Holding the Man

by Timothy Conigrave

  His birthday was on the horizon and I thought I could show him that I loved him. I made a card. The front of a strangely shaped piece of cardboard read, ‘Excuse me, are you the boy with the cutest ears on the block?’ It opened to reveal a pop-up heart with wings flying amongst the clouds. ‘Then this is for you. Happy twenty-sixth, I love you.’

  When I gave it to John he seemed touched. ‘It’s beautiful, thank you. I’ll put it on my desk.’ He sat it up on one corner. That’s how he showed me he loved me.

  Nicholas, an actor in Soft Targets, had told me that he was a volunteer at the AIDS Hotline and that it was good fun. I wanted to do something about the disease, something active rather than just wallowing in self-pity. He told me how to apply.

  I was trained by a gentle older man, a heavy smoker named Edward. ‘We don’t counsel people. If they need to speak to a counsellor we put them through to the appointments desk.’ He then gave me a pile of stuff to read. He took some calls with me listening in and eventually I took my first call.

  A man wanted to know the symptoms of AIDS. ‘Do you have any reason to believe you’ve been exposed to the virus?’ I asked. He’d had a girl who was ‘a bit of a slag’. ‘Do you mean she was a prostitute? Did you use a condom?’ He didn’t trust condoms. ‘Did you penetrate her? If so, there is a possibility that you’ve exposed yourself.’ He asked for a test. I transferred him to the appointments desk.

  Edward debriefed me. ‘That was very good. You left out one thing. They have to wait three months after exposure before they can test. I liked you saying he’d exposed himself. You made him sound like a flasher.’

  I enjoyed working there. It was a safe place to be openly gay and openly HIV-positive and there were lots of laughs. In the phone-calls you’d hear about a side of life that very few got to. The Grim Reaper commercials, above all the image of the little girl bowled over at random, her doll flying into the air, brought a lot of sexual guilt out of the closet.

  ‘Does it matter how much semen?’

  ‘It’s more important what happens to it, whether it gets into your bloodstream through cuts or through unprotected sex.’

  A young woman with a Greek accent, quite distressed, rang. ‘My doctor has just told me I’m antibody-positive to measles. Does this mean I have AIDS?’

  ‘No, it means you have measles, or you have had it in the past, and your body has made antibodies to the virus that causes it.’ I could hear friends in the background priming her with questions.

  ‘What are the symptoms of AIDS?’

  ‘We don’t like to give them out. Most of them are similar to cold symptoms. We don’t want you to panic when it could be just a flu. If you are worried, you could come in for a test.’

  ‘Oh no! What if I saw someone I knew?’

  An adolescent boy: ‘Me and my mates got into a punch-up and I got some blood on me.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to believe the blood was infected?’

  ‘She was a hooker, one of those boy/girl ones.’

  ‘Did you have any open wounds?’

  ‘She scratched my face.’

  ‘There may be some risk, then. Perhaps you should come in for a test, but you’ll have to wait three months.’

  ‘Three months? If I’m infected she’s dead.’

  I hung up and growled. ‘Boy bashes a tranny and he’s concerned about getting HIV. I should have told him he definitely had it.’

  Nicholas was on the next phone and shushed me. Edward called me over to his desk. ‘It’s hard when you get a call like that, but you can’t say that sort of thing. We don’t judge people.’

  I went home, full of rage, to bad news. A while back Karl, my film-maker friend, had fallen in love in a way I’d never seen before, with a guy called Marcus. They started a teddy bear collection that grew until their bedroom walls were lined with fuzzy bears. When they went out to the clubs Marcus would wear a leather harness and a dog collar with a leash, but it was actually Marcus who led Karl. Then Marcus had fallen ill with meningitis and I had wondered at the time whether he had AIDS. He was put in Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital, where the AIDS wards were. Karl rang me one night to say he was deteriorating. ‘He’s gone blind. The meningitis has chewed out that part of his brain. Poor Booboo is so scared.’

  Now John greeted me with the news that Marcus had died. The thought hung in the air like an orb. Marcus is dead. Not here anymore. I struggled to get my head around it.

