Holding the Man

by Timothy Conigrave

  Geofredo, a funky young nightclubbing gay boy, had been a junkie and probably a sex-worker. Through Narcotics Anonymous he’d really pulled his life together. He used to sit with me each night and we’d talk about his work. And we’d flirt.

  My curiosity about boy sex-workers was almost overwhelming. I found it unthinkable to have to get it up with someone unattractive. ‘Why do they do it?’ I asked. ‘To get money for drugs?’

  ‘Some of them. Some of them enjoy it.’ Geofredo fielded my questions without making me feel I was ignorant or a bleeding heart. I found out he also worked for Fun and Esteem, a group set up for men under twenty-six who have sex with other men. Its objective was to build self-confidence and give people a place to talk honestly in a supportive environment. He ran workshops over three consecutive nights. Since many of the clients were homeless, the theory was ‘get ’em while you’ve got ’em’. He was planning a trip to England, and encouraged me to apply for his job.

  Over breakfast one morning he posed the sort of problem I might get in the interview. ‘You’re running a workshop when one of the boys discloses that he is HIV-positive and that he still has unsafe sex. The other boys start openly attacking him. What do you do?’

  Getting ready for the interview was like preparing for an audition: making sure I got there on time, deciding what to wear to give the right impression. I dressed as young as I could, wearing a pair of Frankenstein boots with metal plates.

  The Fun and Esteem office was a basement room at the AIDS Council. I was ushered in by the other worker in the project, Brent, a small boyish man who seemed more nervous than me. He introduced me to Finlay, who worked at Twenty-Ten (a gay and lesbian youth refuge), and Simon, one of the AIDS Council education team.

  I was calm and totally unfazed by their questions. ‘How would you describe your knowledge of HIV and AIDS? Where do you get your information from?’

  ‘I’m HIV-positive, so I try to keep up.’ I can’t believe how easy that was to say. ‘I read the gay press and work at the Hotline.’

  ‘We’re going to pose some dilemmas for you. We’d like you to tell us how you’d respond.’

  Finlay chipped in. ‘You are running a workshop. One of the boys discloses that he is HIV-positive and that he’s still having unsafe sex.’ Geofredo! Naughty! Other problems they posed he had also discussed with me. I answered easily and confidently; it was like being in a play when the audience is with you. I left the interview feeling good, but as the day wore on I started to pick over the things I’d said. I wish I hadn’t made the comment that lesbians are less at risk.

  When I got home, just after six, there was a message from Finlay to call the refuge before five. Damn! I’d have to wait out the weekend. I played the message a number of times trying to determine the result from her tone, but she gave nothing away.

  On Monday morning I rang Brent. He offered me the position. When could I start? Straight away, I told him. I hung the phone up and jumped around the Hotline. ‘I got the job, I got the job.’

  On my first day, Brent showed me a video the guys had made with a community artist. A pretty boy with streaked red-and-blond hair introduced us to Oxford Street and interviewed other young guys. Then there were scenes of boys picking each other up in bars, or talking about safe sex. One of the boys played Dr Crucci, who talked dirty about putting a condom on. The guys were all effeminate bitchy queens, camping it up. What have I got myself into? They didn’t strike me as boys with self-esteem, but people putting themselves down for being gay.

  Brent disagreed. ‘They’re being subversive and they don’t give a fuck what other people think. That takes incredible self-esteem.’

  Jeremy, the boy at the start of the video, had worked the Wall with his hair in dreadlocks and a black hat. The other boys on the Wall called him Boy George. He had been living at Twenty-Ten, and when I met him he was starting the two-year assessment to prepare him to become a woman.

  The work at Fun and Esteem proved to be challenging, but it was also very rewarding. We’d take young men terrified by their sexuality, with their heads full of lies, and help them become proud gay men connected to their community.

  We saw an angelic boy who was obsessed with Kylie and Madonna, and even looked like Madonna. He spent every cent he had on every single they released. He would come into the office with a new Japanese picture-disc of ‘Get Into The Groove’. You had to wonder where he was getting the money. We heard from the boys that he’d been seen up at the Wall and one day I thought I’d raise it with him. He seemed distressed by my question. ‘A number of boys have mentioned it,’ I said. ‘We’re not interested in intervening in your life. We just want to make sure you’re okay.’

