From the archives
Advert at right from The Star, 4 May 1984. Sydney’s (Australia’s?) first AIDS fundraiser and the genesis of the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation.
I interviewed Bobby Goldsmith’s former partner, Ken Bryan, for a story in PL in 2002:
Bobby’s diagnosis came at a time when HIV-specific support services were non-existent. “There was nowhere to go, there was nobody to talk to,” Ken recalls.
After telling the news to their housemates, “it got very uncomfortable,” so they moved into a place of their own. Their housemates never spoke to them again.
Before long the news of Bobby’s diagnosis spread, and the two had to bear the reaction of a community chilled by fear. “Friends would come in [to the Oxford Hotel, where Ken was now working] and say, more or less, ‘it’s your own fault’,” he remembers. “And I was thinking, ‘what have you been doing, and what are you doing now to make this different?’”
“The fear was the biggest thing, and Bob handled it so much better than I did.”
As Bobby’s health deteriorated, the two had to deal with ignorance on the part of hospital staff, too. “The hospital people wouldn’t put his meals inside. They’d leave them outside and they’d get cold, and I’d get there after work and they’d be sitting there.”
By Bobby’s 38th birthday in March 1984, the doctors admitted there was no more they could do. Bobby didn’t want to stay in the hospital, so he came home to die. By the end of April, Ken realised that he could not manage alone.
“I went into the Oxford one night and there was a group of Bob’s friends there, a couple of guys that I’d only just met really. I said to them, ‘look, I need a hand, I can’t do this on my own, I really need to have some help with this.’” Within a few days a group of friends had formed to care for Bobby.
Then the group realised that they needed money as well. Bobby was increasingly frail and in an upstairs bedroom in a house with a downstairs toilet. They decided to try to raise some cash to buy Bobby a commode and a video player. Terry Patterson, one of the owners of the Midnight Shift nightclub, offered to host a fundraiser.
“And thousands of people turned up,” Ken remembers. “We were just staggered; we just didn’t know how many people would turn up and we raised thousands of dollars.”
Safe sex reinforcement campaign concept #7612
With apologies to Mr Kelly.
The King is dead
Australia’s “King of Television”, Graham Kennedy, is dead.
A working-class boy with a sharp wit and no hesitation in making himself the butt of his own (often tasteless but hilarious) jokes, Kennedy rose to become the most well-known person on Australian television in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The picture above is from the game show “Blankety Blanks” which he hosted. Just looking at it makes me remember “Cyril said…” (if you were there’ you’ll know).
Rumours about Kennedy’s sexuality have been doing the rounds forever and I suppose it will all be revealed today that, yes, he was queer. But he never acknowledged this in life, although he often gave pause to wonder, such as when he sang this song:
Being a chum is fun,
That is why I’m one;
Always smiling, always gay,
Chummy at work,
Chummy at play -
Laugh away your worries,
Don’t be sad or glum;
And everyone will know
That you’re a chum, chum, chum!
Kennedy was described by his biographer as “icon for aloneness, an icon for the nature of the solitary life”. In recent years he had become a virtual recluse, refusing to grant interviews and hiding from the public he’d once played up to. He died in a nursing home in Bowral early this morning.
The closet is a lonely place.
Stroking the jaguar
Last night to a do to celebrate the first birthday of one of the local gay street mags. Gay men in suits, drag queens doing the rounds with plates of finger food, Molly Meldrum holding court at a corner of the bar, shirtless twink fetching drinks and smiling his way to the top – you know the drill.
I normally avoid these things like the clap, but the host is a friend of ours and he’s been nothing but kind since we arrived in Bleaky, so we made our appearance.
I’d never been to DT’s, a long-established gay haunt in inner suburban Richmond, before. A curious neighborhood queer bar furnished in a style we used to call “high camp”. They have a stuffed jaguar in there, I kid you not. I stroked its head, said “nice kitty” and made my way into the bar area.
As the pretty boy bounced around the room smiling his luminescent “will you be my daddy” smile, the assembled old pooves made small talk. We wondered how someone so young could have afforded such an extravagant tattoo, bursting like an inky fountain out of the rear waistband of his pants and drawing the eye towards his most valuable asset. We talked work. Eurovision was mentioned, more than once, as was the coming festival of big hairy gay men, Southern HiBearNation, which is about to descend on our city. Football was discussed earnestly and at length (these may be gay men, but this is Melbourne, and football is universal).
The free booze flowed like water, the sausage rolls were pleasantly crisp, the speeches were mercifully brief, and after a couple of hours we made our excuses and left them to it.
From the archives
We had a bit of a clean up over the weekend and I came across a few nice things which I’ll share over the coming weeks.