  I tried to ring Karl but he was engaged for the next hour. Finally I got through. ‘Have you had a chance to cry?’

  ‘I think I’m still in shock.’ He paused. ‘I should tell you Marcus had AIDS. But he didn’t want anyone to know.’ How am I going to tell Karl about me and John? Not now. He has enough on his plate.

  A few weeks later he came up to visit us. I got home from work to find him there with John. He hugged me, the kind of hug you give when you say goodbye to someone you won’t be seeing for a long time. ‘John told me about you guys being positive. I wish it wasn’t true. You guys helped me come out. I remember you dancing together at my twenty-first like you didn’t care what anyone thought. It showed me I could be gay and not ashamed of it.’

  We walked down to the harbour. ‘It’s funny that neither of us told the other what was happening,’ I said.

  ‘It’s good that you guys have been working hard at staying well. Marcus didn’t do any of that. I don’t think we realised what we were dealing with. I believed that all we needed was a positive attitude, and everything would turn out right. What a way to find out we were wrong.’

  We reached a seat that looked out over the harbour. Beyond the bay a yacht race looked like a flock of pelicans. ‘These are strange times,’ I pondered. ‘Who would have thought when we were involved in Young Gays that this is where we’d end up.’ The idea sat heavily on us. I asked about Marcus’s estate.

  ‘He didn’t have anything except his clothes. I gave them to the Brotherhood.’

  In my best old-woman voice I said, ‘Joyce, how much should we charge for this leather brace and dog collar?’

  We chuckled. ‘Have you tested?’ I ventured.

  ‘I don’t want to know. I’m assuming I’m positive.’ We sat there a little longer. Karl put his arm around my shoulder. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  Craig was a chiropractor from John’s year at college. He and John had been toying with the idea of starting their own practice. Craig found one for sale in the association newsletter. The chiropractor was retiring and was less concerned about money than about his patients. John and Craig met him and liked him, and got his agreement to sell them the practice.

  Craig came to dinner to discuss the details of the deal, and whether they would be a gay-identified practice, advertising in the gay press. They talked about what they would do if John got sick. Craig felt they could deal with that when it happened. ‘It’s more important that you have this goal. If things do deteriorate someone else might buy your share, or maybe I might.’

  Craig went away on a locum, leaving John to find premises and fit them out. He asked our friend James Bean and me to help him move into the new building. I hate moving at the best of times. This was easier than moving house as there wasn’t as much stuff, but some of it was back-breakingly heavy.

  With the first load James and I were like kids in a new tree-house. I found a sign that read ‘Chiropractor’ and slipped it inside my shirt so that it read ‘actor’. John had his camera and got a picture. James got into the act and we took a photo of me adjusting him as he grimaced in pain.

  We started to load things for the tip. I spotted a moulded sixties chair that looked like an insect, an ant perhaps.

  ‘Why are you throwing that out?’

  ‘It won’t look right in the practice.’

  ‘But it’s fantastic. It’d be worth a fortune.’ I put it in the back seat of the car and added a beige shag-pile rug which had printed on it: ‘Chiropractic adds years to life and life to years’.

&n
bsp; ‘Why do you want that!’

  ‘I think it’s kitsch.’

  John sighed. We struggled up the stairs with a heavy steel desk. Finally everything was in place. We collapsed on the floor and feasted on cappuccino and banana cake. ‘I think I need a chiropractor,’ I joked. ‘I’ve pulled something in my lower back.’

  A week later, the night before the official opening, John said, ‘Craig saw the ant chair here and asked if he could have it.’

  ‘I’ve done all this work for you guys and you’re going to begrudge me a chair that nearly went to the tip.’

  ‘So you expected a reward? Is that why you did it?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Anger rose in my throat like lava. ‘You can forget your flowers tomorrow.’

  John snapped. He started yelling. ‘Why are you being like this? You’re making everything hard for me.’ He stormed out of the room. There was a large bang. I heard John whimpering in pain. I ran in to him. ‘I smashed my arm on the table.’

