Category Archives: Article

Daily (Or When the Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Truant Trolleys

September 26, 2013Articleshopping, Supermarket, trolleys, truanttimalderman

There is a new social curse taking over our suburbs! It has nothing to do with terrorism, violence or teenagers sexting. It is rapidly becoming the scourge of our local streets, blocking egress, despoiling our parks and verges. It’s the dreaded deserted…supermarket trolley!

For want of something better to do while walking my groceries home recently – minus the assistance of a supermarket trolley, I should point out – from my local shopping centre, I counted them. A total of eleven – yes, eleven – that I could see, including two in intimate collusion near a main road, with God-only-knows-what on their minds. Trouble, undoubtedly!

Now, if it was old people using them to transport their meagre pension-depleting purchases home, or people with disabilities wheeling them along the footpaths,serving the double purpose of grocery trolley and walking frame or prosthetic transport, or the homeless fitting them out with entertainment unit and dilapidated though comfy lounge, perhaps I could understand it. But it’s not!

Last week, it was two distractingly strapping backpackers trolleying four measly bags of groceries along the main road. Admittedly, it was a warm day, and they were partially stripped off, but surely these burley boys could have handled two lousy bags each. I didn’t personally feel the need to “borrow” a trolley to cart my eight bags of groceries home – I like to think there is some payoff for my time in the gym. Today it was three strapping girls with about the same quantity of bags as the guys – though fully dressed, thankfully. One was wheeling, while the other two guided. I have a vague suspicion this particular trolley may have ended up as one of the two trolleys in collusion.

What is really mind-boggling about these truant trolleys is the distance they travel. Not one of the eleven I spotted today even belonged to my local supermarket. They were all labelled ‘Woolworths’ and ‘Coles’ (and clearly labeled with a phone number to ring if they are lost – which, obviously, no one had rung) which means they were a 25-minute walk from their original home. Now, it’s hard enough to handle these trolleys down a supermarket aisle (I have a conspiracy theory that the store managers select the most uncontrollable trolleys, and when they see me coming they divert one to where they know I will collect it), let alone manoeuvring one down a footpath, wobbling over its high and lows, rattling over its bumps and furrows, negotiating gutters and pedestrian crossings with errant meanderings. The people who had the patience to do this – and then ingloriously dumping the poor trolley after all that hard work – surely should be awarded some sort of medal for their perseverance!

It’s not as if you see trolleys decked out as attractive plant holders on the side of the road, or covered with some fetching floral vinyl, living out their days as a little old ladies shopping cart. They are not used as baby carriages, to walk pets, nor used as a means of moving house – okay, they sre occasionally used to move house! They just sit by the side of the road looking sad and lonely, unloved and…slightly sinister.

I certainly know in what high affection I hold the movers of these trolleys, as I wait outside my local ‘Coles’ for someone to finish their shopping so I can collect and use their trolley. They seem to run out of trolly’s with boring regularity at our local supermarket. If I’d known they were going to be in such short supply at the door, I could have taken one from the street, and claimed it as my own. What a novelty….wheeling it TO the supermarket. No one would ever believe that!

On the upside, of the six I counted in my street in the week just after new years – perhaps they had hangovers and weren’t able to find their way back to the supermarket – there were none today. I have to admit to feeling a bit let down that there were eleven between my street and the junction, and none to be seen in what is obviously a regular gathering place for them. I don’t know where they have gone – it’s one of life’s mysteries, but I hope it’s a happier place than outside some ugly 70’s apartment building, holding rags of clothing, and disused household appliances.

As for the two in intimate collusion, their very obvious attempt to reproduce was actually, to all intended purposes, successful. I saw a little girl wheeling one of their babies around the supermarket today. It was so sweet, and looked so much like the parents. When I contemplated all the ordeals they had gone through – the exhaust fumes, sizzling hot sun, torrential rain, one had to admire their sheer tenacity. Lo, a sub-culture is born.

I note that the supermarkets are getting savvy about keeping their flocks of shopping trolleys contained these days. Finding that the coin-operated locks only added to their workload with coin jams, and that people rejected the notion of a deposit, they have opted for a technological approach. They are inserting magnetic strips at shopping centre exits, and any trolley attempting a getaway automatically has its wheels locked as it crosses the strip. Good idea – I think! I have a mental image of gangs of liitle old ladies and the homeless, armed with sledge hammers and tool kits, either digging the strips out of the ground, or removing trolley wheels, tossing the body over the strip, then replacing the wheels. Where there’s a will…

If it is the intention of all these truant trolleys to take over the world, I have little doubt the will succeed, and succeed by using us as unintentional allies. As we dump more and more of them onto the streets, they will start to band together. En-masse they will take over our streets, blocking our doorways and driveways, eventually forcing us to surrender by starving us into submission…the ultimate irony indeed!

So, as you drift towards sleep tonight, feel slightly uneasy. Those trolleys clogging your street today may be gone tomorrow – and to where….you may never know!

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2013

Daily (Or When the Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Cock-A-Doodle-Don’t

September 9, 2013Articleenhancement, exhibitionist, poser, Underwear, undiestimalderman

Look, I may be getting a bit long in the tooth now, but I’m not a total dolt, whinger or even old-fashioned, but I have two words to say to the manufacturers of the seemingly endless collections of male “enhancement” underwear that are currently around – bloody uncomfortable!

Now, though by no means missing out in the downstairs department I am also by no definition of the words well-endowed. I guess I would slot myself into the just-above-average column, so I don’t really feel any need to make my bits appear to be bigger than what they are. However, what started off as a bit of a novelty a number of years back has now become de rigueur in pretty well every men’s underwear manufacturers collections on the planet – euphemistically called enhancement underwear.

I already know what you are going to scream at me – “If you are going to complain about them, then why did you buy them in the first place!”…and that is a fair enough question. In my defence I really didn’t know what to expect when I purchased them – and they certainly looked hot on the models. On all three occasions when I obtained them they were either on sale, a three-pair-surprise pack special, or a freebie supplied after spending X amount with Y company. Like many people I shop online, and like to scoop a deal. I also happen to like nice undies!

So, lets look at what I got, what it does, and why I’m not happy with it. Firstly, my favourite Aussie swimwear company – “aussieBum”. Lets face facts – they make the hottest swimwear in the country, and have also dabbled in mens underwear for many years now, and their Wonderjock was one of the first of the enhancement designs to come out. I have little doubt it works…it’s just not…comfortable. I bought three of these during a rare aussieBum sale – two briefs and a boxer brief. The mechanics of it, the way this one works, is a devise like a pocket. There is a half piece of fabric at the back of the pouch, and you gather the family jewels together and feed them over the fabric and into the pouch, the intention being that the piece of fabric lifts both pieces of equipment and offer it forward into quite a presentable bulge. Now, I have had two problems with this design. One is that it seems to be designed for rather well endowed guys, who upon placing their gear in the pouch, manage to get it to sit there. All day. Without moving. Mine doesn’t! If the weather is particularly cold and there is shrinkage – quite a common occurrence with men of all sizes- or if you move around quite a bit during the day and the undies work their way down a bit, you tend to fall out of the pouch…sometimes half in and half out, requiring some manual manipulation to return everything to where it should be. Happens quite a lot, actually. The second problem is that if you don’t place your dangly bits in carefully, it pinches them – rather painfully – and more manual manipulation is required to fix it. By the end of the day in an average office, you will have been reported as being just a dirty old pervert who does nothing all day but play with himself. It has reached the stage now where when these undies appear at the top of the pile in the drawer – I anally rotate my undies – I dive for the pair underneath. These are now “around-the-house” undies. I can fiddle myself as much as I like there!

I did a “Mystery Bag” deal recently with Andrew Christian in the States. It was three pairs of his undies, picked at random, for about $10 a pair – a real bargain these days. Well, they took six weeks to get here – not their fault – so I won’t order from there again – but when they did arrive I have to say I was pretty happy with their selection – again two pairs of briefs and a boxer brief. Now, I’ve had my problems with Andrew Christian (who himself is very cute, I should point out) over the years, especially when he first started out. One order of two pairs of briefs ordered through an underwear company about 7-8 years ago, resulted in both pairs being binned – too expensive to return. One brief in my usual Small size was SO small it almost castrated me, and the second had contrasting bias strips on the legs that stretched out….and that was the only direction they stretched in. After having them on for an hour my dangly bits fell out the leg opening, and stayed out. No amount of manipulation could get them to stay in the briefs. I swore never to buy his underwear again! Never say I am not forgiving! Having been inundated with his advertising – and very blond twinky models – over the last 12-months on FB, and in gay magazines, and having his undies reviewed by experts, I decided that he had probably finally got his shit together with design and sizing, and was worthy of a retry. He had another $9-a-pair special a while ago now, on a special release, and I bought three pair of a boxer brief. They were, I have to say, pretty sexy. Really light, sensual feeling fabric that really clings to you, perfect fit, and a pouch that emphasised the family jewels by clever use of stitching around the pouch. There is a seam at the back of the gusset between the leg.s that sits a bit uncomfortably in your arse area, but apart from that I was quite pleased. And with the further three pairs of “Mystery Bag” undies I received recently. He seems to have adopted a unique designed pouch for his enhancement undies- and the majority of his range is enhancement. The pouches themselves are quite generous, and very clingy. There is a piece of fabric at the back of the pouch with a edge-protected hole in it. Again, you gather up your goodies, poke them through the hole, and there you go…one enhanced package. I do have some issues with how it is presented, and if you are well-endowed it can end up looking a bit like this odd creature sitting between your legs, but I have to say they are pretty comfortable to wear. However – there always has to be a however, doesn’t there – i recently did another “Mystery Bag” purchase of three pairs of undies through a local, newly started company for around $13 a pair – still a good buy. Amongst their selection was another Andrew Christian boxer brief, but quite a different style to my previous ones. This one was in a heavier stretch fabric, again with the goodies enhancement, and the added bonus of a bum lift panel at the rear – something I don’t actually need, as I can say with little modesty that I have quite a nice rear, formed and firmed by many years of doing squats at the gym. These are not comfortable! Not only are you uncomfortably aware of the support mechanism sitting under and pushing up your dangly bits, you have the added discomfort of the row of heavy stitching at the rear designed to enhance your butt. Could just be the wrong fabric, but whatever it is, you are constantly aware of having undies on.

So, this brings me to my last pair – a very attractive looking pair of “Ergowear” briefs. I would like to point out that I didn’t pay for these – they came as a bonus freebie after paying a certain amount of money on an underwear site, and I had no say in what the freebie was. These are VERY stretchy, and the pouch is a separately integrated piece of fabric at the front. The pouch pushes all the family jewels into a very obvious display position – in fact, pokes them out in an almost obscene display of male appendage. I just don’t seem to be able to find the right clothes to wear with them – too loose, like casual or gym shorts, and it is obvious to one and all that you have a appendage, with the obvious assumption being that you like to show it off. Clothes that are tight just make it squashily uncomfortable. Add to this that your bits tend to move in the pouch as you move around, and you often find the head quite uncomfortably trapped, again involving a series of dirty-old-man manual fiddlings to fix, only to find that five minutes later it is back where you don’t want it to be. Very annoying, and very uncomfortable. I put these on yesterday with a pair of shorts, then looked down and thought “That’s a bit too obvious mate!” and took them off.

So, my experiences with enhancement underwear have not been good. There are heaps of other brands around doing exactly the same thing – some more obviously than others (Cocksox are nothing short of weird – they make your cook and balls look like some strange alien appendage poking straight out in front of you). I’m sort of getting a bit over it now, especially if I like the design or colour of a particular pair of undies, and I don’t particularly want the added extras.

