• If all else fails, when the shit flies, duck.
Chapter 5
Fuck Flying a Flag
FUCK THE RAINBOW FLAG and the coming-out anthems and all the hoopla. I’m here, I’m queer, and I am going shopping.
Even being gay requires your own definition. Gay pride parades can boast diversity all they want, but every year I see the same picture on the front page of the New York newspapers. It’s always a bunch of hairy bears with potbellies dressed in leather outfits dancing on a colorful float surrounded by outrageous drag queens on stilts. It’s never a picture of the senior citizens group or the firefighters or any of the other boring factions. And every year, I hear the frustrated rebuttals of the more staid, mainstream, if you will, gays and lesbians who drive Volvos and invest in 401(k)s like their straight brethren. They start clamoring about how the media is always out to paint the LGBT “community” as “freaks.”
Freaks or not, leather daddies and drag queens certainly have had a long, illustrious history, not only being part of the “community,” but actually helping to form it during such seminal moments as the Stone Wall riots. And yet even the leather daddies and drag queens would like to keep a few groups out of said “community.” During the gay pride parade on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the group NAMBLA (the National Association for Man-Boy Love) wanted to march. Pretty much everyone in the community, including those considered to be on the fringe, wanted the group left out. People were concerned that the inclusion of such a group would reflect poorly on the community as a whole and would give the media an even more salacious picture for the front page. Let me just stop to say, man-boy love is not part of my moral compass and I am not condoning any kind of underage or illegal activity. But the tension this issue caused proves that like every other social group, the gay community is composed of people who conform and people who don’t, and just as annoyingly, it is composed of people who are really vocal about whether you fit in or you don’t. There are rules, and to be a “good gay” one learns the rules. But let’s face it, I don’t like rules or conformity. You’ll never see me and my girlfriend walking down the street in the West Village or West Hollywood in matching outfits. Not so much. I will march to my own drum as a gay woman, defining myself in that aspect of my life my own way, just like I do with every other personal definition. No gay pride parade needed. Not that I don’t like a good parade, but I don’t want the gay community to dictate who I am or who I should be any more than I want the straight world to. I’m not in this life to judge anyone else and I don’t want to be judged either.
For a long time I wasn’t sure about participation in any kind of “community.” As far back as I can remember, despite my childhood fantasy to one day wear a strapless black lace wedding gown with a fishtail, I never really wanted to get married and I certainly never wanted to have children. I grew up having crushes on drag queens, so it’s doubtful I was ever going to take the “traditional” path. However, I definitely needed to grow up and get to know myself better in order to accept who I truly am and to be ready for love.
The first time I slept with a girl was when I was sixteen. We met in a club. I was already living alone and working full-time in a hair salon. I’d always liked makeup and fashion, yet I naturally gravitated toward hair. So, when I was fifteen, Mum got me a job assisting stylists after school and on weekends. Those stylists taught me how to shampoo while rinsing out color for them and helping with the rollers. Everyone apparently liked having me around, and I really, really loved what I was doing, so I quit school—which I fucking hated anyway—and started my apprenticeship, attending night classes to get my high school diploma. That was the deal I made with Mum and it worked out just fine.
Mum was a doer—when I lived at home, she would do my laundry, make my dinner, and do all these things for me that, although lovely, didn’t allow me to be independent and take care of myself. Having my own apartment in Surfers Paradise, about five minutes away, meant I had to pay the rent, feed myself, clean my clothes, and get my arse up when it was time to go to work. And it also meant I could spend quality time with my first girlfriend.
Growing up around mostly older people, I gravitated toward older friends and they helped get me into the clubs. The majority of those clubs were gay bars, where—probably due to my upbringing—I felt much more comfortable than in straight clubs. So, when this dark curly-haired girl approached me in a crowded bar, I thought two things: “Wow, she has great hair,” and “Mmm, I’d like to kiss her.” Sandy was nineteen, worked as a clothing store manager, and actually lived in the town next to mine. And while there was nothing extraordinary or heart-stopping about her, this was my first lesbian U-Haul date. We moved in together after a few months.
Even after we started dating, I never felt the need to come out by making a grand announcement to family, friends, or work colleagues—I still don’t think being who you are requires an event with a Diana Ross anthem. I honestly never thought that being gay was bad. Ever since I was a kid, I had been taught to accept other people. I mean, so what if I’m gay? Being with a woman felt completely normal, so my attitude was “Fuck it. I’m good, so who cares what anyone else thinks.” What surprised me was that Mum wasn’t exactly of the same mind.
Because I’d been raised in a drag queen environment by a mother who’d employed those girls, nurtured them, supported them, and socialized with them, it was hardly a stretch for me to assume she’d be fine with the news that I was gay. I’d heard no remarks or conversations that would lead me to think otherwise. For God’s sake, one of the first weddings I attended, at age nine, was a union between two lesbians. The happy couple worked as bartenders at the club, so all the girls attended and Mum seemed absolutely fine with it. Back then it wasn’t legal in Australia, but the ceremony took place in a church which made it feel quite official, and it seemed perfectly normal to me. There were flowers and an organ and all the conventional trimmings. Afterward, Mum took me to the reception at the girls’ house, in their backyard. So I had no reason to think she would reject my own relationship . . . Wrong!
Before Sandy and I moved in together, I was having dinner at Mum’s house and I casually told her that I’d met someone. But when I told her who I was dating, she was furious: “My daughter is not going to be a fucking dyke!” I can’t recall every word of her diatribe, but suffice it to say there were derogatory remarks about my sexuality and pissy comments that made it clear she was disgusted with the whole thing. I was really shocked and disappointed.
