Easy Reader

I'm enjoying this book.

It is easy to read. The language is not overly academic. It is not set at intellectuals. It is warmhearted. It is honest. Chapters are introduced with an interesting photograph. The writing varies from narratives to jottings.

A bit like a blog really.

Closet Valentine

As I have posted previously on Valentines Day, one of the great standard tunes from the 1930/40s, My Funny Valentine, contains lyrics written by Lorenz Hart.

Lorenz Hart

Hart was homosexual at a time when inevitably he had to remain deep in the closet. He was short in stature, an alcoholic, he suffered from depression and generally was full of self-loathing for his appearance.

Yet he wrote magnificent lyrics that would have won over many a romantic interest. It is thought that many of his lyrics were secretly gay love notes including the classic My Funny Valentine (1937) for which Richard Rodgers provided the music.

It remains a favourite 'torch song' of mine. Frank Sinatra's interpretation is as good as anyone's.

If I were straight......

As a born and bred gay man for whom females make treasured friends but nothing more in the below the waist department I would have great difficulty in nominating some (any?) as a person I could fall in love with....if I were straight.

OK, as a pre-teenager there was...

....Donna Reed but that really was a puppy love. We watched her weekly family comedy series on television and I imagined her as my mother or even in a gay fantasy imagined myself as her. Well, as her character, that is. Of course I never disclosed those thoughts to anyone. I was a naive child but not that naive.

Then as a teenager I possessed non-feeling feelings for...

...Shirley MacLaine. I suspect I had an intuition that this pixie of a woman was gay friendly and in a reprise of my 'love' for Donna Reed I think I wished I was MacLaine.

And then I grew up. Sort of.

I no longer wished I was a woman, or rather no longer wished I was some woman's character that attracted my fancy as the type of spirit I wished to be. If that makes sense.

But now? Oh, if I were straight I think I might actually fall in love with...

...Robin Wright. Former wife of Sean Penn. Whether it be in House of Cards or the recent French/Aussie film Adoration whenever Wright is on screen I almost, yes almost, feel some manner of stirring in my gay loins. Not many females have done that for me. Actually I can't think of any others. Maybe it is the blonde, mannish hairstyle, but there is definitely, almost, something there.....if I were straight.

#sweptaway

#sweptaway was the hashtag used for the South Pacific Flash Mob held on the steps of the Opera House on Sunday.

Here are some snaps;

Rehearsing

Rehearsing

Rehearsing

Rehearsing

Members of the cast of South Pacific introduced to the Flash Mob ahead of filming;

Two beautifully behaved dogs participated throughout the three hours of rehearsals and filming performing the movements better than many of the humans; well better than this human managed at any rate;

Cast members join in with the Flash Mob

Now for the big finish

Whilst the Flash Mob was in progress someone proposed via an aerial sign writer.

I wonder whether s/he said 'yes'?

Wisdom in the movies

Love birds

This pair was enjoying a long nuzzle and cuddle on my kitchen window sill this morning until they sensed me aiming my camera at them and then abruptly parted.

Doctor Matchmaker

I went back to the doctor yesterday having completed the course of antibiotics he prescribed but still suffering cough and sweating symptoms.

He checked my temperature which was OK and then poked and prodded around again as I breathed in and out for him as artistically as I could manage. In his view my infection was under control and what I was experiencing now was some left over inflammation and throat irritation. 'I am very happy with you', he pronounced which was all well and good for him but still left me with a discomforting cough.


You'd think that one of the perks of having a gay doctor with a practice in a gay area of Sydney would be a waiting room packed with attractive gay patients. I've been attending this Doctor for years and am constantly disappointed by the attractiveness quotient of his patient list. No doubt his other patients think the same when they find me in the waiting room.

That's not to say that there isn't an occasional stunner but I can only assume that the really good looking ones save themselves for appointments much later in the day. It seems mostly old Queens like myself in the morning and early afternoon appointments that I frequent.

So there was some relief from my coughing bouts yesterday when one quite attractive man was in the rooms for a while. I stole glances at him but he seemed less interested in me. Nonetheless he rather thoughtfully stretched several times to display some abdomen for me; not exactly a six pack but more than enough for me to be in his bed before he could say 'hello' if he had been so inclined.

From bits of conversation he exchanged with Doctor and receptionist I gleaned that he is from North America and probably only visiting so there is no chance of me building on the one-sided relationship I was developing in my daydreams.

