Rio de Janeiro

So Rio is the location of the next Olympics. Normally I wouldn't give a flying foo-foo valve, but Rio has always fascinated me. There's something about seaside cities and towns in an east coast climate in these latitudes (23 degrees). It makes for easy open living, a warm climate leading (maybe) to a warm people.


It's the same latitude (almost) as Maputo in Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony, which used in its time also to be a city of pleasure, and a bit closer to the equator than Durban or Brisbane.


Another reason for my interest is their music, not just the obvious 'Latin' styles of bossa-nova and cha-cha but also their more 'classical' composers--Louis Moreau Gottschalk (A Night in The Tropics) and Heitor Villa-Lobos, just for starters.



They speak an odd sort of Portuguese in Brazil. Though I can understand written Portuguese and written and spoken Spanish (including the odd dialect of Buenos Aires, where 'y' is pronounced 'zh'), I struggled with Brazilian. They pronounce 'r' even more gutturally than the French, almost like a Dutch/Afrikaans 'g', and swallow all their 'l's.


I did a quick random search of images of men on beaches in Rio. I note that they wear squarecut swim briefs rather than the smaller racing briefs or the bigger shorts. But the women still wear less than the men!


American visitors will have to get used to seeing more male flesh than they do at home. It is good, though, to be exposed to other cultural moeurs; to see the world differently. Broadens your mind.


Here's the Wikipedia article about Rio.


One of the places I plan to visit when I've sold a best seller.

Time, time

"Time, time, time, see what's become of me,
While I looked around,
For my possibilities;
I was so hard to please"
Paul Simon

I've been very quiet. Things have been so hectic; I've been unwell, as has my lady; we're preparing the house for sale; job's been busy, busy, busy; and I've been a bit down -- thinking about friends lost through death or just time's winged arrow.


Anyway, I'm back.

Only Connect

Nelson Mandela was held in prison on Robben Eiland (Dutch for 'Seal Island') by the apartheid government for over two decades. Not because he had committed any crime, but because of his beliefs. His jailers were working class Afrikaners -- the descendants of bywoners (squatters on farms), ignorant and uneducated, devotees of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church, and among the most racist of white South Africans. Nelson Mandela was educated, civilized, brilliant and a Xhosa nobleman. Americans can, I think, understand the situation best by imagining some jail in the deep south staffed by white trash holding a upper class black who'd been to university, spoke three languages fluently, and who was in jail not because he was a criminal lowlife but because the state was afraid of his ideas and his magnetism.

And a miracle happened. Mandela and his jailers connected. I'm still amazed and moved at this. I knew these people. I went to an Afrikaans school. I knew their bigotry and narrowness, their extreme racism, their fear as a minority group in their own country. His warders came to him with legal problems, and he advised them. They came to him with personal problems and he suggested solutions. They called him 'nkosi'. My lord. My lord. White trash. The dregs of Afrikaner society. They trusted him. They admired him. They respected him. Isn't that absolutely amazing? And in the end that great man's capacity to connect led to the peaceful transformation of South Africa to the multi-party, non-racial democracy it is today.

Only connect. Of course, E M Forster wasn't talking about one person connecting with another. This is what he wrote, in Howards End:

"Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the gray, sober against the fire."

Oh yes.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the claymation film Mary and Max from the ppl who did the Oscar winning Harvey Krumpet. Two ugly misfits connect, by letter. They would not have connected in real life. Max has Asperger's syndrome. Mary is just 8 years old. And they become best friends, and their friendship lasts for 20 years. OK, it's fictional. So therefore not true :-)

So let me tell you of a true story, back from the days of snail mail. You remember how at the back of comics they had a classified section selling stuff to kids? Well, one of the things was to get a penpal somewhere. And so, way back when, a teenage girl in England started a correspondence with another girl in Canada. They wrote regularly to each other about their lives, they got married, they had kids, and all the joys and sorrows of life they shared. 30 years later (yup, that's right -- 30!) they met for the first time. Each other was, they said, exactly what they thought they would be. It was like 'coming home'.

Only connect.

