Tag Archives: HIV/AIDS

Why HIV/AIDS History Matters!

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Please note that my use of language here is deliberate, and of-the-time! I make no apologies for it!

The one thing that really got my back up during the Coronavirus/Covid pandemic was that this was touted as the most devastating pandemic of our times. There was the occasional nod to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but it was almost as if the 40-odd year whispers about the most devastating pandemic of the modern era…HIV/AIDS…had never happened. I looked at the worldwide death figures from Covid, approxiamately 7.5 million, with many millions more recovering from it. I then compare this to the death rates from HIV/AIDS over the last 40+ years which stands at over 43 million and still rising (630,000 in 2023 alone) despite modern treatments. The difference between the two pandemics is staggering! And of course, up until 1996 and the advent of HAART (Highly Active AntiRetroviral Therapy), your chances of recovering from AIDS was almost zero!

In this day and age, your chances of living with HIV with no serious illness implications, and by taking 1 or 2 pills a day, is very high. Yes, stigma and discrimination still exist, and I would never downplay that, but for the ease of maintaining good health for the lifetime you may have it for, there is little recognition now for the 40 year battle that led to now! Most people who seroconvert now, due in many respects to generational experiences, have no knowledge of the history of HIV/AIDS, and may never encounter a long term survivor who has lived that history!

So, why is HIV/AIDS history important? Well for starters, the response was nothing like Covid! HIV/AIDS has to be viewed in its main time setting of the 1980s/90s. This alone is a historically important era, as the LGBT community gained rights under the laws of many countries, where we finally came out into the open and proudly displayed our sexuality to the world. In retrospect, HIV/AIDS could not have picked a worse time to raise its head! It’s effects upon a newly openly emerging sub-culture were devastating, and in a world where hatred, misinformation, prejudice and stigma were still rife within the general communities we lived in, for many it was a rough journey from being closeted, to being “out”. So, just as my journey as a late emerging 26yo gay male, just starting out on my sexual awakening, little knowing that three years later both that journey and my HIV journey would go forward hand in hand, so the journey of the LGBT community would find itself both politically and socially intertwined.

From a community perspective, HIV/AIDS created an affirming group of mixed people. That here in Sydney we created what was an LGBT ghetto gave us great strength. The vast majority of this community lived in the Darlinghurst/Surry Hill/Paddington/Newtown/Kings Cross areas, and in many respects our services were centred in these areas. We had our bars, hotels and nightclubs; our own retail strip; cafes and restaurants; our newspapers; medical, dental and legal services; community and support groups. A self-contained community within the wider communit. There was a security and strength within this.

And this is where the strength of the community becomes historically important when HIV/AIDS appeared in the early 1980s. Despite knowing very little about the origins or eventual outcomes of what was to become a worldwide pandemic, the community stepped in early to put both political, medical and support mechanisms in place, as what started as a dribble of cases became a waterfall.

Out of our community of both positive and negative individuals, gay men and lesbians, we started negotiating with politicians to make funds available to help set up support mechanisms, and fortunately we had the very foresighted health minister Neal Blewett conferring with our community on strategy. As a country, we were among the first in the world to start taking the upper hand with HIV/AIDS,to attempt to minimise its impacts

We established what are now long-standing groups for both political clout, and support for those infected. ACON (AIDS Council of NSW), NAPWA (National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS), BGF (Bobby Goldsmith Foundation), CSN (Community Support Network), ANKALI, PLWHA (NSW) Inc (People Living with HIV/AIDS), ASHM (Australian Society of HIV Medicine), Maitraya Day Centre, NorthAIDS, HALC (HIV/AIDS Legal Centre), NUAA (NSW Users and AIDS Association), ACTUP, and many other groups (even an AIDS bus at one stage) had their foundations in the 1980s/90s, and many still continue today within the framework of an evolving pandemic.

A lot of negativity also existed alongside this. Misinformation raised its ugly head even in our hospitals, leading to disgraceful headlines regarding full contagion gear, meals being left outside patients doors. Politicians like the Rev Fred Nile openly created fear and religious discrimination through misinformation. People in contact with HIV/AIDS patients wouldn’t touch crockery, cutlery, glassware, bed linen, toothbrushes. There was no open dialogue about those infected sexually, through blood transfusions, or needles. Safe sex messages became confused, and the badly timed Grim Reaper ad appeared. There was a perception of HIV/AIDS being a “gay disease” even when it crossed over into the straight community. Virus’s do not discriminate!

The community itself suffered innumerable and relentless loss as the pandemic ravaged our social circles. Funerals were daily affairs, our newspapers death notices took up pages. It politicised Mardi Gras! St Vincent’s Hospital established Ward 17 South as a dedicated AIDS ward, and set itself up as the premiere health care hospital, along with palliative care at the Sacred Heart Hospice.

Money poured in…not always political funding, but from within the community itself. Pubs ran auctions, and groups like BGF established fund raisers such as the Bake-Off. We had dedicated HIV GPs, and PBS funding for HIV treatments were established, so that care and treatments were always within the financial constraints of those on pensions. Government departments such as Centrelink, and the Department of Housing came on board with fast track pension approvals, and rental subsidies. Centres, such as the Dental Hospital set up trials. Clinics became specialised. We established memorials such as the Candlelight Vigil, the AIDS quilt, World AIDS Day, and the AIDS Memorial Garden in Sydney Park, so that grief could be openly expressed, never alone, but nurtured within a group setting.

This is why HIV/AIDS history in important, not just as to how a community responded to a seemingly chaotic pandemic, bringing all its diverse aspects together to create support and care, but how we, as individuals, have our seperate and diverse stories of how our lives were, in many ways, empowered and enriched within the structures we had created. Our lives, and deaths, mattered.

This history must never be forgotten. Recent pandemics such as Covid could have taken lessons from these pages of history. There is strength in community, provided we evade the negativity of exclusion, stigma and prejudice.

Sometimes, instead of looking forward, we need to look back.

Interestingly, from a historic perspective, there has never been a review, detailed study, or a commission into the handling of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It would be fascinating to see what was revealed!

And over 40 years down the line from the first infections, we seem to be no closer to having a vaccine, or method of eradication! At this time, despite being able to suppress it using antiretrovirals, it would appear that HIV still has the upper hand!

Tim Alderman ©️2025

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 5

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The period of the Great Denial was about to begin.

I have copies of many of my medical records from around 1994 through to 1999. Included are correspondence between my GP and specialists, information on trials, pathology, viral loads, hospital discharges, along with my own notes giving a chronology to all that was going on. I haven’t actually looked through them for many years. Perusing them now is a very scary process. How I ever survived all this I do not know! There are some frightening prognosis, and the word “enigmatic” appears more than once as my medicos tried to work out just what the hell was going on with many of my symptoms, and test results. If I was religious, I’d say it was a miracle! But I’m not religious! This was pure stubbornness, nothing else!

Ever since having pneumonia, I’d had ongoing problems with anaemia, and though possibly just because I was HIV+, it was later acknowledged by Professor Dwyer, from POW hospital, that there was a distinct possibility it was caused by AZT. I do remember how tired it made me feel. Everything was an effort! I used to walk from Darlinghurst to the then Redfern Mall in Surry Hills to do my groceries…Clancy’s in Darlo were scandalously overpriced…and it was a slow, exhausting walk.

Everything started to decline. For most of the two years between 1994 and 1996, I was put on, and taken off AZT. My CD4 counts dropped to 160, and continued on a slow downhill slide from there. My weight started dropping! In one letter from a specialist to Marilyn McMurchie, it was stated that my weight was 52kg! Considering that for many more recent years my weight was stable at 68kg, and that I now try to maintain it at between 74kg and 76kg, find it hard to visualise myself at 52kg! During my recovery years of late 1996/1997, drinking mates at The Oxford informed me, scarily, that despite wearing baggy clothes to try to disguise it, they could tell I was rapidly losing weight, and speculated on when I would just…disappear, like so many others!

