The Triumph of Eros Over Thanatos: The Imperishable Beauty of “Holding the Man”

“In short, I am in love with the story of Tim and John. It has enchanted and devastated me for years now, which is why I will use their first names.“

A man sits at his desk by the window, clattering away on a keyboard. He is cold, and he is swaddled in blankets, with a beanie pulled tightly down over his head. He coughs constantly and often has to pause in his work while he overcomes a coughing fit. The man is dying and will soon be dead, but he is holding on until he finishes his book. Many years later, a friend recalls watching him at his work: He is “freezing cold…sitting there…papers everywhere…just madly writing.”

The book he is so desperately composing is the story of the great love—and greater loss—that has defined his life. He is immortalizing himself and the man he called his husband, the late John Caleo. He is setting down their life together, from high school sweethearts to AIDS patients. He is terrified of dying before he finishes, but his terror is misplaced: He will complete his book and only then—shortly after doing so—will he die, aged thirty-four.

The man was the author, actor, activist, and playwright Timothy Conigrave, and the book that was published in 1995, the year after his death, is called Holding the Man. I did not know anything of the story of Tim and John until I happened upon a beautiful 2015 film based on the book. Since that first tearful viewing, I have revisited the film many a time (and foisted it on many a friend). I have also read the book itself, plus the text of the 2006 play based on it, and I have watched the 2016 documentary Remembering the Man, which features remembrances from people who knew the couple as well as photographs, video footage, and the voice of Tim himself, as recorded in January of 1993 for the oral history program of the National Library of Australia. (The details and quote above are taken from this documentary.)