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.
In 2001, while doing my writing degree at UTS, I submitted a 13,000 word tome for evaluation, titled “Cleo’s Reflection” – my recollections of my past to my hairdresser as he did up my wig for my final drag appearance. My tutor, a tiny Asian fag-hag (love or hate the phrase), was ecstatic about it, and on questioning the class on what the story represented, and getting the usual crap replies that you would expect from 20-year-olds, enlightened them to it being ” A Sydney story!”, which actually gave me goosebumps.
I have done a couple of edits over the years, but recently decided it was time to get to the bare bones of what “Cleo’s Reflection was really all about. I do intend to publish the full-length tome, but it has bern sitting around for 13 years now, and I imagine a few more won’t matter much. So, here in a nutshell – sort of – is the chopped down version of “Cleo’s Reflection”…”The Evolution/Devolution of Cleo”.
My writing tutor at UTS called this a “Sydney story”, but as I got right to the root of what Cleo was (escapism, flipping the coin, daring) I realised more and more just what a “gay” story it was, and perhaps more importantly – for Cleo was born at the very beginning of the HIV era, and bowed out at its height – that it is a “HIV” story, and of its time..
Cleo’s persona was born, so I like to say, out of pure curiosity. In late 1983, ‘she’ made ‘her’ first public appearance at one of Sydney’s annual parties, called Sleaze Ball, put on annually by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian community. It was a daring move for me, and a move into unexplored territory.
I have had a fascination with ‘gutter drag’ since coming out in 1980. Drag has always been synonymous with the gay community here, though usually more in a serious vein than as send-up or parody. ‘The Oxford Hotel’ opened in 1983 on Sydney’s gay ghetto of Oxford Street, and become an instant hangout for the city’s clone brigade. Simultaneous to the growth of the clone phenomenon was the growth in popularity of gutter drag, and several troupes routinely plied their talents between bars along the gay strip. Most famous of these were ‘The Planet Sluts’, and many a Saturday night out was brightened up by their sudden appearance in ‘The Oxford’.
They had a look that I was always slightly envious of, in that they were cocks in frocks, an over-exaggerating of the femaleness of drag without losing the masculine aspects. It was a phenomena that could only have happened in the gay community and though there were mixed reactions, permission was granted for its continuance. It was a look that I wanted to try – badly!
One minute I would be having a quiet drink with friends in the bar, and a bit of a bop to the music, and the next thing I knew, all hell had broken loose. These four guys would barge in from the street. They would have wigs backcombed to within an inch of their lives and absolutely huge; totally over the top make-up; and frocks that would have been the envy of even serious drag queens (sort of!) – tulle for days, and totally outrageous. But what really made it for me was the fact that they shaved neither faces, chests nor arms and legs, and that was what gave gutter drag not only its name, but also its appeal.
The Planet Sluts – Photograph curtesy of Richard Turner
So Sleaze Ball 1983 was the first time I decided to attempt to emulate this form of drag. I have to admit it wasn’t terribly successful! My flatmate (who was also my lover at that time) had done a bit of drag during the 70’s. I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money on this one particular occasion, and asked him if he would do the wig up for me. Mistake number one! The poor wig ended up looking like a poor relation to Dusty Springfield, but he had done his best, and I felt it was unwarranted to criticise his efforts. Mistake number two! Choice of frock. It was a Marilyn Monroe crepe Halston style rip-off, and by the time the whole outfit came together, I looked like a bloody society matron heading off for a Sunday luncheon. It also didn’t go down well at the party, especially considering the look was nowhere near the Planet Slut look that I wanted to achieve.
The Sydney parties in those days were small affairs (5,000 – 6,000 gay guys), not the huge extravaganza’s they are now, and needless to say, I would have slutted around and slept with at least half the party-goers. My reputation as an aggressive little bottom was ruined, and the message columns in the local gay rags ran hot with malicious gossip about me for the next couple of issues. Undaunted, I decided to forge on!
That night, Cleo was born. She may only have been a name, but the seeds of creation were planted.
No secrets bback in the early 80s, thanks to the Star Observer
My next attempt was in the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras parade in 1984 – it had not become The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras at that stage – and it wasn’t much better than my first attempt, except that I did myself up so that nobody would recognise me this time around. The floats in the parade were all pretty tragic. The Mardi Gras organisation had not set up workshops in these early days, so organisations and businesses just put floats together as best they could, with little taste, and no artistic direction. The one I was on was exceptionally tacky, with everyone on the float being workers for one of the local sex shops, (Numbers Bookshop), and the owner giving us a zero budget to work with. The back of the truck was covered in aluminium foil – very flashy indeed, with a sound system that only worked when the mood took it, which wasn’t very often. The manager of the store, who went under the drag persona of Miss Phoenix had a fairly over the top drag style, though a bit too serious to be gutter drag. Still, he managed to outshine the rest of us on the night, who looked like aliens out of the early days of Dr Who, and I was rather thankful for the anonymity that It afforded me. No photographs exist of that tragic episode in history…I am so glad to say!
In late 1984 I met my next lover, Damien. Frank, the one who had been the creator of the first Cleo wig had been very unceremoniously dumped. Damien was a pretty boy, and a bit of a devil, and liked to think that I didn’t know about him trashing around behind my back. His longevity as a partner was terminated after he faked a suicide attempt. However, before I pissed him off, he talked me into doing drag with him on two occasions, and still I could not get the look together. In fact, the first time I went out with him in drag, I was mistaken for his mother! Really! Not impressed! What was I doing wrong, I asked myself? I knew how I wanted to look. I had the mustache and hairy chest and legs, but somehow my image kept coming across a little bit too seriously. The realisation slowly dawned that I had to stop myself from holding back, that I just had to let my head go, and revel in the whole concept of being a cock-in-a-frock, instead of trying to look like a man dressed as a woman.
Is my mother here!
In 1985, I met Stella, a.k.a. Stuart. I also met my next lover Tony. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning for a new relationship, as I was trying, as I had been trying for many months, to get Stuart into the sack. On this particular afternoon, success was within reach, with Stuart in an apt state of inebriation for seduction, and me moving in for the kill. Well, almost moving in for the kill! Tony sort of got in the way. He had been eyeing me off for most of the afternoon, and I had already gathered that he was a new boy in town – the spider moving in on the fly. He proceeded to start talking with me in the middle of the Stuart seduction, and came over so cute and naïve that by the time night settled in, I had him at home instead of my original quarry.
In some respects, I don’t regret that it happened that way. Tony ended up as my lover for the next four years – and was the main reason for my getting tested for HIV in 1985, and coming up positive (which had nothing to do with Tony) – and though he thought it was the perfect relationship, he was the only one who ever saw it through rose tinted glasses. This time, it was me who plated up…and got caught out! As for Stuart and I, well we ended up good friends, and became drag buddies after Don died – but I am getting ahead of myself here. I will introduce you to Don shortly, and more on Stuart a bit later.
By Mardi Gras 1986, Cleo’s evolution had started. I hunted around the second-hand stores, and eventually managed to find the perfect wig. It was as white-as-white, and it could be hammered into just about any style that you wanted. The wig quickly became my signature, and many years later when I gave up gutter drag, many people would not believe I had stopped until I told them I had given ‘Cleo’ – as the wig also came to be called – away.
I made a huge fishtail frock for that Mardi Gras, in the most gorgeous Thai-silk green fabric, and for the first time – though not the last – got a hairdresser friend in to style the wig. He loved working with it, and had it pulled and stretched into this fantastic wild, white storm. The frock looked great, and there were huge plumes of emerald green ostrich feathers pouring out the back of it. I did the make-up myself, and though in the transitionary phase, it looked better than it ever had before. Add a profusion of diamante jewellery, stiletto shoes, and fishnet stockings, and it was all starting to happen.
Contemplating life with permanently green skin: Mardi Gras 1986. With Tony Kelly.
Unfortunately, the one thing I hadn’t counted on that year was rain. Mardi Gras night has traditionally been a night when you are never quite sure what the weather is going to do, and this one was no exception. Half way through the parade, the rain poured down. I decided to go home and get out of the sopping wet frock and into something dry before going on to the party. Well, my lovely emerald green ostrich feathers decided to run, didn’t they! I had skin in the most subtle shade of green. It took hours to scrub it off. I gave up feathers after that. Much too risky!
