Edwin C (Toby) Johnson

Born August 4, 1945, Nix Hospital, San Antonio TX

1951-1959 Catholic grade school at St Peter’s, Prince of the Apostles, Alamo Heights suburb of San Antonio, lived in adjoining suburb, Terrell Hills.

1959-1963 Central Catholic High School, the high school associated with St. Mary’s University, run by the Society of Mary, Marianists. For soph, junior, senior year taught by brilliant (and manic-depressive) English teacher, Bro Martin (Mac) McMurtrey, who told 14 students, including Toby, to win a National Merit Scholarship as proof of his pedagogical method. 3 of the 14 did, including Toby. In high school was friends with George (Larry) Goodwin (who grew up to be President of St. Scholastica’s College in Duluth), Whitley Strieber (who became a very successful science fiction novelist and writer about the alien abduction phenomenon), Kenneth Fuchs (Wall Street lawyer), John O’Neill (who led the “Swift Boat Captains Against John Kerry” campaign in 2004 Presidential campaign). Between freshman and sophomore years, Toby and Whitley took the train to Washington, D.C. (and visited Colonial Williamsburg) and the Greyhound bus back to San Antonio.

1963-1964 Novitiate with the Marianists at Marynook, Galesville, Wisconsin. Toby was novitiate librarian all year and recatalogued the library of 3000 books; also learned to cook for large numbers.

1964-1965 Marianist Scholaticate at St Mary’s Univ. Was told not to renew vows after one year—a traumatic, but wonderful turn of events. Experienced wonderful “spiritual guidance” under Fr. Paul Search, SM, who revealed to him that sexuality was a normal part of life, and that it is important to experience the senses.

1965-1968 Saint Louis University, St Louis, MO, was in Honors Program; took an Honors Reading class in Jungian archetypes in literature for which Toby read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell; lived in the men’s dorm (Griesedieck Hall) for two years. Summer 66 took French in Summer School at San Antonio College; was reading Campbell’s story about the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara—and had a remarkable sense of “remembering this” from before(?). Just after Easter 67 took LSD with Tom Gass, Roy Neuner and Tony I. At StLU attended “Folk Mass” with the Servites (Servants of Mary-O.S.M.). Toby experienced “being called” to the Servites by the surprise appearance the word “yes” again and again on St. Peregrine’s Day, May 2, 1967. Summer of 67—the “Summer of Love”—visited Servite friend Allan Pinka at Servite residence on Stanyan St; walked over to Haight-Ashbury with Allan; bought a leather ankh which used as crucifix for Servite habit a little later. Senior year moved in with the Servites to finish college. First sexual experiences with Servite Charlie Ruffner over a two year period, at StL and then at CTU. Started an alternative second Novitiate with the Servites in Riverside, taking the religious name Peregrine (after the Servite saint who is patron of cancer cures); spent the summer at the Servite Priory (Benedict Castle) there. In August 68, had important “mystical experience” described in The Myth of the Great Secret of seeing “the Face of God” as daily experience.

1968-1969 Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, continuing the “alternative novitiate” as a Servite seminarian, did one year of theological studies; important teachers included Barnabas Ahern, CP and John Dominic Crossan, OSM (Crossan lived across the hall in the Servite residence). Toby was head of the Student Body Association. He was one of two or three “hippie seminarians” with long hair, granny glasses, and bell-bottom blue jeans.

1969-1970 Summer after CTU, did Hospital Chaplaincy training at Metropolitan State Hospital, Norwalk CA, the state mental hospital for southern Los Angeles County. First exposure to psychiatry; trained in group process; worked in the Admissions Unit/Crisis Clinic; Had a “coming out” experience while arguing with fellow seminarian Bruce Klikunas, that ended with declaring “I am gay.” This was the Summer of Stonewall, but which Toby didn’t know about yet (tho had seen a TV news report in the background during a Servite party). Left the Servites in January, lived in Riverside (at the St Francis Garden Apartments with Tom Sheerin from the Serviettes and a man named Paul who worked in the accounting dept at Disneyland and took us to the park a couple of times just sacually for dinner or coffee) and worked at a gift shop named Windhover House (owned by Cathleen Thief Ciardelli—whose sister Leeann Thief was dating the Servite Novicemaster Fr. Eddie Penozek and later owned a Children’s toy and doll store on the Riverside Mall near the Mission Inn called Mrs. Tiggy Winkles; the Thieles were from a large family in Idaho). Had an important synchronistic experience of hitchhiking in which “God” picked him up twice in a row in a maroon Buick, which was understood as a warning to not pursue the tricking life in Hollywood (exemplified by a beloved friend, Allan Pinka). Moved to San Francisco June of 2000 to be gay AND to pursue study of Buddhism with Alan Watts. Lived at 541 Castro with friends (Roy Neuner & Michael Alpert who were rooming with Steven (Dhruva) Watson, who was Librarian at CIAS, the school that had evolved from Watts’ earlier American Academy of Asian Studies). The stoop at 535-541 Castro was later made famous in a photo as the center of gay San Francisco. 

