This was a very random pick from the library shelves; I was intrigued by the idea of a series of letters between two different parts of the one self.
Peter Quarry is an Australian psychologist, entrepreneur, designer, TV personality, portrait artist and now writer. He had a peculiar childhood. His Australian father and German mother met in post-war Germany; she moved to Australia when they married, but sadly his father died young. There followed a period when his mother moved restlessly back and forth from Australia to Europe, not liking one and then being disappointed with the other, on repeat.
She sounds like a nightmare – self-absorbed and yet smotheringly over-involved with Peter and, while not incestuous, inappropriately intimate. The way she shared details of her emotional life was not fair to a young boy…what was she thinking? And when she found an Italian lover, poor little Peter found himself piggy in the middle of a volatile relationship – literally – in a tiny flat in Rome. The Italian was shiftless; his mother was hopeless with money. So life was precarious.
One of the key images from this period is young Peter dolled up in a smart suit, bow tie and all. Mother lived a fantasy life, a Hollywood movie of glamour and romance. She liked to travel by ship, and on those constant cruises he was made to dress in a suit and squire ladies at the shipboard dances. Talk about the stereotype ‘my mother made me gay’!
After that insecure childhood, Quarry was always driven by the need for financial stability. So although he had a hedonistic, often risky gay lifestyle – Quarry doesn’t hold back on the clubbing, drug-taking and sexual adventuring – he was also a successful and wealthy psychologist and entrepreneur in the corporate training field.
With age, Buddhism, health issues and a loving relationship (which was able to become a marriage because Australians chose marriage equality – yay!) Quarry decided to take stock. His psychologist self PQ asked questions, prompted tasks, commented and clarified as ‘Pete’ reviewed his life. This is a hybrid autobiography/self help book, and so I briefly flirted with the idea of a life review myself, but in the end it was Pete’s life story that was most interesting. A great insight into the lives of gay men from the 1970’s on. There’s the sex, drugs & rock’n’roll of course, but also gay ageism, ‘coming out’, youth and beauty culture, prejudice, illegality and of course AIDS. It’s the era of my youth, too, and I thought about my gay friends, some lost now, with more understanding.