1: I will make you play!

I grew up in England. I was born in a scungy place called Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire. It was a steel-working town; very working class. My dad was a carpenter by trade but worked in the steel mill. Mum did many things. I remember her being a postie and working for the British General Post Office. I was the fourth of five children but we’ve lost three of my siblings. One of my sisters died of a hole in the heart at six months. Then two of my brothers had cancer. The brother I was closest too, in affection and age, died when he was five years old (I was four) and the oldest brother died much later, he was 45. So by the time I was four or five years old, mum and dad had already lost two of their children. So there was a big gap between me and my oldest brother.

At school I quite liked girls and looking back, I clearly preferred girls’ company to boys! I certainly didn’t like team/ball sports. I liked horses and as an adult ended up training and competing in equestrian events for many decades. As a kid I was always dreaming about having a horse and going horse riding. I also loved playing the piano. I preferred dolls to soccer balls and I preferred girls’ company to boys’. So for me, there was always this feeling of “I’m different – but so what?”

Like I said, I didn’t like the major sports we played at school.  The only kind of sports I was vaguely interested in were things like swimming, or using the trampoline. When I got older I was more interested in things like basketball and badminton but at school in those days you weren’t allowed to do those things unless you were on one of the ‘teams’ and if you wanted to do something other than that you were called names. I was called ‘sissy’, ‘pansy’, you know, I was bullied a lot really... (Bullying)

I’ll never forget our Physical Education (PE) teacher yelling at me one day, “You have to play! I will make you play!” And I yelled back at him, “You can make me stand here all day if you want, but you can’t make me move!” Of course, I got a detention for that!

2: Playboy, horses and supermarkets!

I remember looking at my brother’s Playboys. Sometimes they had men in the photo shoots but in those days, the men always had their back to the camera. I remember desperately wanting to see the front. I’m not even sure that I was looking at them in a sexual way but I know I was more interested in what was at the front. Then, when I started masturbating it was all about looking at the guys.

I had my first sexual encounter at 15 with a girl in England.  That was something of a disaster.  Then, at 16 just before my family emigrated to NZ, I had a mutual wank session. I’d been going down to this local horse riding place and there was this guy who came to ride. I don’t know how we knew it was on – cos I didn’t like him and we never really talked much.  Just one summer’s evening we ended up in the stable, giving each other a hand job. (Age of consent)

The first time I ever had penetrative sex was with a guy from the supermarket I was working at after school, I was about 17. He was a manager and he said he was having a ‘party’ and invited me around to his house one Friday after work. Deep down I think I really knew what was going to happen. But I was still a bit surprised at his blatant lie, ‘cos when I got there it was only him and me.

There was penetrative anal sex but it hurt like fuck and I couldn’t go through with it all the way. It was just too painful. Afterwards, I remember walking from his house to my parents house. I felt sick. I felt dirty. I felt like I had ‘homosexual’ stamped on my forehead, in neon lights. I felt that anyone who looked at me knew what I’d done. They knew that I’d been fucked that night. It took a week or two before that feeling went away; that feeling of having done something really wrong and really bad. I don’t remember it being a pleasant experience at all. This was all pre-AIDS so there was no safe sex; it was all unsafe. It was all bare-back. The worst thing you could get back then was syphilis. (Anal sex) (Condoms)

3: If we don’t cum, we’re not gay.

Then, at age 19, my best mate and I basically had a ‘lust’ affair.  We belonged to this group of guys that used to just hang out together. He was engaged and his fiancé was even part of our ‘gang’. He worked on a farm and one summer day, when we’d all been helping him with the hay-making, the others had gone (as I recall he even got one of our mates to drop his fiancé off) then he and I ended up spending the night together. There was all the innuendo, the flirtatious chat first, then we got into bed together. We were both so scared! So we came to a mutual agreement. We said “If we don’t kiss, we’re not gay”. We kissed. Then it was, “If we don’t cum, we’re not gay”. We both came - of course 19 year olds! Then it was “If we don’t fuck, we’re not gay”. Needless to say, we ended up doing everything! He insisted he wasn’t gay and went on and married twice – has children and to the best of my knowledge, lives a totally straight lifestyle.

