Category Archives: Humour

Life in Kellett Way, Kings Cross, 1985.

November 4, 2015Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, HumourAdam Carr, Gay, Kellett Way Kings Cross, Mardi-gras, Outrage Magazine, Sydney gay lifetimalderman

A 1985 fluff piece by Adam Carr for “Outrage” magazine. Adam was visiting Sydney to report on Mardi Gras, and was a friend of my boyfriend at that time, Damian Guy. We were living in Kellett Way in The Cross at the time, behind a strip club. He came to visit us for dinner, and the next thing we knew…we were an article! Again, a lot of editorial license is used, and it is quite a funny piece. For the record, there was NO pink in the flat – it is one of my hate colours – and NO mantelpiece of tiny ornaments lol. For the sake of identification, Damian became “Shane” and I became “Tony”. We had no idea he was writing it, and the look on my face when reading it in Outrage, and the dawning on who it was about, must have been priceless.

Political Snippet: When the chips are down, be alarmist!

September 13, 2015General Interest, Humour, Opinion Piece, Politicaltimalderman

Australian Icons:The Ferocious Australian Drop Bear

January 26, 2015Article, General Interest, History, Humour, TravelogueAussie, Australian mythology, deadly Australian animals, drop bears, tourism in the bush, when visiting Australiatimalderman

phascolarctos malum or Thylarctos plummetus, depending on what area they are from.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_bear) “A dropbear or drop bear is a fictitious Australian marsupial.[1] Drop bears are commonly said to be unusually large, vicious, carnivorous marsupials related to koalas (although the koala is not a bear) that inhabit treetops and attack their prey by dropping onto their heads from above.[2][3] They are an example of local lore intended to frighten and confuse outsiders and amuse locals, similar to the jackalope, hoop snake, wild haggis or snipe.

Various methods suggested to deter drop bear attacks include placing forks in the hair, having Vegemite or toothpaste spread behind the ears or in the armpits, urinating on oneself, and only speaking English in an Australian accent.”

I have never really looked into the lore behind our local super marsupial…the drop bear. However, this morning – it being Australia Day here – I jokingly made a reference to them in a Facebook post, saying to be careful, as I had seen them heading into the bush with a slab (carton of beer). Then my writer instinct kicked in, and I wondered just how had this mythology around the drop bear started, and just how ingrained into our iconology had it become.

Us Aussies find the whole tourist scare “campaign” about drop bears hilarious. I have a friend – an Australian – who lives in NYC and has a lot of American friends. He gets great delight out of scaring them to death, relating stories about the dangers of drop bears if touristing here, backed up with comments from us over here. I tend to wonder about the gullibility of people.

The wonderful thing about the drop bear myth is how it has come to be backed up with some pretty credible research from believable organisations and publications. It would seem that everyone wants to be in on the joke. This from the Australian Museum:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Drop-Bear

If ever there was an institution to give legitimacy to a subject, anything with the word “museum” in it would be right up there. Also, some “serious” research work from the “Australian Geographic”:

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/03/drop-bears-target-tourists,-study-says/

The research, done in a NSW drop bear Hot-Spot, has found that talking with an Australian accent helps keep them at bay.

Needless to say, spoof sights for drop bears have cropped up as well, and one has to wonder just how many overseas tourists have clicked on this link and booked a Drop Bear Adventure. Too funny.

http://www.dropbearadventures.com.au/drop-bear/

And this from Buzzfeed:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/cconnelly/10-terrifying-facts-about-the-australian-dropbear-s3x

There are also three apps to play games of Drop Bear.

Drop Bears are a great example not only of the often perverse Australian sense of humour, but is one of our endearing qualities…not taking ourselves too seriously, and liking to laugh at ourselves.

This link has someone even creating a history for them:

https://picsandstuff.wordpress.com/tag/drop-bear/

But perhaps more than anything is the proliferation of photos and graphics that depict drop bears. You can never say Australians don’t have a sense of humour!

Tim Alderman
(C) 2015

The Waitress

November 14, 2014Fiction, Humour, Short Storycronies, function, vultures, waitresstimalderman

My partner and I actually witnessed this happening at a Historic Houses Trust function held at the old Mint building in Macquarie St. We were members of the group in the corner, and did eventually get fed, though at one stage it seemed unlikely. Any comparisons to people living or dead is purely coincidental!

The waitress peeked around the doorway leading from the kitchen to the cobbled yard. Peering hard through the crowd, she lined her sights up with the area on the far side rear of the courtyard, the area that she was determined to get to.