Later that year, a DJ mate of mine who worked at ‘The Oxford’ invited me to his annual colour-themed party. That year, it was ‘Green with Envy’. The object of these parties were that if you decided to go, you had to wear the specified colour, and you had to wear drag. A little leather mate of mine called Andrew was also given an invite. We all got quite a laugh out of this, as Andrew was a leather munchkin – through and through. None of us could ever have envisioned him in drag. But he wanted to go to the party. Andrew. was one of the first in my circle of friends to contract AIDS, and he spent most of his time then going in and out of hospital – more in than out. He told me he had never done drag, and he didn’t want to exit this world feeling that there was one experience that he had missed. However, he didn’t want to do it seriously, and I had to couple with him. I agreed, and together we put together this rather macho little drag number, with green wig, and army boots, and this tacky little skirt. He looked a hoot, and had the time of his life. I’m glad I spent that night with him, and I’m glad I helped him get that whole ‘thing’ together, even if my own outfit was an abomination. I hated wearing green, and decided most definitely, that if Andrew was going to look bad, I was going to look worse. I succeeded beyond all expectation! He ended up back in hospital shortly after that party, and he didn’t come back out this time. He died on Boxing Day (December 26th) that year, and I’m sad to say that he was just the first of many.
Green with Envy in Lavender Bay – that’s a bit clashy, love! With Andrew Todd
Cleo was defined by the time Sleaze Ball 1986 rolled around. She had come into her own. A persona – and for many years an icon (Yeah! Right!) – was born. Surprisingly, I didn’t wear Cleo for this event, opting instead for a no.2 buzz cut, jelled straight up into the air, and sprayed bright red. The make-up matched, with lots of red, and very unsubtle use of other bright colours. But the outfit was the defining point, and was to be how Cleo was to be seen up to the day I finally decided to hang up the heels. I spent a fortune on a leather corse – not an easy item to obtain in Sydney back in those days – and teamed it with a leather garter belt, fishnet stockings and stilettos. The jewellery was all huge and red, and over all, the effect was beyond even my expectations. That year, I was photographed at every turn, and ended up in a Sleaze Ball montage in one of the gay rags. My boss was so smitten with this sleazy, slutty, trashy look that he used the pictures in the shop’s advertising the following year. Three ‘British Airways’ boys whom I had regular threesomes with when they were in town fell in love with the ‘new’ Cleo, and proceeded to not only give her picture pride of place in a return flight to Britain, but proceeded to stick her photo up on lightpoles from one end of England to the other. This was notoriety, and I relished it!
Trash at last! Sleaze Ball 1986
Needless to say, for the next couple of years, I took every opportunity to put the new Cleo on show, and she created her own demand!
I was not to be a solo act for very long. The story of how Don and I came to be partnered is odd, and was a lesson for me in how easy it is to misjudge people. He was a friend of another couple I knew, Steve and Geoff. Every year, they held a large party in their Glebe terrace called ‘The Annual Port and Cheese Party’. It was a much looked-forward to event, and to get an invitation was to be ‘in the right group’,though not in a snobby way. I had met Don at ‘The Oxford’ on several occasions, and he was one of those people who on a first meeting , comes across as loud mouthed, and rather crass. It was for these reasons that I had spent a considerable amount of time avoiding him. He was one of the privileged who got an invite to the ‘Port and Cheese’, and he wanted to go in drag, so Geoff rang me up and asked me if I would make a frock for him. Now, I should point out that Geoff was someone who it was very difficult, if not impossible, to say NO to. He was one of Gods true gentlemen, and a kinder, gentler, more generous man I have never met to this day. What could I do? I gritted my teeth, and said yes!
So a couple of nights later, Don showed up on my doorstep with an armload of gold lame. As I was to find out over the next couple of nights, he was not the loudmouth that I had originally imagined him to be. Sure, he was loud, but he had a heart of gold, and a great sense of humour. He was also a bastard to fit with a frock, as I soon found out. He wanted to look really elegant, but he had this damn gut, and trying to fit him into even my largest pattern just wasn’t going to happen. I ended up making the frock to the pattern, then inserting this huge gusset into the back of the frock to get it around his stomach. I told him he might have to wear either a corset, or a longline bra. He just laughed. I also told him that I had this great hairdresser,and offered to lend him some jewellery (this was his first time in drag, after all!), but he insisted that he knew what he was doing, and he had the rest of the outfit at home. I should have argued a bit harder! He turned up at the party looking great in the frock, but the wig looked like one of his mothers rejects after a wind storm, and he wore – wait for it – plastic jewellery! I never let him live that down. Plastic jewellery on a drag queen! I mean tawdry is tawdry, but plastic is stooping too low even for gutter drag. He accessorised a lot more carefully after that party. This was also the night that I was photographed in The Oxford…and made the cover of The Star Observer!
Just ignore my sister/girlfriend. Gold lame is so last year! With Don Tickle.You want me on the cover! Any cute boys? Oh…one of the Carter boys…AND Ruby Pollock! Okay then!
He and I did a few drag outings together after that. There was one occasion when I stupidly allowed him to make his own frock. I never let him do that again either. It was hideous! And it was all everyone at the party we attended could do to not tell him to his face. Oh sure, they had the time of their lives behind his back, but not even an under-the-breath-mutter to his face. I have to admire queens sometimes. They’re not always bitchy! I think the most memorable of our outings was ‘The Oxford’s’ 5th birthday party in 1987. They had a themed party every year for their birthday, and that year they chose Egyptian. If you were one of the ‘regulars’ at the hotel, which meant pretty much drinking there every day and night of the week – which we did then – you were invited to a private reception with free cocktails at 2.00pm. The pub was officially opened to the general public at 3.00pm, so you made sure you got there at dead on 2.00, and got as many drinks in as you could before you had to start paying. Don and I decided to do Egyptian drag, and spent the whole night before the party putting together these fabulous Egyptian outfits from gold lurex, with lots of gold fringing and braid, and got the hairdresser over in the after noon to do the wigs up, complete with intertwined gold serpents. We really looked great, and made quite a spectacle walking from Don’s place in Darlinghurst to the pub. Nothing like a bit of street theatre in broad daylight! The look was almost perfect. Almost! Nobody warned me about the non-photogenic aspects of gold grease paint, which I had covered my entire face in. It looks green in photographs, and you can imagine my horror when the first photos appeared after the event. I looked like I had green fungus growing all over my face. Tony never let me live that little mistake down. I’m so glad he had a raging hangover the next morning. Little prick!
I wonder if Cleopatra had problems with gold greasepaint! The Oxford Hotels 5th Birthday. With Les Skinner, Don Tickle & Bubba.
Don and I did a disastrous cocktail party at a serious-type drag queens place shortly after that. Same party was seriously marred by some stupid queens passing around spiked joints without checking what they were spiking them with. The party came to a very abrupt end after everyone either tried to cram into the very small toilet to throw-up, or passed out on the hostesses bed. Ah, good old 80s parties. Nothing like them for disaster, and humiliation. We were so out if it that we were caught not looking glamorous at one stage. I know! Unbelievable!
Yes, beauty does run in the family! With Don Tickle.
By far the best night out that Don and I did was Anzac Day ’87! We both decided to go out as Army Strumpets. So this involved mini skirts, with belted army shirts, fishnet stockings, leopard print socks and gloves, stiletto’s, and our trademark wigs with forces caps. For my part, I decided to wear a set of blue plastic inflatable tits under my shirt to make sure the boys had something to look at. Thankfully, I crammed the pump into my handbag! The night started very quietly in The Oxford…not! We both got stuck into the shots. By the time we teamed up with the rest of our battalion – my flatmate, Steve & Geoff, and another friend James we were strumpeting along nicely. It was around about this stage that I realised my tits were not going to stay fully inflated for the entirety of our bivouac. Geoff jumped in, took control of the pump, and made himself official titty pumper for the night. So just before we were about to enter any venue, we would stop outside, I would unbutton my army shirt, flop the saggy blue plastics out, and Geoff would pump them up, shirt would be rebuttoned…and we would enter said venue. And it was a long march…The Flinders, The Albury, The Unicorn, and The Paddo Green – who definitely weren’t pleased to see us due to the “macho” image of the pub…though I was mates with the owner, so a wink was exchanged, and it was “fuck you boys…we’re out for fun!”. We returned to The Oxford at some stage, in some condition only to be told that The Flinders had been looking for us as we had won a costume prize there! We never did claim it, but it went down as one of the best nights out I have ever had in Sydney.