Or take my mother. When I was, I suppose, 7 or 8, she had a job at the Northern Rhodesia Police telephone exchange. In those days, telephone exchanges connected calls with cables capped with small pegs which plugged into sockets. Her job was to take the call from the exchange down the line and connect it to someone there at Police Headquarters, or to connect it to the next exchange somewhere in British Africa or England. Sometimes I was taken to work (I suppose on the days when the babysitter didn't turn up) and I would listen to her connecting police from South Africa with police from Kenya or Tanganyika or London. She knew all the police telephone exchange operators. They would have a moment of chat while they waited for the Commissioner or the head of Interpol to pick up the phone. They exchanged Christmas cards and birthday cards. Occasionally, they'd meet. The telephonist from Gweru or Bulawayo might be driving through Lusaka (the capital) on the way to another town, and they would drop in. "Sometimes they'd look quite different from what their voices sounded like on the phone," my mum would say.

Human beings are programmed to connect. Even poor Max Horowitz, from Mary and Max, despite having Asperger's (which makes it hard for you to interpret others' facial expressions and emotions) connected, with Mary. By letter. I would go so far as to say that we are programmed to love. Not romance (never trust it, dearly beloveds) but agape or philia. We are supposed to have originated in bands, or tribes, of proto-humans wandering the veld 100,000 years ago. The band would have had to cooperate to hunt; to care for children (our species has the longest childhood as a percentage of total life span of any species on this planet, and there are extremely good evolutionary reasons for that); to drive off competing bands. Loving one another ("as I have loved you") is genetically programmed into us. Tribes which cohered survived.

Of course, the implication is that we are also programmed to hate. That damn tribe across the hill! Always stealing our melons! Fuckers! Redefine an insider as an outsider and it's easy to hate, to turn your face away when they suffer. Think of the Jews of Germany and Central Europe. Think of Matthew Shepard. But right now I'd prefer to talk about the love. There's enough suffering in the world, and I do not want to dwell on it. I know humans are capable of evil. But we are also capable of love, of loving long after it's pointless; of heroism; of self-sacrifice, the glamorous kind (saving a drowning child) and the unglamorous kind (working day after day to keep your family.)

Which brings me to email. Now email differs from snail mail in some critical ways. Obviously, just for a start, it's quick. No waiting for 10 days for the letter to be delivered. And, unlike snail mail, you don't know that the person you're "talking" to is who they say they are. Martin Bizzlewit might in fact be Marilyn Santana. And the address can be nuked in an instant, whereas you tend to live in a place (once you've settled down) for years and years. And, natch, you can't see faces, or expressions, so you have to deal with what a dear e-friend insists on calling 'texts'. At one level, email is no better -- perhaps in fact inferior -- to the communication we have with the guy who sells us coffee (he's cute!). Yet, even though we talk to him day to day, we never really tell him that we are afraid of the random pains in our gut, that we wish we'd made different decisions several times over the last few years, that we worry about our kids and our friends. Any more than we do with most of the (let me call them) e-acquaintances on line.

But email has advantages too. Most of my embodied acquaintances don't know I'm gay (or bi or whatever). It's too awkward to tell them. Most online do -- because after all they're here because of my writing. Always assuming I'm not in fact Mrs Euphemia van der Westhuizen, LOL. So if you start connecting to someone on line you can tell them about your secret fears and wishes, your sorrows and failures in a way that's hard with embodied acquaintances. Good --- and bad. For maybe, after all, intimacy too easily gained is a bit suss. Easy come, easy go.

Another advantage. There are many ppl I would never have met in my "real" life. I avoid sportsmen, for example. Being half blind, and in fact blinded by the jock bullies at school, I start off with a certain.... hostility. I can't play games, because I can't see where the ball is. More than that: I find the life of ideas and concepts much more interesting than sport. When I see a group of young jocks, I am still afraid enough of strange men to avoid them. But suppose you start to talk to someone on line, and you discover, after you have grown fond of him, that he's a jock? All your preconceptions are given a thorough shaking up. That would never have happened without email, or e-groups, which are in effect assemblies of pen-friends, would it?

I come back to all the examples of penfriends in the good old days of steamships and prop jets, and will end with this one.

Dirk Bogarde, the actor and novelist had a long correspondence with a woman he never met. She once lived in the house he bought in France, and on the strength of that, she wrote to him, and they became friends, close friends. They never met. His book, called A Particular Friendship is about it. Dirk Bogarde was gay, and lived 40 years with his husband. But he became very close to Mrs X. They became best friends. And consider: it was quite by chance. Mrs X saw an article about Dirk Bogarde in an English magazine while she was having her hair done. Maybe all the best friendships are by chance.

