Category Archives: Article

Disclosure

October 1, 2014Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDScloset, disclose, Gay, HIV statustimalderman

My first disclosure was probably the easiest.

It was just after testing positive to HIV in 1985, when testing begun. It was done anonymously through the Albin St Clinic, and took a nerve-wracking two weeks for results to come in. Despite saying I probably wasn’t positive, my mind was saying otherwise, and the latter proved correct. So, my first disclosure, along with a lot of others guys who were undergoing the same process was at the bar at “The Oxford”, and was to a group of friends, some of who were also HIV+, some HIV-, and some who either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. Disclosure was imnportant at that time, as with a two-year survival period dangling there like a sword of Damocles over ones head, it was important to let everyone know that the supposed death sentence had been passed, then move on. It gave time for it to sink in both with myself and the friends I was closest to. They now knew what to expect – we had already experienced the quick decline of other HIV+ friends, and knew that the future was not something to look forward to. So let’s party! It was, I have to say, easier than I thought it would be to disclose.

The most recent time I disclosed was to a gym buddy and friend when we weree out for dinnerv one night. He asked me what I was doing these days, and I replied that I was doing some freelance writing for a couple of HIV magazines, and had been doing it for some time. That then led on to a conversation about how things had changed and you rarely heard of anyone dying from HIV these days. There was really no reaction from him at all – it was just a friendly chat about what we were up to, and HIV didn’t seem to register as anything devious or insideous in any way whatsoever.

In the interim between the first disclosure and latest, things haven’t quite always been that easy. Generally when cruising the bars for trade, I used to disclose as a way of getting rid of guys who couldn’t handle it, thus getting rid of the dross. It was also a way of picking up other HIV+ guys so that use of condoms could be dropped. We both knew where we stood. Though there was one negative guy who said it wasn’t a problem – at least until we were home and the jeans were down, thankfully at my place. He baulked, started to throw a drama and found the front door being held open to hasten his exit. That is the one and only person I have ever thrown out of my home.

The second problem disclosure – at work – was a big problem. Not for me, not for my staff, not for most of upper management. However, for one area manager it was a big problem and he bullied and harrassed me until I decided it really wasn’t worth the hassle anymore. I gave in notice, but didn’t let him off the hook that easily. I ensured that I gave notice at the most inconvenient place, at the most inconvenient time that would cause him the most hassles and problems. He didn’t speak to me for the two weeks of my notice period, and he didn’t say goodbye. Yeah, I was really upset about that. Not! I still have no regrets about disclosing on that job – I did the right thing by my staff, and if it cost me my position and my job, perhaps I didn’t want to be there anyway.

I have disclosed mid-fuck, as nothing had been said about condoms (we were at his place), and at the moment the evil deed was to be consummated I yelled out at him that I was HIV+ – several times, and it didn’t even cause a glitch in the proceedings. He disclosed nothing, and to this day I have no knowledge of whether he was pos or neg, though I did assume he was positive. It was all a bit too casual and nonchalant for him not to be.

As far as my everyday life goes these days with neighbours and new friends and the ilk I tend not to say anything, nor do I see any need to. Like a lot of people with health issues I
consider it my business, and it’s not as if I look ill or anything. It doesn’t affect my diet, my pill taking is done in private, and I just want life to toddle on without any hassles. As far as my local community goes I am just Joe Blow from next door or over the road, and that’s how I want it to stay.

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2010.

Daily (Or When The Mood Takes me) Gripe: The Great Aussie Institution – The Barbecue

September 28, 2014Articletimalderman

There was a time when, hearing the words ‘you are invited to a barbie’ would make me physically cringe. It’s got nothing to do with not being True Blue, nor is it about snobbery. What it conjured up in my mind was images of steak sacrificed at the altar of Weber, with all it’s juices cooked out and ending up as tough as old boots; chops – which have no meat on them at the best of times – grilled to this black lump on a bone, and sausages so charred and blackened that given a blind taste test, you would have said they were charcoal flavour. In fact, if asked what flavour any sort of supermarket sausages – where they ALWAYS came from – were, you would have had to say ‘tomato sauce’, as that was the only way they would ever have had any flavour.

