NINETEEN YEARS AGO…….

MYSTERY

MYSTIC..

Nineteen Years Ago I met this 27 year old Man from Isaan, the North East of Thailand…strangely it was in a Bangkok Bar once owned by Molly Meldrum..the man is Samran, apparently there is some kinda translation as ‘Happines’ I have had no dispute for 19 years…The difference in age, in kulcha, in ekonomik stuff I can only accept, in retro spect if I was to have the joy of a partner then much of this is logikal…

Those of you who have not only stood by for nineteen years but continue to give great Joy to both of us do not misunderstand that we are not aware….Wimmin and Men have supported us at lots of levels

My only concern is for Sammy when I go but you decent friends will sort it out I am sure…Lx

SAPIOSEXUALITY..

Her name is Carmel

She was a neighbor, 88 years tottering past my window for some time…Not a Lady in a Van, filled with energy we met on a bus…..Each of us gripping the hideous plasticity of our bags…We shared a Catholic background…Falling as it were from the bus I met Sammy my spouse and asked him to assist Carmel with her shopping bags…My tall Thai Spouse walking with this beautiful graceful Elder…There was a time when I was sitting at West Bathers and she was at the next table with a daughter..another time at the local cafe ..I said ‘Stop stalking me”

Sadness is part of happiness, they happen….Now in a Nursing Home I am making efforts to communicate…Her beautiful response was…’This is my Address’……A Letter..

There is Sivia 88 in an apartment above me…I remember at 14 years of age visiting Mrs Myers in her Nursing Home as part of Catholic Legion Of Mary….as an 18 year old Redemptorist Seminarian I was visiting a Home for the Blind in Ballarat…I had no idea of Palliative Care….

Global Gloom sure…but hold tight to those whom you love ….They are our Lungs and Heart !

Nineteen Years…

This is a recent image…it is one that I like among the thousands…It says something about our 19 years of love across two continents…Sam smiling into the distance with little regard to whatever it was I was saying to him….We continue to learn from one another….I had no idea that at 59 I would bump into this 27 year old son of a rice farmer in the dazzle of Balcony Bar in Bangkok in 2005…..It was once owned by Molly Meldrum but when we collided he had long left…

There has always been a grace about Sammy that was the initial attraction for me….there was no English on our first collide….he heard me speak Thai to the barman…..and in a very cliched way, the rest is His/tory……

And we both got COVID in 2020……This man Sammy is the same man who came to St Vincents Chemotherapy Ward and when the canula came out and the kerosene began to flow on to the stark white hospital sheets, it was he who pushed me outta the bed then gathered up the sheets took them to the nurse and made me a new bed….I have been most fortunate in my life although the words my father spoke to me at the funeral of my mother remain with me, etched…Lloyd you could have been anything…to which I replied to Bob Blakeley ‘What do you mean?’ He just rattled off at 68 years of age..Well you failed the priesthood, you failed teaching’……..The sins of the Father…He buried our mother at 68 years of age ….

I have never stopped writing but am sad that I frequently draw, it is laziness..but there are so many decent friends who support my flaws my silliness.,..

There are so many names who have and continue to stumble with me…men and wimmin who show their love to Sammy and I….

We needs be psychiatrists to one another…that is how we can heal…

PAX

Lloyd

SILVIA..

This image is 2010 during Chemotherapy at St Vincents Hospital Melbourne….I had returned to Melbourne in December 2009 having been diagnosed in Bangkok my home of 10 years..

In four days I will be 78 years old…what a privilege to be able to even say that…

I was diagnosed in 1986 with Meckles Diverticulitis and it was an horrific few months.

When the embryo develops the stalk of the egg is the Intestine system as we know it and for an amazing small number of people this becomes a pocket, and the ultimate is it becomes infected and needs surgery……This congenital madness was my first face en face with Mortality, I was a young healthy man..

Thanks to Nuclear Medicine the issue was resolved..

And in the words of my dear friend William Costigan…’Where was I Iris?’

So the Cray Cray I want to share with my logical family is basically…

On my 78th birthday I am taking my 88 year old neighbor Silvia to Masada Hospital in Caulfield to have a new Pessary inserted…….The dates and the gynological madness appeal to me…

From the womb of my mother to the womb of my neighbor who also is a cancer Thriver and that we share Silvia……The elder Sister I never had but whom I now have…

A THIN LINE OF SCATTERED NOTES 1980’S

A re-tyred Old Queer……In praise of Friendship !

Edging in a chronological sense is very different from that of the Eros Generation, young people..

…Thirty plus years agoI remember quaking as I stood in my first gay bar in Melbourne, Her Majesty’s Toorak Road, South Yarra. It was an Icon, Maisies Hotel, Toorak Road, South Yarra. Need I say anymore….But nearly 60 years ago there wasn’t a Friday night that I spent at home..Sex, and lots of it. In laneways, front gardens, laundries of blocks of flats, backs of cars, even someone else’s flat. Not too many gay men seemed to own houses in the early ’60’s…Queens Road, no pun intended, was a very smart address for queer men in the 50’s. Where the wimmin were I had not yet found out. I met many gam men before I met any gay wimmin. But that sounds reasonable. I was sex with men, not wimmin..

I had not de-closetted at this point. It wasn’t a very strong 50’s and 60’s trend. People knew people who knew people, a sort of network I guess…

But the gatherings of gay men, be it in the one or two Hotels around or at someones spontaneous party as the result of 10 pm closing. There were no Dance Parties ….A Living room was the nearest dance floor…Hallways, kitchens and bedrooms all sensibly utilised.. They were Heady times. There was no amalynitrate around. I had never been offered. It wasn’t till decades later in San Franciso that I was to inhale …Yes Mr Clinton, I did inhale..We are talking post Stonewall here people. 1976 was Americas Bicentennial and I was in Los Angeles and San Francisco on a cheap package deal for a few weeks..