Yet despite all the signs of a rapid decline towards the inevitable end, I went into full denial, and carried on as if nothing was happening. By 1995, the Stronghold Bar had closed, though I continued to DJ at the Oxford Hotel, and for the Dolphin Motor Club at the Midnight Shift. A couple of close friends died which utterly shattered me. Stuart and Don, both whom I did my gutter drag stints with, both passed…Don from stomach cancer, Stuart from AIDS. With them gone, all the wind went out of my sails, and I threw a large party at my apartment…still shared with Tony…and sold off all my costumes and drag. An era had come to an end! The other thing that ended around this time…though in some ways substituted by copious amounts of alcohol…was my sex life. Always pretty healthy up until this time, I just lost interest, and, I gues with my weight dropping at the rate it was, I just didn’t want to be seen stripped down naked!

In early 1996, Tony and I decided to move from The Dorchester in Darlinghurst, to an apartment in Penkivil St in Bondi. It was here that things took a turn for the worst. Initially, I started complaining to Tony about how dark the apartment was…it wasn’t! Then stepping out of the shower one day, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Who was that person, that emaciated skeleton in the bathroom with me! It was a horror show! Skin stretched over bone! I often went to the French patisserie on the other side of Bondi Rd from the end of our street. Just crossing Bondi Rd was an effort. A couple of years later, I ran into the woman who used to serve me there. She told me she would watch me crossing the road, always fearing I would collapse midway, I was so thin and frail looking. She was astounded that I had survived that period (all that I said was that I had a viral infection on my brain…not quite the truth, not quite a lie…I didn’t go into detail!).

In early June 1996, I collapsed on the footpath outside my apartment building. I could hardly breathe, and had this heavy weight in the centre of my chest. My immediate thought was that a heart attack was going to spirit me away before AIDS got me! It could be a blessing! With no one around to help, I got myself into my apartment, and rang Tony to get me to St Vincent’s. It was a collapsed left lung! Thankfully neither the cardiac problems, or PCP I was suspecting.

I was in St Vincent’s Ward 17 South (the AIDS ward) for 2 weeks. Despite my vision greying out, I kept insisting that I just needed new lenses in my glasses. I saw Dr David Cooper, but although questioned regularly about my eyes, I insisted they were fine! Talk about denial! It is a period of stupidity I’ve never forgiven myself for! To my thinking, having gotten though 13 years of HIV relatively unscathed, it could not possibly get me now! My care at St Vinnie’s could not have been better, despite a massive cut to hospital funding that occurred at this time. Our HIV nurses were walking miracles. I was still on the Oxfords DJ roster at this time, though I remember the shocked look on Sandy’s face (a manager at the Oxford) when, on visiting someone else there, she realised I was in there as well. It probably looked obvious I wouldn’t be returning to the mix-decks anytime soon!

I was discharged at the end of two weeks. It is at this point where I am about to make a decision that would save my life! Feeling that Marilyn had too soft an approach to HIV, and desiring a more aggressive approach to my health care…I had my rather scary discharge papers sent to Dr Cassy Workman! Perhaps more importantly, despite being told it could take three-plus months to get in to see the tee-shirt wearing, chain-smoking Cassy…a week later her receptionist rang to say she wanted to see me…urgently!

So a few days later, I turned up at her (then) Surry Hills surgery. Her consults were far from normal, something patients were thankful for as the casual setting put them more at ease. It is not even a point of despute that Cassy was one of the most knowledgeable, most radical, most aggressive HIV GPs in Sydney at this time. Those under her care adored her. The very first thing she did when I got in was to check my eyes. She immediately suspected CMV (Cytomeglovirus retinitis). She rang Patrick Versace (a leading Sydney ophthalmologist) and arranged for me to visit him at his Hurstville eye clinic the next day. A friend drove me there the next morning. He confirmed the diagnosis. By the time I got back to Bondi Junction, I received a phone call from Cassy to say I was to get to Prince Henry hospital, at Little Bay, IMMEDIATELY! They were waiting for me!

25th June 1996! So, a very scary bus trip to Prince Henry, without even a stop-over at home. It was coming on nightfall when I got there. As promised, the nurse in triage was waiting for me. It was not a healthy boy who turned up that night. Weighing in at 48kgs, I had chronic anemia, chronic candida, chronic bilateral CMV retinitis, and 10 CD4 cells. They didn’t need to tell me prognosis was not good! I was admitted to Mark’s Pavilion (the AIDS ward) that night, then followed 2 weeks of blurred memories…life went into fast-forward! Hooked up to blood, and saline drips. Hourly blood sugar tests…my finger tips were so sore from the pricks! In my mind, this was my final pit-stop. I remember vividly how reconciled I felt about that. Not scared at all…just very much at peace at such an…inevitability!

But the twist was coming!

The ward on the floor above us in Marks Pavilion was for the HIV/AIDS Tuberculosis guys. My first morning there, I was piled into a mini van with other patients from both floors who required care at Prince of Wales (POW) hospital in Randwick. The eye clinic there was to become a very familiar place over the next couple of years. And so my first experience with the very scary ganciclovir intraocular injections. Trust me on this…no matter how necessary it may be, our eyes just don’t want needles poked into them. And will go to any means to avoid it. Trying to keep your eye still when you know a needle is heading towards it…they have to try every trick in the book. The weird thing is that it doesn’t hurt, it’s just the eyes defensive function. Anyway, we got there, and this had to be done quite a few times a week until the CMV became quiescent. Both my eyes were full of the cloudy formations typical of CMV, though my left eye was more severely affected, with only a small window of vision left in it. The optic nerve was severely affected. I was lucky…it never got into my nervous system…a very scary way to die.

There was one very touching incident that happened. One of the TB boys and myself often attended the same eye clinic. He was a good looking lad, and appearing to have little support from family and friends, I sort of took him under my wing. I consider myself to be a pretty tough guy…I’ve had enough hard strikes in my day to make me so…my friends say they admire my pragmatism. I can’t remember the guys name, but we were sitting together in the waiting room and started discussing our situations, our fears. I put my arm around his shoulder, and it was like a trigger…we both ended up in tears. Such a brief, intimate encounter, and it was the last time I saw him, but I’ve never forgotten it. The lonely guy and the tough guy sharing an instant in time. I hope he survived his TB and eye encounter. I hope his fight coontimued.

Under Immunologist Professor Dwyer I was started on a combination of old and new drugs…AZT, 3tc and the new kid on the block…the protease inhibitor Indinivir! This was the start of what was to become known as HAART (High;y Active Antitetroviral Therapy). Viral load counts were started around the same time…my initial reading in Prince Henry was 500,000! The initial high dosage of Indinivir caused nausea, so dosages were modified. I also had a bone marrow biopsy to explore how much AZT was present there. The very nervous male nurse gave me Pethidine. I was so high…an amazing experience. The biopsy was done at the rear top of my thigh, and his first sample wasn’t sufficient. Upon asking my permission to go in again for a better sample, I was so off my face I told him to do whatever he liked! There was a very nice bruise there after,

I was in Prince Henry for 2 weeks. As I stated earlier, most of it was a blur. I’m sure I had visitors, but don’t ask me who! It was all medical…including 8 trips to POW for the ganciclovir injections. At the end of the two weeks…thanks to the new drug regimes, my CD count was doing a slow rise. Handing me over to the care of clinicians and my GP, was a logical step.

