http://ozvta.com/2013/02/05/2013-marks-100-years-of-hub-history/
And a new life for the old theatre
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/new-life-for-newtown-landmark-the-hub-as-a-live-venue-20140318-3507c.html
Tim Alderman
(C) 2015
Category Archives: Article
Destroyed (or Almost) Icons: The Sad Life and Demise of a Majestic Cinema.
What a sad story on the life of what was a majestic cinema. The old Mecca cinema in Kogarah, New South Wales, which was affiliated to the Mecca cinema (originally The Savoy) in Hurstville, New South Wales.
I used to go the beautiful Savoy cinema in Hurstville, as I’m sure my cousins Donna and Jeffrey would have done, as they wereliving in Riverwood at the time. My father moved us to Ocean St in Kogarah – the ugly apartment building is still there on the corner – in 1966, and I went to the Mecca there to see movies. In fact, I had a dispute with the ticket-seller on one occasion, after the new decimal currency had been introduced, and some of the coinage…I can’t remember which – had a double value until the coins went out of circulation. As a business they took the coins at the lower value. As a consumer I took them at the higher, and by law they had to take the coins at the higher value. She was trying to tell me I didn’t have enough for the ticket, and I was arguing that my handful of mixed currency was enough -to the cent/penny. I won! Lol
http://pastlivesofthenearfuture.com/2014/09/29/mecca-theatreresidential-kogarah-nsw/
That the two cinemas ended up in the hands of a “cinema Paedophile – follow the links from the first story – is indeed disturbing, though in a way adds to the colourful history of the cinemas.
Originally The Savoy in Hurstville – which became The Mecca – shows the very sad demise of the Grand Dames of Art Deco cinemas as the advent of television put a temporary halt – or rather a slowing – on cinema audiences. This was the Savoy on its opening night in 1937…
http://pastlivesofthenearfuture.com/2014/07/29/opening-night-at-the-hurstville-savoy-1937/
And this, sadly, is what it became…
http://pastlivesofthenearfuture.com/2015/01/22/intencitytarget-hurstville-nsw/
Just as an aside, right next to my home in Samford Rd, Gaythorne, there is a building that used to be a Civic cinema, but which is now a row of nearly all “For Lease” business premises. Another sad loss.
Tim Alderman (C) 2015
Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe : Let The Sydney Gay Ghetto Go!
Some people just can’t let the past go, or have an inability to see when something has passed it’s use-by date! I have too many friends who keep reiterating that they wish the Sydney gay ghetto was still intact and functioning.
Let’s have a look at the (unspoken) history behind the formation, growth and death of the gay ghetto in Sydney. Historically, Kings Cross and Darlinghurst have always been protective enclaves for the dispossessed, eccentric, minority groups and the unclassifiable citizens of Sydney. Perhaps, initially, because of its foundations in working class and poverty-stricken populations, and later on the underworld, gangsters and prostitution – including transgender – it has always had its roots in notoriety!
In the 70s and early 80s in Sydney, the gay citizens were looking for a space to band together, to avoid the illegalities of being homosexual, and the social stigmatisation that happened at that time as we became more brazen and outspoken about our sexuality. I remember visiting there with a female friend in the 70s – before my own coming out – and the roots of the community were there already with nightclubs and cafes, though homophobic attacks and vitriol were prevalent as well. It was a wall-less ghetto in the making.
By the time the 80s rolled around, it was firmly established as a gay ghetto, ambling along Oxford St and its immediate environs, from Elizabeth St through to Paddington. The legalising of gay rights in 1982 brought around a boom in the area. The ghetto formed very much as a means for us to squeeze out the undesirables by a sheer force of numbers…and it worked. Any straight troublemaker coming onto our turf would have immediately felt threatened, and though violent attacks did occur, they were rare.
At its height, you could live within the ghetto and never move outside it. We had our nightclubs, pubs, cafes, restaurants, newspapers, magazines, bookstores, supermarkets, small businesses, doctors, dentists, optometrists, saunas, post office, houses, apartment buildings. A night out would involve a meal in a local cafe or restaurant, a visit to your pub of choice – about 9 in its heyday – then off to your nightclub of choice. In the early hours of the morning you could either stagger home via your favourite takeaway, or do a trip to your favourite sauna or backroom without ever being harassed. The ghetto was a security blanket.
During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, it was a true blessing. Once again, you could live as a HIV person within the ghetto and be safe and protected. Within the boundaries of the ghetto were established our hospital and hospice care, our HIV/AIDS specialists and GP practices, our support groups such as ACON (AIDS Council of NSW), BGF (Bobby Goldsmith Foundation), CSN (Community support Network), ANKALI (emotional support), and the Positive Living Centres, as well as our advocacy groups such as PLWHA (People Living With HIV/AIDS), NAPWA (National Association of People with AIDS), our funeral directors, our church. We did our own fund-raising, and we supported each other through our pain and sorrow. Once again, it was a safety zone where the emaciated frames of those luving with AIDS could wonder without fear of derogatory remarks, hatred and harassment. In that zone we mourned, held our wakes, and looked for material and emotional support. Those religious groups such as the Festival of Light, who preached and promoted hatred towards us learnt the hard way about the strength and communication within the ghetto.
Fred Nile’s Cleansing March in the80s was a good example. Thinking his band of supporters would march unchallenged up Oxford St, he and they were in for a rude shock! From early in the morning on the day of the march, protestors, the gay community and its supporters started lining the length of the march. By the time the Rev Fred – with his cross-on-wheels – started marching up there, the footpaths, awnings and buildings along the route were packed to capacity with his detractors! The march, from his prospective, was an overwhelming humiliation, and failure! I remember seeing a car full of Tiwi Islanders who had evidently not been warned about how unpopular their beloved reverend was. They looked terrified for their very lives, overwhelmed as they were by the booing and vitriol of the massed ghettoites. I actually felt sorry for them!