Oh well, there will be other illnesses ahead to draw me back to the Doctor's rooms and the always hoped for dreamboat patient waiting there to sweep me away.

Matchmaker, matchmaker...

I feel that I have finally shaken off the attentions of fellow nursing home volunteer Da who apparently decided on her husband's death bed that I should be his replacement. It has taken over a year to get to this stage.

I should be relieved but Da's attentions have been replaced by Day Centre member Le, all of eighty-five years of age, who has pursued me during her past two visits as her new 'friend' and 'companion'.

Why does this happen to me? Over the years three women have proposed to me and now Da and Le have thrown themselves at me. But no man has ever proposed. If only men - of my age - had shown the same attention that women seem prepared to lavish on me.

Valentines Day

This is a Valentine for my readers. Enjoy.

Some loving

It has been a long time since I have had some sex. Correction; it has been a long time since I have had some loving sex of the tender touchy feely type rather than the slam bam thank you man type where scarcely a word is exchanged let alone any tenderness.

I need some of the former. Well, I want some of the former but at the moment there is no one on my horizon likely to be providing it. It is a state I have been in before and in the past I have usually ended up visiting a sauna for something different.

It is not that I expect to find the love of my life at a sauna. I have long given away the notion that I would find the man of my dreams at one of these establishments. They can be soulless meat markets where you tread the endless carousel being followed around by men you are not interested in all whilst you are following men you are interested in but who are not interested in you.

I suppose that I have visited a sauna about once every nine months or so over the past few years after having been a more periodic patron in earlier years. The best that I have experienced is the occasional passionate 'rumpy pumpy' that vaguely simulates emotional closeness but as often as not sauna sex turns into a lustful race to sexual relief between two or more men who will just as quickly go their own ways once the deed is done.

But I remain ever optimistic that I will find someone for me, just not at the sauna.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Based on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button spans close to ninety years, multiple continents and is very long. Presumably the film's makers have elaborated somewhat on Fitzgerald's story.

It is an atmospheric film focusing on the visual and its images are often beautiful. I found the softly delivered accented dialogue a bit difficult to follow at times but the story moved so slowly I rarely felt that I was missing anything.

Both Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett have plenty of opportunity to dazzle with their beauty, he as he grows younger and she as she ages. Without giving too much away, Cate also appears in aged form from the outset to enable the story to be told in flashback. Tilda Swinton is delicious in a small but significant role.

I thought that the best sequence in the film was a montage in Paris reflecting on the role of fate in our lives. Tellingly this scene is the fastest paced in what otherwise is a leisurely paced film.

An interesting and, yes, curious film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson are best friends from the USA spending two months holiday in Spain. They are like chalk and cheese in their attitudes to life and when befriended by Javier Bardem, a painter with few inhibitions and divorced from Penelope Cruz, they predictably react in quite different ways.

This is a Woody Allen film without the oppressive New York angst (Spanish angst replaces it). The screenplay contains Allen's trademark quips and dense conversational style. Thankfully Allen does not appear nor is he heard and I enjoyed watching the attractive cast as they struggled, each in their own way, to come to grips with their relationships, loves and passion.

I think I could watch Javier Bardem read the telephone directory. He is an effortlessly sexy man which makes his scary, sexless performance last year in No Country for Old Men so remarkable.

The Spanish settings (apartments, cafe, street and rural scenes) are gorgeous. Allen is back in form.

Nights in Rodanthe

Diane Lane and Richard Gere cross paths in an eccentrically exotic seaside house in North Carolina. Actually that house is more in the sea than by it and looks nothing like the coastal houses I saw in North Carolina in the late 1980s but then what would I know.

If I were into women then Diane Lane is just the woman I would want to be into. I always enjoy seeing her. And from this gay man's point of view she has hit two jackpots. Lane is married to Josh Brolin. This means that she has Barbra Streisand for her mother in law and she gets to sleep at night with Brolin. A gay man's dream twice over.

A bonus for gay viewers is the appearance, briefly, of Christopher Meloni remembered fondly for his impressive personal attributes revealed full frontal in the television prison series, Oz.

Predictably, everyone and everything in Rodanthe is improbably picturesque and the film unfolds as a weepy of the type that had them teary eyed at lights up in the suburban Odeon and Kings Cinemas every Saturday afternoon in the 1950s.

