Peter Cross

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2009-09-02T17:18:00.002+10:00

Hi guys for the few people who still visit this site for my Blogs - the new address is now

www.peteracross.wordpress.com

thanks for taking the time

Peter

No Cherry for Cheri

2009-07-15T16:51:00.025+10:00

Based on the 1920s novel by French writer Colette, Cheri is a tragic comedy love story set in Paris in the early 20th Century. A time considered the twilight of the ‘Belle Époque’, literally the ‘beautiful era’.

Directed by Stephen Frears, (The Queen), screenplay by Christopher Hampton, (Atonement) and starring, Michelle Pfeiffer, (Hairspray), Kathy Bates, (Fried Green Tomatoes) and Rupert Friend, (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas).

So it’s a cast and crew with lots of talent, in fact Frears, Hampton and Pfeiffer all worked together on 'Dangerous Liaisons' in 1988. Unfortunately they do not recreate the magic in this offering, somewhere in the mix things get a little lost.

The film is beautifully shot and sumptuously dressed but doesn’t quite work as the tragedy/comedy it sets out to be. Sure there are some awfully good individual moments but too few of them to make an entire film.

The plot is simple enough; aging courtesan Lea de Lonval, (Pfeiffer), is considering retirement she agrees to help her former colleague and sometime rival Madame Peloux, (Bates), by taking Peloux’s 19 year old son Fred aka Cheri, (Friend), under her wing and save him from a life of louche hedonism. For six years Lea teaches Cheri the art of love and life and they settle into a life of easy domesticity. Just as Lea seems prepared to make a commitment Cheri is married off to the daughter of another courtesan. Cheri and Lea who have unwittingly fallen for each other must now come to terms with their lives being lived apart.

Pfeiffer handles the role of Lea with a sense of style and class, allowing us, every now and then, to peak through the veneer of world weariness and see the vulnerability beneath as she confronts her lost love and lost youth.

Bates, as Peloux, is conniving, manipulative, vengeful and petty, her performance is both over the top and larger than life. Aware that her looks and figure have long since departed she has retreated into a world of venality. Clearly she must have been a hit as a courtesan because she looks as if she has eaten her way through many a fortune.

Friend, (Cheri), is the weakest character. Frears has chosen one of those mop top almost androgenous man/boys that England seems to produce by the bucket load, think ‘Twilight’ and ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, to play the part of the ‘beautiful youth’ who has seen it all, done it all and been bored by most of it. Friend doesn’t excite, in fact he is so wet and annoying that I found it hard to understand why Lea, a sophisticated woman in need of intellectual stimulation would have put up with him for so long. Leaving aside this one major flaw, it’s an easy film to watch and luxuriate in.

One unkind critic, not me, summed it as, “A cougar catches a twink, loses a twink and then tries to catch him again.”

There are some extremely camp moments and if awards are ever handed out for ‘chewing the scenery’ then surely the two older ‘women’ playing cards will win hands down.

The voiceover that moves the story forward and then wraps up the rather tragic and unseen ending is spoken by an uncredited Stephen Frears.

Cheri will be in general release from July 23.

Poor Boy

2009-07-10T14:23:00.012+10:00

Seven years ago on the night that ‘Jem Glass’, (Jed Rosenberg/ Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke), was born something happened; an event that would link two families through time, ‘Danny Prior’ (Mathew Newton), died. He was run down as he crossed a pedestrian crossing and left to die. His mother, (Sarah Peirse) and his wife, (Abi Tucker), have never really moved on from that night.

Jem Glass is about to celebrate his seventh birthday, the cake is made the candles are lit but Jem passes out before the family can celebrate. When he comes to he’s not who he once was. Jem arrives at the Prior family home claiming to be their long dead son, Danny. He knows all there is to know about his ‘new’ family and nothing about his ‘old’.

One family has to let go while the other has to embrace someone they thought they had lost forever.

What happens when one soul needs to complete with the family left behind? What is a soul? These are just two of the really big questions that ‘Poor Boy’ attempts to answer. Pretty heady stuff you would imagine, questions that some of the great minds have been struggling with for centuries.

Strong performances across the board from the cast with the standouts being Linda Cropper as ‘Viv Glass’ and Sarah Peirse as ‘Ruth Prior’.

It’s the staging that grabs your attention, on a multi level set designed by Iain Aitken the players of this family drama try to come to terms with reincarnation and excise the demons of deeds past.

To use an old fashioned term, this is a lavish production. It’s theatrical, expertly staged and what a luxury to have the band on stage, on hydraulics, and what a cracking band it is, directed by Ian McDonald.

But here’s the rub; does the ‘work’ stand up as well as the staging? There are some really great moments in this production but there are some truly cringe worthy bits as well – the rebirth of the Flame tree made me groan, the affectation of the zebra head, as much as I loved the head, in the end, how much did it really move the story forward?

The author, Matt Cameron, describes ‘Poor Boy’ as a play with music by Tim Finn, (pictured). Sure new songs have been written for the production but other songs most noticeably, ‘I Hope I Never’, have been worked into the script, not always successfully.

The show doesn’t quite live up to the staging.

Having said all of that at the end of the performance the audience was very vocal and energetic in its approval.

It’s at times like that, when I’m seeing a play or a piece of theatre and everyone around me is so entranced and taken up by the whole experience that I start to wonder, “Why am I not as moved or involved as the others. What is it about me that stops me from experiencing the same amount of joy that everyone else seems to be.” I sat in the theatre and listened to the cheers and the applause for the show and thought, “Have we all just seen the same piece? Sure it was good but it wasn’t great.” Immediately I began to doubt my own critical abilities.

I have prepared myself to be shot down in flames by the rest of the audience.

‘Poor Boy’ opened July 9, at the Sydney Theatre and runs until August 1.

'Every Little Step' - stumbles but it's worth the trip

2009-07-08T11:30:00.008+10:00

May 21st, 1975, off Broadway, at The Public Theatre the first professional performance of ‘A Chorus Line’ was staged; Michael Bennett’s Pulitzer Prize winning show about the dancers, (Gypsies), who perform behind the star.

After a year of taped workshops in which dancers told their stories the format for the show was set. From all the diverse characters that gathered together for Bennett’s workshop a theatrical event was born. A show that proved to be the forerunner for the reality TV shows that fill screens today: ‘So You Think You Can Dance, Australian Idol’ to name just a couple.

The plot for the show is simple; seventeen dancers audition for eight roles, four male and four female, in an upcoming Broadway show. Through the audition process the audience learn that the dancers are not just distractions to keep you entertained while the star changes into yet another, brighter and bigger costume, but that each one of these ‘Gypsies’ has a story and that these stories deserves to be told.

‘A Chorus Line’ grabbed the heart of New York and indeed the world. It transferred from Off Broadway to the Schubert Theatre. It went on to be the longest running show on Broadway running for 6,137 performances. A record since broken by 'Cats' and 'The Phantom of the Opera'.

‘Every Little Step’ is a documentary about the restaging of the show in 2006 on Broadway. Using flashbacks of the original cast and sound clips from that first workshop the filmmakers attempt to link the two audition processes together.

Unfortunately, while the documentary is hugely entertaining, thanks mainly to a superb audition piece by Jason Tam that had the Producers and the audience in tears, and the hunt for Sheila, the film misses, not by much, but enough to leave you wanting something a little more organic from the film makers.

The main problem for me is that there is not enough reference to the past and not enough engagement with the present.

We’re all used to the ‘Reality’ format of such TV shows as the previously mentioned ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘Idol’, shows that encourage you to become emotionally attached to particular performers throughout the competition. 'Every Little Step' for the most part leaves you feeling slightly distanced from those auditioning.

Don’t get me wrong by the end of the film I was an emotional wreck but still left with a feeling that something was missing.

The show ‘A Chorus Line’ succeeds because the audience is invited in to the world of the dancer and we experience the struggle, pain and heartache that they go through to try and achieve their goal. We are seduced by their stories.
‘Every Little Step’ misses because we're not as invested in the people auditioning.

However with all those reservations it’s well worth spending 90 minutes in a darkened theatre and allow this piece of American musical history to take you away.

‘Every Little Step’ is playing at Palace Cinemas – check your local paper for session times.

When Shi Isn't She

2009-07-06T13:19:00.007+10:00

In other news today, July 6th, Shi Pei Pu passed away possibly aged 71.

Shi, (pronounced Shuh), was a Chinese national who taught the French diplomats wives Chinese in Beijing. Shi may or may not have been a singer with the Chinese Opera. Shi also had an affair with a very minor French diplomat named Bernard Boursicot.

Boursicot believed Shi was a singer with the Chinese Opera and female.

They met in Beijing and the affair continued on and off for almost twenty years. Shi convinced Boursicot that their union had produced a male child, Shi Du Lu, (Bertrand). Believing that Shi’s safety was in jeopardy Boursicot agreed to pass documents to the Chinese secret service.

Boursicot was instrumental in getting Shi and the child out of China to Paris in 1982, where they lived as a family until their arrest in 1983.
The affair, when it was discovered ruined Boursicot and he became a laughing stock in France. He and Shi were tried for treason in 1986, both receiving six year sentences and both being pardoned a year later.

Boursicot never knew that Shi was male until they were arrested in 1982. He explained that their sex had always been rather hurried, frantic and always in the dark. When he found out the truth he tried to commit suicide by slicing his throat with a razor blade.

The affair between Shi and Boursicot spawned the Broadway show and movie M. Butterfly.

Boursicot now lives happily with his longtime partner, (male).

Shi is survived by his son Bertrand who also lives in Paris, but has no contact with Boursicot.

1969 was a VERY big year!

2009-06-28T14:58:00.018+10:00

1969 it was a very big year for change. A lot happened in 1969 - not all of it good.

It was the year that Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected President of the United States of America, the year of the last ever public performance by The Beatles, on top of Apple Records, the year of the first flight of the Boeing 747, the Jumbo jet that would revolutionise air travel, Judy Garland died from an accidental drug overdose, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales, Apollo 11 was launched and the lunar module Eagle landed on the lunar surface, Charles Manson and members of his cult murdered a pregnant Sharon Tate, the Woodstock Festival was held in upstate New York, The Brady Bunch premiered on American television, Sesame Street started, the first GAP store opened. It was a busy year.

Two other events were reported for 1969, events that have changed the life of every gay man and woman.

1969 is reported as being the first year that the HIV virus was documented as migrating to the USA from Haiti.

1969 was also the year of the Stonewall Riots in New York.

These two events would continue to colour our lives for the next four decades and probably for many more to come.

In Greenwich Village on Christopher St. there was a small, rather seedy bar run by the Genovese Mafia Family. It served watered down drinks, paid off the police and was frequented by transvestites, lesbians, gay men and homeless kids. On the night of June 28 the New York Police raided the club. This type of event was reasonably common in the 50s and 60s but for some reason on this particular night, people had decided that they had had enough and refused to go quietly.

No one is really sure who was first to say “Not this time”, was it a butch dyke dressed as a man or a transvestite who first resisted arrest and started to rally the crowd?

It started with the throwing of coins, a symbol of the graft that the Mafia were paying the police, (gayola) and quickly escalated to bottles, rocks and anything handy being hurled at the law. The normally meek ‘fags’ decided that now was the time for ‘Gay Power’.

Word spread through the Village and across the city; hundreds of gay men, lesbians and other minority groups converged on Christopher St. to join the protest.

The Police were woefully outnumbered and had to use the pay phone inside Stonewall to call for reinforcements. Bolstered by the Tactical Patrol Force, (TPF), riot police specially trained to deal with anti Vietnam War protesters, New York’s finest tried to regain control of the streets but every time the protesters were dispersed they would reform and challenge the TPF by forming a ‘kick line’, like a crowd of angry Rockettes, singing and mocking the police. This was a different style of protest, a protest never seen before but soon to become familiar throughout the world. A protest with panache, that would one day become the mainstay of Gay Pride marches throughout the world, proving that you could get your message across and achieve change with wit and humour.

For the next five nights the crowds, in varying numbers, would regather to hammer home the message, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”

In July, the week after the riots, a new organisation was born in New York, the ‘Gay Liberation Front’, (GLF), whose sole purpose was to promote equality and force change on an unwilling government. During the next year lesbians and gay men, through out the world formed their own version of the GLF and took their fight to their streets.

In Australia as news of the riots filtered through, Sydney’s first political group, ‘Campaign Against Moral Persecution’, (CAMP), was formed in 1970. The first national Gay Pride march happened on 15 September 1973, with 18 arrests. In 1975 Rod Stringer with Bill McElvie launched ‘Campaign’ a national gay men’s magazine. On the night of Saturday, 24 June, 1978 the first major protest rally to demand equal rights for homosexuals was held in Sydney and from that march the ‘Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’ was born.

Meanwhile, back in 1969 that little known virus that had migrated from Haiti to America was marshalling its own troops and by the 80’s was ready to mount its own attack on an unsuspecting populace.

1969 was for a lot of reasons a very BIG year.

From Motown to Tehran - Before Breakfast

2009-06-26T14:10:00.013+10:00

Here is where I started: I woke this morning checked my laptop for emails and logged on to my Facebook account and ended up asking...

How did you hear about The Princess of Wales’s death? Did you read about it in newspapers, hear it on the radio or perhaps you watched the reports on television as the events unfolded. It was a story that was slowly played out through the media as the world’s journalists gathered information and wrote their pieces.

How did you hear about Michael Jackson’s death? Chances are it was either on Facebook or Twitter. The message was spread virally. Rumour was written as fact before it was confirmed by either the doctors or the family. People all over the world knew that Michael Jackson was dead before his body was cold.

Who controls the information that we are fed, on a minute by minute basis? It seems like just yesterday it was Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer but now more often that not it is the new breed of ‘citizen’ journalist, the blogger and the man or woman with the mobile phone or camcorder who is on the spot as things happen. There is no censoring or verification of most of this news unless the story is later taken up by one of the ‘old media’ organisations. Yet we believe it and take it as gospel.

Factual reporting is a dying art form. Opinion pieces, like this one, are the new way of disseminating news. The Internet gives people who live in countries less liberal than ours the ability to create change. It is no wonder that all through the world governments both elected and non-elected are nervously trying to limit the amount of damage that this freedom can cause by creating new laws to enforce censorship.