Front page from the (now defunct) Sydney Daily Mirror, 21 December 1984.
AN ADVERTISING campaign which says that mosquitos can’t spread the deadly AIDS virus has sparked a major row among experts.
One said that no one was 100 per cent sure that a mosquito which took blood from an AIDS victim could not pass the virus on to the next person it attacked.
• FULL STORY PAGE 3
Those were the days.
Eurovision
“Hello Europe, end velcom in Kyiv!”
Ah we love our Eurovision Song Contest here at Chateau Buggery, and last night’s telecast was no disappointment. ESC2005 had something for everyone, from wispy Latvians sign-singing or Norwegian transvestites in spandex jumpsuits.
Dougal arrived on the boat from Canada with no previous knowledge of the Eurovision phenomenon, but these days he’s a trufan like the rest of us.
Schadenfreude loves company, so we had a few friends around for the event. Much red wine was consumed (Germany’s entry does not mention peace love or harmony: take a drink) and as the votes came in we were on the edge of our collective seat, particularly as for a long time it looked like the daft sign-singing sook-a-thon that comprised Latvia’s entry might even have won.
Luckily, history will record that Helena Paparizou of Greece took out the top prize with a perfectly serviceable tune called “My Number One” (”My number, ‘My Number One’, won,” said a delighted Ms Paparizou).
But I think I speak for all of our little band in expressing dismay that the Moldovan entry didn’t get up. It was hard not to be impressed by Zdob Si Zdub’s energetic performance of “Bunica Bate Toba”. I have no idea what the song was meant to be about, I was too busy watching the lead singer’s nipples and waiting for the Moldovan grandma to bang her drum (you had to be there).
Luckily, Zdob Si Zdub has a website, so I can share a couple of pilfered snaps to explain the attraction:
Flushing the koran bible
Leunig, in today’s Age.
Ages since I posted anything, I know, but I’m busy busy busy. I have two weeks holiday coming up during which I hope to redress my failure to rabbit on about whatever pops into my head, and also finalise the buggery.org redesign.
Friday morning buggery
Via boing boing, the logo of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in sunny Brazil:
It’s a pagoda, obviously.
More anal pleasure is to be had over at Tim Dunlop’s place, where he reports on a decision by purveyor of warm brown milk drinks, Starbucks, not to have anything to do with a Bruce Springsteen song which goes boldly where the sun don’t shine.
It’s a buggery, buggery world.
Our treasurer’s a sook
Another day, another round of news bulletins chock-full of pictures of Peter Costello sulking because John Howard won’t let him have a turn with the bat. The short man, showing no sign of being ready to let anyone else but himself screw this country back into the 1950s, made a few unguarded comments over the weekend which have Costello crying foul.
“I’m not retiring and you can’t make me,” said Howard*, repeating the now-very-tired line about staying in the job “as long as the party and my country wants me”, and Costello had a hissy fit.
Puh-lease.
Peter Costello, a man who has spent a decade waiting for the gnome to hand him the country’s top job on a silver platter, wants us to think that he’s been wronged because he can’t just waltz into the country’s top job. He is crying “bully”, and who’s the vicious ruffian who’s blackened his face and torn his school blazer? A geriatric deaf midget in a Vodafone tracksuit.
Just read between the lines from this AAP story (emphasis mine):
Speaking to reporters after the Sydney meeting, Mr Costello’s grim face suggested he still felt he was the wounded deputy.
“I wish the events of the last 48 hours never happened,” he said. “As you know, I was not expecting it.”
Mr Costello was tightlipped about his meeting with the prime minister.
[…]
Asked if the Liberal Party was united, Mr Costello replied: “It ought to be.”
“We ought to be able to resolve things in a mature way,” he said.
“I wish that we hadn’t had this recent flurry, but it happened.
“Flurry”? What the—?
Listen up, Pete: there’s only room in the Liberal Party for one milquetoast, and Alexander Downer’s claim on that role goes back three generations. You want the top job? Go and get it. You think it’s owed to you? Prove it.
If Costello doesn’t have the bollocks to challenge Howard he should quit politics and get a job in a bank somewhere. If he doesn’t bring it, he’s a sook, and if there’s one thing this country won’t stand for, it’s a sook.
* Actually, that was Bette Midler, but you get my drift.
May Day
It’s May Day. Here’s some appropriate music:
Bandiera Rossa (The Scarlet Banner) - Oktoberklub [Download]
Joe Hill - Paul Robeson [Download]
(Image above from The Victorian Trades Hall Council, which is organising a rally on the last day before the conservatives have total control over the parliament.)