The coast appeared clear. Everyone was chatting amiably to each other, and noone appeared to take any notice of the white capped head darting in and out of the doorway.
Raising the tray of canapés high above her head, she released a deep sigh of relief, then took in a deep breath and bolted out of the doorway. Heading for her targeted area in the yard, she lithely ducked and weaved, performed a quick pirouette, and a hard-practiced pas de deux while keeping her target firmly in her sights, and her tray held high

But it wasn’t to be! One loud, overdressed old matron saw her from the corner of her wrinkled eye, and let out a high pitched squeal of triumph, attracting the attention of those in her proximity!

The poor bedraggled waitress didn’t stand a chance as the vultures closed in on her, gnarled hands scrabbling high as they greedily grabbed for the sandwiches offered on the tray.

The people in the far corner of the courtyard – the group being targeted by the waitress – let out a yell of disbelief as this was the sixth tray to have not reached them this night. With wineglasses clanking, and false teeth gnashing in glorious victory, the vultures moved back to their groups, spitting sandwich crumbs at each other, safe in the knowledge that no prey was getting past them this night.

The waitress dropped the tray down by her side, a look of sheer desperation and resignation crossing her face as once again she headed back to the kitchen.
The people in the corner, fearing starvation, regrouped to consider their options. A group of girls, obvious leftovers from their school ‘wallflower’ days and undoubtedly still unkissed, joined them to plan an attack. Their equally unattractive boyfriends had the ‘lean and hungry’ look that foretold of struggles yet to come, albeit post-acne.

An old duck in a loud floral pants suit watched, was glancing salaciously between the slowly increasing group of enforced dieters, and the kitchen. She glanced at her watch, estimating the time of the next assault.

The president of the group, struggling on his walking stick, hobbled to the microphone to intone the rest of the evening’s proceedings. The young blues group, entertaining nobody but themselves, stopped their warbling.

The vultures turned to the stage, and for several minutes were distracted enough to not notice the waitress making another foray toward the sustenance starved group at the back of the yard. A desperate, vegetarian lesbian threw herself at the waitress, but not being as tall as all the others, not quite as agile, nor quite launching herself quickly enough, got knocked aside. A gentleman in ‘old man’ beige turned and yelled a signal to Ms Loud Pantsuit. She spotted the tray, and on wobbly heels – the courtyard was cobbled – threw herself once again across the yard in a flurry of windmilling-arms and multi-coloured silk.

The waitress was not to be outdone this time. She climbed onto her toes, raised the tray up onto the tips of her fingers and lunged through the group of old cronies. The president was yelling something about “everyone being welcome, and wasn’t everyone just having the time of their lives”, but to no avail. The direction of the evening had been changed quite unwittingly from what was proposed.

Adding support to the harried waitress, other waiters and waitresses rushed from the kitchen, heading in all directions. The vultures were for a moment unsure which way to go, and it looked for a split second that the throngs at the rear might yet be fed. An elderly, almost lithe woman in purple and green flowing voile did a high jump that would have made Steve Hooket proud. With claw like hand, she grabbed three sandwiches off the tray, and threw them amongst her compatriots. Doing an agile – at least for her age – hop, step and jump, she managed to snatch a further four sandwiches from the tray. The yard was in turmoil as the vultures attacked the other tray bearers as they wended their way through the throng.

The waitress hung her head in despair. Tray hanging from her hand, she cast a lost look at the group she had tried valiantly to fend for. Almost with a tear in her eye, she whispered an ‘I’m sorry. So truly sorry’ to the vegetarian lesbian, and started her lonely trek back to the kitchen.

Never had so few been fed by so many!

Time to regroup for the next assault.

In the courtyard, the vultures picked over the bones in the far corner.

Tim Alderman
(C) 2014

Things My Mother Told Me!

November 12, 2014Article, General Interest, Humourageing advice, bad advice, furniture sdvice, parental advice, sex educationtimalderman

I’m sure we have all received snippets of advice off our parents as we grew up…some of it sound, some not. For some reason they think they are the font of all knowledge – but I beg to differ. How much donyou relate tonthe “sound advice” demonstrated bellow?

As the years start to go by with increasing haste – the first thing she told me; she said they went fast, but didn’t indicate exactly how fast! I have time to occasionally reflect upon the fact that neither my mother or father really prepared me in any way for life. Now I am sure they were well intentioned, thinking in fact that they may have been, in some naïve way, protecting me. Now I find it’s not what they took the time to tell me, but what they left out. Seeing as how I spent more of my youth with my mother than with my father, I have to assume that this repository of misinformation is mainly her fault.

