The Gay Blade

Eight years ago, on July 26th, I sat by the bedside of one of my most loved friends as he lay dying in the scummy, dank AIDS ward in Athens. David Turner was so lovely, so kind, so smart and funny. He came into my life in the 1980s when I was living in Istanbul and he brought a group of US students over who were studying Byzantine history - he was a historian and a scholar. David was old friends with another friend of mine from my youth, John, who was visiting me at the time, so we all met up. David has spent part of his youth at school in Auckland where he'd met John, but his mother was Greek, and he was always happiest there. That first day we met we three had an uproarious slightly drunken lunch together, filled with such lewd and vulgar sexual jokes and stories that we actually made a group of English tourists get up and leave the restaurant in disgust.We didn't care. David loved to shock, loved to confront, but tried hard not to hurt. We had a fairly im...

What years of agonising aversion therapy, hormone treatment for some, being prayed over and beatings and prison couldn't do, Shortland Street scriptwriters have managed. Again. They turned a gay character straight. Again. Jonathan McKenna on his return to the show has now fallen for Gabrielle, when years ago his youthful  character was hailed for helping break down sterotypes about gay men. Obviously the ex-Gay movement, homophobic religious types and the few remaining psychiatrists who claim we are mentally sick should get on a plane and find out just what their secret is, because they succeed in turning gay men and women straight with remarkable frequency. I know, I know, it's a TV soap opera and has little to do with reality, but still, I find something nasty about the way they do this. Australia isn't much better, with "Home and Away" nicknamed "Homo Away" as any gay character they ever bring in is quickly moved on. It's like the way the Sovi...

Yes, I have been assimilated by the Apple Borg, and yes, I love my iPhone, but it does make me stop and think. Most gay men who have an iPhone or Android will know at least one of these icons: Scruff, Grindr and Recon. And there are lots more, Manhunt, Gaydar, Adam4Adam to name just a few. All designed so we can get a root, or maybe love, not just in the privacy of our own home while online, but when we're out and about through the apps on our phone. New technology = new ways to  hook up. Is this what happend when they invented paper and ink? It is kind of weird to have my phone chirp at me from my pocket while I'm walking to work and find someone in Texas thinks I'm hot and will be out here in 3 months and do I wanna hook up? Weird, but cool in a strange sort of way. Hey, it's flattering even if it will probably never happen. (He was HOT btw). I love the way I can monitor the different time-zones on scruff, as the screen fills up with people from d...

A friend put a post up on facebook asking where he could buy a douche while he and his partner were on holiday - they'd  forgotten to pack one. I thought some of the reactions were interesting, that it was "TMI" or "ewww...gross". Shit is shit, and not many of us like it, especially when you mix it in with sex. Don't forget though that all the human sex organs are also rubbish outlets, there's no need to get extra squeamish about the arse. Not all gay men fuck or get fucked, but I guess for most of us, fucking is the defining sexual act. Sodomy. Taking or giving it up the arse. We're bum-bandits, and it's one of the things that straight men find so scary about us - that we can get fucked and enjoy it. It unmans us and is also intensely masculine. It is an incredible amount of fun, it feels fantastic, it is deeply intimate and personal, and physically it's the closest we can get to another man, to be there, inside him or have him inside ...

I have never been all that confident about my looks - like a lot of gay men I guess. I tend to see the negatives, all the things I wish I could change or hadn't been born with. When I was younger I genuinely thought I was ugly - and  now I feel sorry for that teenage boy who couldn't see how cute and hot he was, and wish I could sit down with me then and explain how wrong I was about how I saw myself. I don't think I'm unusual in that. So many guys I know have their anxieties about how they look, whether it's physically or their clothes, and so many of us have worked hard to come to terms with our bodies and faces - learning that we won't be as perfect as the images in the magazines takes time - some of us never really learn and keep beating ourselves up over our failure to look like a cover model. And I can think of men I know who are drop-dead handsome, fantastic bodies, and lovely personalities, but they still think they are ugly and undesirable. And for ...

I haven't blogged for a while - just been busy I guess. I'm sitting here on a break from my PhD writing and once again thinking to myself "Why the fuck did I decide to write a PhD about HIV? Why?" I ask the question because it takes up so much space in my life anyhow, so having to read and think and write about it as well in an academic way may not have been the best move for my sanity. The answer is obivous of course. It matters. What HIV does to the men I count as my community matters - the stories that poz guys have so generously entrusted to me about their own experiences matter and deserve to be heard and to feed into our work on controlling the spread of it. They also simply deserve to be heard, and I hope I can help do that. This morning I was re-reading the interview I did with a young guy who died earlier this year. We just had the annual Candlelight Memorial here in New Zealand - I used to go to them but I don't any more. I feel like I remember t...

I bareback. A  lot. Every time I fantasise I do it bareback. I never imagine condoms being used in my jerk-off fantasies, and  have never met any guy who does.Condoms just don't feature in my ideal imaginary sexual scenarios. In my head I break all the safe-sex rules and don't worry about it and no campaign or sanctimonious finger-wagging is ever going to change that. And I don't know any guys who act differently. How is this different from watching bareback porn? Well, it's fantasy, it's not real - no-one else can get infected through my fantasies, but part of the logic that condemns bareback porn is the claim that watching it undermines the safe-sex message and teaches guys it's ok not to use rubbers, but in fantasies that's just what I do, I watch and take part in wild  hot fucking without condoms, yet I am still able to look after my sexual partners safely in real life. And for some social and historical context for tho...