Tom Seddon:  

I was born in 1964 in Ft Wayne, Indiana, the first of Tom & Myrna Seddon's five children. By 1968 we'd settled in Marion, Ohio - pop was a computer programmer at Marion Power Shovel. First we lived in town and in 1977 we moved 10 miles out and so I shifted from the city to the county school system. Not growing all the way up in either school may be part of why at the time I didn't feel all that attached to my hometown. Realising at 13 that I was gay no doubt also was a barrier! After a squabble with my parents about accepting out of state scholarship offers (I lost), I got myself enrolled at Ohio State after junior year and so never finished high school. I'm sure that I didn't know words like "empowering" then, but making that happen entirely on my own against not a little resistance and even open resentment from some teachers (the two whose views I valued backed me) taught me something about myself. I managed to be unconventional at university as well. I got through undergrad early but the folks and I disagreed on where I should go to law school. I thought that by not applying for any schools in Ohio they'd have to come around, but no, so without co-signers for loans I had to sit out a year and then went to Cincinnati, which I also finished early. I was never a stellar student; I never liked school enough to try, but I got through reasonably well with much haste and little engagement with the courses and - outside of class time - I had quite a decent time in those years. During undergrad I spent a few months in Greece and then cycling around Europe, ultimately reaching Edinburgh in time for the 1983 festival. Camping rough, living by my wits and making $100 stretch from the south of France to the German border, say, was an education all on its own. My first real boyfriend, Michael, was 7 years older and had family money. I got around Columbus on my bicycle then and didn't even have a phone at home. Michael died of AIDS in 1986, and since his family had "clout" there was a bit of reporting but nothing was said about HIV or being gay, which was still the way in those days. I had really enjoyed living in Columbus, but Cincinnati never grew on me. I did like making most of my living playing cards during law school. Mostly that meant poker, but I had a roommate who teamed with me in a crooked game of euchre and people would queue to play us to try and catch us cheating, and they almost never did. I also spent four months in New Zealand in 1987, clerking at a firm in Wellington and playing rugby. After half an attempt to get a job in one of the big firms in either Seattle or Chicago in my final year of law school, I took an offer from Melbourne, Australia and left the States in the middle of 1989. I landed in the toffs' law firm, Arthur Robinson (the other international they took that year was the editor of the Harvard Law Review) and enjoyed my 18 months there until my visa ran out. By then I'd met and settled down with Robert Niemann, so since our relationship wouldn't get him entry to the US but it would get me back into Australia the die was cast. I became a citizen in 1997. In 1992 we decided to rent out our house and travel, thinking that we might get jobs and settle in London for a while. Instead, I got an offer to join a new company which would make asset management software for brokers and fund managers. I held out and ended up with equity. After two years I was bought out ("it's him or me"), but the settlement was civil, we're all friends today and their company has since expanded from Australia to the UK. During this period Robert and I moved up to Sydney, where our principal client was headquartered. I have done the office with a view of the Sydney Opera House thing, but the real treat was catching a ferry across Sydney Harbour each day from our home in Darling Point to the office in the city. So, unemployed but solvent, we made plans to move back to Melbourne, when the telephone started ringing: "I hear you're leaving PathFinder, want to come in and talk with us?" In the space of a week, doing nothing but answering the phone, a tax and securities practice sprang up around us which we rode until 2000. Sydney was a fun place to live in the 1990s. The city was getting ready to host the 2000 Olympics and it was definitely one of the top places to be on NYE 1999. We bought a house in Paddington in inner-Sydney (5 levels, pool, a bridge to the front door, etc) and proceeded to nearly end our relationship in the course of 8 years of renovations and modifications! I'm not convinced that it's possible to live in a house for that long while constantly changing something (the wet, cold winter of 1999 when we spent 8 weeks with a tarp for one wall of our bedroom comes especially to mind) and actually still like the place when it's "finished". On Christmas Day 1995, Robert and I hosted Christmas lunch for about 30 people; friends and neighbours as well as the crew of Robert's brother's sailboat; the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race started the next morning. Robert fell off our deck and landed 15 feet down on concrete, on his head. He wasn't breathing when I got down to him. The next 18 months were hard on me, but obviously a whole lot harder on Robert. He complains now that he doesn't remember anything for two months after the accident, but that is a blessing if ever there was one. I'm not going to write about it, either. I'd never been that much of a "joiner"; Junior Achievement during high school, a short stint in the Boy Scouts, and the rugby team in law school. However, I decided that after a couple of years in Melbourne meeting Robert's friends and a couple of years in Sydney dealing with my staff or my partners or our clients, I needed to meet some friends of my own and I joined the local gay volleyball club. I was soon secretary, then secretary of the umbrella body for gay & lesbian sport in the state (Team Sydney), and then its president during 1996 - 98. Sydney had previously bid to host the Gay Games of 1994 and 1998, losing to New York and Amsterdam. Team Sydney's partner in those bids, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, decided not to bid again and in the way of these things, some of their leadership took it personally when we proceeded without them, and again when our bid succeeded, getting 40 out of 43 votes in the first round of voting in Denver, Colorado in November 1997. I chaired the bid committee and while raising $150,000 for the bid was sometimes a challenge, I'm very proud of the team of well over 100 volunteers and the work we did. To you straight readers, what are Gay Games? They are one of the largest masters-style sporting events in the world and they take place every f...Expand for more