Two hot boogie-woogie bugle girls looking for a Company B…the WHOLE of Company B! With Don Tickle
Don only did one solo drag outing after that. I suspected that he was ill, but he was a lot worse than he let on to any of us. For once, it wasn’t HIV, which in a very perverse way a lot of us were glad about – a reality-check that people were still dying from ordinary, everyday diseases, instead of the dreaded lergy. Don was dying from stomach cancer. We worked together in the sex shop at this stage, and I often filled in his shifts when he was too ill to get in to work. I finally managed, after getting a very frightening phone call from him one night, to get him to admit himself to hospital. Most of us thought it would be a long period of palliative care for him, but as I was about to go and visit him the following night, I ran into a friend coming back from the hospital. Don had just died. I was quite devastated, as we had become quite close over the short time we had spent together, and we had so much fun doing our gutter drag together. I suddenly felt very lonely. We gave him a fitting, gay send-off, and I and another friend scattered his ashes in the Mardi Gras parade that year. We sieved all the chunky bits out, and mixed him with glitter. Nobody was aware of what was going on, but Don would have loved the thought of being sprinkled over people in the parade. He had always been a real party boy. My only misgiving was coming home from the party the next morning. I was wandering down Oxford Street, and suddenly saw the street sweepers going up the parade route. I thought to myself, with a sudden feeling of horror “My God, poor Don’s ended up in a bloody street sweeping machine!” Fortunately, and to their merit, everyone saw the funny side of it. I regaled many a dinner party with THAT story.
Spreading Don’s ashes at Mardi Gras 1988. Sparkle in the heavens, my friend. With Darby Willcox.RIP. Life is that bit less fun without you.
Stuart – or Stella to most – and I buddied up shortly after that event. Seeing as we both worked in the sex industry, we decided to throw a sex toy party at my apartment in Darlinghurst, using stock from the store to put together what might be called a deviates version of a ‘Tupperware’ party. About 200 invites went out, but with it being held on a Saturday night, we thought everyone would be too busy doing other things to turn up. Wrong! About 108 people crammed themselves into my apartment. Drag shows that we had planned – we both wore drag, naturally – had to be cancelled due to a lack of space, and we didn’t even have a table available to be able to do the dildo and vibrator demonstrations that we had planned. People flocked in from near and far to purchase sex toys of every shape and size, blow-up dolls, leather goods of every description from the shortest cockrings to the longest stock whip, S/M & B/D gear and devices, and lubes and condoms in every size, shape and flavour imaginable. We made a small fortune out of the night, and it was a good way to show the boss how good merchandising can really work.
No!!!! My sister Stella and I are NOT like that! With Stuart Law and a multitude of others.
At the end of ’88 I did a ‘Port and Cheese’ party in a Cleo-goes-punk type outfit. I had made a corset for a friend out of some black vinyl, and as payment for the job, which wasn’t difficult, he told me to keep the leftover vinyl. I made a full circle skirt with a plunging neckline corset top out of it, with a matching collar attached to the frock with chains. I spent about a week at work studding the damn thing, and I have to say it looked great, and was a huge smash at the party.
I considered a softer look then thought…why would I do that!
Toward the end of that year, Stella and I attended a charity party for The Far West Children’s Home at a friend’s apartment in Bondi. On a dare from another friend, we performed live, doing both a Christmas carol, and the Pointer Sisters ‘Dare Me’. Well, we brought the house down, and I don’t think many of us had laughed so much for quite a while. HIV had really taken a heavy toll on most of our lives, and many, including myself, found it best to hide all the sadness under a veneer of happiness, and a haze of cigarette smoke and alcohol. That at least made it bearable. Stella borrowed my punk frock for that party, and I never did get it back off her. Bitch! She wore it everywhere for a while after that, and I’m glad she got so much enjoyment out of it. She deserved the good times.
Calls herself my sister THEN steals my frock! With Stuart Law.
Our last outing together was in mid ’89. I made Stella this fabby frock out of royal blue velvet and taffeta with these huge jewelled shoulder pads. I had a mile of red loose-thread Lurex at home, and made myself this huge bubble frock with a silver and black Lurex top. We got made-up in my apartment, and as we waddled our way over to The Oxford for a drink before going on to a party, two lesbians followed us down the street, flattering us with compliments about how great we looked, that real women could never get it together to look as good as drag queens, and how well we walked in heels (it’s a weight thing, I swear!). Well, if that didn’t put the night off to a great start! Who would ever have thought that lesbians liked to see men dressed as women? Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it? Anyway, after this old guy chased me around the bar for about an hour, harassing me to go home with him for a fuck (there always has to be one, doesn’t there! I mean, if I was half ways attractive in gutter drag, I could understand it, but…) we decided to leave for the party. Halfway down Oxford Street, the next thrill for the night is about to happen, apart from dancing briefly with two police men who were silly enough to smile at us as we giggled and staggered about. Yes, the ultimate drag queen delight – a tour bus full of Japanese tourists! I don’t know who was more thrilled – the driver, or the tourists. Everyone knows that Sydney’s Oxford Street is the home of gaydom, but you just can’t expect to drive up the street, and see two drag queens coming toward you. Well let me tell you, didn’t Stella and I put on a pose-and-vogue show for all those clicking cameras. Just to think, drag photos of me not just in Britain, but in Japan as well. My image has traveled further than I have, for Gods sake! Well, we did make it to the party, but it seemed a bit of a let down after all the other events of that evening.
Sisters are doin’ it for themselves. With Stuart Law.
I have photos of Stella from that evening. The ones taken at the party show a happy, fun-loving, carefree boy. The ones at home as he is getting changed show something else entirely. I think Stella knew that night that he would never be doing this sort of thing again, and for just one instant in time, the camera caught the look that said it.
About two weeks later, Stella was admitted to the Sacred Heart Hospice in Darlinghurst. I went to visit him just before the end. He was really doped up, but was really glad to see me, and I sat on the bed and held his hand, and we reminisced about all the good times we had together. As I left his room and headed towards the elevator, I had this sudden urge to turn around. Stella was sitting up in bed, watching me leave. Our eyes locked for a second, and I knew that I would never see him again. I cried all the way home. He died the following night.
His death absolutely tore the heart out of me. First Don, now Stuart. I felt as if everything was falling apart around me. I attended two functions in drag after that, but the fun was sort of missing without a mate to share it with. Don’t get me wrong…I had a great time…after all, I was with friends. A progressive dinner with three couples – 3 in drag, 3 in dinner suits was a welcome panacea after all that had gone on. The itinerary for the night was cocktails in Glebe, entree in North Bondi, main in Bourke St Darlinghurst, and dessert in Goulburn St, Darlinghurst. The first signs of the night going down hill rapidly occurred when one of the drag artistes – for some unknown reason – decided that in the absence of hairspray, they would spray there wig with hobby glue. Naturally, the fumes from said glue caused the artistes eyes to run copiously…which resulted in make-up running everywhere. So there were frequent stops in bathrooms to repair damage…only to hav.e it happen again et al. I had not stopped to think of how hard it would be to prepare a main with nails on. I admire anyone who can, so that took forever. Heedless to say, ,copious amounts of alcohol were consumed at every stop, so by the time we got to dessert in Darlington Towers we were totally sloshed. Evidently we made so much noise that someone in the building called the police! All us girls screamed, and disappeared into the bathroom giggling drunkenly, leaving the butch (not!) boys to handle the cops.
It’s a dinner! How much trouble could I get into?Who IS this man! With David Ashton.
The final party I attended with “the group” was in Glebe, and was a 50s party. Two of my ex’s decided to stir me up by both attending together in drag. That was a laugh. A friend attended as “an orphan baby dumped on the doorstep”…literally. I’m glad I went. I had a great time but there was a sadness in the air, a feeling of something completing its course and coming to an end. Geoff died not long after this, so life as we had known it at Glebe ceased.
You don’t need to tell me! Gorgeous and 50s housewifey…right!I AM slaving in the kitchen’
My 36th birthday was in early 1990. I decided to throw a party to sell off all the drag and costumes that I had accumulated over the years. My health wasn’t the best at the time, perhaps because I smoked 100 cigarettes a day and drank myself into oblivion every night, or perhaps because HIV had decided that it was my turn. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t maintain my weight, and my energy would give out very quickly. I hoped that I would see my 40th birthday (at that time, 50 definitely seemed out of the question), but even that hope was in doubt. I dressed myself in drag for the last time, using all borrowed items except for the famous wig. By the time the last person left my apartment that night, there would not be a scrap of drag, a single accessory, shoe, bag, piece of jewellery, fragment of fabric or a pair of laddered pantyhose left in the place. A friend called Philip (or Phyllis, as he preferred to be called) was the last to leave, and as he went out the door, I yelled at him to come back for a second. As he turned around, I pulled Cleo off my head, and threw her to him, saying simply “Give her a good time. She deserves it”.
THE END!