From pondering I started to wander and then went in this direction…

Censorship has always been an issue that arouses strong feelings on both sides of the debate. Does anyone have a right to restrict anyone else’s ability to access information? If we lived in a perfect world, which clearly we don’t, then there would be no need for any form of censorship. Fairness and equality for all would be one of the underpinning bulwarks of our Utopia. However people being people this is not how our ‘real’ world works. We live in a world filled with deception and manipulation with self interest and selfishness. So somewhere, someone decided that we could not be trusted to monitor our own reading, viewing or web surfing activities; but the world has changed. The old argument of “if you don’t like it turn it off” has lost some of its power. Today it is almost impossible to turn off information. Information is the constant white noise that continuously wraps us in its warm embrace.

People and more importantly governments are scared. They are scared because they are losing control and the more they tighten their noose of censorship the more people are demanding their right to freedom of thought.

In Iran the message of revolution is being carried to the populace and the outside world by the Internet, mainly Twitter, as the Government tries to control every other foreign news source. Images of a beautiful young girl lying, dying, in the street from an assassin's bullet are carried on to Youtube. Her eyes stare at the camera as her blood stains the road as her life force leaves her.

Similarly in China the ruling elite censor and distort reports from inside Tibet or indeed any of their ‘spheres of interest’ throughout the country. Computers are now being sold with inbuilt filters to block sites that the Chinese describe as ‘unsuitable’. China is now trying to construct 'The Great Fire-Wall' to keep their population 'safe'. They have asked, (demanded) that new software should be designed by Hewlett Packard, Dell and even Apple to allow each keystroke entered on your computer to be tracked. This would allow the Central Government to effectively control exactly which computer user is accessing what sites and then take ‘appropriate’ action.

The Australian Labor Party is proposing to expand an already existing censorship system that allows the government of the day to block sites that it considers to be unsuitable, or worse sites that are not in line with the ‘public morality’. 'The Black List'. The examples used to justify such a move are always sites that promote, propagate or groom young children for sex or sites that associate violence and sex. Of course there is a case to be made for censoring web sites that seek to exploit young children for sexual gratification but who will be setting the limits, who will decide what is acceptable? We all remember what happened to Bill Henson’s photographs.

Senator Conroy the Labor Senator in charge of the implementation of the filter says that there will be an ‘opt out’ option, so you can contact your provider and advise them that you would like to have the filters lifted from your computer, with the exception of ‘kiddie porn’ and ‘R-rated’ sites.

The three major ISP’s in Australia all claim that the proposed system is unworkable and will slow Internet access down by as much as 80%. However as technology improves and the Chinese Government’s demands for greater control over its citizenry increase, then surely Prime Minister Rudd’s ideal moral, Christian, right society is only a mouse click away.

Now at the end I am here; worried about freedom, gossip disguised as news and the Nanny Rudd state we are all about to live in. Who would have thought that the death of Michael Jackson would cause me so much concern?

World War Bob

2009-06-15T12:55:00.013+10:00

It’s winter in The Blue Mountains, it’s cold but if you look carefully near the first of The Three Sisters you can make out the silhouette of a lonely bugler as he raises his horn to his lips to send out the clarion call. The Empire is in need. All fit soldiers of the Queen are being asked to do their bit and Private Bob has never been one to shirk ‘doing his bits.’ Like a good Christian soldier he’s marching off to war, with a song in his heart and a can of Ultra Clutch hairspray in his knapsack, our Prince of Polyester, Private Bob Downe with his favourite femme fatale, Ms. Jane Markey, are off to entertain and amuse our boys overseas, giving new meaning to the term, ‘camp show.’

A quick digression: in Sydney there once was a club that was a restaurant that was a bar that was a theatre that once was a funeral parlour and it was wonderful. It was called Kinselas and it functioned as the unofficial Green Room for Sydney. This is where I first saw Mr. Trevorrow and Ms. Markey when they were performing as ‘The Globos’, the year was 1982; I have patiently waited twenty five years to see Ms. Markey, live, on stage again.

Ms. Markey is one of the great comic talents of Australia and it was mostly for her that I travelled the two hours to the Mountains. Did she disappoint – no siree Bob she did not. With a crooked smile and a knowing glance at the audience Ms. Markey had me – in fact she had me at Hello. As ‘Ida Downe’, she led us in a sing-a-long, that from now on every good show must have, just think how much more enjoyable ‘Sweeney Todd’ would be with a little audience participation.

What can one say that hasn’t already been said better by others about Bob Downe? He has the comic genius and timing of Humphries, he has the wit of Kennedy, (Graham not JFK), and the classic good looks of Barry Crocker… with better hair. If John Waters, (Hairspray), had been born in Australia then Bob Downe would have been his muse.

To dismiss Bob Downe as merely a spoof of every bad club performer you’ve ever seen is to miss the point. Bob is an over the top tribute to a time and era when things were simpler, when a holiday away was a trip in a caravan with Mum, Dad and Aunty Merle, or when ‘el dente’ was an Italian comic appearing, third on the bill, at the Murwillumbah RSL. Bob is to entertainment what Bakelite is to radio.

From the Crimea to Iraq in 75 minutes the publicity blurb said and it didn’t lie. No war is too small for this band of military minstrels. Armed only with an Oral B toothbrush and his very own special WMD’s, (Words of Musical Distraction), Private Bob and chanteuse Markey embark on an epic journey through the music of the wars. Pro war – anti war you name it they sing it and boy do they sing it well. It’s exhausting; from the sexually charged ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, performed with great subtlety by Ms. Markey, to the soulful ‘Lilli Marlene’, sung by the very sweet Jeremy Hopkins, World War Bob is a hoot. An old fashioned cabaret/revue that’s proud of its roots.

This is the out of town tryout before WWB hits the big smoke of Adelaide. Sure there were problems; lighting cues that didn’t work and a microphone on the fritz but Mr. Trevorrow’s incredible professionalism and determination kept us laughing until the very last minute.

Conceived, written and directed by Mark Trevorrow, with Bill Harding, musical arrangements by John Thorn and choreography by Jack Webster. WWB is indeed the campest of camp shows.

‘World War Bob’ will be playing in Adelaide at The Playhouse, June 17 through June 20.

In Memoriam - 'Our Dan'

2009-06-02T12:26:00.007+10:00

Danny La Rue passed away on Sunday after a short battle with Prostate Cancer. Born: Daniel Patrick Carroll in 1927 in County Cork, Ireland, his father was a soldier in the IRA who also worked as a cabinet maker. After the death of his father, when Danny was 18 months old, he and his mother moved to Soho, in London. As he famously said when doing a show in Cork, “I left in shorts and came back in a frock.”

Danny was a successful club owner, cabaret performer, TV and movie actor who became one of the highest paid and most popular performers in the UK during the 1970’s. His career spanned 60 years. He made a fortune and he lost a fortune but the one thing he never lost was the love and respect of his audience. Danny was frequent and always popular visitor to Australia, accompanied most times by his pianist, Wayne King, a name that always got a laugh from the audience.

Danny who preferred to be known as a ‘comic in a frock’ considered himself an actor rather than ‘just a drag queen.’ La Rue was the first man to play ‘Dolly Levi’ in ‘Hello Dolly’ and the first female impersonator to perform in drag before the Queen during a Royal Variety Performance.

Danny got his stage name indirectly from his friend Harry Secombe, (The Goon Show). After seeing him perform Secombe advised Danny not to give up his day job, a few months later Danny was to perform at a theatre in London and not wanting Secombe to know, he decided to call himself Danny Street but the name was already taken; so Danny La Rue was born.

As La Rue’s fame grew he opened his own nightclub in Mayfair in the 1960’s and of course it was a hit, attracting the A-List at the time: The Snowden’s, Barbara Windsor, and Shirley Bassey to name just a few.

When Danny’s long time partner and manager, Jack Hanson died in 1984, Danny sank into a deep depression and drank heavily for almost a year, finally snapping out of it and getting back on the stage when it looked as if he was about to lose everything.

Danny died in Kent, aged 81, at the home he shared with his dress fitter of 30 years, Annie Galbraith, who had taken him in when he was once again in financial strife.

Samson and Delilah

2009-05-31T23:42:00.006+10:00

‘Samson and Delilah’; a primeval movie made in a primeval land. The movie is billed as a love story, in the same way ‘Sid and Nancy’ was a love story; bleak and raw.

What is there to do in Warlpiri? Wake up sniff petrol, eat, go to bed – this is Samson’s life, day after day after day after relentless day. The only sunshine in his life is his attraction to Delilah, a girl who lives with, and cares for, her grandmother; a grandmother who paints the dot pictures for the ‘white fella’ to sell to the tourists and art dealers of the big city for thousands of dollars but returns to the artist less than a token, just enough to keep them in paint a little amount of food. As the one telephone in that is in community is left to ring unanswered, how does Samson express his growing feelings for Delilah? The only ways he knows how; by throwing rocks at her, or drawing ‘S4D’ in permanent marker on the wall of the only store, or by moving in, unasked, with her and her nanna.

When nanna dies both Samson and Delilah are cast out, they steal a car and head to the big city only to discover that the isolation they are fleeing is magnified by the loneliness of living in the white man’s world. Through all this the one thing that holds them together is their unspoken love. As Samson slides further into his petrol induced haze, Delilah endures the violence, starvation and addiction that are heaped upon her with a quiet dignity that defies her age.

The strength of this film lies not only in the ability of Director/Writer, Warwick Thornton, to convey in image rather than word the bleakness of this world but also in the talent of his two lead actors, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson to effectively portray that image for us in a way that doesn’t just alienate us but allows us to still feel empathy for them. At no stage does Thornton allow the film to wallow in cheap sentimentality.

This film could not be made by anyone other than an Aboriginal film maker. No Aboriginal community could open up and allow their story to be told by anyone else, possibly because they have been used and misrepresented more often than not by well meaning white men looking to do the ‘right thing.’ Hopefully enough people will see ‘Samson and Delilah’ to dispel the image of the ‘noble savage’ as portrayed in Baz Luhrmann’s, ‘Australia.’

The disturbing thing for me as I watched the film, I realised; I was to a large extent untouched by it. This is not to say I wasn’t moved because I was, deeply; but the world that Samson and Delilah inhabit is as far away from my reality as mine is from theirs and I couldn’t integrate that world with my own, and I guess that really is the point – I can’t for one minute believe that this world exists, yet it does. To live in the outback in a ‘black fella’ community, as presented in this film, is a life sentence without possibility of parole.

In ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ I was horrified by the filth and the abject poverty but this is my own country, how can we allow this to continue? But we do … but I do. It’s easier for me because I rationalise it; it happens out there, in the Outback, yet if I went two suburbs over from my safe haven in Darlinghurst I would be in Everleigh St., Redfern a suburb where the lives of the Warlpiri are alive and not so well.

We pride ourselves by saying how far we have come as a country, our Prime Minister has said ‘Sorry’, but in reality what has actually changed for Australia’s Aboriginals – nothing. The white man is still making good capital from the black man’s plight, both politically and financially.

Russell Crowe Gives Good Head(line)

2009-05-28T12:35:00.009+10:00

Here is the gag line – “Russell Crowe gives good head(line).”

After sitting through the forgettable ‘Angels and Demons’, I was beginning to think that Hollywood had lost the art of story telling; ‘State of Play” reminded me that when Hollywood gets it right, they get it right brilliantly. This is a movie for adults; ‘State of Play’ directed by Kevin MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland), starring Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind), Ben Affleck (Good Will Hunting), Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), Helen Mirren (Gosford Park) and Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) has enough talent both on screen and off to guarantee that you that you are in for a treat.

Without giving away all of the tricks; it’s set in Washington, Cal McAffrey (Crowe) a hard drinking, hard assed, old school newspaper reporter teams up with a young blogger/reporter Della Frye (McAdams), to investigate the death of one of Congressman Collins’, (Affleck), aides. The seemingly unrelated death of a bag snatcher proves that there is more going on here than just a random act of violence. Collins was having an affair and making some very powerful people extremely nervous. That’s just the start; throw in Homeland Security, mercenaries, corruption and conspiracy and you have the makings of a really good yarn with enough twists, turns and last minute surprises to keep you guessing right through to the end credits, and stay for the credits they are worth seeing. Director MacDonald, who also made ‘One Day in September’, keeps the movie ticking along and just when you think you have it worked out you realise that … well see the movie.

Whether you like him or loathe him Crowe delivers, he never just phones in a performance. From ‘The Insider’ to ‘The Gladiator’, he commits. Sometimes it becomes hard to tell where the character ends and Crowe begins. He really is one of the great talents of the last fifteen years and I’m not even a fan.

Ben Affleck, who seems to have had a hit and miss approach to acting since ‘Good Will Hunting’ and has made some pretty forgettable movies between then and now, dare I mention ‘Gigli’. His Congressman Collins, decorated war hero and all around good guy, is one of those roles that fit Mr. Affleck like a well tailored suit.

Rachel McAdams is terrific as the blogger/reporter with aspirations that is mentored by Crowe.

The most surprising performance for me in this film was Jason Bateman, (Dominic Foy), who has a ball as a narcissistic, pill popping sexually gregarious PR consultant.

There is a message in this movie that quietly gnaws away at you as you are taken up by the events on screen. We are becoming so used to people like me, bloggers, people who write without too much research and spew forth opinion as if it is fact. What place does real reporting have in a society of Facebook journalism, a society where Wikipedia is the first and sometimes the last reference tool used. As newspapers begin to close and on-line sites begin to prosper what hope is there for the ‘old fashioned’ investigative journalist of day’s gone bye?

‘State of Play’ is running in wide release at a cinema near you – do yourself a favour go see it.

Get Outta My Face (book)

2009-05-26T08:11:00.000+10:00

It’s Friday night, it’s been a shit of a week, so to celebrate I thought I would treat myself to a cup of tea, a normi, (the tablet not the singer although they both achieve the same result) and a good lie down. By 10.45 I was happily, blissfully, asleep. I had survived another week and was looking forward to a relaxed and pressure free weekend. What I didn’t realise was that while I slumbered, somewhere across the globe in hundreds of darkening rooms; a plot was being hatched by faceless, nameless “friends”.

I woke up the next day, groggy, my face forming a perfect relief map of the Blue Mountains, to discover I had 300 new friends! Now I don’t know about you but I have trouble keeping track of the five, okay three, friends I have IRL, (that’s young folk type for “in real life”). So the weight of 297 people demanding my attention hit me like the Liberal Party election loss.

