Category Archives: Article

Reclaiming the G-A-Y

Article, Gay Interest, , , , ,

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

Article, Travelogue, , , , , ,

“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”

image

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

Bug Chasing – A HIV Phenomenon

Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, , , ,

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

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Will You Still Feed Me…?

Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, , , , ,

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

Article, Humour, , , ,

 

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

Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, Humour, , , , ,

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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The Storyteller: Stories Almost Lost in Time

Article, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, , , , , ,

(This article was originally published for World AIDS Day 2005. It is, with no modesty, the most powerful piece I have ever written. Written with love, it took me the longest time – about 2 months – to write. It is also the piece I have shed the most tears over. I received a huge amount of positive feedback from it, and nearly everyone who has read it has cried. I don’t know that the tears were over my stories so much, but rather that they had similar stories invoked by the writing. I have always hated the introduction to the snippets, and have taken this opportunity to totally rewrite it.)

Anyone who has been observing or participating in the Lost Gay (Insert your state) groups on Facebook would realise the immense value of collective memory. Writers, historians and archivists can churn out volume after volume on gay history, but nothing can match the real stories that come from individuals who lived within the community through its various phases. I personally submitted a tome of comments, stories, reflections and recollections – not to mention a plethora of photos – on other peoples submissions to the Sydney group. It was an energising, amusing, often happy, sometimes sad experience reliving what was, for me, a formative part of my life, and a period of gay history that was positive and empowering as a community.

No recollections of the 80s and 90s can skirt around or avoid the impact of HIV/AIDS on our lives. Indeed, reading through the groups posting on lost friends drove home the nightmare, the immense loss, the sorrow and the stories flowing from those of us left behind. It was a beautiful experience, and more than a few tears were shed. It also informed some of losses they had not been aware of. A friend of mine actually died during this period and his memorium was in real-time instead of being enclosed in the pages of a local paper.

HIV/AIDS was relentless and soul-destroying. There is nothing more helpless than being in the midst of all this obliteration and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do. Many of us stood, stunned, and watched our entire social circle written off the face of the earth. It didn’t discriminate, it offered no mercy or compassion. Death and dying became an event that, even for those who left for nether regions, could not escape from. To write this piece, I have had to dig into photo albums not opened for years (with photos of groups of friends where not a single person is still alive), delve back into long buried memories. It was like a dam breaking. I cried, and cried and cried. Perhaps long overdue, it proved cathartic.

But the same question was being asked as I wrote – what of those who survived the carnage and live with its aftermath? However we have managed to come to terms with it, we are all scarred. Triggers are never far away – a photo, a memory, a casual conversation can produce a flood of emotion. So we learnt to tuck it away, to cope, to avoid. But how do we really feel about our survival? How do we place ourselves? What role have we adopted as a coping mechanism? Are we “long term survivors” (Like or lump the terminology)? Do we have “survivor guilt”? Are we in denial? “Victims of circumstance”? Or was it just “the luck of the draw”! Or have we found other ways to redefine ourselves! How ever we see ourselves there is one thing we can’t deny – we are the holders of all our departed friends memories,; the secrets that endeared them to us; their little irks and quirks. I have come to define myself as a Storyteller, and as a writer I could write tomes on all my departed friends lives, I could bash your ears for hours, and bore you to the point of sleep. But I won’t.

I have chosen the lives of three close friends to write about “in a nutshell”. This is not a biography about them. It is a random thought, that one thing that springs to mind when their name is invoked, that short story or snippet of their lives.

These are three people I love, three people I deeply miss. Their memories are jewels in my mind, are stars at night. I hope they glow and twinkle for you!

Andrew Keith Todd
4 February 1962 – 26 December 1986
“I am white lightening and protecting you all.”

Andrew was, to give a modern comparison, a Hobbit. He would laugh uproariously if he knew I had drawn that comparison.

I met Andrew when I was the manager of ‘Numbers’ Bookshop, which was one of ‘those’ sex shops on Oxford St. He didn’t actually work for me, but for the ‘Hellfire Club’ – later to become ‘The Den Club’ – a Club 80-style sex venue next door to ‘Numbers’, both owned by the same guy. I can never recollect seeing Andrew when he wasn’t smiling, or laughing, or doing someone a favour. He was one of those easy-going guys who was liked by everyone. He was also one of the first people I knew to become seriously ill from AIDS. We knew so little about it back then that I don’t think anyone, including Andrew, was particularly perturbed.

Over a period of about 6 months, we could see his health slowly deteriorating, weight loss being the most frightening symptom on someone his size. Shortly after that, his hospital stays started – or in his words, “just going in for a bit of a rest”. He was in and out quite regularly for the 6 months leading up to his death, with each outstay getting shorter and shorter. Several months before his death, the stay became permanent. There was no dedicated AIDS ward back in those dark days, so he would be placed in a ward for a while, then if the bed was required by someone else, he was moved down to A&E (St Christopher’s ward) until another bed became available. He had the dubious distinction of being one of our first HIV guinea pigs, suffering the discomfort of loads of antibiotics to try to help the PCP, and dozens of lumbar punctures as medical staff tried to work out how best to treat him. His back looked like a pincushion.

A couple of months before he died, he had been invited to Gareth Paull’s 1986 theme party “Green With Envy”. It was a blokes only party at Darling Point, and you had to wear drag. My reputation for doing “gutter” drag was well established, so Andrew asked me to accompany him, and help with his outfit. As you can see from the photo, he was very thin. I was so glad that I went with him, and that he enjoyed himself so much. It was the last party he attended.

