Where We Belong

Where we belong

 

I

‘Ow!’ I cry, as blood rises to the surface of the cut.

     ‘Quick, Ivan, press it on mine!’ Danny says.  I put my hand in his, as though preparing to have an arm wrestle, and our warm, sticky blood begins to bond, like glue.  My heart is beating so fast I can hear it. 

     ‘Now we are blood-brothers,’ he says solemnly, his deep brown eyes fixed on my blue, ‘until we die’.

     Danny and I belong to each other.

 

 

II

I was ten years old in 1979 when my family shifted to Te Kowhai – a small dairy community in the Waikato.  It seemed we had been moving forever.  This was to be my ninth house.

     In my first week at the new school one of the bigger boys in my class, Ross, challenged me to a fight down the school field.  I knew I didn’t have a hope of winning, but also realised if I refused, the taunting and bullying would never stop – that I would present myself to the others as weak, a coward, a sissy.  These were things that I had to keep to myself.

     When the afternoon bell sounded I trudged down the school field reluctantly.  There were a group of boys and girls already assembling to cheer on the assault.  As I put down my duffle bag my challenger charged into me at full noise, knocking me off my feet.  The spectators raised their voices, shrill, hungry for blood and eager for tears.  Adrenaline surged through me.  We rolled on the grass a full couple of turns before he climbed on my back and grabbed me in a headlock, holding tight with both arms.

     ‘Give up?’ he asked.

     ‘No’.

     ‘Give up!’

     ‘Nope,’ I replied through clenched teeth.

     ‘Give up now, or I’ll squeeze tighter,’ he threatened.  I was scared.  I could feel that my face was beginning to change colour.  Sweat was beading under my bottom eyelids and I couldn’t breathe properly. 

     ‘Let him go, Ross,’ said a voice from the crowd.  Ross released his grip, stood up and dusted himself off unceremoniously.  

     ‘Well, I still win though,’ he said as he skulked off.  I looked up to see another boy from my class stretching his hand out to help me to my feet.

     ‘Come on, he won’t bother you again,’ he said.   ‘I’m Danny.  You’re Ivan, right?’  I smiled at him cautiously and nodded.  He returned my smile.

     ‘Do you want to see my secret hut down the gully, Ivan?’

     I picked my bag up and we walked off together.  I knew then that we were going to be best of friends.

 

Danny was one of a handful of Maori kids that came from a small Pa, a settlement which sat near the banks of the Waipa River on the unsealed back-road to Ngaruawahia.  The village was made up of about half a dozen houses, all in various stages of disrepair.  A school bus collected the children every day.

     Te Kowhai, though small, was not that small.  A primary school, a general store, petrol station and the obligatory community hall, was all the town consisted of.  An abandoned cheese factory had been the only real source of employment other than farming in the town, until its closure in the ‘70s.  Te Kowhai was centred among lush, hilly dairy country, prosperous and inherently white.

     The primary school was under the headmastership of ‘Pop’ Taylor.  Pop and his wife were both in their mid-sixties and had been teaching for forty five years.  This ensured that my classmates and I were to experience many elements in our education that had been common to our parents, and maybe even our grandparents, I suspect.

     By this I mean the thick leather strap.  The long wooden stick.  The pieces of chalk and/or duster that would come flying through the air toward an unsuspecting student that may have been absentmindedly day-dreaming out the window, instead of minding the lesson. 

     Hangovers remained from the Victorian era in the education system, with thoughts and notions that were patronising if not downright prejudiced toward the Maori students.  Some of these hangovers had not escaped old Pop, as much as his heart may have been in the right place.

     The kids from the Pa were clearly poorer than the rest of us.  Their clothes were old, ill-fitting and often dirty.  Danny presented himself in stark contrast to his cousins.  Although his clothes were also worn, they were clean and tidy at least.   His hair would be combed and his posture confident. 

     He was different in another way too.    Many of the other Maori kids were struggling academically, even before they finished primary school – but not Danny.  He was near the top of the class at almost everything – Maths, Science, Art.  He was also athletic, and excelled in sports. 

     Danny was good looking and cool, like Fonzie on Happy Days on TV.   The girls would giggle and show off in front of him.  The boys admired him, and would also vie for his attention.  The boys always won out.  At ten years old it was only natural that they would.