Let’s be honest, I’m too old for Facebook and not nearly “gay” enough; I don’t straighten my hair and I wear my jeans around my waist. God knows why I joined in the first place - but I did. I’m thinking at 50 I’m more a “Get Outta My Face” book type of guy. I’m not a networker, social or otherwise, in fact I don’t really like people much at the best of times, just ask my partner. I went to Stonewall, once, only because I thought it was still the NAB, (National Bank of Australia). I did think it strange how funky the tellers were dressed as I handed over my deposit. (What is the deal with old banks turning into gay bars anyway?) I’ve never sent a Christmas or Birthday card in my life. Even a quick text to say “thanks for dinner” is beyond me but now I’m constantly sending hugs and kisses to these strange friends.

Do I really want to go to Ryan’s farewell drinks in Basingstoke on Trent, do I care that Sally has split up with Fiona but is now partnered for life with Cherie from Lucerne or Jose` is seeing Sweeney Todd in Queens? And just who is David Paris?

My time is being co-opted by these pals, demanding that I join their clubs, sending me nudges, pokes, winks, pictures and links to YouTube videos that are just NOT funny. Why do I have to write on someone’s Super Funwall, why do I have to take quizzes all to find out I am most like Joan Crawford and not Joan Fontaine? Why do I keep accepting the invite? It’s insidious, addictive, destructive and yet strangely compelling.

I can’t leave my bedroom, I’m forced to eat cold meals delivered by Christine Courier in front of my laptop, I chew coffee beans to keep myself awake, my back is developing a hump. I’m going mad answering every message that hits my intray. I don’t wash, I don’t shave, my hair has become home to a small nest of spiders and my fingernails are heading to Howard Hughes length. I have no me time, no down time, no quiet time.

I’ve never been so popular.

Please, please, please if my name pops up on your screen don’t feel compelled to add me, treat me the way you would if you saw me or any other MAG out. Ignore me! Gotta dash, Andrew’s not coping with Biomechanics, (I mean really, who is), and my two new “best friends forever” from Ghana want me, or at least my account number at Stonewall.

Who Do I Want to Be Today?

2009-05-22T14:01:00.007+10:00

Another successful face transplant has been carried out in the United States, this time for a man who was horribly disfigured after falling on electrified train tracks. He is the third person reported to have had this kind of surgery. Isn't it amazing what science can achieve?

Where will it end? If you think about it, knowing the kind of people we are with the vanity we have, at some stage, within the next fifty or so years, this kind of operation will become commonplace and will probably be considered 'elective surgery' and be covered by your health fund. All the bright young things will decide that not only can they change their hair colour and bust size but now they can literally have a new face.

Plastic surgery, as we know it, will be as old hat as the 'rotary dial telephone'. 'Face Shops' will pop up all over the world. The incredibly wealthy from Asia, Russia and America will flick through the fashion magazines of tomorrow and pick out their look for the new season. Impoverished people from the Third World with good genes and incredibly high cheekbones will sacrifice the faces of their children so that the International Jet Setters of tomorrow can look less like Mutton and a lot more like Spring Lamb.

I can already see the ads on Television, "No Visage, No Worry. Have we got a face for you, no wrinkles, one owner. Dial this number for a new dial. If you are not entirely satisfied then we will give you your own face back at no extra charge. All major Credit cards accepted. Why wait, call now - remember the look you want is just a clone away."

I am prepared to wager large sums of money that somewhere, someone is cloning Brad and Jennifer, Leo and Kate look-a-likes for the single purpose of selling their faces to the highest bidder. If they aren't doing it now, trust me they will be by the time the operation is perfected. Imagine a world full of Paris's.

Remember that old Urban Myth where the man wakes up in the ice bath missing a kidney, well the next time you wake up and think to yourself "gee I was off my face last night", check the mirror.

Who would I want to wear on my face - I guess I am leaning towards a George Clooney look but knowing my budget I will probably end up with Bert Newton's old face if and when he is finally done with it.

All in all the whole thing is pretty scary and ... maybe not so pretty either. I might just stick with my own scars and imperfections.

Angels and (miss) demeanors

2009-05-17T13:18:00.015+10:00

Dan Brown is to writing what Starbucks is to coffee. If you are on holiday in America and can't find a good cafe` then Starbucks will do - if you are at the Airport and can't find "The Slap" by Christos Tsiolkas then Dan Brown will do.

The good thing about Mr. Brown is that after you have read him you forget him - that is until Ron Howard comes along and forces him down your throat again.

We all sat through the interminable screen version of 'The Da Vinci Code', a movie that did more damage to the art of film making than the Catholic Church has managed to do to Science in it's entire 2000 year history.

You may have noticed I'm not a fan.

What has happened to Tom Hanks? This was the actor who so powerfully portrayed 'Andrew Beckett', a gay man dying of HIV/AIDS in the 1993 film 'Philadelphia', an actor who convinced us that "life was just a box of chocolates" in 'Forrest Gump' and who took us across the beaches of Normandy to save Private Ryan. What has happened - we know he can act, we know he can and will make courageous choices in the the roles he plays - why oh why has he revisited this rather dull character of 'Professor Robert Langdon'? Has the Global Economic Downturn hit the mega rich so hard, that it is robbing them of their talent?

It's a silly plot - The Pope has died, let's elect a new Pope, let's kidnap the favourite candidates, let's resurrect the 'Illuminati', (boy can they hold a grudge), lets drive fast through the streets of Rome, (or a town that could possibly be Rome if we had not been banned from filming in Rome), might as well throw in the 'Hadron Particle Super Collider' and instead of the Anti Christ I know let's have some Anti Matter .

Why did I go and see it - well it was free. Proving once again that old adage, "There's no such thing as a free film in this town".

Now look here Mr Howard, you gave us 'Frost/Nixon', you gave us 'Apollo 13' and you gave us 'A Beautiful Mind' - why oh why are you punishing us with this dross? Perhaps you and Mr. Hanks have made some secret compact to punish all of us who still remember you as 'Opie' and him as 'Kip Wilson', ('Bosom Buddies').

Look go and see it if you want, it's not 'Citizen Cane' and by the time you get back to your car you will have forgotten just how ordinary this movie really is. A much better idea would be to bite the bullet and see 'Samson and Delilah', one of those movies you always say that you should see but always put off because you are never quite in the right frame of mind. It's the difference between artifice and art.

Sometimes YES means NO

2009-05-15T15:46:00.010+10:00

A lot has been made about the issue of ‘consensual sex’ over the last few weeks especially with regard to the behaviour of the Cronulla Sharks in New Zealand in 2002. Legally the question comes down to the issue of ‘consent’ - when is consent given, when is it withdrawn? If someone is drunk do they still have the ability to make that kind of decision? This is no cut and dry case.

As far as we know, at this point, Clare willingly went back to a motel room with two men. Once there, other members of the Sharks decided that ‘one in all in’. According to Johns, Clare made no protest and encouraged other players to participate, however according to her she did not. What happened in that room is a matter of conjecture but what does seem clear is that what did happen was immoral. Clare was a teenager, a waitress in a bar, the players a combination of singles, married men and team officials who should have known better.

This side to Australian male culture of regarding alcohol fuelled sex as a rite of passage is a hangover from a time that is best consigned to the dustbin of history.

Public opinion seems to have come down 75% on the side of Mathew Johns for having the courage to stand up and own his actions. Good for him.

However the majority of comment I have read has condemned Clare, saying that she is deserving of what happened to her. Some people believe that the reason she waited so long to bring it to the attention of Four Corners was to ‘grab the cash’, she was in fact approached by Four Corners. She has variously been described as, ‘a money hungry whore’ and ‘a wowser for not taking on the rest of the team’. A few preface their comments with, ‘I’m not in favour of rap (sic) but …’ or ‘if this had happened to a gay guy it would just be considered a dud root’. Those comments were taken from just one discussion on Facebook between a group of twenty something gay males. The comments section of The Daily Telegraph is filled with more vicious bile directed at this girl and the mix is 50/50 female male but almost all of it against her.

The consensus seems to be she got what she deserved.

I am amazed, horrified and frightened that we ‘gays’, along with the rest of society, are so quick to trivialise what has happened to this girl and dismiss those events with that old fashioned line “she had it coming”, this is the same argument that homophobes and racists have been using for years to justify the bashing, rape and even murder of any number of homosexual men and women.
One case in particular comes to mind; Mathew Shepard who was brutally bashed and left for dead on October 8, 1998 aged 21 in Laramie, Wyoming. The argument of the two accused was that he was ‘asking for it, he wanted it, he deserved it because he made sexual advances to us’. This was the birth of the sometimes successful “Gay Panic Defence”.

It is not too much of a stretch to see that if Clare had put up a fight, had resisted, then in the hands of another group of men she too may have been physically, as well as sexually, assaulted or worse.

Are we going to regress to a time when we could be bashed because of what we wear, how we act or who we are? Wasn’t it just a year or two ago when we took to the streets to protest at the violence that is plaguing Oxford St.

What gives any of us the right to judge what has happened to this woman? Was it consensual; possibly … was it moral, no.

The Age of E (lasticity)

2009-05-13T14:02:00.011+10:00

As I sat, in the foyer of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, drinking a cappuccino and scoffing a large pink doughnut after having a small film crew exploring my nether regions looking for polyps, or the Labor Party environmental policy, I got to wondering about “Life”.

My current journey began ten years ago in the uncluttered fabulousness of one of those brilliant new restaurants that everyone wants to be at, a place too loud to make conversation pleasant. Six of us sat hunched on the backless hardwood chairs, jammed cheek by saggy jowl, into a room too darkly lit, trying to order food and more importantly wine, from a menu that might as well be written in Sanskrit. Everything on the menu seemed a blur, one dish melting into another. At first I blamed the lighting, then the ridiculously small font, then the colour of the ink against the papyrus. The waiter, a louche young man with impossibly high cheekbones, a child god, who I instantly recognised from the “my favourites” section of Gaydar, stood over me beaming a 'too white' Brittany Spears smile. All eyes were turned on me, feeling pressured I pointed at something I hoped was Chicken with Pasta. As the “vision” sashayed off to attend to a fusion table of AussieBum models and Arq barmen, my dearest friends turned and squealed, “Goat Lung with Witlof Salad!”

I needed specs - I sensed the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

It started with my eyes and moved rather quickly to my butt. What was once pert and high, with the round firmness of a ripe peach, has now taken on the texture and look of a golf ball that’s been around the sand traps once too often.

Herewith a very personal example of the indignity handed out to the aging.
To add insult to sagging injury I met a very attractive boy on line a year ago - perfect hair, perfect skin and a perfect - he was mighty fine - thirty minutes later he was knocking on my front door. Now, my pics; they may have been taken by Cecil Beaton using the Doris Day filter, but I think you still get the idea that this is who I once was and in the right blackout could be again. We raced upstairs to my loft, where he did something so unexpected that I’m still recovering from it; he pinched my arm and said in his angelic voice, “You lose so much elasticity at your age”. I looked down to see folds of skin hanging loosely, like a deflated party balloon, steadfastly refusing to snap back into place. Funnily enough, I think that was the last time I managed an erection - without the help of a little blue pill.

I now look longingly but I stress, not lustfully, at the perfectly unlined, lightly tanned nape of young men’s necks. At the gym I stare off into the distance as well toned, high butted Adonis’s, strut from bench press to bicep curl their eyes bright with enthusiasm for all that life has to offer.

I’m not bitter, resentful or just another “grumpy old queen”. I’m happy that, against all odds, I’m the age that I am. I’m a survivor in so many ways and I’ve absolutely no desire whatsoever to go back and do any of it again. But I do so miss “the age of elasticity”.

Star Trek

2009-05-07T18:35:00.007+10:00

I freely admit to it - I am a ‘trekker’ and proud of it. I have been since the first time Captain James Tiberius Kirk invited me to “boldly go where no man has gone before”. I was there for “The Enemy Within” and I was there for “The Trouble with Tribbles”. I watched religiously through Jean Luke’s captaincy and then the stern neo-modernism of Kathryn Janeway as she nursed her crew back home on Voyager, and even laboured through Captain Archer’s ‘Enterprise’. I saw all movies – I am a ‘trekker’ with street ‘cred’.

I have been looking forward to this next exciting instalment of what can only be described as the best franchise since the bible. Was I disappointed? Not for one minute. This is the Kirk for the next generation; he’s sexy, sassy and seriously good looking.

Star Trek, version 09, is directed by J.J. Abrams and stars Chris Pine as James T Kirk with Zachary Quinto as Spock, the head villain is Australia’s own Romulan, Eric Bana and of course a guest appearance by Ambassador Spock, Leonard Nimoy.

Here’s the set up - James T is a hell-raising, thrill seeking Iowan farm boy. Kirk is taken under the wing of Capt. Pike a friend of Kirk’s deceased father. Pike recognises the conflicts in the boy and challenges him to join Starfleet and be one tenth the man his father was.

Our favourite pointy eared Vulcan, Spock, is another misfit on another planet who has little too much human in him for the Vulcans and little too much Vulcan for the humans. So it’s off to Starfleet with him as well.

Lurking out there in an altered timeline is the villain, the beast, of the movie Australia’s newest favourite son, Eric Bana who wants revenge for the destruction of his home world, Romulous.

Let’s not worry too much about plot; there are all the usual bells and whistles, black holes, space/time continuums, singularities and enough photon torpedos to save a planet. Let’s just kick back and go for the ride with Uhura, Bones, Scotty, Mr. Sulu and an incredibly cute Chekov.

And what a ride it is. If you have no memory of the previous incarnations it doesn’t matter this version takes you in and gives you everything you need to know. Sure some of the effects are a little stretched and some of the dialogue is a bit hokey, but this is a boy’s own adventure story with more than enough eye candy and CGI to keep everyone happy.

I freely admit that at places there were tears in my eyes as the characters I grew up with met for the first time and their friendships were forged. How sad is that?

Star Trek is alive and well and this new crew will be around to live long and prosper for a few years yet.

Star Trek is happening at a cinema near you. Peace, out.

Thoughts From the Bed Pan

2009-05-05T22:38:00.008+10:00

‘As we that are left grow old’, there’s a phrase to strike terror into an aging ‘homosexualist’. As I approach my dotage and this recession/depression takes huge chunks out of my superannuation which was never enough anyway, I’m left wondering ‘what the …?’ My entire financial forward planning is now based on a Lotto win.