By December 1986, we all knew he didn’t have all that long to go. Despite his constant good humour, his downhill slide was becoming more and more obvious. He looked dreadful! A Christmas lunch had been arranged by friends living at Glebe on Christmas Day that year. We called into St Vincent’s on our way there to deliver Christmas gifts to him. ‘I won’t die today,’ he said to me as we were about to leave. ‘I don’t want to ruin your Christmas’. Christmas lunch was a quiet, tense affair with everyone jumping every time the phone rang. But he kept his word.

I had to work on Boxing Day – sex doesn’t recognise public holidays. The rest of our friends were at a party in Darlinghurst. I received a phone call in the early afternoon to say Andrew had died, and then had to put a dampener on the party with a phone call. There was a huge wake that night at “The Oxford’, the first of many to come.

His funeral was held at Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, and at the exact moment that the curtains were closing in front of the coffin, every door in the crematorium chapel suddenly slammed shut.

He still managed the last laugh. In his will, he bequeathed me the books I had lent him to read in hospital.

Andrew was 24-years-old. He has no lasting memorial.

Stuart “Stella” Law
Died 1992
“Riding in my pink Cadillac”

My dear friend, how I still miss you! The mental image I have of you dressed in miles of pink tulle frou-frou, trying to not slide off the bonnet of that pink Cadillac as you were driven up Sims St in Darlo, to the sound of Stephanie Mills belting out “Pink Cadillac”, will stay with me forever. How we laughed! You were always such a ‘laydee’!

I had originally tried to pick Stuart up in ‘The Oxford’ one afternoon, but we had spent ages chatting, and the next thing I knew…we were friends. We proceeded to spend the next couple of years doing gutter drag together. How we turned this town on its ear! For those not familiar with the term ‘gutter drag’, imagine huge wigs, over-the-top make-up, miles of lurex and tulle, and body hair for days.

Never one to shun the spotlight, he could be seen doing mime shows at ‘The Oxfords” Egyptian-themed birthday party in 1987, and doing an impromptu performance at my ‘Nuns, Priests and Prostitutes’ party in 1988. My dining table centrepiece was never quite the same after that performance. We did our last drag gig together in 1990. I have a photo of him sitting in my apartment taking his false nails off, and there is a look of true sadness on his face. There was something wrong, and Stella wasn’t letting on!

When he had to quit work, he finally told me he was HIV+. He became a regular at the ‘Maitraya’ Centre – a forerunner to the Positive Living Centre – and he was not one to say no to a free service! This was a bad period for all of us.

In 1992, far too many died. Stuart was placed in the Sacred Heart Hospice. He looked as though he was just wasting away. I went to visit him one night, and lay on the bed with him, just holding him. There wasn’t a lot else we could do, even then. The hospice cat paid a fleeting visit. It came time to go, and I started walking towards the elevators. I remember this overwhelming compulsion to turn around. Stuart was watching me through the door, and suddenly I just knew that I would never see him again. I never did. He died that night.

“Like a soul without a mind
In a body without a heart
I’m missing every part”

Stuart’s life is celebrated on AIDS Quilt panel 057006.along with others from Maitraya

Geoffrey Gordon Smith
7 June 1943 – 9 June 1991
“The Sentimental Bloke”

Famous for their ‘Port and Cheese’ parties, Geoff and his partner Steve were the Hosts Supreme, and entertained many of us in style from their converted shop in Glebe. Geoff was without doubt the last of the true blue gentlemen. With never a bad word to say about anybody, he always had a joke to hand out, a smile that never stopped, and was generous to a fault. Need to move house? Geoff would be there in a flash with his van. Need a lift? Just give him a call.

At one function at their home, a stray cat suddenly appeared on the roof overlooking the yard. We managed to coax it down using Cabanosi and cheese, and noted that it was undoubtedly a stray, as it was very thin, and had some sort of skin ailment. Geoff spent all afternoon trying to shoo it away – if only he’d known that we kept coaxing it back with little tidbits. Later that night, Geoff rang me at home and said the cat was still hanging around the yard. A week later, the cat had been taken to the vet to get its skin cleared up, and had taken over one of the chairs in the lounge room. That was Geoff through and through.

He and Steve as The Minister and Mrs Smith made several appearances at parties over the years. The minister was always well behaved, but Mrs Smith had some problems with the sherry. In early 1991, in an attempt to control the rapidly on-setting symptoms of AIDS, Geoff went to a quack – used in its literal sense – dietician, and was presented with a diet that was principally meat with little else. I didn’t really approve, as I couldn’t see the benefits of it, but Geoff insisted that theoretically it could work, so it was left at that. His health deteriorated quite rapidly from that point.

He died in June 1991.

I stayed over at Glebe after his funeral, and late that night Steve climbed into bed with me and cuddled up. ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘I just miss him so much’.

All these years along and he is still missed. I am privileged to have had a hand in helping to make his quilt panel.

His life is celebrated in AIDS Quilt panel 037004

Tim Alderman
Copyright 2005 & 2013

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Andrew at Gareth Paull’s Green Party at Darling Point, 1986. This was the last function he attended (with me) before his death.

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Geoff at the Nuns, Priests & Prostitutes Party, and his partner Steve as The Minister & Mrs Smith, 1988

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Stuart at a charity function in North Bondi 1988. That is a frock of mine he “borrowed”…I never did get it back.