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...

Part Three 'The Book of Ruth'

The Book of Ruth starts with my arrival back to New Zealand.

In the first few months things seem to go well. I reconcile with my father after years of estrangement. Backpacker friends I met in Australia, come and live in a house that I rent and the exuberance of youth and fun still dominate my nights. But bit by bit the flashbacks return, and are growing in intensity. When one of my friends falls from a ladder picking cherries and breaks her back, the guilt I feel is overwhelming and triggers a new set of flashbacks.

     Before I know it my everyday thoughts are invaded by the ghosts of my past – the very ghosts I had managed to avoid confronting in rehab, years earlier. Finally, after almost twenty years, I disclose details of the sexual abuse I suffered as a teenager to my father. This book will paint a descriptive, vivid and unapologetically graphic picture of sexual abuse.

     I suffer a nervous breakdown in the days following my disclosure to my father. I have found myself in the deepest pit, with no idea how to climb back out. I am diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Bi Polar Disorder.

     I have entered a new and frightening world of illness. I can no longer work. I wallow in a state of depression, interspersed with dangerous, crazy periods of mania. So begins years of endless trials with psychiatric medications, horrendous side effects, and uneasy relationships with ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) and mental health professionals. I become a hermit, dependant on alcohol and dulled down with mood stabilisers, tranquillisers, anti-depressant and anti-psychotics.

     I hold many people responsible for my breakdown and mental state. I feel anger at bitterness at many people for my life but at no one more than my mother Ruth. I consider her own mental health traumas over the years – her suicide attempts, her alcohol dependence and addiction to pills, and the inappropriate behaviour that went along with it. I have believed that if she hadn’t had her drug and alcohol issues then she would have been able to protect me from the sexual abuse that occurred.

     I realise with horror that I now replicate my mother. I am depressed, suicidal, alcohol dependant - stuck at home with nothing but the company of television and prescription pills.

     I strive to recover some of what I have lost. In order to move forward, first I have to go back and confront all the demons head-on, before I can let go of them. When Ruth is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the need to deal with unfinished business becomes more urgent.

     I need to take a wider look at her life – who she was as a little girl and how she got to be the person she became. During this process it is easier to see how I have arrived at this point in my life. I learn that for me to get beyond the blame, bitterness, and resentment I feel towards my mother I have to address it with her and let go.

     This book has some ugly passages. This book will hurt. But this is a story that has to take readers into the darkness in order to bring them back out into the light. This isn’t a book about blame or judgement. It is my personal account that addresses the importance of forgiveness, and the process of my recovery.

Finally, the truth sets me free.

Part Two 'The Boy who always Smiles' the ten years between Rehab and Mental Hospital

The Boy Who Always Smiles  picks up the story upon my graduation from rehab. I return to Australia, spending most of the next ten years backpacking. I find ‘home’ amongst the other backpackers, and feel liberated, young and free. It is an exciting and fun environment with lots of adventures. I feel I have dodged a bullet in rehab, and relieved that the censorship of my life allowed me to avoid the traumas of my adolescence.

     I have found my happiness not only in my friends, but my gypsy nature is as much about being distracted and a means to escape, as it is about being a ‘free spirit’. I am drinking excessively. I move over forty times in ten years. To a large extent my sexuality remains a secret, although there are desperate, dangerous moments of indiscriminate and promiscuous sex, and a one-off attempt at prostitution.

     As my drinking and other coping mechanisms become more deeply entrenched, this part of the book reaches its climax when a disgruntled backpacker sets fire to a hostel, killing fifteen of the hostellers in 2000, at Childers, Queensland. This traumatic event triggers flashbacks to my adolescence, when sexual abuse took place. I begin suffering anxiety, flashbacks and insomnia.

     I return to my family in New Zealand. This is to become the final destination after ten years of running away. I am home.

Extract from 'On an isle called Rotoroa'

‘….Mum came home a few days later.  She headed straight for the fridge and poured herself a carafe of wine.  When Dad had told us that everything was going to be okay, I took this to mean that Dad would be pulling out of Oklahoma! but he threw himself into it even more.  He was rehearsing for it that night.

     I tip-toed around my mother, trying not to say or do anything to upset her.  She remained fairly quiet herself, until the wine began to kick in.

     ‘Come here, Ivan.  Sit down with me.’ she said. 

     ‘Oh I-Jay…  What the hell are we going to do?’  Her eyes were glazing over.  Mum’s face folded up and her chin began wobbling, like an opera singer singing vibrato style.  Oh God, I don’t want to see my mother cry. 

     ‘You know why I was in hospital don’t you?’ she asked.  I shrugged and looked down.  Mum inhaled a puff of smoke and took another a mouthful of wine. ‘I tried to kill myself.  I took an overdose.’

     I started crying as well.  Mum passed me a hanky then she reached into her handbag and pulled out an envelope and tossed it to me. 

     ‘Here, read them all.’

      For the next 30 minutes I read her suicide notes. Her letter to Dad.  Her letter to my older sister Mary and her fiancee.  Her letter to John.  Her letter to Uncle Mike.  And finally, her letter to me.  It was devastating.  By the time I got to my letter, her handwriting had become barely legible, such was the effect the drugs had taken by that stage.

     ‘I can’t live without him I-Jay, I won’t live without him,’ she said bitterly.  I didn’t know what to do or say. 

     ‘You can’t die!  If you died then I want to die as well.’ 

      Mum stopped crying and suddenly looked alert.    

      ‘What?’ I asked.

      ‘Maybe he won’t leave her for me…but both of us?’ 

    

So began ‘the most exciting years of my life’.  I’d graduated from shooting make-believe aliens.  Now it was my duty to fight my family’s battle on the frontline. I had been a teenager for less than three weeks. 

    

‘Your teenage years will be the most exciting years of your life,’ Dad had promised only days before.  ‘Make the most of them.’

     How was I supposed to make the most of this?....’