Golden gay times
by Ian Cuthbertson
Retirement by the water, celebrating milestone anniversaries, wondering about nursing homes. It's not the usual media image of a gay couple. What’s it like to age together, gracefully or not, as two women or two men?
Published November 6, 2015. Reading time: 18 minutes
Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love was about to surrender its number one chart spot to The Beatles’ Let It Be. Germaine Greer was getting ready to launch The Female Eunuch.
It was 1970. John Gorton was Australia’s Prime Minister and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who called homosexuals “insulting, evil animals” and did everything in his power to keep homosexuality repressed and illegal, was the enduring premier of the state of Queensland.
That’s when John Ebert and John Stafford met – formally, at a church function, on Easter Monday. Ebert was 18, Stafford about to turn 28. Now 63 and 73, after four and a half decades together, they are looking great.
Agile and slim, smartly turned out in almost-matching blue sweaters on the day we meet, they rush around the smart, three-bedroom East Brisbane apartment they have called home for 35 years. Across the road, the house where they spent the first decade of their relationship has been demolished to make way for a car park.
John Stafford (left) and John Ebert
The apartment’s balcony overlooks the river for leisurely lunches and there are water views from most of the bedrooms. It is uncluttered except for one wall practically falling down from the weight of mounted, blue crockery. Otherwise the walls are spare, adorned here and there with artworks that mean something to both men.
There is nothing obviously “gay” about the place, except perhaps that the living room is arranged to suit their preferences of reading (Stafford) and surfing the web (Ebert) in the evenings, rather than the suburban ideal of all the chairs facing the television. Neither has much time for TV.
This is not how gay life tends to look in the media. Flick through publications aimed at gay men and there they are at the pool party, glistening in their togs. Muscles, designer stubble and parties that never end: the focus on youth is overwhelming. Young gay men inhabit the social pages, hairy chests bumping, or smooth skinned and sylphlike, arms wrapped around pals.
Yes, there is a party going on, for those lucky enough to come to terms with their sexuality before they are too old to feel welcome. But really, is gay life just about the window between coming out and turning 40? Is that all there is? Is lesbian life just about hanging out in bars and sleeping with a cavalcade of beautiful strangers?
Thankfully, the answer to both questions is a resounding ‘no’, especially for older men and women in long-term relationships. They frequently report high levels of life satisfaction and seem to be at least as happy as their straight equivalents.
In spite of age-related health problems that are almost universal and despite some still frowning on homosexuality, living well in a long-term relationship may be the ultimate revenge on the youth focused gay and lesbian scenes.
Theirs wasn’t a blaze of sexual attraction that flared wildly before smouldering on through four and a half decades. It wasn’t John Ebert’s looks that most appealed to John Stafford.
“It was his spirit, his incredible mind.”
Long before they were introduced, Ebert had grown up seeing Stafford in church and always thought him cute when he was reading at the altar. Both now describe themselves as “recovering Catholics.”
Asked if he was an altar boy, Stafford replies darkly: “Yes. I was taught by the Christian Brothers at the same school for nine years and not one of them molested me. So I’m suing them – for negligence.”
Stafford had just come out of one of those highly physical affairs that burn hotly then self-extinguish. Though he was looking for something deeper, he hadn’t quite been able to let that first big, powerful relationship go. He was a public servant, working for the state in Land Titles. Ebert was what was known as a “bank Johnny” at ANZ, before also joining Queensland’s public service, curiously in the same Brisbane building.
“We were both totally ‘out’ at work,” says Stafford. Given the opprobrium about being openly gay in Queensland in 1970, this seems a brave stance to take.
“If you’re totally out, it doesn’t leave people a lot of room to move,” says Stafford.
Was Ebert the young innocent, meeting the older, more experienced man? “Hardly,” says Stafford.
“I had a lot of sexual experience under my belt at quite a young age,” adds Ebert. “What I didn’t have was much experience of intimacy.”
Ebert's dying father took Stafford by the hand and said, “Look after the little fellow for me, won’t you?”
He idolised his father, a policeman: “My father is for me the ideal, he is the person I try to be like every single day of my life.”
“He was masculine, but gentle. He was very loving, very tactile – he’d think nothing of kissing and hugging my brother and myself in public. That was unusual in those times.”
Tony Ebert always had inklings about his son’s sexuality and they eventually had the official conversation.