1970-1971 In the fall, started grad school at C.I.A.S.; lived at 10th and Cabrillo in the Richmond District. Important teachers were Dr Kim McKell, from whom learned about Tantra, and Bishop Nippo Skyaku, from whom learned abut Mahayana, Nagarjuna and the notion of sunyata. In spring 71, saw a notice that Joseph Campbell was giving a seminar at the Mann Ranch in Ukiah CA; applied for a work scholarship and so was invited to come up a day early. Hitchhiked to Ukiah, Met Campbell casually before the  guests arrived. “Call me Joe” is the first thing he said. During that seminar had an experience of working the slide projector when Campbell played a trick by showing the “Clear Light” of Tibetan Buddhism as a blank slide. This story is told in M of GS. Was invited to join the volunteer staff at the Mann Ranch for future events by Larry Thomas and Barbara McClintock, the couple who ran the Mann Ranch Seminars on Larry’s family ranch in the California Coastal Range mid-way between Ukiah and Mendocino. Started a friendship and correspondence with Campbell that would last through the decade.

1971-1972 Moved to Arguello and Clement; worked as a “hippie carpenter” for Kim McKell (at $2/hr) building a studio apartment in her basement garage. Saw first dorje/vajra scepter through Kim. Assisted with proofreading her dissertation. Began  attending Gay Rap and volunteering with the S.F. Gay Counseling Service (a telephone hotline started by Cliff Kraus), this was the start of Toby’s gay activism. The Counseling Center moved to Toby’s house on Arguello and became a sort of collective that ran Gay Rap. Helped organize two “gay/straight weekends,” one at Alternative Futures in S.F.; one at The Fault of the Earth ranch in Palo Alto, which was a precocious “faerie gathering” long before the Radical Faeries. Took a Don Clark Weekend which inspired gay pride and commitment to gay community service. Met Guy Mannheimer, who was Toby’s first lover. Worked at the summer at the Mann Ranch. Took a writing workshop from Wayne McEvilly, started keeping a journal, and was initiated into Transcendental Meditation by McEvilly. August 4 1972 was 28th birthday—with recognition of 14 year periods. The counterpoint of his life, he thought, with death at age 56 (Toby’s father died at 49).

1972-73 After returning from Ukiah, found an apartment for rent on the corner of Haight & Ashbury, lived there with Paul de Palma, a straight friend from college, and John Shapiro, a gay medical student and part-time heroin user who became a doctor to the junkies—and made the apartment an impossible place to live. Toby worked as a volunteer at The Saint George Homes in Berkeley for troubled and autistic youth. In December after coming home from St George, while driving Paul’s car, experienced an auto break-in while stopping by the apartment, in which his journal was stolen. This started a major life evaluation and the decision to complete the Masters Thesis and to train as a Psychiatric Technician to get a job at Mt Zion Hospital where a friend named Terry Carlson, told him about the job. In the spring moved to Sausalito to housesit a houseboat. In the summer returned to Mann Ranch. 

1973-75 Took classes at Napa State Hospital for a nursing license as a Psych Tech, a year and a half program. Lived in Napa with Guy Mannheimer in a household of 7 psych tech students. Finished writing the masters thesis. Got Rolfed. Did Reichian Body work therapy with Jeremy Naploha. Summer of 74 worked at the Mann Ranch; Had psychedelic experience with Ketamine at a workshop by Dr Salvador Roquet (and “became God” and witnessed the Big Bang). Got psych tech license in May 75; worked at Mann Ranch, then moved to San Francisco, lived with Guy on 18th between Noe and Sanchez in the heart of the Castro. Got a job, as planned, at Mt Zion in the Crisis Clinic. Guy was a second generation Holocaust survivor; he had a “nervous breakdown” from working at the State Hospital; he was at the age (32-33) that his father was when he was arrested and sent Auschwitz; the parallels between Napa State Hospital and the concentration camp were too much. Toby went back to CIAS, completed Masters and started a PhD program in Counseling Psychology.