So Cleo hung up her heels. It was time to exorcise some of the past, and move on. I had spent too much time feeling disempowered. It was time to empower myself, and get my life back into some order. There was a group of eighteen of us that used to hang out in one corner of ‘The Oxford’. It was our corner, and if we were around, nobody else would come near it. Well, there were only six of us left at that stage. Fucking virus! It was a sure means of depleting your social circle. There were still times when I wished I didn’t have to remember people and things, that memories were more like a curse. I wished I could just leave everything in the past where it belonged. Life just didn’t happen that way. Then I thought it was maybe my gift to remember them, to tell all their stories and keep their memories alive in some way. You see, none of them ended up with headstones, and none had books written about them. This was perhaps the only testament to their lives. I think those memories were my tribute to their fun, their love of life, and their bravery. Without them, I would never have been the person I was, and I would never have experienced life the way I did. I realised then that none of us is the sum of our whole existence; we were the sum of a whole lot of people who floated into our lives, and floated out, and profoundly changed things forever. If I had ever been afraid to die, I no longer was. Through dying, I would have been meeting up with them again, having a good old gossip, and discussing what frocks we were going to wear to the next party. I firmly believed that. I believed that after you died, you were reunited with everyone and everything you had ever loved. At least I had that hope to hang onto.
Fuck, I needed it!
And now I need a fucking drink!
FOOTNOTE: It is now mid 2001, and I am still alive. I have seen my 40th birthday (just!), and am only three years away from 50. It hasn’t been an easy time. I have been disabled by AIDS, and was whisked (literally) from the arms of death in 1996 when they started me on the then new combination therapy. I have never done drag since that final party, and I don’t think the peripheral neuropathy in my feet would take too kindly to me levering my poor toes into stilettos these days. But I have all the photos (and all the memories) from those days, and I often look through them for both a laugh and a cry. I am attending The University of Technology in Sydney at the moment, hoping to finish my Graduate Diploma in Writing around my 51st birthday. Part of my writing has been to put the memories of these people onto paper. They were wonderful friends, and a true inspiration, and I want their memories to live on. This is my tribute to them.
And as much as I hate to admit it, there is in the life of every gutter drag quean those rare occasions where errors of taste and sins of design occur. Not one to want you all to think it was a life of glamour – I offer you Cleo’s blooper reel * Cringes and hangs head in shame*.
I think this was a Sleaze Ball. A rose between…with Lance Lyon and Stuart LawWTF! Well, it was only Fergies wedding. Want to suck my toes?Well, it was still esrly days! In Kellett Way, Kings CrossIf I’d gone harder with the make-up…I may have got away with this!NEVER wear stilleto’s on the lawn! At North BondiNever offer to help out at friend’s parties! There is no way of knowing what they’ll put you in!Helping hands to fix a stilleto fail!I’m using a straw so I must be a laydee!
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
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.
Bullying is the use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others
Wkipedia
Bullying has become the new social curse, and no one is exempt from its venom. Hardly a week goes by without it rearing its ugly head in the news, or on a current affairs program. Bullying is infecting school yards, work places, committees, sports fields, political arenas . It is anywhere that people, who think it is right to degrade and demean those who can’t or won’t fight back. It is insidious and hateful, performed in dark mould-ridden spaces where it can’t be witnessed by others, it is in a whisper, a slap, a push, a word. The spiteful miscreants delude themselves that they are the strong preying on the weak, when in truth the strength lies with those who bear the brunt of it – at least until pushed too far. This hateful, soul-destroying disease must be wiped out.
As a male who has always been, at least to my way of thinking, obviously gay, I’m surprised I have never encountered much bullying in my lifetime. I was always a popular student in most of the s schools I attended, on deed was often voted in a a class captain or vice-captain. The one time in boarding school when a rather largish – in girth – school bully attempted to take something off me by grabbing and holding onto it, one of the strapping country lads, who fortunately hung out with my circle, took him on and put him in his place. He never harassed me again. The other occasion is outlined below, and was a situation I would not allow to happen again. There is a misconception that bullying only goes on in school yards. Think again! It gies on all around us every day. And adults are not exempt from it. One only has to look at what has been going on in the Australian political landscape in recent times to know that. it is time for it to stop, but that will only happen if good men – and women – step in and say ENOUGH!
This is a brief tale of subtle bullying, revenge of a sorts, and deferred regrets.
As I have often mentioned to friends, as far as being bullied as a gay man goes – and God knows it is obvious enough that I am gay – I have had little more than the occasional ‘poofter’ thrown at me from a passing car’s window over the years. However, when I did encounter the evil beast in its true disguise, it left an indelible mark.
In 1993 I was managing a ‘Liquorland’ store in Darlinghurst. I had started there in 1990 as a senior shop assistant, after managing “Numbers” bookshop for 7 years – just up[stairs from the ‘Liquorland’ store – and badly needing both a change of scenery and a job that was not as monotonous as running a sex shop. It was known when I started at ‘Liquorland’ that I was gay, and HIV+. I made my HIV status known because I worked on a daily basis with glass. Serious accidents are part and parcel of working in that retail environment, and I wanted to ensure workmates were cautious when dealing with severe cuts etc.
The Manager at that time was gay-friendly, as was the Area Manager. In fact, they had a lesbian working as the Assistant Manager, so there were no problems at all…at least at that time. Six months after starting, Diane left and I progressed to Assistant Manager. Then when the Manager was transferred to another store I became Manager. Now, it always seemed an obvious thing to me that the best person to have managing a business in the gay ghetto of Darlinghurst was someone gay, someone who knew the local clientele and could deal with them on a personal basis. Well, obvious to everyone except the new Area Manager who came on board just after my promotion to Manager. I should point out that being a Manager in the Coles/Myer Group at that time held very little in the way of privileges – you were only paid $40 a week more than your Aaistant Manager. Being under contract you lost most of your time off, and were expected to work long, hard hours. Because bonuses were based on store profits you were ridden hard by your Area Manager to get results.
My health was going through one of its tough periods at this time. I was on high levels of what antivirals were available at that time. Not having recovered from a very serious bout of viral pneumonia earlier that year I found myself working long on top of a dreadful diet, and abusing both cigarettes and alcohol. One might say I had the perfect recipe for a health disaster. Add to that a new Area Manager who was not only homophobic but also HIV phobic, and you have real problems. At that time I thought I had about two years of work left in me before departing this mortal coil from something HIV-related – you have to remember that combination therapy was not a option at this time, and wasn’t until 1996. I was seriously starting weighing up my options – did I take a demotion at work back to Assistant Manager – lets face it, the stress would be a lot less – or did I leave and take the Disability Support Pension option. It was a decision that was soon made for me!
I was due to take a fortnights leave in early November of that year, and had given a months notice of taking it. I had also decided to take a demotion, and the Area Manager had coffee with me at this time, ostensibly to discuss my options. I told him that for health reasons, I wished to go back to the position if Assistant Manager, and could it ge arranged at either Darlinghurst or one of the other Eastern Suburbs stores. His suggestion was that if I was going to start having serious health problems, I should consider leaving the organisation altogether, especially considering that I had an illness with a almost pre-determined end result! Not an suspicious attitude! I suggested that my health issues would be resolved by less stress, thus my request for a voluntary demotion. He appeared displeased, but said he would organise things, again reiterating that it was probably time I left the company. I went back to the store feeling that things were not going to get any easier for me, and as it turned out, I was right.
Let the games begin!!
This particular Area Manager had bullied me in subtle ways ever since he started with the the company. It is a difficult situation, as it is always done out of earshot of other staff, and knowing that their is no way for me to back up complaints to head office, he was free to get away with anything. This is typically how bullies operate in the workplace.
The below scenario was prefaced by an event that was to bring home to me just how demeaning and demoralising the tactics of a bully can be. The sister of a Head Office executive was organising a work function at a restaurant in a back street nearby. The wine order,, address and delivery instructions had been entered up in the shop diary for my attention on the day of the function. The morning of the function started with a nightmare in the shop. Arriving to open, I found that the Assistant Manager, who had locked up the night before, had forgotten to hand the keys over to the staff on with him. This meant I had to ring him, then wait outside the shop until he turned up with the keys. On finally opening the store there were deliveries waiting to be unloaded, the float to be put into the register, the previous days takings to be rung through to Head Office, and customers served. It wasn’t until I received a phone call from the restaurant to say the wine hadn’t been delivered that I realised I hadn’t checked the diary, and the wine delivery had been forgotten! As compensation, we invited the entire party to the store to select the same quantity of wine, but with no restriction on price. They appeared happy with that. I apologised to the woman, rang her brother in Head Office, explained what had happened and apologised to him. That should have been the end of it, but no! The Area Manager had to get involved. He must have rung me a dizen times over the next couple of days to berate and belittle me about the mistake, then made me ring the woman again and apologise a second time, then the following day I had to buy her a bunch of flowers, which gad to ge personally delivered to her at her workplace, then I had to ring her a third time to apologise. I don’t know who was more embarrassed by the whole grovelling scenario – myself, or the poor woman. I have no doubt the Area Manager loved every minute of it. I was reminded of the event on every possible future occasion.
