God Drives a Maroon Buick

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Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness

GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe

SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams




CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers

THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell

IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey

Unpublished manuscripts

About ordering

Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series

  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness

Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"

About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality

Why gay people should NOT Marry

The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage

Toby and Kip Get Married

Wedding Cake Liberation

Gay Marriage in Texas

What's ironic

Shame on the American People

The "highest form of love"

Gay Consciousness

Why homosexuality is a sin

The cause of homosexuality

The origins of homophobia

Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness

What is homosexuality?

What is Gay Spirituality?

My three messages

What Jesus said about Gay Rights

Queering religion

Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men

Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?

The purpose of homosexuality

Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality

What the Bible Says about Homosexuality

Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men

Varieties of Gay Spirituality

Waves of Gay Liberation Activity

The Gay Succession

Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?

The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter

Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium

Easton Mountain Retreat Center

Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism

The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey

The upsidedown book on MSNBC

Enlightenment

"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

Gay Spirituality

Curious Bodies

What Toby Johnson Believes

The Joseph Campbell Connection

The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)

Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The Two Loves

The Nature of Religion

What's true about Religion

Being Gay is a Blessing

Drawing Long Straws

Freedom of Religion

The Gay Agenda

Gay Saintliness

Gay Spiritual Functions

The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.

The Sinfulness of Homosexuality

Proposal for a study of gay nondualism

Priestly Sexuality

Having a Church to Leave

Harold Cole on Beauty

Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption

Not lashed to the prayer-post

Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process

Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)

Redeem Orlando

Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar

Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson

Mystical Vision

"The Evolution of Gay Identity"

"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."

Avalokiteshvara at the Baths

 Eckhart's Eye

Let Me Tell You a Secret

Religious Articulations of the Secret

The Collective Unconscious

Driving as Spiritual Practice

Meditation

Historicity as Myth

Pilgrimage

No Stealing

Next Step in Evolution

The New Myth

The Moulting of the Holy Ghost

Gaia is a Bodhisattva

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016

The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)

You're On Your Own

Superheroes

Seeing Differently

Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil

Allah Hu: "God is present here"

 
Adam and Steve

The Life is in the Blood

Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"

Seeing with Different Eyes

Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom

What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?

The Vision

The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside

A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside

The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis

The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby

Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara

Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection

Part 4: A Course in Miracles

The Secret of the Clear Light

Understanding the Clear Light

Mobius Strip

Finding Your Tiger Face

How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated

About Alien Abduction

In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke

Karellen was a homosexual

The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance

Intersections with the movie When We Rise

More about Gay Mental Health

Psych Tech Training

Toby at the California Institute

The Rainbow Flag

Ideas for gay mythic stories

People

Kip and Toby, Activists

Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.

Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement

About Hay and The New Myth

About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"

About Michael Talbot, gay mystic

About Fr. Bernard Lynch

About Richard Baltzell

About Guy Mannheimer

About David Weyrauch

About Dennis Paddie

About Ask the Fire

About Arthur Evans

About Christopher Larkin

About Mark Thompson

About Sterling Houston

About Michael Stevens

The Alamo Business Council

Our friend Tom Nash

Second March on Washington

The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"

Book Reviews

Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:

Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe

Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman








Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated








Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE

The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here

Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams

Two Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here

Finding Your Own True Myth:

The Myth of the Great Secret III









In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld












The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.

A Most Remarkable Synchronicity

This article/reminiscence follows up Toby Johnson's account of a sort of mystical experience he had in the summer of 1968 at the Servite Priory in Riverside, CA. Here's a link to that page, titled: Intimations

In January of 1970, I left the Servites in Riverside. The previous summer I’d worked as a "Chaplain-intern" in a C.P.E. (Clinical Pastoral Education) program in the admissions ward of Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, CA, the mental hospital for southern L.A. County. That summer, sometime in June or July1969, I had my dramatic experience of "coming out."  Tho' my experience had nothing to do with the events at Stonewall in New York City, and I knew nothing about "gay liberation," I came out at roughly the same moment as all of America was learning what "gay" was.