“I would prefer that you weren’t gay because it’s going to be a very difficult life for you, but for no other reason than that,” he told John. “You are my son and I love you.”
When John Ebert was still a teenager, his father was brutally bashed while on the job at a rally in Brisbane. Already beaten to the ground, he was kicked viciously in the kidneys, which ruined his health. Tony died when John was just 21. Near the end, he called Stafford into his bedroom, took him by the hand and said, “Look after the little fellow for me, won’t you?”
Stafford lets a beat of pure sadness pass, then undercuts it with classic dry humour: “He knew I was going to have a problem, obviously.”
Ebert and Stafford were mightily inspired and politically energised by the Stonewall riots, in which members of New York’s gay community demonstrated against a police raid.
“It was the downtrodden, even within the gay community, who started gay liberation,” says Ebert, referring to Stonewall being led by drag queens, not militant macho homos, contrary to popular belief.
“I have a great appreciation for people who are different in our community,” he says. “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have what we have today.”
Following Stonewall, Ebert sought out active gay organisations in Brisbane and furiously joined up. His social conscience became a lifelong passion, flowering again during the HIV years: Ebert was a founding member of the Queensland AIDS Council and is still involved today.
Asked the key to relationship longevity, Stafford and Ebert are adamant that honesty is the best policy.
They once had a “third wheel” – a man who was sexually involved with them for 10 years.
“If you want to have a successful relationship, there has to be almost brutal honesty,” says Ebert. “If you’re not willing to share your feelings, your innermost thoughts with one another, then I don’t think you have a good basis for going into a relationship.”
They also have a rule about infidelity: it must be discussed openly. Earlier in their relationship, this openness allowed them to have a “third wheel” – a man who was sexually involved with them for 10 years.
Though Ebert feels he doesn’t need gay marriage, as he and Stafford were one of the first couples in Australia to enter into a civil partnership, he understands what it means to others in the community.
"As a matter of respect for the passion and energy people have put in to change the law, I would get married if I could, to honour those who have fought so hard for it," he says.
What else does the future hold?
“I just hope we can go on for as long as possible as we are,” says Ebert.
“And if we do have to go into a care facility, I hope there is one where our relationship and our love will be honoured, that we won’t be forced back into the closet in order to live in the same aged care facility together.”
After 25 years together, Carole Ruthchild and Julie Price decided – almost on a whim – to get married. On January 1 this year, on a trip to Canada, they wed in Vancouver in the presence of family and friends.
For these politically active feminists, it represented an evolution in their thinking.
“I was always opposed to traditional marriage,” says Ruthchild, 61. “Historically, the wedding ring was about the husband’s possession of the woman, and was a way of ensuring that any children born were his.”
So how does a woman who has always held this view come to change her mind?
“You begin to realise that relationships have changed,” she says. “The opposition to gay marriage is purely and simply about discrimination, about trying to deny to gay and lesbian people something heterosexual people take for granted.”
On the way to visit Ruthchild’s brother in Canada for a traditional family Christmas, the pair started chatting on the plane about ways they could celebrate their 25 years together. The idea of marriage came up.
“It wasn’t something I ever thought would happen, so it was kind of a surprise for both of us,” says Ruthchild.
For Price, 55, the philosophical shift towards the idea of marriage equality came from an unexpected quarter.
“I began to realise that young, straight people were turning up at rallies on my behalf,” she says, laughing. “And they kind of convinced me this was important. You know, you get lazy in your belief system. I think I’d taken on the restriction growing up that gays and lesbians can’t get married and that it was just aping heterosexual problems anyway.”
Growing up in Leicester, in her native England, Ruthchild didn’t give much thought to homosexuality.
“When I was at university in the 70s, I realised I was very attracted to a friend and we had a brief fling,” she says.
“She kissed me, in the service station,” says Price. “I was shocked.”
“But it was only after I got involved in feminist issues that I started thinking about heterosexuality more critically and realised there was this whole other possibility. Lots of lesbians were active in the women’s movement and at feminist conferences you’d see women together holding hands and being utterly loving with one another.
“And I thought that was lovely, that I would like that.”
Price knew very early on that she was gay. She grew up with crushes on girls and female teachers.
“I did go out with boys, from when I was a teenager, up until I was about 20,” she says. “But it wasn’t a natural fit for me.”