It was also about this time that I first told my parents about my sexuality. I don’t know how it came up, we were just having a conversation. It was late, I was scared and I just blurted out, “I think I might be gay.” My Dad (who just died this year) and I were never particularly close but when I look back at this now and think about his response, I realise just how amazing he could be sometimes. He said, “You know I’ve been at sea with men (he was in both the Royal and the Merchant Navy). I’ve seen men do things with other men, when they’re away without women for long periods of time that they wouldn’t normally do on dry land.” And I’m thinking, ‘Oh shit Dad, are you outing yourself? Oh, I so don’t want to hear this!’ But he went on to make a very clear statement… “You know, you’re my son. I love you and I’ll always love you. I don’t care what you do in your private life,” he said, “But just don’t be in a hurry to label yourself.”  (Coming out)

It was illegal to be gay in NZ at that time so sexual activity with a man could put you in prison. So I ended up coming out of the closet to my parents at 19 but then sort of going back in again later, when I got married. The decriminalisation of homosexuality only happened in about 1986. We were aware that this was a massive celebration around the country. It was a huge change.

4: Moustaches and Leather

Before I got married I was semi-closeted but ‘adventuring’ out to gay places from time to time. I was doing the whole kind of ‘I am but I’m not’. I heard about this placed called The Empire. I didn’t know anybody gay to go with. I didn’t know anybody gay full-stop. I just remember being really excited. I remember not knowing what to wear. I remember the palpitations, the dry mouth and the nerves. (Getting out there)

It was in the early days of what we called ‘garden bars’. If a pub had a garden bar, you knew it was either gay, or trying to be trendy or both. I remember The Empire Tavern was one of the first places in Auckland to have a garden bar. Oh and I remember, it was all about a particular look back then – sort of the ‘Tom Selleck-look’, Magnum PI; the bushy moustache. (Body Image)

So the first time I walked into The Empire and bought my drink, I was really nervous, as you can imagine. I walked into the garden bar clutching my drink, wondering if I was wearing the right clothes. I looked around me and the two things that struck me were all the Tom Selleck look-alikes and the leather. It wasn’t actually a leather bar, I don’t think we even had leather bars as such back then, but there was a lot of leather.

I remember the second thing that stood out in my mind was how lonely I felt. I stood there for the whole night by myself.  I probably had lots of looks. I must have been about 21, 22 years old and so I’m figuring I would have been being cruised a lot - but at the time I didn’t know about those sorts of things. I just thought people were staring at me and it was hostile. All these things were going through my head. I just went home feeling lonelier than ever and thinking, ‘If that’s what gay life is like, I don’t want it.’ So… it was not a good experience. (Isolation)

5: Deeper than friendship

Some years later, my first lover and his wife introduced me to a woman who eventually became my wife. We dated for about two years and when marriage came up in conversation, I thought, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t marry her unless I tell her.’ So I did and she said, “I always suspected that there was something deeper than your average friendship”. So we broke up for a couple of weeks. We should have got some counselling but at 23 and 20 years, you really do think you know it all. We thought we had it all sorted.

I think she was shocked and upset. She said she needed some time to think and she needed a break from me. I left it for her to contact me ‘cause I felt that was the right thing to do. I think it was after about two weeks and she phoned me and said “I miss you. I love you. I want to see you. What are we going to do?” So we got back together. She said, “What does it mean for me? How do you feel about me?” I replied, “Well I love you. I want to be with you. I want to have kids.”  So we got married and we were married for about four years.

In that time, I was very faithful. I think there was only one time that I strayed and that was near the end. That was actually how I met the guy that I ended up leaving her for. I’m not very proud of this but I went to a gay bar with a friend and met this guy. I fell completely head-over-heels in love with him. Needless to say, that had a bit of a detrimental effect on the marriage! (Trust)

6: Give our marriage a chance

He was the first real love of my life – well, first love that was fully reciprocated. With my first lover, I was more into it than he was.  With my wife, I think she was more into it than me.  With this guy, it all happened so fast. I met him in July and he was meant to be going overseas. In my head, we were just going to have a ‘dabble’. It wasn’t meant to be anything serious. So he went overseas in November but by this stage I was completely besotted.

When he left the country, I actually told my wife how I felt about him. And again, she responded in an amazing way. She said, “Look, I understand, it happens. But for my sake, can’t you give our relationship and give our marriage a chance?” We’d been married for about three-and-a-half years. But I knew I’d be making a huge mistake – for both of us.

