It was in March of 2002 that I enjoyed driving to Alaska, seeing Northern Lights, and celebrating a moonlit shipboard romance. 

In 2009 I came across an internet post saying Scott Pasfield was traveling the United States. He was taking photographs of gay men from all walks of life to include in a large coffee table book. He was looking for stories that would make interesting reading to go along with the photos. 

I sent Scott a synopsis of my kidhood sexual paranoia during the1950s and my subsequent lifelong pattern of opting to avoid confrontation. It became a default to cowardice at every turn. And I told the story of being gay bashed in the parking lot of a bar in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. I was 56 and driving the Alaskan Highway.

My synopsis to Scott concluded that being beat up is not recommended at all, but the next day the swollen left side of my head made me drive through the next town and toward a dot on the map. 

At that little dot I chanced onto an isolated room above a garage where the owners agreed to turn off their exterior lights. I enjoyed two glorious nights staring at curtains of light silently wafting across the sky. A few weeks later, thanks to not wanting to stay in Watson Lake on a return trip, I caught a ferry on the inland waterway and immersed myself in shipboard sex with a full moon filling the cabin with perfect light. 

Northern Lights and a shipboard romance—two blessings of lemonade being the result of an unfortunate lemon of an experience!

Scott liked my story. On his trip around the US he unloaded a portable photography studio of equipment in my home and found places for me to pose.

Gay in America, Portraits by Scott Pasfield, was published by Welcome Books in 2011. I was one of two Idaho men portrayed in it. 

Unfortunately there are editors. Editors understand what publishers are looking for and editors have unlimited authority to edit as they see fit. Often that is an improvement. In my case the story shifted from one of misadventure leading to delightful blessings. Rather it was presented as a morality play of realizing “I had confronted my most awful fear …” (Editors. Can’t tell reflections with ’em. Can’t publish without ’em. Go figure.) 

However, I did get included in an excellent display of the vast variety of living as gay men. And I am part of exposing the silliness of stereotyping any human—whether gay or redneck or accountant. With the exception of all lawyers, of course …