Tell Me I'm Okay

by David Bradford

  ‘Tell me, Bradford. Why did you volunteer to be an Army doctor in Vietnam?’

  ‘I was young and stupid, Sir.’

  He looked outraged. Clearly, this was not the right answer.

  ‘Never say that, my boy. It is never stupid to serve one’s country.

  I admire you for having the courage to volunteer.’

  Over the next three years I worked at three successive hospitals. I ‘lived-in’ at each one, as I couldn’t afford anything else. The pay was atrocious. The work was hard, the hours were long, but I enjoyed the surgical experience, as well as socialising with medical and nursing colleagues after-hours.

  I explored my homosexuality when off duty. Homosexual men seem able to relate sexually with all types of men. I certainly found it so. I felt quite as comfortable in bed with a well-known concert singer as I did with a high church London vicar, the young French postman who lived with me for four days on my first visit to Paris, or one of the theatre orderlies at the hospital where I was surgical registrar. I was catching up for lost time, and my casual partners and I shared many post-coital ‘coming-out’ tales.

  With the requisite three years’ experience in surgical jobs, in 1972 I sat the Final FRCS, in Edinburgh, and then in London. I had an initial failure, but finally I was successful in both exams. My parents were delighted. Sadly, it was really the last time they were ever delighted with me. Knowing what my parents’ attitude would be to homosexuality, I had resolved, deliberately and after careful thought, not to tell them about my coming out. There was no necessity, I rationalised. They were in Australia and I was in England. I had virtually made a decision to stay in England for the foreseeable future. However, events during my upcoming holiday back in Australia would overturn my plans.

  * * *

  18Rev Dr Norman Pittenger was a senior member of King’s College Cambridge, and the booklet had been published by SCM two years prior.

  Chapter Six

  I Meet Michael

  In December 1972, armed with two FRCS degrees, I returned to Australia for a vacation, staying with my family over Christmas and New Year. A week before I was due to return to London to take up a registrar job in Orthopaedics at St George’s Hospital, an entirely unexpected and unsettling event occurred. Late on a hot Sunday afternoon, I had gone to Manly, mostly for nostalgic reasons, to revisit the beach and to remember my teenage years. As well, I had promised to meet my brother and sister-in-law later for the evening service at St Matthew’s Anglican Church. I never got to the beach and I missed church, because I met a man on Manly Wharf – an unlikely place for the start of what would prove to be a life partnership. Michael was twenty-two, and for a couple of hours we sat talking on the Esplanade, looking out over Manly Pool. We both felt a strong mutual attraction, over and above a sexual fascination. The church bell rang and went unheeded. As dusk was falling, together we caught the ferry back to the city, where he was staying.

  Michael Williams lived in Melbourne and was only in Sydney for a few days for work, so there was very little time to spend together before his return. We had a couple of brief meetings over the next two days, which was we all could manage given Michael’s work schedule and my family commitments. Then Michael returned to Melbourne. Despite the geographical difficulties, we had determined we would stay in touch. I was left in an emotionally disordered state. Ever astute, my mother noticed there was something wrong.

  As she ironed shirts for my return to London, my mother summoned me, two days before my scheduled departure:

  ‘David, I think we need to talk.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘You’re not yourself. What is going on with you?’

  ‘I suppose I’m unsettled because I’m flying back to London on Saturday.’

  ‘I think it’s more than that. There’s those phone calls you’ve been getting from some man in Melbourne.’

  ‘Yes, Mum, I know. I’ve been a bit emotional.’

  ‘I’ve been worried about you, David, for months now. Your letters from England have been strange.’

  ‘It’s difficult for me to talk about, Mum.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think …’ There was a long pause while my mother gathered her strength, then she continued, ‘I haven’t discussed it with your father, but I just can’t help wondering if … you’re a homosexual.’

  I was lost for words. I felt as if I were seven years old again, and my mother had caught me with my hand in the biscuit tin. I blurted out, inadequately, ‘Mum, you’re right. I admit it. It’s taken me ages to accept. I’ve tried so hard not to be, but that’s the way I am. I’m sorry.’