She was incredibly forgiving. I think, because I had told her the truth at the beginning, she behaved as if she didn’t really have a big axe to grind. We tried to stay friends and in trying to stay friends we socialised, we went to the movies, we had dinner. One night we had a few too many drinks and she got pregnant with our daughter. Even though we’d separated, that was when she fell pregnant with our daughter.

Then around Christmas time the guy came back and we had some time together, which just cemented the relationship. We went away to Rotorua for a weekend, and I came back, and I said to my wife, “Look, I have to go. This isn’t going to be good for you. It’s not going to be good for me. Ultimately, if we had kids, we’d make the kids miserable too. You deserve to be with someone who’s going to love you totally – in a way I can’t.”

This guy and I were so deeply in love that as soon as his contract ended he came back to New Zealand and we moved in together. We were together for about four or five years.

7: Post marriage

My first love and I eventually broke up. We got into the relationship because we lusted after each other and the sex was good. Then, good sex meant quite soon we thought ourselves in love. Then, after the honeymoon period was over, I realised I didn’t actually like him all that much. A lot of things happened while I was with him, including being introduced to the beat scene. I didn’t know about toilets, beats, that whole public toilet sex business. Sometimes now I wish he hadn't. (Beats)

So I was training and working as a nurse at this stage. Mental retardation nursing was what I did in those days and then after we broke up I got into psychiatric nursing training. My next relationship was with a fellow student – he was a year behind me in his training. We shacked up for a couple of years. So he became my transition person and basically he kind of got me through the break-up of being with my long term boyfriend. It was nice but I think it meant more to him than it did to me. But all these years later, we’re still friends.

Then I went to work for this organization and I fell totally in love with my boss, which was a strange turn of events, because she was a woman! She also knew I was gay when we met. She was an amazing woman, in so many ways.  So we ended up in a relationship and I had five years with her. That relationship didn’t survive either, mainly I think because we had blended family issues – her two kids from her marriage and my daughter. Eventually we stopped being live-in lovers but then we turned into Will & Grace (from the TV series). We literally lived the same kind of life as Will & Grace. She died of cancer in 2004 but was (and still is to me) the single most beautiful person I’ve ever known. She was kind, warm, and generous! To the end of my days, she’s the one person that I know I will love forever.

People have suggested because of my capacity to love a woman, that I might be bi-sexual – but I know I’m not. I’ve always preferred the company of men. I see myself as a man who’s attracted to men, if I wanted to be with someone who was soft and feminine, I’d be with a woman.

I guess I believe that it’s possible to love someone irrespective of their genitals. When I’m thinking lusty things or if I want to have a wank or a quick shag, I never think of a woman, ever - only men. But when you meet someone special and you get to know them, I think it’s possible to fall in love with them and then you make love: that’s what it is.

8: Southern Hibernation

New Zealand’s lovely, and it’s home, and it’s where my heart is but, it’s still very small and very quiet. I remember before she died of cancer I was thinking, ‘I need to live somewhere big and bustley, and happening like London’. It had been my plan to move there as she was living in Ireland – it was much closer. But after she died, I was a bit lost and I came over here to a Southern Hibernation. I’d been here a few times. I had the best time; I absolutely loved it. So I thought, ‘That’s it! I’ll go and live in Melbourne.’

I got connected with VAC pretty soon after I arrived in Melbourne. I was here in 2005 and I think 2006 was when I got involved with VAC, doing Outreach. In my head I thought that was about social stuff. I thought that was about connecting, making friends, getting to know people. I’d been a Lifeline (telephone counselling) volunteer in New Zealand for 10 years. I’ve always known that, if you’re a volunteer, you get a lot back. (Volunteering)

I think in New Zealand we knew about AIDS before we ever had our own home-grown case. So there was a lot of education and awareness about it long before we actually had people spreading the infection locally. I was in a relationship for most of that time, so it didn’t really have a big impact on my life. It wasn’t a big issue for me. I didn’t have a lot of anal sex in those days – I avoided it when I was doing the beats. It was very high profile in our media and in our community – but as I say, I don’t recall it having a big effect on me. It was a very long time before I actually knew somebody with HIV. It was also a very long time before I knew anyone who died of an AIDS-related condition. So the impact was phenomenal but not at a personal level; more at a socio-political level.  Again, in hindsight, I realise now how lucky I have been – I’ve never lost a close friend or a loved one to HIV-AIDS. (HIV the basics)

