Jay Payne

 I was raised in Pawhuska, Oklahoma by my mother, Bettie Louise Harris Payne and my grandmother Louise Lessert. There were no men in my life. We lived on Girard Street and moved to Prudom. I did not know what a father was. Literally, I did not know. Bobby Hughes was the first kid I met. His mother asked, as parents did while trying to form a picture of the new friend, “Who is your father?” I replied, “I don't know.” This simple answer fueled rumors that I was born out of wedlock. You know the word. I won't use it. The stigma started, the rumors started. Somehow, it got back to my mother and when I was eight years of age, she sat down with me and a photograph album and showed me a photograph of my father, Jesse Butler "Jay" Payne. I also learned that I was not an only child, but the youngest of three. I had a name, but little knowledge of him. “Who's your father?” “Jay Payne.” “What does he do?” “I don't know.”

I don't form or hold grudges because we don't hold grudges, grudges hold us. I have reached out to the therapist I used for PTSD  following my nearly fatal automobile accident on December 19th, 2019. I am going to try to heal the 8-year old boy that lives within me who realized that his father didn't want him and whose pain was almost more than he could bear, which directly or indirectly led to my first thoughts of suicide when I was 10-years old. It was a combination of things, understanding that he didn't want me, my own questioning of whether I was born out of wedlock, and who really was my father. When anyone implied that I was born out of wedlock and that's why people didn't like me, the scab of doubt was ripped off and my soul was bleeding out, killing me. The 8-year boy still is my injury point, my Achilles' heel. Because of the 8-year old boy that was never loved. He's still there and I don't want to eliminate him. I want to heal him so that I can have peace. I harbored my own doubt lifelong, even after I met Sperm Donor Jay Payne, until DNA testing with my half brother, Bobby Payne, scientifically proved that Jay Payne was indeed my father.

I will someday make "A Stop at Willoughby," but not yet, for "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." "A Stop at Willoughby" is a subtle hint for followers of the American television series "The Twilight Zone," episode 30. I'm fine,  but I need to heal the boy. 

Latinas and Latinos

 If you really understand the word Hispanic, you will never use it again. Instead, you will want to use the culturally more correct words, Latinas and Latinos. Latinas and Latinos are appropriate for citizens of the American continent. Latinas & Latinos were here, like the indigenous people whom someone, whether it was or wasn't Columbus, dubbed Indians, for hundreds if not for thousands of years before a white European god ever set foot on these islands and this continent. Hispanic is a made up word created by the Nixon administration for the United States census because they couldn't understand how to classify the growing population of people from the south of the Rio Grande river who spoke Spanish and Portuguese as their native language. Latinas and Latinos belong to this hemisphere and deserve their own words to identify their languages, customs, music, and culture. The people of Spain are Spanish and the people of Portugal are Portuguese, not Hispanic, because that word is a fiction of Nixon. Even the words Latinas and Latinos are loaned words from the European language of Latin. The peoples called themselves by their own names, just like the first Americans called themselves Cherokee, Osage, and a thousand other of their own names. Here is why I use Latinas and Latinos. The Spanish language is patronymic, like all masculine leaning languages, and requires the masculine plural Latinos if any males are included. If 900 women are present with one male, it's Latinos. I have been a feminist since 1992 to atone for the life I lived as a misogynistic man before then. I put women first in my writing and speech so use Latinas and Latinos in that order. In English, we always say “Women and men” because they are two unique words. I can use hombres y mujeres, but I prefer the sound of Latinas and Latinos. 

Coming Out

 There is a large group of men who mostly identify as heterosexual who are celibate and abstain from sexual intercourse.They are Catholic priests. There is also a large analogous group of Catholic women who are called nuns. I was raised by my Osage family, my grandmother and mother. They never said “I love you,” but I knew they did because they showed it in many ways. I never had a father. The first time I said “I love you” was in 1955 when I was 11 years old to another 11 year old boy. We boys and girls often said “I like you” to a friend, and I had told Jerry that many times, but this day, we were wrestling, and it just slipped out, shocking me that I had said the words. But I did love him. Being straight or gay doesn't have to be an action, something you do, for you to be either straight or gay. It's an identity, a spectrum, similar to being autistic. It's just what you are. I've been in two long term marriages of more than 20 years each with women whom I loved. I've identified as heterosexual all my life, and there have been many women in my life. I have had a son who lived and then died when he was 36. I have been afraid of saying what I am acknowledging now. I am gay and I have been all my life or I would not have fallen love with two boys, Jerry and then Ernie. I was born so. I have kept it my secret, but I have known it, and I acknowledged it to myself more than 20 years ago. My late wife, Charlotte, and I had a great sexual relationship for our first five years and then it just stopped for the remainder of our 30 years long marriage. There were no arguments, or even discussions. Just a tacit agreement. We continued to share the same big Sleep Number mattress while being celibate within our marriage. 

I have not been in a relationship with another man, but I have almost been. It might have happened, but it didn't. I am 81 years of age now and I have no idea how much time remains for me to be here. I have no intention of engaging in a sexual relationship, and I made a vow to the woman who talked me out having a vasectomy that I would not be in one. I do not want to create a child. I do not want to contract or transmit an STD. I am speaking out because I believe in equal rights. If all of us do not have equal rights, then none of us do. You are either in the fight for equal rights or you're not. There is no middle ground. I have  stood on the sidelines for too long and I now fully join the fight. I will continue to focus on acknowledging the lives and history of black people, but I add myself to the LGBTQ community as well, as one of them, and I will no longer be just a spectator. 

"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the

something that I can do. " Edward Everett Hale

Stephen Joe Payne