This was not my idea of fun eating, and is really a terrible thing to do with good food. I’ve never quite got my head around the whole concept of an inedible meal, served up with a bland salad of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber (yawns!) and bread rolls that had been too long in the sun and buttered from this pool of yellow sludge– all captured on a flimsy cardboard plate balanced on your knee. No wonder the dog got a good feed! If you weren’t sneaking it to him to avoid eating it yourself, the same plate would quickly disintegrate as you tried to saw your way through the steak with plastic cutlery, giving the avaricious hound access to the whole meal – deliberate or not!

And what is it with these supposed “cooks” that as soon as they are standing in front of the six-burner-with-attached-wok-burner–and -rice cooker-and multitasking -processor-and-bull-castrating-device they suddenly consider themselves Heston Blumenthal – a not unlikely image considering the amount of smoke issuing from the cooking apparatus! Since when has sacrificing food been the domain of professional chefs! Yeah, right! Thank you…..NEVER! With tittie motif apron – an amusing item provided by said cooks children on Fathers Day – standing centre, waving and clacking tongs and a can of incendiary fuel to hand to get the flames high enough to singe eyebrows and sacrifice virgins! With a demonic gleam in his eye, he savagely throws meat offerings to Weber…and Weber is much pleased as it hisses and crackles in delight. The whole tableau is horrifying! For fuck sake…turn the flames down and COOK, not ruin the food!

Okay, I am a bit of a food snob, but I didn’t flog my arse off at TAFE, squeezing a 12-month course in commercial cooking into 6 months – usually starting at 7.00 in the morning – to see food ruined in the tradition of barbecuing. Thankfully, evidently enough people got sick of it to see it turned in to a new form of cuisine, raising the bar and making the great Aussie barbecue a tradition to be proud of, instead of shunned and delegated to the world of beer swilling and football.

When we went to buy our current barbecue I had an exact type snd size in mind. I am not – obviously – a great advocate of this style of cooking, so wanted just a small, single burner with a plate and grill section…in red! As I was perusing the perfect one for my needs, the mother-in-law…who was paying for it…kept dragging me around to all these unnecessarily large, grey models insisting that they were what I needed. I won that battle – a rare occurrence – and it has, so far, served me well.

For those who have not as yet discovered the world of gourmet barbequing, of aromatic rubs and spicy pastes, gourmet sausages and butcher-prepared treats…we are forever changing the face of the good old fashioned Aussie barbecue. And I give thanks

Communities

September 24, 2014Article, HIV/AIDStimalderman

Communities, like many other things in life, tend to swap and change as you go through life, get older, change circumstances and a myriad of other reasons.

As a youngster growing up in the outskirts of Sydney in the 50’s and 60’s, communities were like safety zones in areas that were just starting to develop (like Sylvania, where I was born). Everybody kept and eye on everybody else, and you often, to a large extent, lived as much in your neighbours home as you did your own. People were alwayts available for a chat, baking was shared around the neighbourhood, everyone knew your dog, and you knew everybodies name. Religion, whether you just practised to be ‘part of” the community (as my parents did) or for actual reasons of belief didn’t seem to really matter. When there was a birth or a marriage, everyone came to visit and join in. When somebody died, everybody mourned. It was close and nurturing. However, it had its drawbacks. Perhaps everybody knew a little TOO much about everybody else. When my mother deserted the family home, I remember not so much what was said as what wasn’t said – as if it had been expected.

My next community was boarding school – very Catholic, and I have to say very fulfilling. I had a large circle of close friends as I had through most of my school life, people who respected me and wanted to know my opinions. However, the wide divide between city boys and country boys (it was an agricultural college) became evident when I left school, and found that I didn’t continue contact with any of them.