So to underwear manufacturers I would personally like to say the following. Firstly, cut back on the amount of enhancement underwear. It is a little bit disconcerting that so many guys think they need to appear to have something they don’t actually have. As a gay man, if I am going to go to all the trouble to pick a guy up, when I get him home and strip him down I want to know that what is presented to me is what I actually get! Otherwise, disappointment is bound to set in. Secondly, I like my underwear to be comfortable. I have to wear it all day, so when I get dressed in the morning, I like to forget that I even have underwear on. Going out for dinner or a date is no different. All these lift-this-and-push-that designs push your equipment into unnatural positions, and often pinch and chafe. That is just uncomfortable! I am not saying there is no place for enhancement underwear – I have little doubt that there is a whole brigade of fetishists out there that get turned-on by the mere thought of an enhanced bit…but there is also a hell of a lot that don’t. It is a bit like fashion jockstraps and arseless underwear…there is a place and time.

Guys, when designing and making mens undies, remember the KISS principal – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2013

Functionally Dysfunctional – The Storyteller Part 2

June 21, 2013Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDSdeath, Gay, HIV/AIDS, Suicidetimalderman

If tears could pay our debts
If with our tears we could buy you an indulgence from all pain
If by weeping now we could do all your weeping for you
Then we would cry until our eyes were washed away

Excerpt from Wilbur Smith novel

For World AIDS Day 2003 I wrote a piece titled “The Storyteller – Stories Almost Lost In Time”.It was a synopsis of the lives of three close friends who had died from AIDS before successful treatments – as we know them now.

As someone who is accustomed to writing – in fact have a university degree in it – I find that writing flows quickly and naturally from the smallest of seeds. I have to admit that writing “The Storyteller” was one of the two toughest pieces of writing I have ever done. It took me a month to nut together 750 words, a month of anguish and more tears than I have cried for some time. It was an emotionally difficult piece to write. It was hard enough trying to decide whose lives to use for my stories, let alone revisiting photos and eulogies.. The prologue to the piece came easily, but I delayed the writing about Andrew, Stuart and Geoff for as long as possible. It made me realize just how unreconciled to their deaths I actually was, that despite everything that had gone on over the twenty seven years since the deaths started, I had never really allowed myself a period of mourning – not just for them but for all the people I knew during that period who had passed on. The unfolding of the AIDS Quilt had, for many years, served as an outlet for grief during this intense time, a way to ‘get it out of your system’, but that doesn’t happen anymore, so I store the grief, hide it away in a dark corner where it sort of sits and mocks me. The writing of “The Storyteller” was almost like a venting of 20 years of grief. I can’t go back and read it, despite being its author. It hurts too much, and I end up crying – yet again!

What I found very empowering from the experience of writing that story was the reaction of people to it. It was almost like giving people permission to grieve, almost like telling them “It’s okay to cry even now, it’s okay to relive these people’s memories, it’s okay to tell their stories”. Some found the article profoundly beautiful, some used it as a way to communicate to partners and friends exactly how that period of HIV had affected their lives. Some, like my partner David didn’t even know the people in the stories yet related so strongly to it through his own experience that he could not read past the first story. Others said they wished I had warned them I was going to do it. It cut deep, it opened wounds not just for them but also for me. I wish I could have written about every single person I knew over that time who had died, but articles do have their limitations.

In fact, the writing of this piece and a piece I did in university for an assignment in personal writing made me aware of my own mental and emotional toughness, my own ability to cope with intense grief by just cutting myself off emotionally and putting up a wall to block it out. Of course, these things always creep up on you in the dead of night, but there is never anyone to witness that vivid flash of memory, that tear that hides behind the eye, to catch you in a moment of weakness.
My capacity to block out these things is, in many regards, a product of my upbringing, and the experiences of life in my younger days.

Like many of my generation I was raised in the dysfunctionality of families recovering from the effects of World War II. My parents – let’s call them Joe and Betty, as mum and dad are now alien words – raised me in the conservative ways of parents of that period, in the idyllic environment – at least at that time – of Sylvania. Lots of skeletons rattling around in Sylvania, I can assure you! Joe never came to terms with the post-war period of the 50’s and 60’s, and despite a thin veneer of normality in our household, as I grew older I realized all wasn’t as it appeared. I had a younger brother, Kevin. He was to be the subject of a university assignment 40 years after his death.

When I was 11, Betty up and left. No word of warning, no hint of departure. There in the morning making breakfast, gone when Kevin and I arrived home from school. Within several months of her going, Joe bought his mistress into the house under the guise of a housekeeper – we must retain a respectable appearance, despite anything that was happening. Joe had a seriously bad temper, and both Kevin and I experienced his wrath with a strap huddled in a corner. The housekeeper – herein referred to as the bitch from hell – hated Kevin and I almost as much as we hated her. Kevin was five years younger than me and suffered from ADHD. This was enough for the bitch from hell to make him her direct target, and she made his life a total misery. There was little I could do to protect him. Her vengeance for taking her on was to go to Joe with exaggerated stories of misdemeanors, and as we knew – punishment for transgressions was severe. She finally pushed too far, and on the evening of the 8th December 1965 Joe took Kevin out to The Gap at Watson’s Bay and jumped over with him in his arms. Joe survived. Kevin’s body was found two days later floating towards the sea near Broken Bay.

From that day to the time of my university assignment 40 years later this subject was never discussed within my family or otherwise. It was like it never happened. Joe got off on a plea of manslaughter. I had to live with him for another 10 years, but any vestige of trust or feeling had been destroyed.that December night. I never trusted him again, and always guarded what I said, and how much I let him know about my life. I closed off. I became hard. This affected my life for a long time after, and gave me the capacity to survive. The bitch from hell never shed a tear or displayed any emotion regarding Kevin’s death. It was as though he had never existed. By the time we left Sylvania at the end of 1966 we had changed the family name. The bitch from hell had managed to alienate us from all our friends and neighbours, even our direct family. Joe committed suicide in 1978. I shed the obligatory tears and moved on. I’ve never forgiven him, and I never will.

Writing the university assignment in 2003 opened a whole Pandora’s Box for me. I had never investigated Kevin’s death, had never wanted to revisit the wound. However, in June 2000 “Sunday Life” magazine ran an article on The Gap, and the bones in the closet rattled very loudly. Among the synopsis of sad events that surround The Gap was a brief entry for 1965 – “Frederick Pickhills of Sylvania, tells Vaucluse police, “I have been over the gap with my son. I had hold of his hand.” Pickhills was charged with the murder of Kevin Pickhills, 7. Pleading guilty in court to an emended plea of manslaughter, Pickhills was released on a five-year good behaviour bond.” (NB there have been two name changes in the family over time. One to Phillips, which was initiated by Joe so his past wouldn’t follow him, and the second to Alderman by me so that my family could never track me down after the fiasco they called a funeral). For the assignment I scanned all the papers from the time – my tutor was quite concerned about the emotional impact of following up such a closeted and traumatic event – and pieced together a nightmare I had all but blocked from my memory. It was almost a feeling of freedom to finally piece it all together, and lay the bones to rest.

After Joe died, I came out. I was 25, a very later bloomer. I came out with a bang, not a whimper. I had always wondered what Joe would have done if I had told him I was gay, and sort of knew that it wouldn’t have had a good outcome. I may have left it late, but at least it was safe. I reunited with my mother. We communicated for 19 years until 1997, when I finally severed the threads of what turned out to be a futile attempt to try to reconcile some sort of relationship with her. It was never destined to be. Another set of bones laid to rest.

What I wasn’t to know when I came out was that my life as a gay man, and my life as a HIV+ man were going to run in a parallel line, were going to be intrinsically tied together. So this was what the hardening, the hiding away of all emotions had prepared me for. It proved handy I have to say. Always a strong shoulder to lean on at funerals, and to cry on at wakes. I sort of prided myself on this toughness, on this capacity to turn off. But I payed in other ways, as I found out when I wrote “The Storyteller”.

Not only have I given other people permission to grieve, I’ve given myself permission to grieve, to flush out 20 years of pent up emotion and sorrow. But not just that either – I’ve finally given myself permission to grieve for many things. I have finally relaxed the hardness, finally given in to the emotions. I’ve already ruined enough relationships with my inability to give – though mind you, it wasn’t always just me – and when I met David after a 18 month break from the gay scene due to recovering from AIDS I was at a point where I realized I needed to rely on other people, and I needed to give. I needed support, I needed to love and I needed to share. This is the relationship that is making up for all the shit. This is totally open but very secure ground for me. No more secrets, no more closet rattling skeletons from the past. I’m not quite sure if my experiences have made me functionally dysfunctional, or dysfunctionally functional. Whatever the answer, I’m now taking better care of myself emotionally, allowing these feelings to spill out rather than bottling them away, or pretending they didn’t happen. When I get to write my families story, its going to be a hell of an account.

So light a candle at home for all your lost loved ones on World AIDS Day, and tell their stories. And cry! And grieve! You have permission to perform this act of love and remembrance. After all, we don’t want them forgotten. They deserve better than that.

There is the full story of my brothers death, in all its frightening facts, at the end of my blog, titled “Kevin Pickhills – The Unspoken Name” should you be interested.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2013

Body Work

June 13, 2013Article, Health Informationdiet, exercise, fitness, gym, Health, nutrition, obesity, old-agetimalderman

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. Throw an ageing population into the mix, and you have a nightmare. 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 also 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. And gay and HIV+ people we are not exempt from the fat/thin dialectic. And some of it seems to be based in history. 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 sight. 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. 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.

Getting older is one of those things that seems to have crept up on me very quickly. One day I was 40, then 50 and now at 59 rapidly approaching 60. I’m not complaining. I’ve survived AIDS – with a couple of disabilities but nothing to hold me back – and when all is said and done I’m actually enjoying the experience of getting older, that quietening down of life and the intuitiveness that seems to come with it. HIV is no longer something I am concerned about – in fact, it is very much a backwater in my life. My health is under control, and has been for a long time, so as far as I am concerned it is not even an issue. Some things, even disabilities, become so integrated into your life that you just carry on regardless.

However, there are aspects of ageing that I have not liked. I may be approaching 60 but I live very much in the contemporary world. There is a lot about it I love, like the latest music – I still collect dance music; technology and all the wonders it brings; the sheer quantity of goods available for sale, and I am unashamedly a consumer. I still like to dress well, though I try to avoid the mutton-dressed-as-lamb scenario. No skinny jeans for this boy! i still groom myself well, look after my skin, and like the fact that despite my age I can still look pretty good when I hit the streets. However, 4 years ago I started to notice things about my body that were in stark contrast to what I liked to think and feel about myself. Having been blessed with good genes that have allowed me to keep all my hair – and still all black – and for most of my life a slim profile I was disconcerted to find that gravity was finally having its wicked way and changing – for the worst – my body shape. I was flabby with a very discernible spare tire waistline, flabby tits, mishapen arse and bad posture. I was actually starting to look so “old” that it was beginning to depress me and really knocked my self-esteem around. It also didn’t fit in with how I dressed and groomed myself and I was really aware of the fact that I wouldn’t go out in anything that clung to me, or in anyway showed off my body shape. To make matters worse, I started to go up in clothing sizes, from SM to M in shirts, and from 32” trousers and shorts to 34”. I wasn’t happy! Other nasty things that were happening were finding myself sitting on the edge of the bed to put on trousers and shorts, having my partner comment on how bad my posture was getting – that was a real “shit – is it” moment. The doctor starting me on cholesterol meds, which was an additional pill on top of what I was already taking, was a real eye-opener.