For whom the well tolls

I've received an invitation to the wedding of a friend's daughter. Well, this gay man has not attended a wedding, straight or otherwise, in more than ten years and I am not up on wedding trends. So I was bemused to read in the invitation, "if you would like to give a gift, a wishing well will be available at the reception". A wishing well? What the fuck is that, in the context of a wedding?

My first reaction was to ring my friend and ask him but then I thought I would try the Google method. Sure enough, the simple enquiry - wedding wishing wells - brings up more than 400,000 listings. I was astonished.

Anyway, it turns out that the couple who already have everything except marriage can ask you to give them cash at their wedding instead of multiple toasters, ironing boards and the like so that they can then spend that money how they wish. The photo above was in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2006 on the day the couple pictured were to be married and their well is shown to illustrate an article explaining this phenomenon.

I suppose this is not too different from those cultures where bank notes are pinned to the bride's gown. Still, it seems a little strange to me. Do gay weddings have wishing wells?

Sometimes I am quite relieved that I am not straight. They have such strange practices.

Moulin Rouge

I love this photograph which also appeared in the Travellers section of the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend.

It contained the following caption.

Paris. We visited the Moulin Rouge and were taking snapshots when we met a group of people coming out of the show. One was Mehdi, a handsome Parisian. He took my hand, crossed the roundabout and kissed me passionately. My friend took this photo. It was one of the most perfect moments in my life. Photo: Camilla Orr-Thomson

I wouldn't have minded Mehdi kissing me like that.

Overcoming jealousy

I finally got around to visiting Mk in the apartment he has moved into with Rs. This was months after the first invitation to tea to celebrate (with Mk's other friends) the big move which I shamefacedly avoided because I was too mean spirited to expose myself to their joy.

At that time, I was jealous.

A ridiculous thing because even then I was well over Mk as a possible love interest and not into Rs either.

This invitation was to make up for that missed opportunity and also to enable Mk and I to work out our subscription to the Sydney Theatre Company for its 2009 season.

Mk and Rs were gracious hosts. I brought a cake and they provided an excellent coffee. I was relieved that the earlier jealousy pangs had subsided. I took in images of their domestic bliss (romantic sideboard photos, loving glances exchanged by the 'newlyweds', the slide show of their shared travel experiences, the double bedroom etc) without that fateful feeling of my stomach knotting.

Thankfully I didn't sense that newlyweds' attitude of pity for the single man left behind that I have sometimes experienced with straight friends after they have married.

I can move on.

I'm back

I'm back home.

My computer, which was shut down for the two weeks that I was away, is bogged down with requests for updates of all sorts of applications that will take ages to clear. I have downloaded the 456 photos I took on the trip. Most will not be up to the standard of blog posts but I'll try to publish a few in days to come to give readers a taste of what I experienced.

I had a terrific time in parts of Australia I have never previously visited. The promised crocodiles were plentiful and the weather uniformly dry and hot (32c to 40c across all the locations). Sydney by comparison was 14c and wet on my return.

There was no holiday romance and no sex so you can guess what will be one of my first aims now that I am back.

Over the weekend I will try to catch up on my blog reading to see what 'you lot' have been up to in my absence. Thanks to those who left comments on my blog whilst I was away.

Normal service will slowly be resumed.

Listen Lady.......I'm Gay

That's what I should have said as soon as I realised she was coming on to me.

My 'fellow' volunteer at the nursing home, Da, is well intentioned if a bit irritating because of her tendency to overreact to nearly everything, no matter how minor. She also talks endlessly and can be quite exhausting if you attempt to follow her conversation all day long.

Her husband died after a short illness late last year and within a month of his death she invited me for dinner and later to the movies. I realised she was coming on to me. I should have outed myself to her straight away - I couldn't believe she didn't already realise - but instead I made the mistake of just trying to shake her off by displaying a lack of interest.

I thought it had worked but I may have underestimated her lack of awareness about sexuality and worse still her persistence. Today, Da gave me this book for my birthday (this coming Friday) and whilst I appreciate her kindness I am nervous that she still is angling to catch me.


She had the book personally signed by the author who along with his wife are close friends of Da's. The endorsement included that I "am an Ace" (yuck!).

Da is the third female over the years to seriously pursue me. I wish I could get similar interest raging in a male friend.

What's in a pronoun?

The answer? Too much for me.

Mk text me that "we are in Adelaide for the weekend". By "we" he means that he is with Rs whom he met through the internet.

I know that it is mean and petty of me but I am jealous. I wish that I wasn't but I am.

If only there was a "we" in my weekend.