Stephen's Den

It was two weeks ago, late Friday afternoon and I was just putting the finishing touches on a spreadsheet or some such when my phone buzzed angrily. I don’t know why I hate the sound of my phone no matter what the ringtone is. I guess I just don’t look forward to phone calls. “Ally” it announced in bright white letters. I’d better take this.

“Hi Ally” I said in my most cheerful voice.

“Hi” the voice on the other end was quiet, small and unassuming. The voice of a person who is used to slouching just a little to avoid looking conspicuously tall. The voice of someone used to being in the background, trying not to rock the boat, used to barely being seen.

“I got a letter from my father”

Continue reading By any other name

I had been in two minds about going to Vinegar Hill for a few weeks. Vinegar Hill, for the uninitiated, is a great big gay camping event that’s held here in New Zealand every year and every year I seem to be able to come up with an excuse: too far away, too busy, don’t have a tent. It was still 50/50 when I popped into the car in Hamilton to begin the journey down, but just like all journeys, once you get started it’s hard to stop.

Continue reading Vinegar Hill 2010

“Do what makes you happy, Stephen, but don’t do those…. one night stand things… that just makes me frightened” My grandmother’s sound advice. Now, though I have been figuring out how relationships work for quite some time, and though I often go to gay bars. I have never, ever, ever “met” anyone at a bar, let alone experienced that all-to-common “one night stand” phenomenon. That is, until last Thursday. Please don’t read the rest if you don’t want to!

Continue reading One night stand

I knelt there beside his prone body, his mouth was open at an awkward angle that matched his position on the ground. “God, help me, God help me” he managed to squeeze the words around his tongue, his eyes rolling back into his head out of pain… or perhaps it was fear.

Continue reading A Good Thing

Those of you who know me rather well will know that this last month or so has been tough for me emotionally. As is often the case, it involves a guy: a marvellous guy. We’ve been friends for a few years and by happy circumstance recently found ourselves in each other’s arms. At the time I told him I was only in it for the physical, but I was wrong. Deep down, I guess I always knew I was wrong.

Continue reading The heart is slow to learn

I was complaining to a friend of mine the other day about all the things that I had to do: a deluge of responsibilities at work, a torrent of administrative stuff for church. I’m inundated by events I’m supposed to organise, events I’m supposed to turn up to important family commitments. You know, sometimes life gets that way: where you feel as though you’re so busy doing the things you have to do that there’s simply no time left to do the things you really want to do.

My friend then said the strangest thing: “oh, well, at least it’s all good stuff”.

Good stuff?

Continue reading Do What You Want

I met five friends far out in the wood
Rabbit, Eyeore, Owl, Piglet and Pooh

“My friends” I exclaimed
I’m so glad you came
How fares this evening for you?

“Been busy” said Rabbit
“Been thinking” said Owl
“I’ve always just been” said Pooh

“I am angry” moaned Eyeore
“I am worried” squeaked Piglet
“I suppose I just am” mused Pooh

So, Rabbit dashed off in a hurry
Owl’s mind had already flown too
Eyeore slunk under covers
Piglet followed the others

But…

“I’ll stay here with you now” said Pooh

I love New Zealand. It’s my country of choice, I considered myself a New Zealander within a few months of arriving here and I am pretty sure it will always be my “home” even though I don’t plan on living here forever. Still, I have to admit to a little kernel of unpleasantness in our society that has been receiving quite a bit of attention lately.

Those of you outside New Zealand probably haven’t heard about Paul Henry. Well, I hadn’t heard much of him either, but he’s a TV presenter for our breakfast TV show and he has a habit of saying stupid things for laughs. He recently stated on national TV that our Governor General (the person who represents the Queen as head of state) doesn’t “look” or “sound” like a “New Zealander”, despite the fact that the GG was born in New Zealand and has a long distinguished history of serving the country. The reality is: it was a racist assumption that a Fijian Indian didn’t represent “New Zealand” since he, frankly, wasn’t white.

Continue reading NZ Xeno

“Steve, you’ve had really bad luck with that Prius” my friend Sam mused as we returned home after a journey out to West Auckland to see if we could find the guy who broke into my car.

Yes, that’s right, yet again, between 7:09am and 7:14am on Tuesday 7th September, my car was broken into, for a third time. This time, however, it was in my very own apartment building, in my very own carpark!

Here’s a video of the whole event: Video of guy breaking into my car.

Continue reading Sleuthing

A controversial new study from a researcher in Christchurch New Zealand shows that if you are a single parent, your kids are 10% less likely to be gay. If you remarry and raise a child with an opposite sex step parent, then the chances of the child being gay are halved compared to if the child was raised by its biological parents.

You didn’t hear about that? Oh I suppose you only heard about the bit where gay people were more likely to have been abused during childhood. Well, I have actually read the study and actually understand the stats and I can tell you why you didn’t see my headline above. It’s because that finding didn’t fit in with the world view of the researchers running the study, so they chose to gloss over it. After all, we all know that divorce and the “breakdown of family values” is the cause of all the ills in the world and, homosexuality being an ill, it can’t possibly be that single parents or different-sex step-parents are less likely to cause gays, can it?

What’s going on? Is this study giving the wrong answers or is it asking the wrong questions? I argue it’s a bit of both.

Continue reading Divorce prevents homosexuality