It's a G-G-G-G-Ghost!

I might not of mentioned this before, but we live in a tastefully decorated condo overlooking Denver’s most haunted park. Spooky. Well, mostly it’s bothersome because there is a constant parade of hipster type people taking up parking to go wander around the large sea of green with EVP grabbing voice recorders in their little alt-ironic Slayer tee shirt wearing hands. 

Picture it, Denver. As Denver grew up just after the “toss your dead into the closest river” fad, the town needed a place to bury its cowboys and strumpets. It started a cemetery and buried both rich and poor way outside of town. After a while the town grew closer and closer to this out of the way cemetery. The city graveyard began being used for poor, or poppers graves, and gasp, Chinese, Jews, and Catholics burials. The WASPS began burning their fancy dead in a farther away cemetery, and the city graveyard fell farther into disrepair. With more mansions being built closer and closer there were soon calls for the graveyard to be emptied and moved. 

The history of what happened next is well documented. There are nine-hundred Youtube uploads about this history. All of which use the same, not quite right source material. 

A fraudster who won the contract to move possibly thousands of graves, cashed the check and then pulled some of the dead out of their “final” resting place and left them laying them around everywhere. ‘You moved the headstones and left the graves!” When the city, state, and the federal government got involved everyone decided to just grass over the whole situation and begin building their new park. Leaving thousands in the ground. 

It has been very well documented about the spiritual rift this caused and the ghost stories of the unsettled dead. **Eye roll** Not that I am discounting this at all, there have been many documented reports in the area. I’ve seen a couple of things myself. 

Flash forward one hundred and fifty years and Youtube is invented. With this new media comes the phenomenon of the amateur ghost hunter. For the cost of a handheld voice recorder and a flashing thing called a “spirit box” anyone can post “real evidence.”

October is spooky season. This is the time where these local Hipsters come out of the dark to meet and began their annual rituals. Complementing each others band tee shirts, and to hunt for proof of the undead. This is also the season for us to sit on our balcony and watch the bobbing lanterns float around the dark on formal ghost tours and independent adventures. Random screams and skreeks of delight as something extra scary happens. It’s very delightful to watch. Some choose to not walk around and instead take the full bus tour of “haunted Denver” and have a guided tour of all the ghoulish scenes. This includes a stop in the park below our balcony where we can hear the tour guide speak of the haunted buildings surrounding the park. Uh… Bitch, where?

Okay, there was that time someone tapped The Amazing One on the shoulder when he was home alone. And the shadow person. Meh. “If they ain’t paying your bills, pay those bitches no mind.”

 

Here is the plan; White sheets at the ready, when the next tour comes by, we toss on sheets and dance around on the patio like crazy ghosts. Cultural Appropriation, but they will be able to say they saw a ghost.   

   

 

The Balcony that Changed Me

Okay, one more story about the building I live in, then we can move on. Well, maybe. How about one last historic story before we move into the modern era. 

Picture it, Cheesman Park 1990. I was living in tiny attic space in a victorian on Downing St.  My best friend lived on the other side of the park so anytime we wanted to hangout one of us would trek across the green expanse of lawn. This means I would have to traverse a main street leading in and out  of the park. The same building I live in now was on this path. Balconies line the front of the building overlooking the street. As I crossed in front of this building I noticed a guy leaning on a balcony railing. I noticed him for two reasons, I had been introduced to the art of Tom of Finland, and this guy was a spiting image to one to one of the gentleman in this art, and two; he was pointing at me and hollering for me to come closer. So I did. He kindly requested that I go to the front door and buzz his apartment. Walking to his door there would be no way of knowing that 1,000 years in the future I would live there. Well directly upstairs. He met me at this apartment door.    

He was was very old in my young eyes. But we was probably forty, meaning fifteen years younger than my current age.  I would later learn that he would be classified as a levi leather dom. Sooooo, let’s skip the details, you know what happened. We can say he created and formed my lifelong views, tastes, kinks, needs, fantasies, and standards in one amazing afternoon I still think about often. With one man’s tongue and smelly underwear my life began.   

They say you always remember your first. And why he wasn’t my first boy. He was my first man. I carry his torch and try to live in his footsteps. 

The Pavilion

When I was just out of high school and fresh to living out on my own, I spent my early days of  freedom sunning in the park, walking to Taco Bell, and generally being lazy with a lesbian named Michelle. We would spend hours on the steps of the park’s pavilion dreaming, of our future loves, and lovers. Somehow this involved a move to San Francisco. I would meet the love of my life in the mythic city. These were solid plans. Plans that turned out to never move from the marble steps of the pavilion into the world of reality. I think bout how easy a move would of been to pull off in 1990. Everything I owned would fit in the back of my ‘68 Mustang. No strings to tie me down. As of today I cannot actually tell you why I never did it, fear I guess. Fear of the unknown; of failure, maybe of this love of my life not existing in the real world. 

I started adult life in Denver. I got many-many jobs, slowly went through college, grew my hair out, shaved it off. Grew a beard, shaved it off.  Had string of boyfriends both bearded and un-bearded. It’s funny about my experiences with boyfriends during this time we will call Steve’s adult life. With every “love of my life” I had a sense of forcing the idea of love and companionship. Like that over-used song says, “ I would tell myself they were right for me, but I would feel so lonely in there company.”

During this long chapter I would find myself returning to the steps of park’s pavilion and find myself gazing off into my future countless times. These steps were my daydreaming space. I soon settled on the fact that this was, actually what love was. A cheesy song by Gotye about being in and out of love.  

