Tell Me I'm Okay Read online

  My work in Vietnam laid the foundation for my future specialising in sexual health medicine. I’d found there was more to managing STIs than just reaching a diagnosis and giving correct treatment. Catching an STI was often a traumatic event. There were a hardenedfew who laughed off a venereal infection, part and parcel of being a tough soldier in a war zone. I later discovered this was also a common attitude in young men in civilian life. But, for most soldiers, a VD diagnosis made them ashamed and heightened the discomfort they already felt, being away from home, and fighting in an unpopular war. It was my job to help them overcome that sense of shame. That’s the part of managing STIs I most enjoyed.

  Despite my interest in VD, or sexually transmitted infections (STIs), I decided to become a surgeon. It was possible to specialise in STIs in the UK,17 but in 1969 there was no such specialty in Australia. In any case, STIs were hardly respectable. I knew my parents would not have been pleased. Although I was twenty-six years old, I was still trying to be a good son. God’s Will could surely not have been that I become a VD doctor.

  In my last months in Vietnam, I’d booked myself, by letter, into a basic medical science course at Nuffield College of Surgical Sciences in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The course aimed to prepare candidates for the first-part examination for Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) of England. The Australian qualification, the FRACS, was nearly as valued at that time, but the attraction of the FRCS was that I could travel. The course was scheduled to commence at the end of February 1969.

  There was time to fill, so I stayed in the Army until December. During those final months, I worked as Medical Officer at 2 Military Hospital, Ingleburn. The old 2 Camp Hospital had been upgraded in name since I previously worked there, but the buildings and wards looked the same, and the cottage hospital atmosphere that I liked was unchanged. Bill Watson had gone and there was a new CO, Lt. Col. Michael Naughton, with whom I worked well. The work was enjoyable, just as it had been when I was a more junior doctor. The soldier patients remained a delight, and I had a new understanding and empathy for the weekly medevacs returning from Vietnam.

  When on duty for nights and weekends, and often when I was not, I lived at the Hospital. At other times, I slept at home and drove from West Pennant Hills to Ingleburn every day. My sister had married and moved out, and my brother was in residence at college in the University of NSW. In other respects, things remained the same under the family roof. For the sake of peace, I kept my religious doubts and thoughts about sexuality to myself and slipped back into my parents’ lifestyle, even to the extent of attending Pennant Hills Baptist Church with them on Sunday mornings. I figured this would be the last six months I ever lived at home. There seemed little point in rocking the boat. In any case, I had never been much of a boat rocker.

  One evening, very daringly, I drove into town to see The Boys in the Band, the first American play with an exclusively gay theme. The action of The Boys in the Band centres on the thirtieth birthday party of a gay man living on the Upper East Side of New York City. All but one of eight guests are gay men, but they are not the gayest bunch of guys. Low self-esteem and internalised homophobia char-acterise all of them to varying degrees. The play wasn’t the happiest piece of theatre at that stage of my life, and indeed I found it very confronting. On the drive back to Ingleburn, I had to pull off the road for almost an hour because of a torrential nosebleed that I found difficult to bring under control. A testament to the play’s impact on me was the fact that I had never had a severe nosebleed before, nor have I ever had one since.

  * * *

  8Piss-phones or piss-tubes were metal tubes sunk into the ground, serving as urinals. They were made out of discarded ammunition cases and were scattered everywhere throughout the Task Force area.

  9The 2IC of 4 Field Regiment was a Major, small in stature and very large in his own self-importance.

  10VD or venereal disease was the old medical term for infections passed on by sexual contact. The newest widely accepted, and most accurate term is sexually transmitted infections (STIs). I use the term VD in relation to Vietnam because that is what we called STIs then.

  11The ORs’ (Gunners’) Mess in 4th Field Regiment was affectionately called the ‘snake pit’.

