Originally from Malaysia, Ivan Yeo is a gay Chinese man now living in New Zealand. 

Ivan Yeo learnt soon after his arrival in New Zealand that he was not going to be a hot item in the gay world.  A friend told him.

“He told me there was a hierarchy of being gay, what colour plays on the top and which one is the lower.  Unless you’re white, young, blonde, then you’ll be the top line of meat,” he laughs.  “Being Asian is down in the food chain, and he said I’d most likely end up with an older white male.”

In his late twenties, Ivan escaped his oppressive and homophobic home country of Malaysia to come to New Zealand.  Being able to express himself as a gay man without having to lie to his parents or friends about what he got up to at the weekend was like living in a “wonderland”, but he hadn’t counted on the responses that’d face him whenever he logged into dating websites.

You’ll still see it now if you venture into smartphone hookup apps, often in capital letters on the more obnoxious profiles: NO ASIANS.  It left a sour taste.

“I have to say, growing up, being someone who never felt like they were good enough…and then to go to another world and having all these negative messages just reinforced that,” Ivan says.  “I’m not good enough because I’m gay, I’m not good enough because I’m Asian, I’m not good enough anywhere I turn to.”

When Ivan was growing up, sexuality was not discussed at all.  The idea of living your life with another man was a complete fantasy.  Society expected you to grow up, marry and have children to continue your family tree.  Ivan realised when he was a teenager that he was gay, and the thought of not being able to fit the mould made him deeply depressed.

“I remember when I was younger, like twelve or thirteen, questioning my mum and saying, ‘why did you give birth to me?’ I hated myself, I hated the world.  I didn’t know how I could live as myself, so why would they want to bring me into a society knowing that I could never fulfil the obligations society has set me up to do?”

Coming to New Zealand was a revelation for him.  His first friends were a gay couple who showed him that two men could actually live together and be happy.  It was a dream he’d pretty much given up on by the time he had a chance encounter at a bus stop one afternoon.

Then at university, Ivan’s classes had finished for the day.  His mind raced with thoughts of assignments, and he was preoccupied.  He’d not done well at school growing up, and had always felt “stupid” in class.

A handsome man asked him where the next bus was going.  Ivan answered the question and thought nothing of it.

“Honestly, I had no clue.  First, that he was gay, secondly that he actually thought I was cute.  I didn’t associate cuteness with myself, I didn’t think people actually found me attractive,” he laughs.

The bus arrived, and the mystery man motioned for Ivan to sit next to him.  He didn’t find out till later that Gerry (for that was his name) was actually just looking for any excuse to talk to him.

They married in a civil union ceremony two years ago.  It proved to be a pivotal point in Ivan’s life, not only in terms of feeling a safety, security and love that he’d never experienced before, but in opening a new chapter with his family.

Ivan had come out to his family after moving to New Zealand, and initially things had not gone well.  By the time he married Gerry and they made their first trip back to Malaysia together, things were very different.

“It changed the whole dynamic,” Ivan says.  “The concept of having someone to look after your son or daughter is so important in Chinese culture.  They were happy for me and Gerry because they felt we had somewhere we could both call home.”

It’s evident from the beaming holiday photos of Ivan and Gerry together with parents, cousins, nephews and nieces that they are very much part of the family.

In Chinese culture, things are seen as collective rather than individual.  This can have its negative aspects with regards to prejudice around homosexuality and mental illness: one person’s “affliction” can bring shame on the whole family.

But Ivan has managed to turn that collective worldview into a positive as part of life in New Zealand.  It is what keeps him well.

“I will do things for other people, because my father taught me this,” he says.  “You live for other people, and other people will live for you.  Anyone who’s my friend, I will try my best as a friend to take care of them, and I’m still doing it.”

Ivan’s full story can be found in the feature-length documentary Men Like Us, now available on DVD on digital download. 

This story originally appeared on Christopher’s own blog bipoloarbear here.

Rob Calder features in the documentary about gay life in New Zealand, Men Like Us. 

As you read this sentence, Rob Calder is living the worst nightmare of many gay men.  He is 78 years old and single.

This is precisely why I was drawn to meet him.  Not just because he is single, but because he is single and flourishing.

Coping successfully with older age is something Rob does remarkably well, although he laughs that he still has days when he wants to lie in bed with the blankets over his head.