When I lived in the Eastern Suburbs in the 80’s and 90’s, I made a decision – despite the fashion for toned bodies at the time – to avoid going to the gym. They were places full of gay guys who were there not to get fit but to mould themselves into an image of what it was perceived that gay men should look like. They posed, preened, plucked, depilated and fake-tanned, and when they went out to the bars, only ever hung around with, and picked up, guys who were mirror images of themselves. To ensure I never felt out-of-place I hung with the scrawny brigade. I viewed the gym bunnies as body fascists, and in some respects still do. However, a move to the outer edges of the Inner West brought about a change in my thinking and perceptions. Then I had my “mirror” moment! Stepping out of the shower one morning, I caught sight if myself in the mirror, and the first thing that crossed my mind was…who is the tubby old man in the bathroom. That was a provocative moment, and the impetus for change. Burdened with the prospect of the body rapidly getting out of shape, with my self-esteem taking a beating, along with the prospect of 60 looming, with a potentially rickety ride into unhealthy mature years imminent, it was time to do something about it. The word “gym” entered my vocabulary.

I loved – and still do – the gym, which sort of came as a bit oif a shock to me. From the word go I felt comfortable, and a lot of the fallacies that I attributed to going to the gym were dispelled. For starters, no one gives a fuck about what you are doing, and nobody is actually watching and assessing you – except yourself. Everyone there is too much in their own world to care about what you are up to. An initial assessment with a Personal Trainer helped me to set some goals – the major ones being to get fit. I also wanted to loose excess fat, generally tighten my whole body up, fix my posture and improve my general health. I aspired to reclaim my hips and arse, both of which had long ago disappeared. In other words, I had a determination to transform myself. And at 72kg, I wanted to do all this without losing too much weight, as weight wasn’t the problem. The other noticeable thing was the number of other mature aged men and women who were there, really working hard and doing their best to get fit and healthy. There is now a few older role models around to encourage us to do something about being fit and older. Actors like Rob Lowe (God, how hot is that man), Rick Springfield (who despite his demons looks fabulous for someone in his 60’s), and Robson Green, who looked so hot in “Being Human” he almost gecame a masturbation fantasy.

So, goals set, and with a regime to follow, it was off to the beginners studio for a 10 week starters program. The first week…I suffered. Every muscle ached, and I looked at the piss-weak weights I was using, wondering if I was ever going to be able to do things at the heavier end. And don’t think it doesn’t get tedious! Doing the same routines over and over gets very boring. I started to vary things myself, made a lot of changes to what had been set out for me and found that helped me to get through the boredom barrier. I started going three days a week, for 1 hour each visit. And I bloody worked hard! Nothing was going to deter me from the goals. Within 7 weeks of starting, the miracles began. I was using a lot of resistance equipment, and found that the weights started to increase. The spare tire didn’t just reduce – it disappeared. My pecs tightened up and I started to show a firm profile. Muscles even appeared in my arms. My energy levels also increased, as did my flexibility. My self-esteem started to go through the roof, and in turn this prompted me to work harder, to really start to challenge myself. At the end of the 10 weeks, I looked fantastic. I couldn’t believe just how different I looked and felt. I started getting encouragement from others, and that really started me pushing the limits.

So, after the 10 weeks in the beginners studio it was time for another assessment, and a harder program, starting in what I jokingly called “the big boys room” where all the weights and serious resistance equipment was. I continued to flog myself three days a week, still for a total of three hours a week, and the changes continued. I was still having some problems getting a flat stomach – I wasn’t after a six-pack…I could probably get one but at my age it would be a constant battle to maintain it – so the tweaking of our diet at home started. Thankfully I love cooking, so doing a diet tweak wasn’t a big issue as I knew that I had the recipes to over-ride any chance of blandness or boredom. I should point out that I don’t approve of diets, especially fad ones, but I do believe that you can create a healthy diet for yourself without going to extremes, and without cutting out carbs and proteins. Your body needs these things to function properly – it is all a matter of proportion and balance. We cut out a lot of fatty foods, a lot of sugar – have a terrible sweet tooth so this wasn’t easy – and increased the amount of raw vegetables, fish and poultry in our diet. This helped a lot, as well as a lot of repetitions on the Ultimate Abdominal machine at the gym, and a lot of time in the suspension frame. So I pulled, and pushed and strained and grunted through the main weight floor of the gym for the next 3 months.

By this stage, I have to say that I was starting to find it harder and harder to get myself to the gym to go through the routines. I realised that I needed to add some sort of variety to
my program, so at the New Years weekend I decided to do my first class. I looked at all the alternatives, and assessed what I thought I could do, and couldn’t do. I have done yoga before, and enjoyed it, but felt that it wasn’t dynamic enough to maintain the body profile I was aiming for. I still haven’t tried Pilates, but it is on my list. Anything that involved balance was out due to peripheral neuropathy in the feet…the numb type, not the painful. This means I have no feeling in my feet and ankles. Anything involving too much co-ordination was out as I’m unco-ordinated at the best of times, and anything done in dark rooms – such as Spin – was out, as I’m partially blind and have night-blindness. So, this left me with Body Pump, a class that involves dynamic work with weights, and is very muscle and cardio-orientated. You really push your heart rate up doing these classes. I found I really loved Pump, and have stuck with it right through to recently. I avoid lunges for balance reasons, and do squats instead, which means a double session of squats every class, which can really push you to your limits, especially when you have 25- 28 kgs of weight sitting on your upper back to add to the challenge. So, I started doing two morning classes a week on Monday and Friday, and usually the token male in the class at that time of day, and did one day a week in the weight room to work whatever muscles didn’t get worked in the class.

Having just moved from Sydney to Brisbane, I found the break in routine disconcerting, and it took time to get back into the rhythm. But a deal from our local Goodlife gym got me back into the groove, and I returned to my Body Pump class. Having done this weights class for four years now it has its disadvantages. Because of the pace of the class, you don’t really have the opportunity to challenge yourself, as you don’t have the time to swap and change weights. It had reached the stage where I was really using the class for its cardio benefit, and boy don’t you get a cardio workout! I have had three different resistance workout programs on the main floor, including a isometric/fitness ball/body weight program which I derived a lot of benefit from.. However, we have moved on again.

I have now gotten so tied up in the fitness and health lifestyle that this year I decided to get my Certificate III in Fitness at Southbank Institute of Technology. This has had an incredible influence on how I now view fitness in general, and exercise. A dispute with my Goodlife gym when they ripped me off when canceling my membership – DO NOT USE GYMS THAT TIE YOU INTO CONTRACTS – has meant I have moved on to a new gym and now use my local Jetts’. So, no group fitness classes any more, but with my new knowledge I’ve also moved on from that style of exercise. Having used gyms now for four years to just get fit and maintain it, it’s time to up the ante. There is nothing wrong with just staying fit, but without a real challenge it can be demotivating. Personal Trainers are affordable through Jetts. If you can workout unsupervised, you pay them a monthly “retainer”, and once a month they do your body fat and muscle mass measurements, do a fitness test and set you up with a new program. I am now moving on from general fitness, into the world of hypertrophy – building up muscle strength and mass. This really is starting to push my limits, and is really inspiring me to challenge myself. Six weeks in and big changes are happening already. I am slowly starting to bulk up, and my strength has increased considerably. I’m starting to pump weights that really surprise me, and every time I think to myself “I’ll never get through more than one set at this weight”…I get up to three sets. Limitations really are in your mind. I am also now doing what I said I would never do – supplements. I use a pre and post workout amino acid supplement, and mid-workout boost supplement. Why…well, I’ve been researching, and the consensus seems to be that they are beneficial. And they really do give you a boost, aid the prevention of muscle fatigue during my workout, and help with muscle recovery after. They only seem to last for the period of my workout, so no lingering affects. However, I had stipulations; they couldn’t overtax my system, had to have some ongoing body fat burning benefit – called thermogenesis – and no side effects. I have around 8% body fat that I shouldn’t have, and it is sitting around my stomach and hips – typical male – and just will not go. Time to get the big guns out! My goal for this summer is to appear at the pool in Speedos, and not feel self-conscious. I don’t feel the need to have a six or eight-pack abs, but I would like a “V” shape, and a flat stomach. I feel that goal is within reach at this time.

So at this point in time, where do we sit? Our diet continues, but no longer to lose weight. It is now being used to maintain it. We have lived low fat/low sugar/portion-controlled for a couple of years now, and it has been very successful, and easy to maintain. With my new routine there will be some changes as I need to increase my calorie intake to about 2000 kilojoules a day so the body gets enough energy for the now tougher workouts, and I need to add in more fruit – I have never been a big fruit eater – so have started adding bananas and berries into my diet. I look great. I’m trim, have full flexibility, heaps of energy, and some body definition now. The cholesterol meds have gone bye-bye, one of the great benefits of being fit and healthy. I am now hopefully looking forward to a progressive ageing that will see me avoiding most, if not all, of the illnesses and crippling conditions currently associated with getting older. No walking sticks, Zimmer frames or mobility carts for this boy! I intend to be still pumping out sets of squats when i’m 80 – just watch me!

What would I recommend to other guys my age? If you smoke…STOP! If you have a bad diet…FIX IT – it’s not rocket science. Don’t think that walking the dog is all you need to do. You need to exert some energy! you need to sweat! If you are over-weight, do something about it! Look at the long-term, not the short. It is not about having the body beautiful, though it helps. It is about being fit and healthy, and prolonging your prospects for good health and wellbeing as you progress through the years. Don’t think, like I did, that looking fit and healthy is just for the young. The flow-on affects of a good exercise routine and good diet are endless, both in your public and private life. Look good and feel good – you’ll thank yourself for it

Reclaiming the G-A-Y

June 9, 2013Article, Gay Interestageing, clubbing, Darlinghurst, Gay, HIV/AIDS, scenetimalderman

It’s gone!

I don’t know if somebody snuck into my bedroom while I slept and stole it, or if I have just forgotten where I put it! Checked the spare room. Not there! Checked under the house. Not there! Even checked the dog kennel, but no, not there either! One day here, the next day – gone! And just what is this mystery that I am running around, trying to find? well, I hate to admit it, but somewhere along the line I have lost G-A-Y. I’m really missing it, so if you do happen to see it, PLEASE grab it for me, and bring it back. I spent the majority of my life putting G-A-Y together, making it a thing that I showed off with immense pride. Indeed, some said I flaunted it. And as quickly as it was gained, so it has disappeared.

Just as an example of how serious losing G-A-Y is, I tried this morning to do a very G-A-Y thing – swish my hips. Now, this used to happen naturally. I’d take a step – swish! Take another step – swish! Do a little mincey run – swish-swish-swish-swish. Didn’t have to ponder it. It just was! But today….they wouldn’t swish! To be honest, it looked as though something very uncomfortable was stuck up my bum! Like that horrible bum-creep you get from badly cut undies. In fact I couldn’t even get them to do a jiggle. But as much as this was bad, worse was to come. I tried to limp my wrist. I even hunted down a photo of both Boy George and Quentin Crisp to make sure I was doing it right – now how fucking bad is that. Even thinking I need to learn it is really serious shit! Now, you know the limp I am talking about; that flourishy thing that true queens are really good at! Well, it just didn’t happen. It just looked as though I had a broken wrist, or worse still that I had just dropped a handful of small change. And let’s not forget the lisp, something that even Ita has never lost. That slight but obvious distortion of the S sound, making it more like STH, as in sthweetie. Yes, I know, I know – I never had a lisp. My plum-in-the-mouth way of speaking was the result of a private education – absolutely nothing to do with the G-A-Y gene!. But I should at least have been able to fake a lisp! FFS I’m G-A-Y!