  12During their twelve months’ tour of duty in Vietnam, soldiers were entitled to five days R&R – Rest and Recreation Leave (taken overseas) and five days R&C – Rest and Convalescence Leave (taken at Vung Tau).

  13Army slang for Vietnamese people.

  14A small Forward Detachment of the hospital at Nui Dat with about a dozen beds, ideal for non-serious, short-term stays like Gunner Hyde’s.

  15Medical Civil Aid Program, the motto of which was ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’.

  16Uc-Da-Loi means Australia in Vietnamese.

  17The specialty of venereology was called genito-urinary medicine (GUM) in the UK at that time.

  Chapter Five

  London

  Money was short, so I signed on as ship’s doctor to obtain free passage to the UK. In those days junior hospital doctors were paid a pittance: throughout my first year at Concord I had been paid just eighteen pounds ten shillings per week! Although I had been rather better paid in the army and had managed to accumulate a reasonable amount of money in the bank during my Vietnam year, I knew I would have to support myself for six or even twelve months in the UK until I passed the Primary FRCS Examination, so every penny counted.

  Unfortunately, because the cargo ship had unforeseen delays, I arrived in London a week after the course commenced. I was on the back foot from the beginning. The weather was terrible – cold, bleak, and unremittingly grey. My assigned room, at Nuffield College, was tiny and dark, with a window that looked onto a blank brick wall opposite. The food was inadequate in amount and quality. My fellow students all seemed as depressed and unhappy as I was.

  Study proved difficult; away from home, on my own in a foreign city, my homosexual desires resurfaced. I spent the time I should have been devoting to study trying not to think about sex. Those first London months were a dark time; even today, more than forty-five years later, it pains me to think about them.

  On Easter Saturday, 1969, I woke to find that the grey clouds had lifted. A bright ray of sunshine – the first I had glimpsed since being in London – filtered down through the narrow chasm between my study and the building opposite, and even through my room’s grimy window. I hurried outside to find a clear, sparkling, spring morning. The buds were making the most of the change and were opening on the trees in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and early green leaves were appearing. I couldn’t believe the transformation.

  My spirits lifted a little. I decided I needed a break, so I took a train to Cambridge, where I stayed until after dark. I wandered in and out of colleges, trying to imagine myself as a student in these ancient halls of learning. How wonderful to study the Classics in the beautiful surroundings of Cambridge; so different from my hard grind at the basic medical sciences in a dingy room in London. I climbed the tower of Great St Mary’s Church, listened in awe as the organ played in King’s College Chapel, and watched holiday-makers punting on the Cam. I had a pub lunch, with a pint of beer, and sat where I could watch local youths mucking about in boats on the river. Despite my enjoyment of the day, I had an underlying feeling of hopelessness. My life seemed a mess. I was tired of pretending to be what I wasn’t, tired of fighting my real nature. On the way back to London in the train, I acknowledged to myself that I needed help.

  I thought back to the morning I arrived in London. Needing cash, I’d made a visit to the Bank of NSW in Sackville Street. Outside the bank, I had run into an Australian doctor, Frank Lappin, who had been registrar in psychiatry at Concord, and with whom I’d had a pleasant working relationship. I wasn’t in any way special; everyone had a pleasant working relationship with Frank – medical colleagues, nurses, medical students, porters and patients. He was one of those rare delightful men, who seem blessed with a great love for
failing humanity, which of course made him an ideal psychiatrist. He told me he was now senior registrar at the Royal Free Hospital. He had given me his phone number, saying we should catch up when I had time free from study. Belatedly, I decided Frank was someone I could talk to.

  Some time in early June I had my first meeting with Frank. After an hour of small talk, I plucked up courage:

  ‘Frank, I think I might be homosexual.’

  ‘You think you might be, or you are?’

  ‘Okay … I am a homosexual …’

  It was the first time I had said it out aloud.

  ‘… but, I’ve never done anything about it.’

