Hey there Guys. Well I’ve just arrived home from Bear New Zealand (BTW it was absolutely amazing!!!) to be greeted by this book on my desk: 117 BPM: Beats, Bashings and HIV Dementia.
This book looks really interesting. I just wanted to send out a big thank you to Anthony for sending me a copy. Once I’ve caught up on sleep I will be able to get stuck into this reading and I will have a review up.
It looks like a great read based around the history of the Sydney gay community from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. It will be interesting to see if there are any tie ins to some of the people I know who were prominent in the era.
From the back cover:
Beats, bashings, and HIV dementia – Now you’re one of us. It is the year NOW. Wearing Spanish boots and floppy shirts and calling themselves the gauchos, four young men in gay self-denial travel through the dark side of Sydney’s sub-culture of the occult; searching for the unprotected sex of the 1960s and 70s.
Historically askew 117BPM is titled after the speed at which 80s disco diva Laura Branigan’s Self Control plays – one hundred and seventeen beats per minute. The four gauchos discover their daily lives are motivated by invisible forces and are intertwined by degrees of separation to the ghost of one gay basher, Rod (the Devil). One gaucho, former Scientologist Dark Damien convinces the other three that gay Asian males have triple x chromosomes which allows them to give birth.
In a hysteria which becomes contagious Dark Damien is out to prove his theory. The gauchos find Asian girly boi Owen in the sling at a gay dungeon wearing only 1970s platform boots waiting for them. Soon the four gauchos stand on the Tamarama cliff tops gazing out to sea.
Sounds interesting thanks mate! You can check out the book here at Amazon.
117 bpm: Beats, Bashings, and HIV Dementia. (Volume 1)
Dr George
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