9: Bareback intimacy

I have to be honest here, and say that I don’t always practise safe sex. I wish I could say different. I wish I could say that I never take chances, never take risks. But the truth is that I do. Sometimes my defences are weak. I think that’s a combination of many factors. There’s party drugs, there’s alcohol, there’s lust, there’s the addictiveness of beat sex, there’s any number of things. I think the more of those factors are involved the greater the risk that I(or anyone, for that matter) will do something unsafe. (Drugs and alcohol)

I’m one of the many people who actually don’t like condoms. I know it’s psychological but they really do inhibit my performance and there's a whole heap of stuff around that. I know we’ve got Viagra and all the performance-enhancing drugs now. But, at the end of the day, the intimacy when a man blows his load inside you is really, really deep. Especially a man you love. To me there is no deeper connection with a man than when that happens. (Bottoming) (Safe sex) (Condoms and erections)

So it’s a strange thing. How I keep myself safe is a balancing act. I have to think about my partner (when I have one), my relationship with my partner and making sure he’s safe. That if I do something that’s unsafe, I actually have to confess. Then I’ve got that awful situation to go through where they might be angry, might be hurt or upset. And it affects your sex life for the next three months, you know, the test/trust, test/talk, test/trust thing. (Negotiated safety)

There’s a lot involved and I think being part of VAC actually helps me stay connected with people who recognise that there's more to it than just not having unsafe sex. For the longest part of my active sex life I never had sex with a condom, I never had to. So now, for me that’s a dilemma. It’s a struggle. It’s a fight. It’s something that I’m always mindful of.

10:  Strategies to staying negative

If I have unsafe sex with anybody I would rarely do it without asking them what their HIV status is. That's a strategy. It’s not a great strategy but it’s a strategy. I’m comfortable saying “Do you know what your HIV status is?” And having said that, I do know that, your status is really only as relevant as your last unsafe sexual encounter. So it’s no guarantee - but I do ask. I can honestly say that I have never knowingly had unprotected anal sex with someone who was HIV positive. I’ve come close. There was a time recently when I went to Club 80 and I’d been out, I’d had a great time, got home in a very at-risk state, and I went to Club 80.  (Disclosure dilemmas) (HIV testing)

I was there with a complete attitude of… “Fuck it, there’s PEP. I just want to have a really loose, horny, lust-fuelled time”. But it was one of those rare occasions – it just so happened that what I’d gone to Club 80 looking for wasn’t available. It just didn’t happen. I have never been in such a vulnerable state – combination of low self-esteem at that time, and a rampagingly good night out. So I’d gone down there with the full intention of being unsafe and then taking PEP for a month. I have to say, I’m really glad with the way things turned out. It hasn’t happened since. But who knows? This strange mix of all the wrong factors being aligned! (PEP) (Saunas)

I’m not advocating this kind of behaviour in any way. I know that I don’t want to sero-convert. I don’t want to become positive but I’m very aware that it’s not just a simple matter of do or don’t practice safe sex.

I may have been lied to. If someone says they’re negative but it’s based on them not testing, that’s really a lie, isn’t it? They might not tell you they don’t test and still consider this being negative.

In this conversation, I’ve been as honest as I can be. I think the ‘take home’ message that I would want someone to have is that yes, we know it’s not easy. It’s not just simply a question of ‘never have unsafe sex’. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you do. We’re all human, none of us are perfect but we are all people and people make mistakes. I think the most important part of my message is: if you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It does mean being kind to yourself – treat yourself well. Treat yourself how most of us would treat someone else: with kindness and support. Get help. These kinds of things are so much harder to do alone.

This is not an easy thing that we’re doing and the whole process of staying negative is not simply a case of always wearing a condom. As I said, we’re all human and we should be loving, caring, and forgiving of each other and not judgemental or harsh. If you do look people in the eye and say, “Well I sometimes have unsafe sex,” there is definitely a sector of the community who are disapproving and judgmental. I think it’s important that the message gets across that that’s not helpful, in any way.