1975-1978 Studied counseling; worked at Mt Zion, much of the time on the night shift in the Crisis Clinic so could type dissertation. Broke up with Guy; moved to 7th and Lake. Guy’s mother Rita Mannheimer moved from Israel to San Francisco when Guy was in a halfway house for schizophrenics; Toby and Rita became close. Though it was what Toby expected, he and Guy never reunited. Dated John Sokoloff briefly through whom met the cast of Crimes Against Nature, a gay-liberation review. Dated John Hall who was working at Just Desserts in North Beach. John was a Zen meditator; with him Toby bought a zafu and began to sit Zen. John & Toby dated Thanksgiving and Christmas (with memorable experiences with John’s friends in Corte Madera and then Chico). Was dating John when moved from 7th to Fair Oaks. In 1976, Toby’s first client at the CIAS counseling center was an occasional sex partner with Allen Ginsberg (giving Toby 7 degrees of separation from Walt Whitman). Worked as intern at The Tenderloin Clinic, a gay mental health unit. Was involved with D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance and Gay Mental Health Taskforce as male co-chair; got Gay Clients’ Bill of Rights adopted, ensuring gay doctors/therapists for gay clients. Toby considers this perhaps the most influential thing he ever did, as it helped allow gay doctors to work in AIDS services a few years later. Toby did a course of Jungian-Oriented therapy with Peter Andrew who went by Ananda.

1977-1981 Moved to Fair Oaks and 22nd. Lived in first floor, cave-like, flat at 83 Fair Oaks with Adolphine Carole & Chris Codol. Had “summer romance” with Seth Stewart, poet-in-residence at Hospitality House in the Tenderloin, whom met through Toby Marotta. Seth was considered very sexy and taught Toby to dress and feel sexier. Seth moved into 83 Fair Oaks when Chris moved out; stayed a couple of months, then broke up. Moved upstairs to #87; Leslie Peterson joined the household in the now 4 bd flat. A German visitor, Ernst Linden, joined a little later. Met second partner, Bill Ament, through Werner Erhard’s EST training in a love-at-first-sight experience at a Christmas Party of EST graduates, 1978. Bill was a volunteer aide of Werner’s personal assistant. Met Toby Marotta who was studying mental health services in the Tenderloin. Helped him rewrite his Harvard University dissertation for publication as The Politics of Homosexuality. Helped him with his book Sons of Harvard. Toby whimsically called Marotta his “guardian angel” who introduced him to the publishing industry through Toby’s Harvard connections. Toby Johnson worked with Toby Marotta in the URSA study of teenage gay prostitution. Lived in New York Times Square district for two months and in S.F.’s Tenderloin for 6 months. Had experience of being hustled by a black pimp/player and being held at knifepoint by a former client—and learned to understand this as a “message” to leave S.F. and take the gay gospel of liberation back to hometown San Antonio. Rewrote own dissertation on Nagarjuna and Meister Eckhart for publication as The Myth of the Great Secret. Bill had testicular cancer (diagnosed on St Peregrine’s feast day). Nursed him through surgery and recovery for about 2 years. Sexuality never returned to the relationship. Had major experience of “meeting Avalokiteshvara at the 21st Street Baths.” Did David Goodstein’s gay spin-off of EST called The Advocate Experience. Broke up with Bill. Through Marotta Toby met publishing company executive/literary editor Richard Baltzell. Baltzell gave Toby a copy of A Course in Miracles. At New Years 1981, Toby took a Windjammer Cruise in the Caribbean and visited friends in Asheville. Left S.F. in June 81. Spent a summer at Southern Dharma Foundation Retreat Center outside Asheville, North Carolina. Lived out in a cabin the woods and wrote In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld.

1981-1983 In October moved back home to San Antonio; got involved with the San Antonio Gay Alliance and became co-chair. Published the second book. Wrote Secret Matter. Did “The EST Six-day Course” with the intention of finding a serious relationship.

