It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own

It’s not what you think. Unless you’re from Australia and know that a Gaytime isn’t just Pride month or an LTBGI statement but summer on a stick. Creamy coldness of vanilla with the burnt sweetness of toffee, melting on your tongue while your teeth crunch the honeycomb biscuit and the thin layer of chocolate. It’s 104 in the shade and you couldn’t be happier, having a gay old time at the beach.

When the Gaytime first came out in 1959 there were no political connotations. The word gay was an expression of joy not sex, an innocent word for childhood and a common second name. (Though I’ll let my sister Carolyn Gay tell you how that worked out). When the Golden Gaytime premiered in 1970 it was clever alliteration and a perfect description of an Aussie summer.

That’s how I first remember it. As the special treat of a perfect day. Not every day you understand, not unless you were one of those rich kids down the road with their swanky private school and bulging purses with enough money for expensive ice-cream. You’d see them at the shop, handing over a two dollar note for a treat while we counted out sixty scents and argued about the virtues of chocolate over banana in a Paddle Pop.

In hindsight, we were lucky. We had houses our parents could afford, food on the table and money for extras. A cold milkshake in a tall metal jug—and I don’t care what the science says, every child knows drinks in metal are colder—take out once a month and an ice-cream every Sunday. But not any ice-cream, only the cheap ones. Icy poles or Paddle Pops.

But the Golden Gaytime, that was for special occasions. Like the first Sunday of summer, beach day at Balmoral. I’m ten years old, barefoot, and hatless, shorts pulled over bikini bottoms, walking in the white and yellow sand. I need to hop when I get to the road, the black tar burning under my feet and I jump to the cooler white line and the straggling cooch grass.

My sister’s wearing thongs, the summer shoe the rest of the world calls flip flops but I’m a child of nature and go barefoot from October to March. My feet will toughen up as the summer progresses but for now it’s a jumping journey from grass to sidewalk.

I’m clutching the precious two-dollar note in a hand starting to sweat. Today it’s not the brown one dollar, with its extra 20 cent piece which would buy two Paddle Pops, a banana for Carolyn and a chocolate one for me. This note is green, crisp as a new day and has a shiny 50 cent piece to go with it. It’s one of the new ones with the hexagonal sides and, in my childhood imaginings, it’s heavy as a piece of gold. We fought about who would hold the money and I’ve the note and Carolyn has the coins, the heavy 50 cents and the tinny 10 cent piece. Two dollars sixty, it’s a fortune.

‘We could get four Paddle Pops, ‘I say, ‘with money left over.’

‘How much money?’

’20 cents.’

We look at each other. 20 cents will buy extra candy. A 140 cents, which is what we’d have if we got our usual Paddle Pops would buy a lot of candy: chocolate-coated caramel Chomps, tingling Lifesavers, or a packet of ten candy cigarettes known as Fags. The last name is wrong in so many ways but we’re only kids and we neither know nor care.

‘We could buy…’ My sister holds up fingers to calculate but the numbers are too big. ‘How much candy?’

‘Lots.’ I’ve done the math before. ‘Two packets of Lifesavers and two Chomps but…’

We have this conversation every time, but the conclusion is always the same. If we buy something else the chance of the Gaytime would be lost. Forever. We both know that if we don’t seize the day that next time Mum won’t be handing out the extra money. Like Roadworks before the end of the financial year, if we don’t spend how we promise the money won’t come again.

‘Two Golden Gaytimes.’ I hand over the cash and the yellow-wrapped treats are ours.

They don’t melt as fast as a Paddle Pop, and we could wait till we got back to our towels but that isn’t going to happen. There’s shade beside the shop and that’s where we halt, lifting the wrapper to our mouths for that first crucial rip.

I can smell the ice-cream through the cover, like frozen cream with the hint of vanilla and the stronger burnt sugar smell of the toffee. The second sniff brings the richness of cookies in the oven, the biscuit coating like the promise of a party. Then I’ve parted the wrapper and the ice cream is mine. The chocolate coating is milk, tan as Dad’s summer beer and coated in honeycomb biscuit, like an edible sandcastle. My mouth is watering as I take the first bite.

Yes!

Cold as diving into the ocean, the creamy richness smooth against my tongue, the taste of vanilla and the extra sweetness of toffee with the burnt tang that you could never mistake for caramel. This is different, better, a mix of flavors I can find no-where else. And against the melt in my mouth coldness there’s the crunch of biscuit, the textured dissolve of cookies fresh from the oven, both hard and soft under my teeth. I savor each mouthful, tasting luxury through my tongue, the golden delight of a childhood summer.

‘Have a Gay Time.’

It’s eight years later, first year at university and that carefree child is now 18 and ready to discover adulthood. I’ve moved out of home, sharing digs with other impoverished students and poorer than I’ve ever been in my life. Even Paddle Pops are a luxury now. When the active gay community offers free Golden Gaytimes I’m first in line. And what stated as childhood greed becomes friendship and understanding.

But it’s 1981 in Sydney and I have only two years before those friends handing out ice cream will be handing out condoms instead, as they and their mates battle the onset of aids. The HIV virus with its destruction of lives and tolerance would seem to sit badly next to an article on iconic summer food. And yet, forty years later, I still remember the innocent joy of those Gaytimes and the tongue in cheek slogan ‘It’s hard to have a Gaytime on your own’.

And they weren’t alone: people banded together to help each other: nuns nursed homosexual men dying of aids; the gay community headlined education programs. There were massive problems, no one can deny that, but as Aussie’s do, so many of us stood by our mates. And for me, that togetherness is captured by a chocolate coated ice-cream, and a refusal to take the joy out of the word gay.

There are further stories associated with the Gaytime. There’s the rainbow Gaytime invented to promote equality, the unicorn Gaytime in 2017 and my favourite, the failed attempt to change the name. Both straight and gay communities rebelled at the suggestion that a Gaytime be changed to Happytime. The internet was full of stories: friends using the ice cream as a hint at their sexuality; or stating, ‘I’m heterosexual but I do love a Gaytime’. As Benedict Brook said in his news.com article the Gaytime is “The larrikin Aussie humour summed up in a single ice cream.”

And I love it. This ice cream described by everyone as iconic is for me the pure expression of an Aussie summer. It’s the delicious luxury of childhood, the innocence and friendship of adolescence and the solid humour and acceptance of adulthood. And it tastes amazing.

So, if you’re ever in Australia, be sure to have a Gaytime with a friend.