There are some who say that e-friendships aren't real, because they lack "body". Maybe. Yet I have and have had close & dear friends on line. Just like the penpals described above. Just like Dirk Bogarde and Mrs. X. My e-friends are real to me. My heart is engaged, bodies or no. The genes which make me want to connect with like-minded ppl work on line just as they did for my ancestors in Serengeti, making sure we build communities where selfish interests are balanced with altruism. They (the genes) don't know your friend is far away, unembodied. To them, he or she is a warrior next to you, defending the tribe against lions or rapacious neighbours. To me, the point about affection and friendship isn't about embodiment. It's about soul and character. And soul and character come through in letters and emails. Sometimes, perhaps, even better than they might in real life.

Only connect. I think E M Forster would have approved of my hijacking of his phrase.

N

Mary and Max

Yesterday my lady and I went to see Mary and Max, an Ozzie claymation film by Adam Elliott and his team. He was the guy who did Harvey Krumpet, which won the best animated short film academy award in 2003.

Mary is a fat, plain little girl, with a birthmark in the middle of her forehead, growing up in a Melbourne suburb in 1976. He mother drinks too much tea and cheap cooking sherry and shoplifts all the time, her father works in a teabag factory, her granda tells her that babies come from the bottom of a beer mug, and (of course) she gets bullied at school. One day she goes to the post office and intrigued by the picture of the lady with the fire coming out of her hand, opens the New York telephone directory at random and copies down an address: Max Horowitz.

She writes to him, enclosing a cherry ripe as a gift, and her own small portrait of herself.

Max is unemployed, dysfunctional, enormously fat and has Asperger's. He calls himself an aspie. After the shock and terror of receiving something new and unknown, which he takes a few days to get over, he writes back, using his Underwood typewriter, pages filled with details of his life -- his therapist, his overeaters anonymous group, his fish, his parrot, his passion for chocolate hotdogs.

So begins a friendship which lasts 20 years.

Mary has no friends, and nor does Max. Every one of Mary's letters frightens Max, and it takes him a few days each time to get over each new one. But their correspondence flourishes. And the gifts flow backwards and forwards. They write to each other that they are best friends. And they are. Max has no friends because Asperger's makes it hard to relate to other ppl. But somehow, on paper, he can communicate his thoughts, his love and affection for Mary, and because he doesn't see himself as an adult, he doesn't treat her like a child. She doesn't know you are not supposed to make friends with fat old retarded men. She treats him exactly as she would any friend her age.

Of course, there are quarrels and misunderstandings. But the friendship becomes the most important relationship on their lives. And they never meet.

It's an extraordinary film. The local crits gave it 5 stars, and when I left the cinema I was wiping my eyes. Over some Plasticine figures! But oh! Oh! How it resonates! Friendship between misfits; comfort arriving in the letter box; a relationship that helps both survive their lives. It's not a Hollywood film. There are no cliched moments or contrived endings. There's a gay character, and a man who lost his legs in WWI and desperately funny and sad portraits of the ppl in both their lives.

It made me think (which all art should). You know how ppl say, this is my life partner, or this is my best friend -- how lucky I was to find him/her? But why should someone from your school, or a bloke you met at work, be your best friend/lover/husband? It's because you connect. That's the key. And it doesn't matter that one of you is an 8-year old girl in Melbourne and the other a 44 year-old aspie in New York. Or whether you are both in the same school and you fall in love. It's the connection that matters. Of course, it's easier in school or the workplace to connect -- unless you have Asperger's or are a fat ugly child with batty parents. Then the magic of letters or e-mail takes over.

There are many who pooh-pooh e-friendships, because they aren't "real". But the essence of a "real" friendship is love and affection and fondness and caring. When Max writes Mary that he can't cry (after yet another of his goldfish dies) she thinks of something sad (her cat being run over by a lawnmower) and collects the tears and send them to him so he can uses them when he feels sad. When she writes to him that the boys at school mock her because of her birthmark, he writes back and says that she should tell them that it's a sign from God that when she goes to heaven she'll be in charge of all the chocolate, and then adds (because he has Asperger's and is therefore intensely literal) that that is a lie because there is no Heaven and no God, but to do it anyway. Neither of them think this is peculiar. Their friend needs something, so they send it. Unconstrained by conventions, they are exactly what the other needs.

Like all the very greatest stories, it's about love and sorrow, about hope and despair, about our feelings for each other. It is a triumphant declaration of the power of love and affection, of the innate need and capacity for love in humans, whoever and wherever they are.

