by Benjamin Law
What happened next?
I did tell my best friend, then I told another friend, then I told my cousin, who is like a sister to me. The hardest one was my parents. My parents came from such a different world to the one I grew up in. I knew before coming out to Mum and Dad that I couldn’t live at home, so I moved out at eighteen. It seems absurd now, but they were absolutely mortified by that, absolutely heartbroken. But I also knew that if I was staying at home, I would just kill myself. So I moved out of home and that was actually the beginning of taking on a gay identity.
Who else did you tell?
Actually, the first Greek adult I told was my friend Lisa’s mum. God bless her, she had such an amazing soul. Hard drinker, hard smoker. I was over one night and she really wanted Lisa and me to get together. I kind of said to her, ‘No, Sofia, I’m gay.’ We were drinking whisky and she put down the glass and said to me, ‘Look, Christos, all men love sex. My brothers have fucked men. I’m sure my father did.’ I can’t believe I said this to her, but I said, ‘Sofia, I don’t only fuck, I also get fucked.’ [Laughs] She put down the whisky glass and just said, ‘Okay, that’s different.’
And your parents?
I told my mum first. I must have been nineteen. She was so stricken by it, and really angry. Mum initially didn’t want me to tell Dad, but I did tell him and, unlike her, he wasn’t angry. He was really sad.
Did their attitude change over time?
Of course it did, because they loved me, and because my brother was supportive, and my cousins were supportive. In that kind of world, that’s very important. Also, I met Wayne really young. I was nineteen. We were living together first as friends, and Mum really loved Wayne. That helped as well.
What do you think the younger version of you would think of this adult, openly gay, queer version of yourself?
There were so many things that I beat myself up on to do with my body and with sex. That damage of fearing sex was something that took me a long time to really come to terms with. So, I would say to that boy, ‘This is your body. Just treat people respectfully but don’t be scared of pleasure.’ It was so frightening when HIV and AIDS came into the world. I remember going for that first test, sure that I would be positive. Even though I was terrified, those books I’d read, those films I’d seen, those people I had met who’d steered me towards another way of understanding the world stood me in great stead. I could’ve run back into the closet, but I didn’t. I actually got angry. I thought, ‘That could have been me.’ It convinced me that to be a good person in the world, you had to treat people with AIDS with the utmost dignity. I think you just have to treat everybody with dignity. That’s the gift you get from being the outsider.
Coming In
Joo-Inn Chew
Michelle stares at me like I’m an alien. ‘If you don’t say, you can’t play,’ she insists, and pouts her strawberry-glossed lips.
Kylie and Debbie nod, ponytails bobbing in agreement.
It is dim in the cubby and it smells of Vegemite sandwich. There’s not enough room, so the baby’s cot is on top of the fridge, and I’m sitting on the stove. Through a gap in the stick wall there’s a glimpse of blue sky and scraggly gum trees.
I sigh down at my dirty toes poking out of my uncool sandals. I scratch my short hair. For some reason a flash of Lisa Kennedy from Grade 5 acing elastics arcs through my mind.
‘I don’t have one,’ I say.
Michelle frowns. ‘Everyone has one. You have to have one for Mothers and Fathers. Otherwise who are you going to marry?’
‘Yeah,’ says Debbie, ‘but you can’t have Greg, he’s mine. We’re going to have twins.’
I pick at the scab on my knee and wish I was in the library, reading a book. Should I say Alan? He seems less germy than the others. Or Jason – but he likes to squash ants. They’re all so gross. Mothers and Fathers sucks. It was better when we liked horses.
‘I don’t really want to get married,’ I blurt out, horrifying myself. The girls all glare in disbelief. Already lips are curling, hair is tossing, mean words are fizzing on tongues. I stand up and they draw back and closer together, like I’m a bomb. The baby’s cot wobbles and I don’t even bother to catch it this time. It hits the dirt and the doll tumbles out onto its face, one blue plastic eye staring sideways accusingly. Probably dead. The cubby’s gone blurry and I stumble over the cot with its tangle of blankets, out the low door. I hate that I am crying. ‘I don’t care, I don’t want to play your stupid game anyway!’