Was it just two years ago that I sat back thinking, “well if all else fails at least when I turn sixty five I’ll have a small income supplemented by a smaller pension to keep me in lattes and Polident”. Now I’m facing a future of Nescafe` and unstable dentures.
I had my chances; I recklessly spent one large windfall on airfares and cocaine in 1988, and reluctantly spent another on surgeons in 2003. I could’ve bought a house but somehow New York seemed like a much better proposition. I thought that if you’re going to NYC then naturally you fly first class. There was a joke often told by my friends, “How do you make a small fortune?” answer, “Give Peter a large one and wait six months”. We all laughed, some of us louder than others.

I don’t blame anyone for my decisions and god knows I had a blast making them but on reflection they may not have been altogether wise.

I have a much older friend who now lives in a private nursing home, which luckily for him is in the Eastern Suburbs. His main fear when he moved was that he would be forgotten out there in the ‘burbs’, because we Sydney queens are notorious for never travelling far from our comfort zone. You know the old saying, ‘out of sight, where’s what’s his name again?’ Luckily he has enough money to get by rather well. With global warming I’ll be lucky if there is an Ice Flow left to leave me on. I’ll be thrown into some institution in Tempe, possibly the Tip.

So I’ve been pondering my future and what’s to become of me. I’ve always been, as one of my harshest critics described, ‘a survivor’ and I’m sure I’ll get by but I want to more than just survive, I still want to have a ‘life’. I don’t see myself lining up at Mathew Talbot hoping for a bed at night but …

Is this just a problem for us ‘gay folk’? Does our lifestyle promote instant gratification and, pardon the pun, bugger the consequences? Maybe it’s just my generation; a generation that through the eighties wasn’t expected to live much into the nineties so some of us had a tendency to squander our ‘dosh’ and now we’re rather surprised at how old we’ve become.

I worry that the ‘gaylings’ of today seem destined to head down this same path to penury. Perhaps now might be the right time to revisit the wise words of one learned gent by the name of Micawber, “… annual income twenty shillings, annual expenditure twenty one shillings, result misery’.

Old age creeps up on you alarmingly fast. If I was to offer any advice, which is never a good idea because it always has a way of coming back and biting you on the bum, it would be to somehow find the means to occasionally deny yourself that next ‘NEW’ thing and put a little aside because hopefully you will lead a long, long FABULOUS life.

The Devil Made Me Do It

2009-05-03T12:46:00.011+10:00

There is a Devil loose in Salem and she is perverting all the citizenry, at least that’s what Abigail Williams would have us believe.
‘The Crucible’, by Arthur Miller, was first performed in 1953 at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York. Mr. Miller wrote this as an allegory for the ‘witch’ hunts happening at the time under the auspices of ‘The House Committee on Un-American Activities’ hearings. Mr. Miller had been questioned by the Committee and had been found in contempt because he refused to ‘name the names’ of people who were suspected Communists. This play was Mr. Miller’s response to that sad period in American history and it has become one of the ‘stand out’ pieces of American Theatre.

‘The Crucible’ has become one of those plays that has a reputation. Most of us have seen good, bad, or indifferent productions; we have been driven to distraction by too much ‘acting’, bad sets and too many words. If the show we saw was good we have high expectations, if it was bad we’re prepared for a long, torturous night. This production will go a long way in restoring your faith; it may not be the best production ever but it is a very good one.

This abridged version is directed by Ms. Tanya Goldberg and designed by Ms. Simone Romaniuk for The Sydney Theatre Company.

This is a production that hits all the right buttons, it’s staged simply and it evokes all the right images from farmhouse to prison, from Hillsong to Abu Ghraib. The Director wisely lets the actors and the words work their magic. The cast for the most part are very good. Some of the performances are standout; special mention must go to Mr. Peter Carroll and Ms. Lynnette Curran, even when she is playing a ‘little’ out of her age range. These actors bring a maturity and sense of solidness that anchor the show. Mr. Joe Manning, as John Proctor, and Ms. Marta Dusseldorp, as his wife Elizabeth, hit their marks from the moment they step on the stage and in the second half their final scene together is electrifying.
The play has lost none of its power or impact, it still serves to remind us that those same fears that were so effectively used by Senator McCarthy are still able to win elections and sway the modern populous, think Bill O’Reilly, or closer to home, Alan Jones. In today’s world the Devil may wear a burkha, or a yarmulke or may be gay or a fundamentalist Christian, but in fact the Devil is anyone who does not believe as we do. The one thing that is certain is just how easily we, the public, can be led into dark places where fear, suspicion and paranoia are king. The message is simple; bad things happen when good men do nothing.

Is it better to live with a lie or die for the truth? The answer to this question gives measure to the character of man.

While the STC have aimed this production squarely at the school’s market, it is well worth a visit by us adults as well.

‘The Crucible’ plays at the STC, Wharf 2, from May 4 until May 30, schools performances day time at 10.30am, evening performances at 7.00pm.

Rules of (dis) Engagement

2009-04-30T09:35:00.005+10:00

I don’t care what anyone says; breaking up is hard to do, there’s no good way to do it. Think of the repercussions if it was easy; Tammy Wynette would never have had a career, no chick flicks and Lady Oprah would still be colouring things purple.

Having said that there are a few simple rules that if followed should make it easier for all involved.

Don’t break up with your partner by sending a quick Twitter text, do it face to face. Tweet’ing is the modern equivalent of Carrie Bradshaw’s ‘post-it note’ break up. (When you do split, resist the urge to set up a Facebook group called “I Hate (insert appropriate name), he’s a Fat Skank”, it’s just wrong on so many levels). Consider other options especially if they live overseas or inter-state; a video call, phone call or a good old fashioned hand written letter. There are few things worse than finding out you have been dumped by reading it on a Facebook status line.

Don’t break up when you’re out with a group at dinner or clubbing; remember this should be a private moment between two people who once cared deeply for each other not a cabaret performed in the front Bar of your local watering hole. Think of the consequences and most importantly the availability of retaliatory weapons: the ever popular throwing of the drink to the old fashioned public biatch slap.
‘It’s not you it’s me’. Everyone knows this really means ‘it’s you not me’. Don’t say it ... you can think it, hell you can even write it in your Blog next week but under no circumstances say it.

Try not to stick the ‘knife in’ when you’re breaking up. Take the high road. Telling your ex that the only reason you were with him was to “get through winter” while you waited for someone better to come along next summer, is just plain mean - even if it is true.

Expect to lose friends, this is called collateral damage. Make no mistake battle lines will be drawn, “we never liked him, he was a thief, he was cheating”, and some of them may even be talking about ‘him’.

Picking the right time is essential. Don’t break up on ‘Meth’ Monday or ‘Eckkie’ Tuesday, or his birthday; while it might seem like a good idea to get it over with, do you really want to be the ‘one who ruined birthdays for ever for me’, for the rest of your life?

Honesty tempered with compassion, in the end, is the key. Treat your (ex) partner the way you would wish to be treated. There’s no need to read out a list of all the things that have driven you crazy over the last (insert number of months here) months; the fact that he never stacks the dishwasher, empties the washing machine, takes out the trash or that you caught him in the sling at the Sauna on Buddy night. This isn’t Nuremberg.

Be prepared to move out. I don’t mean have your bags, or his, packed and sitting at the front door, but realistically one of you is going to have to go. You can’t both share a two bedroom flat and survive, while it may seem like a good, economical idea at the time, trust me the first time either of you bring home the next Mr. Right expect to find shredded Armani in the trash and crushed crystal in your porridge.

The splitting up of the assets will actually cause you more pain than the ending of the physical relationship. If you take a few simple, precautionary steps at the start of your journey, some later heartache can be avoided: buy a magic marker and take the time to label your DVD’s, Ipod’s, Laptop’s and most importantly your pets and/or foster children, ownership will be easier to prove. At the very least buy two of everything.

So you’ve done the deed, you’re both ‘okay’ with it and seem to be getting on really well. You’ve become friends, better than you ever were when you were lovers. Now is the most dangerous time - don’t have ‘break up sex’. If you do (and lets face it, you probably will), you will plant a seed at the back of your, or worse his, mind; suddenly memories will blur, and before you know it you will begin to contemplate the possibility of getting back together. All of the good work that you’ve done, the tears, the arguments, the rationalisations and the eventual mutually agreed tolerance will come crumbling down. The past will begin to seem like Camelot and before you know it you’re changing your status on Facebook and the cycle begins again.

So, yes, breaking up is hard to do but it’s the chance you take when you love someone and let’s face it all we want is to be loved.

Metamorphosis

2009-04-22T23:43:00.010+10:00

The thing about the theatre is that it never leaves you ambivalent – good or bad it extracts an emotive response, ‘I loved it’ – ‘I hated it’ – ‘I couldn’t have cared less about it’. After seeing the brilliant ‘Kafka’s Monkey’ I was ready and eager to dive back into the wonderful but disturbed world of Franz Kafka.

Kafka wrote the short story ‘The Metamorphosis’ in 1915. In 2005 - 06 Mr. David Farr, with Mr. Gisli Orn Gardarsson, adapted the short story into this intellectually and physically gymnastic production.

The premise is simple, set in Prague, early twentieth century, the Samsa’s, a lower middle class family with pretensions, wake up one morning to find their son Gregor, the breadwinner and provider for the family, hasn’t been to work, hasn’t been down for breakfast in fact hasn’t left his room. Indeed he isn’t quite himself anymore; he has in fact been transformed into a giant bug. What happens next is the guts of the play.

How do we cope, as a family or a society, with someone who stands out as different? How thin is the veneer that binds us all together in an unspoken contract of tolerance and civility? Mr. Farr says that he uses the play, “as an allegory for the Jewish experience in Europe during the twentieth century”, but it could just as easily relate to a family dealing with a son’s homosexuality, or family dealing with an elderly parent’s Alzheimer's Disease, or any number of events that challenge our belief in what is right, wrong or acceptable behaviour.

What should this family do when faced with their son turning into a bug? The simple answer is of course - to understand, love and support him through this trial and nurture him back to health after all that is what is expected of us. The truth is that after a short period of time the family becomes angry, repulsed and resentful of their son, he soils himself, he scares them and he makes demands on their time. The only real solution is to lock him up, throw away the key and hope that he quietly dies so the family can return to a ‘normal’ life. This is pretty much how the Samsa’s cope.

The cast are clearly strong and they know the work intimately but no retelling of this play would be complete without special mention of the incredibly athletic and gymnastic performance by Mr. Bjorn Thors, as Gregor, who clambers and crawls over the set at alarming angles.

With music, composed by Mr. Nick Cave, The Bad Seeds and Mr. Warren Ellis, that sets the tone brilliantly and a set, built over two levels, designed by Mr. Borkur Jonsson, we are transported into another reality that is both horrifying and at times funny. It’s horrifying because of its callousness, yet funny at times, because of the pretence of ‘normality’ that the family struggle to maintain. Did I say funny, well actually it’s not that funny it’s really rather bleak and you certainly don’t walk out ‘humming a show tune’, but it is a piece that speaks as eloquently today as it first did way back in 1915.

Metamorphosis is not for the faint of heart but it is well worth the effort.

Metamorphosis is on at The Sydney Theatre, Hickson Rd. 22 April – 2 May 2009.

Two Plays One Week

2009-04-19T16:04:00.017+10:00

Two plays, one week, both by the Sydney Theatre Company - ‘Kafka’s Monkey’ and ‘The Wonderful World of Dissocia’.

One I saw, the other I struggled to catch glimpses of.

‘Kafka’s Monkey’

A brilliant one woman show based on a short story written by Czech writer Franz Kafka. ‘Red Peter’ played by Kathryn Hunter is a bravura performance by an actress who takes you through the ridiculousness of humanity.

‘A woman, playing a monkey, playing a man’.

A monkey is captured in the wild and transported to a zoo. During the journey the monkey begins to learn what it is to be human from a group of drunken sailors. He learns how to drink and finally how to speak a single word, “hello”. Red is given the option of the zoo or vaudeville, he chooses vaudeville. He engages tutors to teach him what it is to be a man. Finally achieving his goal he is called on by the great minds of the day to present a report to the Academy. During his report Red holds a mirror up to society and generally finds that humans are short on humanity.

Red’s main objective in becoming human is to find a ‘way out’ from the cage that he is in but when he does he realises that freedom is an illusion and all he has done is swapped one cage for another.

From the moment Kathryn Hunter takes the stage and makes her opening bows she gently takes us, the audience, in and carries us through the transformation of monkey to man. Dressed in a Charlie Chaplin style tail coat and bowler Ms. Hunter uses her beautiful voice and pliable body to convince us that you can take the monkey out of the jungle but you can never take the beast out of man.

This is a tight, well paced, beautifully acted piece of theatre that deserves a successful run.

‘The Wonderful World of Dissocia’

Written by Anthony Neilson for the Edinburgh International Festival, 'Dissocia' provides another view into the mind of man or in this case woman; Lisa has stopped taking her tablets, Lisa is in Dissocia, a world in search of a Queen. Lisa has lost an hour of her life.

Lisa has fallen through the looking glass.

This may very well be a good play. I couldn’t tell.

This entire production, directed, by Marion Potts, seems to have been directed with the intention of cutting out almost one third of the audience. The first Act in particular was played almost entirely to stage left.

The first Act is spent in Dissocia a world at war with the ‘Black Dog King’, a world where ‘scape’ goats are literally goats, a world where mad Hot Dog vendors and ‘in’ security guards live, a world where the Lost Property Office has in fact been lost.

To add insult to injury the second Act has the floor raised to create a lowered roof, (I know it’s confusing), however it brilliantly achieves the result that what little I could see of the actor’s was now even further diminished until finally I gave up and just sat shivering under the air conditioning vent.

The second Act is spent in the real world where days pass by in a blur of pills and sleep. Lights come on, lights go off to signify the passing of time; at least eight times the lights came on and the lights went off.

The costumes are colourful and garish, they looked great, well at least the back of the costumes looked great (Tess Schofield), the sound great, the lighting in the first Act great and the set great but gee it would have been good to see the Actor’s.

Lisa has lost an hour of her life – I have lost two hours of mine.

That's Mr. Cross to You

2009-04-10T15:12:00.010+10:00

Dear Darius or Selena,

I realise you have a job to do and that you’re just trying to create a safe and warm environment for me but the reason I’ve called you is because I have a problem with my Internet connection, mobile phone, cable, bank account or, more likely, all of the above. I haven’t called you to ask you over for dinner or out to a movie. I’m not enquiring as to the health or well being of your family, I have a problem that needs fixing, nothing more, nothing less.

