Aaron's story

Patience

I'm the warrior
born to fight
singled out
alone

So I take them on
keep demanding
my better life

They're afraid
rabid
shouting severe ferocity
mumbling savage severity

Violation of my basic right
toxic shame my plight

So I take them on
keep demanding
my better life

Aaron Potter

Race around
knock your brother down
drive me off the road

& you try to tell me
I'm insane

I don't think so

Kill the earth
genocide
can't say you're sorry

& you try to tell me
I'm insane

I don't think so

Don't tell me -

Find a market for
my sanity

drugs won't set us free

& you try to tell me
I'm insane

I don't think so

Aaron Potter

Warrior - the medal for survival and beyond

Born a warrior, yet a reluctant warrior

Accidental warriors - inching towards equality

In my teens I had wondered about my developing sexuality. It was a confusing and inconclusive time. I lacked the support, the language, and the skills to meaningfully address the issue.

I remember at seventeen or eighteen, being picked up at social events and having men try to be sexual with me in their cars. This is not healthy behaviour. Please don't do it. I even went and waited outside a toilet to see if I was gay. Thankfully I must have chosen the wrong one. I was naïve and easy prey. Eventually I discovered something about my sexuality. Though maladjusted and inadequate, socially and personally, I managed to form some meaningful emotional and sexual heterosexual relationships.

After the darkest, lost and wandering years of my life, I decided in my early thirties, to try marriage. This I found to be a dysfunctional dream. It ended ten years later. I am thankful for my son, and for some positive lessons I learned from that time.

Now was a turning point. I found language, resources and support networks. I worked and worked, and eventually developed a lifestyle I was happy with. For the first time, I was financially independent, and in a happy hetero friendship/relationship. Two firsts. A culmination and celebration that lasted over five years. Eventually we grew apart, but we parted better people for having been together.

Single again, I was drawn to the gay community because of the shared struggle against oppression and abuse. They were successful at being different. I met gay people and we shared our stories.

Enter Homophobia. Even though I was open-minded and inclusive by nature, I had had deeply ingrained homophobic conditioning. I had indirectly eroded a lot of it in my intense work towards self-growth, but when I had neighbours banging on my door asking me to come out and fight because they thought I was gay, I knew something else was happening.

I had some unfinished business with my adolescence, I had to acknowledge that I had gay feelings, feelings that I must have previously denied or diverted. The possibility of being bisexual, or of being attracted to men had never really worried me. I just hadn't gone into it. But it sure worried some other people, and they let me know with the same violence and oppression I had seen before. Again I was being set up to be the victim, the loser.

There's nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it. I found out about Bfriend and joined. Their project in Adelaide offered a haven, and an alternative to the role of victim. Workshops became sources of information and places for meeting people in the same situation. I studied books on homophobia and did volunteer work. I informed the Police Victims Officer and the Housing Trust of the homophobic persecution around my home. I hope that one day resources will be spent on TV campaigns to expose homophobia, and to debunk the myths and stereotypes about same-sex attraction.

Today I am more comfortable with my bisexuality. It's different from being gay, and different from being straight. I've always believed that each person is a combination of male and female energies. I'm one of those people who take a long time to accept that there is a problem. It's still depressing to look at how we treat each other and the planet. But there is a problem, and we have to get on with solving it.

In the gay community I have found worthwhile involvement and authentic caring. This is the result of the common experience of the members of the minority group. The community releases in us the power of acceptance, a positive force so lacking in the wider community, a force that enables personal development like nothing else.

I am at the beginning of this phase of self-discovery and fulfillment. Already I am a better person for knowing myself more. The door is open to life, love and friendship, a door once barred by fear and trauma.

The battle rages on- to somehow assist those phobia-sufferers to recognise and own their own problem; to stop people inflicting their inability to love their fellow human beings on those around them.

More importantly, I strive to develop healthy interactions with others in my new community. I am no longer alone.

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