‘There are only two forms of take-away,’ she profoundly announced one Friday, as we tucked into the fish, chips and potato scallops that were a family tradition on this day. It didn’t matter that we weren’t Catholic – my father was, but didn’t practice – and that both mother and myself had been raised through the simplicity of Protestantism. You always had fish on Friday. Now this was one form of take-away. The other was – to the uninformed who were not raised during the 50’s – Chinese. Yep, that was it. Fish and chips and Chinese. None of your Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian or Modern Australian rubbish. No siree! None of that foreign muck. It took me nearly 18 years to realise what a lie this had been, though to my knowledge neither my mother or father ever ate outside those guidelines, and my mother is now in her 80’s.

‘You’ll be grey, part bald and wrinkly yourself, one day my boy,’ was another lie she told me with intent regularity. I am now 60, and despite a few creeping grey hairs, I still have a full head of dark hair. I can also still get away with being in my late thirties – oh all right my 40s! No mean feat…though perhaps good tenetics, mum! Just because my old man was bald and wrinkly by the time he was 45, what made her think that hereditary had it in for me as well?

Perhaps not having two kids may have assisted me, as she also constantly reminded me that ‘there was no greater thing you could do with your life than get married and have children.’ Mmm where can I go with this one! She was so impressed with the whole process that she fled home when I was a mere 11 years old, and my brother a whole 7. She then proceeded to give birth to my half sister 18 years later – at a time of her life when she should, by all rights, have been sitting back and lounging on Queensland islands, or spending her days lost in a pokie euphoria at the local RSL. I hope she doesn’t hold me responsible for any of that.

‘You must have a trade to get by on in life,’ was probably one of my favourites. I had been having gay fantasies since I was 9 years old, and here she is thinking I’m going to be a bricklayer, carpenter, electrician or plumber. Not likely, thinks I! I hide all my art works away, and only allow them to be viewed by one spinster aunt, who sort of understands what it is all about. Apart from anything else, it never really explains why she buys me dolls when I request them – and I’m not talking Ken-type dolls here. I like to dress them up. Perhaps she thinks I’m going to be a fashion designer, and hides the fact from my father for fear that he will disown me? Well, he did that anyway, and it was a long while before I actually ‘came out’ that I found myself disinherited.

So, I managed to avoid any of the butch trades, and even managed not to end up an accountant or anything else remotely embarrassing. Instead, I wasted 30 years of my bloody life in retail, hating every day of it, and wishing to God I had become a builder, even if it was just for the perving that I could do on the job. Now, I’ve sort of gone full circle. Though not a fashion designer, or an artist, I am a writer (and to make it worse – a poet!), and have finally found that not only is it a pleasure to be getting older, it is an even greater pleasure to be doing what I have always wanted to do.

‘Choose your furniture carefully. If you do, it can last you for most of your life,’ she would say as she wiped over the teak laminex sideboard and dining table. Now don’t tell me you haven’t copped this one! She might enjoy living with the same tacky furniture for 50 years, but I’ll be damned if I will. I still cringe at the recollections of going to visit her and my step-father at Toongabbie. It was like reliving my life at Sylvania in a time warp. Neither the style, nor the laminex had changed. And the lounge was a Harvey Norman spectacular, undoubtedly bought at a 40-hour sale. I breathe a sigh of relief as I bring an image of the ‘Freedom’ and ‘Ikea’ logos into my mind. I’ll change my furniture every five years, thank you all the same mum! Besides, nobody has an orange kitchen or teak laminex furniture anymore – or do they?

‘Go ask your father’ or ‘ Go ask your mother’ were the words of wisdom handed out to je by both if the disgusting subject of sex was ever brought up. I may have bern running around with a constant boner, and wanking like there was no tomorrow, but no gems of wordly wisdom to inform me if what was going on were forthcoming! Well, they did make one attempt by sneaking onto my room one night and leaving me some delightful pamphlets published by our local Congregational Church. Oh what a joy to find them the next morning! Having spent some time trying to decipher what the anatomical diagrams were about, I happily came to the conclusion that I had both a penis….AND a vagina. So much for that effort! I ended up letting nature sort it, though not before totally stressing mum out with a lot of very stiff sheets, and underwear. Fair retribution, I call that!

