| Wednesday, September 27, 2006 |
| Sunday, July 23, 2006
I Love You Men |
| Here's a topic that ought to have got some coverage on this site long before now. My entry about Marc got me to thinking. People sometimes ask me how I cope with living in Wanaka as a gay man. Largely they know that it's not a homophobic town, so they are generally referring to the lack of 'family' in the area. I guess they don't know, possibly because I don't tell them, about Ben, Stephen, Paul, Andrew, Dean, Scott, James (Hamish), Mike, Andrea, Richard, Rob, Brian, Cameron, Chris, Deano, Gabe, Ed, Gareth, Gary, Jared, Roger, Malcolm, Peter, Pete, Lincoln, Nathan, Adam, Graeme, Moritz, Tim, Philip, Brian, Paul and last, but by no means least, Todd. Goodness what a list. 80% of this list are men I have met at one time or another in the flesh (there are varying degrees of flesh, ahhh.. Andy.. in the meetings) - and the rest I purely know from my online contact with them. However, I made inital contact with 100% of them online. Yep, every one of these men is gay. They are a group of very very special men. If I were to list their professions, you would be astounded. If I listed the cities in which they reside, you'd think I had been a sailor in a past life. I have been in contact with some of these guys for over 7 years now. They have seen me through many ups and downs and shifts and changes and revolutions in my life. I love every one of these guys. In my life, as much as anyone, these people are my mainstay. They are, in every sense of the term that I can think of, my Gay Community. This 'mobile' community of mine is as utterly important to my happiness living here in Wanaka as the mountains and the lake and that beautiful school of mine. These men have stood the test of time and have shown loyalty and patience towards me such as I never felt I deserved. They have celebrated my triumphs and shared my sorrows and they know me. They know the worst things about me. And they still stand beside me. For all of the public notoriety of the notion of gay "community", one which seems to be dogged with out of date assumptions about rampant anonymous sex and other superficialities, this community of mine has endured and always been here for me. And (partially due to the vagaries of international time) they have often been here for me in the small of the night. The little hours that everyone knows I inhabit. The tough hours. These men are largely responsbile for my idea of myself as a man. The sense of unending pride and possibility and optimism and utter excitement I have about myself has been created through my relationship with them. We're a tribe of men who are not defined by the jobs we do, the sport we play, the colour of our skin or our ideas about the ineffable. We're not unified by the style of our hair or the cut of our jeans or our ability to dance like no other. We're not brothers because we were born together, we're not connected through our taste in pop music (sorry, Kylie, and we do all love you nonetheless) we are united through our love, our love is what makes us who we are - and what higher reason is there to be a community? So, you men who I love. You know why I do this website really? It's for you. 
|
| czechOUT
responded:
I saw the reference to Under the Skin, and I just guessed you might be gay...first entry confirmed. OK it's late here, but I'm going to tke a leisurely stroll through your blog later. |
| Thursday, July 13, 2006
Did you ever lose someone? |
| I don't mean lose in the sense that someone dies. It's not as big as that, but neither do I mean in the Wildean, "To lose two parents.." sense, I mean (well, now that I think of it, maybe I was, indeed, careless) the sense where you really didn't want to lose them and they went anyway. I did this once. I suppose, with the attitudes that people have towards the nebulous internet, that no-one's going to think much of my losing someone when it is revealed that I had never met them. Yeah, Marc (Marc Garnier was his name - and now that I've typed it here, this page will appear on the Google searches I do with alarming regularity) was one of the people I've developed a connection with on the internet. It's becoming quite fashionable now, this internet relationship business, but back in the day such an idea was regarded as bizarre - bordering on perverted. I talked to Marc using an instant messaging service called ICQ (who uses that any more, hey?) and through vigorous email exchanges. I really liked this French-Canadian mechanic. (Yes, we all know what 'really like' means.) One day he stopped talking. I think it was for a good reason, I know it was actually. And this stopping has continued ever since. |
| Matthew
responded:
The cool thing about the internet is you can make these connections that span the globe. But we forget how tenuous the connections are. For example, you read a weblog every day for a year then the RSS feed breaks and you realise you don't even know what the person's name was: they're gone for good. Suddenly we have this global reach, but connections like this are not well integrated into our lives. We can't ask our friends if they know this person like we could in a geographical community. |
| Anonymous
responded:
U know those teachers u always remember from school? either coz u h8 them or they rock! Well chris i will always remember you coz u rock and i love u! Thursday, July 20, 2006 |
| Christopher Waugh
responded:
That one comment makes EVERYTHING worthwhile! Sunday, July 23, 2006 |
| updoc
responded:
