Growing Up Queer in Australia

by Benjamin Law

  You can raise an entire nation of children on nothing but heterosexual imagery, and the result will still be a bunch of queer kids in there among that hetero-majority. We’ve given censorship a red-hot go as a means of preventing homosexuality and yet, even with all that straight kissing up there on the screen, there are still boys who want to kiss other boys, girls who want to kiss other girls, along with all those kids who suspect that the label ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ doesn’t quite fit them like it seemingly does everyone else. By keeping these children in the dark we don’t protect them – we just keep them in the dark.

  When, somewhat belatedly in my early twenties, I finally admitted what my feelings for Dirty Dancing–era Patrick Swayze had clearly been indicating for some time, my first step as a newly minted gay man was to search out every queer movie I could find. This was the era of New Queer Cinema and I saw Paris Is Burning, Swoon and The Living End at arthouses like the Academy Twin in Paddington and the Valhalla in Glebe. At the legendary Videodrama video store on Oxford Street, I found Maurice, Making Love and the ridiculously beautiful Joe Dallesandro in Flesh and Trash. I devoured Vito Russo’s book The Celluloid Closet and searched out Hays Era classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Rope and Rebel Without a Cause.

  I still hungered for a great gay rom-com or a queer action hero. And so, I remade movies in my mind, retelling the story to myself as I watched, imagining the happy queer romance or heroic victory that the story could have included in a different world.

  That’s part of the work that so many of us have to do. We make leaps, restructure and remake so that the world onscreen begins to look a little more like our lives, or the lives we imagine for ourselves. At its worst, such work makes us feel excluded, pushed to the margins or out of the picture completely. But it can be powerful. It expands the possibilities of our world, revealing the porousness of otherwise impermeable-seeming borders. Watching The Matrix, I was never Keanu Reeves but always Carrie-Anne Moss, revelling in this incredible, powerful, leather-clad female hero; sometimes making her the centre of the story and giving her a female love interest; sometimes making her character male. Gender becomes malleable, a performance, something we can shift around and play with; sexuality becomes fluid.

  In recent years the onscreen possibilities for queer childhoods have expanded. In 2012, ParaNorman was reportedly the first animated children’s film to include an openly gay character. Not the main character, sure, but visible in the text nonetheless. Teen-friendly soap operas from Glee to Riverdale feature queer characters with active romantic and sexual lives. Ruby Rose is set to star as Batwoman, the first openly queer television superhero (the character has openly been a lesbian since she first appeared in the comic books, in 2006). And the recent Love, Simon is the gay romantic comedy I would have killed for as a teen. I’ll admit to shedding a few tears at the end of that totally charming movie, partly out of happiness for Simon, and partly out of sadness for the queer kids like me for whom it came too late.

  Despite all this positive change in representation, the moral panic around the Safe Schools program in 2016 demonstrated a continued unease in Australia over the very idea that some kids might be queer. Queerness is something that children must be protected from, so the story goes, not something they should be allowed to accept as a potential part of themselves. This notion infuriates me. It turns childhood into a period of limbo that queer people have to get through before the world will finally, grudgingly admit we aren’t going to be straight or cisgender.

  As a kid, I was invisible to myself because of adults who would rather I was worried and confused than gay. A world of adults more troubled by the idea of Bert and Ernie coming out than by the number of queer kids who take their own lives. Movies have brought me much happiness over the years, but I still wonder about the damage done by all of that silence. I think about the anxious kid I used to be and feel enormous anger on his behalf. If I could go back and give him anything it would be a pile of movies in which the teen hunk has a crush on another boy, where the action hero saves her girlfriend, where two muppets are in love and their gender is nobody’s business. He could stare into that screen and be made visible. Not opaque or shadowy or uncertain, but vibrantly, joyously and unmistakably queer.

  Something Special

  Rebecca Shaw

  This is going to come as a shock to most people who know me, who (I imagine) assume I am perfect in every way, but I sometimes have trouble expressing my feelings. As I am now in my mid-thirties, which is approximately six hundred in Queer Years, I’ve been reflecting on how my past has informed who I am now, and asking, ‘Why am I like this?’ Not to get too crying-drunk-girl-in-the-club-toilet-at-2-am about this, but one of my main issues is that I struggle with being honest and open about what I am feeling, or what I need. From advising romantic partners what would please me to simply asking a good friend to support me in some way, being honest about my desires in any situation makes me feel extremely vulnerable, and terrified of rejection. Instead, I simply lay a series of traps using passive-aggressive language in order to have the person solve a puzzle and do what I want, without me having to actually ask them. (Thank you for asking, yes, it’s extremely healthy, and not frustrating for anyone; psychiatry academics clearly want to use me as an example of how to do things right.)

  It may not be healthy, but at least I have partially figured out why I am like this. In an M. Night Shyamalan twist for the ages, I think it’s because of my experience growing up queer in small-town Queensland. Shock!