  ‘I am. I just wish everyone would butt out.’ He left the office. I wished I’d said, ‘Only magical people get talked about.’

  A few days later I found him sitting at the spare desk doing a jigsaw puzzle. I said hello. He grunted. ‘You doing a jigsaw?’ He looked at me with disdain. ‘Can I join in?’

  ‘Do what you want.’ We sat putting together a photo of a New York street. We didn’t exchange a word but I could tell from his body language that he was relaxing with me.

  A guy came into the office one day looking for a fight. He was a gothic with a pink mohawk, crucifixes hanging from his ears, and a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. ‘You older gays aren’t doing anything for us young people. You think you’re so fabulous because you’ve got some gay bars and a parade.’

  We failed with him, as we did occasionally. A couple of years later he was found dead in his flat, with a needle in his arm. He’d been dead three days and his body had turned black.

  John came through the front door, his breath short and wheezy. He’d been coughing all day but didn’t want to go to the doctor. I gave him some Panadol and tucked him into bed. He slept peacefully through the night, but as soon as he sat up in the morning the cough started again. He was almost choking on his phlegm. ‘We’re going to the doctor,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got to work.’

  ‘John, you’re sick. You can’t work like this. You’ll be coughing all over your patients. I’m sure Craig will manage.’

  The doctor pulled John’s lower lids down. ‘You’re looking a bit pale. I’d like to take some blood and check your haemoglobin, and then do an induced sputum so we can find what’s going on in your lungs, and I hope rule out PCP.

  Induced sputums are a step on the road to hell. You breathe in salt-water steam through a mouthpiece to irritate your lungs and loosen the phlegm from the walls. The objective is to produce the biggest possible greeny. And in achieving that you are racked by a dreadful cough.

  ‘I know it’s uncomfortable but we’re nearly there.’ John was convulsed with coughing, but finally hoiked a greeny into a small jar.

  We had to wait a couple of hours for John to get a result. ‘Your haemoglobin is low,’ the doctor told him. ‘We want to give you a transfusion but we don’t have a bed at the moment. We’ll get in touch with you when one becomes available. Go home and rest up.’

  John decided to stay home for a few days. I got him videos and nibblies, I wheeled the TV into the bedroom and made him a cup of chamomile tea. The next day he rang me at work. The hospital had a bed for him and wanted him to go in straight away.

  As I walked along the corridor I could hear John coughing. When he saw me his face lit up. ‘Timba.’

  There was a doctor beside him doing something to his arm. ‘First the local. Small prick.’ John winced and the doctor threw the spent syringe into a kidney dish. ‘Now the cannula.’ He pushed a huge needle into John’s arm. ‘The nurses will be here in a minute to put up the blood.’

  John and I sat holding hands, conscious of the old men in the other beds. ‘What’s new, Bubbyloo?’ I asked.

  ‘They want me to reduce my AZT so I don’t become anaemic again.’

  ‘That’s a scary thought. Why can’t they transfuse you once a month if it means you can keep up
your AZT?’

  John shrugged. ‘They’ve grown something in my sputum, a bacteria called haemophilus.’ That translates as blood lover. ‘They’re waiting to find out which antibiotics it responds to.’

  Two nurses brought in a bag of blood labelled with a large yellow tag, which they checked against the request form. As I was leaving, John smiled. ‘There’s a surprise at home for you. On one of the speakers. I saw it and knew you’d love it.’ I got home to find a set of white plastic tulips with light-bulbs in them. I laughed. ‘Fabulous.’ My boyfriend knows me well. I felt hugged.

  John decided to leave work. He was now so sick he was finding it hard to deal with his clients’ concerned questions. Fortunately, he had disability insurance.

  My sister Anna and her boyfriend Tony had decided to get married. John and I were flying down to Melbourne for the wedding, and he decided this might be a good time to tell his family he was HIV-positive. I wondered how they’d take it. John shrugged. ‘No idea, but I’ve got to do it. They’ll want to know why I’m leaving work.’