I got into a verbal fight with another seminarian in the CPE program, while we were driving home from the hospital after work in the admissions unit. There were three of us in the program: Allan Pinka, Bruce K., and myself. We were assigned to the Admissions Unit; each morning we'd sit in on intake interviews with new patients who'd come to the hospital voluntarily or, more often, been brought in by the police for being "dangerous to self or others or gravely disabled." The poor patient was expected to bear his or her soul in front of table of staff that included a psychologist, a social worker or two, a psych resident, a couple of nurses, the unit secretary, and now, that summer, three college-age chaplains-in-training. Then—sometimes while the patient was still in the room— the people sitting around the table would discuss their case and determine what should be done with them. Sometimes the unit head psychiatrist treated the case as a teaching occasion and would explain psychodynamic theories or clinical observations.

That psychiatrist (named Dr. Brentano or something like that) had commented earlier that in doing diagnosis, you should expect homosexuality and paranoia to go together. That sounded right, but it also sounded so judgmental and disrepectful of feelings all three of us in the program were sharing with one another in our personal friendship outside the hospital.

As we were heading out to the parking lot, Bruce had been needling me about being paranoid and said something to me like, “you homosexuals…” I’d felt a rush of shame and fear and thought I might start to cry. But then I realized if I started crying I’d end up in the hospital as a patient; instead I should feel and release the anger—as Dr Bruni, the psychologist on the ward, recommended to all the patients in the daily group sessions. So I transformed the tears into shouts and shouted at Bruce all the way home to the Servite Priory in Anaheim where we were living. I remember declaring, just as I pulled the car into the parking space in the lot beside the Servite Residence behind Servite High School, “I am gay.” And it was a transformative moment.

I continued with the Servites, but felt a growing sense of conflict. Roy Neuner, Tom Sheerin and I were all in that Novitiate class at Riverside Priory with Eddie Penonsek as Novicemaster. I think we were fairly open about being gay. I recall that this upset one of the other novices who had a sort of breakdown and locked himself in the basement for a couple of days. I remember thinking that it was OK for me to be gay and know it and be open, but maybe it wasn’t OK that other people couldn’t handle that reality. What was I doing as a Catholic seminarian anymore? And, having read Alan Watts and discovering Buddhism, what was I doing as a Catholic anymore?

My mother had come out to visit in December. I remember telling her I was going to leave the Servites. Tom Sheerin had gone home to Chicago for the Christmas holidays. He misbehaved badly at CTU in front of the Passionists who were on a different floor from the ’Vites at CTU. Tom got drunk and got up on a table and dared the whole Passionist community to fuck him. In reality it was the drunkenness that caused the Provincial to tell him to leave, but as I heard it, Tom’s homosexuality was a problem for the Order. And mine would be too.

I followed Tom out of the Servites. He and I and a man we met through a local club for Catholic youth named Paul Edwards—who worked as a bookkeeper at Disneyland in Anaheim—shared a two bedroom apartment at the St Francis Garden Apartments on Magnolia Ave in downtown Riverside—just south of the “Parent Navel Orange” which was in a little park, surrounded by steel bars.

I got a job working for a friend of the Castle’s named Kathleen Ciardelli. Her maiden named was Theil. She was from a large family in Idaho. Her sister Cee Ann also lived in Riverside. Kathleen had a gift shop in the Brockton Arcade, a little center just off Magnolia and Central Ave, south of downtown called The Windhover House (ah, named for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ falcon). And here I was Brother Peregrine, just out of the Order and looking for where to go next.

My friend Allan Pinka, on whom I had a very powerful crush—and unrequited love—left the Servites from St. Louis at the semester break and moved to Hollywood. We’d been in that hospital chaplaincy program together that previous summer, along with Bruce. Allan had been going into L.A. and discovered gay bars. I visited him a couple of times that spring in 1970. I remember him taking me tricking to a bar called The Farm—it had straw on the floor and they played “There’s a Meeting Here Tonight” by The Limeliters, which is really a song about a Negro Baptist Revival, but was “adapted” to the gay bar to mean meeting a trick. Allan wanted me to pick somebody up. I just couldn’t bring myself to speak to anybody. I was scared—and in love with Allan. We stayed till the bar closed down—the last song was Paul McCartney singing “Long Winding Road.” Allan was living up in the Hollywood Hills, in a lower floor apartment under a house perched on the side of a mountain, held up on wooden pilings. A magnificent view of the city. I longed for Allan, and since I couldn’t have him, I longed for the life he was living. And for the courage to meet somebody for sex whom I found attractive—and for no other reason.