  ‘How old are you now, David?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  ‘Have you read Flannelled Fool?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Flannelled Fool – it’s a recent autobiography by a school teacher and cricketer, TC Worsley, who’s homosexual.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of him or his book.’

  Frank gave a chuckle. He could be quirky at times.

  ‘You should read it. He describes a visit to his school by a progressive lady sexologist. She had got out of him that he had a crush on a fellow student. She wanted to know how far the affair had gone and he replied: ‘Nowhere’. The sexologist was shocked: ‘You mean, you haven’t even had his organ in your hand?’

  Frank seemed to find this anecdote enormously funny. I smiled appropriately, although I wasn’t sure where this was going.

  ‘So I should ask you David. Have you ever had another man’s organ in your hand?’

  ‘Only clinically, Frank – you know, a patient’s penis. There was a lot of VD in Vietnam.’

  ‘It always puzzled me why you went to Vietnam. It seemed so unlike you.’

  ‘I went there, because … I wanted to get close to young guys.’

  ‘And did you? Get close to young guys?’

  ‘Yes, but nothing improper, ever. Emotionally close, yes. I miss that.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Frank, I felt fulfilled there. Useful, you know? But I was terribly frustrated … sexually, I mean.’

  ‘If you are so sexually frustrated, why have you never done anything about it?’

  ‘I’m a Christian. It’s condemned in the Bible.’

  ‘Not all Christians think that.’

  ‘Frank, do you think there’s hope of me ever changing? My folks expect me to marry a good Christian girl.’

  ‘David, you know the score. You could marry of course; some gay men do. But you’d be unhappy and so would the unlucky girl you married. Your basic sexuality wouldn’t change.’

  ‘So, it’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s quite possible for two gay men to fall in love, live together, and have a fulfilling and happy life.

  ‘I suppose so. But, it’s getting over the religious stuff that’s hard for me.’

  ‘Religion is meant to be a comfort, not a hindrance to a person’s enjoyment of life.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Look, David. I’m not saying it’s easy. Public opinion at the moment makes life difficult for gay men. But it’s possible to be gay and happy. I know people who are.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. Recently, I read a little booklet written for Christians who are having trouble coming to terms with their homosexuality. I’ll give it to you.’

  We talked some more. As I got up to leave, Frank handed me a thin monograph entitled Time for Consent by Norman Pittenger.18 Starting in the train, then back in bed at Nuffield College, I read the booklet from cover to cover. It amazed me, not with its theol-ogy, most of which I didn’t understand, but for its warm, human sympathy.

  On a Saturday afternoon three weeks later, I nervously approached the porter’s lodge at Kings College Cambridge. Surely, the jolly-looking, white-haired man, puffing on a cigarette and squatting on a three-legged stool in the entrance court, couldn’t be the learned cleric I was due to meet? I’d written to Dr Pittenger asking for an interview, and an appointment had come within days: ‘Meet me at 2pm at the porter’s lodge at Kings’. The man rose and, in a pleasant American accent, welcomed me warmly. He took my arm, and ignoring the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs, led me across the quadrangle to the Senior Fellows’ Common Room. Dr Pittenger was big in every respect; he had a big body, a big presence, a big voice, a big laugh, and a big heart.

  ‘I understand you’re having trouble reconciling your homosexuality with your Christian beliefs?’ he boomed across the (fortunately) then empty Common Room.

  I acknowledged that was the case.

  ‘A common problem! All due to misinterpretation of Scripture and lack of understanding of human sexuality.’

  We talked for a long time. Norman, as he insisted I call him, wanted to take me to Choral Evensong in the Chapel after our discussion. As we left the Common Room, he pointed out a very elderly man now sitting in a corner:

  ‘That’s Morgan,’ he stage whispered.

  I sneaked a quick look at the man I immediately recognised as EM Forster. I was filled with awe. There in the flesh was the novelist whom I regarded as one the greatest of modern English writers. I knew he was a gay man, so his very presence in the Senior Fellows’ Common Room, where I had been haltingly recounting the struggles with my own homosexuality, seemed somehow fitting and apt. After Evensong, I caught the train back to London. My visit had been uplifting.