  Of late my sister had become more Catholic, so the wedding was to be a big church number, with a nuptial mass and communion. My discomfort burst over a dinner of Mum’s vegetable lasagne as Dad described the reception, to be held in the ballroom at Ripponlea. There were to be a hundred guests and a small chamber orchestra.

  ‘Bit over the top, isn’t it?’

  ‘She’s my only daughter. This will be the only wedding I’ll pay for. I want to make sure it is unforgettable.’

  ‘The best wedding I ever saw was my friend Morna’s. It was a simple exchange of vows in a room full of their friends. It was very moving.’

  I could see the veins in Dad’s neck. ‘But this is what your sister wants.’

  ‘I think it sounds pretty tasteless.’

  My brother Nicholas intervened. ‘Tim! Cool it.’

  ‘No. This feels like a charade.’

  ‘I won’t have you destroy this wedding,’ my father said. ‘If you don’t want to be involved then don’t be.’

  I left the room and went into my old bedroom. Anna came in later. ‘You’re my big brother and I want you to be part of my celebration.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Can I show you the reading I want you to do?’

  I read, ‘My lover says to me, come my love …’

  Anna smiled mischievously. ‘I knew you’d like it.’

  I smiled back. ‘I’m being a bit of a jerk, aren’t I?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t.’

  During Mass the catechism echoed out of my past and I could barely say the responsorial psalm. When the priest spoke about a man and a woman coming together to create a family, to bear offspring and raise them in the Catholic faith, my discomfort hung in my throat like vomit.

  The reception was a fantasy in white. Anna wore a cream silk crinoline with pearls sewn into the bodice. The ballroom, its midnight-blue ceiling dotted with gold stars, was full of large round tables covered in white linen.

  My mother’s cousin Gae snuck over to me. ‘Which one’s John?’ I pointed him out. ‘He’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen eyelashes like that on a boy.’

  I was with him when my Aunt Mary came over and kissed me hello. I could smell stale cigarette smoke. ‘You must be John.’ Later she took me aside. ‘What a beautiful man. You make such a nice couple. Extraordinary eyelashes.’

  ‘They’re false,’ I winked.

  My cousin Anthony, whom we all called Ant, a tall, beautifully built red-haired shearer, sidled up to me. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew I was gay.’

  ‘Your mother told me some time ago.’

  I was flabbergasted. ‘Really? When I came out Mum said she couldn’t tell anyone. But everyone knows.’

  ‘He seems sweet. Why don’t you guys come up to Mudgee and stay for a while?’

  At the end of the night I said to John, ‘When I next see you you’ll have done the dirty deed. How do you feel?’

  ‘Fine.’ That’s my boyfriend. Here he was about to dump a large crisis on his family and he says he’s fine.

  ‘I’ve told them I want the whole family to be at lunch tomorrow because I have something I want to discuss with them.’

  ‘I guess they’ll be relieved that you’re not pregnant.’ I hugged him goodbye. ‘I’ll send positive vibes.’

  Next day I sat at Karl’s drinking coffee. I started to feel that telling Mum and Dad wouldn’t be too hard. ‘John has made this seem so easy,’ I told Karl. ‘I’m that close to telling my parents.’

  ‘The weekend of your sister’s wedding? I don’t think so.’ With one sentence he deflated my bravura. There was a knock at the door and Karl opened it to reveal John.

  ‘Went pretty good. Dad had already suspected something. He found it strange that we went to Europe five months after I opened the practice. He asked about my disability insurance. Mum was concerned about my weight and just kept blowing her nose. I think she wanted to cry, but she wasn’t going to in front of anyone else.’

  Back in Sydney I felt pressure to do the same. It nagged like a paper cut, till I decided to fly down for a weekend and do it. When I had come out, my parents’ reaction was totally different from the one I’d hoped for. This time I was expecting the worst. They’d blame me, or worse, blame John.

  In the car on the way from the airport Dad asked about work.