I seemed to move from that to a very hectic ‘straight’ community after leaving school. Again, it was a large group of friends who I socialised with pretty well every weekend. We dined out, drank way too much, went to far too many concerts, and were heavily involved in each others lives – again, not necessarily a good thing. When I made a large move from a local suburb to another in a distant state, the friendships just seemed to drift away. I guess the glue that held the group together wasn’t all that strong after all.

Moving into the gay community was a big leap for me, and also one of the strongest of the communities I have lived in, and in some sense it still has an influence on my life, though not as strongly as in the 80’s and 90’s. Let’s face it – I lived ‘gay’. I drank in gay pubs (way too much), danced in gay nightclubs (way way too much), read gay media, shopped in gay shops, went to gay doctors and solicitors, lived for Mardi Gras and Sleaze Ball, and had lots and lots and lots of gay sex (never too much!). Life in the ghetto was just one big ‘gay’. Even the advent of HIV didn’t deminish the gayness of life, though with becoming infected with HIV I did sort iof find my loyalities divided between the gay and the HIV communities. And whether we like to admit it or not, they were separate, and if you were HIV+ it was hard not to hang out with others in the same boat as you were, as in many respects, they were out support group, our sources of information and, in far too many circumstances, people to mourn with. Yet despite the cameradie that came from within that community I never really felt that I clicked into it like many others. I loved my life being centred around ‘gay’, but didn’t quite feel the same affinity with ‘HIV’. I tried joining groups and organisations but really realised that I never wanted to be information-driven as far as HIV went. I didn’t want it to be a central component of my life, something to hide behind when I didn’t have an answer to ‘why is this happening, or why is that happening’. Even after a debilitating and life-threatening run-in with AIDS I didn’twant to get drawn too far into HIV’s mbrace. I went through all the steps involved to recover from it – then just moved on and sort of left it behind. Yes, perhaps I do involve myself in that I do write about HIV, but I always try to put it in the background to what I do, never in the forefront.

Recently, we moved again (I had a partner in tow). I have pretty well also moved away from ‘gay’ and probably have as many straight friends these days as gay, if not more. Life evolves. It is about two month’s since we moved to Ashgrove, and if we were ever to wonder just how well integrated we had become within this community, last Saturday probably dispelled any fear we may have had. It started with a chat over the back fence about the garden with our neighbours, and a co-joint decision to work from both sides of the fence to repair our overgrown and neglected yard. We then got tied into a lengthy concersation with some other dog owners at the off-leash dog park. These people live in the next suburb, and we get along very well with them so a friendship will probably develop. The girls in the local cafe know us as Saturday regulars and make us our coffee’s without us ordering, and chat to us as they go about their work. The owner iof a local store drops in for his coffee, and inquires how my recent purchases are going, to be followed by the manager and a staff member from our gym who stops in for a chat about his recent holiday. I have to say that all this chatting and laughing made me feel very cosy, and I realised just how much we were settling into our new community, and had been accepted by all those who had been members for some time. This really is what community is about. People getting along, interacting with each other and helping to make everybodies else’s lives just that little more pleasant. I’m positive that everybody knows we are gay – it is pretty obvious – but no one gives a damn. They are not as nosey as my first community, and I think I would like it left that way.

Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Messages From the Lord

September 4, 2014Articletimalderman

It is no secret amongst my atheist, agnostic, no-religious-tag friends…who are many…that I intensely dislike religion! Loathe it! You only have to look at what is happening in the Middle-East right this moment to start to understand why I have no belief in God. Oppression, murder, hate, abuse, destruction, mind-control, misery are some of the words I use to describe religion.