1984-1988 Met Kip Dollar, third partner—and final. Kip worked at the Johnson family’s bank; Kip was warned by a bank officer (and friend of Toby’s mother) that “he’s head of the homosexuals.” After a year of casual meeting at the bank, Kip asked Toby to dinner; that started their dating. Another year later, Kip left the bank and went to work for the Johnson family business, Texas Wholesale Floral Company. In 1985, as a sort of honeymoon, Toby and Kip traveled to Paris, Amsterdam, Switzerland, Florence and Rome in a whirlwind, first trip abroad. Toby had a private practice in psychotherapy for gay clients with office partner Frank Scott. With Kip, helped founded a gay business association in San Antonio and helped set up the San Antonio AIDS Foundation. Wrote PLAGUE: A Novel About Healing (about AIDS); it was published by Alyson Publications in 87. In Aug 87 turned 42 (a multiple of 14), retired from social service. While on a book tour to Washington DC, Kip bought Toby a 350 year-old dorje from an antiquities store on Dupont Circle (on-sale because the metal is worn smooth from use by meditators—so even better!) Spent summer of 88 with Kip in Santa Cruz CA; Toby wrote Getting Life in Perspective. They fantasized about running a gay B&B. Then returned to Texas to be close to family but moved to Austin to take over running the Gay & Lesbian bookstore, Liberty Books.

1988-1997 Kip and Toby ran Liberty Books. Secret Matter published 1990 by Lavender Press, then Getting Life in Perspective in 91. Secret Matter won a Lambda Literary Award (in a tie) for Gay Science Fiction. Toby’s mother died in 1991, leaving him with a modest but secure trust fund income. Remodeled a house in inner-city Austin; Kip and Toby were known for dinner parties; in 89 acted in a musical comedy review called “I Pass for Straight,” directed by Doug Dyer (a gay Austin playwright who indirectly inspired the famous Broadway show A Chorus Line). Were asked by the Gay Rights Lobby to apply for Marriage Licenses as a visible gay couple in Austin in a political zap. This event made CBS national news. Two years later, in 1993, were invited to follow through by being one of the first two couples to register as Domestic Partners in Travis County. Liberty Books acted as sponsor for a Men’s Movement spin-off for gay men called Shaman’s Circle; Toby was on the faculty for these “wild man-style” weekends. At the solicitation of Paul Reed, editor-in-chief at Celestial Arts Publishing Co in Palo Alto, revised first book and republished it with a new subtitle as The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell (1991). Campbell had died in 1987; his library eventually was moved to Pacifica Graduate Center in Santa Barbara CA. Toby served on the Board of the Directors for the first year. In 1993, Kip and Toby took an RSVP cruise from Athens to Istanbul and the Greek Islands. Kip and Toby sold Liberty Books to Crossroads Market, a gay bookstore chain from Dallas. In 1994, they drove from Paris to Mount St Michel to Amsterdam and back to Paris. And on the return to Paris accidentally came upon the wonderful Castle in Pierrefonds, a real version of “Sleeping Beauty’s Castle”; the hotel in Pierrefonds was called Hotel des Etrangers.  In 95, Kip and Toby worked in an Earthwatch study of Oregon Caves for two weeks and learned to be spelunkers. In 1996, by himself, Toby participated in an Earthwatch expedition to India and lived in a small village in Orissa Province, south of Calcutta, for three weeks. In 1996 Randy Conner (Blossom of Bone & Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth), called Toby (while he was typing the quote from Campbell: “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid and doors will open where you never even knew there were going to be doors.”) and proposed he take over editing White Crane Journal because the founder/editor Robert Barzan had announced he was retiring. SO, of course, “Yes.” Together Toby and Kip attended a T’ai Chi retreat in 96 with their Austin teacher (Heloise Gold) in the mountains above Las Vegas, New Mexico; they were so impressed with the mountains, they decided to follow through with the B&B plans.

1997-2000 They moved to Conifer CO and converted a 3-story log cabin lodge into a B&B called The House at Peregrine’s Perspective. Curiously, the house was in the very location of the imaginary 19th century utopian colony in Getting Life in Perspective.
Toby and Kip traveled to London, arriving the day after Princess Diana’s funeral; they drove to Dollar, Scotland to investigate the roots of Kip’s family name. In Conifer, Toby edited White Crane; Kip assisted with mailing and bookkeeping; together they ran the B&B. They lived in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at 8500 foot elevation-very cold most of the year. Because the B&B had a large “great room,” they hosted parties of the Foothills Family, gay and lesbians living in the area. Scott Brassart, the editor/publisher of Alyson Books (now owned by the Advocate Magazine), asked Toby, as editor of White Crane, to write about the Gay Men’s Spirituality Movement. This book was published in 2000 as Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness. It was a Lambda Literary Award (again in a tie) for Religion and Spirituality.