Outside it’s cold and fresh. I run down the hill away from the shrieks and the dead baby and my future husband and triplets, run into the open, jumping anthills and logs, looking for a tree to climb, scaring the magpies into flight.
*
‘Brad’s so cute, but he got with Nadine at the Blue Light and my life is ruined.’
‘She’s such a slut anyway.’
‘Jason said hi before Woodwork, but was that hi or hi?’
‘You should totally ask him out, Nic. He’s such a spunk.’
I hitch my short uniform up even further to let the sun bite into my thighs. Eight tanned legs lie parallel along the concrete, like long shiny coconut-scented rolls. Forty painted toenails loll at ease. Four mouths gossip or mmm-hmm, while trying not to eat too much fattening food. Four sweaty backs with trainer bra straps lean against the warm bricks of the canteen wall. Distant shouts and the crack of ball against bat float up from the oval. The air is heavy with wattle and sun-tanning lotion, and the drowsy droning of flies.
Shar strides across the netball court with her friends, and suddenly I’m wide awake. She burns across my retina like a comet. My skin is prickling and shivers ripple down to my toes. Electricity dances all over me. It’s hard to sit still, hard not to run. Hard to act cool as she walks towards us. Sun is in her hair and sliding off her arms, spilling down her long legs, teasing out a sinuous shadow behind her. She stops to say something to her friend, so close I can see freckles on the side of her neck. Her voice tickles my ears. I can’t look at her lips, her green eyes, the way she’s laughing, or I might explode or give myself away. I stare at a wad of gum flattened into a whitish splot on the concrete by my left ankle, run my eyes round and round its rough edges, until at last she moves away and I can breathe again. My heart is skittering and blazing, faint and fierce all at once. I let myself watch her as she walks away, the way her hair slides across her shoulder and one strand lifts in the breeze. When she disappears round the corner she takes light and colour with her. The afternoon is empty and dull, a stage after a show.
Around me the others are still chatting, they haven’t noticed, or maybe they’re used to my silent weirdness. Now they’re talking about which boy has the best bum. I make myself nod and mmm. I concentrate on acting normal. I file Shar away with the others in my secret Quite-A-Few-Crushes-But-I’m-Not-A-Lesbian-It’s-Just-A-Phase file. Lots of girls love Madonna and Jodie Foster. Lots of girls aren’t into boys yet. Lots of girls are too busy reading books and getting As – okay, well, not that many, but if there were more with glasses and Chinese fathers like me then there would be lots. I’m just a late bloomer. And Shar is just distractingly beautiful. It’s not like I love her or want to kiss her or anything. I’m not a perv or a lemon. Those Grim Reaper ads are nothing to do with me. When I imagine rescuing her from a fire in assembly, or saving her from hypothermia in the snow when we miss the last bus, it’s not like I . . . oh god – think about something else.
I can do this. Only ten minutes till the bell goes. I focus really hard on what I can add to the group analysis of Derek’s personality and Wayne’s shorts. And I keep my dangerous and delicious secret hidden under my uniform, right over my heart.
*
I wipe the steel kitchen bench again and again, even though it’s shiny clean. The last elderly resident has shuffled out of the dining room, and Carol hurries in with an armful of trays. I open my dry mouth then close it again. I watch her stack porridge bowls into the dishwasher and fe
el my heart doing a tap dance of terror. Come on, you coward. Don’t pike now. It’s 1992, you can do this.
‘Guess what?’ I squeak.
‘What?’ she asks. She has kind, dark eyes and a gold nose-ring, and she is an Indian dental student.
‘I’m . . . I’m bisexual,’* I blurt out. And start sorting trays like a maniac, feeling my cheeks heat up the room.
‘You’re kidding me,’ she says.
‘No, really.’
The longest silence in human history ticks by. I fight an urge to hide under my apron. Instead, I wipe the pink-and-purple floral placemats, the true hideousness of which I’ve never taken in before. Mrs White’s radio blares golden oldies from Room 9.
‘Wow . . . well, that’s okay,’ she says.
I drag my eyes up to her face and see she means it. Something in me collapses, a breaking wave of relief that washes warm tingles to my toes and salt water to my eyes.
‘Course it is,’ I say gruffly. I line up the water jugs. Their painted daisies and teddy bears seem about to gambol off the glass. Just seeing them frolic beside the stack of attractive floral placemats is making me grin absurdly.