My parents passed away in the space of a year. And yet they live on inside of me. Just as I am a part of them, so too are they a part of me. That never changed while I was living overseas and that certainly didn't change when they shook off their mortal coil. The same, however, cannot be said for those whose ties ran less deep. There may well have been strong emotional attachments at the time but, with the passing of time, these once powerful connections fade. They become more phantoms of your past as opposed to the people you once knew. You would like to believe that you could pick up the pieces and start afresh where you left off. People, however, are not static entities that never change with time. However imperceptible the differences may be, the passage of time sees a change occur in all of us. We may at times be curious to know what a ghost from the past is up to but we forget that a closed chapter in our life is a new opening in their life. Sunday, September 17, 2006 |
| woman wandering
responded:
Strange creature I be, I just wanted to write that I loved this sentence: 'One day he stopped talking. I think it was for a good reason, I know it was actually. And this stopping has continued ever since.' |
| Sunday, May 14, 2006
Racing, This Time... |
| In 2002 I competed in the triathlon in the Gay Games in Sydney. It's almost beyond my comprehension that it's now 2006 and the Gay Games are being held in Chicago (or Montreal, depending on your gay politics). The exprience was amazing for me, I trained pretty hard (well, as hard as someone who was working as an aerobics instructor could train outside of working hours) and I loved being in a really serious, truly competitive international event amongst 'real' athletes. It made a difference that it was the 'gay' games. Like many men like me, sport at school had been a living nightmare of humiliation and I'd pretty much avoided anything but individual sport and aerobics ever since. So putting myself up for a competitive event against other men was suprisingly hard. Knowing they were all likely to be gay made a big difference.. and that's basically the premise of the Gay Games Federation - to provide a place where gay men and women can confidently compete as athletes. It was a really nice change in the gay world to have a massive gathering (in Sydney there were about 12,500 athletes and 40,000 supporters - the events were held in the Sydney Olympic facilities - how cool is that!) where the focus was not our sexuality alone. It was an extraordinary set of experiences for me, not the least of which was entering a rugby stadium, the single representative of Christchurch, New Zealand, to be greeted by the cheers of the 40,000 people present. I'm all for an audience at the best of times - but this really was something else. Not that our sexuality was irrelevant. That triathlon is the only race I've ever competed in where your competitiors yell things like 'nice legs' as they pass you on the cycle leg. I have to say it did soften the blow of the indignity of being passed. A little. I had aspirations of competing in the Montreal games and coming first in the triathlon in my age group this year. My life instead seemed to experience a few speed wobbles and I became a little distracted by the sudden emergence of childhood issues in my adult life. It's with great relief that I can say that that period seems to be coming to an end and I'm once again 'returning to myself'. I'm feeling great these days. So, of course, my mind moves to competition. I know we're all meant to be satisfied with our own personal achievements.. but somehow I have a hankering to test myself against other people in real race situations, and now that I'm no longer afraid - I'm looking at entering in some New Zealand events. The ones I have in mind are the Port Tauranga Half Ironman. And the Mototapu Icebreaker next year.. and something else before them. Anyone want to come?
|
| Barb
responded:
Nice post! I'd love to go to Chicago and experience a tri at gay games. I think it would be a blast! Monday, May 15, 2006 |
| Sunday, April 30, 2006
The lonely mountains |
| This beautiful place in which I live is grand and beautiful and lonely. Lonely can be wonderful. For me it often is; I luxuriate in long expressive runs in the failing light of a long summer's evening and I love when I don't encounter another soul. My more difficult lonelinesses have always been underlined and reinforced when i'm in large groups of people. In those times my 'tangent universe' seems so palpable I wonder if I'm even visible to the others there on anything but a purely physical level. Not so my lovely mate Bagley. The same mountains that I run amongst resound for her, at times, with a deafening empty silence. In it she hears the absense of the life and vigour of her home and the friends and connections she has left to be here. Loneliness is said to be one of the most anti-social of afflictions. No-one talks about being lonely. So they say. I have friends and strong connections too, but I've created such an island of myself that a physical dislocation can lead to an almost insoluble disconnection. Sometimes I can be so of the moment and the place in this way that it must be desperately difficult to care about me. I was thinking about (and wrote below about) boys and the boy in me and I am also not ignorant of the job that women have in the life of we boys. If men hold the hope for boys, it is certain that women hold the heart. The women in my life have allowed me access to my heart in ways that are made of such deep levels of acceptance and love that I could never have fallen off the precipice at which most boys stand at some point in their growth. But for these girls, these women. Who catches them should they fall? |
| woman wandering
responded:
The kiwi chick wants to write: 'but they were asking for it' ... which seemed like the prevailing belief back when I was growing as a girl then a woman. Did you notice it or are things changing in the world of the girl children you teach? |
