eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781741153330 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 252 |
| Lexile: | 1190L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 540 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Positive
By David Menadue
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2003 David MenadueAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74115-333-0
CHAPTER 1
A SECURE PLACE
In early October 1982, I was celebrating my thirtieth birthday with some of the staff from the Publications Branch of the Victorian Education Department, where I worked. Ann James, one of the artists I worked with to produce colourful magazines for schoolchildren around the state, had made an 'Over the Hill' cake to mark our joint birthdays and the fact that it was all downhill from here.
I reflected later that I was over the hill in a positive way. My thirtieth birthday was a milestone — I could confidently say that I was as happy and secure as I'd ever felt. I had a job that I adored and a supportive work environment, including a gay boss and a remarkably liberal bunch of fellow workers. I was a lot less neurotic than I had been during most of my twenties, when I was coming to terms with being gay, trying to find the right career, learning how to be a confident and successful individual. During my nervous, awkward adolescent years, I had spent much of my time avoiding bullies who wanted to bash me up or taunted me for being a 'poof'. My family life was finally starting to sort itself out, after my parents' divorce and the trauma of several nervous breakdowns suffered by my mother.
My personal life had been relatively settled since the break-up of my first meaningful relationship. In late 1981 I had purchased a house in the inner-west suburb of Kensington. A large, four-bedroom Edwardian weatherboard, it was soon filled with friends looking for accommodation, and I was establishing what was to become a fairly close-knit and amiable household. There was something exhilarating about owning my own property. Along with the satisfaction of having a material asset that would hopefully help to give me some financial security, it was also good to establish my own roots and build the kind of security I once felt about my family home.
I enjoyed the company of my housemates immensely. John Sharp was an incredibly funny, easygoing friend who I had met in a sharehouse in Kew after he had been picked up by one of my housemates. Danny Vadasz was my first-ever boyfriend, who I'd met in the mid-seventies. Like many of my ex-romantic partners he was now a good friend, and involved with me in gay politics, including the group that produced the activist newspaper, Gay Community News. How some gay men are able to form close, ongoing friendships with former lovers, without too much jealousy involved, surprised a lot of my heterosexual friends. But it often worked that way for me.
Megan McDonald was someone I met through my work, when I visited the NSW School Magazine staff in Sydney. An incredibly tall woman with a deformed spine and overly large features, she had a condition called giantism, which affected her health and her confidence in public. She did look intimidating to people who had not met her before, but in the short time I worked with her, I saw that she was a charming, witty, highly intelligent and loyal individual who I could happily live with. She was coming to Melbourne in early 1982 to start a year's placement with the magazine I worked on.
When Megan turned up one morning to move in with us, she must have got a bit of a shock. I hadn't told her that I was a gay man. As the doorbell rang, people ran everywhere to put their clothes on. John was entertaining his teacher boyfriend, Michael, visiting from Adelaide. I'd also had a visitor for the night, a train driver who I had picked up at the Laird Hotel in Collingwood.
'Oh Megan, I forgot to mention that we're all gay here,' I spluttered out.
'Yes, well, I've worked that much out,' came her reply.
The train driver left with a promise that whenever he was driving a train past our house, he would give a big toot to let us know he was thinking of us. It became a household joke that whenever a train tooted on its way past us, it was a reminder of Megan's introduction to Melbourne.
In many respects these three people, and my good friend Michael Chambers (a schoolteacher I had known from university days) were to become the basis of my social life for the next few years. We were always having people over for dinner or parties and occasionally the crew from GCN would meet to discuss upcoming issues. Our collective published this fairly dry but nonetheless substantial activist publication that had developed out of the National Homosexual Conference in Melbourne in 1979. The paper struggled to get a readership in Melbourne, with the gay scene much preferring the glossy bar rags that gave them lots of scene gossip and photos of young spunks out at the discos.
One day in a GCN meeting, Adam Carr, one of the founders of the paper and a features contributor, pointed out a small article that had appeared in a gay newspaper in the USA. It was about a 'fatal homosexual disease' affecting gay men in New York. A small number of men had come down with this disease that devastated their immune systems and led to their deaths. Theories about the disease included the possibility of a link between the sexual stimulant amyl nitrate and a cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma.
There was little more information available and I guess most of us thought it was one of those isolated incidents you read in a news brief from time to time, one of those things that happens in a far-off place. I remember it set me wondering whether amyl nitrate really could be harmful. Amyl is a stimulant some people enjoy using during sex — 'the icing on the cake', as one friend described it. It is often handed around on dance floors to give people an added rush, to elevate their mood. In the early eighties the discos would often end up smelling like crushed ants by the end of the night. I was not rapt in it, as it made my heart flutter. And as for using it during sex, I always found it had a rather deflating effect. If it was found to cause a dreadful cancer, then thank goodness I was not sniffing it for hours on end every weekend.