      Though he was mild-mannered and diplomatic everybody knew he would be a fighting machine if he was provoked.  You could almost see a silent storm inside him, behind his deep brown eyes, dormant, but there all the same.  And everybody knew that the kids from the Pa came from a much tougher world than we would ever know.  It was written in their expression.  Danny even had a small home-made tattoo on his hand that his older cousins had put on him when he was only six.

 

 

III

As we got to know each other, we became solid friends.  His promise that Ross would never bother me again proved true.  Nobody did.  In fact, apart from the odd groan from my classmates when a teacher would place me on their team during sports, they knew better than to embarrass or humiliate me while Danny was around.  Danny was tough and the other kids knew he would defend me.  Danny and I were tight.

     The first weekend he came to stay at my place I was so excited.  I had never had a sleep-over before, so wanted everything to be perfect.

     On the Friday night Dad gave us money to go down to the store and buy fish and chips and an extra forty cents each so we could play the Space Invaders machines while we waited.

     After tea we had a bath and huddled up in our pyjamas sharing a bean bag in front of the open fire, to watch BJ and the Bear – a show about a truckie and his monkey, and their adventures on the road together.

     Dad sent us to bed, after a hot milky cocoa.  Later, when the lights were out, we laughed and talked until Dad’s stern voice rumbled through the thin walls to our room – ‘Go to sleep!’ – so we lowered our tones to whispers in the dark.

     The next morning Dad cooked up bacon, eggs, bubble and squeak.  Mum liked to stay in bed until late in the morning on the weekends.  But such an extravagant breakfast could only mean one thing – there was work to do.  Sure enough, Dad loaded us on to the trailer and we headed out to collect firewood.  Danny didn’t complain though.  This seemed to be an adventure for him.  My father scratched his head.   I could never muster much enthusiasm when it came to doing chores, but funnily enough work didn’t seem so bad with Danny there.  I was happy because he was happy.

     When we got home that afternoon I stole two of my mother’s cigarettes from her packet in the kitchen and we walked down to the school field.  Danny had a lighter stashed in our secret hut.  I felt cool as I puffed away on my smoke.

     ‘No, Ivan.  You do it like this – watch,’ Danny said.  The end of his cigarette shone red as he drew on it.  He held up his free hand to draw attention to himself as he inhaled deeply, then the smoke came back out in a long continuous stream, just like how Mum’s did when she smoked, not like the thick puffy little clouds that I was spitting out.

     ‘I can’t do that,’ I said sheepishly.

     ‘Aw, don’t worry.  My cousin taught me how to do it.   It’s called taking it down.  Hey, watch this – I can blow it out my nose as well’.  Danny smiled at me with his cheeky grin and brought my eyes back to his level. 

     ‘Just take a deep breath as soon as you take a puff.  It’s easy, you’ll see’. 

     I was dizzy and felt a little sick by the end of my cigarette, but I was now worthy of being a smoker and I knew how to do it all, even the chinese drawback.  It was going to take some dedicated practice though.

 

I woke in the middle of that night and stretched.  Still half asleep, I tried to roll away from the saturated patch that was only just beginning to go cold.  This was nothing new to me – I had pissed the bed all my life and nothing seemed able to stop it.  Not even the little red bed-wetting pills my mother gave me for two years helped.

      I started drifting back to sleep again when I noticed the musical rhythm of Danny’s light snoring across the room.  I froze.  Shit!  I had forgotten he was even there.  My mind was spinning at a hundred miles an hour, trying to make it not real.  If anyone was to find out, I’d be the laughing stock of the entire school.  My life would be over.

     I snuck out of bed, my pyjamas clinging to me as I crept down the hall, to the kitchen.  Shivering, I wrote a note:  MUM – PLEASE HELP ME.  I’VE WET THE BED.  I folded the paper over writing MUM across it, before tiptoeing back down the hallway, placing the note on the floor outside Mum’s bedroom door and slipping back into my sodden bed.

     I woke up later with Mum gently shaking me.  Instantly I burst into tears.

     ‘Shhhhh, shhhhh,’ she whispered.  ‘It’s okay, I’ve run you a bath.  The heater is on in the kitchen.  There’s some clean P-Jays in the hot water cupboard.  You jump in the bath and I’ll fix your bed.  He won’t know a thing’.

     I started to calm down.  Never had I felt so grateful to my mother as I did right then.  Everything was going to be okay.

     In the morning I rose dry and happy.  If Danny did suspect anything, he didn’t say a word about it.