  It may be hard for younger readers to imagine, but for a long time I didn’t have easy access to the internet. I couldn’t find information (what do lesbians DO) online, or secretly contact communities of like-minded people to discover I wasn’t alone in the world. So, from the age of ten, when I started to realise I felt differently to my friends, to seventeen, when I was able to connect to the rest of the world, I felt alone. Excruciatingly, desperately alone. Partly this was because, when I was nine, my family moved from the regional city of Toowoomba to a small locality outside the city, called Charlton. To set the scene a bit, according to the 2016 census, Charlton had a population of 120 people. The school I went to had thirty kids in it. So, my world was tiny when puberty hit and I discovered my queerness.

  This would end up consuming me. As a teenager, I thought I was the only person on earth who felt the way I did. As well as not having the internet, I didn’t meet an openly queer person until I was in my twenties (unlike now, when I refuse to meet straight people), and I didn’t see a queer person on TV until I was sixteen (hello, I love you, Tara, and no, I still haven’t forgiven Joss Whedon). The only time I even heard about the concept of being gay in real life was when I started commuting to high school in Toowoomba. Toowoomba has a population of 150,000, but is not exactly a thriving metropolis. It is still country, it is conservative, and I actually felt even more isolated there. That’s because I did finally hear about gay people there, but exclusively as slurs, or in a negative context. I went from not knowing what queer was, or that anyone else in the world was queer, to understanding that some people are queer but it’s bad and everyone will fucking hate you for it.

  I spent almost every waking moment thinking about how I was queer, how it was bad, and how I could change it. Or, if I couldn’t change it, how I could make sure nobody ever found out my terrible secret. This didn’t only mean not telling people I thought I was attracted to girls. It meant figuring out what I was ‘supposed’ to be like, and mimicking that. Making sure that nothing I did would raise suspicion.

  When I think back now to that girl, I feel heartbroken for her. Not only because she felt she had to hide who she was, but because those years were so full of secrets: faking emotions and actions, and having to self-monitor constantly. The loneliness and fear she felt is tragic, but so is the exhaustion of living a lie. Just about every memory I have of those seven years, even those unrelated to my secret, evokes the immense weight I felt on my shoulders, the pit in my
stomach. It was always there, humming under the surface.

  I couldn’t express what I was feeling. I was worried that if I told the truth about what I desired for myself, I would be rejected, ostracised, or worse. My world would end. Even when, in my late teens, I was able to see a world beyond mine and consider that maybe I could be honest and happy one day, still I couldn’t face it. The first time I decided to come out to someone, an aunt and uncle I loved and thought would be okay with it, I heard someone at their house say ‘faggot’. I didn’t try to come out to anyone else for two years. Even then, in a late-night conversation in the freezing cold in Toowoomba, drunk with a friend from university who I knew was queer and would therefore be okay with who I was, I struggled to bring myself to say it. I twisted and turned and deflected until she asked me point-blank if was attracted to women. When I came out to my mother, it was after a long conversation in which I manipulated her into asking me directly. It was still almost impossible for me to say the truth.

  That brings us back to me in 2019, struggling to be upfront with those I love. I think you can see what I’m getting at. What I went through then has obviously informed who I am now. It has been hard to overcome how the world taught me to be. But many years have passed, and I’ve become more openly and powerfully queer with each moment. I have evolved from that place of fear to one where I truly and absolutely cherish being queer, and I believe it is a gift. Now, I get to process my problems, my limitations, with people who understand where they spring from and who aren’t judgemental; with people who can empathise fully, based on their own experiences. I can be completely honest with them. They know why I am like this, and they love me for who I am. Nothing feels better than that.

  Of course, I hope that all the queer kids of Australia today are having an easier time of it than I had, but if they aren’t I need them to know something: your world might seem small now, but your people are out there waiting. The classic saying goes: ‘It gets better.’ That’s a nice message. But I believe it doesn’t just get better, it gets the best. It is a privilege to be in this position. If I had the choice, I would go through all those hard years again if it meant I would end up where I am now, in the beautiful, diverse community I get to call family. So do what I am still learning to do: be honest about what you want. Be open to loving and to being loved. You’re part of something special; get here as quick as you can.

  Floored

  Nic Holas

  This is a story about being on the edges.

  *

  In the mid-1990s, my family lived on the edge of a golf course on the Gold Coast. Large swathes of the town had been transformed into golf courses, in an attempt to cash in on the Japanese tourist market. Sliced into the curved perimeter of the golfing green were residential fence posts, easy enough to jump over but rarely did I dare to do so. The threat of being killed by an errant golf ball from some Gold Coast real estate agent trying to impress ‘Mr Takahashi-san’, or similar, was too great a risk. Anyway, I was not a risk-taking kid.

  I was on the edge of adolescence, a slip of a boy, not quite twelve. I had just kissed my first girl, and I knew I was different but hadn’t yet named what that difference was. I lacked something other boys had. The deficiency was anxiety-inducing. A year later, I would know that I desired men, but for now I was deeply suspicious of boys my age, especially since I didn’t know how to interact with Australians.

  My family was on the edge of one era, moving into another. After several years living in Malaysia, and having recently left my stepfather, my mother had brought my brother and me back to Australia so I could start high school here. To be close to family and friends, she chose to settle us on the Gold Coast. It was quite the culture shock.