In my opinion, never has a bigger con-job been fostered on the world than religion. How we, as supposedly thinking and evaluating humans, allowed this to happen is, at times, beyond me. Sorry, but St Peter standing at the pearly gates to allow you to wander down the streets of gold is pure fantasy in my books, let alone a guy in a red body suit accessorised with horns and pitchfork turning up the flames and poking everyone in the bum. Don’t even start me on the twelve virgins!

Indo not deny the existence of Jesus. He is a historical fact, and mentioned in Flavius Josephus’s “History of the Jews”. However, virgin births, holy spirits, feeding 5,000 with a loaf of bread and a fish, changing water into wine, walking on water, rising from the dead and shooting up into heaven – well…..it just doesn’t hack it in my book! If he was anything, he’d be a Jewish radical who had a fanatical following, got under the skin of the Roman oppressors, and they crucified him to shut him up.

YAnd all these people who love to quote the bible – which one, people! It has been chopped and changed so many times by so many religions that the original tales would be lost in history.

So, has religion been absent from my life? Not by a long shot. My father was Catholic (non-practicing), and my mother was a Methodist (non-practicing). I was christened Congregational (now absorbed into the Uniting Church), though basically left to my own devices. I was never influenced to join any of the three. In 1968 I converted to Catholicism due to attending a Catholic boarding school. Even after that I still questioned the validity of much that I was instructed to believe. Mind you, conversion was very much influenced by ritual, custom, colour and movement. I encountered molestation by the Marist Brothers…not personally, though observed it going on….and eventually saw the priest who baptised me arrested for molesting his altar boys. I spent time in an enclosed monastery, and found a world of control and megalomania. This was the final straw for me.

Ever since, I have been anti-religion. Do I respect any religion and any religious leader? Yes! Buddhism and the Dalai Lama. That is it! A religion that keeps to itself, doesn’t promote or door-knock, doesn’t hate or discriminate. If you become a Buddhist you are free to mould the religion to suit your own path. That is how they should ALL be. Unfortunately the rest are nowhere near it.

So you can imagine how my hackles rose when Joi Russell sent me a friend request on Facebook recently. Being a member of the Starts At 60 group on Facebook, I checked out Joi’s profile – if I had looked harder alarm bells would have rung. Smiling face with hubby, older woman…I assumed someone from the group, so confirmed request. Wrong move! The next thing I know, the following message was received:

“My dearest Happy New Month. thanks so much for accepting my friend request and i am very sorry for intruding into your privacy. I am .Mrs Joi Russell a 53 years old Widow suffering from a long time cancer of the breast which is about claiming my life, My dear i have an important message from the Lord i tried sending you a message but it was not going through cos my facebook is acting up, so i will like you to please mail me on mrsjoirussell@—–.com so i can pass the good news of the lord to you.
Your swift response will be appreciated.
Mrs Joi Russell
mrsjoirussell@_____.com (will not include email address).”

Naturally, I also have a message for the Lord, so this was my reply to Joi:

“I thought you were someone else, but sad to hear about your cancer.

That’s funny that you have a message from the lord for me, as I have a message for him. Tell him it’s time to stop this fiasco called religion which is continuing to cause hatred and war and violent deaths in this world! You know, religion has caused more trouble and deaths than even war could manage. It has tried to force people to follow one religion, and if you thought differently, they killed you. Then we have the Crusades, and the Inquisition who revelled in torturing, then burning people alive. Then we have the wonderful missionaries who decided to force their religions on people in remote areas, thus destroying cultures that were thousands of years old. Religion burnt books, destroyed art and sculpture, killed scientists and academics who didn’t think their way. Then we have Henry VIII, who deciding to break from one religion, and make himself the head of a new one, destroyed churches and monasteries, putting monks who fed and sheltered the poor out on the street, thus making many peoples lives harder thsn they already were. We won’t even go into him chopping off the heads of his wives, and the chopping and changing between religions with following king and queen, and people being killed if they didn’t follow the religious trend decided by whoever was ruling. Then we have the Muslims charging around the world for hundreds of years killing anyone who believed differently to them. Then, of course, we have the fundamentalist and the Ku Klux Klan who hate everybody in the name of religion, and use hate speak and threats in an attempt to force their beliefs on others. Then we have immense wealth in certain churches, while all around them is poverty and misery, bishops and cardinals walking around dressed in silk, ermine, gold and precious stones. We can then throw an overwhelming amount of child abuse into the mix, and the cover-ups to try to get everyone to think it doesn’t happen. I could go on and on about the amount of hate, misery, war, destruction and death religion has caused. So my message to the lord is simple…FUCK OFF AND LEAVE US ALONE, YOU NON-EXISTENT ENTITY! ENOUGH US ENOUGH!”