    

 

IV

A few weeks later, I was excited and a little scared as I sat on the dusty school bus with Danny and his cousins.  Danny had invited me to stay at his house.  I didn’t know of anyone who had ever been to his house, much less stay over.  I felt proud that he had asked me, but apprehensive – I was journeying into the unfamiliar and unknown.

     The front door was wide open when we arrived at his house, though the weatherboard house stood silent and empty.  I dropped my bag on the porch, with no intentions of entering until Danny invited me in.

     ‘No one’s here,’ Danny said in a flat tone.  He turned and looked at me.  ‘Come in,’ he said, as though declaring the house safe.

     The house was a mess.  There were bottles and cans littered around and clothes strewn all over the place.  The curtains were pulled closed in the lounge and the room felt heavy and smelled stale and dank.  The hallway led to a kitchen down the back of the house.  This room was better lit, but there were bottles in there too, and dirty dishes and pots – lots of them.

     Danny retrieved a couple of long butts from an ashtray and handed me one.  He walked around the room touching the bottles, feeling them with his fingers.  Finally he picked one up.

     ‘This one’s still got some in it,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘and it’s still cold.  Want some?’

     I sniffed the long-necked bottle of Lion Brown and took a cautious mouthful.  It tasted terrible!  But as awful and flat as it was, we both finished it and it felt liberating to have no adults around and the house to ourselves. 

     Danny stood up.  ‘Come on, I’ll show you my room’.  We walked back down the hallway and Danny opened the last door on the left.  As I stepped into his room I was floored – it was as neat as a pin.  His room was sparsely furnished, but his floor was swept and his bed made.  The air was clean in here.

     ‘Do you want some tea yet?’ he asked.

     ‘What is it and who’s going to make it’ I asked cautiously.

     ‘I am,’ he said double-raising his eyebrows.  ‘Do you feel like hot chips?’

     We went back to the kitchen and Danny cleared a space on the bench retrieving some potatoes from a cupboard underneath the sink.

     ‘Here,’ he said, handing me some.  ‘You can help me peel them’.

 

Later that evening we went down to the river.  A couple of his older cousins were already there swimming.

     ‘Come on, Ivan,’ Danny coaxed, already taking his shirt off.  I watched, intrigued but wary.

     ‘I don’t think so,’ I stammered.

     ‘But it’s really cool!  Come on, bro.  You’ll be okay – I’ll look after you’.  His face was sincere.

     ‘But my undies will get wet’.

     ‘Take them off then,’ he laughed, ‘I am’.  And with that he ripped off his jockeys and jumped off the bank, making a huge splash, wetting the clothes on the bank that he had just taken off.  Reluctantly and modestly I followed suit.

     My fears, whatever they were, were unfounded.  We played, splashing about, ducking each other,  wrestling and laughing, both as naked as the day we were born.

 

That night when we got home, the house was still empty and we could hear what sounded like a party going on only a couple of houses down.   We went straight to bed exhausted and satisfied, our hair still wet and our skin cool from the river.  We lay facing each other in his bed.  I could see the outline of his face highlighted by the moonlight that shone through his window.  His stare felt intense, like it was burning me.  I had a heavy aching feeling growing in the back of my throat and butterflies in my stomach.  I felt like crying.

     ‘Danny?’ I whispered, even though there was no one else there to hear us.

     ‘Yeah?’

     ‘You’re my best friend, Danny…  ever’.

     For a moment he didn’t say a word, and his stare became more intense.  I wondered if I had said something wrong.   Danny suddenly leapt out of bed and switched on the light.  Reaching into the top drawer of his dresser he pulled out a small knife, looking more serious than I had ever seen him.  I must have really upset him, I thought.  I wondered how I could fix things, how I could retract the words that had upset him so much.  And then he said something that I would never have anticipated in a million years;

     ‘Would you be my blood-brother Ivan?’

 

 

V

On our last day together at Primary School I felt sick – Danny and I were going to be attending different high schools.  We both knew that we might not see each other again for a long time.  Danny didn’t even have a phone at his house.  I was so afraid that we would move on from each other, change into different people and gradually forget who we had been.  We were entering a new, uncomfortable phase in our lives – no longer children, but not yet men.

     He pulled me close as we said goodbye and I tried to be brave, but could barely speak without the threat of tears spilling out of my eyes.  Danny was pretty quiet himself.