Despite all this, I have ended up a fairly well-balanced adult. I know! A bloody miracle isn’t it! I have aged well, live in a tastefully decorated Queenslander, eat in a large variety of restaurants serving many different cuisines, am a writer with a respectfully popular blog…and I’m gay! Now there is something they could never have advised me on, though perhaps my curiosity as to who these ‘bloody poofters’ were, that my father was always muttering on about, may have had something to do with it. Credit where credit is due! I found I had heaps of fun with the poofters, and still continue to!

Mum and Dad! Thanks for the advice…but I’ll leave it, all the same!

Tim Alderman
(C) 2014

The Troll Affair

November 4, 2014Fiction, Humour, Short Storydwarves, fairies, fantasy, fiction, gnomes, trollstimalderman

This was a comic story I started when writing at UTS. It is an ongoing story and obviously not finished.

‘Bloody trolls!’ Cadfel muttered, slamming the front door behind him and entering the small dining room.
‘What are they up to now?’ Fingel asked, putting the morning edition of ‘Gnome News’ on the table, glancing at Cadfel as he plonked himself into a chair opposite.
‘They’s got the bleedin’ Fairies up in arms, they has,’ he said, thumping the table, making the teapot, cups and saucers jump several inches. ‘Tryin’ to take over the garden fountain, filthy creatures that they is!’ he yelled, thumping the table again. The teapot moved precariously towards the edge of the table. ‘Fairies ain’t happy at all. You know how they feel about the fountain, especially after all the wand tapping and sprite spells they’ve used to get it right.’ He folded his hands on the table and peered at Fingel over the top of his glasses. ‘They’s talking about a strike! They want the trolls out, and I can’t says I blame them. Where goin’ to have to talk this out with them.’ He tapped his fingers on the table, suddenly giving it another thump. This was too much for the teapot. It teetered for a second, then crashed to the floor. Steam emanated from its remains, tea leaves splattering the table legs, and the shoes of the gnomes seated at the table.
Fingel jumped, a look of exasperation crossing his wrinkled face. ‘Please Cadfel, not another meeting. You know trolls and fairies can’t be in the same room together. Shit, can’t we find some other way to negotiate? Bloody trolls will stink the place out! They only want the fountain out of spite. You know that!’
‘Yeah, I knows,’ Cadfel answered, bending down and starting to collect the pieces of broken china scattered over the floor. ‘Bloody rotters never wash, so I don’t know what they ’s wantin’ with the bleedin’ fountain. Probably just want to muck it up, just to give them fairies the shites.’
‘Reckon you’re right’ Fingel replied. ‘Best we go and see the fairies and try to sort this out right now. I don’t want a meeting if I can help it. Bloody fairies flitting all around the room, tapping their bloody wands on everything, and making out they’re so bloody high and mighty.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Then the trolls humping and grumping everywhere, shaking their fleas over the fairies just to give them the shits, scratching and moulting everywhere. Hell, Cadfel, we have to sort this out without a meeting.’ He headed towards the door.
‘Come on, let’s go and see if we can calm Pookie and her lot down a bit!’
Cadfel dropped the pieces of the broken pot in the garbage tin, and followed Fingel out, slamming the door behind him.
The cup and saucer crashed to the floor.

Leaving the gum tree, they waddled down the path towards the dell. Elves, now resident in the plots of Kangaroo Paw that had been planted in groupings down the path edge, peered out at them as they passed, tittering to each other in elf-talk. Pretending that nobody could see them was one of their favourite games, though Cadfel occasionally ventured the opinion that is was pretty stupid pretending no one could see you when they were looking straight at you. Still, that was elves, and like everything else they did, none of it made sense.
Continuing down the path, a group of six fairies floated toward them – you could tell they were fairies from the gossamer wings on their backs – bearing placards with ‘GIVE US BACK OUR FOUNTAIN’, ‘DOWN WITH TROLLS’ and ‘FAIRY POWER’, rounding a bend that led around to the wishing well. Pookie, the lead fairy, was in a tizz, buzzing backward and forward through the group, yelling rousing chants and trying hard to get the group agitated. They halted when Cadfel and Fingel approached, grouping tighter together to form a barrier across the pathway.
‘Okay Pooks! What’s going on?’ Fingel asked, ducking his head to avoid a shower of fairy dust aimed straight at him. ‘Can we try to keep this civilised. We don’t want any trouble from you lot.’
‘Don’t talk to us about trouble,’ Pookie warbled, swooping over his head, swishing her wand and sending out another shower of dust. ‘It’s those awful trolls. It’s not enough that they go around stinking up the garden. They’re now leaving tide marks in the fountain, splashing around in it like they owned it. The waters polluted, Fingel! Polluted, I tell you!’ she grabbed a ‘TROLLS LEAVE TIDE LINES’ placard off the fairy closest to her, and shook it in their faces. ‘No more favours from the fairies, boys! We’re on strike! No pleasant dreams, no magic mushroom rings, and no fairy bread, fairy floss or fairy cakes until we get our fountain back!’ She thrust the placard back at the fairy she had grabbed it from, and with a heave-ho of her tiny hand, ushered the hovering, glittery group straight through the middle of the two gnomes.
‘Shite!’ said Cadfel, watching them as they vanished up the path, thrusting the placards at the elves as they passed by, as if the elves would care! Too bloody busy pretending nobody could see them, as usual. ‘What we gunna do now, Fingel?’ Cadfel asked, turning back to his friend.
‘Guess we’d better go and see what the trolls are up to,’ Fingel replied. ‘Let’s go and see what damage they’ve done, and try to negotiate a peace.’ He started to work his way down the path, ‘Shit Cadfel, they threatened no fairy bread. We can’t have this! We can’t go without fairy bread!’
Cadfel sighed, following him towards the wishing well.