  In the years that followed, Frank Lappin and I became close friends; we shared many interests, especially music, books, and reading. I heard from Norman Pittenger regularly; always encouraging and supportive, his constant refrain: ‘Be the best homosexual you can be.’

  Both men are now dead – Norman in 1997, Frank in 2010 – but I remember them with great affection.

  After one failed attempt, in November I passed the primary examination for FRCS. I celebrated by treating myself to a trip to Holland. Like some of my former gunners on R&R, I had reached a stage where I just wanted to have sex. My reading led me to believe Holland was the place for this to happen. It was to be my version of a bar in Vung Tau.

  At midnight, a week after the primary exam, I stood outside the door of the best-known gay club in Amsterdam. The entrance looked forbidding; I heard the muffled doof-doof beat of music within. I’d never been to a disco or night club before, far less a notorious gay one. Faint-hearted, my resolve melted, and I slunk away through the icy streets to my solitary bed.

  After that setback, I decided to give up the quest for sex. It looked like I was doomed to celibacy. The next night, I made my way to the Concertgebouw, the main auditorium in the Dutch capital, where an excellent concert had been advertised for that evening, and purchased a ticket. Ten minutes before the concert began, I found my seat. Then, as I was reading the program, a man I judged to be a few years younger than myself needed to get past me to reach his allocated seat. It happened to be right next to mine. The man was conservatively dressed in a well-cut sports jacket and tie, with a happy, open face and an engaging grin. I took to him at once and, by sheer good luck, managed to avoid the dreadful mistake of assuming a Canadian accent was an American one. My neighbour proved extraordinarily friendly. We got talking and continued our conversation at interval, and later over a few beers in a nearby bar. Murray McMillan was a Canadian journalist employed by the Vancouver Sun, on the tail end of a holiday in England and Europe. I was impressed with his enthusiasm and zest for life and his excellent sense of humour. I felt entirely comfortable and relaxed with him. As well, I was becoming increasingly intrigued; although we only skirted around the subject indirectly in our conversation, I couldn’t ignore the increasing suspicion that Murray might be gay.

  I was unused to alcohol and when we finally stood up to leave the bar, I found myself a little unsteady on my feet. Murray kindly offered to see me back to my hotel. Outside the rather basic establish
ment I had chosen, he pretended it was a palace compared to his own and expressed a desire to ‘just have a quick look at what your room’s like’. I readily agreed, and almost as soon as I had closed the door, to my amazement and delight, I found that we were kissing.

  Next morning, after the alcohol had worn off, I fully expected to feel guilt-ridden. On the contrary, I felt happy, content, and somehow more human. I was overwhelmed with thankfulness that I had found such a kind, considerate man to share my first sexual experience. As we lay cuddled together in that tiny hotel bed after the first wave of passion was spent, I remember sighing and whis-pering to him: ‘Ah Murray, I can die happy now!’, to which Murray had replied indignantly: ‘Don’t you dare think of dying any time soon!’

  Murray and I spent the next two days and nights together, and, as I had hoped, I lost my virginity in Amsterdam. I could have found a no more sympathetic man to initiate me, nor a kinder friend than Murray. There was nothing sordid, shabby, or shameful about our experience together and I still remember it as little short of a miracle. For years we wrote regularly and each year on 11th November we remember the evening we met in 1969. Now, more than forty-five years later, Murray and I remain in touch and I count him a dear friend.

  It was not time to return to Australia. I only had the first part of the FRCS qualification and I needed to get some hands-on experience. Back in London, after half a dozen failed job applications, I found myself a training post in Orthopaedics at the Royal Post-Graduate Medical School’s Hammersmith Hospital. The consultant was a conservative old fellow. Vietnam may have got me the job. After studying my application, Mr Stephenson looked at me over his glasses: