But I was wrong. He told me later he was totally preoccupied with sex. Sex, he admitted later, was this huge thing with him. When you’re a virgin you don’t know how to admit you don’t really know how things work. He’d study full frontals in Playboy, but they didn’t seem to make him any wiser; so he pretended indifference when, really, he was going wild.
Once, when we were talking about sex, he said that the trouble with men’s magazines that show all and talk about seduction is that they never talk about the preliminaries. Exactly how you actually go about undressing someone, or whether they undressed themselves and you did the same, or whether the girl was supposed to unbutton your shirt or pull down the zip of your fly as a sign of her agreement. To be totally sophisticated was terribly important to their image and they couldn’t imagine sort of fumbling about and learning on the job like other guys. So they acted dead casual, when inside they were going crazy with lust and stuff.
Damon also had something else to contend with. In the middle of his final-year school exams, the most difficult period in a teenager’s life, he had been called to the Haemophilia Centre and told he was HIV positive. Imagine finding out in the middle of HSC exams that you have AIDS!
When we started to go out in April 1985, he told me. He explained carefully that he wasn’t sick and that there was nothing wrong with him, but he was HIV positive and that sometimes developed into full-blown AIDS but that it wouldn’t with him, he’d definitely beat it come what may.
I remember thinking nothing of it. If Damon said he’d beat it, he would. Damon was very proud of his mind. He believed it could beat anything. He talked about it a lot, how if you can control your mind you can beat pain and discomfort. It was something he’d gotten from his father from a very young age. So the news of his HIV positive diagnosis wasn’t like a clap of thunder in my consciousness.
No one outside the medical profession knew very much about AIDS in 1985 and I didn’t ask him a lot of questions. I don’t think he knew too much himself, so I just accepted the news and our lives went on. I felt very privileged that he’d told me, because obviously it was an incredibly private thing to be told by someone. Of course it was very important that I know. Later I realised that Damon would never not have told me, he just wasn’t like that. But there must have been something in the back of his mind, a real fear of harming me which made Damon very careful about sex, because we didn’t have sex for a long time after we started going out. Damon was worried for me and scared inside, though he couldn’t show any of this. His hands loved me and said things I could feel very strongly.
I now realise Damon had a real fear about his HIV as far as it involved me, but at the time I didn’t understand this. I sort of vaguely understood that it was something which could be sexually transmitted but I didn’t really know. I mean, no one at the time seemed to know. Damon’s doctors hadn’t told him he couldn’t have sex. One of them had simply said he should always use condoms, but there was nothing new in that. And then he had to overcome the trauma around condoms and all that sort of stuff and that took a while.
I had no problems about sex at all, I really didn’t. I just thought we’d leave it up to time and so on; when it happened I’d be happy but not overwhelmed, it just wasn’t this big thing with me. I was so happy moving in and knowing I was being loved, so it didn’t really matter; I honestly didn’t think about it that much. I was a bit shy about my body, but not for the usual reasons. I was ugly and gawky and skinny with small breasts; these were things that troubled me greatly.
Damon was also a bit shy, maybe for the same reasons and, although I loved his body, he was no Arnold Schwarzenegger or even Burt Reynolds. He’d brought a set of weights from home and he used to work hard, puffing and huffing without any discernible result, though he never told me how long he’d been at it. One morning unbeknownst to me he’d been doing his exercises and had just finished and he’d left the weights on the floor. I entered the room humming happily and I saw they were in the way, so I reached down with one hand and picked them up and started swinging them around like a circus strongman, shouting “Wahee! Look at me!", swinging the weights around in a big arc and puffing my cheeks out. Then, without thinking, I put them somewhere out of the way and caught Damon looking at me as though he was about to cry. Instead, he burst into laughter; and that was the last time he ever used weights. I was glad about this, because I was pretty sure they were giving him bleeds and I loved him just the way he was, a bit crooked in places. He certainly was no Greek statue but I loved his body.
And so for some weeks after we’d moved into the little cottage in Woollahra we’d get into our pyjamas and go to bed and just lie there and hold hands. Sometimes, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and the moonlight would be shining through the dormer window and it would fill the room with silver light and we’d still be holding hands; I’d bring Damon’s hand up to my lips and kiss it and begin to cry, it was just so lovely being with him.
That was the wonderful thing; there’d been no discussion, I’d just sort of moved in. It seemed, at the time, to be the most natural thing in the world to do. Damon sort of felt worried for me that I’d missed out on things; we’d exchanged confidences with one another and I know he felt upset that I’d never had a proper family like his own. In fact I was jealous of his childhood, his parents and brothers and his happy home. Of course I had no idea at that time how tough it had been for him growing up as a haemophiliac.
He told me what it was really like to be a haemophiliac, the pain and the hours alone and wishing you could just do things other kids did. He told me how he imagined himself doing things, being terrific at something physical, but then not allowing the fantasy to build up too much because he had to keep a grip on the reality of who and what he was. “The only thing I could play was ping-pong and I was terrific!” he’d sometimes boast, but always with a sad little smile on his face.
He didn’t tell me any of this out of self-pity, but I knew he’d never told anyone before. Despite his haemophilia Damon was very sure about himself; compared to him I felt very weak. I too had never shared confidences and, when I told him about my life, I felt sure he’d never tell anyone else and that he’d look after me.
It was truly amazing. Things about myself that had worried me all my life didn’t seem to concern him in the least and things about him that worried him, like his atrophied leg and bent arm and stiffened elbows and wrists, I didn’t even notice. I certainly wasn’t shocked by his HIV status.
It was simply a case between us of, “Is that all?” We both realised that our worries and fears were just so petty. Damon gave me a lot of strength and made me glad to be who I was and even proud of growing up as I had. But I think he wanted us to be a family, so that I could know what that was like, too.
At last I had my own house to play in. All the dreams of cleaning up Maison le Guessly were taken into that tiny little cottage. It sure got a going-over. I scrubbed and polished and cleaned the windows and borrowed his parents’ vacuum cleaner and hoovered the fading, ratty old carpet with its barely recognisable pink rose pattern about eighty times, until the threads of its threadbareness practically pleaded for mercy.
I remember waking up and hugging myself because today was the day I was going to scrub the bathroom walls and floor and inside the cupboards. I’d bought some Brasso to shine the ancient copper shower rose, green with verdigris, and the copper pipe that led to the small gas heater on the wall. In my mind’s eye I could see the shower rose and the pipe shining with a bright coppery glow against the flaking calcimine wall. It seemed like the biggest adventure possible and I hoped that I’d find the bathroom really filthy when I examined it on my knees. Eighteen years of frustration were building up into a cleaning frenzy and itching to be let loose and no bathroom on earth was going to be able to withstand my scrubbing brush and heavy bombardment bleach.
Housekeeping was no hardship, I can tell you. I’m sure I’ve got a very strong mother-program in me. I’d treate
d my mother like a child, and Daddy, in some ways even my grandmother Muzzie as I grew a little older and, of course, my brother was always like my own child. Now I had Damon, I’m pretty sure there was a pattern happening there somewhere inside.
We didn’t know at the time how upset we were making a lot of people because we were together. Damon’s closest friends were Toby, Paul, Bardy and Christopher. They were all characters in their own way, but Damon loved Christopher for being an eccentric right from the moment he’d met him in primary school. While his other friends were never very close to floppy, gangly, totally absent-minded Christopher whom Damon thought of as a genius, they would spend hours together and really loved each other.
All the friends were told about his HIV status and, like me, they’d accepted it without any trauma. But, for some reason or other, they’d told this to their parents. Parents who knew the Courtenay family were deeply shocked. How could Damon and his parents allow me to put myself at risk? They felt that he was committing a terrible sin.
Only quite recently Damon’s dad told me how he had begged Damon not to take the house and, under no circumstances, allow me to move in. Despite the fact that he trusted Damon and he knew he’d use condoms, he also knew that young people have a sense of their own immortality, even Damon. We might grow careless, if only once, which could be enough to infect me.
Like me Damon hadn’t even thought about my moving in and assured his dad that he wanted the house for only one reason, to listen to the best collection of classical jazz LP records in Australia and, by looking after the house, he could do this for a token rent.
The idea that I might become infected never worried me in the slightest. I didn’t even think about it, so I can’t even say that I was knowingly and lovingly taking a risk. It never occurred to me to worry. I suppose Damon’s dad was right, it must have been a kind of immortality you have when you’re young. I now know that Damon’s parents were pretty worried and must also have been aware of the disapproval of the other parents. But when I did move in, apart from talking needlessly to Damon about condoms and instructing him to be very careful, they never again interfered. They both trusted Damon and loved him and they just had to rely on this trust and love.
Of course, I never told my mum that Damon was HIV positive. If she’d known, she’d have made my life unbearable. I suppose you can’t really blame her, any mother would be pretty upset, but when my mum gets something into her head she’s unstoppable, she is capable of anything. If she’d known about Damon’s HIV she might have phoned all the television stations.
As it was, I’d told her Damon was a haemophiliac and this alone led to a pretty traumatic incident. Somehow, my mum got it into her head that the reason why Damon wanted me and the real reason we were living together was that Damon needed my blood, I was to be his permanent blood supply. She would threaten to take the story on to television, that’s why I was so scared to tell her about Damon’s HIV status.
I didn’t know that Bryce already knew about her, that she’d invaded his office and created a huge fuss on two occasions. Bryce didn’t tell Benita or any of us until after Damon’s death when it couldn’t upset anyone any more.
Living with Damon at close quarters in the cottage, I began to realise just how fragile he was. He was missing a lot of university because he’d wake up with a bleed in a knee or ankle and couldn’t walk for a day or two. Or his hand would blow up and he couldn’t pick anything up for days, not even a pencil. When we got a bleed in his hand or arm he sometimes couldn’t do the transfusion himself and he’d have to go home so his dad could transfuse him or, sometimes, we’d be forced to go to the hospital.
Ever since the time I saw the drunken father of one of my Cross kids beat his small son to bloody pulp on the pavement I have been repelled both by blood and fathers. But now I wanted to help, to take Damon’s father’s place. Damon hated going into hospital, where there were no good memories for him. I asked Damon to show me how to perform a blood transfusion.
I’d seen some prostitutes using a syringe in the public toilets around the Cross and several times I’d observed someone at a party or in a back lane giving themselves a hit. I was familiar with the tourniquet, usually a tie or a strip of cloth, pulled tight with one end held firmly in the mouth and the little syringe pushed into a vein on the inside of the arm. It always seemed such a simple and, at the same time, a defiant, incredibly daring and wrong thing to do. In a perverse way, I found it both glamorous and repulsive. Syringe drugs are the end of the line and are sort of heroic as well as being awful, so you can’t help being awed.
But now it was different. Damon was someone I loved terribly, who was in pain and who couldn’t always help himself and he needed me to get the butterfly needle into his veins. The insides of his thin arms and the tops of his hands, just in front of his wrists, were lined with scar-tissue from years and years of two or three transfusions a week since he’d been a tiny baby. I knew I must learn to get into those veins first time, every time. That was the most important thing I could do for him.
I’d force myself to watch, repulsed and wanting to throw up, as the needle probed into Damon’s soft white arm. I’d grow increasingly dismayed as he’d sometimes try five or six places. The very best place for him was the crook of the elbow, the same vein addicts like to use. He’d refer to it as “Old Faithful” but it had been used so often from childhood and was so heavily scarred that he liked to keep it for a super emergency when all other veins failed.
But even Old Faithful didn’t always work and I’d watch his despair, often wanting to cry out as each carefully aimed jab missed its mark and nothing happened. Then, when he’d finally get the short, stumpy, wicked-looking butterfly needle to centre in a vein and the blood, almost black, would suddenly shoot up the tiny plastic tube which led from the rear of the needle, that was happiness and I’d want to jump for joy.
I realised that forcing myself to watch him over the weeks I’d lost my revulsion for blood, lost it at the joy of seeing him get the needle into a vein. This sharing in the resolution of yet another crisis, knowing that one more needle was home and relief from pain began, was much more powerful than the impulse to throw up at the sight of his blood. When this finally happened, that’s when I knew I was ready to take on the task myself.
I’d watch as Damon quickly connected the end of the tiny plastic tube to a large syringe which contained the stuff that began to stop the bleeding, the clotting factor. I felt certain that I could learn, even though Damon claimed his mother had never been able to put a needle in because she had an almost pathological fear of blood. I said nothing to him, though I was positive it would be different with me. It really did seem relatively easy and I told myself that his misses were because it wasn’t easy to transfuse yourself, that someone else doing it would probably be less clumsy.
After all, he was often putting a needle into an arm, hand or joint that was already bleeding and swollen and very painful. It seemed logical that my undamaged hand would be more steady and more skilful if I could control my initial fear. To this I added the thought that people with a heroin habit manage it and most of them are not exactly Albert Einstein. Sometimes, when Damon had a bad bleed in his right hand, he had to attempt to get the butterfly needle in using his left hand. Only after he’d tried this several times would he give up and call his dad or go to the hospital. Often he’d used up all the good veins attempting to get the needle in and it was a real battle when his dad or the hospital finally had a go.
I felt sure that if I could overcome my fear of blood and the desire to throw up, I’d find transfusing him a relatively easy thing to do. I’d be on the spot and have first go and that could save Damon a little pain. I begged him to let me attempt the task.
But when Damon actually took me through the steps that first time I realised it wasn’t at all as easy as it appeared. He was very casual about it, his voice light and relaxed as though he were teaching me a trick with a length of string, how to make a c
at’s cradle or something equally amusing and inconsequential. The first transfusion he asked me to attempt was in the back of his hand. This is about the second place to use because the fist can be clenched and placed at almost any angle and because it is rested on something it can be kept very still. He placed a tourniquet around his upper arm and pumped his fist furiously until the veins stood up blue and bold on the back of his hand.
I’d already practised under his instruction, sliding the butterfly needle into a smooth-skinned lemon, which is roughly the thickness and resistance of human skin, or so Damon claimed. Now he made me run my fingers down the two or three biggish parallel veins which ran across the back of his hand pointing towards his wrist.
I’d made love to his hands, held them a thousand times, I felt I knew every vibration, every dent and curve and pulse in them, but suddenly this hand, placed so quietly down, ready to accept the needle, was a strange new surface where I’d never been before.
“Feel each with your forefinger, feel each vein, see if it’s got bounce, is smooth and has, you know, tension.” He took my forefinger and made me stroke along two or three veins, “Can you feel them? They’re not all the same, are they?”
I nodded. I was breathing hard, trying to hold back a small panic rising in my chest; the veins all felt the same and all seemed very small. “Choose the one you think is biggest and is nice and firm and smooth.” He pressed my finger down again, moving it along a vein. “What about that one? It feels pretty good.”
“Okay.” I gulped and brought the needle towards it, my fingers gripping and bringing together the plastic butterfly wings attached to the top of the needle.
“No, no!” Damon cried suddenly. I pulled back in shock. “Sorry, babe. The swab. Swab the area first. It must be sterile.”
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