Holding the Man is a 1995 memoir by Australian writer, actor, and activist Timothy Conigrave. The book tells the story of Tim's life, and centrally of his relationship with his husband and love of fifteen years, John Caleo. They met in the mid-1970s at Xavier College, an all-boys Jesuit Catholic school in Melbourne. The term "holding the man" refers to a transgression that incurs a penalty in Australian rules football. Caleo was a star footballer at high school, captaining the school's team and winning the APS Best and Fairest trophy in 1976. He was also an avid supporter of the Essendon Football Club, one of the reasons Conigrave appropriated the term as the book's title.