     The very notion of weathering my future alone without him was daunting.  In our final term at primary school my family had begun to fall apart.  My mother was drinking huge amounts and my father was absent most nights rehearsing for a stage show opposite his new leading lady.  I felt too embarrassed to talk about it and a part of me was still frantically hoping that things may resolve themselves.  I was stuck at home with Mum, who had taken to crying most nights while Dad embraced his new role.

 

Danny and I never spoke to each other during our high school years.  Ross attended the same school as Danny, and now they hung out together.  Mutual friends told me that Danny stayed with Ross one weekend, but when they had gone to return Danny home, there was no one there.  While Danny had insisted he would be okay, Ross’s Dad decided it was best that Danny spent another night with them.  After all, Danny’s parents (whoever they were) would know where he was, at least.

     But the next day, again, there was no one there to receive him, and again Danny returned to Ross’s house.

 

Danny never returned to the Pa to live, and stayed with Ross and his family until he finished high school.  The school bus to Ngaruawahia High School drove directly past my house, and on the odd occasion when I stayed home from school sick I would press my face up to the window in my bedroom hoping to catch a glimpse of my best friend when the bus drove past.

     And most times I would see him sitting next to Ross, waving back at me from his seat.  It was bittersweet.

 

At seventeen I left high school and moved into Hamilton to live with my brother and his new wife.

     One day while I was walking through Centreplace mall in town, I was nearly knocked over by a tall dark man, decked out in an army uniform, impeccably groomed.  As I tried to recover myself I realised that it was Danny.  A smile spread across my face and he was beaming right back at me.  After a shy but warm embrace, we both relaxed and burst into laughter.  Immediately we were talking with ease, as we had always done.   It seemed obvious that he had stepped onto the highway that would lead him to success, in the military.

     ‘Next time I see you, you might be an officer,’ I laughed with him.  I was in awe of his path.  At the same time I felt ashamed and deficient, for I had stepped onto a highway of my own that was a lot less impressive and a lot more uncertain.  I was embarking on my own journey, but I could see no light at the end of the tunnel.  I was planning my escape.

     I was running from many things.  The fallout from the break-up of my parent’s marriage had a profound effect on the family.  My mother had survived two suicide attempts, only to exist in a drunken slur.  My relationship with my father, who retained custody of me during my high school years, was polite at best.  I had gone from being the top of the class in my first year to failing dramatically in my final year at high school.  I had discovered alcohol and drugs and was increasingly drawn to it and its ability to disconnect me from my feelings, and my anxiety about who I was.

     I was concealing a huge secret – I was a homosexual.  It explained a lot about the kind of child I had been, and the feeling of ‘apartness’ that I felt.  I had been raised to believe that homosexuality was sick, unnatural, deviant and wrong, but above all a mortal sin, and an offence against God.  It had only been a matter of months since hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders had raised their angry voices and marked their signature on a petition to the government opposing plans to decriminalise homosexuality.  I signed the petition myself, alongside my father, to avoid detection.  These were frightening times for a seventeen year old gay male, and Australia and a new secret life were calling to me.

     I needed a place to hide, a place where I could belong, a place where I could feel safe – and New Zealand couldn’t offer me any of those things.

 

 

VI

When I left New Zealand in 1987 the future that I had imagined for myself in Australia couldn’t have been further removed from the place that I eventually arrived at. 

     To begin with it seemed I had all the opportunity in the world – a secure job in hospitality, with promotion to management within two years.  I fell in love and moved in with my partner.  I had freedom, money, security, all the things I had hoped for.

     But my partner turned out to be a possessive alcoholic, who beat the crap out of me.  I left him and found comfort – first in a bottle of rum, and a bong.  But the ultimate freedom was discovered in a syringe filled with crystal meth.  The freedom came at a bloody high cost though –  financially, career-wise, physically and mentally.  And freedom?  It really was just another word for nothing left to lose.  Once again I was alone.   Really alone.  

      I returned to New Zealand ten years later with a much older soul.   Though I had thrown the needle away, I had been suffering from chronic diarrhoea for two years.   I was scared I was going to shit myself to death.  The doctor prescribed me codeine for the pain, steroids to address the massive weight loss I incurred and anti-depressants.  I self-prescribed cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis.