When a friend confronted her about sitting on the fence, Price contacted a young woman who had made her interest apparent and her new life began. A dozen or so years later, Ruthchild and Price met in a dyke bar (their term) and it was not love at first sight.
“I thought ‘who is this bolshie, argumentative English backpacker with a hundred and one opinions?’,” says Price.
Within the week, they met again by coincidence at a hotel during Sydney's Mardi Gras. This time Carole was less drunk and less severe.
“She was all done up in her work gear, stilettos and the whole deal,” says Price.
As well as being chic and attractive, it seemed she was also nice – far nicer than Price remembered. In her early 30s at the time, Price had become a librarian. Ruthchild, in her mid-30s, was a computer programmer.
“The person you are going to live with has to make you laugh.“
There was plenty to do during Mardi Gras season, of course. Then one night, when they popped down to a servo to get cigarettes, something unstoppable began.
“She kissed me, in the service station,” says Price. “I was shocked.”
Neither woman was looking for much more than a fling at the time. But fate had other plans. Both soon found themselves uprooted from their living situations, so the obvious thing was to give living together a go. At first, they shared with another couple, then lived together on their own for four years, before buying the sweet two-bedroom Leichhardt cottage they share today.
And the secret to their relationship’s longevity? Price says she has always had profound respect for Ruthchild, her knowledge and her wisdom.
“I just admire her so much -- Carole’s a very principled woman,” she says. (Ruthchild’s principles have extended to many years as a member of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby.)
“You have to enjoy each other’s company,” adds Ruthchild. “I’m a big believer in a shared sense of humour. The person you are going to live with has to make you laugh.”
Apart from their Canadian wedding, highlights of their life together include first buying, then renovating their home.
“When we finally chose an architect and he started coming up with all these incredibly exciting ideas, it was tremendously exciting,” Ruthchild says. “Until then, I never actually thought we’d do it, that it would all just be too hard.”
Adopted as a child, Price notes more their emotional experiences together, such as having Carole help her through coming out to her stepfather. Ruthchild also stood by Price though a long period of depression, and again last year when she developed breast cancer.
Price admits she used to drink way too much, but now doesn’t. In part, she blames the gay scene.
“That sort of hanging out long-term in the scene, for some of us, leads to quite addictive pathways,” she says. “That wasn’t pretty for a while, either. But Carole is still here.”
Unlike the men in this story, Ruthchild and Price could no more entertain the idea of a “third wheel” in their relationship than fly to the moon.
“Sexual passion means you fall in love with someone [and] then you don’t want to share them with someone else,” Ruthchild says. “It’s one thing if you are a free agent, but quite another if you’re in a relationship.”
“Perhaps men find it easier to divorce sex from emotions. I think to some extent you have to be able to do that in an open relationship.”
The women define themselves as completely faithful to each other. Marriage has only deepened their commitment.
“I didn’t think there’d be any change once we were married and in many ways there wasn’t,” says Price. “But I think there was a tiny foundational shift in my heart.”
Ruthchild is now a public servant. Price remains a librarian. Both women are looking forward to retirement, but aren’t financially ready just yet. When age makes the stairs and upkeep of their cottage unmanageable, they hope to move to an apartment a few kilometres away in Glebe. They speak fondly of the beauty of the area and its social diversity.
“I love the mix of those old Sydney families in those grand houses and the housing commission people around the corner who have also lived there for such a long time,” says Price.
They are looking forward to overseas travel, seeing it as a reward for having worked their whole lives. But most of all, they are looking forward to growing old together. In Glebe.
Murray Sheldrick, 78, and partner James Bellia, 72, have been together for 50 years – yes, half a century. If they look familiar, it might be because recently they were all over the news when they were ordered to stop flying a rainbow flag on the balcony of their Port Melbourne apartment.
Apart from its new political dimension, the three-bedroom seventh floor apartment is spacious and airy, as elegant as you’d expect the home of two accomplished interior designers to be. It has several large terraces (on one of which, the famous flag used to fly), some with 180-degree views over the port to the city.
But their story of flying the flag, of being proudly gay, goes all the way back to Perth in 1965, when they were introduced by mutual friends at a dinner party. Sheldrick was 28 and on the way to being one of Australia’s top interior designers. Not long after they fell in love, Bellia went to work with Sheldrick in his Melbourne interior design business.
“I was his sidekick,” Bellia says. At first, he ran the office and did the books, but soon his own talent was recognised and he began to help with the design work.