I was distraught! How could this had happened, how could it have snuck up on me so quickly, like an unwanted dose of the flu. It was bad enough that I attended a nightclub a couple of weekends ago, and thought the constant thump of instrumental music was abysmal. “Whatever happened to vocals!”, I screamed at my partner over the bass. Well, whatever happened to handbag when it comes to that! We did try to dance; Even my father could have done better. Fuck, now I’m doing dad dancing. Very sad! But then you can’t outrightly dismiss things. You have to give them a go. But a shuffle isn’t a dance. On top of all this we had taken an ‘E’ that had very much decided that it was not going to kick in – well, not this week anyway. We wandered back to the balconies.

To make things worse, there were some very sexy men roaming around without their shirts on. Now I have to admit to a twinge of jealousy in having to acknowledge, to myself, that there was not even a remote hope in hell that one of them would even throw me a glance,, let alone try to pick me up. That’s one sure way for an ageing queen to feel really unG-A-Y.. It’s not that I’ve lost the ability to be a slut – hell, that comes naturally to all of us – it’s more a matter of never being caught up in the gym culture, and though certainly not overweight, I’m definitely not a six-pack on legs.. And watching them, one has to wonder just what significance do brains have for these torqued bodies anyway? Are they taking each other home to solve “Scrabble” grids, or watch Q&A on the ABC? I think not! Who needs brains when you have a body.

I had a lot of G-A-Y in my younger days. I’m sure there are those who would say perhaps too much. I was both singularly and plurally – a nightclub pig; a minor druggie – though more so if there was good acid around; a big slut; no, a very big slut; a party animal; a clone; a pseudo leatherman; – and would take any opportunity to dress G-A-Y; speak G-A-Y; act G-A-Y; eat G-A-Y and just generally be…G-A-Y.

I would attend protest rallies for all things G-A-Y – though as often as not be there just to cruise (refer to my note on being a big slut). I would attend any group or party, and read any paper that was said to support anything G-A-Y. I have done gutter drag. I have supported and done my fair share for all things HIV/AIDS…and herein, perhaps, lies the crux of the matter, pointing the way to where G-A-Y disappeared to.

Twenty years of – being; living; fighting; writing; reading; talking and surviving – and don’t you dare rob me of the use of that word – HIV/AIDS has in some part stolen that iota of me that was G-A-Y. Let’s be honest about HIV/AIDS – it wore us all out. It was at our throats day and night. We lived it, and breathed it, day in and day out 24/7. We nursed it, cajoled it, hated it, and then hated it even more as we buried it. And Instead of being G-A-Y males who just happened to be HIV+, we became HIV+ males who just happened to be G-A-Y.

So back on track in my search for G-A-Y. Oh sure, I still read the papers – takes me all of five minutes these days – and if the parties were still even basically G-A-Y I might, at least on occasion, attend one or two. But they are not, nor ever will be again. The days of la grande party are over. Just as our streets and clubs have been sacrificed to the straight community in the name of political correctness and assimilation, so the community has slowly sold itself out to other, less G-A-Y concerns. Some say the day of the G-A-Y ghetto are over, and I’m not going to argue that, as all things mature and evolve. But did we really need to annihilate it!

Even if I wanted to revert to the G-A-Y stereotype of old – not that I object to that stereotype – I doubt anyone would recognise what I was attempting to do. A sad attempt to regain that which I had had, and lost in the wake of a greater cause. The only way I can really try to regain the G-A-Y in my life these days is to have a fashionable home – seen only be close friends; dress a little bit twink – I just get away with it; have my hair spiked – yes, I still have it all and it is not dyed; and throw dinner parties – again, which only close friends attend. As far as everything else goes – well, now it takes me a week to recover from a night out on a single ‘E’; I love modern dance music – especially Trance – just don’t ask me who the artist is, I can enjoy bars still – if I can get past the bouncer on the door; I get cranky at Mardi Gras trying to be ‘big business’; I’m sick of the sight of standoffish six-packs on roids; and I want to go to bed at midnight. What sort of G-A-Y person does that!

Perhaps the secret is not to get G-A-Y back. Perhaps the memories and my few remaining friends should be enough to reminisce with about what G-A-Y used to be like. Perhaps once having lost G-A-Y you can never get it back! Fuck, now there is a terrifying thought! Or perhaps I just heed to step back from it all for a while. Ruminate on where I fit into it all now. One thing I do know for sure…having been spewed out of the arse-end of HIV, I no longer view it all through rose-coloured glasses.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t hate G-A-Y. But neither does it hold the great fascination that it once enthralled me with. I don’t want to be a 50-year-old G-A-Y man trying to look – and fit into – a 20-year-olds world. That would be just fooling myself. I want to be able to be just who I am; with those who think like me and act like me and are also now…old and G-A-Y. I hate feeling cut off and alienated, and that is not a road I am walking alone. The truth is that G-A-Y has not been lost. G-A-Y has in fact been found. G-A-Y has metamorphosed.

G-A-Y has come home

So perhaps the best I can hope for is – NOT to end up like my parents! Now that would be reclaiming G-A-Y!

Tim Alderman
Copyright ©2001

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Pruning Floriade

June 8, 2013Article, TravelogueACT, Canberra, floriade, flowers, Goulburn, Marulan, merinotimalderman

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“…I have become a work of art. Welcome to the pleasuredome”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood “Welcome to the Pleasuredome”

I hate Canberra. Always have! I still have nightmares of visits there with my family when I was a youngster – the endless hours it took to get there (always with a thermos of instant coffee and cut sandwiches – no roadside cafes with bain-marie stodge and International Roast coffee for my parents), then being dragged through every door and corridor of the War Memorial, old Parliament House and every other building that the ubiquitous ‘Tourists Guide to the ACT’ booklet told us to visit. We stayed in “budget” motels, all decorated with the same teak laminex, the same matching curtains and bedspreads in orange floral fabrics, bathrooms with folded-edge toilet paper, bag-wrapped glass and a “Sanitised” paper banner across the toilet seat. All served an almost cold breakfast to your room in the morning, served on a teak plastic tray that was left outside your door. Where would we be without cold toast, rock hard pats of butter, little plastic sachets of Vegemite, peanut butter, honey and various jams;Kellogg’s ‘Variety’, and Lipton’s tea bags draping out of a stainless steel teapot? Add in the small impish squeals from my mother as she tucked sample soaps, complimentary shower caps, miniature shampoo and conditioners, and sachets of tea and coffee into the suitcase, and you have, evidently, the ideal holiday scenario. Mmm!

Then there was the weather!

The last time I was in Canberra was in 1982, to audit the stocktake in a retail store owned by Pellegrini and Co. I have to point out I wasn’t there voluntarily. Canberra was covered in fog when I arrived, and was still covered in fog when I left. I didn’t see a single minute of sunlight in all the time I was there. I determined to never return. Never let it be said that I am not softening in my old age. I decided to give it one final chance at redeeming itself.

We stayed at my partner David’s family home at Mount Annan on the Friday night – a trial on its own – then headed off for Canberra at 7.00am on Saturday morning. It no longer takes endless hours to get there, though that isn’t necessarily advantageous. Before the M5 was built, you could visit a multitude of small towns en route to the national capital. Now, you can drive there from Sydney in three hours, provided the monotony of the drive doesn’t induce a microsleep. No longer is there an obligatory stopover at Goulburn, to climb and admire the view from the eye of the Giant Merino (1). No, we had to do a detour to see this grand example of Australian kitsch. After climbing the ghastly concrete interior up into its head, I took a photograph from the eye, just to prove that I had been up there as I was sure mo one would believe me, but all it managed to capture was fingerprints, and perspex-blurred clouds. Even the souvenir store failed to intrigue us with myriad counters of boxes-that-bleat-when-shaken – what is the purpose of these? – and tiny fleece covered model sheep. Probably made in Taiwan anyway!

The other port of call to break the journey was at a tiny township called Marulan. Neither of us had ever heard of it, and the tiny castle on the signposts pointing to it captured our imagination. I was disappointed at not finding a castle in the town! Instead we find a tiny two-street town going back to the 1820’s. It’s hard to imagine that until the M5 was built, trucks would roar up and down its main street. It is one of those church/ police station/ post office/ school/ historic Victorian railway station/ pub/ general store/ and several historic homesteads-type towns. Two of these beautiful homes had been converted into a factory by the addition of a very ugly 1970’s redbrick facade. The roof peaks of the original historic buildings could be seen poking up above the added frontage. I wept at the ruination! Just to the south of Marulan are the remains of the ‘famous’ Moccador Pavlova Factory (2), which was built in the shape of a large pink and white pavlova. And I thought the giant merino was pretty hard to beat! The more modern (operating) general store and pub were the only two buildings open. Everything else was boarded up. Poor Marulan has been bypassed three times in its history, and is now totally cut off from the world. A new housing sub-division is going up, but somehow, I don’t think it’s going to relive its boomtown era again.

A quick stopover to view the currently dry Lake George, and we were in Canberra.
I’d like to say its changed, but I’d be lying. However, I have to admire its wide avenue-styled, tree lined streets. There is a lot to be said for planning a city, though I don’t really think – to be political – that I want to live or work in an area named after a predecessor of fishnet-stockinged Alexander Downer. We only got lost once – which is better going than when I went there with my father in the late 60’s. We managed to go around the circuit road so many times that I started to think Canberra only consisted of one street! David and I orienteered our way around the circuit road and finally found ourselves, though somewhat dizzy, at King’s Park.

Entry to Floriade was free – a pleasant change after paying to get into the Bowral Tulip display last year. Before venturing into the gardens, we decided to have a look at the markets set up at the entrance to the display. Now if we were expecting plants, and all things horticultural, we were to be bitterly disappointed. You could purchase Chilli Chutney – so hot that David’s mouth was out of action for the next hour – and one of the few times in my life I exercised discretion in the presence of food. I thankfully threw the hand up and avoided it, leaving the assault on my palate until lunch. On top of that is fudge in every imaginable flavour; puzzles; clothes; jewellery; sunglasses – just about everything but flowers and plants. And here was me thinking it was a horticultural show! Passing by a prominent display of willow branches spray painted in realistic fluro colours with matching watering cans – the connection between the two items is lost on me as the branches were obviously dead – we overheard another store holder commentto the owner of the matching willows and cans that he was “Glad to see you in shorts, Now we really know that summer has started”. David and I exchange a look! It may have been 28°C in Sydney that day, but it was only 20°C in Canberra, for God’s sake! A garish display of artificial flowers distracts us. Decisions, decisions. We decide to avoid the wrath of the mother-in-law by indulging David’s grandmother with a bunch – she has a great love for them, despite being a fanatical gardener. I’ve never quite understood that.

From here we traipse to the displays. There were 1,188, 011 plants. I counted them, so trust me on that. Most were in full bloom, though due to the cold weather several beds were fallow, barren grounds and hadn’t achieved blooming status. One bed that was supposed to be a mass of white lilies was just a sea of pointed green leaves. I admired them anyway, as we had come a long way to see this. Mother Nature decides what will be, and obviously this year she was being a bitch. The garden theme this year was “Poetry in Flowers”. Areas are divided into themes’, such as “Kubla Khan – Xanadu”, inspired by oriental carpets; “Ode to the Plum Blossom”, a floral interpretation of Lu Yu’s poem in camellias, viburnums and rhododendrons; “Song, From Pippa Passes” – I got the giggles thinking about what Pippa may have passed – by Robert Browning, planted with 58,000 hyacinths, muscari, narcissus and tulips; “Noise by Pooh” – the giggles are now hilarious laughter – the centrepiece of the children’s area, depicting A.A. Milne’s famous bear created with 53,000 blooms. One major problem with setting the gardens out in these phantasmagorical designs is that you can’t see them! From ground level, the designs are totally lost. “Kodak” have kindly placed some Photo-Moments stands along the way, which raise you about 2 feet off the ground, but that still isn’t enough height to give you a vista showing the designs off to there fullest. There should have been stands set about 6-8 feet off the ground to show off the displays – but then, this is our political capital, and either nobody thought of it, or the idea is still in some public servants in-box. I wasn’t even aware that the designs were in place until I thumbed through a magazine the next day at home.