2000-2003 To be closer to Kip’s aging parents, they sold the house in Colorado and moved to Wimberley, Texas, midway between San Antonio and Austin; they bought a house with two separate guest facilities and named it Casa Peregrino. They ran the B&B three years. Again at Brassart’s suggestion for a simplified version of the book, Toby wrote Gay Perspective: What our homosexuality tells us about the nature of God and the Universe. It was nominated for a Lammy. In 2002, to celebrate the completion of Toby’s 56th year (and living), they worked in an Earthwatch archeological dig on the island of Mallorca, Spain.

2003-2009 To be closer to home when Kip’s father was dying, and because Toby’s mother’s house was available, Kip and Toby moved to San Antonio. After 7 years, Toby handed editorship of White Crane over the Bo Young, but continued to assist with producing/editing White Crane Books. Began working with Lethe Press as editor and book designer. He finalized the book he had been collaborating on with Walter L. Williams for several years and published it as Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo by Walter L. Williams & Toby Johnson. He also edited the Lethe anthology Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling. Lethe’s original mission was to republish gay titles that had gone out of print; Toby’s Gay Spirituality and Gay Perspective were both reprinted with updates, revisions and prefaces; also a revised version of Secret Matter and Getting life in Perspective. In 2004, Toby helped organize a “Gay Men’s Spirituality Summit” at Garrison Institute outside New York City. With Toby’s assistance, Lethe Press publisher Steve Berman grew the little publishing venture to be a major gay publisher with hundreds of titles. While living in San Antonio, Kip and Toby traveled to Germany (Christmas 2004) and to India (November 2006). In Varanasi, where the Buddha first taught, Toby had the strange experience of the hotel room filling with smoke—as it turned out from a fire in a new wood-burning oven that was being installed in the kitchen at the bottom of the staircase by their room; it was like an enactment of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of “Tonglen,” breathing in the suffering of the world like smoke, as a bodhisattva. Following up the Gay Spirituality Summit, Toby attended several gatherings at Easton Mountain Retreat Center in Albany NY; he was keynote speaker for their Gay Spirit Camp in 2005. In 2004 Toby gave the keynote at Gay Spirit Visions (Atlanta, GA); Kip and Toby attended several GSV gatherings in the mid 2000s.

2009-2016 When the house in San Antonio needed to go back to the family for another use, Kip and Toby finally followed through on their plan to return to Austin. They purchased a house in the annex of Hyde Park, the neighborhood north of the University of Texas “where the professors and grad students live.” They worked together as volunteers for Lethe, with Kip doing bookkeeping, for several years, then “retired” in 2014. Plague was republished as The Fourth Quill. Toby continues to do publishing industry jobs of one sort or another. In 2014, Toby gave the keynote for LoveSpirit in London. They have traveled on two Europeans riverboat excursions with Brand g Vacations in 2013 to Paris then to the South of France and inn 2015 to Prague and along the Danube to Budapest.

Toby helped several authors publish or republish books, including Brue Grether, Mark Abramson, David Day, Mel White, Tim Clausen

October 30, 2018, the 30th anniversary of Joseph Campbell’s death, Toby published a third revision of The Myth of the Great Secret, now titled Finding Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell.

2018 On January 1, Kip and Toby traveled to Buenos Aires, then to Iquazu Falls, Argentina (with a flight delay and temporarily lost luggage), then boarded a ship on Norwegian Cruise Lines to travel down the coast of Patagonia, over to the Falkland Islands, back to Cape Horn and through the Strait\s of Magellan and up the coast of Chile to Santiago. Toby had always fantasized “escaping” to the Falklands if life ever became unlivable in the U.S. The election of Donald Trump had made him think maybe that time was now. But the Falklands were very unwelcoming: a nature hike turned into a 3 hour ordeal of hiking along a strand of beach in a 40 mph headwind. Toby came down with fever and chills that afternoon. And was sick through most of the rest of the trip.

On Kip’s birthday, Feb 21, 2018, the two applied for Marriage Licenses, going to see Dana DeBeauvoir personally. She was the County Clerk in 1991 who had to decline such a request, but then who issued Domestic Partnership registration to them on Oct 11, 1993. She was delighted. Then on March 16, their 34th anniversary, they were married in a private ceremony with Travis County Commissioners Court Presiding Judge Sarah Eckhardt (whose mother was an old friend of Dennis Paddie’s). Jim Fouratt, one of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front after Stonewall, was the witness. Fouratt was in town for South X SouthWest. A nice bit of symbolism—from the birth of Gay Lib to Toby & Kip’s same sex marriage.