| Saturday, April 29, 2006
Boy's Boys' Boys |
| Last week I went to Auckland for a conference on the education of boys. Aside from the fact that my colleague Hamish and I cast our eyes around the room with discomfort at all the 'schoolteacher' types that surrounded us, it was a really worthwhile event. We spent three days being regaled with definitions of masculinity and statistics defining the challenges boys face in the school education system and naming the characteristics that make boys great (but which are all-too-often named as the ones that make boys such a 'problem'). All this talk of boys made me think a lot about the boy in me. As adults, for boys, more than anything, we carry the hope. We see the man they will become. We know they will turn out okay. We show them we know. I am thinking about the ideas about what a boy is, the degree to which I am a boy, and the things about me that made me feel ashamed because they didn't match what a boy was meant to be... and now finally i'm reclaiming them and realising they're some of my greatest strengths. Boys are purposeful. Boys avoid shame. Boys are emotional. Boys are wonderful dreamers. Boys focus. Boys are practical. Boys enjoy boundaries... and pushing them. Like my desires as a gay man. I'm probably the baddest kind of gay guy in that my desires are so much about men and masculinity that they undermine every historically-conceived definition of masculinity we can access. And yet at the same time I make not such a bad bloke. I know enough about machines.. I'm a reasonable athlete. My voice is deep enough, my body masculine enough. I can all-too-easily be mistaken for an ordinary man. Wanting to be liked, accepted, wanted, I once suppressed some of the most important parts of myself - my desires. These days I carry my own hope; I am very excited about the man that I will become... |
| Sunday, March 05, 2006
When I was a boy |
| All those photos of me as a child have got me thinking about other elements of my childhood. I used to listen to the children's programme on National Radio and there were many stories told that I will never forget. There was a single one that always stood out over the rest. It is actually a modernisation of a classical myth about Atlanta, but it was told as "Diana and the Golden Apples". The story went something like this: Diana and Malanyon were childhood sweethearts, they did everything together. Diana was as good as any boy at throwing and running and she had that boyish look that was yet still beautiful. Malanyon was the only boy who could outrun Diana in a race. The years passed and Malanyon had to go off to war. Diana waited year after year for him to return, but there was no word and no sign of him. Eventually she was convinced by the village folk that she must give up hope that he will return and marry another. She agreed to this on one condition. She would marry any man that could beat her in a race - and if they did not, they would be put to death. Many men came from all over the land (Diana had become a singular beauty) and they each corageously raced Diana. All of these men were put to death. No-one could beat her. Eventually the men stopped coming to race Diana and all talk of marriage ceased. One quiet day a single soldier arrived in town, he asked around and it was soon known that he wanted to race Diana. She was curious about who it was that wanted to risk everything for her hand in marriage and when she set eyes on the unknown soldier she could see that beneath the lines of grim experience lay her childhood friend Malanyon. Her heart sank when she saw his limp. He had been injured at war. The race was set, but just before it began an old woman crept up to Malanyon and handed him a secret package. It was three golden apples. She gave him some instructions. The race began. Malanyon crept ahead but soon Diana was gaining on him. Just as she met him, he dropped one golden apple. Diana swerved to catch it and as she did, Malanyon surged ahead. Once again Diana gained on him. The race was half over and again Malanyon dropped a golden apple. Again Diana swerved and picked up the apple. She slowed and Malanyon again took the lead. The finish was in sight, Malanyon's damaged leg was slowing him and Diana was gaining even more quickly. They were almost at the finish and a third apple was dropped by Malanyon and as Diana dipped to pick up this, heaviest, apple Malanyon crossed the finish line. Diana had lost the race, but she had won the hand of Malanyon in marriage. I've often thought about this story and wondered why it has had such a strong effect on me. I think I am like this. I make people race me, and if I win, I move on. The message for me to learn from this childhood story is that it is good to seek people who are stronger than you in your life, but if in the end I want someone close to me, I may have to help them get there. More paradox, but a rather delicious one, don't you think? |
| Matthew
responded:
Certainly a femme fatale. |
| Christopher Waugh
responded:
This is so true. I remember agonising over that as a kid. I often wonder if that's part of the reason the stroy haunts me. That it somehow contains some eternal logic that eludes me - and if only I could find the answer. |
| swimmer
responded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynxkMjeo1jA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enightcharm%2Ecom%2F |
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You can also read my old journal that I wrote in 2001 when I threw everything up in the air and did a road trip of New Zealand to help me make some decisions. |
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