So I was discharged from Prince Henry on the 9th July 1996. I got a cab home. One would think…gee this is a really good outcome! And it should have been! I’d survived AIDS! But it was just the start of an 18 month recovery nightmare.

Thrust back into a world that was not prepared for me…for us! We became the HIV worlds Lazarus syndrome survivors! No one knew what to do with us! We were left flailing in the winds of change!

Tim Alderman ©️2025

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 4

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Before diving into the 90s, a brief note on sub-cultures (Tribes) within the gay community at this time…or to be more exact, how I placed myself within the community as far as lifestyle went in the 80s and 90s. After coming out in 1980, I intentionally positioned myself in the Clone sub-culture. It was a Tribe I felt comfortable in, and adopted it with ease. It was a badge I wore with pride pretty well for the duration of my active life on the scene. The short hair, big moustache, white or black tee-shirts (and flannelette shirts during winter), Levi 501 jeans and boots were, in my eyes, the look that defined gay masculinity. I was, at times, known to dip into the leather world, but my interest in leather was never sexual! I just liked its look, so never saw myself as a leatherman. For a number of years I was an active member of the Dolphin Motor Club (DMC), and member of a gang known by the acronym G.O.D. (Girls/Guys of Disgrace) which was established by the girls who founded Wicked Women, and whose purpose was to peruse the scene at night, and report any potential problems…problems which had escalated since the advent of HIV/AIDS thanks to the media, and societal homophobia. This morphing between scenes meant I could indulge my fun-side by doing what was known as “gutter drag”…a sort of respectful parody of drag itself, using huge wigs, over-the-top make-up, big frocks…and no removal of facial,or body hair. Cleo’s “reputation” and antics still live on amongst my friends. My life revolved around the Oxford Hotel, and the Midnight Shift night club.

By the 1990s, what I call the Great Diaspora of the gay community began, starting, in many eyes, the slow demise of the gay ghetto. People fled to the far flung suburbs, the north and south coasts, to the hinterlands, to the bush, and even interstate, and overseas. Some from fear, some to get away from the relentless deaths and illnesses, some to find peace and quiet, some to die.The scene has never recovered.

So we enter the 90s! Little did we know that the apocalyptic start to the decade, with death notices filling page after page in the gay rags, and with no end in sight, would morph into a decade of great hope by the time we hit 1996. It was at its start, a time of monotherapy, and trials. At the start of 1990, I had a CD4 count of 453…and going down! Two of my ex-partners died of AIDS. Damien evidently returned to his family in Victoria, and died in 1991. I found out quite some time later, when running into a mutual acquaintance in the Oxford Hotel one might, just as I was about to attend a DMC dinner. Frank…my first Sydney partner, if I don’t count the psycho who dragged me back to Sydney from a happy Melbourne life…I ran into when leaving my hairdressers (Kulture In Hair) in Goulburn St one day in 1994.I hardly recognised the figure slowly shuffling up the street. He died a short time later.

Personally, I had a fleeting relationship with Anthony. My sex lifestyle was pleasantly fulfilled with three fuck-buddies. Paul I met in the bottom bar of the Midnight Shift in the very late 80s and would have had a serious relationship with him if he wasn’t already married to his job. Graeme I met when he and his partner Peter took me home…after picking me up in the Midnight Shift…for a threesome. The next morning I found myself in the middle of a domestic abuse (verbal) situation. It was like I wasn’t even there. Graeme drove me home, and when I asked him up for a coffee, he told me Peter would have him on the clock for his return. Shortly after, they thankfully split up, and Graeme and and I saw each other regularly for a couple of years. Gregg I met at the Oxford late one night. He wore way too much after-shave, and he had a wife and two daughters in Forbes. One of those marry-to-cover-up-being-gay situations. He came to Sydney every month to tutor on computers at Sydney Uni. We saw each other very regularly for about 2 years…until I started to get serious with him.

I quit my managerial job at Numbers Bookshop, and moved to a managerial position with Liquorland in 1990, whose store was situated under Numbers. This job was to be my last for quite some time. Not only was I out as a gay man, but also out as a HIV+ man. To my thinking, a gay man running a business on the gay strip was a no-brainer. Obviously I had the contacts in the community to bring in business…and I did. Under my management, the store shot up the rankings from 43 to 18. However, not everyone was happy with my presence! More on this shortly.

Healthwise, in 1992 I started seeing Dr. Marilyn McMurchie as my HIV specialist, and she started monitoring my CD4 and CD8 counts, and percentages. At that time, my CD4 count was <350 My greatest fears were realised…I was diagnosed as stage 3 HIV infection, and started on AZT (my thoughts on this have already been mentioned.There was a slow decline in my CD4 counts once I started on it. Having been taken off AZT briefly, I was asked to go on a trial using another monotherapy drug called 3TC (lamivudine). A short way into the trial, it was found that nearly all participants had haematological toxicity and become anaemic, so the trial was stopped. I also went on the p24-VLP (Very Light Protein) trial around this time. It was an injectable, and the theory was that by stimulating the p24 antigen, it may stop the decline to AIDS. It did nothing!

It was also the year I had viral pneumonia in my upper right lung. It was pretty serious, and something I may have shaken off more quickly if I wasn’t a chain smoker. It pretty well crippled me for a couple of weeks, and I pretty well took up residence on the lounge, in front of the tv. Recovery was very slow, and my holiday pay in advance saw me through.

In 1993, I went onto DDI (didanosine). I was reluctant to take ddC due to side effects. DDI was vile. The huge chalky tablets (jokingly called horse tablets) had to be ground down to a powder in a mortar & pestle, then you mixed them into whatever liquid made them palatable…in my case, Nestles chocolate Nesquik. Even then, you had to hold your nose when downing it! It was a nightmare to prepare in the workplace…which was only one of several problems I encountered at Liquorland.

When I started there in late 1990. The area manager was a wonderful man, who believed in inclusion and treated all the staff with respect. He left in late 1991, and replaced by Rowan, pretty well his exact opposite. Not only homophobic, but as it turned out…HIVphobic as well. For the next 18 months I was subjected to relentless bullying, by an expert. Always out of earshot of staff, the smallest thing was picked on. With no witnesses, so a his-word-against-mine situation, knowing from experience that head office would take his side. Things came to a head in late 1993 when he installed an assistant manager at the same pay grade as me. With me working 50-60 hour weeks, smoking and drinking heavily, and with a bad diet…I’d had enough. My health was already in decline, and I was losing weight. I arranged a meeting with Rowan to request that I step back to a position of assistant manager to reduce my work load. At the time of the very uncomfortable meeting, he said to my face…”You should consider quitting. You’ll be dead in a couple of years anyway!”. As it turned out, an assistant manager position opened up at the Surry Hills branch. I then went on 2 weeks vacation. Rowan would not confirm the transfer despite a number of calls. A day before I was due to return to work, he confirmed the transfer…he had been hoping I’d quit in the interim. As an act of planned revenge, I turned up at the Surry Hills store…and handed in my 2 weeks notice. Rowan said not one word to me over that period…not even a farewell!

I had started to indulge in my passion for dance music by becoming a resident DJ at The Oxford Hotel in 1990. I DJd there until 1996, and also at the Stronghold Bar (in the basement of the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills) from 1990-1994. This proved to be a handy source of additional income as time went on.

I met John at The Oxford one night just before quitting Liquorland. A gentle, artistic man (his mother thought I was too old for him) we were together for about 8 months. With my health slowly declining, I pushed him away. I didn’t want him (he was HIV-) to have to nurse me through, what I saw at that time, the inevitable end.