Some gay men reaching retirement age are in long-term relationships, and that’s their built-in support system.  What if you’re on your own in a world where you’re gay and there doesn’t appear to be anything that reflects your experience?

As I was delighted to discover by talking to Rob, there is actually a lot more than you think there is.  Older gay men have found and created their own social and support networks, but you have to look in order to find them.  You have to be active and put yourself out there, and Rob Calder is a man with a full diary.

“I think it’s extremely important to have a sense of control over your life, whatever age it is,” he says.

Rob has a tanned and healthy complexion, so it comes as little surprise when he says he’s been a naturist for a good part of his life.  “All my life I’ve liked to be naked in the sun, and I still do.”

Having only had my first experience of this recently, the idea is one I find personally horrifying.  I suggest that Rob must have always been comfortable with his body.

“No,” he says firmly, “I used to think it was awful and I was ugly.”

In Rob’s case at least, growing older has meant that those neuroses have fallen away.  He now does life modeling.

“I used to do it as a student to earn money, without my trousers off,” he laughs.  “Then more recently I had friends who were artists, and they wanted a model, so I was it.  And these folk became my friends.  I just liked going along and being with them.”

He pulls out a folio to show me the drawings.  The lines and contours of his body are beautifully rendered, and I can see the attraction in giving yourself as a subject in this way.  If you’ve ever harboured feelings that you don’t measure up physically, seeing yourself the way that others do in the form of art can be very empowering.

Seeing drawings of Rob naked brings up the inevitable question of sex.  Sexual and romantic desires do not go away as we age, although there’s a perception that such things turn off like a tap at sixty.

Rob laughs that “the plumbing doesn’t work as well as it used to, but you’ve got be very philosophical about that.”  However, he adds, “I think I’ve got much more attracted to other men as I’ve got older.”

The idea – or hope – that older people are asexual does not line up with reality at all.

“I’ve had friends who’ve worked in old folks’ homes and they say that many old folk are just desperate to be touched,” he says.  “I think intimacy is something that everybody needs, and it’s quite hard as you get older to get intimacy.  And that’s more being close to somebody than being sexual.”

When Rob retired, he set himself a series of goals, and steadily ticked them off.  He joined the gym and stayed active physically.  He taught himself to type.  He joined the gay and lesbian choir.  He’s recently taken up Tai Chi.  He reads a lot and attends lectures that interest him at universities.

He also likes holidays, but in a move that would seem unthinkable to the Facebook generation, he doesn’t take photos.  He keeps a journal, but it is reserved for postcards and bits of paraphernalia he finds interesting.  He doesn’t write a diary or keep a narrative.

It’s something I find intriguing and horrifying in equal measure.  Memories, like good wine, can mature over time, and as we get older they become more important to us.  While aging has never frightened me – forgetting terrifies me utterly.

“I went away overseas as all young Kiwis did, a long time ago, and I took photographs which were slides in those days.  I’ve looked at them twice since 1960,” he says.  “They’re down at my son’s place because he wants to look at them sometime, but he’s not going to look at them.  They’ll just have to be thrown away.  I can’t see any point in having a whole lot of stuff.”

I felt profoundly sad when he said that to me; as if he didn’t see any value in the record of his life.  But I realised with his next sentence that it’s not an outlook borne out of depression, but of mindfulness and living in the present.

“I like to be in today, really,” he says, before paraphrasing one of his favourite quotes from the Sanskrit: “Yesterday is only a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision.  But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

It’s said with such a deep sense of satisfaction that I envy his peacefulness.

“I’m very lucky,” he says.  “I’ve got good friends, I’ve got enough money, I’ve got good health.  I think I’m pretty optimistic, with the proviso that I’m allowed to get grumpy or sad every now and then.

“Mainly because I would really like to have a partner, I think,” he adds.  “But that’s ok.”

Rob accepts that life doesn’t have to be perfect in order for you to be happy.  “I’m about a million times more in touch with my feelings than I was as a young person.  I can express them, have people listen and accept them.

“And the other good thing about being older is that you’ve been through crap times and you’ve got through them.  So when a crap time comes along, I go with it, and know I’ll come out the other side.  You know you can, and you know you will.”