However, in the midst of all this, other changes were taking place that were to instigate the downfall of the gay ghetto. Anti-discrimination laws came into play and all-male/female venues became – temporarily – illegal. Nightclubs like the Midnight Shift had to start letting women in, and once they started bringing their boyfriends and other straight male friends, the ambience of the clubs changed forever! And not in a good way! Many ghettoites who had been in the centre of the HIV/AIDS bonfire scattered to other states or to the far north of NSW. Indeed, by the time highly effective HIV antiretroviral regimes started in 1996, it was very much a decimated community, though the epidemic itself had moved on to the straight community, to drug-users and those that had the double-whammy of HIV and hepatitis. The myth of the “gay plague” was laid to rest for good!
But perhaps the greatest enemies of the ghetto was generational changes, social acceptance, and a movement away from the boundaries of the ghetto, a realisation the we no longer needed the safety and protection of the ghetto to live our lives. We dispersed to Newtown, Enmore, Erskinville, Camperdown, Leichhardt, Annandale, Alexandria, Pyrmont, Zetland, Moore Park, Surry Hills, Redfern and Summer Hill. We transformed areas into “Trendy” and moved away, in our hordes, from Oxford St. Yet, some pieces of our lives remained there – a few pubs and nightclubs, a few medical practices, but all-in-all, we moved on.
Darlinghurst and much of Paddington are now mere shadows of their former selves. A stroll down Oxford St now will reveal dozens of empty businesses, and those that do remain struggle for customers during the day. The nightclubs and pubs are now the enclaves of straight people, and a general feeling of desolation, violence, uncomfortable vibes, and unrest permeates the air. It is now, once again, a place where unsolicited violence can occur irrespective of your sexuality.
So the ghetto has outlived its usefulness, and is, to all intended purposes, dead! I can understand nostalgia, even fleeting yearnings. What I don’t get is an inability to accept the ravages of time, the changing dynamics of an area, the growth and development of populations, indeed diaspora! To those who wear blinkers, want the past to live on, the “good old days” to be a mantra for days gone by, I say…let it go! Enjoy the memories, but don’t wish for them to return. To deny yourself the insights of living in the “now” is to root yourself in a past that can never be repeated. Allow the ghetto to be swallowed by history, to takes its place in our memories as somewhere that we lived and enjoyed IN ITS TIME…and leave it there! Never let your yearning for the past, cause you to overlook the reality of now.
Tim Alderman
(C) 2015
Disappointments
As I watched the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade wend its way up Oxford St, I paused for a second of reflection as I saw the group for PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) marching up the street under the PFLAG banner. I admit to a tinge of envy as I pondered how proud both the parents and the children must feel at being able to express them selves so easily, and be so comfortable with each other’s sexuality.
This is not a privilege I have ever known with my own parents. Growing up as I did through the fifties and sixties, my parent’s generation was not given to liberal attitudes, and the prospect of having a gay son in the family would have meant automatic exclusion from the family unit, a prospect not many of us would have favoured. During the 70s, I had amongst my friends several gay men. Though not being out myself at this time, I enjoyed their company, finding them a constant source of amusement with their camp witticisms, and enjoying many social occasions at their homes. On the one occasion when one of them came visiting at home with a group of friends, my father told me, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to cross our doorstep again. This was only one of many rifts between my father and myself over the years. Thankfully, I was old enough to stick up both for myself and my friend, though making sure I did not ‘out’ myself.
My mother had left home when I was eleven years old, and shortly after my brother was killed. My mother accepted guilt for this happening right up to the present. She used the classic “well, maybe if I’d never have left…”, which is pretty inconsequential at this stage of the game. My mother was also part of the homophobe generation, though she seemed to have had little compunction about buying me dolls as I grew up, on the proviso that I never told my father.
My father killed himself in 1978, and I moved to Campbelltown with my stepfamily for a short period of time whilst the legalities of his death were sorted out. I accidently ‘outed’ myself to my flatmates when, on packing a bag for me to take down to my father’s funeral, they encountered some gay porn hidden in the drawers at home. So the cat was out of the bag in respect to that subject – at least with them. They weren’t particularly shocked, but told me I should tell my mother, who I had reconnected with only a short time earlier. The reconciliation with my mother had been shaky at best, and with her having remarried a man who reminded me very much of my father, I wasn’t really prepared to tackle the issue of being gay.
The opportunity came in 1980 when I went to live in Melbourne for a couple of years. I kept contact with my mother, and my old flat mates. While living there, I came out with a bang, and made short work of catching up on the life I had been denying myself, for all of my mature life.. There is nothing quite like the freedom you get from being far away from everyone you know. The flat mates kept telling me to be honest with mum. I kept putting it off. When mum found out I was gay, it wasn’t me who told her. My flat mates accidentally outed me.
When I moved back to Sydney, I never really set up an intimate relationship with my mother. I think all the years apart had played a role in distancing me from her. Anyway, she had established a life of her own with Ray, and produced a daughter. If we weren’t distant enough already, eighteen years between my half-sister and myself certainly didn’t help shorten the gap. I never really felt comfortable at their home in Toongabbie, and over the years my visits got less and less, until they were finally reduced to nothing more than phone calls. I did attempt a single reconciliation, and had my doubts about its success fulfilled . Over a very nice lunch in the city, a situation where I thought the two of us could discuss the issue of gay like mature adults, I gave up after having to sit through the old “it’s my fault you are like this…” line. I realised then that we were beyond reconciliation. But the saddest aspect of it for me wasn’t her inability to accept me as a gay person, but the fact that she would never really know me, the person I was, or the person I was to become. I wasn’t even really sad, just angry that she just would not accept things as they were.