Go and see it. Don't take your children. It's a story for grown ups. Especially if you have loved, and lost; if you are lonely and an outsider; if you believe in hope but suspect in your heart that your hope in hope is hopeless. There are so many deplorably rubbishy films made, filled with tired old recycled piffle, made with all eyes on box office success and none on the the worth of what they're creating. This film is a gem. And if you don't laugh on the way through, and hold your breath with tension when it looks as if it won't work out, and cry at the end -- you're dead, and no one told you. It manages to be sad as well as uplifting, to be engrossing and exciting, funny and moving and clever. Somehow, despite the gentle fun poked at Ozzie suburbia and Mary's weird little family, at Max and his acquaintances, it never preaches or talks down to you, yet all the same still makes its message crystal clear: only connect.

You can read The Age's film critic's take on it here.

Bread of Heaven

It's been a while, dudes. My mother got serious pneumonia, and since she's 88 and bed-ridden, we all worried that it might be the end of her. So I dropped everything and flew to Cape Town to see her before she died. Fortunately, she rallied. And though there's plenty wrong with her health -- she's old, after all -- she's still alive. All the same, I get the feeling that this will be the last time I see her. Parting was very hard.

On Friday night, two days after I got back to Melbourne, I disgraced myself on the train home. I was listening to Bread of Heaven, the hymn they sing when the Wales rugby team plays a rugby team from another country. Well, it's hard even when nothing is wrong with my life to listen to hymns and anthems unmoved, but right now there is so much happening. So of course I started to weep. I compounded my grief by listening to Hallelujah, and then the first movement of the Beethoven Moonlight sonata. I'd been hiding from my grief till then. But it was no good. I thought of my mother. I thought of my sister, poor beloved sister, whose life is such a mess. I remember friends who have died -- three in the last year -- each one of them horribly, in pain. I thought of a good -- even a dear friend -- whom I quarrelled with fatally just a few days before. I thought of someone I know who I reamed out -- deservedly! -- but who is himself suffering great loss. I'm sorry, mate. I shouldn't have.

So... I cried. In front of a woman whom I often meet and talk to on the train and a handsome bloke with kind eyes and a real smile who watched me perplexed, unable to respond to something so outlandish as male grief.

Have you noticed how each grief makes you connect and remember all other griefs? Not like happiness. Each happy occasion is unique. My lady and I were talking about it and she said it's not fair or right that humans feel such pain. How are we supposed to bear our loss? When someone we love is taken from us, what do we do? How do we keep going? We were talking about a specific person, someone whom we knew as a toddler years ago in Brundall in Norfolk, the same age as my younger son, who died, inexplicably, a year ago. His mother cannot come to terms with her grief. How do you do that, come to live with the death of a child? How? I remember just a few short months ago when my younger son was in hospital with a mysterious disease, in the neural ward, while we sat next to him, numb with horror and shock, waiting, waiting for him to get better. If he had died....

Love, and those you love. It seems that there is an end to everything. And it came to pass, it says in the Bible. Kai egeneto. Nothing lasts. That's good and bad, isn't it?

But it does last. Memory lasts, and love. I still remember and love my father. I remember my friend who died. No matter what happened to our friendship, I loved him. And my children, each one of them, and my lady: they are there for me, they love me, they forgive me my sins.


In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.

Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
"Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray."
But here my love would stay.

And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
"Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time."

But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.

They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.

The bells they sound on Bredon
And still the steeples hum.
"Come all to church, good people,"--
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.

Indeed. Of course, A E Housman's love was male, his best friend, who was unable (or unwilling) to return his love, and in the end emigrated to Canada. 'Her' was a fiction, to satisfy the obscene passions of Victorian moral rectitude. Like me, Housman didn't have the consolation of religion. A formidable classical scholar, he knew that Rome and Greece didn't regard us queers as loathsome pariahs. He couldn't forgive the church its homophobia.

What I know as a certainty is that it is love that carries us through the griefs. Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all. The Romans were thinking of sexual love I think, and that's all very well. But I'm thinking of the less glamorous kind of love, the love between friends and family, the kind of love that lasts long after sexual love and desire have withered to dust. Omnia vincit amor. They knew something, those Romans, more than they realised. How do we survive? I asked above. Well, we do. One step in front of the other. With the help of those who love us.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tennyson. Very Victorian sentiments. Yet there is more than the obvious kind of courage. The obvious kind is bravery. But there is another, more profound, more valuable, much less glamorous. And that is the kind of courage you need to face despair. There aren't poems about keeping going day after day, about keeping a smile pasted on your face, day after day, about getting up before dawn to do your job because there are ppl who depend on you and bills to pay.