This, without warning and without my approval, changed when I agreed to a lunch date with a man we will call, “The Amazing One.” Within the last couple of years The Amazing One and I started walking, these walks seem more and more end up at the pavilion in Cheesman Park. I sit and chat with the most amazing, talented, warm, smartest person I ever met. Every second I am filled with gratitude. As I sit and daydream with this amazing human, I think about my first summer sitting on the marble steps and how long it took to really find my place of contentment and pure happiness. The hows and whys don’t affect me any more. For the first time it’s real. As solid as the marble steps. 

The Blue Light Project

During the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic the community in Denver was devastated. To cope and indicate our strength many houses placed a blue light in their windows. The Blue Light Campaign.  You could drive around Capitol Hill in 1988 and whole streets were lit up with blue light bulbs glowing from windows. During this time I was in high school and rode the number 10 bus every day, riding early in the mornings way before the sun would rise. As I left my safe neighborhood to head to the grey suburb I would count the glowing blue bulbs. One building next to Cheesman Park had every window lit up with a blue lamp marking the defiance to a disease. I would stare at this building with a sense of belonging, solidarity, and fear for the future of the disease.  

Then the violence started. 

Rocks began to be thrown through windows shattering the widows and the lights. Somehow attempting to stop and deny the solidarity in a time of crisis. The news refused to cover the growing violence, community leaders started civilian patrols. I remember meetings at the gay community center trying to build some sort of protection. Not only were we fighting AIDS we also had to fight roving bands of rock throwing nasty hate. But, the building next to the park never stopped shining their blue lights. Window glass was replaced and the lights were still lit. 

One morning on the bus to school I saw that a large picture window in this building was shattered.  On the ride home that day I noticed a sign. It read “WHY? You will not break us!!” I cried the rest to the ride home. The sign became my mantra. My driving motive to get involved in the movement. All of my belonging to the community was started and formed on that day. They may throw rocks, but will not break us. 

I thought about that day a lot growing up. So it was surreal when I stood in an empty bedroom on the other side of that window where the sign was posted. The window I looked out of was once shattered by hate. The blue light sat in the condo where we were touring. Thirty-five years later I stared onto the street below where someone once stood and threw a rock. Someone bravely lived in this home we were deciding to make our home. My partner stepping up next to me seeing the look on my face as I stood thinking about that day. “You okay?” He said. “Yes, we need to live here” I said. We moved in soon after. 

I have blue lights decorating our balcony. I am 100% sure no-one knows the significance. But I do. It’s for the person who hung up that sign in the window. 

The Park

We live in a tastefully appointed condo overlooking the gay park in Denver. Well, it was gay. 

In the sixties the counter-culture hippies gathered in the park to smoke weed and worship the moon. In the seventies the homos came to this park to smoke weed and worship dick. In actuality gays and lesbians came to the park, named Cheesman due to repressive zoning laws meant to keep Denver white, conservative, a safe place for their idea of a nuclear family to not feel oppressed. In most parts of the city, unmarried individuals could not cohabitant. If you weren’t married you just could live under the same roof. The area around this park was a tiny area not restricted to this zoning ordinance. The gays gravitated to this green open space to find any resemblance of freedom. 

I literally stepped off the number 10 bus in the summer of 1989. I too was seeking freedom, and I unknowingly found it. An oasis of grass, grass, and ass. The time spent in the park made me who I am, the friends and culture gave me my foundation in life. My entire adulthood has had this foundation that draws me back. So, when we discovered that a condo overlooking the park came to the market, I think it took three seconds for us to contact and set a viewing. After moving in and settling into our new house, I had floods of memories of our new building. I walked by and gazed at our future home ever since that summer of ’89. A unattainable pipe dream to live life on a balcony opening up to a sea of green trees and lawn. Now I sip coffee at 3am on that balcony, casting a gaze onto my home. 

 I soon realized that the park was very different. This center of gay culture, with it lurid cruising and circling cars blaring Madonna, was missing one thing. The gays. Everyone has many opinions  as to why the gay neighborhoods across the US have be come….less concentrated… The best being we don’t need to live in fear in a gay sanctuary part of town.  The  worst opinions being “online apps” No matter the reason the park seems, to me anyway a very different atmosphere and experience. As we walk around the park now-a-days, I will casually say, “I used to get plowed on that tree” to hear, “the tree with the family picnicking?” “yeah” I will sigh.  

The passing of time changes everything. 

So, Hello.

Ever wonder where old media goes to die? No. no-one wonders that. You're watching a Vine video on your humongous desktop, thenYoutube blows up, then dies, then blows up. The winds of self-indulgent communication blow gently, and yet consistently. The written word morphed into live streaming, the journal turned into  live streaming shorts.  

There's an ancient art that happened just after cave scribble, it was called "Blogging"and yes, this is where I say "back in my day" as I rattle my cain in your direction. I am big! it's the screens and attention spans that got small!

Let's skip the junk about kids these days and how everyone once blogged and now walks around with live uploads to their platforms. I was a blogger in the past. A popular one. But, then life moved on. I live by the mantra which states, a sign of a healthy life means there is no sign of it on line. I am having a healthy life. I am with the MOST amazing partner. I thank my lucky stars every day that we are together. Now, why am I typing these words. I miss writing, I miss telling my stories. Sometimes the same stories I've told a dozen time to this amazing partner. Let's call him "The Amazing One"

My Dad was a story teller. Not all stories were true, but the truth can be a killer in a good story. But I learned story telling from him. Which may be the only thing I learned from him. Which brings me back to my writing tool, my Macbook. My companion through my college years and stage era of Japanese suit porn. Term papers and blurred business men in the past just as Nice to See StevieB blog posts.  Blowing the dust off the keyboard and seeing if the Blogger platform still exists. I does. Oddly enough to find out. 

So, hello. Hi. Let's see what happens.