Pictures Still Not Working

The Pictures are still not working. I don't know why I can't upload photographs anymore. It looks perfect but then after I click Done it just turns into gibberish, not a picture. It's a pity because I love putting pictures up here from my camera phone; I'm a frustrated photographer or a frustrated painter at heart. Oh well.

Had a madly hectic week; one of those been everywhere, done everything, the fingers lying across the keyboards, dealing with crap. Nothing is straightforward, but problems were invented to be solved.

Typing up this story of myself when I was 16, called And Then A Funny Thing Happened, published in an anthology more than a decade ago now, I just can't imagine how my parents did what they did. I have a 16-year-old son and I would do anything to protect him. I just got thrased and thrashed and thrashed, and when I wouldn't sit still for it, they would both chase me around the house with the belts snaking out towards me, hitting and hitting and hitting. It would be regarded as child abuse these days; then I suppose it was called discipline. It was just abuse. No wonder I walked off down that road, never to return.

"As he grew older things changed. Once the serial subject of unrequited love, now it was his turn to experience the agony of wanting someone who didn't want him. Desperately in love with a painter who didn't want to know about him, he made a complete, esperate fool of himself. Shattered self-esteem led him to weepy, melancholic dawns across the white terraced houses and the flowering frangipani of Paddington.

At the same time the experience of being gay in Sydney was changing, becoming less singular as a gay culture and identity developed. No longere unique but communal, he longed for love, a relationship, a type of marriage. He wanted desperately to have a boyfriend, to be part of a couple. He didn't want to be single any more. He mooned through a succession of bumbled affairs, young men standing awkwardly in the back yard, waiting for him to make the move.... I was thinking of making a pass at you... Were you now?