  My mother burst into tears. I tried to comfort her.

  ‘David, it’s a sin!’

  ‘Not everyone believes that, Mum, and I don’t believe it.’

  ‘God’s Word says it David. It doesn’t matter what you believe, or what some liberal theologians believe. God says it’s a sin in the Bible. It is not open to debate.’

  ‘Mum, give me some credit. I have known I was like this since as long as I can remember. I’ve lived with it every day since puberty. I’ve tried my best to get rid of my thoughts and desires for other men. Nothing has worked: not praying, not Bible study, not church attendance, not my work. God seemed not to take the slightest notice when I asked Him repeatedly as a teenager and young man to cure me. I decided when I was in London that I couldn’t go on living a lie. I am gay; I’ve accepted it and I’ve acted on it.’

  ‘And, this man in Melbourne. Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Michael; he’s a law graduate and a judge’s associate. I met him last Sunday afternoon at Manly. I saw him again in town on Monday, and then again on Tuesday. How I feel about him is really different and amazing. I miss him so much since he left.’

  ‘David, it’s unnatural for you to feel like that about some man, rather than a Christian girl. There are girls right here at Pennant Hills Baptist Church who could fall in love with you. I know; some have told me how much they admire you.’

  ‘Mum, I’m not attracted to girls. If I was to force myself into a relationship with a woman, it would ruin both our lives.’

  ‘Well, you’re likely to ruin your own life anyway, if you go on like this. You’ll either commit suicide, or die a lonely old man.’

  ‘No, Mum. That’s not true. I’ve been happier in the last year or two than I can ever remember. It’s like a burden’s been lifted.’

  ‘Well, you must promise you will not tell your father. He’s so proud of you, David, of your surgical work, of your music …’

  My mother became inconsolable. I felt wretched. Our discussion couldn’t have gone more badly.

  The next two days at home were a nightmare, my mother in an emotional state and my father puzzled and confused. When Saturday evening came, even though I was leaving Michael behind in Australia, it was a relief to board the plane for London.

  Over the next eight months my state of mind improved. Despite the geographical divide, my relationship with Michael blossomed via letters, postcards, phone calls, and audio-cassette tapes. He determined he would come to London and live with me in August, when he finished work as judge’s associate. He had started, part-time, a Master’s degree in Law at the University of Melbourne, but his thesis supervisor had accepted a post at the London School of Economics before the degree was completed. It therefore seemed perfectly appropriate for him to come to London to complete the degree. He arrived in August 1973 and we have lived together ever since.

  Relations with my parents were not so easily repaired. After a few weeks, even though my mother had advised against it, I wrote a long letter to my father and told him the truth about myself. I apologised I had not told him face to face when I was at home on holiday. I explained about Michael and the feelings we had for each other, and that we were determined to live together. I waited apprehensively for his reply. Both my parents found the situation extremely difficult to accept. There was never any question of them disowning me,
or cutting me off from the family, but they continued to argue strongly against my ‘gay lifestyle’, and especially against my living with another man. My homosexuality cast a shadow over my relationship with my parents until the end of both their lives. Fortunately, my brother and sister (who remain committed Christians) have been quietly supportive of both Michael and me throughout the years.

  I soon discovered my new relationship was more important than a surgical career. In sum total, before Michael arrived in London to live with me, we’d spent a little less than twenty-four hours in each other’s physical presence. We had to get to know each other, and we had to learn to live together. Trying to build a relationship with a heavy daytime work schedule and frequent nights on duty at St George’s Hospital proved too difficult. My heart wasn’t in a surgical career anyway, so I cut my losses, handed in my resignation and finished at St George’s on New Year’s Eve, 1973.

  In early 1974, I went into partnership in general practice in Clapton in the East End of London, where I remained for seven years. It was a happy time for me and for Michael, but I soon knew that general practice wasn’t what I wanted to do. One evening, at a meeting for GPs at Hackney Hospital, I met Michael Symonds, the physician in charge of the nearby Homerton Grove Genito-Urinary Medicine (GUM) Clinic. He was most interested to hear that I had experience in STIs during my service in Vietnam and promptly offered me the opportunity for locum work.