So, to my final month with Liquorland.
The first thing the Area Manager did was bring in to the store another staff member to be trained up to my position. I could never quite work this one out, as I already had a very good Assistant Manager who was more than able to take over from me – and in fact deserved the promotion. Not only was a new guy brought in, he was placed on the same pay level as me, despite not actually being a Manager. This, of course, effectively undermined my authority. Because he was on an equal footing with me, staff were answerable to both of us, but as I was about to be moved to another store I was told that he was to have the managerial authority. So, for the next three weeks while training him to take over as manager, he controlled the store and I was left twiddling my thumbs behind the cash register. This was very demoralising, though as I was to find out shortly, there was a method in the Area Managers vindictiveness..
My holidays eventually rolled around, and off I went, thinking that in two weeks I would be starting in a new store as an Assistant Manager. There was an Assistant Manager position available in the Surry Hills Mall store, and I was informed I would be filling tat position. A week before returning to work I still had not had the position confirmed, so rang the Surry Hills store to find out if they had any confirmation of my appointment, and to find out what roster I would be on. The store Manager knew nothing about my being transferred there. He told me he would look into it, and get back to me. By the Thursday of that week I still had heard nothing, and started leaving messages with the Area Manager to contact me so that I knew what I was doing on the Monday when I was due to return to work. Nothing! The Surry Hills Manager still had not heard from him, and had no idea what was going on. I decided to pay a visit to the Darlinghurst store and see if I could pin the Area Manager down. The new guy who was now Manager asked me to come out the back with him for a chat. He told me he felt really badly about the shabby way I had been treated. He had been told by the Area Manager when he started to make my life as uncomfortable as possible in the hopes that I would resign. This hadn’t happened, though he (the area manager) was sure that in the course of my holidays I would resign. The store Manager, in an about face, told me to hang on, as if I resigned, the Area Manager would get a great amount of satisfaction. Also, if I resigned before I returned to work, he could pay me out in lieu of notice,and get me out of his hair. The plan was for me not to return to work from my holidays.
I decided to dig in my heels – after all, he didn’t know that I now knew what he was up to. I kept ringing the Surry Hills store manager, and late on the Friday he got back to me to say that I was to start work there at 8.30am on the following Monday as Assistant Manager. I now had my position confirmed, and a plan in place. At no time did the Area Manager contact me to confirm any of this. At 8.30am on the Monday morning I turned up for work as confirmed – and gave two weeks notice. I believe the Area Manager was furious, but I can’t confirm that, as he totally ignored me for the next two weeks, despite regular visits to the store, and didn’t even bother to wish me luck on the day I left. At least I felt that I had a hand in my own demise – in the end it hadn’t been determined by him. I was talking to another gay Manager from another store in the area just after this, and found out he was encountering the exact same harrassment from the same Area Manager
After several weeks of tossing backwards and forwards whether I should report his conduct to the company or not, I decided to let it drop. My health wasn’t the best at the time, and I had no witnesses to the discrimination. The Darlinghurst store Manager – despite telling me what was going on – wasn’t going to back me up, as it would have put
his job on the line. He had, in fact, asked me not to divulge the information he had given me, and despite the fact that he had treated me like shit, I sort of felt sorry for him. After all, he was stuck with the Area Manager, and I no longer was.
In retrospect now, I regret that decision. It still plays on my mind from time to time, especially when I hear of others encountering bullying, harassment and discrimination in their workplace. I regret not mentioning it to my other staff members at Darlinghurst – none of whom had any issue with a Manager who was gay and HIV+ – and I especially regret not taking it further with the company and possibly onto the Anti-Discrimination Board. As I have mentioned to others, despite having no witnesses, and being in a his-word-against-mine situation (with the odds being stacked on his side, as he was a ‘company man’), at least there would have been a report about it, and I would have, at least, sewn the seeds of doubt. Even back in those days Coles/Myer had anti-discrimination policies, and he may – or may not- have been dragged over the coals. It is a regret that I now have to live with.
If you are suffering any kind of harrassment or discrimination in your workplace,report it! Your workplace should be somewhere you look forward to going to every day, not somewhere that you sneak to with trepidation, wondering what is in store for you to make your life difficult. Even if you have no witnesses to what is being done to you – the people making life difficult for you will make sure there is none to back up your side of the story (like my being taken out of the store and to a cafe to be told he thought I should get out of the company). It is important both for your confidence and self-respect to ensure that there is at least a report written up about it, and that it goes into the company records, probably through the HR department. There are also community and government organisations who can advise and direct you as to what actions can be taken.
Bullying, harassment, discrimination and prejudice are NEVER to be tolerated – anywhere! By anyone!
ThIs youngster who hit back made headlines. You can only be pushed so far, for so long.
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner vonice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Extract from Steve Jobs’ Commencement address, Stanford University, June 14 2005
In June 1996 I was admitted to Prince Henry Hospital. I weighed in at 48kg, had 10 CD4’s, chronic anaemia, chronic candida and chronic CMV retinitus. Prognosis was not good, and I truly never expected to walk out of the hospital. In fact, it was thought that I would not last longer than about 2 weeks, especially with the CMV diagnosis, which was a very serious problem, and as I knew only too well, a very unpleasant way to die.
I think what surprised me the most was how calm I was about the whole situation. There was no panic, no despair. Just an acceptance that this was the way it was, and there was little I could do to change it. There was a certain inevitability about it, a knowledge that I had already beaten the odds to get this far with no serious illnesses, and it was just “my turn”. In some respects I had begun thinking that things were starting to get very lonely anyway, with so many I knew already dead, and still more to die before things started to get better. It was a time of reflection, introspection and recollection that was in its own way very calming, and I think I found a certain strength within myself that I wasn’t expecting to find, and a set of beliefs that have stayed with me since.
I underestimated modern medicine. This was a time of miracles! Intensive and aggressive treatment for the problems I had – gancyclovir injections into the eyes to halt the CMV, blood transfusions for the anemia and very aggressive dosing with the then new protease inhibitor class of drugs as part of my new combination. Miracles did indeed happen! Two weeks later, though still very thin and very weak, I walked (sort of) out of Prince Henry, and very much into a new life. And the new life was not what myself, nor anyone else, may have expected it to be.
I guess one would expect that after a close brush with death that one would undergo a huge epiphany, a movement towards God, many humble and pliant prayers (and much rattling of rosary beads) to the Power’s-That-Be to thank them for this great deliverance, and to invoke them through bible-bashing, church-going and good deeds to show Them that I was moving myself into a world of piety and religious zeal unequaled since Martin Luther or the Spanish Inquisition. Nah! None of that happened. There was no great enlightenment, no being filled with the Spirit and babbling in tongues. No overwhelming desire to drag myself into the confessional and plead for forgiveness for my sins (whatever they might be) and do 200 Hail Mary’s as penance, nor a need to robe myself in sack-cloth and ashes and disappear into a Cistercian Monastery for the remainder of my life. Was I even disappointed that this didn’t happen? Not really! I was too busy getting my health (and my weight – thanks to decadurabalin) back together and trying to work out what one was supposed to do, when one didn’t die as expected, to worry too much about the spiritual mine-field that I may have been in, but wasn’t. Get my drift!
In fact, with the exception of one (who surprised me, I must say), no one I knew gravitated towards religion as they lay in hospital, or closer to the moment in a hospice. No one! Nought! Zero! Well, except for the one! So did this (or should it) have made me wonder about my own mortality, or about the spiritual desert that I should supposedly have been in? Nah! That didn’t happen either. So exactly what is it that I felt about the great mystery that we call life, what is above and below us – and does it really matter at all? If you are broad-minded, read on. If not, stop here.
Now, before I go into details about my own religious upbringing, it may interest you to know that I come from a background of Yorkshire Wesleyan Baptists. Yes, that came as a shock to me too. In fact one of my first cousins, twice removed up, was the Reverend Alfred Pickles. Alfie (this far down the line I feel I can be familiar) appeared in the 1861 UK census as a watchmaker, then lo and behold 10 years later in the 1871 census he is suddenly a Baptist minister. He preached his way around Rochdale in Lancashire for a while until being made Pastor of North End Baptist Chapel in Towcester, Nothamptonshire frpm 1880 to 1891. It appears that a dwindling congregation forced his resignation, and he and his wife and brood ended up at Dallington in Northhamptonshire as a hatter and hosier. My, how the mighty fall.