In 1996, I became very ill, and ended up in Prince Henry Hospital, with a prognosis of about two weeks to live. However, new drug regimes and a lot of Capricorn stubbornness and determination turned the tables in my favour. I was released from hospital, and a whole new era of my life began.
My mother knew nothing of any of this. She knew nothing about my brush with death, nor the numerous operations I had over the next couple of years to try to save the sight in my eyes. She knew nothing of the thousands of injections I had been given, the litres of blood taken, or the 150 odd tablets I took every week to stay alive. Nor did I want her to know. Her reaction to me was that it did not exist. She lived in a vacuum- packed little suburban world, and things such as ‘gay’ could never break through the seal of that vacuum. Perhaps the saddest part of this was that she never got to be involved in my new life. She knew little of my community work, nor of my battle to return to work, of the success I was making of my writing, and my continuing attempts to reeducate myself so I could move in new directions. I felt particularly disappointed when I was given my UTS offer, and knew I could not share it with her.
The crunch came at the end of 1997. She had been having a number of tests, and had been diagnosed with bladder cancer. I thought it was terrible, but was still recovering from my own battles with ill health. She was admitted to hospital to have her bladder removed, and it came as quite a shock to me to find out she was there, as my step father never notified me. I rang him at Toongabbie to enquire about her health. He shocked me by demanded that I go out to Westmead and visit her. It was Christmas Eve, and I refused. I slammed the phone down. I knew he would go to the hospital and create a scene, whether I went to visit or not. As far as he was concerned, I should have been the loving, doting son. I wasn’t, and couldn’t be. I rang mum in the hospital, wished her a ‘Merry Christmas’, and that was the last time we ever spoke. She has never rung me, I have never rung her. I feel sad that it had to come to this, but I don’t have any regrets.
I envy those people walking up the street because they know how to love and accept what is. It may have been a battle, they may still not understand what it is all about, but they support their children in the most dynamic way, by walking up that street and declaring their support in public.
It was perhaps an odd anachronism that my partners’ family was more accepting of our relationship than my parents could even have considered. I have been accepted into their household, and I’m treated every bit as part of the family, though we are no longer together.
But I still wish that my parents had just taken the time to try to understand, not to be necessarily all over me about it, but at least accepting of me as being their child no matter what my sexuality. They have never allowed me the privilege of feeling like I ‘belonged’ to them in any sense of the word.
I know only too well that when my mother dies (if she hasn’t already), there will be no one to call me and let me know. To me, that is perhaps the greatest sadness of all.
Tim Alderman
(C) 2010
The Long Search
We waste so much time looking for what is right under our noses! Look for reasons for our existence, justification for our lives. We need to accept what is, and be thankful for what is given to us every day. We need to learn to appreciate just what is!
At 23 years of age, I went searching for God, and didn’t find him.
I am still looking.
What did I find instead? Well, you can’t hide forever in a monastery, to start with!
I always insisted I had a vocation. Most Catholics do at some stage of their lives. Heavily influenced as I was by Marist Brothers, Discalced Carmelite Fathers and Franciscan Friars, by retreats run by Redemptorist Fathers were such a thrill…not! it is little wonder that I started a drift toward the religious life in my early teens. There has always been this feeling that, as a heathenish Protestant wandering the lowland of faith, once I became a Catholic I was suddenly floating through the rarified air of Catholic piety. I must confess to being humbled at the sanctity that was suddenly available to me through the contemplative monastic life.
Some decisions in life require more emotional input than others. The decision to join the Community of St Thomas Moore was one of those with an emotional base. I am, by my very nature, a contemplative. If I had not been Christian, I probably would have run away and joined a Buddhist Zen community. The decision to enter the tough life of a contemplative monk was one that suited me well. It fulfilled a spiritual side of my nature that I had otherwise found empty. In silence, chant, work and prayer, a huge spiritual chasm was, supposedly, filled.
In the monastery, I found the “Powerhouse of Prayer” that is the essence of the monastic life, and is no better evidenced than in the community life of contemplative monks and nuns. This total overturning of ones self, of emptying out all that was unnecessary in ones life and replacing it with a concept of God I found to be a truly freeing experience. In the community religious life, I found in miniature a model of what the wider community could be, if they embraced ideals outside of themselves. With the rest of the community, I practiced selfless acts of community work, of communal prayer and life, which opened me up to a greater concept of what existence, God, spirituality and religion (both the latter as separate identities) were about.
But they are also good places to hide, to shut out the real world and convince yourself that you are something other than what you really are. I found this out the hard way.
Just short of my first vows, I had a crisis of faith. Why was I really here? What was I hiding from? Was I using spirituality as a scapegoat to shirk responsibilities in the outside world? Was I deceiving myself? This last question was the one that tipped the balance. The decision to leave the community was not made over a long period of time. In fact, the situation surrounding it is as clear to me today as it was on the day that I made it. In retrospect it is almost romantic. The monastery (an old convent given over to the Benedictine monks to found a new branch of the order) was situated at Leura set right at the top end of a valley. I went for a wander around the grounds on a very cold, winters morning. I stopped at the end of the monastery grounds and looked down into the valley. Mists were crawling in along the valley floor and had just started climbing the valley walls. It was there, at that instant, that I realised I was hiding here, trying to make a life that I may have desired, but which wasn’t really ever going to be mine.
I left the community a week later. Life then proceeded to unfold the way it should. I went to Melbourne, and ‘came out of the closet.’ This is what I had always been hiding from, and when I eventually made the decision to take up my place in the gay community, I found it a fulfilling one, though more in a carnal, materialistic sense than a spiritual one. I have no complaints about that.
