The Gay Blade

Ructions at Body Positive and unhappy members.  Where have I seen this before? Before we go on, let me be upfront that I do know some of the people involved on all sides of this: that’s NZ’s HIV world for you. And if I’ve got any dates wrong, please let me know – but be forgiving,  I’m painting in broad brushstrokes here. My first contact with BP was back in 1993, and I was a member of the Board for 1994 – 95. Mike Butters was the first Executive Director of BP, and if my memory serves me right, he was the first person to have a paid position with the organisation. That in itself pissed off some members, who thought any work done should be voluntary and any money we had be used on supporting people living with AIDS.  Of course it was a very different era. We didn’t really talk about HIV then, it was AIDS, as everyone was getting sick and dying of AIDS. I attended a 12-on-12 support group (twelve HIV+ people meeting for twelve weeks) and one of the...

I took this photo as I left Urge on its last night/morning of business. I like to think the white ball is the ghost of all the accumulated cum that was spilt in those walls, slowly rising up to gay heaven. Because let's face it, there was a lot of sperm spilt in there over the 17 or so years it was in business. And yes, some of it was mine, and I helped other guys spill some of theirs too. I recall a few years back being in Sydney and talking to an Aussie in the Oxford who'd been over to Auckland and Urge the week before and he excitedly told me how he'd been given a blow job while standing at the bar. Maybe I'm jaded, but I was like "Yeah, that happens there." And it wasn't just cum, remember Troughman? And others of his ilk lying on the floor in the toilets and hoping for a drink straight from the tap. He swore he could tell what drugs people were on by how their urine tasted, and sometimes got high off too much P in their pee. But Urge ha...

We’re two years into marriage equality here in New Zealand, and as Green MP Kevin Hague noted, the world hasn’t come to an end yet. I never saw this one coming, the huge importance that would get tied to being able to get married I mean. I was attending a conference in Melbourne with Warren Lindberg, sitting in his hotel room and watching on his laptop as Louisa Wall’s bill went through its final reading. That feeling of euphoria was amazing – even more so the next day at the conference when we could celebrate this with our fellow Rainbow health activists and advocates. Growing up as a young gay activist the last thing I ever thought we’d fight for was marriage. Isn’t it just a patriarchal institution, designed to subjugate women and keep men in power? Why would gay men (or lesbians) ever want any part of that? Even straights were giving up on getting married! And as gay men, we were busy celebrating our right to have a full and rich sex life, not to get tied down ...

So all things being equal, it looks like we're going to get the right to get married , if we're all reading the tea-leaves in the right way. It seems like it's going to get through. Marriage. Love. Intimacy. Trust.   If the point of marriage is a public, legally binding declaration of love in front of all who we love and recorded officially by the power of the State, then is it ok for the married couple to stop using condoms?  After all, if you've decided to make that commitment to another guy and maybe you're going as far as buying a house together, merging your finances, getting a mortgage, sharing a credit-card, all the things you see in so many straight marriages - surely if you're doing all that with each other, you can consider whether you need to still follow the old rule of  "Use a condom every time!" Looking at the NZAF's latest condom campaign , they seem to be saying  "No!"  And it's not just here in N...

Queer Auckland took to the streets to show our pride on Saturday, and it was a lot of fun. It is obviously not such an important event as yet, as the Prime Minister didn't bother to cut a ribbon, but we got David Shearer and others from Labour and Kevin Hague from the Greens. The Catholic  Mayor of the city, who considers being gay "a lifestyle choice" was there eager to hoover up some PR. Was it good to be back after 12 years away?  Yes it was, definitely. I marched with the Bears from Urge, and it was a lot of fun walking down Ponsonby Road with a group of handsome men, being led in our impromptu cheer of "1 2 3 WOOF!" at hot guys in the crowd. Some of the straight boys loved it, some didn't seem to appreciate the compliment so much. I have to say an hour beforehand Ponsonby Rd was looking very empty, and the crowd that did show up in the end was tiny compared to what we used to have. 30,000 seems to be the accepted figure. Thin...

Happy New Year ! Yeah yeah, I know, it's been a while ... again. But I'm back. And will be on a regular basis. What better topic to start the new year off with than porn, penises and life online? I've never really been a huge fan of porn,  not the visual stuff anyhow, I've always preferred to read it and make up the scenes in my head. Then along comes technology, people everywhere with cameras in their pockets, and what are an awful lot of guys doing?  Taking naked selfies. It has in fact become an entire genre, with websites dedicated to it.  And this is, I'd say, a very good thing.  There's something endearing about all those naked cock-shots in bathrooms, changing rooms, gyms, cars, offices and bedrooms all around the world. I think you could do an entire exhibition on traveller's selfies taken in hotel rooms, it's a sub-genre in its own right. The horny salesman stuck in a foreign city for a night, such a tired old clich...

I have been busy ! Or that's what it feels like anyway with two part-time jobs on the go - I  keep trying to find time to write stuff in here, keep trying to catch the ideas as they appear, but then something else comes up and I lose the thread and well, you know ... But hey, it's my blog and if I write it every day or once a month is really up to me - though I do get little feelings of guilt at times when I leave it too long, like a pot-plant I've neglected to water. I gave my annual guest lecture on AIDS and me a few weeks, called "Living My Death" - I do it in for a paper here at the University of Auckland called "The Sociology of Death & Dying", taught by the wonderful Dr Tracey Mcintosh. I get to weave my own life story through an academic exploration of theories of death, gay social history and AIDS - it is something I really enjoy, but also find quite tiring, and it's also very revealing in many ways - personal narratives have to be ...