I was raised in a household of mixed religion, with my father being Catholic (non-practising), and my mother a Methodist (or Presbyterian or something or other, also non-practising) and religion was something that was never discussed in any shape or form at home. The great wonder to me is why they felt the need to baptise me in the Congregational Church (talk about confusing the issue) at Sylvania. Perhaps, being the newbies in an already close knit commnity, they felt the need to fit in. The fact that we were surrounded on all sides by Congregationals may have had something to do with it (and it is, after all WASP territory), as our neighbours over the road ended up being my Godparents. They were Godly people, but thankfully not preachy so I guess religion was sort of left up to me to work out for myself. I did attend Sunday School, but saw it more as a way to collect scripture cards (“I’ve got more than you”) than to live by the precepts printed on them, and it was a good way to get to blow out birthday candles on the plaster cake used for such occasions even when it wasn’t your birthday (I plead guilty to relieving my boredom one Sunday by saying it was my birthday when it wasn’t – then packing shit that my parents may have found out – or even worse, that one of the other kids may have told his parents it was my “wasn’t” birthday and they would embarrass me by wishing me happy birthday. It caused quite a quandry! I never did it again). I was then sent to a Catholic boarding college at Campbelltown. Now for a while this did induce in me great piety and religious zeal (not to mention the first time I was groped by another guy, even if it was in the swimming pool), as like many other new converts to Catholicism I got caught up in all the rigmorole, ritual and razzamattaz that this religion inspires. What sort of budding gay boy can’t get caught up in all the shiney vestments, the candlelabra, the incense, the sprinkling of holy water, and devotion to Mary and all the saints (well, until they decided that some of them were fairy tales and not pulling their weight, and decided to chuck them out…go figure!). I certainly was inspired, and within 18 months of starting school there I converted, and was baptised in the school chapel by a priest (who later turned out to be a child molester – truly!), and my math teacher (who absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke) and the School Captain (a bit of a spunk) as my Sponsors. It was truly a moment to treasure. I didn’t think much of telling the priest in the confessional that I spanked the monkey like crazy (though truth be told he probably got off on it), but that was the only real drawback. Six months later I was Confirmed by the then Bishop of Wollongong, and started off on a quite short but vigorous religious life as a Catholic. I started hanging
around with the Carmelite Fathers who visited the college for weekly Masses and Confession and decided that I may have had a vocation. Truth be told, I think I just got caught up in the romantic appeal of monastic life (yes, you read that right – just ask any Catholic!), the dedication of my life within a totally male-dominated community devoted to God (I did the male community thing later, but God had nothing to do with it), the thought that I was entering an institution that had been around for centuries, and hey…I got to wear a frock, as uninspired as it may have been. I did enter the religious life for a while about seven years later (yes, into an enclosed community), and I guess this may have been the start of my doubts and probably accelerated my move to Athieism. A small start-up community with a Prior who was an egotist and loved the power trip, doling out penances that were almost medieval, and not one iota of support for new or struggling novices was the order of the day. I gave up out of sheer frustration and moved on. Needless to say, the community didn’t last long.
By this stage I had studied religion and found it wanting. I looked at all the hatred and hypocrisy; all the wars caused by; all the cultures destroyed by; the Catholic church burning and killing people who dared to believe otherwise; all the fundamentalist religions who seem to despise everybody and everything yet insist in ramming down your throat how Godly & Righteous they are; King Henry deciding he was God, and beheading or burning anyone who defied him; all the history and architecture and books and art destryed by same religions; all the lives twisted and destroyed by molestation and lies (and which the Church still tries to deny); all the doomsday and suicide cults who,unbelievably, manage to suck people in until it is too late to get out; attitudes to celibacy, contraception and sex that are so outdated that we may as well be living in the 13th century; the way women are treated in many religions; and the Catholic church being totally unable to reconcile itself to the modern era, and remaining in the past by electing conservative & ancient Popes…and decided it was all bullshit. The whole fucking lot of it! I have recently been reading a series of Historical Fiction novels by C.J.Sansom about a lawyer called Matthew Shardlake, set in the reign of Henry VIII. Everybody, irrespective of social rank or standing or occupation is terrified to express any religious view other than what the King tells them to believe. It delves into the sheer egotism of the time, the Catholic Church forcing itself onto everyone as the ONLY faith that one could have, Henry VIII as the ultimate egotist and dictator saying no, he should be the religion that everyone follows, and the reformists who were at heart no better than either, as they also thought they were right and everybody else was wrong. To be contrary was to be dead. It is a rather terrifying insight into the medieval mind, made more so by the fact that we know this actually happened.
Next, I “came out” at the grand age of 25. I managed to have a total of two years as an active gay man before contracting HIV. Didn’t that make me wish I’d defied everyone and come out a lot earlier! So, did I blame God for this plague on my life? Nah! Unfortunately I had to admit to contracting it from being newly out, and a trash bag. I slutted my way around the scene quicker and more thoroughly than the flu virus spreads through an office. I could sniff out a Yank at 5 metres, and would stalk him until he relented and bedded me…little knowing! It was prolific sex…and wonderful. I have no regrets about that. Though I didn’t know it at the time, over the next 10 years I was to see enough death, desolation and despair to last me the rest of my life. I saw incredible bravery in the face of adversity; I experienced people taking their own lives to avoid the misery of AIDS; the hope on the faces of guys being guinea pigs in an attempt to try to help both themselves and others (and I am indeed in that group); a community coming together and showing that there is power in numbers; and we did gain a voice that was loud and radical and took no compromise in the face of everything that was going on. Oh yeah, and we had the Rev.Fred Nile and his ilk, screaming out in true Christian sympathy, love and compassion that this was a plague from God on the gay lifestyle, that we deserved it (in a Christian way), and that everyone with HIV should be quarantined and locked away from all the “good” members of society (but in a Christian way, of course). Any single, solitary vestige of religion I had left in me (and there would have been very little left) went out the window at this stage. I have never looked back and regretted that.
So, at this point we come back to Prince Henry Hospital, and me being thrust back into the real world, with no tools to get me back on my feet, spiritually, emotionally or psychologically. I guess I could have seen religion as an easy way to acknowledge my survival from what should have been death; as a way of celebrating living and being given a second chance. Nah! Not for this boy. I have never regained any respect or love for religion, and I don’t imagine that I ever will. Some people gravitate towards it as they get older and the prospect of death looms. They seem to join the ratbag fringes for some reason – they start ‘speaking in tongues (also known as glossolalia), or join Opus Dei or call themselves Charismatic, Pentecostal’s or Born-Again’s (to be avoided at all costs! I dislike people who preach without listening). Fear of death obviously causes a lot of people to lose the plot.
So, what then do I believe? Well, I don’t delude myself to start with – Athieism is a belief. Okay, it’s a belief in not believing which in itself is a bit contrary, but perhaps that is getting closer to where I am anyway. I don’t really want to die, but I’m not afraid of it. Perhaps I should consider being truly radical and joining the Baha’i, or Zoroastrian religions. Now, that could be interesting. I guess if I was to go back to any religion – and the arguments would have to be truly convincing – it would be a religion where I was just left to decide my depth of faith for myself. No theology, no liturgy, no preaching, no dictating, no churches, no ministers. Give me the bare-bones of belief (whatever that may mean) and let me devise it for myself. I don’t believe there is any afterlife. No heaven, no hell. It makes no sense to me why we should live this life for something that comes after – one way is good, one way is bad. It’s just stupid and illogical. If heaven and hell do exist, why is it that the Christian religions (and many of them are new arrivals to the religious scene) are the only ones who believe in this concept? Yes, other eligions do believe in an afterlife (and many don’t) but nowhere is it so clearly delineated by pearly gates and streets of gold in one direction, and nothing but flames and misery in the other – like living here and now can’t be misery enough! Does this mean that everybody else is wrong, or irrelevant? If heaven and hell do exist, are the millions who don’t believe in it excluded from this exclusive club? How ridiculous that people actually believe they are so above everyone else that only they are right and deserve this deliverance! And how typical of the superiority of Christian religions that they are ‘holier than thou’ and everyone else be buggered! I belive in the theory of “the right place at the right time” for our evolutionary process, that we are here simply ‘because’. Everything has its time and wears out, as we do, and just passes away and becomes part of the Earth’s recycling process. I don’t see why there should be anything greater or higher, and I don’t know why this imaginery being we call God should be any better than me, nor why I should worship something that can’t even be proved. It is all so ethereal and…silly.