     My mother was the only person who could relate to me and my coping mechanisms, and at times enabled my substance abuse.  Like a dirty secret we exchanged pills in private, Mum carefully explaining how best to potentiate the drugs.  Combining them with alcohol was a given.  Crushing the tablets that said ‘Do Not Crush Or Chew’ was mandatory.

     On one such occasion Mum asked if I remembered the little bed-wetting pills I had taken all those years ago as a child.  I laughed when she told me that they were in fact tranquillisers and how rapt she’d been at their effectiveness at putting me out for the night.  Like old pals, we charged our glasses, laughing cynically at the irony of our lot.  We were like rotting apples in the fruit bowl.

     My father, his new wife, and both my brother and sister had all became heavily involved in the church and lived in a world completely foreign to the one I now lived in.  My coming out, which happened only six months after I had left New Zealand was more successful than I anticipated, but I understood that while they accepted me, they offered no blessing for me or my gayness.  This was a lifestyle that I had chosen alone.  I carried a burden of shame, although there were other sources hidden deep within me that even I had yet to acknowledge.

 

I had been back in New Zealand for a year when I first heard news of Danny again.   I was downing a pint of beer greedily, in order to gather courage to participate in the Karaoke at the pub.  Another person had just staggered off the stage to a rapturous applause, and their performance was terrible, stumbling their way through the song, off-key and out of time.

     Karaoke catered for the shy, the misfits and the sentimental.  It provided a stage where people could receive validation and support, irrespective of their flaws.  A protocol was observed during the performances, a political correctness.  No one had expectations.  No one judged.  Alcohol made the stage more accessible. 

     I approached the bar for a fresh drink and noticed a girl at the bar sneaking glances at me, although I felt no threat.  When we made eye contact again she made her way towards me.

     ‘Excuse me, you’re Ivan aren’t you?’ she asked.  Non-specific sparks of recognition floating in my sozzled brain failed to connect and I couldn’t identify her.

     ‘I’m Charmaine.  You used to go to primary school with my brother Ross?’

     Straight away I placed her face.  It was great to see her.  Since returning from Australia I hadn’t reconnected with anyone from my school days.  Over a couple of cigarettes we caught up on what Ross was doing (he was now a mobile butcher, like his Dad), what she was doing (raising a family) and a heavily edited version of what I had been doing, and my travels around Australia.  Finally I asked her what I really wanted to know.

     ‘How’s Danny doing?’

     Charmaine looked non-committal.  ‘You knew he stayed with us while he went to high school eh?’  I nodded, waiting for her to continue.

     ‘It was great, he’s like a brother to me,’ she said.

     ‘What’s he doing now,’ I asked again.  ‘Is he still in the army?’

     Her expression dulled a little, and she took a deep breath as she inhaled her smoke.  ‘Danny’s had a few problems, but he’s trying to sort them out.’

     ‘Problems?’

     ‘He’s had a bit of trouble with drugs and piss.  Violence, too.  He’s still great… most of the time.’

     I found it hard to believe, and didn’t press for more details.  Danny violent?  Supposing he was homophobic?  Would he be able to tell I was gay.  Could I even tell him?  Fear of his rejection thwarted any idea of pursuing him at the moment.

     But I was sure of one thing.  He couldn’t have failed as much as I had.  I wore my weakness like a tattoo, visible and permanent.   Danny had always possessed an inner strength and confidence that I lacked.  I was certain he could overcome any problems he had.  Danny was good at everything.

 

 

VIII

January 2001

‘…Yep, he was the best friend I ever had,’ I slurred through glazy eyes to two friends I was spending the night with.  We were on the piss and for some reason Danny had presented himself to the front of my mind, and I had to talk about him.

     Sentimental and melancholic, I longed for my blood-brother and defender more than ever.  I yearned for the feeling of kinship he’d given me all those years earlier.  I mourned for the long-gone innocence and naivety of our childhood.  I felt him so strongly.  After I had staggered off to bed and shut my eyes I could see him staring back at me again in the blackness, just like he had all those years ago in his bed.

     I drove to work the next day with a thick and murky hangover.  I didn’t notice that a car had run off the road into a paddock.  I had no idea that inside the car, somebody was dying.

     It wasn’t until the following afternoon when I went to my brother’s house that I found out about it.  John greeted me at the back door, The Waikato Times rolled up neatly in his hands.

     ‘Hey, you went to school with a kid called Danny, didn’t you?’  he asked.