I miss the monastery still. I probably always will. But I now realise that no amount of devout prayer, no endless chanting of mass and the divine hours, no pious clacking of rosary beads can hide the person you really are. It is not good to hide your light away.
Questioning the existence of God, of the relevance of religion itself comes over time. When you sit down and evaluate what faith and religion are all about, you will find them wanting. When you read, research and assess what religion really is, it fails to come up to expectation. One could blame human nature itself, but when we as people allow what religion dishes out, how religion itself allows hypocrisy, hate, disdain, discrimination, stigmatisation , alienation and false hope to be its credo, then it really has a lot to answer for! As for it being a matter of personal faith, then there are real problems that people are having their vulnerability exploited! Religion has become a conduit for hate. Just look at it’s history!
It is far too easy to say that good people exist within the framework of religion. The reality is that, without religion, these people would still exist. Faith is not the harbinger of goodness and charity! Those traits exist within people themselves! You don’t need God to make that happen, nor for it to exist. And as for being an Atheist? They seem to spend way too much time defending why they don’t believe in anything, instead of just not making an issue of it. There is a standing joke that you can always pick a vegan because the will make sure you know! Atheists are the same!
So, does one really need faith, really nerd religion to fill in a spiritual yearning, a need to find something greater than ones self? I don’t believe so. I truly feel sorry for the religious fanatics who believe that this life should be an absolute misery, a bleak, desolate preparation for the life to come after death! Really! That is our sole reason for being here? A dark, cold crawling toward something that, in all probability, doesn’t exist? What a sad state some have come to. Like those who see life as a burden, or as something to be lived with no joy or light, they never take the time to stop and look. Our true spirituality can be found by doing nothing more than being ourselves, living our lives to the fullest, drawing from experience, causing no one harm, letting people get on with their lives as they allow you to get on with yours.. Look for the beauty and goodness around you. Live your life for the now, not for the unknowable! Spirituality lies within the simplest things – the unconditional love of a dog; the beauty of a flower; the caress of a lover; a feeling of fulfillment for a job well done, or a small act of charity towards another. It lies in bird song, butterflies wings, sunlight, and in just being! You need look no further than yourself! To quote Neil Diamond – I am, I said!
I never did find God. I did find myself!
Tim Alderman
Copyright © 2014
Weighted!
According to the 2013 report from the Bureau of Statistics, 63% of Australian adults are overweight or obese. An estimated 280 Australians develop diabetes every day. The 2005 Australian AusDiab Follow-up Study (Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study) showed that 1.7 million Australians have diabetes but that up to half of the cases of type 2 diabetes remain undiagnosed. By 2031 it is estimated that 3.3 million Australians will have type 2 diabetes (Vos et al., 2004) – stats from Diabetes Australia. These statistics are nothing short of frightening. Every day we are inundated with conflicting impressions – both in reality and in the media – of body image. On the one hand we have a population becoming so obese it is bordering on terrifying. If the trend is not halted, the cost of health care is going to spiral up at a frightening rate. On the other hand, we are inundated with images of sculpted 6 and 8 packs, biceps and pecs that are almost impossible for us to obtain, let alone maintain. They fill my newsfeed with promos from gyms, supplement companies, models, celebrities, health and fitness magazines, clothing and underwear companies. What seems to be missing is a healthy norm. As gay and HIV+ people we are not exempt from the fat/thin dialectic. And some of it seems to be based in history. The problems of being at both extremes affects us as a population in general, and I think it heeds to be tackled from as many angles as possible.
I am just staggered by the number of over-weight (anywhere from obese to chronically obese) people I see every day. While I had a coffee at Brookside a couple of days ago, and at my local cafe today, I made a point of observing people coming and going (referred to as being a flaneur), and a good 90% of them were over-weight, and in the older age group where this is causing the most problems. Considering the constant emphasis on our increasingly over-weight population, and the regular medical bulletins on problems associated with obesity, nobody seems to be particularly alarmed about it. It really is frightening!
And the gay community is not exempt from this problem. In fact everything but! We have developed a sub-culture that celebrates over-weight men, which is certainly nothing worth celebrating!. Not only are they celebrated, but encouraged, and that is the most worrying aspect of this unhealthy adoration. An acquaintance of mine is a bear (I am not going to debate the rhetoric behind the terminology). The fact that his obesity is disguised by the use of cultural terminology, and the acceptance of this as “normal” has far-reaching implications that will only be changed by a huge cultural shift away from this behaviour. Eventually everyone subscribing to this culture will develop most, if not all, of the illnesses associated with obesity. There is no “might happen” about it. This acquaintance regularly posted pictures of himself in various stages of undress, and all the comments were of the “woof” variety. I have yet to read a comment from anyone encouraging him to start losing weight for the sake of his health. And I’m sure any negative comments would be met with a barrage of abusive comments about minding your own business, and what is “wrong with this normal guy”! Nothing like an unhealthy obsession to put the blinkers over peoples eyes. For the last twelve months I have kept my mouth shut – I really can’t see any sense in leaving myself open to abuse, even though a friends welfare is uppermost in my mind. I quickly flick past his massive underwear-clad posts on my newsfeed. After several months of health issues that had seen him avoiding medical help because he knew he would be told to lose weight, he has now been diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes. Naturally, all the comments about his health update have been sympathetic. Not one person has said…you didn’t expect this! I think he is very lucky it is only diabetes. I was expecting a heart attack. Only months ago his status updates on FB informed us of his driving to a nearby supermarket to stock up on pavlova or marshmallow flavoured ice-cream. That has changed rather quickly. To his credit, he has taken the scare seriously, has changed his diet and is losing weight. He now also advocates change amongst his peers.