Anyway, it didn’t seem to phase the thousands of beige-outfitted elderly men – Panama or tweed hats are the official headwear of the gardener male – and their partners, in three-quarter-length white or bone pants (visible panty line optional), over-blouse of blue and white floral (blowsy enough to propel them along in the breeze) and over-sized straw hats with floral hatbands, tied with a chiffon scarf tied under the chin in a giant bow – the official headwear of the gardener female. They pointed, oohed and ahed, tittered and tutted, and cupped blooms in their hands as they wandered from bed to bed. The serious gardeners stood in groups, dissecting, analysing and correcting every nuance of every flowerbed. I often wonder if these people can ever just enjoy a beautiful display as a beautiful display, or if it must always be never quite good enough.

The arrival of a very large troupe of Japanese tourists provided a momentary distraction to all the beauty around us. David and I were sitting in a tent set up as a café, eating and trying to enjoy a very limp – and obviously not fresh – Waldorf salad when they arrived. In typical Japanese tourist fashion, they were herded into two groups, segregated by large signs on green and yellow cardboard, mounted on sticks and waved in the air. The writing on them was Japanese, but considering where they were, I imagined the groups were possible named plum blossom, and cherry blossom, or something equally Japanese. Anyway, they didn’t manage to see all that much. They were shuffled into one spot, did a 360-degree rotation accompanied by the very audible click if twenty cameras going off at the same time, then they were off amongst a lot of pointing and chittering. Probably off to the market. One almost felt sorry for them.

A quick trip to the Theatre of Film and Sound to view some of the archived material from the Canberra based film preservation group ended our tour of the garden. It had taken us about two hours to cover the whole area – and yes, we did find some plants for sale. Real plants, that is! We picked up a tub of flowering Daffodils, to drop off at David’s mothers on the way back.

I can’t in all honesty say that Canberra has endeared itself to me, but they put on one hell of of a flower show!

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2004

The Big Merino, Goulburn

(1) The Big Merino:
Built in 1985 is a monument to Goulburn and the surrounding district’s fine wool industry. Standing 15.2 meters high, 18 meters long and weighing 97 tones he is an impressive life-like model of Rambo, a stud Ram from a local property, “Bullamallita”.
The complex was opened on September 20 1985 by John Brown who was the federal minister for sport, recreation and tourism. The idea was originally conceived by brothers Attila and Louis Mokany.The Big Merino was constructed by Adelaide builder Glenn Senner and took six months to build. The frame is steel, covered and shaped with wire mesh, sprayed and detailed in reinforced concrete. The architect was Gary Dutallis.
As the Goulburn bypass took effect on the city, Goulburn changed. The city expanded and a new development at the southern end meant that the Big Merino previously the first stop off the southern exit from the expressway was now stranded in no mans land. On the 26th May 2007 this grand structure moved 800 metres towards the southern exit to greener pastures.
The move has given Rambo a new lease on life with the construction of a new gift shop and a permanent exhibition from Australian Wool Innovation depicting the 200 year history of wool in Australia which is housed in the Big Merino structure. The second floor will eventually show all the stages of wool processing. Marshall Judd was commissioned to construct the under belly and three new legs representing a more complete, free standing model than previously shown.
The Big Merino gift shop displays an eclectic range of quality gift wear, cosmetics, souvenirs and accessories. We aim to supply our overseas and local visitors with the best quality products made from fine Australian merino wool. Our range includes Australian made ugg boots, locally hand-dyed gossamer-fine wool scarves, merino possum blend scarves, hats, jumpers and jackets, Mohair throw rugs and scarves, pet doonas, medical and baby’s sheepskins as well as plush sheepskins.

Mocador Pavlova Factory, Marulan

(2) The Old Pavlova Factory:
Just to the south of Marulan are the remains of the ‘famous’ Moccador Pavlova Factory which was built in the shape of a large pink and white pavlova. The factory used to manufacture pavlovas, handmade chocolates and cheesecakes and offer devonshire teas to travellers but it was a casualty of the town’s by-pass. It closed in 1991.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-factsheet/marulan–places-to-see-20081124-6fx9.html#ixzz2VbstoFXr

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Bug Chasing – A HIV Phenomenon

June 7, 2013Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDSBug-chasing, gift-giver, HIV, infection, virustimalderman

Bug Chaser: A person who seeks to become infected with HIV.
Bug Chasing: Actively engaging in sexual activity with the goal of acquiring HIV.
Gift: HIV.
Gift Giver: A person who gives the gift of HIV to an HIV negative person.

In February 2003, Gregory A Freeman wrote an article on bug chasing for “Rolling Stone” magazine. It was a highly controversial article, and any Googling of the term “bug chasing” will bring up endless results from the piece. So I will not rehash old ground, especially 3-year-old ground. “Carlos”, the gay guy he uses as his interview subject is a self-obsessed, hedonistic guy who truly needs to get a life, as distinct from trying to destroy it, which he seems hell-bent on doing. The article appears, at least to me, to be a bit dodgy, both in its emphasis on the opinions of one extremist, and its ability to distort the statistics of experts. However, it does raise some interesting issues.

For starters, are we to make the assumption that “bug chasing” is going on? I dare say that if it was happening in 2003, it is happening now. If we admit that barebacking is a reality, then we have to admit also for “bug chasing”. In Andrew Barkers article “Bug Chasing” (1), he states that “Not surprisingly, the stigma and fringe quality of bug chasing is something that very few people would admit to doing. Of course, people were saying the same thing about bareback sex a few years ago, and now the term – and the activity itself to a lesser extent – has become a normalised, if not accepted, part of gay culture”.

So, if we accept that it is happening, we have to ask why! Not for one single moment, as a HIV+ man, could I ever condone the practice of bug chasing. However, having said that, when I read these articles I can sort of understand where these people were coming from. I was amongst the first people officially diagnosed with HIV in Sydney back in the early 80s. At that time, I had a HIV- partner, and though our relationship broke up shortly after this, we remained as flat mates further down the track for 10 years. These were the bad years in HIV, when just about everyone in our group of friends was infected, and many died. My flat mate remained negative through all this time, and still is. However, he stated to me on one occasion that he wished he was HIV+, as it would be easier for him to deal with the situation, and he would not always feel so “left-out”. Needless to say, he never turned into a bug chaser, but you can see the thinking behind it. Other underlying causes for people to take up this fetish – and I use the word loosely – are various forms of abuse like drug and alcohol use, poverty, lack of social supports, homophobia, low self-esteem, poor mental health, perceived invincibility and survivor guilt. In his article “Bug Chasing:
Why Some Men Want to Become HIV Positive” (2), Ashley Shaffier says “Those who seek HIV are called “bug chasers” and like most people they want to be involved in something that separates them from the rest of humanity. A few find something special by becoming infected with HIV – Not everyone has the virus, which makes those who are positive different. They are also not alone. “They see those living with HIV as a cohesive group that welcomes its new members and receives vast support” (Freeman). Freeman goes on to say that “The sense of being my brother’s keeper is never discussed in the gay community because we’ve gone to the extreme of saying gay men with HIV can do no wrong. They’re poor victims, and we can’t ever criticise them.” Another reasoning behind bug chasing is that some do it for the thrill of it, getting their kicks from the danger element, the “will I get it this time, or do I get to try again” attitude. “Many people engage in socially acceptable extreme sports for the rush, knowing that they’re risking their lives jumping from planes or free-climbing a rock face. And many do lose their lives. They are heralded by some as adventurous. One could argue that bug chasers are seeking a similar risky thrill” (Barker).

Another reasoning behind bug chasing is safe-sex fatigue some 24 years after AIDS first emerged in American cities. Many who have practiced safe sex for this long a period of time crave to have sex “the old fashioned way”, without the use of condoms, good old skin-to-skin sex. Normal sex is seen as being almost unattainable, something from the past that will never be revisited.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, it remains a very scary phenomenon. Some of the statements made by “Carlos” in the “Rolling Stone” article send a chill down your spine: “I know what the risks are, and I know that putting myself in this situation is like putting a gun to my head”; “When I have sex, I always like to make it special, a really good time, something nice and memorable in case that is the one that gives it to me”. Carlos feels that living with HIV will be a minor annoyance, that HIV is not such a big deal anymore. “It’s like living with diabetes. You take a few pills and get on with your life”. I think quite a few of us may have something to say about that. I also feel that there is a general lack of empathy for many HIV+ people, and a lack of acknowledgement that many of us were infected in the very early days of the epidemic when very little was known about it. I don’t like to use terminology like “innocently infected”, but for some of us, that is the fact. Given a greater scope of information, and an acknowledgement of just how deadly HIV was going to be would have been a wake-up call to many of us. The playing-down of information in the early days was a bad move, a disservice really, though that cannot be used as an excuse today. Given the amount of available information, and given the anecdotal stories of those who survived to now, one has to wonder how they come to the conclusion that bug chasing is a good thing.

Even the language itself is scary, the use of words like “gift”, “gift giver”, “bug chaser”, “conversion (from negative to positive)”,and “bug juice”. Doug Hitzel, a former bug chaser who is now HIV+ says, in Freeman’s article “Bug chasing sounds like a group of kindergartners running around chasing grasshoppers and butterflies…a beautiful thing. And gift giving? What the hell is that? I just wish the terms would put some real context into what’s going on. Why did I want to say that I was deliberately infecting myself? Because saying the word infect sounds bad and gross and germy. I wanted it to be sexualised”.

The internet itself has helped in the spread of bug chasing, with sites dedicated to it and its followers. I have to admit to not being able to find any to aid in my research, though I’m sure they are there, possibly linked into barebacking sites.

Freeman interviewed Dr Bob Cabaj, a public official working in San Francisco in psychiatry. Cabaj admitted that statistics were hard to come by, and he estimated that at least twenty-five percent of all newly infected gay men fall into the bug chasing category. Naturally, “Rolling Stone” took this figure literally, and on-board, and calculated that of the then 40,000 new infections in the United States every year, around 10,000 were attributable to the more liberal definition of bug chasing. This figure caused such a huge furore that Cabaj denied giving Freeman any specific percentages, and he wrote a letter to “Rolling Stone” asking for a clarification to be printed, which then stated that only a “certain percentage” of new HIV infections may be deliberate – but that this figure was “probably more than people wanted to think”. I think common sense would say that the figure wasn’t accurate, despite a lack of actual data on the subject.