In 1993, Carol Ann King started the Luncheon Club and Larder, providing cheap meals and grocery items to HIV+ boys on pensions. Though never attending the club myself, I did become a disability pensioner that same year. Fred Oberg at ACON was instrumental in getting me onto the pension, and a SAS (Special Assistance Subsidy) with the Department of Housing, who paid a percentage of my private rental in The. Dorchester, in Darlinghurst.

At the same time, the Dental Hospital in Chalmers St, Surry Hills started providing free dental care to those with HIV (a trial). Having ongoing bouts of thrush as a result of a declining immune system, I attended there and had a number of teeth removed that were so loose I could have pulled them out. They also devised a small denture to fill a gap at the front lower jaw. I could smile again without covering my mouth to hide the gap.

Prophylaxis was another term we came to grips with. In 1992 I started on Bactrim for my reoccurring bouts of thrush, and Fluconazole to ensure I didn’t get PCP.

I had my 40th birthday 1n 1994. I considered myself very lucky to have reached this milestone, and threw a big bash at the Stronghold bar, where I was a DJ. Tim Vincent, a close friend and owner opened the bar early in the afternoon, put on a long happy hour, and was an open house until the bars usual opening hour. It was quite a crowd, and quite an afternoon.

By May that year my CD4 count was 160, and I was back on AZT! At this stage I estimated I had maybe 2 years left…if I was lucky, or a miracle happened. On the former, I was accurate, little knowing the latter would happen, and a miracle did happen!

Tim Alderman ©️ 2025

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 3

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We create our own memorials for a growing list of names of friends, acquaitenances, partners, and family members swept away in this new tide, a tide of grief. I attended my first AIDS Candlelight Rally and Vigil…it was the first held… in October 1985. My friend Dietmar Hollman was a reporter for 2SER Gaywaves, and reported from the rally and AIDS Candlelight Vigil,,organised by Sydney City councillors Brian McGahen (died 1990, using voluntary euthanasia) and Craig Johnston. The recording, which can be found on the Australian Film & Sound Archive, includes discussion of the 1985 Public Health Proclaimed Diseases Amendment Act, speeches from Brian McGahen, Craig Johnston, Dorothy McRae-McMahon (Dean of the Pitt Street Uniting Church), Dennis Scott, a performance from Judy Glen and vox pops from the crowd, including Robert French, and Mother Inferior (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence). The candlelight walk down Oxford Street started in Green Park, had the vigil in Hyde Park…there weren’t many names to read out at that stage, but as the years rolled by the list got longer and longer…and finished with a rally at Parliament house in Castlereagh Street. Along the way, there was a brief halt to remember Michael Stevens, a young gay man who had been bashed to death two months earlier, caught up in the tide of gay hate and hysteria brought about by media reports on the HIV/AIDS pandemic at that time. The whole event was solemn, and tearful.

The other equally emotive memorial was the AIDS quilt. The panels were created as part of the Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, which was founded in September 1988 by Andrew Carter OAM (the brother of Don Carter, known as Dodge Traffic) and Richard Johnson in Sydney. It was formally launched on World AIDS Day, 1 December 1988 by Ms Ita Buttrose. Quilt unfolding started in 1988 with 35 panels, now 122 quilt blocks with 8 panels per block. This was the most powerful of the AIDS memorials, due to its panels being designed and partially put together by friends and family of the deceased. Wandering around the blocks of panels…with conveniently placed boxes of much needed tissues…and hearing the names being read out was a truly moving experience, and no one left with dry eyes, and feeling emotionally drained. Myself and a group of friends assisted with the beautiful, quiet unfolding of the panels at both the Commonwealth Pavilion (in the old Sydney Showgrounds) and the Conference Centre in Darling Harbour. I was also a names reader, and despite the solemnity of the occasion, there was the occasional lapse

Above photo…Peter McCarthy, Peter Gilmore (Deceased), Bevan (Deceased),,Steve Thompson and myself at an AIDS Quilt unfolding (we were in folders) at the Government Pavilion (Sydney Showgrounds ) around 1988/89. The tee-shirts bear the Quilts Insignia, and “Remember Their Names”

into humour when the names of the Sisters if Perpetual Indulgence were read out. It was hard to keep a straight face. It is the one singular AIDS ritual that I miss, and feel that the panels are wasted hanging on a museum wall.

In August 1987, I was approached by The Bulletin to gather some HIV+ friends together for an interview (unfortunately I can’t remember the reporters name). The interview was held in The Oxford Hotel. I still have a copy of it, and when I read it now, I cringe. There was so much naivety back then, as we were still “filling in the gaps” in our knowledge base, so to speak. There was a mixture of positive and negative attitudes about how we rated our chances of survival, but the general feeling amongst all interviewees 3as…we will be killed by it, so let’s party while we can!

Then, despite all this solemnity going on around us, we still managed a bit of dark humour with the publication of “The Daily Plague”. This was a fanzine that had no regular publication dates…it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. It’s tongue-in-cheek satirical approach to the AIDS pandemic came at a time when it was needed. I also can’t overlook the huge role played by the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence. Despite what seemed to be a bit of flippancy, both with their over-the-top names, and the irreligious n and interpretation of Catholic ritual, they were in fact outspoken radicals, and would be seen at most rallies and vigils. I always have great admiration for those who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Much to my amazement, by this stage I was still very healthy. By 1987 I was already four years into the fray, with no sign of illness, though my CD4 counts had slowly started dropping This was the year that the controversial…most toxic and most expensive ever… drug Retrovir (AZT, Zidovudine) was introduced. A failed cancer drug, it was thought that it might “keep the wolf from the door” with HIV huts…yeah, right! Despite several flawed trials, and some evidence to show that it pretty well did nothing, they fostered it onto us.,I wanted nothing to do with it, due to the bad press around its side effects, and the results from the Concorde trial in 1991.. Patients on zidovudine should be monitored closely for nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, myalgias, insomnia, bone marrow suppression, peripheral myopathy, lactic acidosis, elevated liver enzymes, and hepatotoxicity…oh…and suppression of their immune systems! I fought my doctor on this one. Some patients flatly refused to go on it. They were the lucky ones. My doctor won that battle…and I reluctantly started on it, with massive dosing. I, and many others, paid the price for that decision.

Shortly after my return to Sydney from Melbourne in mid 1082, I met my first partner, Frank. We had an apartment over;poking the harbour in Neutral Bay. We split up around the time I seroconverted, and left my retail job in the city to take up the then far more lucrative jobs…we were paid huge amounts of money under the counter back then…as a bar useful in the Midnight Shift, and doing the graveyard shift in Numbers Bookstore. It 3as an amicable breakup and we remained flat mates. Frank also seroconverted around this time, though we both had a lot of casual sex back then, so it was impossible to pinpoint any one person for causing it. Frank died in the early 90s. While working at Numbers, I met my second partner, Damien. At that time he worked at “Dudes”, a male brothel in Goulburn Street (which later became Kulture In Hair). Damien also worked at the Den Club in Oxford Street. He was also HIV+, and died in October 1991. At the time I was officially flagged as HIV+ in 1985, my partner was Tony. He was HIV-, and the two differing status put what was already a shaky relationship on a downward spiral. We split shortly after, though have remained friends…and occasional housemates…through to the present day. Tony is still HIV-.

As we entered the 90s, things were about to come yo a head.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2025

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 2

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

New words were added to our vocabulary, a series of acronyms that would imprint themselves forever into our memories…PCP (Pneumocystis pneumonia); KS (Kaposi sarcoma); CMV (Cytomegalovirus…one I’m intimately familiar with))… MAC (Mycobacterium avium complex); candidiasis (Thrush), toxoplasmosis, to name a few. When we asked how people were, we were really asking what did they have…and what was the prognosis! Meanwhile, the Australian nightmare was well and truly hitting home.

