Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave

Ahh Penguin Classics. Bringing good stories to the people for under $10. I became aware of this book as it has been turned into a super successful play in recent years (which I haven’t seen but have heard great things about). It’s the true story of the author, a young gay man, and his relationship with the captain of school football team, at Xavier College in Melbourne in the 70s. Not only is John the footy captain, he’s Italian – so his parents go absolutely spare when he tells them he’s gay. Conigrave’s parents are slightly better, but one can imagine how being gay 30 years ago went down. These sections were infuriating in just how small minded people were (and to be honest, probably still are). For a parent to disown their own child based purely on their sexuality is just wrong and stupid.

John becomes a physio and Tim becomes an actor, getting in NIDA and moving to Sydney, where the two “take a break”, which involves Tim getting it on with loads of dudes. They get back together and end up both testing HIV-positive, which back in the day was helpfully known as ‘gay cancer’. The book candidly documents John’s struggle with the disease, as Tim looks after him and tries to block out his own impending sickness.

This book was published just before Conigrave’s death in 1994, but stops after John’s passing – I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it would be to watch your lover of years and years waste away, and also knowing that you had the same illness. It’s a pretty brave book in that it doesn’t gloss over anything, which had its confronting moments to read, but it’s a better book for it. It’s actually not all that well written, with Conigrave’s writing lacking any flourishes, but it has an authentic quality that was quite endearing, and I could see that its material would make for a brilliant play.

I think Conigrave wrote the book that he always wished existed when he was a young guy coming to grips with being gay; and luckily now for a generation of boys it does.