It's love, dearly beloveds. Agape or philia, if not eros (so untrustworthy, so false a friend, the good God Eros). Love and courage. Then... we can move mountains.

I shall end with a quote from the Book of Common Prayer, not because I am a Christian (I am not) but because it always comforted me when I used to take Communion, and because I think at their apexes, all the great religious thinkers commune with the divinity in a way which emphasizes the godhead not the doctrine, whether they are Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Sufi mystics or the Dalai Lama.

The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding.

There is another quote from the Book of Common Prayer, which I find apposite:

From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us.

What amazing sentiments. And how few Christians apply or follow them.

I have wronged others. May they forgive me. Forgiveness, even more than love, is a two-way street. If you do not forgive others how can you possibly expect them to forgive you?. And without them we are as nothing, and our grief and loss destroy us.

Till next time.

Footy

No, I'm not talking about the game, at least not directly. I'm talking about my novel which is -- yeehah! -- complete. I'm rewriting it now and posting it to my website. I've uploaded the first 8 chapters, and have revised/rewritten about half the rest. I'm uploading a chapter a day or every second day. You can read chapter 1 here. It's about a Brownlow medallist who finds that the only man who cares for him is gay. And how he deals with that.

The image is of Shane Crawford holding up his Brownlow medal. Shane once said on TV that he was exploring his gay side. I wonder what he meant? Had he started listening to Judy Garland? Whatever. He's nice to look at, not so?

Wilde Oats

The name of course is a pun, a mix of wild oats (as in sowing them) and Oscar Wilde. It's what I've been working on like a demon for the last couple of weeks. It's a great new gay/bi/slash magazine. The premier issue is chock-a-block with entertainment. Stories, articles (including a reworking of one of my blog posts but with nicer pics, which I got directly from Aussiebum), plus I am gradually moving over the archives from Forbidden Fruit (which is sadly no more) so you'll have lots to read from 'previous' issues.

Anyway, you should hop over there and read everything. I mean it. You'll be able to say, I read it when..... Because it's going places.

My Father-in-law's Wake

A hot Ozzie autumn evening, the currawongs and magpies calling, and the cockies with their raucous shrieks, so different to the endearing twitter they make as they fly in formation. A day Michael would have liked. He grew to love Oz and the Ozzie character; their generosity and scabrous sense of humour; their quiet patriotism; their robust egalitarianism; their honour and integrity. He spent nearly 15 years in Oz, living with us in a cottage we built for them out the back of our property. Although he came to love Oz he never stopped missing Cape Town where he was born 82 years ago, and where his closest friends remained.

It was a lovely wake, if you can say that about such a ceremony. While we were clearing out the cottage (Bay, my mother-in-law who used to live there has gone to live with her other daughter in New Zealand) we found 6 long red candles that she has been carrying around we think for over 50 years since she apparently had them in Kenya and we lit them and surrounded them with oak leaves - and sprigs of rosemary as well because Michael and Bay loved Ophelia's speech - 'there's rosemary, that's for remembrance'.

My two sons William and Nicholas changed out of their usual grunge gear into black pants and white shirts and sang a cappella 'Danny Boy' which was one of the songs Michael used to sing. My daughter Alexandra then read out a poem from one of my wife's cousins, and then my lady's 'Memories of Dad' in her calm, kind voice - she said her work in community radio was a help as you have to learn to carry on regardless (and there were many tears as well as laughter as she read). William then sang 'Jerusalem' at Mum's request as it was one of Dad's favourite hymns, and his pure angelic tenor lifted us out of ourselves and was balm to aching hearts. Needless to say, the champagne flowed copiously all the while. Nicholas finished by singing an impromptu version of 'Rambling Rose', another of Michael's old favourites, and his lovely gravelly baritone was every bit as good as Nat King Cole's. The children carried us through with their humour and gentleness and their steadiness. Our Jack Russell was the only one who didn't enjoy the singing - a very emotional dog, his head drooped lower and lower until he looked like Snoopy on his dog kennel, his nose almost on the ground, his eyes black pools of woe. He did cheer up when we shared some Camembert cheese with him, though. The red candles burned quietly for 3 hours and as the evening drew to a close, we watched them in silence go out, one by one.

