![]() ![]() ![]() Tim himself died of the same disease not long after he had finished the manuscript, before it had been published. This isn’t a spoiler it’s well known that John passes away at the end of the memoir, and it’s even implicated in the blurb. He’s in Italy writing a letter addressed to his partner of fifteen years, John, who died of AIDs a few months prior. I’ve just translated the last line of Timothy Conigrave’s memoir, Holding the Man, written in 1995. We sit quietly together, both temporarily out-of-order. Tears fall onto my keyboard and make a little salty moat around my spacebar, which refuses to work for an hour or so afterwards. ![]() The screen wavers in blurred, watery streaks. The language is automatically detected as Italian, and the translation begins: we will see each other… Sadness is caught like a fishbone in my throat. Originally published in Good Reading Magazine October 2015. A piece I wrote about Tim Conigrave’s memoir, Holding the Man, on the 20th anniversary of its publication, and in light of its recent film adaption by Neil Armfield. ![]()
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