Positive Life NSW

Lance Feeney reflects on the candlelight service, memories of lost friends and how we might honour them in a more enduring way.

Years have passed since I’ve been to a World AIDS Day Candlelight Memorial service in Sydney. One of these times was shortly after a friend ‘took himself out’ after a diagnosis of imminent blindness and the awful prospect of doing a long prison sentence for dealing amphetamines (he believed he would not survive). The other time was when I was asked to give the address. Except for these two occasions, I have been absent and have felt little desire to take part.

I regularly attended in the 80s and early 90s. I remember walking down Oxford Street through Taylor Square, clasping a flickering candle protected in a cone of rolled up paper, surrounded by gay men and lesbians; old, young, positive, negative, mothers, lovers and friends. Many of those HIV positive peers and fellow marchers are gone.

Then, one year at the Oxford and Crown Street intersection, I made a synaptic decision to leave the march and walk back to the Oxford Hotel. That ‘watering hole’ held happier memories. The frequent reminders of lost friends that peppered my consciousness on a regular and often daily basis, seemed more than enough torment, and I had no intention of prolonging the emotional discomfort for one more nanosecond and indulging masochism. Finding some like-minded friends perched around a familiar bar table, we drank, reminisced and consoled one another.

Last year, however, something in my head shifted! An email appeared in my inbox calling for volunteers to ‘read names’ at the Candlelight Memorial. It struck a chord and a quick response signalled my commitment to attend. No analysis, no soul searching or forethought – just a simple yes.

I then had a conversation with a colleague about the cyclical nature of such events. He suggested that its popularity is probably in the ascendency and we pondered some of the reasons.

Candlelight 2009

When the day arrived, I caught a bus up Oxford Street to Paddington with my work colleagues. I don’t frequent this part of town much any more.

The bus stopped right outside what was once one of Sydney’s first gay-friendly wine bars, Enzo’s. On Friday and Saturday nights, we had packed in like sardines to check out the talent and pair off before closing for sex and love. At that time (the late 1960s) Paddington, Woollahra, Elizabeth Bay and Potts Point were the centre of homosexual life in Sydney. The inner city had not yet been discovered by the rest of Australia, let alone the rest of the world. Indeed, these old areas of the city were considered rather undesirable by decentralised professionals and their brood. Rents were cheap and the housing was far more interesting than the bleak fibro brick and tiled monotony of suburbia – a reality and aesthetic from which many of us increasingly fled.

Lost in memories of an existence long past, we crossed Oxford Street, entered the town hall and walked up the stairs to the first floor. I was remembering the wonderful men I had met at Enzo’s all those year ago – the sex, the house parties with bath tubs full of champagne, the dinners, the friendships and, later, the sickness, sorrow and horror as HIV/AIDS indelibly changed our lives forever.

We entered the hall with its mixture of Victorian colonial grandeur and Art Deco trimmings. Flanking the ends of the room, hundreds of LED tea-light candles flickered on the floor. I found a seat at the back and began to study the names that had been entrusted to me. Some I had known; a few I had ‘known’ very well!

The service started and after the formalities were concluded, the first reader walked to the stage and the reading of names began. Memories invaded my head, falling uncontrollably one over another. I tried to stay focused and keep up, but my thoughts transported me to another reality.

‘Stay focused’, I told myself, but it was hopeless. Those names were triggering something much more powerful than any self-control I could muster. Perhaps a deep knowing had fostered an unconscious fear and stopped me attending for so long. Then I suddenly realised I had lost count of the order of speakers and panicked about when I should walk to the stage. Oh shit! I pulled myself together and when it was my turn I walked to the lectern to read the names on the list – slowly, carefully.

I focused very hard on those names. I didn’t want to get one detail wrong. The names and our memories were all that we had left. And then the service was over.

A group of us adjourned to the Paddington RSL for a drink. Joined by others who had not attended the service, I wondered if we shared similar fears and suppressed memories. Then after a few strong lubricating drinks, the stories began: wonderful and funny stories about friends we had known and their exploits, good and bad. I wondered about other scenes that may be simultaneously being playing out in bars and kitchens across Australia.

Lunch with a friend

A couple of days later I had lunch with Ross, the colleague and friend who had proposed the ‘inverted bell curve’ theory of popularity for Candlelight. I recounted the avalanche of memories kindled by the reading of the names and once again we slipped into recounting humorous exploits of friends who had passed.

At some point in that conversation I think we both realised that – like Oliver Twist – we wanted more, a place to give these names context. This is in no way a negative reflection on Candlelight. I believe the current service is dignified, appropriate and would be difficult to improve. It is more to do with context and an evolution that time (and technology) now enables.

Many of the men we lost lived exceedingly outrageous, unbridled and twisted lives – lives lived on the edge of self-indulgence with a unique reality. Restraint, self-denial and ordinariness was supplanted by sexual discovery and liberation, individualism, confidence and rebellion. Some of them made quite extraordinary contributions to the gay culture of Sydney, and it seems only right that we celebrate that legacy in some more reflective way rather than merely reading their name on the first of December each year.

