On Friday night I will be participating in a panel discussion at the

Grey Lynn Library, called Finding Our Stories. It is one of many

events making up this years Pride Festival. Well be exploring all
kinds of texts, including books, films and music, that inform and
affirm the construction of queer identity.
The notion of queer identity would be an interesting starting point
for the discussion about how language shapes our understanding of
ourselves. I prefer to think of myself as homosexual because its less
loaded with meaning than queer. Its a statement of physiology and
biology. Theres never been any choice for me, in fact quite the
opposite. My three heterosexual experimentations were baffling,
unnatural experiences. I was trying to make myself enjoy something
in which I had absolutely no interest. I was out of alignment with my
true self.
For me sexuality is a primal driver, very centrally
connected to my sense of who I am.
Born in the sixties in the Hokianga to eccentric, artistic parents, I felt
absolutely out of sorts with the world from a very young age. My
earliest memories are that I had something inside me that felt like a
grubby little secret. I was repelled by boys my own age, because
they were rough and boisterous, but I was also undeniably attracted
to them. As I grew older and my sexuality became more obvious to
me (I could name the issue), I would fantasise about teachers, and
become sexually obsessed with older, good looking, sporty boys. It
was a contradictory mix of intense fear and attraction, which I could
discuss with no-one. Hardly any wonder that entering puberty I
would experience intense personal unhappiness that I now
recognise as depression, something I learned to manage only when I
was well into adulthood.
There was nothing to affirm my feelings: no gay teachers,
programmes on television, books, or gay parades. I liked television
programmes like The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie, because
they were campy and escapist. I wanted to be Jeannie, pursued by
the handsome Larry Hagman. I identified with the female leads
because they were, like me, attracted to men paradoxically my
homosexuality played out in these heterosexual fantasies. Being by
nature a lazy reader, I recall few books from childhood and
adolescence apart from Lord of the Flies, an exclusively male
narrative about bullying, hatred and social control. The first text
where I truly saw myself reflected back at me was the telemovie of
Quentin Crisps biography The Naked Civil Servant, first shown in
New Zealand during the 1980s. The movie was an epiphany, so
many elements of my own childhood present. The girlfriends, the
dress-ups, the effeminacy, it was all there. More than that was
Crisps bravery as an adult, as a man, being utterly true to himself
in excrutiating circumstances. It was a turning point for me and
precipitated a fast-tracked coming out.

Perhaps it is the absence of homosexual text in my growing-up that

means that many of my favourite writers are gay men. A friend gave
me Edmund Whites biography A Boys Own Story when I was on the
cusp of coming out. I very much identified with his middle-class
childhood filled with eccentric and successful friends of his mother. I
later read the follow-up The Beautiful Room is Empty, a detailed
description of the excesses of sixties gay culture before Stonewall;
lots of sex in public toilets and quaaludes. My mother, also a writer,
had read the book at a literary conference in Germany. I think this
may have fuelled her anxiety about what might become of me once
I gleefully unleashed myself onto Aucklands gay scene. She may
have cooed soothingly when I first came out to her, but a few weeks
later she screamed at me, after much ruffling of her newspaper,
Why did you have to give in?!
One of my all-time favourite books is The Hours by Michael
Cunningham. I thought its structure was very inventive and the
prose was gorgeous. It was the prose more than the light narrative
that drew me in. I also liked the way that as a gay writer,
Cunnigham wrote about much more than the gay experience. He
placed himself at the centre. This is always how I have wanted to
live my life, not living on the fringe; Im an integrationist and believe
I have as much personal power as any heterosexual. Over the years
I have sometimes wondered whether this has been a nave
positioning, but it will always drive me.
I have immersed myself in Maori childrens rights issues for
example. I like the idea that a gay man without children, can place
himself in the centre of this discussion. I have a right to be there, I
have an informed opinion. Bigots will argue that homosexuals
undermine the institution of the family but the opposite is true.
Absent of the obligations to children, we play a central role in caring
for our ageing parents; our heterosexual siblings are so often preoccupied with their own family commitments. When we choose to
have children, this is carefully planned. Gay fathers and mothers I
know are very committed parents, the intricacies of sharedparenting worked out long before their children are born. These
children have privileged upbringings, financially supported by two
sets of parents, surrounded by a diversity of successful adults.
These new stories now need to be told, because literature is by
nature a political exercise, reflecting cultural change and moving it
forward.