In 1986, my first close friend, Andrew Todd, died. At that time there was no dedicated AIDS ward, and Andrew was shifted between wards as beds were needed for other cases. On Christmas Day, we visited him in what was called St Christopher’s ward (due to patients travelling into and out of it), in Sydney’s St Vincent’s emergency department. He was very thin, and frail, but we had brought gifts for him, including sheet sets, and books. We were going to a friends place in Glebe for Christmas lunch. When the time came to leave, Andrew said to us, something that was quite upsetting for us, I have to say, that he ‘wouldn’t die that day, and ruin everyone’s Christmas lunch’. It unintentionally did, as we waited all day on edge, for a phone call. True to his word, he didn’t pass away on Christmas Day. He died on Boxing Day. It was my unpleasant duty to ring everyone at a party, and inform them. Party pooper status acknowledged!

His funeral at Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, a place we were to visit on far too many occasions, was several days later. His father had travelled from South Australia to oversee it. Myself and Sandro, both close friends of Andrew’s, ended up being the middle men between those of us who wanted a funeral that was honest and respectful, and the leather community who wanted what we considered an over-the-top leather funeral. We won that one.

Towards the end of the crematorium service, as the curtains were closing over the coffin, every door in the chapel suddenly, and very loudly, slammed close. The silence after was eerie. We could say it was just the wind, but one was left wondering. Andrew got the last laugh anyway. I had lent him many novels during his hospital stays, and in his will he bequeathed them all back to me.

Sex became a conundrum. As soon as it was found that HIV was sexually transmitted, the dynamics of sex changed, at least temporarily. Some guys went celibate. Others cut out anal sex altogether. Others went to odd extremes, like standing well apart and just mutually masturbating. For a culture that was heavily geared towards sex, it was a real blow. The dynamics of “picking up” changed significantly. Condoms became the new order of the day, and condom and lube “safe sex” packs were everywhere, from sex venues to pubs and nightclubs.

ACON created the Safe Sex Sluts, who at least put a bit of fun into what was now a serious subject. This, over time, created some reverse, and some dark situations. On the dark side, terms like “bug chasing” came into being. This phrase described those who deliberately sought out HIV+ guys and indulged in unsafe sex on the purely weird chance that they would get infected. “Breed me” could often be seen on sex sites, placed there by guys who wanted to become infected. It was strange times.

Then there were guys like me who just hated sex with condoms. They ruined spontaneity, and were just passion killers. Naturally, this meant we were seeking out guys to have unsafe sex. To this end, I restricted my sex life to sex with HIV+ guys only. It was politely referred to as “negotiated unsafe sex”. I could never have lived with myself if I knowingly passed on HIV to another guy, but the thinking was that it was impossible to infect a guy already infected. Talk of the risk of creating a HIV mutated “super bug” came to nothing.

Of course, this meant constantly outing yourself as HIV+, but that has never greatly concerned me, and by this time I was working on the scene so it wasn’t a risky thing to do. For the record, I had a very fulfilling sex life. There was no shortage of HIV+ guys hunting for skin-on-skin sex. Another term spawned by the era of safe sex was “barebacking”…known as normal sex (or condom-less sex) in earlier times. Yet despite all the restrictions, self imposed or otherwise, the sex-on-premises places such as Numbers Bookstore which I managed in Darlinghurst, the Toolshed, the Hellfire Club (later to become the Den Club), Club 80 (initially thought to be Ground Zero for the Sydney epidemic) and various others, and the saunas such as 253, the Roman Baths, KKK and the Steamworks, and other notorious sites such as the beat in the Green Park toilet block, and The Wall on Darlinghurst Road, thrived.

In 1984, Ward 17 South was established at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney which became the dedicated AIDS ward. For the next 10 years it was never empty. Palliative care was through the Sacred Heart Hospice. With the support services in place, pubs and nightclubs started running events to raise money. I think if there was ever a time where I was proud to be a member of the Sydney gay community, it was seeing the huge amounts of money raised at auctions, raffles, and events. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised from the pockets of the grassroots community, and was either spread around the various support groups, or was used to buy things like televisions for Ward 17.

In 1987, Colin Crewes, seeing the need for basic lifestyle support, such as meals, a place to meet and interact with others in the same situation, massages, hair cuts, access to magazines and newspapers, counselling services etc started the “Maitraya Day Centre” in Surry Hills (it later morphed into the “Positive Living Centre”). It had a constant stream of guys socialising there. At Milton’s Point, NorthAIDS (Myrtle Place Centre) offered the same services to those living on Sydney’s northside.

Hospitals such as Westmead, hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons; full contamination clothing for those working with HIV patients, rooms not being cleaned, meals left outside doors. According to the rumourmongers, you get HIV from using plate/cups/cutlery/glasses/toothbrushes/towels/bed linen that any infected person had used. It was anathema despite it being washed, despite all information stating that you could not contract HIV through this means. Even the poor old mosquito copped a hiding as a means of contamination. An advertising campaign in 1987 featuring the Grim Reaper bowling down people indiscriminately, created an apocalyptic vision of HIV that scared the life out of everyone. It was quickly withdrawn three weeks into its six week run.

By this stage, my two years prognosis had become four years…became six…became eight. That was great for me, but not for so many others. The obituary columns in the gay rags went from scattered memoriums to pages as the death toll mounted. My life became a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, not shared alone. Our coping mechanisms were being stretched to their limit. Funerals were a daily occurrence, as were wakes. I attended as many as I could, but I just got to a stage where I was burnt out by the continuing relentless onslaught, and stopped going.

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. In 1997, having finally recovered from AIDS, and thinking it was time to reconnect to the community, I went out one Saturday night to The Beauchamp. For the first time in my life on the gay scene, in a crowded pub, I stood in a bar and could see NOBODY I knew. It was an incredibly lonely sensation.

Tim Alderman 2024

Above photo…Peter McCarthy, Peter Gilmore (Deceased), Bevan (Deceased),,Steve Thompson and myself at an AIDS Quilt unfolding (we were unfolders) at the RHI Pavilion (Sydney Showgrounds ) around 1992. The tee-shirts bear the Quilts Insignia, and “Remember Their Names”

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 1

Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDS, , , ,

I love history. Always have, and excelled at it at school. Not just local and world history in general, but individuals personal history as well. Though often distorted, edited to fit the times, world history is fixed. There is only one truth to it, no matter what narrators may say. Personal histories are quite a different thing. A hundred people will produce a hundred histories, each distinctly individual, never duplicated by anyone else. I have written much about my experiences with HIV over the last 25 years, most of it via “Talkabout”. Though personal, and often intimate, none have really gotten into the nitty-gritty of my personal, lived experience. This reflective piece is to rectify those omissions, giving both a factual and lived insight into a period in gay history that should never be forgotten. The recent Covid experience really drove home to me how HIV, its past, and still present history, was no longer of any consequence. Covid was being spoken about as though it is the only pandemic of recent time. It would be interesting to see where Covid sits in 40 years time. So this is my history with HIV/AIDS. It is more detailed, and more anecdotal than my previous writings…which also means it’s much longer. It is, with no strutting involved, a story of survival, but if survival is the gauge of one’s strength and tenacity, then I have come out at the end of it with flying colours, the glass half full, so to speak.