     I nodded, thinking to myself how odd it was that Danny had come into focus once again.  Then John handed me the newspaper, and there he was, my Danny, on the front page – in colour.  In the photo he looked handsome, relaxed and smiling, older, but still the same.  The headline that accompanied the photo made no sense though:  Gunman – not a very nice man.

     I hurdled through the text but had to read it several times before it registered.  It was as though I was hoping that somehow the story would correct itself if I read it again.

     The report told how a love-crazed man had flown home from Australia after his girlfriend in New Zealand had broken the relationship off over the phone.  Upon arrival he rented a car in Auckland, and stole a firearm from a mobile butchery (it was the family business of the man’s foster family).  He then drove on to Taumaranui and shot his ex-girlfriend in the head while she was sleeping.  As he was driving back up north, he crashed off the side of the road.  The crash doesn’t kill the man though.  First he wrote a note for his son.  Then he fired hot steel into his own head.

     Pins and needles ran through my body as I gazed at the photo.   How was it that I had felt him so strongly on that night?  I had been only metres away from him as he sat bleeding and dying in his car, tantalisingly close and yet out of his reach, just like when I used to wave to him on the Ngaruawahia High School bus. 

     Over the next few days, more details emerged through the media.  Some of his acquaintances spoke of a difficult and sometimes arrogant man, others, of his alcohol and drug issues.  They also identified key mental health problems.

     The previous year Danny had been discovered wandering naked through the streets of Taumaranui in the middle of a cold winter’s night.  He was hospitalised, assessed and diagnosed with Bi Polar Disorder.  They treated him with medication and after a couple of weeks he was released from hospital.  Appointments made were missed, and never followed up.

     Less than twelve months later, and Danny and his ex-girlfriend lay dead.

 

I can barely describe how overwhelmed I felt in the weeks that followed.  I didn’t want to believe it.  I willed for it to be untrue.  I wished I could go back in time and talk to him.  I wanted to talk to him now.  I was afraid of him.  I loved him.  I wanted to rescue him.  I wanted him to rescue me.

     Then about three weeks later I found him in my dreams.  We were twelve again, but he seemed lost and confused instead of his bold and confident self. We were both in a dark, unidentifiable space. Danny was disorientated in a way that I had never seen him.  He seemed to have an understanding that something momentus had taken place, but it was as though he didn’t understand what, or how.

     I reached for his hand in the dark and we pressed our bleeding wounds together one last time as I lead him down a dark corridor.  ‘Come on Danny, I can see light up there,’ I said to him.

     Ahead of us stood a tall wooden door.  Light was shining through the key hole and I reached for the door handle and opened it.  It was his room!   The tidy little bedroom from his childhood, the sanctuary he had created for himself.

      We climbed into bed together.  And then, we slept.

 

 

IX

Two years later

We sit on the long green couch at my house, my father and I, waiting for the people in their long white coats to arrive.  Dad is fighting back tears.

     ‘It’s going to be alright, Ivan.  They’re going to help you get better,’ he says.  But I am already shutting down my mind.

     A series of crude smoke rings are bouncing up from my cigarette.  My hands are shaking.  My legs are shaking.  My whole bloody body is shaking.  Man, this feels like being really wasted.  I focus on the vibration and become absorbed in the rhythm. 

     I hear the hospital car coming down the driveway so I break my focus and duck into the kitchen.  Greedily, I swallow four sleeping pills.  I don’t intend to sleep though – I’m ‘potentiating’ the drug.

 

A year prior to that day my world had turned upside down.  I had disclosed details to my father of the sexual abuse I had suffered at the hands of my mother, as a teenager, while my family was dissolving.  Finally, I had identified my source of shame – I just had no idea of what to do with it, though. 

     Diagnosis was made swiftly:  Depression.  Anxiety.  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I could no longer leave the house, let alone go to work.  Anti-depressants made things even worse and six months after making my disclosure I received a new diagnosis – Bi Polar Disorder (was there something in the Waipa river water, Danny?) 

     I was put on anti-psychotics, mood-stabilising medication and tranquillisers, but the drugs offered no respite.  I had no idea who I was anymore.  I had fallen in a huge pit and couldn’t reach the ladder.  I had gone to hell.

 

My father sits with me while I am assessed by the house psychiatrist, before being released into the dayroom with the others.  I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and grief from the other patients instead of outright madness.  I drag my father to the smoking room and struggle to roll a smoke with my trembling hands.

