Once again I am forcibly reminded, I am my body. Crossing Queen St on Wednesday on my way to a meeting at the AIDS Foundation, I felt this sudden Bang! like someone had slammed the back of my left calf with a hammer. I’d pulled a muscle, just by running across the road. Pain! And […]

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I was out dancing the other weekend and “Forever Young” came on.
I was dancing with a small group of old friends, some of us have been dancing together for 30 years. I’m 48 and I often go out dancing. Do I want to be forever young, as the song says, or not? Should I have […]

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If you go to many of our main gay venues this week - Caluzzi, Centurian, Dots, Urge, and Kamo, you’ll find Bears. It’s the first Bear Week we’ve ever had here in Auckland.
Which raises the question: “What is a Bear?”
And it’s a hard one to answer in some ways. Initially being a Bear seemed to […]

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Last Sunday saw well over 10,000 people at the Big Gay Out here in Auckland. Woah, over 10,000 assorted queers in one spot!
It was a lot of fun, as it is every year. And it’s the last big LGBTQ community event in Auckland. The days of HERO are now over, for all sorts of reasons. […]

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I always loathed PE at school. Anything to do with sports made me shudder.  
Except  of course for the communal showers afterwards. But I hated playing rugby, cricket, going for runs, doing workouts - all of that. I’ve never had a great sporting relationship with my body. But I was lucky, I was able to get […]

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Another year over, and already into the next.
I’m not complaining, I’m glad I’m still going. I know it’s a bit artificial to think of each year as somehow separate and distinct from the other, but it’s how we humans work.
What will I remember 2009 for? Personally, the pain and chaos the Mills affair wrought […]

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So it’s a week since Glenn Mills’ death. I for one can take no pleasure in the way his life ended.  What I would have preferred is to see him stand trial, and, if found guilty (as I have no doubt he would have been) to do his time. The trail of destruction he has left […]

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On NZ Dating the other day, an 18 year old asked me to do cam sex. 18 !
I told him he was a bit young for me (he didn’t even look like he shaved) but he said “It’s just cam and I’m horny”. I said thanks, but no. It just would have felt… icky.  Yes, […]

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One of the most successful tactics of the Gay Liberation Movement back in the 70s was the emphasis they placed on “Coming Out” as a political statement.
The logic was that if every gay man and lesbian came out and admitted who they were, the general public would see so many queers everywhere that they’d […]

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I read a lot. So I go to bookshops a lot, and love spending time and money in them.
If you’re ever stuck on what to give me for a present, book-vouchers are perfect. But I have to admit that it took me a while to figure out that Unity Books here in Auckland had […]

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