The Gay Blade

So, whoever would have guessed that Ricky Martin was gay? OK, all of us really. But it matters. And it shouldn't matter - that's the trouble. I can remember years ago as a scared gay teen desperately looking for any sign of gayness in singers, actors, public figures: I just wanted to know there were others out there like me, and they'd been successful. But of course, so many successful queers have had to hide who they are in a way that straights don't. And that's not right. There have been some really nasty homophobic comments on message boards and youtube since Ricky made the announcement. The saddest thing for me is that it still seems necessary for success in the entertainment industry to pretend to be someone you aren't. The general public are the problem more than the industry itself, yet it's a vicious cycle: if people in the public eye are warned that coming out will kill their career, they won't, and so the hypocrisy continues, and instead of qu...

Once again I am forcibly reminded, I am my body . Crossing Queen St on Wednesday on my way to a meeting at the AIDS Foundation, I felt this sudden Bang! like someone had slammed the back of my left calf with a hammer. I'd pulled a muscle, just by running across the road. Pain! And not the fun kind! I rang my Dr, got an appointment. Rang my boss and told her I wouldn't be back in. Staggered onto the Link and got to the meeting. The Dr couldn't see me till after 2, and they're only 5 mins away from my Dr and home, so I thought, "Just go for an hour" and I managed. The Dr said "you've pulled your left calf muscle near the top." Gee, really ? A compression bandage (so not sexy) and panadol - not even a decent opiate-based pain-killer. Although a surprising number of friends have them in their medicine cabinets it turned out, offers of all sort of things came in - thanks for that! An awful lot of people have walking sticks lying around too it seems....

I was out dancing the other weekend and "Forever Young" came on. I was dancing with a small group of old friends, some of us have been dancing together for 30 years. I'm 48 and I often go out dancing. Do I want to be forever young, as the song says, or not? Should I have taken myself off the dancefloor in shame? Gay men are often accused of having a Peter Pan complex. And while we visible ones on the scene help create this stereotype, it's often applied to all homos with thin-lipped disapproval, to show we aren't really serious or mature somehow. We don't want to grow up, apparently. We like to do "young" things, like dance, dress up, go to parties, sleep around, and worry about our appearance, apparently. We spend money like teenagers, apparently. So we are judged by some, including some of our own, to be immature. Well what's mature? Holding down a nine-to-five job till you retire? Getting to bed at 10 on a Saturday night because you're rea...