I know this may seem harsh but I really don’t want to be your ‘bestest friend forever’, or even for the next fifteen minutes, what I want is for you to attend to and fix my problem.

Yes I am upset, because I had to press button two, three times, the 'hash' button four times and finally button one, twice, then listen to ten minutes of Andre Rieu, just to get this far and I did get upset that my call did not seem to progress in the line as quickly as I was led to believe. Yes of course I did mind holding but no, in the spirit of fair play, I don’t mind this phone call being recorded for coaching purposes.

However, there’s one thing that really does irritate me and that’s being asked by you, someone I’ve never met and in all probability never will, if you can call me by my first name. My name, until we have been formally introduced by a close mutual friend, (no Facebook friends do not count), and known each other for a much longer period of time, is Mr. Cross. I realise I’m older than you, grumpier than you and probably not as computer literate as you, however I have reached a stage in my life where I would like to be called ‘Mr. Cross”, and not ‘Peter’, by a twenty something who lives in Melbourne, Manilla or Macau; call me old fashioned. No, I didn’t mean that literally.

Please do not take this personally; it’s not meant as an insult. I know the chances of us ever speaking again are very limited so let’s not pretend there is any real connection between us. Oh I’m sure I will have to phone this number again and again and again and each time I will speak to a new and possibly chirpier Darius/Damian or Selena/ Serena but just for now, for the next few minutes that we’re together let’s pretend we’re not equals, let’s pretend you’re here to serve me, not in any inappropriate ‘master/slave’ kind of way either but rather as a customer and ‘retail facilitator’.

No I’m not meaning to be rude, truly I’m not.

Hello, hello … hello Darius ... Selena ... are you still there … don’t you dare hang up on me …?

Give Me Chaos Give Me Joy

2009-04-08T18:49:00.013+10:00

A while ago I wrote a tongue in cheek piece for The Sydney Morning Herald called “I Hate Theatre”, which of course I clearly don’t. I love theatre; theatre at its very best can be the catalyst for great changes within our society. It can open up our minds, it can expand our consciousness and it can allow us to be transported away from our safe cosy world and explore other possibilities. Think of ‘Angels in America’ or ‘The Crucible’ or ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’. Even at its worst it will create discussion and provoke critical thought. All theatre will provoke some kind of emotive response.

Not all theatre needs to be a gut wrenching emotional roller coaster that leaves you an exhausted emotional basket case at the end of it. Some theatre can achieve it’s purpose in a much more gentle and surprising way. Theatre, today, is everywhere from proscenium arches to pubs, from stage to street and from arenas to alleyways. Theatre seems to be popping up in the most unusual places and when you least expect it.

As our lives become busier and more hectic we risk becoming more distant and isolated from each other, any sense of the ridiculousness of life and the things that once upon a time tickled our fancy until we cried tears of pure joy is removed and we become grim faced frowners who rush, head down, from home to office to gym to home. Every now and then we need to be taken out of the dull reality we surround ourselves with on a day to day basis. This is where this new version of spontaneous theatre has found a welcome niche and made us stop and smile, groups of actors, artists and everyday citizens are coming together to perform seemingly impromptu pieces in everyday situations.

In New York a group called ‘Improv Everywhere’ organise mini productions and places them in unusual and unexpected venues. They bring colour, light, comedy and spontaneity to alleviate the very humdrum day to day existence that so many of us fight through. Their reason for being is simple, they “cause chaos and joy in public places”. They have organised large groups of people to meet complete strangers at JFK Airport, performed musicals in a food court and in Grand Central Station, froze time for five minutes to the confusion of commuters.

In Antwerp, Belgium, another group decided that they should perform a number from 'The Sound of Music' in the main railway terminal of the city. Can you imagine the Austrians after a long hard day at the bank trying to catch their evening train home being confronted by a hundred citizens dancing to ‘Lets Start at the Very Beginning’ as Julie Andrews serenades them in English.

The internet has spread these performance pieces across the globe and more groups have been formed in some of the strangest of places. In 2008, in Russia, ‘Improv Everywhere’ were invited to collaborate with a local group and organise a ‘Sleep In’ at a furniture shop. Their mission was to enter the shop, pick various pieces of furniture, a couch or a chair and sleep. This caused no end of consternation of the sales woman until finally she called the Police and the performers were moved on ... after the organiser’s names and addresses were taken down. The Police didn’t charge them with any thing because they couldn’t clearly define what crime, if any, had taken place, which is just as well because I am sure that the Russian Police are not known for their sense of humour. It must have taken great courage for these people to do what they did.

Funnily enough when some of these events were tried in Sydney good old fashioned narrow mindedness raised its ugly head. A mass drawing of ‘Valentines Day Hearts’ at Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, where hundreds of people young and old, gay and straight, gathered on Valentines Day 2008 and with coloured chalk drew hearts and left messages of love on the pavement. In Sydney a city that prides itself on being progressive, enlightened and open to new things our city council responded promptly with street cleaners and hoses, within 12 hours they had erased all the evidence.

Don’t we all need a little chaos and joy in our life at some time ... especially when we least expect it?

Cafes, Toilets and Self Preservation

2009-04-05T10:31:00.016+10:00

I was chatting to a friend the other day a fellow writer and we were trying to organise a time to meet up to go through a project she is working on, for some reason she values my flawed advice ... mad woman. We decided that we would meet at Forbes and Burton on Monday at 9.45. Handy for me, I live just around the corner - walking distance really - so naturally I drive, I like to do my bit for Global Warming. Her timing is perfect, I've an appointment at the Doctors at midday and luckily enough my Doctors is right next door to the Cafe. My Dentist, who I am seeing on Thursday, has rooms just up from my Doctors very near to Forbes and Burton, walking distance to my house. I realised that I don't travel very far these days.

There is a VERY good reason for it as well - read on if you dare.

My Facebook friend Jeffery Self, who I have never met but follow like a love struck Emo, says in one of his latest Blogs that he has a terror of wearing his 'grey skinny jeans' and what accidents may happen in and with them. He's always worried that any stray drop of water may leave a 'wet spot' and people will consider him tardy in his ablutions.

Well suck it up sister I say.

If you want terror try walking a metre in my Abercrombie and Fitches Bitches. I have a pathological terror of being caught short and needing to... well you know... do it ... no not that ... that. Yes, "that". So I plan every outing like a military invasion or more accurately 'evacuation'. I have been known to scour Google maps searching for restrooms, Cafes with conveniences and Gas Stations with facilities. I've taken to wearing the Bridget Jones underwear, tight and secure around the legs, just in case, (also they give me a bum). There's an image to take to bed with you tonight.

While we are on Cafes and Toilets - the other Cafe` I really like is at Perry Lane, it's a little space not much bigger than a lounge room. It's also used as an Art Gallery , for emerging local artists. It's run by the very beautiful and gentle Christopher and his Mother - it attracts a VERY groovy crowd ... and me. But here's the rub, their Toilet Facilities are located near the kitchen and very public ... not as public as the picture posted but public enough that I know that any sound made in that inner sanctum can and will be heard by not only the Chef but every fabulous fashionista sitting at the outdoor tables. I know that if I ever went to the aforementioned Loo I would be mocked, scorned and pointed at by all the bright young things of Paddington who sit with their Macs and smoke cigarettes while sipping a Fair Trade latte as they write their next Booker Prize winning novel. My friend, Hugo, says I should go in and try it ... make a noise and he will tell me honestly if he can hear any thing ... yeah right. As if I am going to place the last shreds of my dignity into the hands of one of my best friends. It's much easier to just write about it on here and not worry about the roll of the eyes as they sigh and say things like "get over yourself queen as if anyone is interested in what you do in a toilet any more".

Continuing the theme of my life lived through the pursuit of the perfect placement of public pissoirs - every year I do some little amount of Exam supervision for one of the 'better' schools in Sydney to supplement the HUGE amount of money I make writing *cough*, in the week leading up to it I always test drive the area and make sure that all the Restrooms I remember are still open and in working order. I check out where is best to park and how long it will take me to walk from my car to the school, I allow 5 minutes of leeway just in case I have to stop when crossing a road. Once or twice it has been touch and go. My (two) bosses there are very understanding.

Well that's probably enough about me and my bowels strolling down the avenue, oh wait that's not how the song goes.

Anyway it's Sunday and it's Sunday Brunch group meeting - I have to get there early to secure the table and make sure the toilets are working. If you made it this far thanks for reading if you haven't then boy did you miss a ride.

Random Thoughts to Fill up the Page

2009-03-28T15:14:00.009+11:00

I think my life is turning into some kind of soap opera and it's not Home and Away, it's becoming a cross between 7th Heaven and Judging Amy.

Saturdays is my coffee club meeting. I know, when did I become one of those people that have coffee with the same group every Saturday at the same time and at the same Cafe? Sundays is brunch group meeting - similar group, similar time, same Cafe. Like the goldfish in the ad, "certainty, Peter likes certainty". That's the great thing about having a 'local cafe', they know you, you know them - it's all very easy.

Last Sunday I spent the day at Jamberoo, (the Southern Highlands), with the 'ex', he was working. I sat on a large verandah writing and looking out over the fields down to the ocean while Kangaroos drank from a dam in front of me. A fantastic early Autumn day, it really is, along with Spring, my favourite time in Sydney.

I seem to be a week ahead of myself. In my mind I am going to Berry next weekend for Easter - Easter isn't for two weeks. I always get everywhere early but even for me that's a little extreme.

"Should of" said the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard. Perhaps she needs to sit the Literacy and Numeracy Test that the Govt. has introduced.

Off to see Travesties on Thursday night - I was supposed to go last week but I had one of 'those' issues.

I can not believe the fuss being made about a little Lesbian kiss on Home and Away and some of the readers comments in The Daily Telegraph. Here's one I prepared for you earlier, thank you Martha Stewart.

"I have watched Home and Away since l was very young...l often objected to the constant bed hopping in the show anyway.....everyone sleeping with each other is not a good thing for kids to watch,,,they take it as you can have as many bed partners you want!! Now they are going to push homosexuality? why? l often wonder why homosexuality is pushed so hard.....hetrosexuality is not constantly pushed into peoples faces..."

Posted by: SallyAnne of Sydney 11:20am 28 march 2009
Thank you Sally Anne I have been wondering what was being pushed into my face for the last 50 odd years at the movies, on TV and in every book, magazine and poster I have been reading

Just when you think there is progress... still, when you consider the audience of Home and Away I shouldn't be surprised.

Why should it take one well known ... no I better not write that otherwise I may not get any more work with them ... but please send the cheque it's been over 75 days.

Q and A was very good last week on the Net Censorship trials. Poor Stephen Conroy took a bit of a battering. Andrew Bolt is a piece of work, but then I think the same about Piers Ackerman and Miranda Devine. It frightens me sometimes when I actually agree with them. They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

That's enough for today don't you think?

p.s. What is the deal with 'booking fees' for tickets when you book over the internet. I do all the work, I don't waste anyones time, I'm not talking to anyone, my credit card is instantly billed, I pick up my tickets on the night at the theatre - who actualy gets the fee and why? Surely the Promoter is paying a fee to the booking agency as well. It's a puzzlement.

Boys and Their Dresses

2009-03-25T11:12:00.012+11:00

Drag has always been about beautiful costumes, colour and movement but recently there has been a tremor in the force. A new ingredient has been added to the mix. Drag is under going a revival. I’m amazed, and that’s no easy thing these days, by the number of boys who like to “frock” up. If I had been asked in the early 90’s did I think Drag would survive? I would have shaken my head and knowingly pontificated that, “The young ‘Gaylings’ have moved on and Drag has had its day, like the rotary dial telephone”.

How wrong I would have been.

A potted history - Drag came of age in Sydney in the 60’s and flourished through until the early 90’s. Most of the performers, especially in the 80’s were “professional” full time live in a frock and grow your hair long kind of DQ’s. When Drag moved off the revolve and out of the proscenium arch of Cap’s and onto the bar of The Albury I was convinced that this was the beginning of the end of “the Show”. The great production shows of Mitchell and Penfold that had theme and story were now replaced with a succession of spot numbers. Oh sure a few of the shows were still held together with a storyline, like The Priscilla Show, but mainly they became a pastiche of star turns.

With the closure of The Albury, Oxford Street lost some of its glitter and Drag seemed to disappear and for a while it went into a form of stasis, waiting for the next wave of gender bending, in-your face entertainers that we have today. Little did Miss 3D and Cindy Pastel know what they had begun or perhaps they did.

Drag is back, bigger and better than anything we’ve seen for a long time.

These days it seems as if every pretty and some not so pretty boy is tarting up his visage with taffeta, toile, mascara and makeup, then hitting the boards and the bars to dance, mime and even sing LIVE. The world has gone brilliantly mad.

Sequins and glamour are back and it’s wonderful to see. Choreography is queen and high heels are “strutting” their stuff up and down the tiles of a battered and bruised Oxford Street. Whether it is a career choice or a casual dalliance Drag is wowing them again in the bars of Sydney. Performers like Prada Clutch, Tora Hymenand Trevor Ashleyare the Aeysha, Rose and Michael Michelle of the new generation.

Heading this pantheon of impersonators is the wonderful and very talented Courtney Act, a former contestant on Australian Idol, who now also spruiks make up to a frightened and confused Larry Emdur on breakfast television. Courtney has made Drag fashionable, fantastic and feminine again. Courtney by night and Shane by day is leading a parade of “glamazons” who are proud to embrace the history of Drag gone by and create the myths of tomorrow.

As post party Sydney drags it’s aching head reluctantly into recession and winter, isn’t it great to see splashes of rainbow colour reflecting from the sequins and once again lighting up the pavement of Oxford Street.

The Golden Mile is getting a little of its glitter back.

The Queer Bill of Rights

2009-03-25T10:43:00.007+11:00

For thirty one years we’ve been marching. We’ve been marching against discrimination. We’ve been marching against a disease that everyday, still takes our brothers and sisters in ever increasing numbers. We’ve been marching against inaction, self interest, prejudice and greed.

We’ve won a few battles but our march continues.

Our warriors don’t have tanks and armour; our warriors wear overalls, suits and high heels. We don’t have weapons of mass destruction hidden in our borderless country; our weapons are humour, wit and strength of character. When we march we don’t march for conquest, we march for recognition, for understanding and for compassion. Our uniform is rainbow not khaki, we have no need of camouflage yet too many of us are forced to hide.