I must admit to finding Buddhism very tantalising. The Dalai Lama is the most amazing man, and far surpasses any leader of any faith that I have ever encountered. His compassion, his piety and his dedication to Buddhism despite being in exhile from his own homeland is truly inspiring. Let’s hope he never gets sucked into doing “Masterchef” again! Having said that, the thought of having to turn vegetarian is definitely a put-off for me, though recently I have found myself putting spiders and other creepy-crawlies that appear in the house back outside…so maybe I’m considering who it might be. I watched Judith Lucy’s recent program on the ABC about her spiritual search (she didn’t find anything that changed her perspective) and at one stage she interviewed a Buddhist nun. This woman had the best attitude to Buddhism, claiming that you didn’t need to follow it in it’s purist form, but you could draw from it the parts that suited you and create your own form of Buddhism around that base. Now, that has almost converted me. If only Christianity had learned such wisdom, understanding and humility. Perhaps it would not have lost me in the first place.
As an ageing HIV+ man, I don’t feel any real need to negotiate with a God. I don’t need to justify my existence, nor do I need to create an afterlife so that I have something comfortable to believe in as death approaches. I don’t know how or when I will die, though I do believe that the time is not yet, and that there are still a few kilometres on the speedo. I used to be concerned that I was not going to leave a legacy behind when I died – something that said to future generations “I’ve been here and I’ve done something”. I do hope that I have done no one true harm, and that somewhere along the line I may have had a positive influence on somebody. Just one would do! It’s not important, but it would be nice. As for a legacy? I hope my writing is my legacy. I hope that at some stage someone will read what I have written, or quote it, or even contemplate it and think to themselves “what an interesting man”. That would be nice indeed!
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!
There is an A4-sized photo amongst my collection, notable only because there are very few photos I have blown up to that size. The photo is almost surreal. In it, two people stand on the porch of a Classical building. A sign in the background gives the location away – the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The person in the foreground is dressed as something out of a fantasy novel, quilled headdress sweeping several feet into the air, the rest of the outfit equally futuristic, or perhaps something from the past, a couture of leather and giant jewels. In his hand is a whip with a silver skull adorning its handle. The figure in the background could be a God, or a sprite about to cause mischief, a glittering figure with gold face and shining blue hair. The photographer has caught the two figures just as a breeze has blown, and has caught the movement of an arm and hand behind the fantasy figure, and the sweep of the voluminous robe being worn by the God/sprite. The movement, captured on film, gives the impression of bodies just arriving from somewhere? Nowhere? Anywhere? The photo is suffused with a golden light. The subject matter is illusive. It is Mardi Gras 1988, and the figures are waiting expectantly, nervously, for the parade to start.
What can’t be seen in the photograph is a gold lurex bag with a drawstring, clutched in the hidden hand of the God/sprite. They descend the stairs and join the line heading towards College Street. As the parade starts to snake its way down College Street, then into Oxford Street, colourful floats, flashing lights and booming music, surround them. Drag queens cross their paths, as do other costumed visages. Religious fanatics, huddled almost in fear on the sidewalk, hold placards promising Christ’s mercy and forgiveness. These two fantasy figures start to walk alone. The forgiveness of Christ means nothing to them.
As they arrive at Oxford Street, the roar of the crowd increases. The figure in flowing gold glances across at his leather-clad partner, and a brief nod of heads indicates to the God/sprite that he is to reach into the bag. As they round the corner into Oxford Street, the God/sprite pulls his hand out of the bag, and flings something into the air. The clamour from the crowd is deafening. A soft cloud of glitter and dust floats down towards the ground, some floating off amongst the crowd, some a soft coating landing on the feet of the fantasy one. A close-up shot of the pair would have shown tears streaming down their cheeks.
The God/sprites hand returns to the bag.
Don had died on the 2nd February 1988. It had taxed our faith in human nature when his flatmate stole all the furnishings out of the apartment before most of us had even been notified of his passing, but had amazed us with his almost surreal, funeral. Unlike just about every other funeral at that time, Don had not died from AIDS. Instead, we all had to watch his slow, painful demise from stomach cancer, caught too late to be cured, and a secret that Don kept until it was no longer possible to hide it.
Some expressed the view that it was nice to know that people died of things other than HIV, and though most of us would not have voiced it, we agreed! We knew of no family. Darby and I had no money, and relied on the generosity of friends on the evening after his death to get the several thousand dollars together to cremate him. He had been well loved, and we had to call an end to their generosity. We had far more cash than we needed. The funeral home managed to come up with two sisters, who had not had contact with their brother for many years.
They did not even know he was gay, let alone ill. They attended the funeral, but left us to our own devices. ‘You obviously knew him better than we did,’ one sister confided to me as we sat outside the MCC church at Paddington. ‘I had no idea he would ever have so many friends.’
At the Northern Suburbs crematorium, Darby is the MC. I have made up the tape for the service, and tell him where the numbers start. He miscalculates, and Shirley Bassey singing “Don’t Cry Out Loud” fills the chapel. There is a shriek from the front of the chapel, and the sister who had been speaking to me earlier is on her feet and heading towards the coffin, yelling ‘This is one of my favourite tracks too!’. It is only later that Darby tells me that it was not the track he intended to put on. We exchange a look!
I left the Mardi Gras party about 9 am the next morning. As I walked down Oxford Street, the street cleaners were working there way up the parade route.
“My God, poor Don’s ended up in a street sweeper”, I thought to myself as they trundled past me. Well, he had always claimed that he trashed himself! Perhaps it had all been more appropriate than we ever realised. I smiled to myself as I continued down the street, and the sweepers headed up Flinders Street, towards the show ground.
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
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.”
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
The challenge of writing about 33 years of living with HIV/AIDS isn’t so much to write tomes about what actually was witnessed over that period. That is easy to do, and I could ramble on forever about it. The challenge lies in being objective and succinct, to tone down the schmaltz and sentimentality and cut to the chase. Not as easy as one may think, as these were the most challenging, relentlessly ruthless and heartbreaking period of my life. But if survival is the gauge of ones strength and tenacity, then I have come out at this end of it with flying colours. Indeed, the cup is half full!
So what was it really like in 1982 to be reading snippets in our local gay press about this mysterious illness in The States that seemed to be targeting gay men who frequented the saunas, and quickly killing them? Well, cynicism and disbelief to start with, and the surety that within a short period of time they would find an antibiotic to clear up yet another STD. Soon the snippets were to become columns, then pages as the mysterious and deadly illness leapt from the shores of America and found its way here.
Our response was mixed. The first recorded case of HIV at home was 1982, and the first death in 1983. We had our usual ratbags who yelled and screamed about God’s vengeance on the evil, sick and perverted gay lifestyle (obviously a different God to the compassionate, all-forgiving one that I had heard about), the advocates of hate who demanded quarantine for all infected persons, and those who either quietly or vocally wished that we would all die or just go away. Not that easy folks! Thankfully, common sense prevailed and both the government and the grassroots gay community combined to put both AIDS Councils and NGO programs in place. Our quick response was instrumental in Australia always being at the forefront of HIV/AIDS care. Within 2 years every state had an AIDS Council under the national umbrella of NAPWA (National Association of People with AIDS), and the formation of support organisations such as The Bobby Goldsmith Foundation, Community Support Network (CSN) and Ankali. Without these organisations life would have been grim for those infected. In 1985 testing was introduced. It was a bit of a strange affair in the early days. Due to hysteria and discrimination no one wanted their personal details on a database, so you chose a name, and Albion Street Centre issued you with a number that then became your ID. You had a blood test, and waited for two weeks – talk about high anxiety – to get your result. I had a mystery illness in 1982, a flu-type illness that wasn’t the flu, and already suspected that I had sero-converted and was going to come up HIV+. I was right. Counseling? Oh yeah, we had a lot of that back then. “You’ve got about 2 years to live”. Shrug shoulders “Okay”. And off we went knowing the inevitable was rapidly approaching, and it was time to PARTY!!! What else could you do? However there were horror stories. The disgusting treatment of young Eve Van Grafhorst is something for all Australians to be ashamed of. Born in 1982, she was infected with HIV via a blood transfusion. When she attempted to enrol in her Kincumber pre-school in 1985, parents threatened to withdraw their children due to the (supposed) risk of infection. The family was literally hunted out of town, and forced to leave the country and go to NZ. I will never forget the sight of this poor, frail girl on her way to the airport. I, like many others, was horrified that this could happen in Australia. Thankfully, her NZ experience was quite the opposite, and she lived a relatively normal life until her death in 1993 at 11 years of age. Her parents received a letter from Lady Di praising her courage.