Over 40 years has passed since I sero-converted to HIV. I remember it well…I was managing a retail store in Sydney and was due to go on leave in August 1983. My last day before going off on my break was hellish. Temperature, diarhhea, extreme lethargy, disorientation…I couldn’t wait for the day to end. As it turned out…for the fortnight it went on for to end. I had only been out for 3 years…a late closet jumper…and I have to admit to being very trashy, making up for lost time as it was. I have wondered over the years, as have many, just who it was that infected me…and where! Was it that hot American boy who was staying in The Connaught in Darlinghurst, who picked me up one night just after my return from Melbourne (very likely!) or was it a Melbourne or Sydney local who had returned from a holiday in the USA, or, like me, gotten off with American boys (the flagour of the month) here. Of course, I’ll never know, but the speculation remains anyway!

Since that time, both as a writer, and as a 12-year public speaker with the Positive Speakers Bureau, I have told of my journey with HIV/AIDS. But the story has always had constraints…either in word length with articles, or time restrictions in talks. There is a lot more to the story than I tell in these…often done by rote…sessions.

I have just finished reading Cheryl Wares “HIV Survivors In Sydney – Memories Of The Epidemic”, an oral history project that I was part of, contributing a 21/2 hour interview with Cheryl when I lived in Gaythorne, Queensland in 2014. I was disappointed in the book, for as much as Cheryl wanted it to be a story of ordinary gay men surviving HIV/AIDS, and how it affected their lives both then, and now, it really came across as a voice for…and was hijacked by… HIV activists, rather than just us bar crawling gays-on-the-Golden-Milers. I was left feeling that both my contribution, and the contribution of others like me who weren’t part of the activist community was largely overlooked…again. I know it sounds like sour grapes, and mine is only one of a thousand survivor stories, but like many others I want there to be some sort of public record of many aspects of the HIV/AIDS survival story that doesn’t make it into many articles, or talks. The one thing Cheryl’s book did do was to invoke memories of so many personal experiences…and feelings…that made my personal HIV journey…MY journey.

This is not the first time I’ve contributed to interviews and photo sessions on HIV/AIDS survival, and either been left out in the cold, or had my story overshadowed by activists…or academics. But more on that as we go along. Because this is a personal transcript, I am not putting a word limit on it, so it’s going to be long. I want all this unknown or forgotten information to be in one article. It’s not a soul-cleansing, so don’t get me wrong. I see it more as an addendum to HIV history. I want it in writing before I either forget it, or confuse it in the fog of ageing. Luckily, I am a bit of a hoarder, so have copies of a lot of the things I will be referencing as the story unfolds. To make sense of it, I guess I need to go back to the beginning.

I have written a lot on my family, the dysfunctionality of my growing up, in my blog (http://timalderman.com), so I am not going to rehash already told stories here. In a nutshell, I was born in St. George Hospital, in Kogarah (NSW) on the 18th January 1954. I had one younger brother, Kevin, who was born in 1959. My childhood was pretty uneventful until I was 11, where with my mother deserting the family home, when my brother and I were at school. My father was a difficult man, trapped in a past that had long gone! Yet, he managed to find the housekeeper from hell…to this day I have no idea where he found her, though her move from the bed in the sunroom of our Sylvania home to the bed in the master bedroom occurred within a week, so I am left to wonder… entering our lives. Her persecution of my ADHD brother was relentless, and led to the death of him, at my father’s hands, in the waters below the cliff top known as The Gap. This blew my innocence all to the shit. My knowledge of “being different” at age 9, and my eventual coming out after my father’s suicide are also on my blog, so let’s move it all along.

1980 finds me in Melbourne, where I had just come out as a 26 year-old. A HIV story begins. Little did I know that both my life as a gay man, and my life as a HIV+ man were to walk the same road.

So what was it really like in 1982 to be reading snippets in our local gay press about this mysterious illness (KS, or Kaposi Sarcoma), rearing its ugly head in the gay ghetto’s of America, that seemed to be targeting gay men who frequented the saunas, and quickly killed 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. However, the snippets were to become columns, the columns pages as the mysterious and deadly virus…originally labelled as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (Gay plague/Gay syndrome) in 1981, it was followed by HTLV-3 in 1083…human T-lymphotrophic virus type 3…leapt from the shores of America and found its way into the gay scene here. The panic and fear began!

Our response was mixed. The first case of AIDS was reported in Sydney in October 1982 by Dr Ronald Penny. In July 1983, the first recorded Australian death from AIDS-related causes occurred in Melbourne.. The most notable death in these early days was Bobby Goldsmith (1984).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 Christians liked to rant about…the most vocal and notable being the Rev Fred Nile MLC and his Festival of Light, and Call To Australia affiliations, the advocates of hate and intolerance who demanded quarantine for all infected persons, and those of the citizenry who either quietly or vocally wished that we would all die or just go away. Mind you, we did have our fun with them. I vividly recall one early Mardi Gras…back then, joining the parade was a very informal process…where the Festival of Light were protesting at the parades starting point. Myself and some friends, dressed in leather chaps with our bare backsides hanging out of them, deliberately stood in front of them, shaking our booty, much to their horror and disgust.

There is no watering it down…discrimination and stigmatisation was rife. It was frightening!

Thankfully, common sense eventually 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 (BGF), Community Support Network (CSN) PLWA (which was to become PLWHA), ActUp, and Ankali. Without these organisations life would have been grim for those infected. They provided financial, emotional and spiritual support for those who, quite suddenl found them selves with a death sentence hanging over their heads, along with the fear of unemployment and homelessness in the midst of the hysteria going on.

I digress! In 1985 testing was introduced. It was a bit of a strange affair in the early days. Due to the hysteria, discrimination, and fear of being dragged off to quarantine…a genuine fear… no one wanted their personal details on a database, so at clinics like the Albion St Centre you chose a fictitious name, and the clinic then issued you with a number that then became your ID. Mine was Peter 3080. When things cooled down, the fictitious name was dropped, and replaced with your real name. You had a blood test, and waited for two to six weeks – talk about high anxiety – to get your result. At the time of my HIV test, I 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! The initial window periods were reasonably long, but got much shorter as time progressed, and the virus mutated. That I did not get seriously ill with AIDS until 1996…though their were other factors in play…I always put down to getting infected early in the history of the virus, thus getting a much weaker mutant of the virus than what was to come. I was in a relationship at that time, and my partner came up HIV-…already the juxtaposition between positives and negatives had begun. The strange thing was that I felt no need to hide my status. I turned up at the Oxford Hotel and said to friends…oh well, I’m positive. Of course, I was far from being the only one.

Then the horror stories started! 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

To be continued

Tim Alderman ©️ 2024

Wrong Turns…The Person HIV Created

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

Wrong Turns

How often have you asked yourself “what the hell am I doing with my life?”. How often have you sat at work and wondered,”’why am I doing this?”. I’ve found that as I get older, it’s a question that rears its ugly head more often. You ponder the missed opportunities, the wasted time in jobs you hated; you envy those who are happily going about their chosen careers, fulfilling ambitions, doing what they enjoy.

I sometimes feel I’ve lived a life of quiet desperation. Most of my work life has been for nothing. I’ve nearly always been unhappy in my job choices…despite being very good at it…and developed the I’m-just-doing-it-for-the-pay-packet mentality. Sure, my latter years have been a lot more fulfilling, but the operative word is ‘latter’.