We count each small victory as a stepping stone. We don’t see defeats we see hurdles.
We see hope rather than despair; we feel elation rather than desperation.
Our troops live not only in Darlinghurst and Newtown but also in New York, London, Beijing, Harare and Tehran. We are not restricted to any one country or religion and no amount of denial by narrow minded bigots will ever change that.

We are a universal nation that is inclusive not exclusive. We welcome into our hearts all that seek healing and peace. We do not discriminate because of gender, race, sexuality or religion.

There are those who will persecute us, threaten us and in too many cases harm us. We will no longer simply lie quietly and die. We do not believe that we have any more of a right to exist than anyone else but neither will we accept that our right is any the less.

We know we have made mistakes but from each mistake we have learned and grown. We learn our lessons the hard way but we never have to learn them twice.

We will not stop and we will not be stopped.

Ahead of us there are the glimmers of hope that give us the strength and courage to continue this fight. Yet still we need new treatment regimes, greater accessibility to medication in developing countries and we need, now more than ever, to work together to bring about an end to the policy of greed, self interest and selfishness that keep medication from being made available to all those who are in need.

We need the help and support of ALL our elected leaders every day not just every three or five years when elections are due. We are not apart from society; we are a valuable and necessary part of it.

We’re here. Were queer get used to us.

Something About Miranda

2009-03-17T17:12:00.005+11:00

I love ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, it’s a witty, colourful fast moving romp. I was watching it again the other night on cable and suddenly it hit me. The movie has a message and the message is not about what shade of blue the colour cerulean is. It’s about choices and making them.

Life is all about making choices and then taking responsibility for them.

Simple choices are easy, we make them with out thinking, every second of every day; tea or coffee, toast or bran, bus or train. But it’s not just the little things we choose; it’s the big, life altering, reality shifting things as well. These are the ones we’re always quick to blame someone else for especially if they go pear shaped. If it’s a good outcome then of course its “yes I knew all along that I had to make that decision and now seemed like the right time”. We’re all happy to take responsibility for the good things. It’s the tough things, the hard choices that we like to shift blame for.

It’s the hard choices we make that define us.

The concept of taking responsibility for our own actions is becoming something of a rarity in these 'victim consciousness' days. Someone else is always to blame. ‘You make me feel bad; you make me sad, you make me so angry’, and even better, there is always someone lurking around the corner that is more than happy to put up their hand and say, “hang on you’re right, it was my fault – I did it. Blame me”.

In the movie, Andy played by Anne Hathaway, constantly uses the excuse, “That's not what I... no, that was different. I didn't have a choice”. Whether it’s missing her boyfriends’ birthday party or firing Emily, it’s Miranda’s fault. Finally Miranda, played by Meryl Streep, turns to her in the limousine in Paris and says, “No, no, you chose. You chose to get ahead. You want this life. Those choices are necessary.” Miranda for all her faults which are as numerous as they are enormous at least has the courage to stand up and take responsibility for the choices she has made.

In the end no choice we make is bad as long as we own that choice. Everything provides an opportunity for us to learn and grow. Some choices may in the short term seem better than others but we have to look long term, see things in perspective. There is no point in sinking into the abyss because things ‘ain’t’ working out the way we had planned. Forward motion is the thing that keeps creating opportunity. Sure there will always be something that we look back on and think ‘maybe if I had done this rather than that then it might be different now but who knows’.

Barack Obama’s mantra has been, 'Yes We Can'. Our mantra should be, ‘Yes I Do’. If we say it often enough then we will begin to believe that Yes I Do create my own reality. Yes I do make choices; yes I do take responsibility for those choices, not only personally but nationally and globally.

We are responsible for the society we are creating, each one of us. We are ALL responsible for the Cronulla race riots, we are ALL responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, we are ALL responsible for the state of Aboriginal health, we are ALL responsible for the man who dies alone in his council flat and is not discovered for a year.

As our communities have become more fragmented and urban isolation becomes more of a way of life for so many, we have started to see ourselves as islands; once our homes were castles now our castles have shrunk to the size of tiny rooms cut off from man and nature. More and more we live our lives in front of an LCD screen counting a curser as our best friend.

Like Andy we can choose to get out of that limousine anytime we want and reclaim our right to choose a better reality.

What a Piece of Work is Man.

2009-03-13T12:14:00.005+11:00

It is disturbing to read in the paper how the International Space Station crew were forced to take evasive action for fear of being hit by 'space junk', this seemed to tie in with the Chinese container ship that floundered off the Queensland coast spraying oil and ammonium nitrate into the ocean and the sea of plastic bags that form an island twice the size of the United States off the coast of California. All in all we are a messy bunch.

As we sit and argue about how best to clean the mess we are creating on this lonely blue planet we are now busy leaving our usual dust and debris trail through the cosmos. Experts believe that there are 300,000 orbital objects measuring at least 1cm to 10 cm in diameter and millions possibly billions of smaller pieces circling the globe. These travel at speeds of thousands of kilometres per hour forcing our astronauts, in the Space Station that we want to use as our launching pad to the Greater Universe, to take evasive action.

Every year while Ian Kiernan is busy cleaning up Australia we are busy messing up the solar system. We make learning nothing an art form. The movie Wall–E suddenly becomes a documentary and not a work of fiction.

Isn’t it the height of arrogance for us to believe that we have earned the right to consider searching for life on other planets while we are intent on destroying life on this?

Can you imagine the reaction on Altaris 9 when they see one of our satellites, blasting rock and roll and Beethoven, entering their solar system? Panic. The Altarians, a civilisation that is justifiably proud of the society they have created, working with their environment, learning to dispose of their waste effectively and creating a world of peace and harmony. Then from out of the darkness of space come the Earthlings – the “Trailer Trash” of the Universe. Their property values plummet as we begin to leave our little carbon footprints of rusting piles of carelessly discarded Iridium; a nuclear reactor here an Isotope there. Before they know it they have mountains of non recyclable waste fouling their forests and lakes, their off-spring have begun to gain weight as they become addicted to the sugary tang of left behind food wrappers.

As we gaze out with wide eyed wonder from the safety of our Command Capsule at this new world of possibility, without consultation, we send a signal to the folks back on Earth, “Y’awl wanna pack up all your cares and woes, time to go, say bye bye dead earth”. The great unwashed humanity, that we all so proudly belong to, descend like carrion fowl on this once pristine planet and we begin to populate.

“We come in peace” we say proudly. We’ll have a piece of that and a parcel of that if you don’t mind. Oh and by the way we’re changing the name for you, from now on this planet will be called “New Eden”.

As that Prince of Denmark said “What a piece of work is man”.

Sex and the Sissies

2009-03-04T10:01:00.002+11:00

Sex, sex, sex is not just a phone number in New Zealand. Sex is a confusing, clumsy, enjoyable, frustrating, messy, irritating part of everyday life.

I just had sex, when will I next have sex, am I getting enough sex, why do I crave sex, am I any good at sex? Everywhere we turn sex is thrust down our throats.

Gaydar, Arq, Stonewall, Town Hall, it’s a non-stop barrage of sensuality and opportunity. We crave sexual satisfaction and, like Chinese food, once we’ve had it we want more, just from a different wok. At least that’s the theory.

But do we do more talking about sex than actual sexing? Night after night in the chat rooms of Australia cyber boys are pounding keyboards bemoaning the fact that no one is having sex, at least not with them.

All the bottoms are in Melbourne, all the tops are in Sydney, all the versatile guys are in Albury-Wodonga and the ones who are up for it — well, they’re just not up for it with me!
It’s as if we’ve made this subconscious pact to always want the person who wants someone else, the ass is always keener on the other side of the bar.

To paraphrase Marx, Groucho, not Karl, “I would never have sex with someone who would have sex with me”. I know exactly what he meant.

We’re told that we’re the great sexual hunter-gatherers of our time, rutting and sucking at the drop of a pair of aussieBums. Is it true? Maybe it’s all just a myth.

Do gay men have more sex than anyone else? According to the Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behaviour, on any given day intercourse (fucking), happens 120 million times. So that’s about 1 out of every 25 people in a population of 6.1 billion people.

Now if gays (male and female) are numbered as roughly ten percent of the population that means… you do the math, because I can’t. But it’s not a lot of us who are actually doing “it”.
As a sidebar, if you’re lucky enough to have sex, choose a Brazilian. According to the Atlas they can go for thirty minutes. The quickest are Russians — they only last for 12 minutes. Suddenly I’m feeling a little better about myself.

The upside is that there is great peace in knowing that we’re not the fucking machines that the writers of cheap porn novels and makers of those DVDs would have us believe. The relief of not having to live up to an expectation allows us to just enjoy the monthly shag and not feel as if we’ve failed the numbers game.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some people are keeping their end up and taking one for the team, but I reckon most of us just lead normal, lustful lives that are never sated.

We go out, we stand around, we perve, we flirt, we make out (pash and grope), but still end up collapsing into our double beds alone at the end of the night. The only happy ending we usually get is a good night’s sleep after a little self-pleasuring.

Thank God for IQ and those replays of Scrubs. And that’s not such a bad thing… is it?

How I Met My Boyfriend

2009-02-18T13:06:00.003+11:00

I met my partner; that’s what we have to call each other these days, once upon it time it was boyfriend but then that somehow didn’t define enough of the depth of the relationship that we had, so we had to change it to “partner” to please the political activists. I met my partner at a beat. He still refuses to acknowledge that he was doing a beat; he says he was just desperate to go to the toilet. For three hours he was desperate… please.

It was summer and for some reason I was out near Brighton-les-Sands. I think I had been taken to see Bernard King’s show at his theatre restaurant the night before; anyway, I got so drunk that I had to stay the night at the ex boyfriends. I think Judy Connelli was in the show but that’s by the by.

I woke up the next morning like Vera Charles, hung darling and not in a good way. (Once upon a time I never knew who Vera Charles was or Mame Dennis). I’m sure I was still drunk and I thought a swim would bring me back to life.

Brighton-les-Sands in summer, on a hot day and with a hangover is not a pleasant place to be. However there is a little amenities block down near the beach that had always been popular with some of the more “ethnic” queens. And god knows I do love a wog boy. So just after lunch, Devon, cheese and pickle on white flushed down with a can of Tab, I found myself in need of a little relief.

I had seen this one number, a rather rough looking piece of trade with a plumbers crack, scoping out the toilets and I thought to myself, “now that’s right up my boulevard”. I headed into the darkness and the smell of men. That’s a nice turn of phrase… the smell of men… men smell; even as I sit here I can still feel it wash over me, the aroma of men, a mixture of sweat, adrenalin, cum and with a hint of Old Spice. Where was I, oh yes … the darkness, the smell etc. Okay so there I am standing at the urinal pretending to pee and in he comes. His head nervously flicking from side to side, checking out the cubicles, scared his mother is hiding in there waiting to jump out and accuse him of crimes against her soul. Remember he’s a wog boy and they’re always so scared of what their Mummy will think. He sidles up to me and I can see that this one is a hairy number, black curls of coarse hair plastered to his stomach. A five o’clock shadow permanently darkening his chin. His breath is hot and hard in that close room. His trembling hand reaches out and snakes into my pants, he grabs me and I swear I can feel that sigh that rushes from his mouth, my body tensed with expectation. This is what I needed and desired, a real man someone who knew what they wanted and how to take it. No bullshit. Just a primeval grunt and I would be his.

So there we were just about to get really heavy when some queen rushes in screaming “run girls it’s the bashers”. We all button up and run for the door and this creates rather a log jam at the exit. I’m stuck, until I feel one hand on my shoulder push me through and I tumble out into the sun just in time to see ten big burly shire boys barrelling down on us.

I’m grabbed from behind and pushed to the car park, thrown into the front seat of a car and then as the wheels squeal (assonance in case you missed it), I’m driven off into the afternoon.

Like a real bloke I start to scream “let me out… Let me OUT... “I know people… whatever you do NOT the face”.

“Oh shoosh” he said. Shoosh is not something a basher usually says. “I’m not going to bash you, you big girl… I’m saving you”.

Sitting next to me, his face fixed firmly on the road ahead as we career along General Holmes Drive, is the little queen who had run or more correctly, swished into the toilets, hands flailing, screaming with a slight lisp, (not an easy thing to do) and warned us all of the impending attack of the barbarians. This little number, no bigger than an elf, a refugee from the Myers window dressing department, a hairdresser in search of a blow-dryer is the person we all owed our lives to. Can you believe it? Now I’m no ocker butch queen, I am what they now call a “straight acting gay”, a term I really dislike but that’s another thousand words. However sitting next to this little fem bot made me look like John Wayne or maybe even a Russel Crowe.

“Saving me … you… look at you… how could you save me?” I screamed, in my deepest butchest voice.

“I can always drop you back there if that’s what you want” he simpered.

He had me there. The last place I wanted to be was back at that beat. Maybe that’s why they call them beats – because eventually you will get beaten up.
“So just shoosh and say thank you. My names Leon, what’s yours?” My heart sunk. Of course his name would be Leon. He had Leon written all over his face.
“Tony” I mumbled. Oh the humiliation. Not ten minutes ago I had been about to do the “good deed” with the future Mr. Right and now here I am trapped in a mauve Toyota with a tiny mirror ball hanging from the rear vision mirror and some animal print fabric covering the seats.

I had gone from Old Spice to Opium in five fast minutes. From plumbers crack to… really there are no words to describe where I was now.

“Hello Tony. Well that was a close shave. Lucky I just happened to be passing by and saw those brutes. I thought that trouble was brewing.

Who says “trouble was brewing”, and what does he mean just passing by - I had seen him in the dunes about an hour before. Passing by, yeah right.

I found that I was getting more and more irritated by this little number as she prattled on about gossipy titbits and trivia from Broadway shows and then from out the blue she hit me with, “would you like to go out for a cheap eat with me? Not tonight but later in the week”.

“Sure” I said. WHAT. How did that happen, why did I say yes, I can’t still be drunk… no one can be that drunk. Before I have a chance to change my mind my phone number tumbled from my mouth. Maybe I was just rattled. I mean it’s not everyday that you are chased out of a public toilet block by a group of thirty, (its growing isn’t it), cricket bat wielding Neanderthals with the sent of blood in their nostrils.
“Drop me here” I blurted out, “there’s my car”.

I got out of the car confused by what was happening, not so much the riots, (thousands of them now), more the acceptance of a dinner date with this jockey. I leaned into the window to say thanks and as quick as a flash he leaned over gave me a peck on the cheek, flashed a smile, “toodles” he said and drove off.
Toodles! Oh god. Toodles.