American Jock, Caesar’s Palace…stood with me at the bar while Frank Sinatra was alongside with a goon squad…..The first and last time I enjoyed a four post ceiling mirror bed.

Falling in Lust on the 38th Floor of the San Francisco Hilton, 1976..

Scribblings From Last Century

Lloyd A. Blakely

Congregation Of The Most Holy Redeemer..

The Roaring 60’s….

These men are the men whom I spent 5 years of my life in community…It was post Vatican 2, there was confusion at many levels in the Catholic Church….five of these men became Redemptorist priests…I was not to be anointed …We have lost one the late Reverend Neil Dwyer , and on his left Dominic The Abott 0f Galong who approaches his 80th year..and only two of us, arms crossed, Doctor Phil, who is an analyst in New York…Yes a person of color, from the Philippines ..We stood in 1965 on the steps of the Redemporist Monastery in Ballarat in Victoria…and we are still in contact all these years..

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EIGHTEEN YEARS..

I was living in Hua Hin on the Gulf of Thailand …a long time escape for many rich Thais from the Banging of Bangkok…for myself, a Farang who had spent 4 years teaching at a Buddhist University in Chiangmai in the North…The fantasy for an ill health retired teacher from Melbourne the lure of where the Land meets The Sea was irrestible… In the face of temptation I knew the only resolve was to give in..

With a dear Thai friend who offered to move my meagre belongings in a truck from Chiangmai to Hua Hin I was keen to make a move from the North to the South of a country which was to be my home for 10 years…Thus ended my second retirement from teaching….Yet the saffron robes whom I taught at the Thai Buddhist University in Chiangmai were walking along the same stretch of beach at 6 am in Hua Hin as I was making an effort at 60 years to maintain some level of Health……For them it was for a different reason.

As a 16 year old boy I had left the family home, Marie, Bob and my brother Peter who was 10 years younger….That is another story…in short I entered Junior Seminary in the New South Wales town of Galong to study to become a Redemptorist Priest…I Professed Temporary Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience in 1964 where my mother and my grandmother and her sister were present…

Second front right..

I undid my habit for the last time and caught a train from Ballarat to Melbourne with $50 and a new suit and a packet of cigarettes ..This part of my life was without Sammy and at 59 years of age I began the journey of Love….I have learnt a lot from Samran and I hope that his life this past 18 years has given him as much Joy as it does me…

THE MAN WHOM I LOVE

I had travelled to Thighland….Indeed Siam or even a further stretch ‘The Land of Smiles’ and I dd recently hear ‘The Land of Smirks’

My first visit was in 1999…..I was living in Melbourne, Azia had already seduced me earlier with my first experience, Indonesia..no it was Lombok, not Bali..

An ex Catholic Monk having been ill health retired from the Mystery of Eduction in Victoria in 1988….My deepest thanks to Maurice Blackburn and The VTU……Yes that long ago my comrades…In 1968 I was the Treasurer of the SRC…I failed..who became a Professor at a Buddhist University in the City of Chiangmai …So I began teaching for the second time but with a tsunami of Saffron young men sitting in the desks in front of me….Ajarn….

I am not a Buddhist, much of what I read makes sense to me…..for a catholic seminarian there was attraction some thirty years later, as the University had a serenity that I was used to….A cell, a room, a bed, a desk and a preadue for those hours of kneeling..and it was an all male environment…However since my departure in 2006 wimmin are now students but I think not in the same classes as the monks whom I taught…..I am sure I learnt far more than they educed..

I lived in Thailand in 2005 in Hua Hin previously I taught at the Buddhist University in Chiangmai for four years….Ajarn Lloyd…

April 29th….Balcony Bar Bangkok…once owned by Molly Meldrum…there was an exchange in Thai between myself and a young Thai man……I was hungry, wanted to sit and eat with a glass of red…he sat with me because my Thai Lingo was a strong way to begin…..I had little interest but spent the night with him…

It is almost 18 years ago….I have learnt far more than I have taught ..I have been offered nothing but love from family and friends.

I want it to be made clear how much I love Sammy well before the afterwords…

And in his physical absence as he reconnects with his Biological Family, I find myself wondering is he in his room?

Any of my dear friends would willingly admit that Sammy day by day for 18 years with Lola…..Oi Veh

77 SUMMERS…

I remember looking at my reflection in the window on the train from Murrumbeena to South Yarra in 1966….

There are traces, vestiges of a face I once knew….Black Horn Rimmed Glasses ….de rigeur for the period..

I had only left a Major Seminary in the same year….but eros was never tamed only the religious denial of the sap rushing towards the loins, an unknown area for I had lived outside the touch and contours of my own flesh for decades…

Elder and often used term….across cultures…Now I am, fully bona fide…I have been loved, hated and ignored….Not much different from many ….

I do not know how I have survived ….apart from a few decent doctors and nurses….

And along with Sammy those of you know, that your loving kindness played a major role….and continues to do so…..Lloyd

PEDAGOGY

This picture was 40 years after I was ill health retired as a Primary Teacher….

November 30th 1983…..

This seems to be the day that rain is falling, kids are somewhat disturbed at having to suffer unjust incarceration in the 130 year old school building, although carpet has proved to be of some absorptive quality. The kids are singing along with the record, some are writing the words- smiles, some, blank faces.

Stepping back, the emotional vision so often clarified, defined but the absolute closeness..

It is mourning that has become and that needs certain ‘after-care’ assistance from time to time which will not be available in Rome.

It is here that the standing back must occur. Not within the walls of pensions across the parabola that has been dreamt up, fantasided .

Distancing is so necessary. If there is any worth in this friendship it will remain with time..