  ‘We’re seeing a lot more boys from other agencies, like STD clinics or the AIDS bus that works up at the Wall. That’s where boy sex-workers find their customers.’ I want them to know the heroic work we’re doing.

  ‘Oh God,’ Mum exclaimed. I fell silent.

  Later that night we were setting the table when I asked if we could have lunch tomorrow. ‘There’s something I want to discuss.’

  ‘What now?’ Mum abandoned the knives and forks.

  ‘I’d rather wait till tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re making me fret.’

  ‘Come on son, you may as well get it over and done with now.’

  I had prepared a speech that I was now struggling to retrieve from my memory: there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for some time but didn’t think I could; I love you and I’m afraid it’s going to hurt you. Here goes … ‘John and I have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.’

  Dad stared at me from under his furrowed brow. Mum crossed her arms, put her head in her hand and started to shake. She was crying. ‘What a waste. All that talent.’

  ‘I’m not dead yet.’

  ‘How long have you boys known?’ Dad was going to get down to business.

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘And how is your health?’

  ‘Mine’s pretty good but John’s is failing. He’s already had pneumonia.’

  ‘That beautiful boy. I knew something was up. He didn’t look well at the wedding.’

  I had already lined them up a counsellor at the AIDS Council. My father declined the offer. My mother was nervous of being seen there. I gave her the number and she promised to ring on Monday. Then I rang John in Sydney and told him it had gone okay.

  ‘I’m on a roll. I think I’ll tell Anna and Nicholas.’

  I rang my brother. We agreed to meet at Dogs Bar in St Kilda. Things between Nicholas and me had been strained for some time. I think I was jealous of him and the way everything was handed to him on a plate because he was heterosexual. If he brought a girl home a big fuss was made, but when I brought Johr there was an air of embarrassment.

  All through our coffee I was distracted, waiting for an opening to launch into my speech. Now? No. What about now? ‘Let’s go for a walk. Along the pier?’ We crossed the highway on the flyover. About halfway across I found myself saying the words, ‘John and I have HIV.’

  Nicholas gasped as though he’d been punched in the stomach. He started to cry. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ I rubbed his back as we looked down on the traffic. ‘I can’t believe it.�
� He started to cry again. ‘You poor bastards, having to face the fact that you’re dying.’ Not quite how I see it, but I’ll leave it.

  We walked along the pier and stood at the rail, watching little waves bobbing up and down. Every now and then Nicholas would say, ‘I can’t believe it,’ and start crying again. But each time he cried a little less.

  Anna’s reaction was quite unexpected. It didn’t seem to upset her at all. It was like I’d told her I’d got a new job. She didn’t grill me about my health, or ask who had infected whom. Maybe she’s trying not to upset me.

  I flew home, and a few days later I rang to see how Mum had got on with the counsellor.

  ‘I saw her this afternoon. She’s a riot. That Irish accent! We had a lot in common. We laughed and laughed.’

  ‘Did you talk about me?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘When are you seeing her again?’

  ‘I don’t think I need to.’

  ‘Gert, wouldn’t it be better to set up a relationship with her now, so that if things get worse you have something established?’

  ‘It’s not me. I’ve survived bigger crises. I was an orphan at eleven.’

  John and I saw Alex Harding’s play Blood and Honour. Michael, a Chinese boy, watches his lover Colin, a newsreader, being crushed by AIDS but slowly growing to acceptance. Colin’s mother, a seventies feminist, moves in with them and tries to politicise both boys. The play’s structure and style were refreshing: lean, precise, accurate, angry. Glaringly lit moments of the human condition went whizzing past at an extraordinary speed.

  I was shocked to hear my thoughts coming out of Michael’s mouth. And then I was shocked because he’d say something I hadn’t thought of and I’d think, What’s wrong with me? The play ended with Colin coming out on his news program, a fantasy about taking control.

  John was crying by the end, and I was choking back tears. We drove down to Bondi Beach and walked along the damp sand. We took off our shoes and paddled in the shallows. In the darkness, in the warm air, we were safe, trying to comprehend what we had seen. John said he was shocked. ‘I hadn’t seen my health from your side of the story. Alex should be proud of what he has done.’