Naturally, the religious right then had to get into the picture – no show without Punch – and have their two cents worth. Of course, they didn’t come up with anything original. The Rev. Louis B Sheldon, Chairman of the “Traditional Values Coalition” stated on traditionalvalues.org that “With bug chasing, barebacking and Russian Roulette parties (3) was part of the homosexual lifestyle (sic), it is not surprising that HIV infections are on the rise. And with sexually depraved individuals like Keith Folger and Vince Gaither (4) overseeing how Centre of Disease Control AIDS dollars are being spent, it is unlikely that this epidemic will decline any time soon…”. On altermedia.info David Mullenax informs us that “My wife and I discussed the issue of “bug chasing” at length over freshly brewed coffee and Italian biscotti. Each of us had difficulty in describing exactly how we felt about such insanity and madness…Homosexuality would not be a trendy alternative if it weren’t for a Jewish-controlled media that glamorises and insists that gays are the same as everybody else. To be gay is to be exotic, and thus revered. The many stories of death, some by infection and others by suicide, are never told on MTV…As the media promotes homosexuality as a hip and fashionable lifestyle, the anger is reserved for them….This is why gays should be pitied, and the anger reserved for the alien minority who run the majority of our news and entertainment outlets…Recruitment and outreach programs prey on the weaknesses of many of our young ones…Without (that) mental preparation, the gay lifestyle would be rejected by many vibrant and innocent White (sic) children who have become victims to this scheming…” etc etc, I’m sure you get the message.

A video was made of the phenomenon, called “The Gift”, and has been shown over here at one of the Queer film fests. In it, a young redheaded San Franciscan man tells the tale of how, at 19 he set out to become infected with HIV. “I thought being positive was a positive thing”, he says. “I thought I was just going to have a lot of promiscuous, unsafe sex. I didn’t know I was going to change (to HIV+) so fast. No one told me”.

In January this year, British editor Mary Wakefield, writing in the Sunday telegraph (5) describes her shock at discovering the underworld of bug chasing among homosexual males. Her investigation was fuelled by the funeral of a young man who recently died after deliberately becoming infected with HIV. The young man had invited his HIV+ boyfriend to live with him, and though being aware of the dangers of HIV, soon developed the disease and brain cancer. His HIV+ friend had also infected a previous partner and that man had died not long ago. After reading the article in “Rolling Stone”, Wakefield stated that “I remember being skeptical at the time – it seemed too creepy. After tens of millions have died of AIDS worldwide, after billions spent on medications, how could anyone seek it out?” This in turn led her to seek out the bug chasing underground on the internet. She observed “…there was a darker side, the romanticising of AIDS itself. Google led me underground, to gay clubbers with ‘HIV Neg’ tattooed on their biceps as an invitation to others to infect them, to online chats about HIV-spreading sex parties, talk of ‘conceiving’ the virus like a pregnancy and the intense intimacy of infecting a partner. “It offers a kind of permanent partnership, a connection outside time” stated the editor of a gay newspaper.”

So, it would seem that we cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that bug chasing doesn’t happen. I would like to think it was not widely practiced in Australia, but if time has proved anything, if it is happening on the gay/HIV scene in America, it is happening here. This article was prompted by an article I received last week from queerplanet.com.au, by Charlie Parker. He states in his article “Bug Parties” that “The Russian Roulette bug party. This is where a group of gay men have ‘no condoms allowed’, unprotected sex and no one’s HIV status is revealed. This type of party is treated like a game by the participants. The guy who becomes infected is the winner.”

I felt that if he thought it still relevant, then perhaps we needed to revisit the subject, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, then in twelve months time or so, it will suddenly raise it’s ugly head again, possibly due to someone being infected this way, or someone dying, then with people saying “Oh, I always knew that was going on”.

Perhaps I should leave the last word to Carlos. As sad and pathetic as he appears, you can’t help but hope he wakes up to himself. When asked what would he do if he found out he was HIV+, he says he would move on to become a gift giver. “If I know that he’s negative and I’m fucking him, it sort of gets me off. I’m murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that’s sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me.”

I have goose bumps crawling up my arms.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2007

References

1 Living + Magazine, November/December 2002
2 AssociatedContent.com
3 AUTHOR’S NOTE parties specifically intended to assist people get infected with HIV
4 AUTHOR’S NOTE San Francisco AIDS activists
5 15/1/2006

FOOTNOTEs:

CNN interview on Bug Chasing movie, July 2007 https://youtu.be/Bo_n0IPsC7g

Article in Sydney Morning Herald April 21, 2007 ‘HIV chasing’ a trend in gay communityApril 21, 2007 – 6:09AMA Melbourne man who fantasised about contracting HIV before actually being infected by the virus has spoken of a gay subculture in which infection is seen as “desirable”.The 20-year-old man, who does not want to be named, told Fairfax newspapers both complacency about the virus and the wish to have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive man he was in love with led him to become infected.”I wasn’t actively seeking it, but maybe there were parts of me, dark corners, that wanted it, that were thinking, ‘Let’s just do it and get it over and done with and then it won’t be an issue’,” he said.The young professional is the first to speak out about “bug chasing”, a behaviour in the gay community in which men seek to become infected with HIV.The phenomenon was highlighted at the recent committal hearing for Melbourne man Michael Neal. Mr Neal was accused of deliberately spreading the virus.A HIV-positive man said in court that “bug chasing” was “a big thing out there” and that he had been pursued on the internet by a man wanting the bug.”I just kept reminding him that it was not glamorous,” a witness told the court.Dawn Wilcock, of Positive Women Victoria, a support group for HIV-positive women, said the reaction showed a need for Melbourne’s gay community leaders to stop dismissing claims of the subculture as an urban myth.”There’s a lot of defensive and protective behaviour going on that is not addressing the potential repercussions of this,” Ms Wilcock said.”It’s a real problem. We know that 75 per cent of Victorian women infected with HIV are contracting the virus from long-term male partners, so the health campaigns targeting gay men need to target others in the community who would never publicly identify themselves as being gay, too.”The HIV-positive man said some men going to group-sex parties with HIV-positive men might want to “join the club” and have unprotected sex more freely.”I have had an extremely intoxicated person claim that he wanted it once,” he said. “I fobbed him off and he never came asking for it again.”

© 2007 AAPArticle in The Age 21 July 2007 “Gay subculture in ‘bug chase’ sees HIV as desirable Julia Medew and Karen Kissane

April 21, 2007
Dance with death
A MELBOURNE man who fantasised about catching HIV before he contracted the virus has spoken out about a gay subculture in which infection is seen as desirable.The young professional, who does not want to be named, told The Age a combination of complacency about the virus and the wish to have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive man he loved led him to become infected.”I wasn’t actively seeking it, but maybe there were parts of me, dark corners, that wanted it, that were thinking, ‘Let’s just do it and get it over and done with and then it won’t be an issue’,” said the man, who is his 20s.He is the first to speak publicly about taking part in behaviour that is known in the gay community as “bug chasing” — seeking to become infected with HIV. The phenomenon was described by witnesses at the recent committal hearing for Melbourne man Michael Neal, who was accused of deliberately spreading the virus.One HIV-positive man told the hearing “bug chasing” was “a big thing out there” and that he had been pursued on the internet by a man who wanted to catch the virus from him.”I just kept reminding him that it was not glamorous,” the witness told the court.Dawn Wilcock, the director of Positive Women Victoria, a support and lobby group for HIV-positive women, said yesterday that such accounts confirmed the need for leaders of Melbourne’s gay community to stop dismissing claims of the subculture as an urban myth.”There’s a lot of defensive and protective behaviour going on that is not addressing the potential repercussions of this,” Ms Wilcock said.Her organisation was extremely concerned about other kinds of HIV recklessness, including the behaviour of heterosexual men who have sex with other men and do not tell the women in their lives. Such men do not think of themselves as gay or even as bisexual.”It’s a real problem. We know that 75 per cent of Victorian women infected with HIV are contracting the virus from long-term male partners, so the health campaigns targeting gay men need to target others in the community who would never publicly identify themselves as being gay, too,” she said.The HIV-positive man said that some negative men who attended group-sex parties with positive men might want to “join the club” so they could have unprotected sex more freely. His own intermittent desire to catch the virus was more about wanting intimacy with his partner than a “tribal membership or a rites of passage sort of thing”.life for HIV-positive people was now reasonably good, and that contracting the virus “wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it might have been 10 years ago”.While it was difficult to tell how many men who fantasised about the virus actually tried to get it, he said, some men certainly advertised for it on the internet and asked for it during sexual encounters.”I have had an extremely intoxicated person claim that he wanted it once,” he said. “I fobbed him off and he never came asking for it again.”Many gay community leaders and spokespeople for HIV and AIDS lobby groups last month dismissed claims of “bug chasing” and “conversion parties” — group-sex parties where positive men have unprotected sex with negative men to give them the virus — after the concepts were aired during Neal’s court case.Mike Kennedy, the executive director of the Victorian AIDS Council — the peak body representing gay men living with HIV and AIDS — this week again told The Age it was an urban myth.”You will find one of everything you look for,” Mr Kennedy said. “But the notion that this is a big scene, absolutely not. The language of ‘gift givers’, ‘bug chasers’ and ‘conversion parties’ — it’s something that’s come off the internet.”An HIV worker who did not want to be named said there was a party line offered to the outside world on the issue of reckless HIV behaviour in Melbourne’s gay community.”The party line is that it’s not happening — ‘What? Us?’ ” the worker said.The worker agreed with Ms Wilcock that heterosexual men who had illicit sex with gays were the conduit for the virus into the wider community. The worker said that when such men were diagnosed with the virus, they rarely started using condoms with their long-term female partners, “because she’s going to say, ‘What’s this?’ “Ms Wilcock said that gay male organisations were not doing enough to confront this and the “bug-chasing” issue

An article in the Ottawa Citizen about a court case involving a man deliberately attempting to “kill” his partner by infecting him with HIV, dated October 11, 2012 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/positive+used+toxicity+kill+partners+Crown/7375342/story.html

An article in The Body dated September 10 2010, headlined Tracking the Elusive HIV “Bug Chasers” http://www.thebody.com/content/73956/the-bug-chasers-tale-an-interview.html

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Will You Still Feed Me…?

June 4, 2013Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDSageing, chronic illness, geriatric, HIV, nursing, nursing homestimalderman

I have an idealised image of growing old with my partner and drifting out of this life in my sleep. In this ideal world of ageing, there is no pain, nor any unpleasantness. Occasionally, though, reality creeps into my thoughts, causing me to wonder just what will happen as the years speed by. The fact that I’m the older partner in the relationship doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be first to die. Nor does it mean that any of life’s unpleasantries are not going to overtake one or the other of us in the guise of cancer, dementia or other illnesses.

The most frightening scenario is one where I’m left suddenly on my own and have to find new ways to cope. It’s difficult enough to adapt to new life situations when you’re young, let alone when you’re set in your ways. The prospect of ending up in a nursing home is something most of us don’t want to contemplate. A quick bit of research indicates that a lot of HIV+ guys perceive that they are ageing at a faster rate than most people the same age and fear the early onset of cancer, dementia and diabetes. But what about those of us who are hale and hearty and making lifestyle choices to try to ease the way into a healthy old age? I guess we’ll find out all about it when we get there.

At 58, and having now lived with HIV for 30 years, I’m trying my best to take a positive approach to ageing. To my way of thinking, my brush with AIDS in the mid-’90s was about as scary as it could get. Having survived and retained my sense of self (and humour), I fail to see how anything could scare me again.

Dirty old man
I decided a long time ago that I was going to become a Dirty Old Man (DOM) in my old age and to that end I’m already working. As a DOM I can wink, make innuendos, pinch bums, eye up and down and generally make a fool of myself in the presence of any handsome guys and get away with it because, well, I’m a DOM and it’s expected. I’m going to derive a great deal of pleasure out of this and brag about every creepy thing I do to other DOM friends, who will be numerous. This behaviour will, of course, come with me into the nursing home.

Now, let’s talk about my concept of the nursing home I will be in. It will have all modcons, from Foxtel and the latest in computer, phone and tablet connectivity. No jelly and ice cream in our gourmet dining room and the 24/7 gym will be staffed by the hunkiest of personal trainers, who will put up with our erratic behaviour. Likewise the male nurses will be tanned and hunky and dressed in the skimpiest clothes available. The nightclub and bar will be staffed by the best DJs and the dancefloor will be zimmerframe and wheelchair accessible. All our pets will be catered for in equal luxury.