  After ‘coming out’ to my parents, it no longer seemed important whether they were upset over the specialty I chose to follow. In later years when asked what my specialty was, my mother used to tell people I worked ‘in Public Health’; she could never quite bring herself to admit that I was a specialist in sexually transmitted infections.

  Work in Sexually Transmitted Infections

  While still working predominantly in general practice, with Michael Symonds’s help, I became part-time clinical assistant in the GUM clinic at St Thomas’s Hospital, euphemistically called the ‘Lydia Department’. The consultant in charge was Dr C S Nicol, co-author of the then only British textbook on the subject.

  Claude Nicol was a hard taskmaster. He was then in his early sixties, at the peak of a distinguished career, including notable war service. He came across as a rather stern and serious man, as I suppose befitted a physician appointed to the royal household. Indeed, on his appointment to that role a few years before, the scurrilous magazine Private Eye had made much ribald comment, asking why the royal household even needed a venereologist! According to his more junior colleagues, Claude had taken this in good part at the time, even relaxing enough, they reported, to ‘have a twinkle in his eye’. He certainly ruled the Lydia Department rigorously, but fairly. It was a busy clinic, with many doctors working there each week. Claude nevertheless managed to review every single patient file a day or two after the patient was seen in clinic. If he found any fault with the clinical management, then the patient’s medical records, with a note attached, would appear in the luckless doctor’s pigeon hole. ‘Please see me about this patient’ would be written in Claude’s tiny, Parkinsonian handwriting. I had one or two such notes during my time in the Lydia Department.

  ‘Ah, Dr Bradford, come in. Please, let me see the file.’

  He would carefully read through what I had written at the last patient visit.

  ‘So, you believe this woman had mild non-gonococcal salpingitis, Doctor?’19

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I see you have prescribed the correct treatment for the infection.’ ‘I hope so, Sir.’

  ‘But I see no record that the patient was referred to the contact tracers.’

  ‘Well, Sir. I was unsure about that. The young lady only had one sexual partner. I guess I didn’t want to embarrass her.’

  This explanation clearly did not please my boss.

  ‘Dr Bradford, you are aware, are you not, that the main cause of non-gonococcal salpingitis is Chlamydia trachomatis, and that this micro-organism is always acquired through sexual transmission?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘That being the case, there is little point in treating the patient if she is immediately exposed to re-infection from her regular sexual partner on return home.’

  ‘No, Sir. I see that.’

  ‘Well, then, it is your responsibility to get on the phone to this patient, and ask her to return to the clinic, with her male partner, at their earliest convenience.’

  ‘I will do that, Sir, at once.’

  Of course, his admonishment seems totally appropriate now, although I smarted a little at the time. When I was the director of a clinic myself I did my best to follow Claude’s example, but I doubt I was ever as successful as he was in the area of clinical governance.

  It was in the Lydia Department I first met a Polish gentleman, conductor of a minor orchestra, a sprightly eighty-five year old. He had recently been touring Europe, and was now attending with a profuse urethral discharge. Across the desk, I looked at my white-haired patient in some amazement, tempered with not a little awe and respect. The microscopy showed my senior citizen had gonorrhoea!

  ‘I’m afraid, sir, you’ve caught gonorrhoea.’

  ‘Oh yes, Doctor, I know.’

  I picked up and glanced through his file, almost as thick as his Polish accent.

  ‘I see you’ve had it before.’

  ‘Yes, often and often, Doctor. So sorry.’

  He hung his head, but there was a twinkle in his eye. ‘Well, you know the treatment? An injection now.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I know.’

  ‘What about the lady you caught this from?’

  ‘A lady of the night, Doctor. In Bruxelles.’

  ‘Can you contact her?’

  ‘Lamentably, no. We met in the street. She was very nice.’