I wasn’t offered a lot of opportunities to select a fulfilling career. I left school at 15, in 1969, with the School Certificate under my belt and no idea what I wanted to do. According to my father and his family, I needed to get myself a “career”. By ‘career’, they meant becoming a plumber, electrician, carpenter or any of the associated trades. Considering the current sexy status attributed to tradies, I’m wondering if it may not have been a bad choice. I loved working with food and even when I was at school used to create my own recipes. However, it was the wrong time to be a foodie. My father suggested becoming a hospital cook (and tried to get me into that area), but the prospect of being stuck in a hospital kitchen for years was daunting. Let’s face it, hospitals are not prestige culinary establishments, especially in the ’70s. I begged out of it, though despite the severe lack of a restaurant culture at that time, the TAFE course may have been of benefit – at least I would have got a grounding in the basics. I had an uncle who was a pastry cook and he helped get me work experience at a bakery (Isoms) in Campsie. Now, if I hadn’t been 16 years old, if I hadn’t had to get up at five every morning and if I hadn’t had washing up and measuring ingredients as the full account of my day, maybe I would have stuck with it. Four months and I was out.

I spent the next 12 months (A) as a presser at a dry cleaning outlet and (B) doing repetitive work at a battery factory, where at the age of 16 I was getting adult wages due to the high turnover of workers, and the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the work. Not very inspiring and certainly not life choices. While in the dry cleaning job, I saw an ad in the window of a menswear store for a junior shop assistant in a high end menswear store . I got the job and…

…pretty well set my career path for the next 28 years. A quick timeline from there would read clothing, records, religious and church paraphernalia, monastery, back to religious paraphernalia, bar useful, sex shop, liquor, community work, cash office manager, data entry/doctor surgery receptionist, office work (at ASHM – the Australian Society for HIV Medicine). At least a variety. Could I really say I loved any of this? Well, it was a job.

The option of continuing education, through TAFE or university, was never presented to me early in my life. Doing anything creative was frowned upon and indeed one would have had one’s ‘inclinations’ (read sexuality) put in jeopardy by even suggesting that you might want to write, be a window dresser, hairdresser, clothes designer, interior decorator, artist or anything else creative. I was told in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable.

This isn’t to say I didn’t do a few things that fulfilled my creative streak. I did some window dressing as part of general retail; I did quite a bit of writing, though none of it published at that time; I did some costume-making (as well as making my own drag outfits); some catering from home for a delicatessen; made my own jams and preserves (winning quite a few prizes in the process); and I was a DJ in two Darlinghurst gay pubs and bars for five years – the only job I’ve ever truly loved. Who knows, I could still become the oldest Trance DJ in Australia given the opportunity.

What other options would I have chosen for my life? In retrospect, I would love to have been an investigative journalist, in print or television. I enjoy research, and love history, and personally think I would have made a decent career out of it. I love gardening and would have made a successful landscaper or horticulturist. I love athletics and was a good high jumper, relay and short distance runner in my day. With the right encouragement before I started smoking, I would have loved that; or working on the stage; or a singing career (again we come back to smoking!) I have an intense interest in history, both local and global, which could have led in many directions. All these not to be.

What do I do now? I write! I love writing. It’s the flow of ideas; having that fledgling phrase circling in your head that just has to be put somewhere; the one word that can become an article; anger that can be released; opinions that can be controversial; comments that create debate; taking the collective consciousness of many and making it your own; pent-up frustrations released; intelligent argument put forward; comedy to induce a smile; information to be exchanged. Writing is wonderful.

Why suddenly 15 years ago did I head in this direction? And more importantly, where can it lead at this late stage? Well, HIV brought about this huge shift in my life.

As part of my self-organised repatriation after getting out of Prince Henry Hospital and surviving AIDS, I decided to take on some volunteer work to get out of the house and away from Days of Our Lives and the panic attacks I’d started having as a result of my swift and unexpected return to life. A life of clinics, counsellors and support groups was great for filling in time, but I also needed to do something that wasn’t medical. I’d started to see one of Sydney’s more eccentric doctors at that stage and felt a need to write about my experiences with her. This opened the floodgates, which haven’t closed since. I started writing about my experiences with HIV, the processes I was going through, the strategies I was using to cope, the sheer bloodiness of being HIV+ and having had AIDS, the questioning one went through and the realisation that one had to get on with it.

I think therefore I write.

I have always, even as a young kid, loved books. My compositions at school were always a bit over-the-top, much to the amusement of my teachers, and my parents were always being told I had a very fertile mind. Shame they never took this seriously.

On leaving St Gregory’s in 1969, Brother Geoffrey, who taught English, took me aside and told me I should take up a career in writing. Stupid me just let that comment drop.

In the 1980s I was a member of Acceptance Melbourne l and had quite an intense affair with the editor of their newsletter, and contributed regularly to it. I was a prolific letter writer. I edited the newsletter for the Dolphin Motor Club and was responsible for them starting a media sub-committee. I did several courses through community colleges on fiction and life writing and had two poems published overseas.

In 2001 I was accepted into the Humanities Faculty at UTS to do a degree in writing. But the first year of an undergrad degree is full of everything except writing. UTS uses authors to run tutorials, which might sound great in theory, but is just a means for them to push their own writing agendas and methodologies. As a mature-aged student, I clashed! I also didn’t feel comfortable with the often snobbish, elitist attitudes to reading and writing. The tutorial class was horrified that my favourite authors are Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, Michael Crichton, and Edward Rutherfurd. Well…fuck them!

By the second year, and finding yet another author being given their own tutorial, I looked to changing the degree to a Masters. At least by doing this I was just writing. The writing courses did give me the opportunity to publicly write about my drag persona Cleo and in a short story course to talk about my murdered brother, which had never been discussed with anyone. This making public some previously private parts of my life (other than HIV) was very liberating. I had at this stage done enough subjects to get my Graduate Certificate in Writing, so I took that and fled.

My university experience is not something I wish to repeat. The one thing I did learn is that it is extremely difficult to make a living out of writing in Australia. In the meantime I continued writing for Talkabout and the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. I began to realise that all these articles had become a timeline of my journey with HIV, from the days of illness to the healing process to the return-to-work issues, from treatment issues to regaining my health, redirecting myself and finally my movement away from a life centred around HIV, and a spiritual reawakening through Buddhism. In a way, writing freed me. I took advantage of the beginnings of the Internet to do HIV site reviews and eventually my cooking column. Before leaving Talkabout after 15 years of writing articles and columns, I did a series of articles on Getting On With It, about reshaping life, ageing, and how to cope with its inherent problems.

I would love to widen the scope of my writing. For many years people have been telling me to write about my family and upbringing which was a complex, sometimes sad, sometimes happy experience. Perhaps a bit late in my life – or not – I’m thinking of getting into freelance journalism. Everything HIV that has happened to me over the last 30 years has led to this. It has presented me with new opportunities and opened doors that had previously been closed to me. I am contemplating a course for 2024 – not a cheap thing to do, so I have to consider carefully. In the meantime I will continue to write. Am I self-opinionated? I hope so. Am I controversial? I hope so. Can I see both sides of an argument? I hope so! But most importantly, do I love writing? You bet!

Tim Alderman 2023

A Long Term Survivor Diatribe

Article, HIV/AIDS, , , ,

The long-term survival journey is one where it is easy to get lost along the way. Low motivation, low self esteem, social isolation, lethargy, and a victim mentality can lead to feelings of worthlessness, seeing no value in your own existence, and survivor guilt…all my friends have died so why am I still here! It can be overwhelming.

We have already spent 30+ years of our lives popping life saving pills, thousands of pills…and still with no end in sight. Pretty well every organ in our bodies has been subjected to incredible stress. Our minds have been tested beyond belief. We have been so low that we thought there was no coming back. Lipodystrophy and lipoatrophy have ravaged and aged us early, made us unrecognisable, made us feel ashamed of our own bodies, reticent to strip in front of strangers, in front of even lovers. We have lived without immune systems, a state of inherent danger, not knowing what was going to attack you next, a world where even a cold or the flu could be deadly. We have been eroded by strange diseases, live right now with their devastating consequences. And now we live in a world where younger generations don’t understand us, don’t understand why we carry rage, why we roll our eyes at recent seroconversions, who carry on as though death was lurking around the corner. We have met death, witnessed its cruelty. You have nothing to fear!