Now, with many of the patients in this imaginary nursing home having read my fitness and healthy eating columns, muscle-bound, slim and over-active elders will be the order of the day and day trips to the latest hip cafes will be a weekly experience. Life will be a dream and we will all depart this life with smiles from ear to ear.

The reality
I fear the reality may be quite different. According to NAPWA (National Association of People with AIDS), there are about 19,000 people in Australia living with HIV and of those, about 30 percent are over 49. At this rate there is going to be a rush for the retirement home doors. If you happen to be gay and HIV+, you don’t, at this time, have a lot of options. Considering that a lot of available aged care is run by religious organisations, identifying appropriate aged care is a bit scary. Unless the gay community start to invest in their old age by putting money into gay nursing homes, I fear you and I will end up in a home that will be inadequate to our needs and certainly won’t allow us to be ourselves in the company of like-minded individuals. If we have HIV, I dare say there will be little in the way of experienced medical care and nursing.

In Australia things seem to be moving a lot slower than in the US, where gay and lesbian retirement homes are already up and running. In our own backyard, GRAI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans & Intersex Retirement Association, Incorporated) at GRAI.org.au is a WA-based volunteer group whose mission is to ‘create a responsive and inclusive mature-age environment that promotes and supports a quality of life for older and ageing people of diverse sexualities and gender identities’. In July 2010 they launched a report in conjunction with Curtin University entitled We Don’t Have Any of Those People Here. Though the research is WA-oriented, it would hold for any state in Australia. They point out that baby-boomer retirees are likely to be the first generation to be openly out as they age (which will also apply to HIV people, especially long-termers), which means that service providers, agencies and Government will need to approach glbt/HIV people very differently to any other group of retirees in years to come.

In 2008, the gay press mooted the building of the first glbt retirement village in Victoria, called Linton Estate. A check of the website doesn’t show any info past that date, though a 2011 report in the Star Observer indicates that retirement apartments are for sale from the plan. According to one report [in outdownunder.com] there are to be 120 units, with a heated spa, bar, cafe, library, croquet lawn (just how old do they think these people are?), tennis courts and much more. Construction is now expected to start in 2012. Things about this that make me nervous: buying off the plan for something that doesn’t as yet exist and is it going to be affordable (or elitist), considering that many of us will be surviving on the pension. I have always laughed at the notion of the pink dollar, whereby we are assumed to have limitless amounts of money to live lives of luxury, when the reality is that most of us struggle to get by. I certainly won’t be getting any inheritance and most other baby boomers are rushing to spend their money before they get too old to enjoy it. Let’s hear it for reality checks!

Just a dream
Fantasising about a gay retirement village is all very nice, but I fear most of us are going to find the dream of a gay retirement in diverse and HIV-knowledgeable environments just that … a dream. We also have to look at our unhealthy lifestyles, as we continue to get obese, drink too much and continue smoking (still a big problem in the HIV community), added to problems of social isolation, lack of interests, a drop in exercise due to laziness (let’s not bullshit here) and as you can see, there is a plethora of problems facing us as an ageing community. These things need to be addressed – and fast!

For some, one of the potential outcomes of limited choice is a return to the closet as a way of ensuring security, in conjunction with a move to the outer suburbs and away from the glbt/HIV community due to the lack of affordable accommodation in the inner city and suburbs.

As a 58-year-old gay HIV+ man in a long-term relationship, I need to start assessing the future realities of life, as pleasant or unpleasant as they may be. I don’t want to be left on my own to deal with my old age, nor do I want my partner to be. In all likelihood we will be together as we run into this stage of our lives (unless one or the other of us runs into a particularly hot 70-year-old – with lots of money, naturally), so sooner or later one of us is going to die and the other will have to continue life on their own. It would be cathartic to think that either of us could get accommodation that was both supportive, suitable and met all the social and medical needs of both gay and HIV people. Somebody will decide to do something about this eventually, though in all likelihood 50 reports will have been written on the subject and many dozens of older HIV+ people will have passed out of this life in undignified circumstances before action will be taken. The suicide rate amongst older glbt and HIV+ people would be interesting to know, especially considering that our coping mechanisms added to problems of discrimination and isolation decline as we enter extreme old age.

This is food for thought for all of us, young and old. Anyone who thinks they will never be old lives in Never Never land and anyone who thinks it’s someone else’s problem needs to get a life. Let’s give our elderly the respect and acknowledgement that is due to them.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2011

P.S: In an article in QNews dated 27th April 2012, the Gillard government announced changes to aged care that ensured GLBTI aged that service providers would be required to support their special needs. The reforms are part of a package to keep seniors at home for as long as possible. GLBTI seniors have been added to the “special needs” category. Aged care operators are required to allocate places in this group. This means that for the first time, places are required to be set aside for these seniors. It is also the first legislation to include Intersex people in the special needs category.
To read the full article go to http://qnews.com.au/article/glbti-seniors-aged-care-bedded-down-0#

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The Changing Face of Erotica – or How I Spent My Life Searching for the Perfect Wank

June 4, 2013Article, Humourerotica, Gay, porn, sex, wankingtimalderman

Warning – if you are offended by gay male sexuality, DO NOT read any further.

Anybody who has access to the Internet these days, and hasn’t encountered pornography is either in denial, has their rating preferences set way too high, or just isn’t trying.

It’s prolific. You only have to do a tiny slip-up with your spelling in a search engine to link up with some sites you possibly never even imagined could exist. However, it hasn’t always been this easy, as anyone growing up in the 50’s or 60s can attest.

Sex education? What’s that, I ask! My parent’s concept of sex education was to get some small, discreet booklets – complete with very rough line drawings of naughty bits – from our local protestant minister, and subtly leave them next to the bed, trusting – in providence, of course – that I would read them, and – hopefully – not ask any questions. Well, unfortunately I did read them, and was left clutching my head in sheer horror at the prospect of what lay before me in the world of sex. Is it any wonder my generation still harbours hang-ups. All those vulvas, urethras, vaginas, penises and testicles were just too much for a young lad, let alone deciphering the mechanics of how it all happened. So I spent most of my youth thinking that kissing any girl would cause pregnancy – watch any 50’s movie, and you will quickly deduce how this idea came into being – and when one of my 6th form classmates tried – this would have been around 1965 – to set me straight on the matter of intercourse, I screamed, threw my hands into the air, and fled. Such horrors were the stuff of nightmares. How could anybody possibly want to do that!

However, at around 10 years-of-age, things started to change. Mind you, I was none the wiser about the ‘doing’ part of sex, but I was definitely starting to get interested. I’d started growing pubic hair – much to my consternation, as no one else appeared to be – and the erections and wet dreams were well and truly at full steam. My mother must have been horrified at the state of the bed linen! There was, however, one major difference in how I perceived the erotic, and how other kids of my age perceived it. You see, I collected – yes, cut out of newspapers – ads of men in underwear. Now, considering these were usually only advertising sketches, decidedly lacking in any bulge appeal or the remotest suggestions of cotton-moulded genitalia – we are talking the 60’s here – you may imagine that it wasn’t hellishly sexy. And you’d be right! But shit, it was any port in a storm, and I had an imagination – and a hand. What else was a young lad to do! I’d tried talking a neighbours son into giving me a quick look at the naughty bits but…well… everyone appeared to be hung-up about it.

And I was well aware that I couldn’t be discovered harbouring an attraction to this sort of…erotica. There wasn’t a name for this sort of thing, as far as I knew. I had heard my father and his mates yelling ‘poofter’ to guys out of the car window, but just what these ‘poofter’ things were, I could never make out. All I could see was some guy walking along the footpath. The one thing I was pretty certain about was that I was the only guy in the whole world who got off on the suggestion of a bulging crotch, in a sketched ad, in a newspaper! You can only imagine the alienation, the feeling of being apart from everyone else. It could have been worse, I guess. I could have been a Catholic! However, in a while all these misnomers were to be blown away.

The 50’s and 60’s were not good decades for a blossoming gay male, I can tell you. It was even worse if you were growing up in ‘The Shire’ – the southern suburbs of Sydney. The only other things resembling porn I could get at that time were photos of guys in Speedo’s, from the sports pages of the same papers I cut the undie ads from. I did manage to get in some good perving at Speedo-clad guys at the local Carrs Park beach, for if the 60’s had nothing else, it had plenty of guys in Speedos. For this I was eternally grateful, and put the imagery to good use. It did, I should point out, lead to future fetishes.

These were to be my entire concepts of pornography till the early 70’s. Okay, it wasn’t great stuff, but like most potential gay men, I have a pretty fertile imagination, and it didn’t take much to get a fantasy together from the bare minimum of material. Next in the search for gay erotica were muscle mags. Now, you can’t tell me that guys assuming very suggestive poses, in tiny little briefs, aren’t aiming a certain amount of their appeal to gay guys! I used to hunt around my local newsagent, watching for that rare break when there were no customers at the counter. I would be waiting in the wings with a newspaper and muscle mags of choice, safely – and discreetly, or so I thought – tucked under it. I would, with bated breath, slink to the cash register to pay for my treasures, already the slight hint of a hard-on throbbing in the jeans at the prospect of the session that lay ahead of me at home. That there was this scrawny little 15-year-old, with not a muscle to be seen, buying the entire current collection of muscle mags – which weren’t cheap, I should point out – was an anomaly that never crossed my mind. I think the newsagent was probably more interested in the cash, though I’m also sure this customer scenario must have been a common one. My beach perving continued, and my hidden stash of ‘pornography’ grew at an ever-alarming rate.

Praise God, the 70’s also saw the advent of “Cleo” and “Cosmopolitan” magazines. Now, I should point out that I only bought the magazines for ‘the articles’, just as straight men only ever bought “Playboy” and “Penthouse” for the articles. Articles on make-up, the ‘G-Spot’, and photo spreads of women’s fashion were terribly relevant to growing boys – not! My interest in make-up and frocks didn’t actually eventuate till my 80’s drag years. But I digress! The centrefolds were, at least, a legitimate reason to buy a magazine for perve value. Okay, you had to put up with the occasional non-sexual type person like Jack Thompson in the raw, but on the whole, they were pretty hot. The ones in briefs always managed to fill the briefs, and the ones in Speedos did likewise, so I had no complaints. Tidying up some drawers a few years ago, I discovered some tucked away in scrapbooks from the era. How dated it all looked.

I think I bought my first real porn in about 1978 or so. I couldn’t even tell you now where I obtained it from, though it must have taken a lot of guts, because you just did not live in the western suburbs of Sydney in those days, especially Granville, and buy gay porn. I worked in the city, and I imagine I must have picked it up from one of the city newsagents. It wasn’t great stuff on recollection, but hell – a cock was a cock was a cock when you wanted a wank. It was hidden away in my underwear drawer in Granville, and actually became the cause for my being unintentionally ‘outed’. My old man kicked the bucket in 1978 – NOTE: if he used the sexual techniques, suggested in the same books he gave me as sex instruction manuals when I was a kid, I can’t work out, for the life of me, how I came to be conceived! – and I stayed for a brief period at my step-families home in Campbelltown while the funeral etc was arranged. I rang my flatmates in Granville – one of them a mate of mine since I started work – and asked them to pack a bag for me and bring it out to Campbelltown. By the time I remembered what was in the underwear drawer, it was too late. Despite a frantic phone call asking them – can you believe this, because I can’t – to ignore what else was in the drawer – like the men with erect penises, and doing things, I have to say that if shocked, they managed to be very discreet and said nothing. Like they would! I moved temporarily to Melbourne just after this, and they wrote to tell me that they had only suspected I may have been gay prior to that revelation, and they regretted to inform me that I really should write to my mother, as they thought she already knew, and had accidentally outed me to her. Thank you, pornography! Who would have thought that the simple desire for some quiet masturbation could lead to all this drama?