Carol is staring at me.
‘Um, thanks,’ I say.
‘No problem.’
Who knew dental students could be so cool? I skip away at the end of my shift, leaving my old skin a tattered remnant on the mopped kitchen tiles. Outside, my new skin fizzes in the sunlight, alive to the breeze, smelling much more like me.
*
The line snakes down the block outside the Builders Arms, into the warm Fitzroy night alive with glittery grunge. Thursday is Queer and Alternative night at the pub, and it feels like everyone radical and fabulous is queuing to get in. Dreadlocked ferals and tripping ravers suck lollipops next to my lesbian separatist housemates, next to gay boys with sparkling pecs, and a sprinkling of Asian queers. Hot dykes in dog collars, radical feminists, drag kings and queens – they all let eachother be tonight. There’s even a sheepishly excited handful of medical and engineering students, and a couple of fellow formerly closeted survivors from high school, freed at last. Doc Martens and goddess tattoos abound.
There’s lust and revolution in the air. Last week was Melbourne’s first pride parade, thousands striding defiantly through the St Kilda streets – where some of us had been gay-bashed – holding hands and kissing, strangely buoyed by the cheering voyeurism of the hetero crowds. Heads high: we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping. We don’t belong in your ‘straight suburban breeders’ world; we’re roaming in wilder terrain outside the map, making new tribes and families, seeing more clearly from the margins.
Our love is in the spotlight in the early ’90s, zigzagging between wicked and chic. k.d. lang is on the cover of Vanity Fair in a suit, lathered up for a buxom Cindy Crawford teetering in stilettos to shave. There are gay flicks in the cinema, and Queer Studies at uni. We go to AIDS rallies, Reclaim the Night marches and Queer Kiss-Ins. We come out to family and some of us are thrown out of home, or told to pray away the gay.
I am lucky; my parents and siblings accept my sexuality. Perhaps softened up by the long teenage years of tortured girl crushes, they are more surprised by my two-year heterosexual detour than by my eventual coming out. They see how happy I am with my girlfriends, and welcome them into the family. Still, we keep the secret from elderly and religious relatives, here and in Malaysia, not wanting to identify a devil incarnate in their midst and be fending off prayers and condemnation for eternity.
My father comes to the launch of a book I have contributed to, a collection of coming-out stories. He stands awkwardly in his hand-knit jumper and cargo pants, a lone Chinese dad in a crowd of people he once would have called fairies and poofters, just to be proud of me. He used to jeer at Mardi Gras on TV; now he drops me off at Pride March and warns me to be careful. But when I try to stay over at my lover’s house, her father shoves a twenty-dollar note under the bedroom door. ‘Get that woman out of my house,’ he snarls. And we flee into the night, and I never go back.
But for now we are gorgeous radicals, uncloseted and in love, ordinary and extraordinary. Dance anthems throb from the pub doorway and my girlfriend grins at me in the streetlight, setting me aglow. A passing ute-driver rolls down his window to yell, ‘Fucken homos!’ The drag queens in the line blow him a kiss. The lesbian separatists muscle towards him and he drives off fast, silenced. ‘Dickhead!’ chorus the engineering students. And we laugh and growl and shimmy, because tonight we own the night.
*
A rainbow balloon slips loose and disappears into the wide blue sky. My daughter frowns and clutches hers more tightly. My son leans against my leg in his black hoodie and pink socks, reading Harry Potter. He’s bored with rallies now and has only come to get his ice-cream bribe afterwards. Next to him, my partner holds a banner with the kids’ donor dad. Around us, the feisty crowd listen as gay dads, lesbian union organisers, politicians and religious leaders speak with passion and honesty. A wave of cheers echoes off the buildings and the march is away.
What do we want? Marriage equality!
When do we want it? Now!