That pretty well states my stand. Don’t get me wrong – I wish Joi well, and hope her remaining time is kind to her. If this delusion brings her some consolation, then she should hang onto it.

BUT – don’t ever send je religious crap and expect to escape without a caning. You will NEVER convert me. When we die, we become part of the Earth’s recycling process. That is my belief!

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2014

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Daily (or When the Mood Takes Me) Gripe: We Adore Thee O Facebook, and We Bless Thee

May 8, 2014Articletimalderman

Fucking not! Okay, okay….I admit it! I’m a recovering 24/7 Facebook addict! It’s the pretty colours, the hilarious memes (dubious description at best), the neverending Huffington Post posts from all the realms on earth (covering everything big and small, visible and invisible!, real and fantastic, truth and exaggeration!), my friends jaunty Status Updates – well, most of the time – and photos of their dogs or the occasional video of their dogs, or posts of cute puppies…ah, the puppies! Well, that was the start of it, in my innocent, virginal early days which seems decades ago now, but in reality is about 4 years, when the most inflammatory thing I would post was photos of the spring flowers blooming around the area I lived in. Oh how my innocence flew out the window, my virginity pierced and stolen by a lust for Facebook recognition.

Through Facebook I discovered friends that had disappeared out of my life 20 years ago – actually one of Facebooks endearing qualities – mainly upon joining the Lost Gay Sydney group. Friends I had partied with, danced with in Darlinghurst’s more salubrious establishments; people who had worked for me at the notorious “Numbers” Bookstore…or been customers to our…rear ‘club’…or both; by posting on Lost Gay Melbourne I reconnected with an ex-staff member from my Pellegrini days; two ex-partners (now three); a couple of friends of friends, who I share a sick sense of humour with; a total of – and this includes the ex-partners – six people I’ve slept with; and the most recent addition an old friend from Sydney who I encountered on a sex site – take a bow now, mate. Okay, the ladies are few and far between, and need to be very broad minded, but there are a few, definitely gay-friendly and a dark sense of the ridiculous in our lives. This leads us to…

The “Like” button, which became the most important thing in my life. A cute puppy “Like”; a weird story on HP “Like”; A normal story on HP “Like”; a Status Update “Like”; a funny meme “Like”; a corny meme “Like”; a stupid meme “Like”; someones death “Like”; a friend feeling depressed “Like”; someone going into hospital for open-heart surgery “Like”; anything to do with puppies “Like”; a broken romance “Like”; Lindsay Lohan going into rehab…again “Like”; sure you get the story now, as you have been there yourself. Didn’t matter whether the post was serious, frivolous, cute, funny, life-threatening, dumb,plain stupid, happy or sad…it got a “Like”. Took me quite a while to seize upon the fact that some things just weren’t “Like”, and though the finger hovered over it, common sense thumped in and said “no, that is not a “Like” moment….which leads us to…