The two have quite strong views – possibly controversial ones – on marriage equality and fathering children.
“We don’t need to get married, we don’t need to have children,” Bellia says. “I have always maintained that homosexuality is nature’s way of controlling population.”
“We are here for a reason, not just to go to parties and have sex with each other – and that is the reason. Why do we have to imitate heterosexual life? We just have to be ourselves.”
However, he is just as adamant about the choices of others.
“If same-sex people want to get married, it should be entirely their choice, not up to the church, the government or anyone else, especially people who don’t know anything about gay life,” he says.
Asked what has kept them together for 50 years, Bellia denies that “giving each other space” – as so many couples are apt to answer when asked that question – has been an issue.
“No, we don’t like to be apart,” he says. “Of course, we have been apart for work trips overseas and so on, but our preference is always to be together if we can be.”
In his still strong Italian/Maltese accent, Bellia philosophises about the psychodynamics of longevity in their relationship.
“Maybe because my father died when I was seven years old and I’ve never had a father figure, I guess I’ve always looked – unconsciously or otherwise – for someone to guide and protect me. Murray has always done that job so well; he has protected and guided me for most of my life.”
Sheldrick’s voice, with its measured Australian tones, is reminiscent of Patrick White’s laconic, educated flow.
“We are totally different personalities,” he says. “James is very outgoing and forthcoming with his opinions, whereas I’m more conservative.”
“I’m a steady background for him, I think that’s is what he is trying to say.”
For these two, when it comes to fidelity, the first rule is that they always come home to sleep – they never sleep over. As with Ebert and Stafford, Sheldrick and Bellia have a third person in their relationship, though in their case, that person, Stephen*, is more of a fixture.
For the curious: the threesome used to sleep in one enormous James Bond style bed.
“I will tell you the honest truth now,” says Bellia. “We have been a threesome for 40 years.”
“Ten years into our relationship, we met this wonderful young man and he has been with us ever since. He is quite shy. He doesn’t like to get involved in these press things and prefers to stay in the background.”
For the curious: the threesome used to sleep in one enormous James Bond style bed, but they no longer do. Bellia says he now prefers the space of sleeping by himself, while the others continue to sleep together.
Both men are adamant there have never been any jealousies in their time together as three people in a relationship. Bellia puts that down to Stephen’s nature.
“He is a very loving man, a man who truly values a very stable home life,” he says, without a trace of irony. “All three of us have the same loves – we love nature, plants, our animals, and we love art. We love concerts, ballet, opera and theatre. And yes, it is very handy that we all have the same passions.”
He sustained 42 fractures and was left for dead, as his assailant destroyed much of the house.
One defining incident, however, shook the foundations of their lives.
The three used to have a little hobby farm above Mansfield in the Victorian Alps, which they bought in 1980 and worked hard to turn into what Bellia calls “a little paradise”. In 1998, Sheldrick was there alone. Sound asleep in the middle of the night, he was woken by a tremendous crash and was confronted by a “maniac” with an axe handle, who proceeded to bash him with it, yelling “die, you fucking poofter”.
Sheldrick sustained 42 fractures and was left for dead, as his assailant continued the rampage, destroying much of the house. But Sheldrick managed to call the police before he collapsed, which almost certainly saved his life. He spent three weeks in intensive care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, then wore a body brace for six months because of the fractures in his spine.
“It has ruined his life,” says Bellia. “From the fractures to his skull and subsequent brain injuries, he developed epilepsy.”
Sheldrick also has Parkinson’s disease, the onset of which was likely hastened by the attack, and has developed prostate cancer. In 2006, he needed heart valve replacement surgery. But to the delight and amazement of his doctors and lovers, he sailed through it and has had no heart problems since.
When I tell him he is surely the man of steel, Sheldrick laughs.
“It’s the opposite, I think,” he says, chuckling. “I bounce. I get all these things thrown at me and I just bounce back.”
He says he is accepting of his life as it is and doesn’t worry about the future.
“I don’t put a time span on the years I have ahead of me,” he says. “When your time is up, it’s up, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But when my time does come, I hope I’m able to leave James and Stephen in a good financial position. That will make me happy.”
* Not his real name.
Photography by:
Paul Harris (John Ebert and John Stafford)
Tamara Dean (Carole Ruthchild and Julie Price)
Frances Andrijich (Murray Sheldrick and James Bellia )