Meanwhile, the Australian nightmare was well and truly hitting home. My first close friend, Andrew Todd, died in 1986. At that time there was no dedicated AIDS ward, and Andrew was shifted between wards as beds were needed for other cases. He died on Boxing Day in A&E at St, Vincent’s. I had the sad duty of ringing all my friends at a party to tell them the sad news. Party pooper recognition acknowledged! Ward 17 at St Vincent’s eventually became the dedicated AIDS ward, and for the next 10 years was never empty. Palliative care was through The Sacred Heart Hospice. Hospitals such as Westmead hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons; full contamination clothing for those working with HIV people, rooms not being cleaned, meals left outside doors. Even the poor old mosquito copped a hiding as a means of contamination, along with toothbrushes, glasses, cutlery and crockery. An advertising campaign featuring the Grim Reaper bowling down poor people created an apocalyptic vision of HIV that scared the life out of everyone. It was quickly withdrawn. In the interim, my 2 years became 4, which became 6 followed by 8. My life became a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, not shared alone.
In the 80’s I held a lot of parties with anywhere from 40- 60 friends attending. By 1996, if I had tried to hold a party I would have been lucky to have dug up 10 friends to attend. In the blink of an eye my social circle was effectively wiped off the face of the earth. Hospitals, hospices, funerals and wakes became the dreaded regular events. It was death on a relentless and unforgiving scale. The Quilt Project became the focus of our sorrow, and it’s regular unfoldings and name readings were tear-filled times of remembrance and reminiscence, along with the yearly Candlelight Rally. I attended until I became so empty that I could no longer bear it. I submitted my names but no longer attended. In the early 90’s four friends died close together – two from AIDS, one a heart attack and one cancer. This was a particularly heavy blow as two of these friends had been regular “gutter drag” partners, and that part of my life effectively ended. In a perverse way, it seemed strange that the Big A wasn’t the only thing stalking our lives.
Despite its reputation for being human Ratsac (the Concorde Study in France named it such, after conducting an unethical trial; turns out they were correct!) I started taking AZT when my CD4 count started to take a dive. Hard work, long hours, heavy drinking, chain smoking, a shit diet and emotional turmoil didn’t help. Pub culture became lifestyle. Did several drug trials – D4T, which was sort of successful, though the same class of drug as AZT. Also p24 VLP (Very Light Protein) which proposed that stimulating the p24 antigen may help control HIV. Total waste of my time. It did nothing. We started alternating drugs – 6 months on AZT, 6 on D4T, 6 on DDI, 6 on DDC. Perversely it seemed to keep the wolf from the door. Dosage was huge. Everyone on it ended up with kidney problems and peripheral neuropathy. Prophylactics added to the drug burden. In the meantime there was no HIV dental service and our teeth rotted or fell out due to bouts of candida. I left work in 1993 after being seriously knocked around by viral pneumonia which should have killed me…but didn’t. I was shuffled onto the pension, and given rent subsidised housing by DOH. The subsidy seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, weren’t we all eventually going to be killed by the Big H, so no one would be on it for that long? Famous last words! My alcohol consumption and chain smoking increased, if that was possible! Was losing weight at an alarming rate, and naturally no one noticed because I took to wearing baggy clothes to disguise it. Nothing quite like being delusional. Moved from Darlinghurst to Bondi. Nothing like moving away from the scene to help your health…not! Collapsed in the street, and admitted to St Vincent’s not with PCP as suspected but a collapsed lung. Two weeks later and a change of female GP’s saw me back in the doctor’s rooms while she read my hospital discharge report. Had they tested me for CMV retinitis? No! Was I having trouble with my vision? Yes, but I do wear glasses. Guess what? We’re sending you for a little holiday at Prince Henry Hospital (now closed). I was a little bit sick. Chronic CMV retinitis, chronic candida, chronic anemia, had 10 CD4 cells and weighed 48 kgs. Mmm, prognosis was not good. Well, it had been a good life. I was certainly joining a band of party people. But no! Life hadn’t finished with me yet. Protease Inhibitors had come along at an auspicious time, and within a fortnight I had been stolen from the arms of death. Mind you, that fortnight had been no picnic. Ganciclovir injections into the eye, Deca-Durabolin injections to help put weight back on, blood transfusions, and enough finger prick blood readings to last me the rest of my life. And the problems had just started for this return-to-lifer. Not dying when you are supposed to really fucks up your head space.
So started the next round of therapies. Peer Support groups; counselors; Caleo (a treatment management group who help you maintain the impetus to take the billion pills a day we were taking); clinics; dental care (now up and running); volunteer work (to keep one sane). What started out as volunteer work at the then PLWHA (NSW) Inc (now Positive Life) turned into paid employment as a research assistant. I started writing for “Talkabout” magazine, joined the Positive Speakers. Bureau, and learnt to use a computer. A couple of stints back in full-time employment made me realise that big changes needed to be made with my life. By this time my health was pretty well back together. A couple of nights out pushed home just how few people I knew, however did lead to meeting my current (now ex) partner. A brief encounter with Indinivir sludge in my kidneys (which involved having a stent inserted then removed) also made me aware that for HIV+ people the unexpected can happen at any time. Yet another change of doctor. Self-empowerment had become an important issue, and I wanted a say in my health management, as distinct from being dictated to. Big changes were about to happen.
In 2000 David and I did a big (and expensive) holiday to the Red Centre. It was an amazing experience. Before leaving Sydney I had applied to the University of Technology in Sydney to do my degree in writing. Shortly after arriving back home I was informed that I had been accepted. Ah, the advantages of mature age AND disability. So spent three years doing my Graduate Certificate in Writing, was office- bearer for the Special Needs Collective…in fact I WAS the Special Needs Collective, and discovered I hated having to deal with the moronic “radicals” who called themselves the Student Association and did nothing except rant and rave, and waste student money. I was glad to leave uni. Towards the end of 2004 I decided to get my chef’s credentials from East Sydney TAFE, and crammed a 12-month course into 6 months. As much as I hated uni, I really loved TAFE and found it more grassroots and honest. David and I started Alderman Catering, a top-end catering business though it only lasted about 2 years as I found it very exhausting. I then sort of returned to my retail roots by opening a web site called Alderman Providore to sell Australian made gourmet grocery items. The site proved successful, and within 4 years I was opening my second site, this time specialising in tea, coffee and chocolate products. I got involved in a trial using Goat’s Serum to treat HIV, but again another waste of time. I did manage to get a skin rash from it, and managed to score a $1,000 for participating. In late 2009 the GFC hit, and online shopping took a major hit. After a disastrous Christmas that left me severely out if pocket, I decided to sell the business and put it behind me.
More eye problems followed, this time involving my blind eye. Back to the regular rounds at the Sydney Eye Hospital, and an injection of Avastin into the blind eye to stop it creating new blood supplies to an eye that couldn’t see. By this time, the interior of the bad eye was collapsing, and it took on an unnatural colour. Before this I hadn’t looked blind. Now I did!
The next step, which sort of brings us up to date, was a major move. Plans to move north had been on the agenda for 10 years – in 2011 it finally happened, though we did jump the border which wasn’t in the original plan. Recently my retina detached in my one seeing eye…or rather was pushed off by all the scar tissue present from my original CMV infection. An emergency operation to scrape down the scar tissue, and replace the retina and fluid (called a vitrectomy) has seen my sight degenerate even further and I am now the proud owner of a white cane curtesy of Guide Dogs Queensland. It has become obvious that our two Jack Russell’s are not, despite their best of intentions, good seeing-eye dogs. I can see, though very poorly. A lot of life is a blur these days.
However, I am not going to complain. I have always enjoyed a challenge, and this presents yet another one. I gave up smoking 15 years ago, and drink only lightly and socially these days. My partner and I both adopted a healthy diet and exercise program 8 years ago when we both started getting unattractively over-weight and inactive. We have both turned our lives around by adopting this course of action. In 2013, I obtained my Certificate III in Fitness from Southbank TAFE. It proved both a challenge for me, and for the TAFE, as they had never had a student with severe visual impairment do the course before. And finally, at the beginning if this year, I had my troublesome blind eye removed. I now have a very life-like prosthetic that I dan do drunken party tricks with.
33 years eh! OMG where have those years gone? Despite all the discrimination, stress, anxiety, illness, deaths, survivor guilt and despair, there have been moments of great introspection, illumination, strength and enlightenment. That over-used word “empowerment” springs to mind and that is perhaps the one word that sums all those years up. Victim? No way! Survivor? Not in my words! And I have never been one to wallow in self pity. You just need to grab life by the balls, and get on with it. I trust that is what I have done.
Tim Alderman
Copyright 2012, 2015
AIDS Quilt unfolding in Government Pavilion, Sydney Showground circa 1988. L-R Peter McCarthy, Peter Gilmore, Bevan, Steve Thompson, Tim Alderman