Rob’s full story can be found in the feature-length documentary Men Like Us, now available on DVD on digital download.

This article first appeared on Christopher’s own blog bipolarbear here. 

Michael Bancroft is a gay man and a former Catholic priest. 

After leaving the priesthood, it took Father Michael Bancroft six months to return to church because he could no longer be, as he puts it, “the holy man standing up front in church clothes who was struggling” with his homosexuality.

Trying to slip quietly in to St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland, particularly when you’d been a high-profile priest there, is a bit like attempting to sneak into the bank wearing a Nasty Pig jockstrap.

The Mass ended. Michael headed for the door, only to find himself laid up by blue-haired parishioners. They surrounded him so he couldn’t escape.

Was he to be berated for his sins?  Asked questions about his choice of lifestyle?  Spat on for being a disgusting hypocrite?

For the majority of out gay men, what Michael called struggling we would merely call living, but the Catholic Church is not known for its tolerance – let alone acceptance – of homosexuality.

Michael’s vocation came at an early age.  Now in his early sixties, he came from a large Catholic family. In his post-World War II generation, entry into the priesthood was just another career opportunity, actively encouraged by the church from primary school onwards.

He entered the Marist brotherhood, became a high school teacher and football coach, and eventually led the procession for Pope John Paul II’s Mass in Auckland Domain for the Polish pontiff’s mid-1980s visit. There’s even a photo of him receiving communion from the soon-to-be saint.

In 1987, Michael was ordained a priest.  By 1991, he was conducting over two dozen funerals a year for gay men who had died from AIDS-related causes.

He was asked by Auckland’s bishop at the time to join the Interfaith AIDS Ministry Network. The bishop had received disturbing reports of gay Catholics dying and being ostracised by the very people who are supposed to provide comfort, support and unconditional love.

Being asked to do this work was no coincidence. Although it remained unspoken, Bishop Denis Brown knew that there was…something about Michael.

“I suspect he already knew that I was gay, even though we didn’t discuss it,” he says.  “In latter years it became pretty evident to me that he saw that as a way of supporting me as a person, because he would often comment to me, ‘keep up the good work, I need you, but for your own sake, Michael, be careful.’”

Brown was already hearing reports that Michael was “flaunting himself in the gay bars” and “hugging and kissing other men too often”.  The reports were eventually traced to a single gay Catholic man that, for whatever reason, didn’t feel comfortable with Michael’s presence in a gay venue. 

Perhaps this person was unaware of Michael’s many hours nursing other gay men, in some cases twenty years younger, through their final hours.  Being there for that man’s partner, his family.  For half a decade, his life was a revolving door of hospices, hospitals and family homes.

Michael’s vocation was not a supernatural one, but a human one.  The priests, brothers and nuns he saw around him as a child were genuine role models.  As a young man, he “wasn’t having deep spiritual thoughts, visions or anything like that.  It was just human beings that I saw as good people, dedicating themselves to God through their work, and me saying ‘I think I could do that’.”

In the end, that wasn’t good enough.

By a stroke of coincidence, the Auckland premiere of my film Men Like Us, in which Michael tells his extraordinary journey of spirituality through the Marist brotherhood, the Catholic Church, the AIDS epidemic in the gay community and beyond, fell exactly on the date of his 25th anniversary as an ordained priest.

It was never formally acknowledged by the church.  It was as if he never existed.

But to the blue-rinsers who surrounded him on that day he worked up the courage to face his old congregation, six months after leaving the priesthood, he would never be forgotten. The circle became a group hug.

“You’ll always be Father Michael to us,” said one of them. “Just know that we’re always here to support you, and we hope that one day our church will come to an understanding that it has to accept difference.”

Maybe one day it will, but in the meantime Michael continues to find meaning and beauty in life, and contribute to his community.  For other gay men struggling with the conflict between being gay and a person of faith when your religion doesn’t want you, he has some simple words:

“Look at yourself as a person.  If you believe in God, you’ve been created by God through the gift of your parents,” he says.

“There is a little poster I’ve always loved – ‘God loves me, because God doesn’t make junk.’

Michael’s full story can be found in the feature-length documentary Men Like Us, now available on DVD on digital download.

This article first appeared in Christopher’s own blog bipolarbear here.