So, there are several issues here. One important one is the quite deliberate action of contracting Type-2 Diabetes, a condition we know is avoidable by adopting healthy diet and exercise lifestyles. The incidence of this type of lifestyle-related diabetes is rising at an alarming rate. To actively be a member of a sub-culture that actually promotes this lifestyle aberration defies imagination. The cost to the healthcare system from the combination of this group (which is rising), and smokers (which is decreasing) is going to be staggering, and we will all have to bear the costs of both these irresponsible and selfish behaviours. It has nothing to do with personal choice, as much as these groups like to harp on about it. As soon as your lifestyle choices start to infringe on my health, or my ability to easily access good, affordable healthcare, then your choices are no longer personal. They are far-reaching.
I guess one can’t address the issue of bear-culture without looking at how it has come into being. The opposite extreme also has a lot to answer for. I, for one, am sick of looking at guys on fitness and health magazine covers, in gay magazines, in modeling, in movies, in advertising and even in pornography whereby the now accepted norm is over-emphasised washboard abs, and over-developed musculature that has nothing to do with a healthy body image. The sudden move towards this portrayal of the male physique as “normal” is as frightening and concerning as the move towards obesity. We don’t seem to be able to find a happy, healthy middle road. Given that maintaining this type of body is both time and money consuming – does in fact involve almost daily doses of gym and supplements (and for some, steroids) – and is not sustainable in the long term, it is surprising that it is promoted as much as it is. Whatever happened to men wanting to look trim, fit and healthy? Why the move away from developing lean muscle mass? Why a move away from diet and exercise that is both low maintenance, and sustainable long term? I really have no answer to that, other than to hope it is just a current “trend”. It certainly makes no sense to me. At my own gym I regularly see guys hefting huge amounts of weights, grunting and groaning and banging their way through routines, with no different an end result than my routine of combined isometric/Swiss exercise ball/body weight exercises, a method that does take longer to show results, but is easier to maintain and add to over a long period of time. As to diet, in our household it has been low-sugar/low-fat/portion-controlled for so long now that it is now lifestyle.
So, back to my acquaintance. If he had listened to the warnings, if he had seriously thought about the consequences of his choices, the outcome may have been – positively – different. To date, I have seen no signs of his fan club encouraging him. Indeed, I have to wonder just how many of them will hang around, just how many will give him a “woof” if he were to suddenly become fit and healthy. It has become notable that if parents who are obese have children who are obese, it is seen as normal. Society as a whole really needs a good kick up the arse. We don’t need to spend as much as we do on fast-food; we don’t need to eat as much as we do – we don’t heed to fill our dinner plates; we have to stop making excuses like time-poor, time-consuming and too hard as far as healthy food choices and preparation goes; we need to stop seeing exercise as something hard; and we need to stop looking at each other and thinking “they are bigger than me, so I must be all right”. We need to think of the health implications of decisions we are making NOW! Do we want to be fat; have mobility problems; increased risk of diabetes; coronary heart disease; risk of stroke; circulation problems; high blood pressure; loss of flexibility; breathing problems; low bone density; joint problems and replacements due to just wearing the joints out from having to carry all the weight around; and a multitude of other problems all of which are preventable by some simple lifestyle changes. Given the choice of a fit and active old age, or a quick decline into bad health and misery I know what my choice is! There are 168 hours in a week. Surely it is not too hard to devote two or three of those hours every week to exercise.
The HIV community is also faced with problems of obesity. There is some research into the problem that indicates that for many long-term survivors the problem is a flow-on from the dismal days of the 80s and 90s, when emaciated bodies were a common site. To them, over-weight means healthy. It appears that the longer people are healthy, the more common it becomes to end up over-weight or obese. This trend signals a need for doctors to change their approach to caring for HIV positive people. It’s time to shift the focus to the prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure and weight gain.
HIV positive people who need to lose weight must follow general weight loss recommendations. You must eat a balanced meal that does not exceed your caloric needs, and you still need to exercise and avoid junk food. If you are overweight and HIV positive, where should you start?
The best place to start a weight loss plan is a food diary. Knowing what you are eating, how much you are eating, and when and where you are eating can help you adjust your diet and eating habits. Each time you eat, be it a snack or a full meal, write down what you have eaten, how much, and under what circumstances. For instance, if you eat a bowl of chili at a party, write down how much chili you have, what’s in the chili, and the circumstances surrounding your eating the chili. Was it your dinner? Were you hungry? Or was a bowl offered to you and you ate it so not to insult your host? Enter your meal into the diary as soon as you can after eating. It is difficult to keep accurate records if you wait too long after eating. Not to mention we often underestimate the amounts we eat after too much time has past.
Like anyone who is overweight, adjusting what and how much you eat is the first step to weight loss. An all-too-common problem is that we try fad diets and quick loss diets that may work in the short term but do nothing to keep the weight off. The key to an effective diet is one that teaches you healthy eating habits that will serve you a lifetime. By learning healthy eating habits, you will take the weight off and keep it off for the long term. The bottom line: Watch your calories, your fat intake, and your portion sizes to maintain a healthy weight. If you find your are eating for reasons other than hunger, talk with your doctor or a dietitian. They can help you lose the extra weight and keep it off — and in turn that will help you live a healthier live with HIV.*
I wish my acquaintance well, and I’m truly sorry that his lesson had to be learnt the hard way. Should I have thrown caution to the wind and spoken up? Truth be told, it wouldn’t have made an iota of difference. His fan club would have beaten me down, and the cries of “woof” would have drowned out the voice of reason. People only hear what they want to hear. Until these attitudes change, until these sub-cultures are given their proper place and are not seen as ‘normal’ nothing is going to change, and stupidly, more people will get seriously ill. Time for a rethink people, before it is too late.
