Melbourne and Sydney, Runes and Moonlight

In October 2001, I stayed in Melbourne for a week as a foreign delegate in the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific held at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

I did not book accommodations before going to Australia, so I stayed with the leaders of the international branch of our NGO (non-government organization) billeted at the Grand Hotel.  I felt a loss of privacy, so I left a day after and lodged in a backpacker hotel for $50 a day (way too affordable compared to Sydney's backpacker scene).

I had the option to get another room at the Grand Hotel, but that would have reduced my pocket money.  My stay in Australia was a personal expense not sponsored by the NGO.  I could only get sponsorship from funding agencies if I presented a paper at the Congress.  I just presented my passport to my mother –  no interest, no late fee, no need to pay back if forgotten.

I experienced four seasons in a day.  Melbourne weather was uncomfortable and erratic.  The place was beautiful, though, and the people were friendly.

I noticed the word "Batman" plastered in different places.  And, there was a Batman Park.  I initially thought Australians loved superheroes, but the ubiquity of the name made me question the association with the superhero Batman.  I learned from people at the Congress that John Batman is one of Melbourne's founding fathers.

I bought a copy of The Wild Man by Patricia Nell Warren and other books from Hares & Hyenas <www.hares-hyenas.com.au/> which set up shop temporarily and was the only merchant, as I recall, to sell LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) books at the Centre for the duration of the Congress.

I saw billboards of the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence directed by Steven Spielberg on buildings and ogled the hunky Australian men rowing boats along Yarra River.

My colleagues and I would eat at a Chinese restaurant near the railway station for lunch.  The servings were so large that my colleagues would take half of their order home for dinner.  I forgot the name of the station.  I just called it King's Cross (after Harry Potter's Platform 9¾).

I distinctly remember that I could not find a Wendy’s fast food restaurant.  I wanted to eat the resto’s chicken breast fillet which I had for lunch everyday in my first semester, first year, in medical school in the 1990s.  In college and in medical school, I would choose one restaurant to have lunch in for the entire semester or trimester.  So yes, I had lunch daily for at least a term in Shakey's Pizza, McDonald's, etc.  I was told later (by a friend in Sydney) that Wendy’s did not operate in Australia.  My favorite chicken burger was the one from Cindy’s, but there was no branch near the medical school.  My current favorite is a toss-up between the breast fillet of Wendy’s and the McChicken of McDonald’s.  Cindy's was a local fast food resto that I no longer see in malls and restaurant complexes I go to.

There was a specialty bookshop in Melbourne that only sold books related to aviation and the military.  I forgot the name of the shop.  I went there as often as I could just to browse.  I could not bring home any more books.

I went to Sydney after a week.  Sydney weather was much better.  Temperatures were consistent.  At the time, I think it was around 18 °C during the day.  It was spring.  Summer (December) was not too distant.

I find Sydney especially memorable because nearly every corner had an adult shop.  The shops had rooms where men could meet and mate or sleep in.  A colleague who also attended the Congress in Melbourne used the shops to doze off.  For $10 a shop, a customer could go in and out of the rooms for 24 hours.  A shop either stamped the forearm or issued a ticket for verification.

In one of the shop visits, a loud voice suddenly boomed over the microphone upon my entry saying, "Minors are not allowed!"  I gazed at the camera oriented towards me and roared, "I'm not a minor!  I just look great in my 30s!"

I never slept with anyone while in Australia.  I only bought adult stuff like videos featuring American performers in action.

Oxford Street also made Sydney an extremely lovable place for me.  Oxford was (still is I hope) the LGBT street where my Australian siblings could express themselves freely.  It was not unusual to find two women or two men holding hands while walking.  I had fun looking at two shirtless hunks walking by, holding hands, with a dog in tow.

In a bookshop along Oxford Street, I purchased beefcake calendars and non-adult videos that included Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss starring Sean Hayes, cast member of the American sitcom Will & Grace.

While in Sydney, I liked to stay in my hotel room or walk around, alone, to peruse the city.  I rarely took pictures.  I always told myself, “My heart took a picture that should last a long time.”

Backpacker rooms were pricey in Sydney, so I might as well lodge in a hotel.

It was in Dymocks Sydney where I first saw an issue of FHM magazine (which was inaugurated locally around a year earlier than my Sydney trip).  Dymocks had a Philippine branch at Robinsons Place (a super mall in the City of Manila), but the bookshop did not last long.

I did not go to places my friends had wanted me to visit like the Olympic Stadium.  I did visit the Sydney Opera House and Taronga Zoo.  I love animals, and Taronga Zoo is a must-see for people like me.

I ate at different places like KFC, McDonald’s, a few upscale diners (where my friend liked to swipe my – not his – credit card) and the Vietnamese restaurant along George Street in the direction of the University of Technology Sydney.