  Living abroad in Kuala Lumpur, where my mother worked in fashion and my stepfather was a pilot, had afforded me a relatively cosmopolitan upbringing. My mother’s job had exposed us to a network of designers, fashion buyers and local homosexuals. To my young eyes, they seemed like an exciting underground: part Parisian bohemia, part Chicago gangster. Given homosexuality was outlawed in Malaysia, I wasn’t entirely off the mark.

  My white skin made me a valuable commodity as a child model, so Mum would often make my brother and me pose for the catalogues and walk the runway shows. My latently homosexual ten-year-old self took to this with gusto and aplomb. But weirdly, my new Australian classmates were not impressed by my portfolio or tales of stomping the runway.

  In KL, I went to an international school in the heart of the embassy district; my classmates were the children of diplomats. Our classroom looked like a United Colors of Benetton ad had fucked the ‘It’s a Small World’ ride at Disneyland. It was so diverse, Peter Dutton would have accused it of making Melbournians afraid to go out for dinner.

  When apartheid ended, our white South African teacher cried in front of us and then suddenly disappeared, never to return. I’m not sure if she was crying tears of joy or sorrow, but it stuck with me. Growing up white in a former British colony in South-East Asia affords you a degree of privilege that is different from growing up on the unceded land of what we now call Australia. Different, but not better or worse. In KL, we were ‘expats’, with all the terrible trappings that identity allows.

  Back in Australia, nothing could prepare me for the shock of starting school on the Gold Coast. The shock was not just from seeing only white faces in my classroom, but also at the way the school seemed geared to appease freckled little Australian boys, with its endless sports activities beneath an unforgiving Queensland sun, sports that as a boy I was supposed to be familiar with. The choice given to me was rugby league or soccer, and for some ungodly reason I chose rugby league.

  The only memory I have of my school football career is of the coach yelling at me to go play some sort of on-field position. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was too intimidated to ask, because all the other boys knew how to play. So I ran into the middle of the pack and pretended that this was exactly where I was meant to be – while he screamed at me, over and over.

  They say masculinity is a prison, but mine was more like Nicole Kidman in Bangkok Hilton: a foreigner, overly proud and weirdly up myself, while simultaneously incredibly anxious.

  So, come 1994, my family and I were literally and metaphorically on edge. Adding to this sense, for me, was my strong loyalty to my mother and my belief that I needed to protect her. There had been a time, before she married my stepfather, when it was just her and me: a bonding time as a little boy, made more intense by my latent queerness.

  In my mind, my mother’s decision to leave my stepfather was irrevocable. I never dreamt of a Parent Trap–style plan to reunite them. I had been too young to experience my own parents’ divorce, and this meant that I believed that when Mum left someone, that was it. Marriages end; you move on.

  My stepfather, however, was not of the same mind. Mum leaving him wounded him deeply, and he did not cope well with the separation. This was his third failed marriage, made all the harder by distance. He remained in Malaysia. When the boxes filled with our stuff followed us home, they arrived covered in handwritten notes to my mother, begging to be taken back.

  He eventually turned up on the Gold Coast, hot on the heels of those same boxes. It wasn’t a surprise. As with my father, her first husband, Mum was determined that a divorce would not prevent her son from seeing his dad. Maybe it was school holidays, maybe not.

  One afternoon during his visit, my stepfather sent my younger brother and me out of the house. According to him, he and my mother needed to chat. By the time we got back to the house from wherever we’d wandered, Mum was gone for the evening, and he was looking after us.

  Hanging thick in the air was something that made me feel uneasy, a child sensing the desperation of a grown man. I knew nothing of the complicated nature of marital heartbreak, but I knew Mum had left him and that her mind was made up. This was an edge that had to be leapt off. Divorce meant never turning back.

  So there we wer
e, my little brother, my stepfather and me. Apparently, Mum was over at her friend’s house, and would come home eventually. So I decided to stay up as late as I could to ensure I was still awake when she returned. A little moral guardian, like some sort of anthropomorphic Disney creature, there to cheerfully ruin my stepfather’s chances of a romantic reunion.

  I’m not certain what prompted it, but when I was eventually ordered to bed I detoured to Mum’s room and declared that I would be sleeping in her bed that night. I was not a toddler. Here I was, on the edge of puberty, already kissing girls at blue-light discos, instinctively climbing into my mother’s bed in a ham-fisted attempt to protect her from my stepfather’s charms. Or her own choices.

  Suddenly, the space between my stepfather and me moved from Disney comedic relief to full-blown Oedipal tragedy. He told me to go sleep in my room. I told him I wanted to stay there. When pressed for the reason I, a boy of my age, needed to sleep in my mother’s room, I had nothing. I had no words to describe the feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that came out of my belly button via an emotional umbilical cord that was still connected to her, all gristle and blood wrapped up with the metaphorical apron strings we are told must be cut.

  I will only state what I recall happening, what it felt like then, and how it feels now.

  I recall his rage, volcanic and apoplectic. Breaking without warning, out of nowhere and directed entirely at me.