They continued on down the path, kicking up fairy dust litter as they went. Turning a bend just past a bed of Aster daisies, the tiny-pitched roof of a wishing well came into view. A light plume of steam rose from behind the well, then suddenly a small dragon appeared, nipping at their heels and singeing their shoelaces with tiny licks of fire emitting from its mouth.
‘Calm down, Scales,’ A tiny water sprite appeared from the bucket suspended over the opening to the well. ‘It’s only the gnomes! Don’t carry on so. I’m sorry guys,’ the tiny figure replied, climbing out of the bucket and standing on the edge of the well. ‘Scales is still a baby, and a bit on the naughty side. You know what these Australasian dragons are like. They either say bugger-all, or you can’t shut them up!’
‘What’s ya doin’ in the well?’ Cadfel inquired, peeking over the edge.
‘Hiding from the bleeding fairies. Cor, ain’t they on the warpath,’ the sprite replied, grabbing the dragons lead, and attempting to bring it to heel, without much luck. A small shrub near the edge of the path went up in flames, causing Fingal to jump.
‘Well, trolls will be trolls,’ Fingal said, blowing on the small fire in an attempt to put it out. He gave up, turning back to the sprite, who was walking back from the well with a pail of water in his tiny hand. He threw it over the flames.
‘Bad boy!’ he shouted at the dragon, shaking a finger. The dragon ignored him, singeing a patch of grass as he snuffled around.
‘The fairies are a bit upset, losing their fountain and all. We’re on our way to negotiate with the trolls. We’ll try to broker some sort of agreement. Want to join us, Gaddy?’
‘Naw, don’t think so, Fingal. Got my hands full with Scales at the moment. Anyway, never have liked that Pookie. A bit high and mighty for my liking,’ he replied, finding himself being dragged back towards the well by Scales. ‘Good luck, all the same. It’s time those trolls were put in their place. Always causing trouble.’
The dragon was on its back, and Gaddy was rubbing its belly. Steam puffed out the dragon’s mouth as it rolled around, obviously enjoying the attention.
‘Yeah, we understand. Cute dragon!’ Fingal said, starting to move back down the path. A sudden whoosh caused them to look back. Gaddy was stamping his feet, a puff of smoke rising up from his shoes.
‘Can we gets a dragon?’ Cadfel asked. ‘They sure looks like fun!’

The sound of splashing water and raucous laughter reached them before the fountain even came into view. As the gnomes came out from behind a poinsettia tree, a stream of water hit them, knocking them to the ground. They stood, wiping water from their faces. A grizzled figure stood a short distance from them, watching the shenanigans going on in the fountain. Five trolls jumped and splashed about in the murky water.
‘Your boys enjoying themselves, Wiggat?’ Fingel asked. The troll towered over him.
‘And what can we do for you nosey gnomes,’ Wiggat replied, guffawing as one of the swimmers did a double somersault, knocking a concrete frog off the edge of the fountain. The frog smashed, green concrete spraying in all directions.
‘This is Pooky’s territory,’ Fingel said, bending down and picking up some shards of concrete that had skittered as far as his feet. ‘She’s not happy about you boys dirtying up her fountain, and I can’t say that I blame her. Just look at it! It’s a right disgrace.’
The usually blue fountain water was dark grey, a scum mark noticeable where the water had retreated to, as the trolls frolicked about.

To be continued…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Alderman 2003

From the Pen of an Ageing Dissident

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Alderman
(C) 2013