Dedications

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Here you will find some dedications of readers, contributers, fans and former Chiron Rising models.

I was living in Seattle, WA , I found Chiron Rising Magazine at the Old Gay Bookstore called “Out Of The Closet” in the Gay District of Seattle.
I really liked the magazine and so I had a friend of mine take some photos of me and I send one of the photos to Chiron Rising. It was just a nude (not erotic) of me standing next to my radiator wearing only my socks. I really didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Well, this very handsome man, (David to be exact), wrote to the magazine and Chiron Rising forwarded his letter on to me. David was in a small town called Elkhorn, WI.
He was getting divorced from a woman and he was in the closet. Well it took me about 9 months to answer his letter, because all of the gay friends in Seattle told me, he is getting divorced, he is in the closet and Jeffrey Dahmer was there (that happened in Milwaukee about 45 miles from Elkhorn). But the more I looked at his photo, the more I wanted to get to know this man.

Well, I wrote to him. We started communicating and he flew out to Seattle to meet me the last weekend of Feb 1993. (We had been writing and talking to each other by phone for about 6 or 7 months by this point). When he walked towards me at the airport, he looked so handsome, tall, slender, with his silk scarf, leather jacket. My heart exploded and I knew at that moment he was the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with. We went to this Gay Bed and Breakfast up in La Conner, WA (it’s no longer a Bed and Breakfast). He left on Sunday and we called and wrote. He asked me if I wanted to come and visit him in Elkhorn, WI. Well, I had never been to the midwest (except as a 2 year old living on the Navy Base with my Dad and Mom back in the early 1960’s). So I flew from Seattle, WA into Milwaukee, WI. I spend 2 weeks with David and it was cold, snowy and nothing like I had experienced before.

The morning I was leaving, David looked at me and said, “Would you come and share my life with me?” I looked at him and said, “I was just waiting for you to ask”, so I went back to Seattle and reduced everything I owned to 5 boxes and Wisconsin there I went.

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In 2004, I came across Lu, my partner of 22 years, writing at his keyboard for an extended period of time. After a few days of furious typing, I asked him what he was working on. He said he was trying to set the record straight about our relationship by explaining to the world how three men could live harmoniously in one dwelling, and publishing it in CR. He called his article the Texas Triangle.

We had a triangle but not a threesome, and our confused friends and acquaintances couldn’t figure us out. He had gotten tired of repeating how we operated, so he detailed our experience in 6000 words. When I saw that Pat Colley published it immediately, and that the magazine was broadcasting our story to its readership, I said, “Hey, that looks easy. I think I’ll write a story too.”
I had never written before and my first tale, Apollo in the Garden, was written without dialog because I wasn’t sure how to punctuate dialog. Colley published it. “OK,” I said, “since he publishes everything that comes his way, let’s try this again.” Well, he didn’t publish everything I wrote, but what he did print, whether my stories or those of other authors, were all good quality. They were sexy and sex-filled, but they weren’t one-handers. They made sense, made you smile ot think, and they enlarged your knowledge of the world.

When I had written 20 stories, I put 13 in a book called Heights of Passion and sent it around. Alyson Publishing told me there was no audience for my writing because AIDS had decimated my target readership. That seemed pretty short-sighted to me since gay men were aging daily just as straight men do.  So I ended up self-publishing and continued to write for CR. I now have 11 books and I’m writing my 12th. And THAT is what CR did for me! CR provided an outlet to mature gay men, so writers could write stories with meaning instead of the poor excuse for gay literature that was otherwise available, where twinks resolved their problems on the beach.

A San Antonio Triangle appeared in issue 71 with Bill as the coverboy; the three of us appeared on the back cover of issue 87. Bill died ten years ago.

My best to you,
Don (Tecumseh)