I was left staring at the rear of his Toyota as he drove off into the sunset back to where ever he had come from.

Sure enough three days later I got the call. “Hello Tony it’s me, Leon… from the other day, I thought it might be nice to have dinner tomorrow night. I know this little place in Paddington behind the Unicorn we could get a bite to eat there and then see Kandy Johnson’s new show”.

“Okay Leon… hi… yeah about that…” I stammered, “You kind of got me unprepared the other day and I wasn’t really thinking straight. But I don’t think…”
“Oh shoosh you, you silly thing”, there was the shoosh again, “a dates a date. Now what’s your address and I can pick you up”.
“My address. Look what I am trying to say is… I don’t really think that we…”
“Darls let’s say about 7.30 for dinner, then you can have a beer after the meal while we wait for the show… now what was the address again?”
“Flat 5/78 Brougham St.” Jesus wept, what am I doing? It’s all that Opium he uses it’s seeping through the phone lines, drugging me.
“Lovely, see you later. Toodles” and then he was gone.

So we had dinner and then I had a beer, a few beers actually and then we watched Candy’s show. We were the odd couple, him with a scarf and me with a scowl. But you know what after thirty years I don’t notice the scarf so much anymore or the indecent amount of perfume that he insists on spraying before he leaves the house and I guess he has learned to put up with certain irritating habits of mine that some people say I have.

Every now and then as we drive down to Berry to our weekender we pass that little amenities block at Brighton-les-Sands and without fail every time we pass it by he says, “I was NOT doing the beat darls”. Yes dear and that’s still your natural hair colour.

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had taken up with the “plumbers crack” that day. I suspect that I wouldn’t be driving to Berry for the weekend.

Toodles.

Ps. this is Leon now.

Tony tends to exaggerate, god love him; allow me to correct some factual errors.

I did meet him at Brighton-les-Sands but I have never done a beat in my life, I mean they’re just so dirty… and that smell. There was no riot, there may have been a cricket bat and yes there was a small group of about three boofheads who wanted to cause some trouble. And yes I did run into the toilet block and shout out a warning.

Yes I gave Tony a lift… no I did not ask him out, he asked me out… to thank me, he said. Well I thought that was a nice thing to do and being polite, I agreed. He kissed me. I gave him my number, he phoned me, (three times), he suggested we have dinner and then he wanted to see a drag show. Drag is not really my cup of espresso but I thought why not.

So we had dinner, I paid; we saw a drag show and then spent the next thirty years together.

I am five foot nine inches tall and I do NOT dye my hair.

Blogging is Just Another Way of Avoiding Writing

2009-02-12T12:41:00.006+11:00

It's easy and it's fun. It can be done anywhere and often is. It can be pithy and wise. It can cut to the heart of "the matter", but... Blogging is just another way of avoiding writing.

I can sit in a smart Cafe' drinking or at my desk in my room and pound out a thousand words on anything that grabs my interest that day, like "Why does the dishwasher never finish the cycle, I mean there's always a pond of water left sitting in the bottom of the tub and it's what they call pottable water ie. not fit for drinking. Why is it there? Can I just blame the summer cockroaches that have decided that the dishwasher is the perfect place for them to try out their new resort wear? Or is there something more sinister; is this some kind of leftest, greenie, new agey plan to make me hand wash and dry all the dinner dishes." See I could spend an hour or two on that, easily. Meanwhile I'm really supposed to be working on the script.

The script - it's up to third draft stage now (which really means that it's been rewritten at least fifty times but we say third draft so it sounds fresh) and I'm beginning to hate it. Every time I reread it, it becomes more and more banal and trite. I'm over the characters, I'm over the setting, I'm over the artificiality of the hole dang thing. That's one of the reasons I'm blogging.

Another reason - all these articles that I've written and sent off to various "gay" papers are just sitting gathering dust on an editors desk until "the right time" pops up. "will you use them?" I always ask. "Oh you bet, we love them. They're a really interesting take on life. Keep them coming", they say. Man does not live on the promise of publication alone. That's another reason I blog, it's instant, warts and all, bad grammar and spelling mistakes included.

And then there's the short story that's floating around out there in the ethos. It's going to be published but they won't give me a date. I have to say though if I really knew they would publish it I would have written something much better - but it's too late now.

Three days ago I wrote a letter to the editor of a Sydney paper - that was published! (an exclamation mark is lazy writing by the way). Today in the same paper someone has written a reply basically telling me to shut up. If I respond will I get my own column?

Anyway, Act 2 is calling, it needs tweaking. That's just code for I'm going to spend three hours searching YouTube for interesting Vlogs.

My Man Crush

2009-02-10T13:03:00.002+11:00

I’ve got a “man crush”, well it’s really more of a “man/boy crush” but I’m proud of it. The only real problem I can see is the man/boy I have the crush on lives in New York, oh and one other small detail, he’s a little younger than me. I’m guessing he was born on or around the year 1988 – in that year Australia was celebrating its 200th birthday and I was celebrating my 31st. You see my dilemma – geographical distance and that other kind of distance.

Let me tell you how it all began.

About a year ago I became a huge fan of [title of show], the little show that could and did make it to Broadway. The way they did it was to set up a web site dedicated to raising awareness and creating a buzz for the show. They filmed “webisodes” for YouTube and used their friends who just happened to be Broadway celebs to help promote their push to get the show on to The Great White Way. All the usual suspects where there, “Broadway” Cheyenne Jackson, Bebe Neuwirth, Michael Arden, Nathan Lane – are you getting the idea. One of the NYC celebs they used was a fresh faced young chap by the name of Jeffery Self, cute as a button and funny to boot.

A couple of months later another friend in London, who was appearing in The Sound of Music, sent me a YouTube link for the “VGL (very good looking) Gay Boys”, starring the very same Jeffery Self and his perky but cheeky offsider Cole Escola. These boys have about twenty or so clips listed and between the two of them they manage to send up Broadway, the recession, flies, post coital chat and Bernadette Peters to name just a few. Their humour is gentle and not nasty and they have the good sense to send themselves up at the same time. There is nothing malicious or mean in their performance. They’re just funny.

I was trapped, I couldn’t stop watching and I became an addict demanding more and more from each clip that I saw. Never once have they let me down.

But getting back to my “man/boy crush” – those who know me would be forgiven for assuming that Jeffery would be the object of my rather scary cyber stalkering, (there you go a new word), but au contraire, it’s the delightful, discerning and I think slightly demented Cole Escola. The boy is a genius. There’s nothing he will not do for a laugh, not a wig or an accent that he will not wear out, no piece of scenery he will not chew to get that gag.

So yes I have unrequited “man/boy crush” on a performance artist who lives over 30 hours away by Qantas Airbus380.

And you thought you spent too much time in front of the laptop.

Sexual Racism Suxs

2009-02-10T12:35:00.001+11:00

“No rice, abos, fats or fems“, read the legend of an on line profile.
When does sexual preference become sexual prejudice? Is it the terminology? If it said “No Asians, no Aborigines, slim masculine guys preferred” would that make it better? WOG, ABO, GAM, FAT, and FEM are all commonly used terms within our community. All of them in one way or another seek to dehumanise us. It makes it easier for us to dismiss those amongst us who are different. Do we think it empowers us? We, a group that has been discriminated against, can feel that at least we’re not the lowest of the low.
Sexual racism and stereotyping is a problem within the gay community. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. Whenever I see an older gay man with a younger Asian gay male I immediately make an assumption; “Chopsticks and walking sticks”. That phrase vividly illustrates the ingrained level of racism in white, gay Australians. It carries with it a presumption that both parties are settling for something less than they might otherwise expect.
I don’t think of myself as a racist but the very fact that these thoughts jump into my mind worries me. Of course I’m discriminatory; we all are by our very nature. We make choices and judgements based on appearance and perception every day. Some of these decisions are helpful others are destructive. But do I make judgements based on someone’s race? Yes. It’s not overt, I don’t burn crosses but I make assumptions. How did I get to be this way? When did I start to judge people based on their ethnicity?
It seems at its most blatant on line. Does the anonymity of the LCD screen and the use of a nickname or adding “LOL” and a “smiley face”, somehow give us the right to attack and vilify with impunity? Does it make it any the less cruel? Would we say, face to face, most of the things that we type? When confronted the perpetrator often replies “it’s just the internet, no one takes it seriously” or better “if you don’t like it, leave”. Words have power. Just because we can’t see the effect doesn’t mean that there are no consequences.
Is the term “No GAMS” offensive? Yes. If we saw an advert proclaiming “NO GAYS” would we all quietly move on? No, we would picket and protest. We’ve been fighting for decades now for acceptance and yet within our own sub groups we discriminate.
I don’t have any answers but I do know that we have to deal with the issue. If one person is offended then we, as a community, should look at changing or modifying our behaviour. This isn’t political correctness this is common decency.
I started this piece with what I thought was a simple question, “when does preference become prejudice”? It may be a simple question but there are no simple solutions. I thought this would be about how we treat others but now at the end I think it’s more about our own self esteem. It’s a theme that keeps recurring for me, “respect of self”; when we think so little of ourselves how can we ever expect to think positively of others.

So You Think You're Ready To Bareback

2009-02-10T12:25:00.000+11:00

So you think you’re ready to bareback? You’ve selected your partner and had an informed, in-depth discussion. You’ve known each other for a while, you both look good, gym three times a week, proper food and only do drugs on special occasions. You trust each other. You commit; NO casual sex. You have blood tests so there are no doubts.
Sitting at home watching re-runs of Will and Grace, you wait, counting the days until the results are in.
Finally! You’re a little nervous, who wouldn’t be. In the waiting room you sit next to a gaunt man with shaking hands, sallow cheeks and strawberry blotches on the side of his neck and you wonder. You’re called by your Doctor; you follow him down the corridor. You’re both negative. The much planned and longed for event can go ahead.
You set the day, Saturday. Dinner first, drinks at the Pub, a line of coke, maybe an E, and then the foam party at Arq. So many sexy guys, sweating, bodies all moving as one to the music. You see yourself reflected in the eyes of the other dancers. You’ve never looked better. Tonight’s the night.
At your apartment you fall into bed and pretty soon you’re more intimate with this man than you’ve ever been with anyone.
So now you’re really ready to bareback.
Twenty minutes later it’s worth it. All that discipline, being so careful. It’s never felt like this before. Is it the booze, the E, the coke or the cock. Doesn’t matter, it’s awesome.
A couple of weeks later he’s moved on. You’re feeling run down. You’ve been hitting it pretty hard for a few weeks. Time for a vitamin shot and, while you’re there, might as well get the bloods done.
A week later and you’re feeling much better; you almost forget that Doctors appointment.
The results are back. Unexpectedly, surprisingly, you’re positive. How could it happen? You only had unsafe sex with “him”.
While you were watching Karen and Jack he was at a “private party” and met a guy. They only screwed for a minute and it was such a small cut on the head of his cock that unless he looked really close he would never have noticed it. They took turns, versatility was the key. Neither of them came in the other, well not much anyway. It was over fast. It was “safe”.
So you’re ready to bareback. Good for you and good luck to you. Go for it. But if it goes wrong YOU take responsibility. Don’t blame your partner, you made the decision. It was your choice and you need to own it.
Ask yourself this “Is it worth it?” Is it worth a lifetime, no matter how long or short, of taking pills, every night, of worrying about every sneeze, every sweat and every ache? Are you ready for a trip to the doctors every three months, worrying about T-cells and viral load? What about treatment failure? Is it worth worrying every time you lose weight? Is it worth it?
So you still think you want to bareback?
Across Australia the rate of new HIV/Aids infection is increasing. The time when a man is most infectious is when he sero converts.

Why We Need Another Plague

2009-02-10T12:10:00.000+11:00

Well this is going to offend; at least I certainly hope it will. I want to hear arms being crossed and every dudgeon being set to high.

Okay what I mean is, our community needs another challenge, focus, raison d’etre. Something that will bring us back together, a common goal or purpose.

In the 50’s and early 60’s we had the one common purpose of “keeping our closet safe”. We formed groups of like minded men and women, met in secret places and kept our secrets safe. Everything was word of mouth as clubs began to open and then flourish. In the late 60’s and 70’s we found a new voice. Out of the Anti – War, counter culture protest movement and moratoriums we decided that we had something to say and we had a right to be heard. The more radical amongst us learned how to network, form cells, alliances, collectives and societies. Slowly out of those disparate groupings, we put together a cohesive force that burst onto the streets of Sydney and marched. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it! It was wonderful and exciting. It was the start of our brave new pink world. But somewhere along that road to full liberation we settled. Not everyone, but lets be honest most of us, settled for “our once a year day”. Mardi Gras. Until finally even that day is now becoming an irrelevancy. We settled for an existence rather than a life.

Then along came that big disease with the little name and suddenly we were focused again, united against a common enemy. All of that energy got us back out of the Bars and onto the streets. This time we marched under a rainbow banner and demanded that “attention must be paid”. We were dying, slowly, painfully and in alarmingly increasing numbers. Not the pretty death we had hoped for after watching “Now Voyager”. Who was going to look after us if we didn’t start looking after each other?

As the pages of this paper began to fill with the death notices of young men in their 20’s and 30’s we decided that silence really did equal death, it was time to Act Up. Each victory was hard fought and sometimes the battles took unexpected tolls on those fighting. Despair overwhelmed some and they found it impossible to go on. So we formed more groups, groups of caring, unpaid, volunteers like ANKALI and CSN. to support not just the sick but the carers as well. Then new drugs began to appear, then combinations, then a 10 year life expectancy became 15 then 20 then……what was once a death sentence has become a manageable chronic illness.

So we gave up, not everyone but most. The death notices were replaced with Real estate adverts. The quilt was wrapped up and put away and now only occasionally bought out as a relic, an example of how things were. HIV AIDS became the disease of “that generation”. Once a year the names of our martyrs are read to ever decreasing numbers of people.

We lost our focus. Our bright but brief rainbow community dissolved into fractious internecine fighting. Our crusade became a vehicle for people to hitch their wagons to, to promote their own careers and agendas. God save us all from pragmatists.

We are settling. And what is it that we are settling for? A life of self congratulatory self gratification, of selfishness rather than selflessness. We are still at war but now it’s with each other. The discriminated have become the discriminating. The one thing that the Festival of Light could never do we have done to ourselves. We’ve gone from fabulous to fatuous. We’ve become a theme park for out of “towners” to come to each weekend or on that one night in March, Mardi Gras, and point and stare and snigger at the “gays”. We’re becoming an irrelevancy, a footnote in the last part of a millennium gone by; being sucked slowly and inexorably into the mundane. We live small lives and because of that we are becoming smaller people, focused totally on ourselves.