  It was our first real screaming fight and it had gone as fast as it came.

  ‘I’m sorry about what I said. Of course the flowers will be there.’ Blown that surprise. We kept the ant chair.

  Chapter EIGHT

  Italy

  November 1988 and John and I were off to Europe. I sat in the back of Craig’s car on the way to the airport totally unnerved. ‘We haven’t left the iron on? And all the timers for the lights are on? What about the kettle?’

  John had had a few health scares recently. While on a double-blind AZT trial he developed a barking dry cough. It was assumed to be PCP, an AIDS-related pneumonia, and John was started on Bactrim. When the cough cleared up the diagnosis seemed confirmed. The code of his AZT was broken and we learnt he had been on a placebo. If he’d been on the real stuff he might not have got sick. I felt angry that my boyfriend had been used like that.

  Around this time John’s T-cell count seemed to drop somewhat, probably because of the PCP. He was very upset. He lay face down on the bed. ‘What am I doing wrong? I’ve been seeing a naturopath, meditating and doing the anti-candida diet.’

  ‘Maybe it’s stress. You seem fairly stressed at the moment. Maybe you need to express your feelings more.’ Later that night it struck me that I was being unfair to John, blaming him when the problem was a virus.

  And so we decided on Italy. We flew into Rome and got straight on a train to meet John’s college friend Steve in Florence.

  Steve was dressed like a Renaissance Florentine in black tights, a green suede tunic with puffed sleeves, and a beret sitting on top of his bobbed hair. He greeted us and led us out to a small Fiat with his girlfriend Marina behind the wheel. She was an elfin beauty with a bright, open manner – until she started driving, when she became a Roman taxi driver, tooting and abusing people. Every time we turned a corner my heart was in my mouth. I was convinced we were on the wrong side of the road.

  We drove through an old archway flanked by icons of the Blessed Virgin. Suddenly we were in the Tuscan countryside – rolling hills with silhouettes of churches and conifers. The road was now a winding dirt track. ‘That is where we live,’ Marina said, proudly pointing to an old building with a tower. ‘It was a monastery eight hundred years ago. We live on the top two floors.’

  We climbed the stairs to a large room with wooden floors, adzed furniture and the smell of burning olive branches. Steve’s really into this Renaissance thing. After a lunch of gnocchi in melted gorgonzola John and I went for a walk to a small lake beyond the monastery. ‘Well, Doompson, here we are in Italy.’

  ‘Wahoo!’ John yelped.

  Across the hills we could hear the crack of gunshots, which Steve later explained were boys shooting sparrows.

  Florence is a dream, cobbled streets and endless beautiful vistas. And art treasures in every church, cathedral and museum, even on street corners. How do people live in such beauty? I was stunned by how large and majestic the David was, the way it made marble seem sensual. His hands are disproportionately big; he could never be a convincing drag queen.

  John wanted to see the Pitti Palace with its Boboli gardens, a name he thought hilarious. As in the rest of Florence you could see how rich the Renaissance had been, but you had to wonder who painted the frescos, who clipped the hedges in the gardens, who wove the tapestries. Then on to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, Caravaggio’s Medusa at the Uffizi. I started to understand why Stendhal fainted, earning himself extra fame in having a syndrome named after him.

  On the third morning John woke complaining of feeling sick.

  ‘Darling, you’re bright red.’ I felt his forehead. ‘You’re burning up.’

  We were in a bind. We didn’t want to tell Steve and Marina about our HIV but something could be seriously wrong with John.

  Steve drove us into town to a doctor who worked in the same building as him, and acted as translator. ‘It looks like an allergic reaction. He wants to know if you’re taking drugs.’

  ‘No,’ John lied. At least we now knew that Bactrim was probably the cause.

  ‘He wants you to go home and rest up for a few days, drink lots of water.’

  Bummer, not going to see much more of Florence but I hope my boy will get well. When John got back to the tower he went straight to bed and slept till the next morning. He was still hot but greatly improved. I made him some toast on the fire and he sat up, eating and smiling. ‘My top lip is really itchy.’ He was biting his lips to soothe them, which looked so cute. I couldn’t see anything.