     A patient walks in and sits opposite me.  Her legs mimic mine as they bounce up and down.  Then as if to prove my first observations of the patients wrong, she opens her mouth and out pours the nonsense, the madness.  She may as well be speaking in tongues, for it is a language I don’t understand.

     ‘You won’t let anything happen to me, Dad?’ I say.

     ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you,’ he replies, ‘you’ll be safe here.’

     He embraces me tightly and I cry as he leaves and I am shown to my room.

     In the darkness the silence is interrupted throughout the night by mournful groaning, soft crying and occasionally a frantic scream.  I am terrified and my eyes fill with tears.  While I try to gain some control of my breathing, I sense Danny behind me.

     ‘Come on, bro.  You’ll be okay, I’ll look after you.’

     I feel him shielding me, holding me.  I think to myself, ‘I must be completely mad,’ but within minutes I fall into a much needed sleep.

 

 

X

Who I am today

It’s been ten years since that night when at thirty three years old I thought I had no future, or at least not one that I wanted to participate in.

     Today I step outside and count the blessings under the warm Marlborough skies.  I stand productive.  I am grounded.  I have found closure.  I accept that I cannot change my past, and I cannot unmake my mistakes or my decisions.  I understand that at times I have a condition that will pull me to the extremes of the mood spectrum, but not every day, and certainly not today.  I love life and feel excited about the future.  I have been given a second chance. 

     For the last five years I have stood firm, courageous, unaided by psychiatric medications.  I choose to experience life with the sharp edges and refuse to lie down and doze in the stagnant and soupy stupor that, for me, was life as a mental patient.  In my periods of extremes I will exploit the demons, and I will transfer the energy with a paintbrush on a canvas, or a pen on a page.  I will take lemons, and make lemonade.

     I am changing the way I talk to myself, and I will reap the rewards for my efforts.  Today I will engage and participate, in my studies, at work, and at home, with my friends and family.  I will achieve many things today. 

     Danny and I spent a lifetime looking for a place to belong – we promised to be blood brothers until we die.  Well, we’re not dead yet.  I am still very much alive, and Danny lives in my heart.   

     He rests in my peace.   That’s where he belongs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Gay Literary Heroes (2)

I was sixteen when I saw my first gay kiss on TV.

     1986 was my final year at school.  There were many things going on in my life at that time that caused me pain.  There was the on-going fallout from my parents divorce and an obstinate refusal to accept that their union was over.  I was reeling from my experience of sexual abuse.  I developed insomnia and for the first time ever at school I failed miserably with my end of year assessments.  I was writing mournful poems about going crazy, about wanting to die, about how unhappy I was.  But if there were any words within those poems that referred to my sexuality and the stress I suffered because of it, then they were shrouded, coded with a code only I or people like me would understand.  And my understanding was that there really weren’t very many people like me. 

     At the same time, The Homosexual Law Reform Bill had not long been passed amidst huge opposition and hateful protests, and the new ‘gay’ disease AIDS, had arrived in New Zealand bringing with it new fears, anxieties and prejudices.

     I remember the night it screened on TV – A Death in the Family - a film made for television about the final days of one of New Zealand’s first AIDS victims.  It was terrifying, it was poignant, it was confronting, it was raw.  In it, the dying character’s friends had gathered to stand vigil at his death bed.  The kissing scene was between two of the friends. 

     Nothing like this had ever screened in New Zealand.  I cringed during the scene.  I wanted to cry as I contemplated meeting the same horrid fate as the poor AIDS victim.  And without looking at my father who was also watching, I could feel his blood starting to boil, his indignation at having to bear witness to such a scene manifested with a sudden outburst.

     ‘That’s disgusting!' he said.  'There’s absolutely no need to put stuff like that on the TV!’

     I felt so sorry.  Sorry that my Dad found it so offensive.  Sorry for him.  Sorry for the dying man.  But I felt something more akin to hate for myself for being ‘one of them’. 

     The film heralded in a new era of fear and paranoia about gay men.  Homosexuals were still trying to rid themselves of the stereotypes – paedophiles, perverts and mentally corrupt deviants of the community.  But now society was recoiling again with the latest development – homosexuals were deadly. 

     I remember the jokes that circulated the school yard – ‘Hey, Ivan.  Do you know what gay stands for?’