Ah, “Comments”. The most staggeringly frustrating part of posts, be they your own, or someone elses. Typo’s aside – and someone should write a book on some of the ones I’ve done (the most notorious, and which put a girlfriend of mine into conniptions for weeks after was “Actions speak louder than wombats” thanks to auto correct) and speaking of auto-correct…why does it try to replace FUCK with FUNK (He’s a funkwit is just plain stupid, as is funknuckle) and ARSE with ASS (which, when I was at school, was a donkey) – the “Comments” column is a vipers nest writhing with poisonous fangs. I hate it when I do a great post, and nobody comments on it. What happens then, seeing as it may have been a late night post, thus lost amongst the jungle of overnight posts, is that I “Like” it again, then “Comment” on it so that it goes back to the top of the Newsfeed. Now, I’m quite the controversial guy, and enjoy knowing that certain posts will make hackles rise or blood boil. I know now what will just get “Likes” and what will get “Likes” and “Comments”. Cute puppies usually just get likes, but post a photo or video of MY dogs and there are heaps of “Likes” and “Comments” from others who also own and post about their dogs. Hunky guys get “Likes” and “Woofs” – not to be mistaken with posts about dogs, just to confuse the issue. They also get obscene comments, much to my delight! Political rants – of which I do hundreds every week, always get “Comments” because…well…we fucking hate our government. Many think it is futile, but I don’t. It is cathartic, and releases a lot if built up steam. Items also get “Shared” by ithers, so there is, in effect, a pyramid process going on, and who knows where that may end. There are occasional arguments, but I have a hard and fast rule – if I am not totally knowledgeable about the subject, or not totally up-to-date on it, let the argument go, and don’t make an arse (ass, for any American readers) of yourself. It helps keep friendships. Which brings us to…

The “Unfriend” button. Wow, that’s a heavy dude. I have, to date, only used it once. I get light-hearted posts from a page called BareBackers. In the gay scene, barebackers are guys who have condomless sex (I am NOT going to call it unsafe when we are talking about consenting adults, and that will probably start an argument now). Anyway, I reposted a rather funny meme from them, and a friend took offense that it was from a page titled BareBackers, and despite my telling him that the page wasn’t about pornography, and that FB didn’t give two hoots about how people practiced sex, they went and reported it to FB Admin, to no avail. At first I let it go, then about an hour later, after stewing about it for that long, I took action. In the “Comments”, under his gloating ones about reporting the page, I let fly about him telling me how to run my life (mind you, he wasn’t exactly backward at being forward himself to the point of rudeness, often offensively) and how he set himself up as judge and jury about things he knew nothing about. Then I “Unfriended” him! I felt bloody good after that, I can tell you. Now this brings us to the tumultuous world of…

“Friends Requests”. Don’t you just love the obscure ones “I love you long time” and you go to their profile and they have no other friends – not even family, no photos, and no posts. You think to yourself “How the fuck did they find me!” And shrug your shoulders, for after all…this is Facebook, with all its mysteries. And the ones where you scratch your head and try to figure out where they know you from – friend or foe! The ones from obscure people in equally obscure countries who don’t even speak English. Then the ones you do befriend, who then never interact with you. Weird! I always read about friends doing culls on their “Friends” lists, but it is never my problem as I have about 90 friends, and I know why they are all there. I have to confess I don’t get the Facebookers who “collect” friends, to the extent of hundreds or even thousands. My Newsfeed often goes largely unviewed, as the number of posts I get is so full-on that I just don’t have the time. Imagine adding feeds from hundreds of “Friends” on .top of that…no thanks. No wonder one never hears anything from these “Friends”…they are just overwhelmed by posts. Which brings us to…

Pokes! Has anyone ever managed to work out just what the fuck “Pokes” are all about! I know friends who have competitions with them, seeing how many people they can “Poke” in one sitting, or how many “Pokes” exchanges they can have in one day. Fuck! I return them when I get around to it, which isn’t very often. This now leads us to…

