Two men are dead. I knew these men, I think, despite never meeting them. I’d lived my entire life without ever really being aware of the AIDS Crisis. I was too young, too separate. I knew that it was an autoimmune disorder, that gay men were at risk, that it killed people, but I don’t think I really understood it until I read Holding the Man. I finished the book, and cried for Tim and John. I cried for a whole generation, for myself, for all the queer kids out there kissing at school, fighting with their parents, fucking in the grass or saying goodbye.
The beauty of Holding the Man is its honesty. You experience everything through Tim. He is vulnerable, open, raw, flawed and in love. He is so deeply and tangibly real. He died ten days after completing his memoir. You feel it when you read it, you really do. The book is haunted, in a sense. The story is so deeply alive, but you feel death seep through it. Death lingers between lines until it finally eclipses the beautiful life they built together. In every word, every kiss, every mistake, you cannot forget these two men are dead. This same spectre haunts so much of queer life. AIDS has left a legacy in what it’s taken from us, a legacy of absence. There are 8,000 people who should be here today, who each have a story as soulful as Tim’s, and instead they are gone.
One of my favourite myths is the idea of a swan song; that before a swan is about to die, it breaks a lifelong silence to sing a beautiful song. The origin of the proverb is lost, but it goes back to the myths of Ovid. For thousands of years, the swan has sung, but was it with sorrow or with joy?
Holding the Man has made me so incredibly happy. To know that 50 years ago, two boys met in a stuffy private school in Melbourne and then spent the rest of their lives in love, a deep and beautiful love, gives me a joy that is just as tender as the sadness it evokes. Every tear I’ve shed, every kiss I’ve shared, is steeped in history; a million people who have felt how I’ve felt over all time.
I could never call Holding the Man a swan song — much was lost in the AIDS epidemic, but the queers were never silent. They have left a legacy to queer youth, one of resistance, protest, resilience, and love. Tim has never stopped singing. The beauty of Holding the Man comes from the life it contains, not the death that ends it.