*HIV dietary information from http://aids.about.com/od/nutrition/a/obesity.htm
Tim Alderman
(C) 2013
An Outsiders Overview of the HIV “Industry”
This year marks, for me, 33 years of living with HIV/AIDS…though now it is just HIV. I consider it a landmark, as back in 1996 I was admitted to Prince Henry hospital with chronic CMV retinitis, chronic candida, chronic anaemia, wasting syndrome (48 kg and going down), 10 CD 4 cells, and no immune system, and was not supposed to leave…at least not under my own steam. I did, thanks to advances in medications at that time, very aggressive treatment and a lot of will power. I don’t give a fuck how negative many HIV+ guys are about life with HIV. For me, this was the great singular event of my life, a pivotal point that resulted in life-altering decisions, a mental overhaul, and the knowledge that there was a hell of a lot more to life than HIV. It altered the course of my life, and for better or worse I have never looked back.
I was a speaker for the Positive Speakers Bureau for 12 years before realising that when you continually tell a story you start doing it by rote. The time came to opt out before it becomes totally meaningless. I have also written for “Talkabout” magazine (the flag ship publication of Positive Life NSW – formally PLWHA NSW Inc) for 15 years, as a features writer and a columnist. I also spent many years on the Publications Working Group. As a writer I see my role as not only to inform people, but to provoke debate, at times to be opinionated, to raise questions, to address abuses and unfairness and to be, when required, controversial. Unfortunately, my time with “Talkabout” taught me that to get published in a HIV publication you need to walk the safe road. To be controversial is to be tolling your own death knell. Mind you, this censorship has nothing to do with the editors who, in my experience, have been nothing but supportive. Community Health and a certain AIDS council provide funding to the magazine, so to poke your nose into sensitive areas will ensure your censure and non-publication.
As a HIV+ person writing about HIV issues I have always found my hands tied. I have written two extremely controversial articles on HIV Issues over the years. One, on Options Employment Services using HIV clients as a free work force in the guise of “work experience” was so watered down after threats of suing PLWHA, the editor and myself (I truly wish they had) that by the time of publication was a mere shadow of its original fiery tirade…despite the fact that I had evidence of this going on.The manager even took me aside and “suggested” that I quieten down my opinions as they were providing a service to the HIV community. Shortly after, they went broke and disappeared. The second article was amongst the best pieces I have ever written, and covered the controversial area of bug-chasing (HIV- guys who deliberately have unprotected sex with HIV+ guys in the hope of contracting HIV). The magazines working group deemed that by writing about bug-chasing I may have been promoting it amongst a certain sector of the community. Considering that the practice is well documented, is acknowledged and exists I failed to see how being informative about it was in any way promoting it…oh shit! I forgot that community health and certain HIV organisations wanted to keep their heads buried in the sand about the issue…and they held the purse-strings. Censorship is alive and well within the HIV community and always has been. Want to tell the truth about what is going on or want to expose something? Not on their watch!
But despite this I continue to write, though I keep it to the more nondescript these days. I do enjoy being published! Since moving to Brisbane I have been phasing out my writing for “Talkabout” (which after 15 years of being published in pretty well every issue, has gone unacknowledged by the organisation itself, though not by the editors), and have started writing for QPP “Alive”, the magazine of Queensland Positive People. Same story, different place as far as funding goes, I’m afraid. Nothing controversial will be coming out of here either.
33 years ago at the start of the HIV shit fight, people never questioned anything about treatments, definitions, philosophies, or courses-of-action. We were in crisis mode and anything was better than nothing. We let a lot happen that in more sane times, in more accountable times, would never have been allowed to happen. This far down the line it is time to start asking questions, time to demand investigations and redefinition into many aspects of treatment, time to look back at some of the historical record and say “we were wrong”, and set the record straight. I no longer allow my doctor, or the HIV establishment, or the drug companies to dictate my path to health for me. I follow my own path, which is dictated to by knowledge and experience. 11 years ago I made a decision to halve my daily medications, and dose myself once a day only. Considering the negative impacts of huge amounts of HIV medication on the body I decided to take a risk. Well, this far down the line my health has never been better (though diet and exercise also contribute to that), my viral load has remained at undetectable, and not only has my CD4 count remained stable, it has in fact risen considerably. In fact, on my blood tests all other readings – except CD4/CD8 – are within range. Considering the recent emphasis on drug regime “compliance”, and considering my own circumstances, I am forced to ask – controversially, naturally – if the compliance issue is being driven by HIV specialists, or by the drug companies who stand to make a fortune out of HIV drugs. I will leave that question in the air for you to mull over and answer for yourself. This is a personal opinion, and one I am entitled to.
With the release of the brilliant “Dallas Buyers Club” the truth about AZT is finally out there. Pressured by my doctor to go on it in the latter part of the 80s, it is the one decision of my HIV care that I regret. I had read the report from the “Concorde” study in France, I knew it was described as “Human Ratsac”, yet I still finally gave in, and witnessed the immediate decline of my health as it bashed my immune system into submission. Needless to say, the long-term affects are disabling, and were not worth the risk. I still hear those who work in the HIV “Industry” – as indeed it was and still is – banging on about how it kept the wolf from the door – it didn’t! It poisoned and destroyed our immune systems, and left us vulnerable to opportunistic infection! It effectively killed many of us. As a drug to assist with maintaining CD4 counts it was a total and complete failure! And I am not the only one to say so! Ask any one who survived AIDS their opinion on AZT! Minor control of HIV did not start AZT situation. How the FDA in America handled the AZT situation and allowed wed the drug companies to dictate treatment options, block other drugs put out by rival companies, and chose to ignore or acknowledge research from overseas was a disgrace.
Even now in 2014 ignorance lives on. I continually hear, read and see HIV being described as AIDS! It is NOT AIDS – it Is HIV or HIV+! For fuck sake get your facts right! HIV is a viral infection, and AIDS are as the initials infer – Acquired IMMUNE Deficiency Syndrome! They are infections contracted by a breakdown of the immune system! The two do not necessarily go hand in hand, and you can have one without having the other. People undergoing aggressive cancer treatments which knock the immune system around are left vulnerable to the same infections triggered by AIDS in the plague years. Drug addicts also.
There are – and I am not being unkind nor ungrateful – those who have worked in the HIV Industry for too long. They are burnt out, and out of touch. If you only wander in HIV circles, you will only know that singular perspective. These people are indoctrinated, lacking in vision, and single-minded in their approaches to HIV and its management. They are blinkered, and only ever spiel forth statistics and the same information that we have heard for the last 30-odd years. They seem incapable of acknowledging different perspectives, new ideas, or revisiting and re-evaluating the old philosophies and education. Without an insurgence of new blood, HIV is in danger of stagnating and just at a dead end. Their current publicity of “Ending HIV” is a fantasy, and they know it. As long as HIV is in Africa, and in countries like Russia and China where education is almost non-existent or played down, HIV will never end. Empty words to seem to appear to be doing something, is just a waste of money. The HIV Industry seems to be very good at this. Always about 2-years behind actual need – just look at the employment needs of AIDS survivors in 1997/98 – when services were introduced they were way off course. You can only have so many programs that teach you how to write a resume, or attend an employment interview. Every single return-to-work session I went to do talks at had the same people in them. They just moved from one group to another, never putting the teaching into action. Where was the advice for people who wanted to be re-educated, or start a business, or upgrade a hobby,or buy into a franchise? It was non-existent. These people were the ones who fell through the cracks for lack of support and services. This has always been an ongoing problem. Naturally, the lack of funding is always blamed – though enough money to pay huge salaries – when really it is a lack of foresight, and imagination. Of course, everything is now wrapped up under the umbrella of Community Health, so any hope of imaginative thinking is now out the window. Those who hold the purse-strings control everything. It is a sad state of affairs. Groups like “Positive Life” no longer acknowledge their roots, nor do they move in the directions set down by the original founders. They are out of touch with their memberships, are indeed losing them. In the race to save money they are dropping resources that keep everyone active within the group. Even Positive Speakers Bureau inductees are now told what to talk about, and bang on about the same old messages and sprout the same old statistics. The trouble is…no one gets sick any more, so there is nothing to talk about for an hour. Perhaps it has outlived its use.
If one has to be totally frank, service delivery, information and services are no better now than they were 20 years ago! In many cases, they are worse. One friend of mine complains of the lack if easy access to HIV meds, and he has to spend a lot of time travelling to obtain them. He also comments on how he and his partner feel isolated and-reclusive due to no social groups to mingle with, and the constant heed to continually go through your medical record every time you change providers. Pretty sad state of affairs considering he only lives in Canberra.
Being my 33rd anniversary of life with HIV, and with World AIDS Day approaching I have written a personal retrospective of that period hopefully for publication around that time. It is 2,500 words long…not a lot of words for 33 years. If you are interested, follow the link. Not quite as controversial as this!
Getting On With It! A 33-Year Retrospective of Life with HIV/AIDS
For information on the Concorde Trial – http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/news/5/concorde-trial
Tim Alderman
(C) 2014
Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Breaking the Internet
WTF with Kim Kardashion reportedly “breaking the internet” by showing her bum! My worked fine through the whole episode…and no, I haven’t seen it. Will google it now, and get back to you….*leaves WordPress and googles Kim Kardashion’s fat arse*
Well, wasn’t that interesting! Firstly a photo of her in a thong *shudders* with an inflatable bum..no bull. It’s very. ….fat.. Then a news item on a furore over a Facebook ban…who cares, Facebook, you are run by a pack off pricks anyway…of a photo of a birthing mothers bum (why you would even think of posting this is beyond me! Seriously!) yet allowed the photograph of Kimmy’s fat, photoshopped, oiled derrière! If it was really that size, problems everywhere from buying clothes to booking plane seats! As a gay man, I have one word for it…HIDEOUS!
If it was Hugh Jackman’s, or Ryan Gosling’s…Bradley Cooper’s…Brad Pitt’s…Matthew MacConahey’s, Zac Efron’s…Daniel Craig’s…then I’d say break the internet, as gay men worldwide race to download it
But let’s get to the crux of this “breaking the internet” bullshit…the Cult of the Kardashion’s itself! The hole in the ozone layer above their homes must be huge! If ever a family could lay claim to starting carbon pricing…this is the one! The phrase most associated with them is “a waste of oxygen”.
Now, one could say this sounds like sour grapes – and in a way it is, as I can’t stand any of them – but really, this plague on humanity started in 2007, when a nobody family doing nothing became an E! hit. Obviously a lot of people with the attention span of a gnat or with no taste in entertainment created this moldy snowball! Let’s face it, anyone who names all their daughters with “K” names (Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, Kendall & Kylie) leaves a lot to be desired in the originality sweepstakes! Not to forget the “momsger” Kris, famous only for marrying Bruce Jenner…an athlete and now motivational speaker and television personality, and whose looks deteriorated rather quickly.
But back to the arse – which belongs to the greatest waste of air – Kim. Doing nothing more than cashing in on being the biggest airhead in the series, her mother has now ensured that she has become the families “spokeswoman” and media mouthpiece! Along with her marriage to Kayne West, her shoes, clothing, perfume lines are all she has, and there are plenty around who do it better than her. She is nothing less than an example of how selling yourself on social media, and having the E! publicity machine behind you can make you mire famous than you deserve to be.