We workshopped the concept over lunch! We thought maybe a satellite event, held before or after the Candlelight service, might work; somewhere for people to tell stories, to give context to the names and the lives. We speculated that perhaps a website would be helpful – a permanent place for people to post stories, pictures and anecdotes, in private.

A lost friend

Des’s name was read at Candlelight, but like so many others, could the reading of his name do justice to his life? He grew up in a small town on the western slopes of country NSW and his father was a truck driver. By the time I met Des (in the Sydney Uni Men’s Union showers), he was a ruggedly handsome man in his late 20s, with an evil sense of humour and a passion for sex. We were to remain friends until he died in 1986.

Increasingly bored with nursing intensive care patients, Des swapped a medical uniform and the financial security of nursing for King Gee shorts and football socks, and a lawn mowing business. The change gave him a new freedom to explore the city. He soon knew every beat within the greater Sydney metropolitan area and when they ‘worked’.

The Albury Hotel had a reputation for drag and employing handsome flirtatious barmen. They spotted Des and offered him some bar work and he soon established himself as a popular Albury staff member and ‘good time boy’.

When the weather was good, we would play hooky and go to Lady Jane or Obelisk beach. We’d buy some food and drink along the way and make a day of it. In fact, there were many days when I found myself wandering through the bush hunting for Des after the sun had gone down. Eventually he would turn up with a wicked grin on his face, scratches over his legs and some items of clothing missing. Sharing his exploits on the drive home, complete with graphic detail, was part of the deal.

While holidaying in the US, Des started to get sick. He resumed his job at the Albury when he returned to Sydney, but he had lost weight and rumours of AIDS began to circulate. He was tapped on the shoulder and told his current appearance was bad for business.

Some time later when I was in San Francisco at the 1986 Gay Games, Des’s condition suddenly deteriorated. I immediately flew home, but he died about 30 minutes before I arrived at his apartment.

A lingering emotional legacy

I tell this story because many gay men of my generation lost a ‘Des’ and the loss was repeated multiple times. Friends, lovers and a whole generation of acquaintances progressively disappeared from our lives. The absence of these loving friendships and the thoughts about what might have been had they survived has left indelible emotional scars on many of us who survived this period. This negative emotional legacy frequently reappears to haunt our lives – sometimes at the most inopportune times – stifling our relationships, arresting our emotional development and crippling our sexual expression.

Younger gay men who were untouched by this unfolding drama understandably wonder what the fuss is all about. They seem embarrassingly unable to fathom the attitudes and behaviours of a generation who lost so much. After all we survived!

Modern pharmaceuticals have stopped people dying from HIV/AIDS, so what’s the problem? It is unsurprising that we continue to struggle to meaningfully interact with those who did not share ‘the experience’.

We crave our own kind – even knowing that the interactions can be strained, complicated and difficult. The perennial call for peer support groups may be just one manifestation of the inability to bridge a generational and experiential divide that has been cut increasingly deeper by silence, invisibility and unfathomable behaviour. There may also be another discussion about HIV transmission and its relationship in these contexts, but that is a discussion for another time and place.

Subconscious mechanisms for survival are complex ‘things’ and many of us have managed to ‘hold it together’ in varying degrees by adopting a range of clever strategies and ploys. But, I can’t help wondering if the abnormally high level of depression and anxiety among older positive people are inextricably linked with this issue. They surely can’t be helping each other! Something is needed to bring about a process of healing.

I silently watched my father battle with the after effects of combat in World War 2. He would disappear early in the morning on Anzac Day, only to return after we were all in bed. He never spoke of his experiences in the war or the demons that haunted him, and I believe he took them to the grave. But, my mother and I both lived with the resultant fallout.

Just as Anzac Day has evolved to meet the needs of veterans and a nation, so too do we need to find evolving and effective mechanisms to exorcise our demons and heal a legacy of lingering loss.

Gay men have a history of resourcefulness and innovation, particularly when confronted by adversity. Candlelight and the AIDS Memorial Quilt have been important reactive parts of our coping and healing processes. But maybe now we need to give a context to those who died and find ways to publically celebrate their contribution both for us and for our community. By sharing these stories, we will go some way to progressively exorcising our pain and improving the emotional quality of our lives and the understanding of others.

I hope that this article will stimulate an honest discussion about the issues faced by those who were touched and damaged by the AIDS epidemic in Australia. My feeling is that we certainly need to have this talk. We need to find a way to address the lingering emotional legacy, permanently honour the people who died from AIDS and help our younger peers appreciate the importance of that time.

If you have any ideas, let me know at lancef@positivelife.org.au

Lance Feeney is a 62-year-old, HIV-positive gay man who lives in Sydney with his partner Geoff and their tortoise shell cat Madame de la Pussy. He works for Positive Life NSW and advocates for the health and wellbeing of people with HIV in NSW.