  ‘No address?’

  ‘No, Doctor, so sorry.’

  ‘Have you had sex with anyone since you got back?’

  ‘Oh, No, Doctor. No.’

  ‘Well, the nurse will give you an injection. Then you must see the health worker. You need advice so you don’t catch gonorrhoea again.’

  ‘You know the big trouble? I like the beautiful ladies too, too much.’

  He chuckled to himself. I couldn’t help smiling too. My patient took a liking for me. Over the next eighteen months, I saw him twice more in Clinic with gonorrhoea. Those ‘beautiful ladies’ continued to lead him astray.

  * * *

  19Salpingitis is infection of one or both Fallopian Tubes, the main sexually transmitted causes being gonorrhoea or chlamydia. The more modern, and more accurate, term is pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), as tissues, membranes and ligaments surrounding the Fallopian Tubes are almost always involved in the infectious process. In clinics in the seventies, we had no readily available test for chlamydia. If tests failed to find gonorrhoea, we presumed a case of salpingitis was due to chlamydia and treated accordingly.

  Chapter Seven

  Return to Australia

  Because Michael was an only child and his parents were not in robust health, at the end of 1979 we moved back to Australia. We settled in Melbourne where Michael had been brought up. With an eye to my future medical career in Australia, in the final months of living in London, I undertook a course in Venereology from London University. I then had the necessary credentials to obtain a senior position in a public STI clinic in Australia.

  After our return, Michael and I bought a terrace house in Richmond and became inner-city dwellers. I had already been offered a job by the Health Commission of Victoria (HCV), but before I could start practice, I had to register with the Victorian Medical Board. In those days it was necessary to have an interview with a member of the Victorian Board. The Old Treasury Building was the venue for my interview, and my interviewer was an irascible, elderly Professor of Medicine.

  ‘Where do you intend to practise, Doctor?’ he asked.

  ‘I have a position as medical officer at the Melbourne Communicable Diseases Centre.’

/>   ‘Good God! Not the VD Clinic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The professor looked at me as if I were a rather unpleasant pathology specimen. He said, ‘I happened to attend a Medical Conference in Sydney over the weekend. There was a morning session on sexually transmitted infections. I can honestly say it was the very worst presentation I have ever had the misfortune to attend!’

  I was then at the height of enthusiasm for my chosen specialty. I replied with some warmth, ‘I’d heard in the UK that venereological practice in Australia left a lot to be desired – I’m sorry to hear from you that it’s so bad.’

  ‘Bad! If that presentation was anything to go by, I’d say it was atrocious.’

  ‘Well, I aim to try and do something about that.’

  ‘All I can say then is: bloody good luck to you!’

  The Professor’s assessment wasn’t wrong. The Public STI Clinics in Australia had been under-resourced and inadequately staffed for decades. They were state government responsibilities and had never been a high priority. There was no STI research carried out anywhere in the country. But, I soon found that in each State there were doctors genuinely interested in this area of medicine who wanted to make a difference.

  The Melbourne Communicable Diseases Centre (MCDC)

  Once registered in Victoria, I started work at the Melbourne Communicable Diseases Centre, an anodyne name some bright spark at the HCV had dreamed up for the government-funded, public STI clinic. Towards the end of 1980 – after the retirement of the previous incumbent – I became Director and assumed the grand, newly created title of ‘Chief Venereologist’ for the State of Victoria.

  There was a lot to do. The clinic was busy, inadequately staffed, and had been poorly run; the clinical service provided was vastly inferior to the service at the Lydia Department in London where I had worked. Some of the old staff had terrible attitudes to patients and, to put it mildly, were a little work shy. Indeed, they protested the coming of my new regime with vigour. But I was still young (just under forty), filled with enthusiasm for the job and I loved the patients: the gay boys, the sex workers, the carefree heterosexual youngsters who descended on the clinic in droves, especially on Mondays after a wild weekend. Friday afternoons were always busy too. Patients who had been disregarding mild symptoms suddenly became concerned because another weekend of fun was looming.