We were reminded again of the importance of family and friends at these times. Omnia vincit amor, they say, even loss and sorrow and grief. Bay and my sister-in-law flew out to New Zealand yesterday morning and it was a wrench for all, but we know that in the long run she will be better looked after there. My sister-in-law has plans for giving Bay a whole new life and we know she will be lovingly cared for. We are planning our first trip over to see her in June/July.

The cottage is dismally empty and sad, devoid of the pictures and antiques that made it so beutiful, and missing the ppl who made it so welcoming.

ὣς ἔφατ' εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δ' ἔκλυε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
βῆ δὲ κατ' Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆρ
τόξ' ὤμοισιν ἔχων ἀμφηρεφέα τε φαρέτρην:
ἔκλαγξαν δ' ἄρ' ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ' ὤμων χωομένοιο,
αὐτοῦ κινηθέντος: ὃ δ' ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.

(If the quote appears inappropriate, I am very aware of the anger of the God.)

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Music and mood

I was talking to a friend of my younger son's on the train a day or so ago. He's studying percussion at the VCA (Victorian College of the Arts) and he was saying how he'd come to understand and therefore like some very intricate drum solos which previously he'd cared for. He said the same thing had happened with classical music. As a boy he'd disliked it, found it boring. Now he loves it.

But how do you explain my passion for jazz, swing and blues from the 20s, 30s and 40s? I grew up in a house where classical music was virtually the only music around, except for my mother singing popular songs as she wandered round the house. She had a lovely voice and was an excellent piano player and introduced me to South Pacific as well as Chopin, the one from her songs the other from her playing. No jazz at all. Then, one day in a tiny record shop in Cape Town I listened to Paul Whiteman and immediately fell in love. It's the joy of the music that gets me. They needed it -- the great depression, war clouds and then actual war, unemployment, poverty and misery. The music made up for it.

Listen to this one, made just before the great crash, and this during the war, not long before Benny Goodman was shot down over Europe. (Man, I wish I could play the clarinet like he could)

I'm needing this stuff right now. The wake is tonight. It's going to be hard.

Reflections on grief and loss

On Tuesday my father-in-law died. I'd known him since 1976, when I started going out with my lady, and he's been a friend ever since. My parents-in-law never struck me as unlikely friends, though soime might have questioned the generational gap -- they were well-read, well-travelled and young at heart. I enjoyed visiting them and talking to them. But Michael had further claims on my loyalty and gratitude. When I was a poor student, they invited me along to their visits to the theatre, the ballet and opera. I shall never forget the first time I saw La Bohème at La Nico in Cape Town. I was electrified, overwhelmed, blown away. I had never seen or experienced anything like it. Michael never went to these shows, but he paid, and the cost was way beyond what my student budget would have worn. How do you thank people for the things they did which permanently changed your life? My spirit soared on the things they introduced me to, and my mind broadened. I shall always be grateful.

We've been going through old photo albums, and I've been seeing sepia photographs of him as a baby and a boy, glossy black and whites of him as a young man, smiling sardonically at the camera, wedding photos and bon voyage photos and all the pictures we take of each stage of our lives. A whole life in pics, a whole extended family of uncles and aunts and cousins, most of whom I shall never meet, for they are long dead.

He'd been ailing for a while. Gradually his body started to shut down. Watching this process hasn't made my grief at his going any easier. Instead, it's been spread out over a couple of years. His decay and death have happened at a time when other people I've loved have died -- my dear Sam; my best friend's wife; other good friends. Somehow each grief, each loss, isn't unique. I am reminded of previous losses, of previous deaths. My beloved father, dead now these 15 years, but still somehow always in my thoughts. Each happiness is unique and special, each grief just a drop in the sea of sorrow and loss which surrounds us.

Yet there is hope and comfort, too. My friends, my children, my wife and my family. Love is the only palliative for sorrow. We know it instinctively with a child when it falls over and grazes its knee. We pick it up and hug it, we kiss the wound better, we show we love it. Would that it were as easy to fix adult grief and pain! Yet how much worse would it be if I were alone. And how will I endure the inevitable loss of those I love when their time comes?

N

Book and Film Lists

One of Amazon's very clever innovations is to use the (free) input of its customers to create added value for customers and itself. Stuff like customer reviews and customer lists. I've created two lists, though I will be setting up more; one for romantic gay or bi stories; and one for good gay films.