The stories about this fatal disease would not go away. We read more news bulletins at the GCN meetings, and began to realise there were serious implications for all of us, and not just a few gay men in New York and San Francisco. Nothing much about AIDS made the newspapers in Melbourne, although GCN did run an article by Adam in February 1982, which asked the question, 'Will we all die of gay cancer?' Adam wrote that while the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma was not known, the possibility that it was sexually transmitted had some doctors in the US recommending gay men 'reduce their sexual contacts and get the names of people they had sex with'. Gary Jaynes' feature in the magazine in December 1982 reported that the virus was not restricted to gay men and had in fact been first noticed in a group of heterosexual men in Haiti.
There was a rumour circulating that a person had been diagnosed with the disease in Melbourne as far back as 1981. There was much secrecy around this news, for fear of provoking a hysterical reaction in the gay community. No one ever really got to the bottom of that story. Even when the first Australian case was officially diagnosed, at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne in May 1983, there was little palpable fear that the virus could actually be living with us in Melbourne, circulating through people's bodies and beginning its work of destroying immune systems. No one had identified the route of transmission this virus took, if indeed it was a virus.
A friend, John, reported that he had been asked to use a condom by a partner. He remarked on what a curious request this was. Why would a gay man want to have sex with a condom when everyone knew you couldn't get pregnant from gay sex? He thought it was a huge joke but went ahead with the process anyway. He said it was fine, although he couldn't come at using rubber for oral sex. The person he was having sex with, I was to find out several years later, was a man named Ian Goller. Ian was an immunologist who had been living in the USA for the previous few years, and he had theorised that the disease could be transmitted through sex. Hence his caution about sex and his use of condoms. Ian was later to play a major role in educating gay men and the wider community about safe sex and how to stop the transmission of HIV. He was to die from AIDS in 1993. He had already picked up the virus before he began to practise safe sex.
In 1983 some gay community leaders felt concerned about the possible implications of this new disease, now called Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID). Members of the Alternative Life Style Foundation (ALSO), a gay community organisation, decided to call a public meeting at the Royal Dental Hospital Hall in July. My friends John Sharp and Michael Chambers accompanied me to the meeting. Michael and I wanted to go on a trip to the USA later in the year and we were interested to know if there was anything we could do to avoid picking up this thing.
The room was packed with several hundred people chatting away happily. The relaxed attitude was shattered by the serious words of the doctors and community leaders assembled on the stage. Dr David Bradford, the director of the Communicable Diseases Centre in the city, spoke about what the medical profession knew. There was a strong line of thought that this condition was caused by a virus, and that it was probably transmitted by sex. An American tourist in Sydney had been recently diagnosed, as had an Australian man in Melbourne. We could no longer deny that this virus was amongst us. AIDS was here in Australia and it would only be a matter of time before we had friends affected by it.
'If you are travelling to the United States,' said one of the doctors, 'you will need to restrict your sexual contacts. Maybe put off going until we are totally sure about how this thing is transmitted.' Michael and I looked at each other with pained expressions, realising that we might have to cancel our trip. And we were also being told that perhaps we could pick this thing up quite easily. All this and no one really knew whether it was transmitted by a virus or a bacteria, or if there were other factors that affected the immune system.
Something else unsettled the crowd that night. A well-known lesbian activist, Alison Thorne, got to the microphone during question time and made a statement that, while she was at no risk from AIDS herself, she and all gay and lesbian people were at risk from the homophobia that the AIDS scare would generate. 'What are we going to do to protect the gay community from abuse and harassment as the AIDS hysteria becomes more and more out of control in the wider community?' she asked. Others commented that this virus could destroy all the advances we had made in gaining acceptance and tolerance from mainstream society. We might be lucky to have a gay community at all, if no cure was found.
I'm not sure that many people really believed in this doomsaying, but we were clearly in for a difficult path ahead. A psychologist, Bruce McNichol, spoke of the need for people to establish their own support networks to get them through the fear and hysteria likely to prevail. And those who were infected with the virus would need support from others.
It was decided to hold another meeting in a month's time, to set up an action group (a term very much in vogue in that activist period) to speak for the gay and lesbian community on all matters relating to AIDS. The group would try to control some of the expected backlash against the community and attempt to counter it with accurate information as it came to hand. The meeting, held on 12 July 1983, was held at the Laird O'Cockpen Hotel in Collingwood, my favourite cruising pub. It was a surprise to see that bar turned into a venue for a public meeting. A range of community activists, like Danny Vadasz, Adam Carr, Jamie Gardiner, Chris Gill and Phillip Carswell, put up their hands to be on the new Victorian AIDS Action Committee. Members from ALSO, including Peter Knight, Lee Visser and Gary Sauvarin, were also elected to the committee.