Outdoors in areas near water, feral birds – I think they're silver gulls – liked to grab food from people.  Australian law prohibits their capture.  Australians are generally law-abiding.  If those birds were here in the Philippines, their audacity would earn them a place in cages for the pet trade or a place on the table as food.  The law of poverty takes no prisoners.  We, Filipinos, are generally hungry.  Our charming little islands still belong to the Third World.

After sundown, Alfeo a.k.a. Al and I stayed at the Mountbatten Hotel to chat the night away.  Al is a colleague and friend who regularly traveled to Australia and is now an Australian citizen.  I first met Al in 1993 at the Remedios AIDS Foundation where we served as volunteers and hotline counselors and where we began our lifelong involvement with HIV/AIDS work.  Al did not attend the event in Melbourne, due to a prior commitment, but he did spur me to use plastic money in Sydney.

It was at Mountbatten that I realized I had traveler’s diarrhea.  The establishment’s comfort room had been intimate with my mixed Chinese and Filipino bacteria (through my explosive excreta).

Al introduced me to the bartender who was a model.  The model’s looks made my loins palpitate incessantly, compounding the intestinal spasms.

Oh, I was so enamored of that young male model.  Let’s hide him by the name of Rune.  Al gave me a fashion magazine with Rune in it months after I had left Australia.

I chose Rune as a pseudonym for that dishy model because runes are supposed to be mystical, and that’s how Australia was to me.

I expect Australia still is.  Mystical.  Bewitching.  Utterly beautiful.

I wrote Rune a letter when I got home from Sydney.

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22 October 2001

Dear Rune,

I wonder if this letter will reach you considering the anthrax threat that grips the world in fear at the moment.

My stay in Australia was, in many ways, wonderful.  You contributed to that enriching experience.  How?

Songs strike a tune that brings us back to the past.  Old songs echo in the depths of our hearts.  You will one day become an old song.  And, I will celebrate the moment.

How is the moonlight in Sydney?  When you have time, take a look and give me a smile.

I wish you a lifetime of joy and wonder (and great sex)!

Always,

Robert

===

Mushy, puerile crap.  Well, my crap grazed Mountbatten once upon a spring.

Al told me Rune had read the letter with a smile.  I never asked for a reply.

The smile was already the reply.

On Living Alone

Four years ago today (April 12), one of my dearest friends asked me through text:

Pag matutulog ka na sa gabi (When you’re about to sleep at night) and you know you are so alone, how do you feel?

I replied the next day:

Sorry I wasn’t able to reply last night.  I had a patient, then Sir Boy and others arrived.  I read the text at 5 a.m. when I was about to sleep.  I’ve felt alone for most of my life until recently, and I’ve lived alone literally.  Initially, it was very tough being alone.  There was longing to be with someone, anyone who would keep me company and listen to my never-ending ramblings.  It got better though, and it still gets better.  I feel neutral verging on happy when alone or sleeping alone at night.  I do feel sad occasionally especially when memories come barging in without invitation.  I live with the notion that it is not my place in this world to be with someone; it is not my place to be a politician or to be a chef or whatever else I’m not, not now anyhow or maybe not ever.  However, I do believe it is my place to deal with destiny as I see fit.  I somehow feel this is fate.  I occasionally nurture the pain or whatever negative emotions besiege me at night, but being alone doesn’t mean I have to be lonely.  Happiness is ALSO a choice.  And, it takes a lot of practice choosing to be happy.

Shakey's Atlantis

The gaydar (a gay man’s built-in detector of other gay men) is a powerful tool which should be used judiciously for a lot of reasons, e.g., to prevent hurting those in the closet, etc.

Shakey’s Pizza is undoubtedly my favorite pizza.  If I were to create an Excel sheet or a graph in terms of frequency of visit compared to any other pizzeria, Shakey’s would win, hands down.

In my last visit to Shakey’s (yesterday), I noticed that there were more waiters and busboys than usual (too many, I think, for the capacity of the branch – trainees perhaps).  At least half of them (both butch and femme a.k.a. masculine and feminine) registered in my gaydar.

We, gay men, affectionately call our siblings mermaids (among other terms of endearment).  It occurred to me that at that point I was at Shakey’s and Mermaid’s Pizza and not just Shakey’s Pizza.

I also imagined mermaids hidden in rocks above water level, so the name Shakey’s by the Sea also occurred to me.

But because Shakey’s has always been big to me, at least in taste, I also pictured an expansive underwater restaurant called Shakey’s Atlantis to serve great-tasting pizzas to the metropolitan water world.

Newly Acquired Book

The book is small (smaller than a comic book, just thicker).  It only looks big because I have a small body.

The book was ordered from my favorite bookshop over a month ago and arrived on 6 April 2017.  I picked it up on April 7 (less than 24 hours ago).

I'll read it by next week.

Dr. Brian Cremins also has a blog <brianwcremins.wordpress.com>.  I have read a number of his works from different sources including his blog.

Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia is Dr. Cremins' first book.  It was initially released in December 2016 by Amazon.com and by www.ebooks.com as a PDF.  Amazon stopped selling before the end of 2016 because the book had sold out, and ebooks.com stopped selling the PDF version in the same time frame for reasons I don't know.  Anyhow, the book is now sold without interruption, and the publication date now shown at Amazon is 3 January 2017, and ebooks.com shows a date of January 2017.

There was a time I could read such a thin book in one sitting.  But, that was the perk of youth.

William Moulton Marston's Connection to Margaret Sanger

William Moulton Marston, primary creator of Wonder Woman, lived in a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth Holloway and former student Olive Byrne a.k.a. Olive Byrne Richard and Olive Richard, niece of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger.

Jill Lepore wrote a book about Wonder Woman’s origins and highlighted the connection (that Olive Byrne is Sanger’s niece) between Marston and Sanger.  In my blog post “Wonder Woman’s Origins and Other Occurrences,” I stated, “This piece of information first came to light, for a mainstream readership, in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.”  The inclusion of kind of readership opens the statement to interpretation.

A number of books have mentioned – and scholars have known – the connection before Lepore’s book got published in 2014.  However, not one of these books generated as much buzz as Lepore’s book has, so the mainstream crowd learned the fact from Lepore.  Also, Lepore focused her lens on the inspirations for Wonder Woman’s beginnings with the intended impact of readers remembering a sensational lifestyle, the feminist movement, and Margaret Sanger.  The media had a field day.

In his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes published in 2011, Ben Saunders wrote, “Olive Byrne was herself well-acquainted with sexual controversy, as the devoted niece of birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger.”¹

Saunders’ book was reviewed in Comix-Scholars List Serve,² among other places.  It (Saunders’ book) employs critical theory which may not be palatable to readers who prefer narrative history.  Don’t knock it until you’ve tried (read) it.

In her book Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility published in 2005, Angela Franks mentioned “niece”³ (referring to Olive Byrne Richard) a number of times and Margaret Sanger Marston.⁴

In Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion published in 2011, Jean Baker mentioned Olive Byrne Richards⁵ [sic] and Margaret Sanger Marston Lampe,⁶ who can also be found in Lepore’s book.

Peter Engelman’s A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (published in 2011) has for its cover a photo that can be found in Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.⁷  Engelman did not mention Olive Byrne or William Moulton Marston.

Not all books chronicling the birth control movement acknowledge Olive Byrne and/or Marston, just as comic-book history books may or may not refer to Margaret Sanger (even with the inclusion of Wonder Woman’s herstory in the particular book).

Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book linked Sanger (not to Marston but) to Harry Donenfeld who, before becoming the head honcho of DC Comics, distributed Sanger’s contraceptive devices.⁸  Donenfeld interacted with Sanger purely for business reasons.

And finally, in Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine published in April 2014 (predating Lepore’s book by months), Tim Hanley mentioned, “Olive’s aunt, Margaret Sanger, birth control’s most famous advocate.”⁹

Hanley may have not intended it, but his book endowed my memory emporium with the charts and stats of Captain Marvel a.k.a. Shazam and Wonder Woman in bondage.  Hanley’s and Lepore’s books have a lot in common (content-wise).  The impact (to me, at least) differs.

Hanley, within 2 weeks from his book’s publication, wrote an article about DC Comics’ Wonder Woman: The Amazon Princess Archives Volume 1 where he stated, “Byrne was Sanger’s niece.  Her mother, Ethel Higgins Byrne, was Sanger’s sister.”¹⁰

There are other reading materials that link Sanger to Marston.  Jill Lepore’s book is arguably the most famous one.

Notes

¹Ben Saunders.  Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes.  New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.  42.

²Greg Steirer.  "Review of Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes."  ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 6.2 (2012): N. pag.  Department of English, University of Florida.  Web.  5 Feb. 2017.  <www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v6_2/steirer/?print>.

³Angela Franks.  Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005.  16; 37; 39; 261.

⁴Franks 309.

⁵Jean H. Baker.  Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.  181.

⁶Baker 306.

⁷Book Cover Photo.  A History of the Birth Control Movement in America.  By Peter C. Engelman.  Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011.

Jill Lepore.  The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  New York:  Vintage Books, 2015.  91.  [This is the revised edition.  The first edition was published in October 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf.]

The cover photo of A History of the Birth Control Movement in America can be found on page 91 of The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

⁸Gerard Jones.  Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.  New York: Basic Books, 2004.  56-57.

⁹Tim Hanley.  Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine.  Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2014.  12.

¹⁰Tim Hanley.  “America’s Silver Age.”  Comics; Gender & Sexuality.  Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 Apr. 2014.  Web.  5 Feb. 2017.  <lareviewofbooks.org/article/americas-silver-age/>.

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This piece is supposed to be a part of the Notes of “Wonder Woman’s Origins and Other Occurrences” posted on 5 February 2017.  <robertbaytan.blogspot.com/2017/02/wonder-womans-origins-and-other.html>.