Walk the Line

The Sydney Convicts Rugby Club

A friend of mine sent me a text message today alerting me to the fact that SBS was showing a documentary on gay footballers, called Walk Like a Man, featuring the Sydney Convicts.

Well, I’d be confident in saying the vast majority of gay men would be interested in at least checking this out, so it’s no surprise that I stopped watching whatever I was watching and switched over.

Was it because I find footballers physically attractive?  Maybe a little.  But it was definitely more about seeing gay men doing something that is almost exclusively heterosexual.

Masculinity is a very sensitive issue for a lot of gay men.  For some it’s a symbol of aggression and something to be avoided, while for others – like myself – it’s a link to normalcy and a world we don’t want to leave behind just because we’re gay.  On one side is the tendency to be ‘camp’ or effeminate, while on the other hand there’s masculinity – with a thin line between – and there are a lot of gay men who try to walk that line.
Personally, I have a real problem with anything that seems effeminate – in myself and other gay men, even though I know I have certain things that tend to be… less than masculine.  I’m particularly sensitive about it in a partner, and my poor boyfriend (more on that surprising development later) has already bore the brunt of my insecurity there.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of my homosexuality, because I don’t hide it anymore.  I think it may have more to do with ego and superego – what we are and what we want to be.  There’s another line there, too – and it’s even thinner.  Can we find balance between who we want to be and who we are?  Are we all just walking the line between reality and desire?

Putting all this aside for a second, there is a second issue I have spent my short life asking myself about: are there any truly masculine homosexual men in the world?  And not just in the world – could it be possible that they’re in my neighbourhood?
In my experience with internet dating sites, porn and in the flesh, there are some very well built, muscular gay men.  Some have tattoos, shaved heads, and beards.  They can even have a ‘butch’ face on them – it’s all the very picture of a tough, masculine man – but it always turns out that their masculinity is nothing more than an illusion that shatters completely the second they move or talk.  They’re twinks, buffed-up, hairy and inked – but twinks nonetheless.  I wondered if the real thing existed.  And as an aside, I wondered if that’s how I could classify myself, or was I just looking for the kind of man I knew deep down I wasn’t?  Most of these questions – especially the latter – have not been answered, but at least for now I’ve realised they don’t really need to be.

So back to the documentary.  These guys were (in my admittedly limited perspective) complete anomalies.  Rugged and attractive, they were great footballers – focused, ruthless, and aggressive.  They were also gay, not flamboyant, but not afraid to be affectionate or poke fun at themselves.  They were exactly what I was convinced did not exist, and they even flew to America to battle it out with yet more teams full of the same type of men.  It was actual proof that gay men exist.

I had to laugh when one of the players reminisced about the first footy practice he went to with the team – he was so shocked to discover there were actually a lot more masculine gay men out there, and he wasn’t as alone as he’d suspected.  An island floating in a sea of pink glitter.

Are You Sterile?

Heh.  Nothing about fertility here, it’s just a run-down on how the hospital I’m at likes you to scrub-in for surgery.  I’m blogging this because it’s fairly interesting (and a little convoluted), but also so you can get an idea about just how dilligent the surgical teams are about maintaining the sterile field.  Hopefully it makes you feel a little better.  Or not, whatever.

There are 3 scrubs in the process:

First Scrub – 2 minutes:

- Take a sterile surgical scrub brush and open the packet, careful not to touch anything inside it.  Sit it on the bench, and turn the water on (our hospital uses infrared-operated taps you don’t need to touch).
- Hold you hands above your elbows and let the water run over your hands and forearms down to the elbow.  From now on, your arms should remain in this position – never let your hands fall below the level of your elbows.  If they do, start again.
- Using your elbow, squirt some soap into your hand.  For the first scrub, use iodine-based soap – since it’s brown, you can see if your hands and forearms are completely coated.
- Carefully pick up the small plastic nail pick from the surgical scrub brush packet and clean under all your nails; discard the pick.
- Rub your hands together like you do when you normally wash your hands, then use the nailbrush side of the scrub brush to clean under your nails, over your nails, and the knuckles of your fingers.
- Once this is done, quickly coat your forearms down to the elbows with soap.
- Rinse under water.

Second Scrub – 2 minutes:

- Soap up again, using either iodine- or chlorhexidine-based soap – whatever you prefer.
- Spread the soap, making sure to work it in around the nails, knuckles, finger webbing and around the wrist.
- Use the sponge side of the scrub brush to go over these areas again.
- Once this is done, quickly coat your forearms down to just before the elbows.
- Rinse under water.

Third Scrub – 1 minute:

- Using soap, repeat the scrub process.  Do not use brush or sponge.  Clean only to the mid-forearm.
- Rinse under water.  Hold elbows over trough and let the water drain off.

Starting Gowning:

- Put your hands together as though praying and enter the theatre.
- At the gowning and gloving station, pick up the folded gown on the left-hand side – as this will be the inside of the gown.
- With one hand pressing either side of the folded gown, slide your hands forward and move them away from your body to let the gown unfold.  All going well, you should now magically have your arms inside the gown.
- At the stage, a scout will come and attach the adhesive strip at the back of the neck, and tie the internal string at the small of your back.
- Keeping your hands within the sleeve of the gown, start to glove up.

Gloving Up:

- Without actually touching the glove with your skin, pick up the first glove and lay it over the sleeve of your gown (palm up).  The way to do this is lie the thumb of the glove on your thumb, and the open end of the glove over your wrist.
- Then, carefully gripping the glove in your thumb and index finger (which are both still in the sleeve), use your other hand (still in the sleeve) to pull the open end of the glove over your hand.  This sounds hard, and is hard.  If you do it right, you should have half a glove on, and the sleeve of the gown should have been pulled back to show half your hand.
- Gently pull the sleeve of your gown so that the glove slides on easily, and the sleeve of the gown retracts so that your fingers are all free.  Be careful not to tear the gown!
- From this point, it is easier to put the second glove on, since yo now have a sterile hand to use.  Glove up in the same way.
- Put on another pair of gloves.

Finishing Gowning:

- Your trusty scout should now come back to help you finish gowning.  There is a cardboard colour-coded tag on the front of your gown which is connected to two ties.  Holding the left tie, pull the tag off.  It should still be connected to the right tie, which is long.  Hand it to the scout, careful not to touch the scout.
- Once the scout has the tie, spin in a circle (therefore wrapping yourself in the tie) and pull the tie away from the cardboard that the scout is holding.  You can now tie your gown up in front.  You are sterile!

Now that you’re all gowned and gloved up, don’t touch a scout – they’re dirty.

Theatre 23, #2

Surgery 6:     Right knee arthroscopy.  Repair torn medial meniscus; extensive calcification of entire knee joint.

Surgery 7:     Left knee arthroscopy.  Repair torn lateral meniscus.

Surgery 8:     Open re-exploration left foot, plantar aspect.  Morton’s neuroma removed.

Surgery 9:     Open tibialis anterior tendon repair. 

Surgery 10:   Left ankle arthroscopic and open fusion of talus and calcaneous.  Intraoperative complication: tourniquet not applied to limb, resulting in moderate blood loss through the bone.

Surgery 11:   Bilateral osteotomy of hallux valgus deformities in the first metatarsophalangeal joints, with sesamoid removal bilaterally.

 

8.5 hours in theatre today, and got to actually scrub in.  I’ll go into detail of the scrub-in process some other time – it’s rediculously complex.