Looking through the list of books I'm struck by how many are 'slash': Swordspoint, The Fire's Stone, The Protector, Luck in The Shadows, Wraeththu, Fire From Heaven, just to name a few. Now traditionally (and some would say, strictly speaking it still is so) slash is about taking heterosexual characters from say Star Trek or Starsky and Hutch and have the two blokes get so close they discard societal taboos and become lovers. At first, slash was written by women for women. But gay-shaded blokes like me find the emotional sensibility of women when they write about men very appealing. I never liked the cum-and-go culture of gay life prevalent when I was a young man. My attraction to men was always much deeper than sex, sometimes, indeed, instead of sex. I'm not saying men don't turn me on. I like cuties of both genders. What I am saying is that my relationships with men were always, from my side, about love and friendship and companionship, and I could (and often did) do without the sex.

So I was drawn to m2m stories written by women, starting with Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault, and then of course (which gay-shaded man hasn't read it?) The Charioteer. To my way of thinking, slash has broadened from Spock/Kirk (which is where the term 'slash' comes from, where it was and still is used to indicate the pairing) to any m2m story whether written by a man or a woman where the 'feel' is like the first slash stories, or like the stories written by Mary Renault, Marguerite Yourcenar (her Memoirs of Hadrian, about the Emperor Hadrian and his Greek slave Antinous, is a masterpiece) and their ilk, which are not 'slash' but are written by women. And I consider that I write 'original slash', reflecting my propensity towards romance rather than sex.

There are sex scenes in my writing. I've put them in partly because I object strongly to the fact that heterosexual sex scenes are treated as acceptable, but homosexual sex scenes are preceded by a warning ("may offend"). In ElvenSword there is a het sex encounter between Fluin and Ilya, and it seemed only reasonable to put in m2m sex between Fluin and Steppan or Fluin and Lthon. But the drivers of the relationships between my characters are love and affection and respect, and only secondarily sex. As it happens, writing good sex scenes is hard. They take me much longer than even dialogue which is hard to get to appear natural without being natural. Real dialogue is elliptical, confusing and boring when written down -- think of the transcriptions of Nixon's phone calls.

As it happens, right now I'm working on Will and Emma's sexual reconciliation in Footy. The hard thing isn't the sex. The hard thing is making her forgiveness and his love convince within the context of the bedroom scene while Sean, Will's lover and Emma's friend, is alone in the bed in the spare room. So I suppose I'd better go and finish it!

Skimpy Sexism

It's curious how we take our cultural values as given and obvious. Take for example skimpy bathing suits. A while ago a member of one of my groups told us a story of a whole group of Czech construction workers staying at a hotel in America. They used to wear Speedo-type swimwear, as Europeans do, and as I used to when I was a lightie. After a couple of weekends with them swimming and lounging round the pool, the owner of the hotel told them that it was a "family hotel" and would they please wear shorts, not swim briefs. Now, ironically, there were several women present, all in bikinis. Their attire was not considered indecent, however. This is very odd, don't you think? Women wear bikinis, men wear baggies. And no one asks why.


Of course, the reason is obvious once you think about it. It's sexism. Women aren't people, oh dear me no. They're sex objects. And so it's OK for them to wear skin-tight, skimpy swimming gear. A woman's sole raison d’être is to attract men. So it's OK for her to wear next to nothing. Men, however, don't need to attract anyone (after all, they are men, belonging to the superior form of our sexually-dimorphic species) We've got so used to this cultural tosh we don't even blink. Women in bikinis are normal and OK. Men in similar clothing are indecent.

But it is nonsense, isn't it?

Of course, maybe one shouldn't wear skimpy swimwear for other reasons. Aesthetic reasons. Like I wear a djellaba to swim in, so's I don't frighten the horses. (I got the pic of the man in the djellaba from here -- some great watercolours there) But if you are slim, you can wear Speedos. Whether you're male or female. It's OK. I approve.


BTW, I think both people in the photos are yummy. The woman reminds me a lot of of my wife when we first started going out. My lady was -- is -- very beutiful. The guy has a nice bod and a lovely smile. And vertical stripes are very flattering!

Grief

Grief is the big no-no in our society. The Victorians wallowed in grief, and pretended sex didn't exist, even covering their table legs because bare legs were immodest. We do the opposite. Sex is everywhere and is used to sell everything. But if you grieve, you must "get over it". "It's time you got a new girlfriend" people have told my best friend, whose wife died nearly a year ago. "Your grief is selfish", his family have said.