  We headed off to Venice. In the train carriage I noticed that John’s lip was blistering. ‘I can feel it. I think it’s cold sores.’

  I looked closely and could count ten blisters in a triangle from his lip to his nose. When we went to buy cold-sore cream at the station, the pharmacist was intrigued and called his assistant out to look. He gave John a cream to dry out the blisters, and over the next couple of days they became large scabs. If John smiled they cracked and bled. He started to look like the rock monster from Lost in Space.

  If Florence had been a dream, Venice was a mirage, foggy in the autumn mists. We found a sweet pension on a small piazza. The manager was a beefy guy who walked with his bum sticking out. Without even asking, he showed us to a room with a double bed. When he left I did an impression of him and John started to laugh. His scabs cracked. I grabbed some toilet paper and blotted them for him and he reached out and patted my tummy. John sucked his lips in, trying to cool them by breathing on them.

  ‘You look like a parrot.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ John said without moving his lips. That made me laugh.

  ‘I won’t make you laugh,’ I said without moving my lips.

  ‘Don’t!’

  It astounded me how groups of schoolkids would point at John. Shop assistants did double takes. Even more astoundingly, John was unfazed by this, as though he hadn’t noticed. I wondered if it was because he had such a strong sense of himself.

  Everything about Rome was big. It didn’t have the village feel of Florence or Venice. Biggest of all was St Peter’s, the holy-water fonts held up by eight-foot cherubim, the baldaquin as big as a skyscraper and carved out of porphyry. Markings on the floor showed the relative size of other cathedrals, asserting it the largest in the world. It is considered good luck to kiss the feet of a small statue of St Peter – after hundreds of years the feet have been kissed down to small stubs.

  John had wanted to see Michelangelo’s Pietà for some time. He stood reverently in front of the bulletproof box; I never knew why it was so important to him but I guess it was to do with a mother and her dead son.

  From Rome, John and I went south to Sorrento, a resort on top of a cliff. It was deserted, being autumn, and virtually everything was closed. From Sorrento we caught a ferry to Capri, a volcanic rock covered in glamorous shops: Versace, Mugler and Moschino set around small piazzas. It didn’t feel very welcoming.

  Taking the chairlift to the top of the island we stepped in
to a surreal world. Past old stone walls and a gate flanked by terracotta urns we looked out over pinnacles emerging from the sea. The horizon was bleached out by the salty mist. This was how I imagined the land of the gods would look. John sitting on the fence in the clouds looked like an apparition.

  Italy was a sensual experience: spectacular vistas, moreish food. The gelato was sensational. My favourite was a tartufo in the Piazza Navona in Rome, a ball of dark chocolate icecream with cherries in the centre, covered in thick, thick chocolate. The barman smashed it on a plate, squirted cream over it and topped it with a glacé cherry. John and I went and sat on the fountain of the four rivers and indulged.

  And the men were beautiful. They had good dress sense and carried themselves like they knew they were being looked at. They had beautiful bums that filled my head whenever John and I were having sex.

  I knew as we left Italy that I would come back some day.

  Blood and Honour

  On our return from Europe I again volunteered for the Hotline. I was asked if I would be interested in relieving the night co-ordinator for three months. The day I accepted the job I was offered a month’s work at the Film School, which I turned down. It was a turning point.

  Towards the end of my shift the workers from the Bus would roll in. This was a mobile facility for testing, needle exchange and counselling. It went up to the Wall, where the boy sex-workers waited for tricks, and also to St Peter’s Lane, where the transsexual workers hung out. The staff were working on the edge and I was impressed.

  One of them, Diana, was transsexual. She was large and fat with frizzy red hair and freckles. She looked like Buffy from Family Affair and had a wicked sense of humour. ‘Want to see my new cunt?’ She pulled up her skirt and pulled her panties to one side, revealing stitches. She took no shit from anyone. She had worked as a nurse and was still driving a taxi on dayshift. I loved her subversiveness.