     I shrugged mostly, always afraid that the mere sound of my voice would confirm people’s suspicions.

    ‘It means Got Aids Yet?  Hahahaha!!!’

     New Zealand had some major growing pains to endure before society would come to accept gay people.  As painful as it was to watch my first gay screen-kiss, and the sombre narrative that it sat amongst, this telefilm was brave bold and new and started a discussion amongst New Zealanders, and won awards as far afield as New York.

     I hadn't thought about that tele-film until last year when I began to research gay New Zealand writers.  I discovered Peter Wells, a writer of fiction and non-fiction, a scriptwriter and film maker, was the writer and director of A Death in the Family.

 

                                                 

     Peter Wells was ahead of his time, and now stands as one of New Zealands most successful gay writers.  It is people like him who have paved the way for other gay writers like myself, and I am grateful for his courage.

     Below is a link for more information on this hero.

http://www.nzonscreen.com/person/peter-wells

Gay Literary heroes (1)

 

‘…Ginsberg, Allen (1926-1997)

Probably the best-known U.S. poet to emerge in the post-World War II period, Allen Ginsberg entered public awareness with the controversy over his first book, Howl and Other Poems (1956). A sharp denunciation of America's cultural temper during the Cold War, the volume included extremely frank celebration of the libido in all its manifestations, including the homoerotic.

Throughout numerous later works, Ginsberg has embodied varied aspects of the counterculture: pacifism, drug experimentation, sexual liberation, hostility to bureaucracy (both capitalist and Communist), and openness to Eastern religions.

In his earliest writing, Ginsberg imitated the metaphysical poetry of Andrew Marvell and John Donne. Through romantic relationships with fellow Beat Generation figures Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs--and with the help of a therapist who encouraged Ginsberg to accept his sexuality--the poet began to draw on personal experience in his work.

He abandoned strict verse forms, instead producing rapidly written, uncensored compositions. These poems somewhat resemble the work of Walt Whitman, with their use of anaphora and their extensive catalogues; but their diction probably owes more to the "spontaneous bop prosody" of Kerouac's novels.

Ginsberg's exploration of open forms culminated in Howl and Other Poems. The long title piece is a jeremiad in which the poet recalls how "the best minds of my generation" refused, and were "destroyed" by, the norms of middle-class society.

Through the juxtaposition of images ("the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox") and an incantatory blend of Biblical cadences and jazz slang, "Howl" evoked extreme states of mind. But the volume also spoke of a feeling of solidarity and community among the dispossessed.

Howl's forthright treatment of gay life--sometimes with a dramatic coarseness of expression ("who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy")--contributed to the book's seizure by the San Francisco police and U.S. customs in 1956. Thanks to court testimony defending the book's literary merits by prominent writers and academics, Howl was declared not obscene. The book has sold more than 300,000 copies….’

 (http://www.glbtq.com/literature/ginsberg_a.html)

 

 

In my early drafts of my  life-story (the linear thread) sexuality issues never came into the story because I only wrote up to about the point where I was nine years old, and I hadn’t yet at that point come to understand sexuality, although I was aware I was different to the other kids, and felt a feeling of ‘apartness’ from them. 

     When I changed the structure to a completely multi-linear collection of threads, where the narrative ducks backwards and forwards suddenly I was confronted with new decisions of how to tell the story.  For the first few pages of the newer draft, suddenly I was 22 years old, a homosexual and drug addict.  As the words came out, I felt embarrassed and unsure whether or not I needed to disclose my sexuality to readers.  I was afraid of offending them.  But as I made my tentative first few steps,  I was encouraged by my colleagues, and further on again, I wondered how I could’ve even contemplated writing my story without disclosing my sexuality.  I was editing my own life, once again, just like I had been asked to do on Rotoroa Island.

     I was directed to read a little gay literature, study some iconic gay literary figures, and in the process I learnt a lot, about the context of gay literature.  Allen Ginsberg was the first gay literary figure I researched. 

Upon reading a little about him and listening to his poetry, my readers can soon begin to see why I was drawn to the words of this man, and why it is said he became a voice for a generation of ‘Beatniks’ a movement he is considered the founding father of.

 

Beneath is a link to a recording of Ginsberg reciting his most famous poem 'Howl"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_kKhRmRkM&feature=related

Some people may be sensitive to some of the content which contains adult themes and language.

 

More on Literary giants tomorrow...