The dreaded “Newsfeed”…the one, singularly most frustrating parts of Facebook. Has anyone actually worked out a successful way to negotiate the “Newsfeed” yet! I bloody doubt it! Posts are all over the place. There is no way to search for something you want to review, no way to group posts from one person or organisation, page or group. Comments sometimes just disappear, or are delayed. I HATE that if you are calmly and methodically working your way through the “Newsfeed” and inadvertently touch the screen…and suddenly find yourself back at the fucking top of the page. Shits me big time! Then you have to scroll back down to find where you were. This, naturally, leads us to everyone’s favourite love-to-hate-you

Facebook Admins. What fucking morons these people are! Sitting up there in some cyberspace viewing platform, picking us off like sitting pigeons for the most menial infractions of their childish thou-shalt-and-thou-shalt not rules and regulations. Kicking people off, or penalising them for being adults. Sorry FB, no one on my “Friends” list has kids that can be corrupted by any of my posts, no matter how obscene! This is how fascist they are – I posted a video of my two dogs playing with a neighbours dog a couple of weeks ago, and tagged a “Friend” in it. The next thing I knew…the video had gone, to be replaced by a message that I may not have had the copyright owners permission to post the video…my video…of my dogs! I then had to fill out a form to say the video was mine to get it reinstated. Unbelievable! Seems you can run scams, piggyback profiles, hijack profiles, rip people off left right and centre…but don’t post the wrong thing! Which finally leads us to…

Just enjoying Facebook for what it is. Don’t try to analyse it. Don’t take it too seriously. Yes, there are a lot more important things in life, but we all need a break and a bit of fun in our day.

So, how did I cure my addiction? I didn’t! The novelty ran out eventually, which cut it back substantially. I enjoy it over breakfast, or a cup of coffee. And that is just as it should be…maybe. And don’t forget…

The Facebook Mental Asylum is only a post away.

Lol

Tim Alderman
Copyright May 2014

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Newly Discovered First Articles

November 1, 2013Article, Gay Interesttimalderman

We are currently in the process of moving, a dreaded task at the best of times, though this time not just moving but downsizing as well. Part of the downsizing process has been to go through crates of papers and magazines that have been dragged from home to home over the years and remain untouched. Not only has it been a real trip down memory lane with long-forgotten cuttings, cards, newsletters, historic booklets and a plethora of other bric-a-brac but a treasure trove as well, with the unearthing of the first two pieces of writing I had ever done in all their type-writer glory. In fact, I can date them to the turn of the 80s by them being done on a typewriter. Yeah, they are a little bit too adjectival, a bit melodramatic, really badly punctuated but in essence very good pieces of writing – said in all modesty…not!

So, I present here for your perusal and enjoyment both pieces of writing. I have resisted a strong temptation to edit them so you are getting both pieces in their original text. To put them in context, they were written within two years of my coming out, in all the naivety of a young gay man who thinks you should meet the man of your dreams five minutes after falling out of the closet, and who upon meeting supposed man finds that love is not as perfect as we would like it to be. They were evidently very serious issues to me back then, and written in an instant of melancholy, though now they just make me smile. I hope you both enjoy and empathise with a 26-year-old me.

Gay Blues (Where is the Love?)

It’s now night. God, sometimes I hate the night. In the silence and darkness of night, melancholia creeps up on, and overtakes one, with a speed that leaves one stunned with its depression. It is at the peak of this creeping melancholia that I find myself detesting being gay. No, it’s not the actual fact of being gay. That’s the way I am, and that fact was sorted out and accepted many years ago. Tonight it’s the gay lifestyle I detest. Being lonely and unloved, to express these feelings to another, would seem self pitying. Yet they are so much a part of our lifestyle that we tend to accept them without questioning why.

