Saturday 15 October 2016

Holding the Man

Maria got me the book for my birthday.

It's a memoir from an Australian writer and actor, Timothy Conigrave.

Before reading it:

Expectations were, White Gays, will I relate? I heard the movie was good and I mean the book is a penguin classic too.

Whilst reading it:

White Gays, How did Tim get a bf so quick, where were the gays of CVHS!!!, I mean I know John will die (it's in the blurb) but still jealz. His writing is quite boring, plain, the way he thinks makes him a little unlikeable. Where's the poetry.

However, by the end, I was washed over by this remorse (so mission accomplished, Holding the Man) but it's just... It's odd.

Throughout the book, I visualised Tim and John as two people I had met before. Tim Conigrave made me think of this guy called Timothy who I had slept with. Could they have been the SAME timothy's??? No. But he was so aussie, the accent but gay. Have you seen Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? Or just imagine an aussie drag queen. Fun fact, the tim I knew used to be a drag queen - he called her Leva Salone. Anyways, I imagined a younger version of him. That was Tim. For John Caleo, I imagined Fynn. Fynn was this 19 yr old boy I met who came to Sydney from Germany. It didn't go past 3 dates and it was surprising it went past the second. He was v cute and v pritty. However, he was also very un-italian and John was like Italian lol but anyways, he was nice to picture as I read the book.

I just googled Timothy Conigrave and found a photo of them. They are nothing like I imagined hahaha Especially John (and I am soooooooooo glad I didn't know what they looked like before reading the book because yikes).

Anyways, it was as sad as the critics said.

It wasn't written amazingly, it was just a lot of recounting but I guess it was better than it what I'm saying now because it messed me up post-reading.

I googled Holding the Man right before I wrote this post and I read the little piece of the wiki page that google gave me:

"Holding the Man is a 1995 memoir by Australian writer, actor, and activist Timothy Conigrave. The book tells the story of Tim's life, and centrally of his relationship with his lover of fifteen years, John Caleo."

And as I read that (I think "memoir" sparked it), I just felt this deep deep sadness because I was reminded that everything that happened in that book actually happened. It was all real. And compared to what the author had experienced in real time, the book was a millisecond. Timothy Conigrave watched his lover die. John Caleo, the nicest person you'd ever know, stopped breathing.

The book didn't need to be poetic or anything fancy. If it did, maybe it wouldn't have felt as real. It wasn't fabricated. And that kills me. I didn't realise before I read the book that it was a memoir and when I did piece together that the main character's name was Timothy Conigrave, it didn't hit me until after the book. How odd.

...

Bye.