So yes we need another plague because maybe then we will come together truly as one community and stand up for something more important than our right to drink, drug and “rut” ourselves into oblivion 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The need is out there it’s the willingness that’s lacking. All it will take to get us back on track is the desire to do something for someone else without once thinking “what’s in it for me”. Will we do it?

Maybe violence is the new plague. Maybe the “Reclaim the Street Vigil” is the start of the new Community.

Cancer and all that jazz

2009-02-08T16:40:00.000+11:00

Let me preface this entire piece by saying that this is not a finished "bit" and may never be.

Cancer is a funny thing, not funny ha ha but funny peculiar. When you’re diagnosed you have four options of treatment, operate, radiate, kill it with chemo or a combination of all three. There is one other option, do nothing, sit back, wait and see. Now this fifth option is a risky alternative. You’re basically saying, “I am going to take a chance that this cancer will just disappear and I’m going to be just fine again”. You take the chance that the cancer, your cancer, will not invade and destroy the rest of your body.

Cancer is an efficient, uncaring and determined foe. It knows when, where and how to attack. It wages a well planned, well provisioned war on your body. Its supply lines are protected, its intelligence is exact and its retreats, if any, are only ever strategic. Cancer can be a very patient adversary. It’s willing to lie dormant, seemingly defeated for years only to - when you finally allow yourself to begin to believe that possibly, this time; it’s gone for good - reappear, refreshed and ready to rumble.

Cancer perverts. It perverts your healthy cells and turns them against you. One diseased cell becomes two becomes four becomes eight etc etc. Doubling and redoubling, recruiting seemingly eager participants through out your body. Cancer is the al-Qaeda of diseases.

If you’re a cancer patient, you often feel marginalised and paralysed by the competing jargon and treatments recommended by dispassionate doctors who can not allow themselves to become personally involved because the weight of each attachment would, for them, become unbearable. An array of men and women in smart white coats and nifty ties, oftentimes stand over your bed and argue back and forth about differing treatment options. Words that you have only ever heard before on episodes of “House” and then only after you have had at least two, okay, three glasses of wine.

Who do you trust, who do you believe?

Doing nothing is not an option. Ultimately you must become involved. You have to on some level take charge and become the driver of this journey and not the back seat passenger. It’s not acceptable to sit back and be passive about this.

Own your disease, own your journey. Everything you do must be proactive.

Cancer it seems to me is a perfect metaphor for the environment and for our relationship to it. Anything that is left alone and allowed to become infected will destroy its host.

If we take the Holistic view, we are all linked. On a cellular level we all come from the same chemicals and minerals that create our world, our planet. Like a cancer patient our world, our Earth, is struggling to find a path through the various diagnosis to achieve one common goal, healing. We continue to look at this planet, this earth, as something that is outside of us, an external force that we are not part of. Something we can control. When we begin to see that we are as one with it, then we are making that first small but important step towards the solution. We would never leave our own wounds open and uncared for, why then should we even consider the possibility of not cleansing and caring for our environment.

Our planet needs healing, we need healing. We are the cancer cell spreading through this world raping, pillaging and plundering to satisfy our ever changing, ever selfish, desires.

While our planet, our Earth, heaves and gasps for breath, the Doctors and Scientists stand over us giving different and divergent diagnosis. “It’s cyclical”, “We only have a few years left”, “Leave it, it ain’t broke”, and “We stand on the abyss”. Each one of these pundits has a professional PowerPoint production filled with statistics and reports and more statistics and more reports to prove that their point of view is the correct one. Each one confuses and discounts the other. It’s hard to know who or what to believe. Gore versus Lomborg.

Kubler Ross talks about the seven stages of grief in her book, “On Death and Dying”, if we apply that paradigm to where we stand now, we are bouncing around between denial, anger and bargaining. Each of these steps is promoting passivity, not action. When we get passed all of this to acceptance then we begin to find a way forward.

No matter which side of the argument you agree with, it’s obvious that we are not doing all that we can to treat our planet, our Earth, with respect. Forget Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, surely our most basic philosophy should be, do no harm. From that simple statement we then take the next step and start to “do good”. We can begin to create our own, new, reality.

I know that none of this is jaw dropping, earth shattering news to any of you. And it’s a bit like shouting fire after the fire brigade has been phoned. For me the world is too big and if I look at the Amazon, the Arctic, Indonesia, the Sudan, it all becomes so overwhelming that I really think it is easier to do nothing, to take that fifth option. Is Kyoto the answer, god knows, I sure as heck don’t.

Who do you trust, who do you believe?

What I believe is simply that our life force and the planets life force is linked in such an intimate embrace that we dare not close our heart to the suffering of each other. If we turn our backs, shut our eyes and ears, we do nothing but harm ourselves. When we are long gone, like the Dinosaur or the Dodo bird, then our time here will be measured in cosmic seconds not centuries. What legacy did we leave in those few brief seconds?

Define Me a Relationship

2009-02-06T13:44:00.000+11:00

Yes I’m having a long term, long distance cyber affair and I have to say it is the most satisfying relationship I have had in a long time. We message each other daily on msn or Gaydar, we send txts and sometimes we eat dinner together, him in his room and me in mine. We’ve never met and really not ever likely to but it did get me thinking – “how do you define a relationship in these modern times”?

Apparently everyone wants one, at least that’s what they say and yet so few seem to admit to having one. Lesbians of course are the natural exception to this rule. I have never yet met an unattached Lesbian.

If relationships are so important to us why do we continue to define them by the paradigms of the past? The traditional Anglo monogamous role play version we see on TV. Do any of us need to have our union sanctified by George, (Pell) or Peter (Jensen)? We spend hectares of old growth forest proclaiming our individuality and yet the one thing we want it seems, is to conform to society’s snapshot of a happily coupled couple. We march for miles, in all weather, in tight fitting, chafing, sequinned thongs with chiffon capes and for what? To be like George and Mildred! The wind created by the rush to be married could power a large Reception Centre. And what’s so great about being like everyone else anyway it seems a little grey and mundane. A very wise individualist said, “we are all unique - just like everyone else).

Most of my friends are in committed relationships, just not the type of relationship that we’ve been told by Leo Burnett or Val Morgan that they should be. One couple I know, much older, so naturally much wiser, had been partnered for over 30 years, (one now sadly deceased), both had younger boyfriends and the boyfriends had boyfriends as well. That’s one hell of a table come Valentines. It worked perfectly, for them.

We’re all in relationships, just look around. It may not look like the Doris Day / Rock Hudson version or the Tom Cruise; Mimi, Nicole, Katie variety. So its not what you imagined it to be when you were in high school secretly fingering your dog eared copy of “The Front Runner” or proudly proclaiming your “outedness” reading “Tales of the City” on the 380 bus.

For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, (mostly poorer at the moment) I seem to have fallen into a relationship, (this is different to the cyber one), with a man 10 years older than me. If you knew how old I am then that would frighten you. Let me stress this though, right here and right now, we never have and never ever will have sex – I think we would both rather set our hair on fire. But we go away on holidays together; we eat dinner in together 5 nights out of 7. We watch House together and we are furious, together, that “So You Think You Can Dance” has finished. We get invited out too most things together, I’m still “Anne Guest” ,(yes I mean Anne), at the STC. We have shared a house together now for over 15 years. He has sat by my bed, in hospital – twice. Although the second time he did demand my Qantas FF number before he would let the Doctors put the tube down my throat. I woke up, a week later, 25 kilos and a 100,000 points lighter. However you cut that flan, that’s a relationship, it may not be healthy, but it’s mine.

Our best friends have been partnered for over 20 years. True they don’t sleep together or in fact live in the same house. They live next door with connecting passageways and five bathrooms. But it works and works very well, for them. They are the happiest couple I’ve ever seen. Two other gay men I know are foster parents to 2, count them 2, children. Another couple flew off to Canada for a commitment ceremony then a honeymoon in Tasmania.

As far as I can tell we are swimming in relationships. Whatever works and does no harm should be encouraged, celebrated and respected. Just because your relationship doesn’t look like Lucy and Malcolm’s, or George and Laura’s, doesn’t make it any less real. Ultimately it shouldn’t matter what the boys in the back room are whispering it’s your life and you are the one living it. So what if it’s not like the fairy tales, who wants to live with 3 bears or 7 small miners or a cow and a beanstalk anyway. Then again maybe you do and maybe you are, that’s fine as well.

Oh and allow it to happen for heavens sake. There is no set time or age when you should buy that summer share in Port Douglas or get those matching Celtic tattoo. It isn’t instant coffee after all. It happens when it happens; in the big scheme of things it’s all perfect.

Go stand in the middle of Taylor Sq. or where ever you like to stand, take off that beret, throw it in the air and you’ll see that love is all around and you’re gonna make it after all.

From Diesel and Dolce to Pj’s and Puzzles

2009-02-05T14:17:00.001+11:00

Last Monday we went to a friends place for dinner. Now normally this isn’t news worthy but, over a year ago Matt and Peter fostered two boys “T” and “J”, brothers, who had need of love and stability. When they were going through the process we all said, “isn’t that wonderful, what a great thing to do… are they mad!” None of us actually thought through the implications and responsibilities that were involved. To be honest, I don’t think even Matt and Peter did.
We turned up for dinner at their beautifully restored New York style high ceiling, old timber, two bedroom, groovy inner city apartment. What once was a room of clear surfaces and clean lines is now an obstacle course of puzzles, games, Bob the Builder, toys and plastic children’s chairs. Flannelette pyjamas versus Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s gone from “Sex and the City” to “Malcolm in the Middle”. It feels and smells like a family home now. Dinner is in the oven, two tables are set, one for the boys and one for the “old” boys.
What these guys have done is take two brothers, both under ten, who’ve had a tough time of it, (that’s the understatement of the century), and they’ve provided them with a secure and safe environment where they have a chance of experiencing nurturing and love for possibly the first time in their short lives. To me this is an act of total selflessness.
After the boys had been fed and bathed, “Grandpa” Michael read them a bed time story and then when they were both safely tucked up in their beds, the adults sat down to dinner. I asked Peter and Matt how they were coping.
Their lives have changed dramatically. Things that were once important are now irrelevant. No more smart restaurants and opening nights, now its soccer practice and parent teacher meetings. Lazy Sunday mornings reading the paper in bed are a thing of fond memory when you have two “energiser bunnies” waking up at dawn and wanting to rumble. The boys don’t know the meaning of downtime.
None of it’s easy. Not for a minute. Its constant twenty four hour seven day a week focus. It’s made Matt and Peter a much stronger couple who talk and more importantly, listen to each other. They have a common purpose outside of themselves, something that is so much bigger than their own needs.
I can not imagine where they have found the resources to achieve what they have. There’s been no nine month pregnancy preparation. The boys landed fully formed and damaged in their laps. There have been hard times when it has seemed overwhelming. Peter travels, a lot, for work and “T” and “J” have not been easy. As Matt said one night “Mommy Dearest only tells one side of the story”. He was joking but I think at that stage he was lost in the enormity of this force that has taken over his life. And yet both of them have maintained and grown their own careers.
And the boys’ lives have changed so dramatically as well, from abuse and anger to love and compassion. They had been shunted from one home to another, now at last they have stability. There is a photo of “J” pinned to a once pristine beam of hard wood in the lounge room; it shows a clear eyed, open faced soulful child staring straight into the lens of the camera. There is no artifice, no agenda and no lie in his eyes as he stares back at you. The photo was taken on one of the first days when “J” felt safe enough to again look anyone directly in the face. He was so used to seeing anger, judgement and threat, now he saw love and security. It’s one of the most moving pictures that I’ve ever seen.
The change in all four of these “boys” is enormous.
Matt and Peter don’t expect or seek approval for what they are doing, in fact I know how embarrassed they will be when they read this. They don’t think of reward or recognition. They do it because they can’t not do it. They all have grown in so many ways not only as individuals but as a couple and as a family. They are still Peter and Matt but…more.
Now that’s a Christmas.

Have You ever Had One of Those Weeks?

2009-01-25T13:34:00.001+11:00

Have you ever had one of those weeks? I did.
It started innocently enough standing in front of the toilet with a pot of leftovers trying to open the seat by pushing my foot down as if it was a rubbish bin. Now, to me, this was rather amusing but imagine if it had been the reverse, standing in front of the rubbish bin… well you can picture the rest.
One incident by itself does not an article make. The next day as I drove to my local café I had what can only be described as a senior’s moment. Yes, I pumped the accelerator and not the brake and just avoided being hit by a taxi that appeared from nowhere. I now sympathise with all those Nannas who have driven down the steps of the railway station, thinking they were entering a parking garage.
You would think that would be enough but no, wait there’s more.
Three nights later I was sitting on the couch with blood running down the back of my head. Now I am by nature a suspicious person and I assumed, incorrectly, that my housemate had hit me over the head with a hammer. We have one of “those” relationships. Apparently I had been talking to “Thor” in the kitchen, collapsed backwards and whacked my head on the hardwood floors. I was more Greg Louganis than Mathew Mitcham. I’m told I was out for about five minutes. I have no memory of any of it and I’m still considering the hammer theory.
The very next day I had promised to help a much older friend of mine, who now lives in a nursing home, get to St Vincent’s to have his feeding tube replaced. I know; it’s a tube that feeds into his stomach and he pulled it out when taking off his shirt - this is my world. While waiting for him to be seen, I stood up and yes you guessed it, had “a turn”. Now I was this elderly gent’s designated driver. Suddenly he, poor fellow, was ignored while I was ushered through to a day bed and force fed Barley Sugars, by a cute young male nurse who lent over me and said, “So you’re driving him home?”
Being a straight acting gay bloke I of course “sucked it up” and lived for the next five days with headaches, confusion and dizziness. I Googled the symptoms and discovered I probably had concussion and that it would go away in time. However after emptying yet another packet of Nurofen I thought perhaps I better see a doctor. He took one look at me and quick as a flash said “concussion” and “that it would”, yes you guessed it “go away in time”.
It seems the main problem was that my blood pressure medicine was working too well and slowing the flow of blood to my head to a trickle. “Better stop taking those tablets” he said. Well “der”.
So I’m off my tablets, no more fainting but now I have this strange tingling down my left arm. I really must Google that.