Well, the 80’ improved the pornography situation greatly – as did coming out. I discovered some gay bookstores in Melbourne, and purchasing porn – and other accoutrement – became much easier. I can’t say the quality really got much better, just the quantity. Everything was always wrapped in plastic, and you really couldn’t have a look at it before you bought it, as the shoppies thought – rightly – you were just after a cheap thrill. Often, what was on the cover wasn’t what was inside the mag. You would buy something with this hunky bit of flesh in a jockstrap on the cover – in full colour – and get it home to find it was full of black-and-white photos of some scrawny 18-year-old. Very disillusioning.

I returned to Sydney around 1982, and managed Numbers Bookshop in Darlinghurst for the next 7 years. Can we talk one extreme to another here! From a drawer full of second-class porn mags to a shop full of top quality. Now, let me tell you something. It may have been on tap, but if ever there was a job to kill your desire for porn, it’s working in a sex shop! By the time I left there in 1990, I didn’t want to know about cocks in any state – flaccid, erect, cockringed, jockstrapped, Y-fronted, or shoved up an arse. I stared at it all day, every day, and everyone wondered why I no longer bothered with trade! Ha!

Anyway, everything goes full circle, and my sense of all things perverse returned very quickly after getting out of the sex business. I do have to say that in that period, my
magazine and video collection had improved by leaps and bounds, and some of the videos I bought back then are hotter than a lot of the stuff coming out now. This obsession with trying to create a screenplay around a porn scenario has to stop. It just doesn’t work.

Now, I have the Internet. On last count, I had something like 10,000 images downloaded – and that’s only the freebies. Like all decent perverts, I refuse to pay to stare at cock. Hell, they will even email it to you. As I noted in the first paragraph, just don’t have your spam preferences set too high. Not only have I got all these images, they are categorised. If I just want to see stiff cock, I can go to that folder. If I want to see jockstraps or Speedos, hey – they’re separated into folders. I can even be choosy – too skinny, delete it! Not large enough – delete it! Not showing the right amount of enthusiasm when getting fucked – delete it! So now I just have what I want, and in prolific amounts. I still wander down to Ithaca Pool – only 20 minutes from home – for my Speedo perve, but alas, times have changed, and it is the era of the baggy boardshorts. The only thing to gawk at is some sad guy with a saggy arse, in a hot pink G-string. Even the DILF dads don’t flaunt it. I ponder the cruelty of life, and wander back home.

But there has to be a drawback in the search for the ultimate wank, which this profusion of stimulus is helping to define. It is also becoming boring. No longer the furtive search through a newspaper for the right photo; the embarrassment at the newsagents counter as you bought a mag you shouldn’t have; or the surprise of taking off the plastic wrap and finding that the guy on the cover IS inside the magazine. Now, it’s served to you on a tray – all shapes, sizes, fetishes and positions. We have group sex, we have fucking and oral, we have underwear, jockstraps and Speedos, we have leather and latex and drag, we have labourers, cowboys, military and cops. You name it, it’s there somewhere. And somehow along the line, we have lost the mystique of pornography. Our tolerance to the stimulus of pornography is now so high that we almost need the perfect photo to garner a reaction – read ‘hard-on’. In truth, we have spoilt the whole thing. It is no longer perceived as ‘dirty’, so it is no longer fun. It is weird that out of all the images and sets you have, there are possibly only a small number that really captivate you.

Death by a surfeit of porn! Who’d have thought!

Tim Alderman 2003

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From the Pen of an Ageing Dissident

June 3, 2013Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, HumourDarlinghurst, dissident, Gay, HIV, Sydney, UTStimalderman

This article was first published in the Queer issue of “Vertigo”, the student newspaper at the University of Technology Sydney in 2002. It was published “as is”, though I have edited and cleaned it up since.

I’ve spent most of my life sitting on the sidelines of a radical’s playing field

It’s not that I’ve never had opinions; it’s always been more a matter of having different opinions, and a strong urge not to end up affiliated with the unpopular (read losing) team. So, I’ve shut up and put up where I shouldn’t have; sat back and listened to endless tirades of bullshit sprouted by individuals who have no idea what they are talking about; held a glass to the wall while the downfall of sanity was planned in another room; and watched people selling off or ignoring the weight of sane idealism. White-collar elitists undermining the structures of a blue-collar world!

Perhaps I could carry on like this; perhaps I could continue to use my soapbox as a storage devise for my now unused vinyl collection; arse-end my megaphone and convert it into a vase; or start a petition to sue the growers of marijuana for being inept at keeping me (us) permanently stoned. Nothing can change the fact that these days, I am getting fucked off by just about everything going on around me, and fucked off by having allowed myself to keep quiet for far too long.

When I crashed out of the closet in the early 80’s – at the grand old age of 25 – it was into the perfect environment for a potential dissident – the gay liberation movement. Yeah, let’s hear it for gay rights! Sure, if you can find the time between checking out the latest bar, and keeping your cock in your pants long enough to fight the good fight. Naturally, I sympathised with all the boys out there trying to make life easier for us, and sure, I had an opinion. I just didn’t want the opinion to stand in the way of a good time. Oh, I did write a letter to ‘Campaign’ (newspaper, not magazine back then) defending the rights of guys to look like clones if they wanted to – and accused those who didn’t like it as being ‘cloneophobes’. Nothing like inventing a word! Did I ever feel guilty about this lack of radical action? Sure I did, as someone yelled ‘faggot’ at me as they drove past in a car, or I read in the latest gay rag about the increase in gay bashings in the local ghetto. I even determined that I was going to the next rally, or the next kiss-in, or signing the petition that was sitting in my local pub. The problem was that I had to manage to get past the pub door, or get up before midday, or say no to a bit of trade to accomplish any of these things. So I left it for those guys to do. You know who those guys are! They are the ones who wander from club to pub with the petition that you should sign, but never seem to remember. The guys who always had their photos in the gay papers, as they tried to rally a community to action. The guys who always had letters published in the same gay rags, defending us all against the rantings and ravings of the vocal minority, who saw fit to hold everyone ransom to every other standards of morality than those we accepted as right. Yep, those guys! I admired them, I supported them, fucked if I wasn’t even just a teensy bit envious of them for being so out there, but I mean…I was just a 25-year-old male bimbo with a life to burn. I’m sure they understood!

So, the 80’s passed me by. I never did get to any of the gay rights marches, or the kiss-in arranged by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on the steps of government house, or the first march, that political pivot point, that was to become Mardi Gras. I did, however, manage to work my way through three relationships, got the clap no less than four times, and found myself trapped in a frantic lifestyle that generally left anyone caught in its vortex an alcoholic, a drug addict, or dead! Even I, from my ivory tower of intellectual snobbery, sprouted from a bar-room stool, should have foreseen the next chance at radicalism – a bigger stage that I could have acted from, another soapbox to yell rousing, unrhymed verses from, finding uses for milk crates other than what we annually used them for – viewing a parade!

No, not even I foresaw HIV. No one knew the devastation, the heart wrenching desolation, the sheer bloody mindlessness of this pandemic like those of us in the middle of the fray. Behold, another opportunity was handed to me, and still I sat back, still took the easy road, still tried to pretend that tomorrow I would do something, tomorrow…

Sure, like many others I put up the pretence of radicalism. I joined the fringes of the AIDS groups, at least long enough to say that I had done my bit, I shouted members of ACT-UP a drink if they happened to be in the same bar as me after a demonstration; I unfolded quilt panels; attended auctions to raise money; visited the sick and dying in hospital; ranted, again, that everybody was doing something except those who should; then took myself off to the local and again, got my priorities right from my bar stool in the corner. Let it never be said I didn’t have an opinion – it was just aimed at the wrong ears. When I realised it was no longer good enough to fight this battle this way, it was almost too late, and the white-collar elitists had almost kidnapped the whole epidemic to their own benefit.

There is nothing quite like a degree, nothing quite like a network of those in the know to give people a sense of wisdom beyond that of everyone else. It was time to act! Enough of pub politics, opinions whispered into the crotch of the latest bit of trade, the mind numbing importance of yet another drink – like I really needed it – or another joint, or another tab of acid. Life leeching away at the speed of the next line of coke. I had a frightening experience – I got ill. I had another, more life altering experience – I survived the illness. I had the most frightening experience of all – I got older! When I think of all the frightening things that have happened in my life, perhaps the latter was the most frightening of all. Years flying past at the speed of light.

So, like Lazarus, I arose from the dead, marched from the hospital ward and back onto the streets. It’s too late, I kept thinking to myself. It’s too bloody late and you’ve missed the fucking boat. But no, it’s not too late. In an age of complacency and burn-out, there is time still for a yet-to-be-a-has-been radical. I find myself at a rally in support of equal age of consent for gay and straight men, not quite comprehending what makes one sector of the community more irresponsible than the other in terms of sex. All I really find is that the era of great radicals has passed, and no one seems to be moving up the ranks to fill their Doc Martens. The rally leaves me feeling flat, wondering where all the great bullhorn vocalists have gone! Even the turnout is small compared to those of the 80’s. There was no value in rallies and parades anymore. As far as these forms of radicalism go, perhaps I have missed the boat.

I join the underground world of working groups, sub-committees and networkers, and at last started to find the missing flame of righteous indignation. The written word is something I am more than proficient at, and my letter writing on anything from ugly McDonalds advertising to condom use – and misuse – becomes prolific. I discover the hidden world of ‘the article’, and start to churn them out by the zillions. I discuss, initially, disease and its impact on life, but soon find myself drawn to the palliative issues of illness, and how best to survive in a world that barely recognises your existence. Public speaking is my next step up in this alien world, and I suddenly start to realise that it is not too late to be a dissident. You just need the right soap-box at the right place and the right time. Being there when something is happening doesn’t mean that you have to act on it. Sometimes, coming in through the backdoor can be much more beneficial.

Now, as I enter the noughties, I am finding the dissident gene that I thought was missing for so long. I joined groups, both community and university orientated, and feel that in some small ways, I am making a difference. Perhaps more importantly, I am no longer just focused on the smaller issue of HIV, but see potential for being a voice in all areas of disability. What achievements and benefits I obtain for myself I also obtain for others, and vice versa. Make a difference? You bet your balls you can. Shout, yell, scream, demand. Send emails and annoy people until they are sick to death of the sight of you. By the time they reach this stage, they are willing to listen to what you say. Be patient, be diligent, be aggravating. Trust me on this. I do it regularly, and yes, things are happening – perhaps not as quickly as I would like, but they are happening. In many respects, it has given me an alternative view. I used to wonder what the attraction was – name in the paper, photographs at rallies, police record – and like most others, I thought they really just craved attention. Now, when I see a set of stairs being marked so vision impaired people can see them clearly, when I see adverts for note-takers in lectures for the same people, when lighting is fixed in badly lit areas, or just an advert in a lecture about a disability meeting in a faculty, I know what it was that they obtained from all their vocalising and protests. It is that feeling of having done something for the greater good, and that is something you can do whether you are 16 or 60, gay or straight.

Feeling peeved? Pick up your soapbox. Find a patch of grass or asphalt big enough for a captive audience. Raise your megaphone high…and SCREAM!

Tim Alderman
(C) 2013

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