They are embarrassed at his pain. They want to be able to stop worrying about him. They want him to be happy. Never mind that he lived with her for 30 years, that they were a devoted and very happy couple. Never mind that without her he is incomplete. Broken. Devastated. No, he must be happy. For them.

I grieve at his wife's loss, and I grieve for my dear friend Sam, who died a few months ago. I don't believe grief ever goes away. But in our society we have to pretend that it has gone away, that we are "over it". It's almost more perverted than the Victorian aversion to sex. Both are part of life. We love, and those we love die or leave us. So we grieve. It's natural. But the do-gooders tell us we need counselling and drugs, to make us feel "better". Being unhappy is the great sin today. It embarrasses and annoys everyone. Be happy. Or else.

What brought this on is the news that my sister-in-law is today taking their very beloved dog to the vet to be "put down" (and why the horrid euphemism? Tell it like it is: killed) I know the dog well. She's a gorgeous, friendly intelligent Staffie, with a lovely nature. And the sorrow at her death has made me weep again for the loss of those I've loved, human or animal. But we are allowed to grieve for a pet -- as long as we get a new one, quicksticks. We are allowed to cuddle our dogs but not our friends ("too gay, mate"). Odd, isn't it, how a new grief reminds you of old griefs, while new happiness is unique? Here's to Pundi. I shall miss you.

Sometimes I feel so alien to the rest of mankind, as if I were truly from Aldebaran III, and were watching the antics of some exotic species, not my own.

Well, I suppose I'd better start getting over it, hey?

N

Love one another as I have loved you

Talking of religious extremism, there are a bunch of nasties who want to invalidate Californian same-sex marriages contracted when they were legal (before proposition 8 was passed). Their opponents, Courage Campaign, have produced this very moving video. Watch it. And sign the petition.

We shall overcome, some day. Never doubt it.

Nigel

Religious Extremism

I am not just against Christian religious hatred, but also ANY religion's use of its beliefs to persecute others. Christianity has been tamed by two centuries of secularism and by decaying religious observance. Only in America out of all western countries does the majority of the population declare themselves religious, and the malign influence of the fundamentalist meatheads is obvious. But Muslim countries are FAR more religious (except for Turkey) and their religion is FAR more militant (how many Christian or Jewish suicide bombers have there been over the last few decades?) This is an interesting site (thanks to Rock for pointing me towards it) by a Muslim who points towards the malign fanaticism in their faith.

BTW, I don't agree with Sam Harris that religion is inherently evil. I have met too many sincere believers (in all three Abrahamic faiths) who are truly good ppl, and whose religion has made them not haters and destroyers but honest, decent builders and creators who make life better than it might otherwise be.

Surfing

I used to love surfing. There's something unique and special about being on a board slicing through the glassy underside of a breaking wave. My first board was an eleven footer. These days they're shorter. I remember my first 7 foot board, bought for me second hand by my friends for my 21st birthday. I'm still in touch with two of them, one alas is dead and I've lost touch with the other.

I loved surfing for the sport, for the fresh smell of the sea, for the freedom, for the perfection of cool water on a hot day. Really. OK, I was also in love with -- let's call him Josh -- who was a extraordinarily beutiful bloke. Josh was a surfer too, intelligent, loved poetry and dope, and himself. All that self-directed admiration left little love over for me.

I don't surf any more. We live too far from the sea, and anyways, the water here's so cold you have to wear a wetsuit and that's just not the same as doing it in your fantastic baggies (alias boardshorts.) Here are two pics of very different surfies, one in fantastic baggies, the other in swim briefs (Aussiebums, I'd say). Of course, the surfies were another reason to go surfing. With all the paddling, surfing naturally gives you huge shoulders and arms and pectorals -- as you can see in these photos. You don't need to do weights work if you surf, and somehow the bodies created by surfing look better than those scuplted by weights.

I never admitted my attraction to surfers to myself. Ah, the poison of the closet.

A Mom's Letter

She says it better than I could. Curious how sure 'Christians' are that Jesus is against homosexuality -- when He never mentions it. You'd think, if it were that evil, there'd have been a parable about it, or verses in amongst the four Gospel stories. But no. St Paul has a lot to say, of course. But he's just a man, not God. And a bit of a bully too, I think. Anyway, he says women should cover their face with a veil. But when last did you see a female Christian fundamentalist in a veil?

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant.

You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12th Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human
beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

Signed,

A Mom