I lie in bed and reflect on all my years since “coming out” – in itself a detestable expression – and reflect on all the faces that have been – however temporary – part of my life, all the bodies that have been caressed and loved by my hands, the number of lips that have been kissed, the eyes that have been gazed into intimately or otherwise, all the sex that has been given and taken. So very many faces. So very many nameless faces. Sex in my bed, their bed, bar pick-ups, party embraces, brief encounters in bathrooms (and any other room), on beaches, front and back seats of cars, gropings on dance floors, sauna cubicles, suggestive movement when body briefly touches body. Sex wherever and whenever it could be obtained. Brief, fervent, hot, sweaty, passionate, cold, painful, given, taken, loved, hated sex. Love …the seemingly taboo word. Spoken in the night and forgotten in the morning. Spoken in haste and forgotten. Promised but not given. Wanted but not received. We all seem to be running from that one, ultimate, total commitment. We run for to admit that we can love, that we are totally capable of loving, is to deny ourselves another face, another body, another brief encounter with sex. This fear is not something I share alone. God, how desperately we want it. How we want to be loved, just once, for a day, a week, a month, a year or a lifetime. How we long for it to be spoken in the intimacy of darkest night. How we long to be held and embraced for more than just the orgasm. Bodies truly loving bodies for more than just quick sex, to be covered and smothered by that one simple human need and emotion. Maybe I live a silly gay fantasy. Perhaps we have all been conned by romantic novels, movies, and friends who say they have found love with another. Perhaps it is all just one big gay fantasy. People have told me it is so! But just for tonight, just for this one single moment in time, I would willingly give all I have to hear someone say those taboo words, even to have it whispered – I love you!

And the reasons. Are there reasons? Does the answer lie in deliberately alienating ourselves from love? Have we reached such a stage of self-deceit that we actually confuse sex for love? Are we so scared of the passing years , the balding head, the greying hair, the ravages of time on face and body, that we require the constant parade of bodies so that we can reassure ourselves that time is really not passing us by? Can we be so like the squirrel who puts away his requirements for the coming winter? Do we consider ourselves so vastly remote from the heterosexual world that we deny ourselves this one basic emotion to prove how different we really are? Have we allowed ourselves to be forced into a position in society where to be gay means not to love? Are we so full of self-love that we have forgotten how to give ourselves to another? Or do we just deny its existence because we are so scared of it! For love means a constant commitment, a constant giving, constant attention, and a constant flow of emotion to another person. Are these answers? Heaven help us, can ANYBODY give me an answer. To me, a future without love is too much to bear even thinking about. Yes!! At this moment I detest being gay. At this moment I feel the ache, the knowledge that something that should be there is missing. I reach out and touch nothing. Does being gay mean being a person who cannot love, who cannot feel, who does not care? Another pound of flesh leaning on the bar waiting for the nights pick-up?

And the bars and saunas. What a love/hate relationship we have. We don’t want to go, but where else can we go! And you lean against the bar with your drink and cigarette, and allow your eyes to wander around. And you see a hundred replicas of yourself. Everybody hunting, looking for that brief encounter for the night. Thinking – maybe this time – just as they have thought it a thousand times before. And those that bother to look only see the facade! They don’t want to see the loneliness, the longing, the wanting. And you see the empty, hopeful eyes of the hunted, seeing less than they should, and wanting to see more than they can. For are not the hunters lonely too? Are they not thinking – maybe tonight? Are the hunters not also hunted? Hunters and hunted are both trapped in the inescapable fear of being left without love. God help me, there are so many lonely people! So very many lonely people! We are all lonely people searching! Searching! Constantly searching! Searching for what? If we are lucky, and we manage to find it, then we know what the search was. But for most of us, we really don’t know, and chances are it has passed us by anyway. Having let it go, will we recognise it when it comes around again? Or will it come around again!

The room is lightening now. The morning will dissipate the fears. And as for me? As for you? Tomorrow night will find us back in the bars. Once again we will search the eyes of the hunters and think – maybe tonight. Yes, we still have tomorrow night. Perhaps then we will find love. And if we don’t find it tomorrow night? How about the night after, or the night after that, or….

Bob Phillips (Timothy James Alderman)
Copyright 1982

Writer in 1981

SECOND STORY TO FOLLOW.

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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

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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

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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

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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

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2013

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