We surge down the Canberra streets alive with rainbow flags and banners. The kids skip and chant, glad to be on the move, hopeful of getting on TV and being famous at last. At the edge of the crowd, a handful of men shake placards scrawled with Bible verses and shout that we’ll burn in hell. My son glances at them in confusion and I hurry him on. Another thing to explain over dinner tonight. There are too many things that are too hard to explain. Why the whole country is ‘voting’ on whether their two mums are allowed to get married, even after seventeen years together. Why everyone at school is talking about it. Why we keep muting the news as another politician spouts bile about the slippery slope to bestiality, or how we are not fit parents. Why their mums have been edgy for months. The stress of wondering how everyone we know, how our whole country, is going to ‘vote’ takes its toll. We discover things we wished we hadn’t known about workmates and family, things that can’t be forgotten. As a doctor, finding out my valued nursing colleagues are voting ‘No’ stings.
One, two, three, four, stop this homophobic law!
Five, six, seven, eight, how do you know your kids are straight?
*
It’s the week after the plebiscite. The resounding ‘Yes’ vote has brought wave after wave of emotion. First: relief. Then, surprise, gratitude, a melting wonder. I realise I had been dreading a kick in the guts from the entire nation. Despite the confident lesbian life I am living now – rainbow family, queer community, LGBTIQA+ health work – I was still carrying around an ’80s-kid view of Australia. Believing that outside my little protective bubble the great masses disapproved, thought I was abnormal, lesser, sinful, wrong. A perv and a lemon. I hadn’t dared hope that my country had moved on from homophobia to affirmation.
Now I walk around the shops, the schoolyard, the waiting room, knowing I am welcome in my real skin. I came out decades ago, but it has taken this long to truly come in. Married or unmarried, our family of ‘Mothers and Mothers’ has a place in the cubby too. Our love has come in from the fringes, into the muddle of humanity in the middle. Bringing its own radical gifts.
And somewhere inside me, an eight-year-old girl up a tree shakes out her short hair, then breaks into the most beautiful smile.
__________________________
* This is true at the time. I do have a boyfriend (I have to give blokes a try, and he’s a good one) but I’m in love with my best friend, and I’m about to break my boyfriend’s heart in a long, messy, self-absorbed twenty-year-old way to go out with her . . . and never look back.
Androphobia
Heather Joan Day
As far as I know, I am the only girl at my high school. I wake up every day with an ache in my stomach like something growing inside me is desperately trying to claw its way out. The more I wish it wasn’t there, the more it feels as though it’s going
to burst out of a cavity in my chest, spraying blood all over the breakfast table and my family. Pregnancy doesn’t cross my mind because I don’t have a uterus.
My mother, the owner of a physiotherapy practice, tells me my biggest problem is my bad posture. She drops me off at the bus stop on her way to work. She hopes I have a nice day at school. There is a convenience store by the bus stop, run by an old married couple. I go in to buy a coffee and the wife surveils me, as she does all teenagers. At the register she counts my coins carefully while the husband watches a kennel-sized TV behind the counter. An ad is playing for a show called There’s Something About Miriam. It’s a British Bachelorette-style dating show where the ‘gimmick’ is that the titular Miriam has a big secret, to be revealed to the contestants during the final episode of the series.
‘SHE . . .’ the ad teases, ‘is a HE!’
Miriam holds her index finger to her lips and winks right at me.
After they finished making the show, the male contestants sued its producers for ‘emotional and psychological damages’. Miriam Rivera eventually moved to Spain, rich from TV appearances and high-end sex work.
The husband chuckles, and I stare longingly at the cigarette boxes on the wall, golden packaging with royal-looking insignias that will be illegal in a few years’ time.
On the bus, I find a seat so I don’t spill my coffee, and I put in my iPod headphones. It’s not even 8 am and the bus is already stinking hot. Queensland summer makes the air thick and sticky. I play a song called ‘Pray for Plagues’. At the next stop a school of fish (cis) girls my age board the bus, rummaging through their purses for their paper tickets. I stare enviously at their uniforms. Mine is awful: a waiting-room blue button-down shirt with gravel-grey pants. Their ocean-blue pleated skirts and billowy summer-cloud blouses look breezy and cool. One of the fish sits in the row in front of me and reties her ponytail. Her long red hair spills over her shoulders in slow motion like a cartoon mermaid. At my school our hair has to be short at the back and sides and over the ears. My head of year, who after I graduate will be convicted of paedophilia, has threatened me with detention several times for having my hair too long or wearing my fringe over my eyes.