Back in Riverside, I was working at the Windhover House. The business next door was a frame shop that had a basement woodworking shop. There were two young men whom worked down there. One of them was, I think, named Mike. He was Italian-looking, handsome, pretty, with fair complexion and dark, curly hair that spilled over his forehead. He was tall and well-built. He came into the Windhover a couple of times and smiled warmly and was very friendly with me. But always just in passing. He drove a blue Chevy Corvette that was always parked in the back lot of the center, just outside the back windows of the Windhover House. From the cash register station, I could catch glimpses him leaving work every evening at 5:30 sharp. That’s also when we closed; most evenings one of my jobs was to assist Kathy in closing the register, adding up the credit card slips and preparing a deposit. I’d usually notice Mike getting into his Corvette as Kathy and I were closing up.

I longed for him to come in and talk to me. I tried going over to the frameshop to chat with him, but he was always in the basement, not available for contact with the public.

One afternoon, Kathy had jury duty, and she’d have to leave at noon. I would close up by myself. Since I was on my own schedule, I handled all the register closing a little early and was ready to go out the door just a few minutes before 5:30. I had a plan. I’d go out to the main street—Magnolia Avenue—and started hitchhiking. I knew Mike would see me and most likely give me a ride, since he always went that direction anyway. It was about ten blocks to the St. Francis Garden Apartments. I usually walked home, but I was hitchhiking in those days and it would be easy to set my trap for Mike, so I could talk with him. I fervently hoped he’d take me home with him. Of course, I didn’t really know if he were gay, but how could I find out without making some kind of social connection.

So I left the shop just before it was time for him to leave work. I positioned myself on the other side of Magnolia, just across from the exit to the parking lot, so he could easily swing wide and pull over as he was coming out of the lot and pick me up. I was watching as he started his car and began to come toward the exit. I put out my thumb. I think I could see that he’d noticed me.

Just then a beat up old maroon Buick that had been speeding down the inside lane of the wide four lane boulevard, suddenly put on its brakes, squealing, and pulled over across the outside lane and stopped to pick me up. As I was getting in the front seat, I noticed Mike pull onto the road ahead and drive off. My plan had been foiled.


A couple of weeks later, Kathy again had sometime to do in the afternoon and announced she was leaving early and I could close up on my own. So here was a chance to do it again.

Same scenario. But this time, I dawdled getting over to the other side of the street. I waited till I saw Mike actually in the exit. I looked at him. Put out my thumb. He looked at me. I could tell my plan was working.

Just then, a screeching of tires, the maroon Buick pulled over from the middle lane and stopped to pick me up—again.

Twice in a row. It was too meaningful to not pay attention to. What was the message? At the time, I understood this as a warning not to pursue the life of casual sex and tricking that I saw—and envied—in Allan Pinka’s life. I decided not to move to Hollywood in an effort to be like Allan. Instead, I’d move to San Francisco. I could be gay—this wasn’t an anti-sexual message. But I shouldn’t pursue that particular kind of urban gay tricking life.


It was a most remarkable experience. I understood the driver—an older man who worked in a hardware store about six blocks closer in than the Windhover—to be an “incarnation” of God the Father, giving me a pointer about the direction my life should go.

I’ve summarized the experience in my personal mythology in two deeply meaningful phrases: “The God who Thwarts Plans” and “God drives a maroon Buick.”

I’ve wondered if I was “protected” from something awful that might have happened had my heart-throb Mike picked me up. Would he have been hateful or dismissive? Or would he have been a great sexual experience of the so-called one night stand variety that would cause me to want more? Would connecting with him that day have caused me to move to L.A.? Maybe the important thing was deciding then to move to San Francisco. Maybe the important thing was deciding then that I should be looking for true love and not just casual sex. That, indeed, is what happened.

———
See Toby & Kip Got Married,
March 16, 2018, on their 34th anniversary

Allan, by the way, studied at the California School of Professional Psychology, got a PhD and worked in gay mental health. He had a long time partner, Harley Knight (on the left in the photo). They lived together happily through the 70s and into the 1980s. Allan worked at the L.A. Gay Community Services Center and was beloved and well-respected. Allan has been recognized by the American Psychological Association as “instrumental in the formation of the Association of Lesbian and Gay Psychologists, which later became Division 44, the Society for the Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues.”

Harley died of AIDS in November 1986, Allan on January 4, 1989.