arc of life or the Arch of life. Either way these sixty-something years began in Missouri, brought me to Chicago for a long career and life as a single father, and carried me to Arizona with my husband. There we have discovered a rewarding artistic life together among new and old friends–our chosen family–even as our freedoms and institutions in the America we still love are threatened by fascism.
Along the way, the highs and lows have transported me to a profound place of greater gratitude and understanding, which I have earned.
It is a welcome destination that once felt out of reach.
On Monday, September 22, 2025, Tom captured this photo of me leaning against the base of the north leg of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.
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.
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.
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.
Sunday through Monday–when desert winds blow freely or not at all–I prefer nature’s ever-present sweet, sunny and determined backyard faces to yesterday’s and today’s front-page disgraces.
Katie’s sweet faceArizona’s sunny faceMason’s determined faceSt. Francis watches over nature in Glenn’s backyard
In early March, while Glenn was away, Tom and I (along with an assist from St. Francis) cared for our friend’s lovable Newfoundland dogs–Katie and Mason–in their peaceful backyard.
According to the Arizona Forestry and Fire Management Agency, “Mr. Big” is the largest red gum eucalyptus in the U.S. Located in the picturesque desert confines of Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, Arizona, he stands 117 feet tall with a circumference of 22 feet. He was planted here as a three-year-old sapling in 1926.A wooden fence and security camera surrounding the base of the tree are designed to discourage thoughtless people from carving their initials in the trunk. On February 6, 2025, I captured this photo of Mr. Big with my husband Tom during our Boyce Thompson visit. Mr. Big’s presence, threats to nature from global warming, and the upheaval in our country have inspired me to write this poem.
In the old days (the pre-Covid days)–just five years ago this week–I hawked my books with my husband by my side at a local author book fair at the Scottsdale Public Library.
We didn’t know about the dark days ahead. Holed up in our cozy condo. Wondering if we and our closest family and friends would survive. Wondering if the race to create a viable vaccine might save us.
Fortunately, science did produce a vaccine that saved lives (for those of us who had the gumption to protect ourselves and others).
We did survive and Tom and I have gone on to create new chapters at the library … him leading several successful film series; me guiding those intent upon writing their own memoirs.
Strangely, those Covid years feel quaint now as our nation disintegrates daily. Tom and I cling to one other, as our nation turns a blind eye toward anyone who is different.
Yes, we have many friends and family who love us. But, to put it bluntly, I don’t feel safe. This experience of living in 2025 in the United States (we aren’t really united) has cued old tapes in my psyche that remind me that–once again–I am living in a straight, white world of shallow masculinity.
I will keep trudging along. Loving my husband. Guiding my adult sons. Speaking my mind. Telling my stories. Holding my closest friends close. Giving to organizations that might make a difference. Advocating for those less fortunate. Donating my time, talents, and voice to the Scottsdale Public Library and the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
Most of all–like many of you–I just need to keep breathing today. And, for tomorrow and the next day, I need to save any reserves of energy and sanity I have to fight the good fight.
Mark Johnson Stories 