Yet…we are here! Present! Sentient! We carry a world of knowledge that no one seems to want to know about.

So what do we do, wandering in this alien landscape? Do we bend, fold and cower…or do we BLOOM! This world is trying to put us down, humble us when we have already been humbled. But there is one thing this world doesn’t know…we are, and always have been, fighters. We make a fist and punch the shit out of it! Then we stand back and roar at it “You are not going to win!”. Our world is not what it was! Having already been deconstructed, the only choice left is…reconstruction. So we stop! Re-evaluate! Pry around our fragile edges, gouge out the positives! Rip our lives to pieces, then sew it back together again into a fabric of renewal. We re-educate, for our past is not our present! We reconnect, seek out those from our past who valued us for who we are…and take steps to make new acquaintances, find those who bring joy, laughter and value into our lives. We feed our bodies, this indestructible machine, with goodness, purity, health. We strip ourselves naked, stand proudly in the light, and rebuild our broken frames. We glare at those who put us down, and yell “FUCK YOU…if you want to learn, come to me…otherwise, bring others down with your ignorance!”. We reconnect with life! Everything is right there in front of us…you just need the hunger to grab it by the balls, and say “make me whole again!”. Don’t give it choices! Never accept no as the answer! Take it…mould it…your new, renewed life waits! Don’t waste the opportunity! Long term survivor is not three dirty words! It is empowerment! Having survived, you rise up…proud…arrogant…and step confidently into the new.

Mantra

I am here! I’m not going away!

Tim Alderman 2023

HIV Myths: Virgin Cleansing Myth

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDS, ,

The virgin cleansing myth (also referred to as the virgin cure myth, virgin rape myth, or simply virgin myth) is the belief that having sex with a virgin girl cures a man of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Anthropologist Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala says the myth is a potential factor in infant rape by HIV-positive men in South Africa. In addition to young girls, who are presumed to be virgins because of their age, people who are “blind, deaf, physically impaired, intellectually disabled, or who have mental-health disabilities” are sometimes raped under the erroneous presumption that individuals with disabilities are sexually inactive and therefore virgins.

History

The myth was first reported in 16th-century Europe and gained prominence in 19th-century Victorian England as a cure for syphilis and gonorrhea among other sexually transmitted diseases. The origin is unknown, but historian Hanne Blank writes that the idea may have evolved from Christian legends of virgin–martyrs, whose purity served as a form of protection in battling demons.

Prevalence

People all over the world have heard this myth, including in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

A survey by the University of South Africa (UNISA) in South Africa found that 18 percent of laborers thought that having sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS. An earlier study in 1999 by sexual health educators in Gauteng reported that 32 percent of the survey participants believed the myth.

According to Betty Makoni of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, the myth is perpetuated by traditional healers advising HIV-positive men to cure their disease by having sex with virgin girls. In Zimbabwe, some people also believe that the blood produced by raping a virgin will cleanse the infected person’s blood of the disease.

In 2002, psychologist Mike Earl-Taylor wrote that the virgin cure myth may explain the staggering rise in child or infant rapes in South Africa, which is facing an HIV/AIDS epidemic. UNICEF has attributed the rape of hundreds of girls to the virgin cleansing myth.

However, it is unknown exactly how common the myth is and to what degree rapes happen because of the belief in it. The claim that the myth drives either HIV infection or child sexual abuse in Africa is disputed by researchers Rachel Jewkes and Helen Epstein, as well as by research on convicted sex offenders in Malawi, where no evidence was found to support the idea that the virgin cleansing myth prompted any rapes.

Importance of education

Ignorance with regards to HIV and AIDS infection serves as a barrier to prevention in numerous African nations.

Education has helped women such as Betty Makoni speak out against the myth and attempt to dissuade people from believing the virgin cleansing myth.

According to UNICEF, culture-based gender roles that prize innocence and ignorance in girls and that accept sexual licentiousness in men promote this myth. Girls may be forced to marry older men, which can increase the likelihood of HIV transmission to girls. The stigma attached to AIDS also stops many people from seeking information or health services to shield their status, contributing to further transmission.

In popular culture

The virgin cleansing myth is referenced in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon. The minor character Mattumbo is stopped from raping a baby based on the belief that sex with a virgin will cure his AIDS. During the song “Making Things Up Again”, Elder Cunningham tells Mattumbo that raping babies is against God’s will, and invents a passage in the Book of Mormon in which God tells Joseph Smith to instead have sex with a frog to cure his AIDS.

Reference

The Hidden Survivors

Article, Gay Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDS, ,

Why people living and aging with HIV will lead the way

Tuesday, 9/18 is National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day. Long-term survivors of HIV face unique challenges; they are the “hidden” survivors of the epidemic. When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1989 I wasn’t sure I’d be here in 2018 to talk about it. At the time there was no effective treatment for people living with HIV, it

was basically a death sentence. For those of us who did have access to health care and treatment, we were given what we now know is suboptimal therapy that not only rendered us resistant to more effective medications that were being developed, but also had life-altering side effects that remain with some of us to this day. These side effects from those earlier, more toxic treatments have added to the stigma of aging with HIV and have disfigured us, made us frailer, and caused our hearts to literally skip a beat.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be here. As a white, gay, cis man living with HIV who turns 60 this year, I also recognize and acknowledge my privilege. I have access today to a one pill, once-a-day therapy that keeps my virus fully suppressed, so that I’m unable to pass on HIV to others, and I experience virtually no side effects to my current regimen. But I also know that when I walk into a room, I have “the look”—the sunken cheeks, the veiny arms and legs, the extended belly. “You should be grateful to be here,” we’ve been told, “thankful to be alive!” But to what end? Grateful to be here to suddenly be rolled off of disability after being out of work for 20–30 years, expected to join the ranks of the work force without any specialized training or support? Grateful to be here only to fall into addiction or isolation because our support networks, friends and former lovers no longer exist? Grateful to be here while there is scant culturally competent care for aging LGBTQ+ seniors who are living with HIV? We as a society in general do not value our elders—how does the LGBTQ+ community regard those of us aging, let alone aging with HIV?

There is much work to be done, but if anyone can lead the way, it’s people living with HIV and our allies. We were the ones who took care of each other back at the start of the epidemic, and we will come to the forefront of the battle once again. The lesbian community was there for many gay men back in the 1980s when we were dropping like flies and when no one else would touch us; thank heavens for these unsung heroes. Community-based organizations like TPANwere founded by people living with HIV so that we could survive and thrive. Informational resources like Positively Aware delivered the information we needed to live healthy, happy lives.

Earlier this year The Reunion Project convened a community-led, diverse coalition of survivor advocates to discuss the needs and priorities of survivors, and issued a report in June. Go to tpan.com/reunion-project for more info. As someone living with HIV for 29 years, I am excited to be part of a national network of survivors that is giving voice to those who don’t have one and who have in many respects been left behind.

Currently 50% of people living with HIV are over the age of 50, and by 2030 it will be 70 percent. But we knew this was coming. Where is the sense of urgency? Where is the crisis task force taking up our agenda? Do we matter?

I believe we do. As the saying goes, with age comes wisdom. Long-term survivors have an opportunity to come together and join forces, mentor those coming up behind us on how to age and live with HIV gracefully, and to advocate for those who have no voice. An entire generation was lost, so who now is going to step up and advocate for us?

Those of us who have survived.

Reference