I thought about putting my hand up when the time came for nominations but I held back. I was doing volunteer work for a new newspaper, OutRage, which was about to replace the old GCN. I also knew I had increasing responsibilities at work ahead of me. This decision meant that I missed being a part of the pioneering days of the Victorian AIDS Council. As events were to unfold, this probably had some benefits for me in the long term.
I don't think that I seriously considered the likelihood that I had come into contact with the virus. All the public meetings I attended, most of the articles I read, and in discussions with friends, the focus was on what to do when the virus eventually came to town. I ignored the possibility that it was already here.
The reports in the media spoke of a very small number of infected Australians, and it was thought that they had been infected during time in the States. The idea that these individuals had been having sex since they returned, and that there were probably many people harbouring the virus, did not really figure in my thinking. The concept of a viral infection lying dormant didn't fit with my experience of medical conditions. If I contracted a sexually transmitted disease, like gonorrhoea, the symptoms usually came on within days — and after a dose of antibiotics, they would go away. A blood test had picked up the fact that I had come into contact with Hepatitis B, but my immune system was strong enough to create antibodies that kept me asymptomatic. I felt strong and I was doing fine.
Nothing could break the secure shell I had built around my life. I was still a reasonably young and healthy gay man who had good prospects for the future. There was a chance of promotion in my work, I was a home-owner, I had lots of wonderful, supportive friends, and I was sure that I would soon find the life partner I would settle down with, at long last.
CHAPTER 2TESTING TIMES — 1984
The lead-up to the Melbourne Cup and all its festivities gives people a lift, with lots of celebration, extroverted behaviour and dressing up to the nines. It's one of my favourite times of year, which might explain why I was feeling in a buoyant mood when I walked to the Communicable Diseases Centre in William Street to get my test results.
Innocence and trust had me walking into the clinic thinking about the lavish Cup party I had been invited to, and not the possibility of a positive result to the test I'd taken several weeks before. As a sexually active gay man, I had been accustomed to attending this clinic for check-ups and had ultimate confidence in my doctor. Many of my gay friends felt the same — a visit to the STD clinic was a part of your life if you indulged in a fair bit of casual sex. It was nothing to be ashamed of. The seventies and the era of gay liberation had taught us that our sexuality was no longer something to be reviled and hidden away — and we rejected the Victorian-era notion that having an STD was a blot on your morals or your reputation. And medicine provided an answer to the health problems we had.
My doctor, David Bradford, pronounced, 'David, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your test is positive.'
So much for my friends who claimed there was no way this virus had reached Melbourne yet. So much for my general practitioner, who had said several weeks earlier that the swollen glands in my armpits were probably the result of a transient infection, and that I didn't need a test for this new virus.
'What does that mean, do you think?' I asked David, still not sure whether to be distressed by the news.
'Well, we don't know a lot about this virus yet. We've only just been able to test for it in your blood. At the moment we think it will be a bit like the hepatitises. Many people come into contact with Hepatitis B, for instance, and never actually develop the illness. They just carry the antibodies that protect them from ever getting sick. We think this might be the same case with HIV and AIDS. You may have one chance in ten of going on to develop full-blown AIDS. And most people will probably build their own resistance to it.'
One chance in ten, a 90 percent chance of not developing the illness: I can live with that, I thought. It wasn't quite the same as walking out of the clinic with a handful of antibiotics to fix an STD. But I felt okay. I could learn to live with these odds and adapt to the fact that I was carrying the virus.
What about friends with similar sexual histories to me? Would they be in the same boat? The test had only been available in Australia for a few months, and hardly any of my friends had chosen to be tested yet. Some were afraid to find out the result. And others couldn't see the point. As one friend put it, 'What's the value of knowing you're positive? There are no treatments, it's likely to cause you added stress, and who knows, you might suffer discrimination if people find out your status.'
I didn't want to live in denial if I had come in contact with the virus. I had lived with the trauma of hiding my sexuality from my friends and family for so long that I was not prepared to go through the same process with this test. Coming out hadn't led to seriously negative repercussions. Taking the open and honest path was the natural thing to do. I had to have the test.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Positive by David Menadue. Copyright © 2003 David Menadue. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Acknowledgements,
Prologue — No Visitors Allowed,
PART ONE,
1 A Secure Place,
2 Testing Times — 1984,
3 A Soulmate,
4 Panic,
5 Turmoil,
6 Leaving Work,
7 Living with a Prognosis,
8 Attitudes to Death,
PART TWO,
9 Sandpits and Building Blocks,
10 Bullies,
11 The Golden Nine,
12 Secrets,
13 Lucky Breaks,
14 Love and Lust,
PART THREE,
15 Celebrations,
16 AIDS Politics,
17 New Hope,
18 Education,
19 Support,
20 Positive,