The Prodigious Talent Of The Late Michael Callen

20 years ago (20!) I accompanied my then boyfriend Simon, who was a research scientist working in AIDS (specifically education and its effect on gay men), to an international AIDS conference in Hobart, Tasmania. It was an amazing trip. I met some lovely people, learned heaps from the conference sessions, booed Wilson Tuckey (along with everyone else), participated in a civil disobedience act by informing the police I had committed (the then illegal) act of sodomy on Tasmanian soil, and even had dinner with a then very closeted (but now not) leading judge. 1988 was an amazing year, I was 24 and very much in love with Simon, it was the same year I backpacked around Europe and a year before I came to live in Sydney from Adelaide.



One of the highlights of the conference though was meeting the American singer Michael Callen. Even then Michael was considered a long term survivor of AIDS. Sadly, he passed away 5 years later in 1993 at the age of 38, but he left a legacy of fab work behind him, including cameos in the films "Philadelphia" and "Zero Patience".

Tasmanian activist (and part-time tour guide) Rodney Croome gave us a homo-tastic tour of the colonial penal institution at Port Arthur, and while we were on the bus there Michael very sweetly gave me a cassette of his latest album with a beautiful inscription in it. Basically saying that he wished he had had young role models like Simon and I when he was growing up. Here's his cover of "Where The Boys Are" from the very same album:

(Slightly NSFW, if you're watching this at work that is, in that the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name calls out the f-bomb in the beginning.)

Sweet Babbie Jebus, that Michael could hit the right notes!

[Updated: I dragged out a couple of old photo albums last night to show Tall & Handsome some pics of me at the Berlin Wall in 1988, an lo there in the back of the album were some snaps from the conference and a couple of Michael. Awwww. Made me all nostaglic, it did.]