When the road to adventure is rough, a 1984 Renault isn’t the best Mystery Machine. — In the summer of 1992, I embarked on my college career at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, MO. I landed, mistakenly I would later learn, in the Music program as a piano major. In the bowels of the chapel building, in a narrow hallway flanked on each side by small…

What life is like as a gay man when you live on a chess board — I learned to play chess in my high school gym class. You probably did tumbling, rope climbing, running, and all manner of sportsball. I learned chess, bowling (and keeping score on paper), canoeing, and archery. It was part of a new adaptive physical education class for those who could not…

Surviving the hellfire, brimstone, and marriage mentality of a conservative Christian college. — Ozark Christian College, a small, private college focused on ministry and mission work, sits at the north end of Joplin, Missouri. I had no frame of reference for what would have been considered a large enrollment; I think there were about 600–700 students my freshman year. Arriving there felt like…

Meeting a loved one in a dream offers unexpected comfort — Cold. Wet. Cooper’s nose pushes firmly against my cheek, and I am pulled from a dream which I don’t want to leave. In that dream, you lived. It’s natural, I think, for the subconscious mind to create a world where our most terrible losses are reconciled in some macabre, yet…

Navigating nascent gay life may be easier now, but in the 90s you needed a manual to decipher the coded language of the era. — It was the evening of November 26, 1995, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I was at Lambert Field in St. Louis, waiting to board the plane that would ferry me back to Omaha after having spent the holiday weekend with my family. …

I miss my 12-inch PowerBook G4 Apple computer. I owned two of them — the original, and then another when there was a spec bump a couple years later. 💻 From Apple-History.com: Announced in January 2003, The PowerBook G4 (12-inch) brought the subnotebook form factor of the 12" iBook to…

I was only six years old when Robbie was a senior in high school, marching in the band and singing in the A Cappella Choir. Rob also joined the Math Club, was an acting Thespian in the Drama Club, a member of the National Honor Society, listed in the “Who’s…

noun ˈkəsp a: a point of transition (as from one historical period to the next) : TURNING POINT also : EDGE, VERGE There is an episode of Charmed where a little girl was in danger because she was protecting fairies from trolls. The trolls lived in the in-between spaces (windows…

“Come on!” I shouted in whisper as I stared from the utility room window at the yellow Jeep parked in the driveway. It was Christmas Eve in the early 1980s. My dad and oldest brother Robbie had parked a while ago but hadn’t gotten out and come in the house…