No Kim, your arse did not break the internet, however, it dud gain you more publicity. It would seem that being a media whore is something you are very good at,
Tim Alderman
(C) 2014
Things My Mother Told Me!
I’m sure we have all received snippets of advice off our parents as we grew up…some of it sound, some not. For some reason they think they are the font of all knowledge – but I beg to differ. How much donyou relate tonthe “sound advice” demonstrated bellow?
As the years start to go by with increasing haste – the first thing she told me; she said they went fast, but didn’t indicate exactly how fast! I have time to occasionally reflect upon the fact that neither my mother or father really prepared me in any way for life. Now I am sure they were well intentioned, thinking in fact that they may have been, in some naïve way, protecting me. Now I find it’s not what they took the time to tell me, but what they left out. Seeing as how I spent more of my youth with my mother than with my father, I have to assume that this repository of misinformation is mainly her fault.
‘There are only two forms of take-away,’ she profoundly announced one Friday, as we tucked into the fish, chips and potato scallops that were a family tradition on this day. It didn’t matter that we weren’t Catholic – my father was, but didn’t practice – and that both mother and myself had been raised through the simplicity of Protestantism. You always had fish on Friday. Now this was one form of take-away. The other was – to the uninformed who were not raised during the 50’s – Chinese. Yep, that was it. Fish and chips and Chinese. None of your Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian or Modern Australian rubbish. No siree! None of that foreign muck. It took me nearly 18 years to realise what a lie this had been, though to my knowledge neither my mother or father ever ate outside those guidelines, and my mother is now in her 80’s.
‘You’ll be grey, part bald and wrinkly yourself, one day my boy,’ was another lie she told me with intent regularity. I am now 60, and despite a few creeping grey hairs, I still have a full head of dark hair. I can also still get away with being in my late thirties – oh all right my 40s! No mean feat…though perhaps good tenetics, mum! Just because my old man was bald and wrinkly by the time he was 45, what made her think that hereditary had it in for me as well?
Perhaps not having two kids may have assisted me, as she also constantly reminded me that ‘there was no greater thing you could do with your life than get married and have children.’ Mmm where can I go with this one! She was so impressed with the whole process that she fled home when I was a mere 11 years old, and my brother a whole 7. She then proceeded to give birth to my half sister 18 years later – at a time of her life when she should, by all rights, have been sitting back and lounging on Queensland islands, or spending her days lost in a pokie euphoria at the local RSL. I hope she doesn’t hold me responsible for any of that.
‘You must have a trade to get by on in life,’ was probably one of my favourites. I had been having gay fantasies since I was 9 years old, and here she is thinking I’m going to be a bricklayer, carpenter, electrician or plumber. Not likely, thinks I! I hide all my art works away, and only allow them to be viewed by one spinster aunt, who sort of understands what it is all about. Apart from anything else, it never really explains why she buys me dolls when I request them – and I’m not talking Ken-type dolls here. I like to dress them up. Perhaps she thinks I’m going to be a fashion designer, and hides the fact from my father for fear that he will disown me? Well, he did that anyway, and it was a long while before I actually ‘came out’ that I found myself disinherited.
So, I managed to avoid any of the butch trades, and even managed not to end up an accountant or anything else remotely embarrassing. Instead, I wasted 30 years of my bloody life in retail, hating every day of it, and wishing to God I had become a builder, even if it was just for the perving that I could do on the job. Now, I’ve sort of gone full circle. Though not a fashion designer, or an artist, I am a writer (and to make it worse – a poet!), and have finally found that not only is it a pleasure to be getting older, it is an even greater pleasure to be doing what I have always wanted to do.
‘Choose your furniture carefully. If you do, it can last you for most of your life,’ she would say as she wiped over the teak laminex sideboard and dining table. Now don’t tell me you haven’t copped this one! She might enjoy living with the same tacky furniture for 50 years, but I’ll be damned if I will. I still cringe at the recollections of going to visit her and my step-father at Toongabbie. It was like reliving my life at Sylvania in a time warp. Neither the style, nor the laminex had changed. And the lounge was a Harvey Norman spectacular, undoubtedly bought at a 40-hour sale. I breathe a sigh of relief as I bring an image of the ‘Freedom’ and ‘Ikea’ logos into my mind. I’ll change my furniture every five years, thank you all the same mum! Besides, nobody has an orange kitchen or teak laminex furniture anymore – or do they?
‘Go ask your father’ or ‘ Go ask your mother’ were the words of wisdom handed out to je by both if the disgusting subject of sex was ever brought up. I may have bern running around with a constant boner, and wanking like there was no tomorrow, but no gems of wordly wisdom to inform me if what was going on were forthcoming! Well, they did make one attempt by sneaking onto my room one night and leaving me some delightful pamphlets published by our local Congregational Church. Oh what a joy to find them the next morning! Having spent some time trying to decipher what the anatomical diagrams were about, I happily came to the conclusion that I had both a penis….AND a vagina. So much for that effort! I ended up letting nature sort it, though not before totally stressing mum out with a lot of very stiff sheets, and underwear. Fair retribution, I call that!
Despite all this, I have ended up a fairly well-balanced adult. I know! A bloody miracle isn’t it! I have aged well, live in a tastefully decorated Queenslander, eat in a large variety of restaurants serving many different cuisines, am a writer with a respectfully popular blog…and I’m gay! Now there is something they could never have advised me on, though perhaps my curiosity as to who these ‘bloody poofters’ were, that my father was always muttering on about, may have had something to do with it. Credit where credit is due! I found I had heaps of fun with the poofters, and still continue to!
Mum and Dad! Thanks for the advice…but I’ll leave it, all the same!
Tim Alderman
(C) 2014
Lest We Forget
timalderman 