“Isn’t it interesting?” I shot back. “While it’s okay for everyone else, it isn’t okay for your own bloody daughter!”
Mum’s reaction threw me for a loop because I looked up to her. Acutely aware of how much Mum wanted me to present her with a grandchild someday, I felt bad, and our relationship became quite strained. We are both strong, uncompromising personalities, and we basically entered a yearlong standoff on the subject, which was hard to take in light of how much I respected her.
My mother is a complicated woman. Clearly. Despite raising me in a transsexual strip club and allowing me to be in the presence of one of Australia’s most notorious mobsters, my mother was really quite traditional. She laid out my father’s clothes every morning and she made family dinner every night. My mum hated the fact that kids teased me for being fat, and when she drove me to school each morning, she would always give me a little batch of courage (and a big lunch) to get me through the day. And when my father abandoned us, I felt rejected, which I’m sure was hard for her to deal with. To that end, I think Mum always hoped I would be able to fit in. I think she imagined that as I got older, and thinner, and more successful, life would get easier. And when I told her I was gay, all that hope was momentarily shattered. My mother didn’t want to see me rejected anymore. This is not a unique story; it’s far too common for gay people when we come out to our parents. But what is interesting is that a woman as uncommon as my mother could be so common in her reaction. L
et’s face it, her moral compass is not exactly conservative or traditional. And ultimately, her moral compass didn’t include being homophobic either. But she had to work out all the cultural stereotypes and bullshit about what it “means” to be gay. She had to realize being gay didn’t mean I would wind up alone, an alcoholic, on a bridge somewhere ready to jump. She had to understand that being gay was part of what made me me and what made me happy. Once she got that, we never really had to discuss it again. Me being gay is like me having blue eyes to her now. It’s part of who her daughter is. My mother has pretty much always lived with me, and while I have been writing this book and making Season Three of my TV show, she has been sick. My partner has been taking care of her and I won’t say it has been an easy task. But Mum relies on her when I am not there and Mum knows she is her family. We aren’t exactly traditional and that’s totally normal to us.
Throughout that early rough patch, however, Mum’s cold shoulder made me start to question myself and what was right for me. She was the only person I respected enough at that point in my life to actually make me unsure of myself, and during that year I was really unsure. I wanted her approval, and having witnessed the struggles of the transvestite strippers at her clubs, I decided that life would be a damned sight easier if I played by the hetero rules. I don’t think I was trying to fit in so much when I chose to give the conventional route another go. I was really looking for Mum’s approval. So I ended the relationship with my girlfriend. And following a couple of short-term meaningless flings with other girls, I did precisely what I’d vowed I would never do and changed who I was to meet someone else’s definitions. Just two years after having come out of the closet, I dove straight back in and began dating guys again.
But trying to please my mum also meant I had to quell some of my own desires and that was very challenging. I started dating men who were flash-in-the-pan characters, the type who never offer a commitment—much like my runaway Dad. This was exactly what I wanted at the time, because I wasn’t looking for anything serious with a guy. It was easier for me if they weren’t going to stick around. I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to have children. I didn’t want to settle down and feel trapped.
After I moved to America, I frequented New York City straight clubs like the Tunnel on Eleventh Avenue and the China Club on West Forty-seventh Street, and most of the door people knew me. It was a great distraction from the banal grind of doing hair in the suburbs, as well as a way for me to try to fit in with the people on this side of the pond. For a while, I even dated an NFL football player who I met in one of the clubs. But I soon realized I had enough of pretending that I enjoyed men’s boring stories . . . and their boring sex. It turns out that taking the conventional route when you are unconventional doesn’t actually make life any easier. You have to find yourself and be yourself if you are going to live your own life. I was young, learning my craft as a hairdresser, and ready to go out and make my mark on my own. No boyfriend need apply.
I entered a period when I just avoided dating anyone. I preferred to date me, which helped me get to know myself a little better. I started to realize that I couldn’t change who I was, even for my mother. And I figured out that my identity wasn’t built around another person. I had to build my own identity. I didn’t need to date someone to define myself. Figuring that out was a big life lesson. I highly recommend self-dating; it is very therapeutic. Finally focused on my career, I wanted to be a great hairdresser, so I worked like a maniac to make that happen. There wasn’t really room in my life for another person at that point. Another person would have to come later, once I figured out who I was and how to be me. Parade or no parade.
Literally and figuratively, it’s hard for a lot of us to look in the mirror, but that’s something I’ve tried to do all my life, and I actually prefer to look in my own mirror to figure out what’s going on than turn away from it or see a false reflection. I’ve always been very good at checking in with myself, talking things through with myself, and analyzing myself. While, like everyone else, I sometimes struggle to be honest with myself, I have a hard time looking in the mirror when I do things that I’m uncomfortable with. During those times I tend to make everyone around me uncomfortable, too, even if they don’t know why. When I was with women, I was me; when I was with men, I was someone else, and I was angry with myself for allowing that.
The fact is, I can be a miserable wench if I’m not allowed to be me—by other people’s standards or by the cop in my own head. It doesn’t matter if I’m being good, bad, or ugly—I need to be me. When I try to do or say something that pleases other people but doesn’t please me, it becomes so forced that I have a really hard time dealing with myself. That’s when I can easily turn into the bitch that no one, including myself, wants me to be (as opposed to the kind that I’ve already defined).
I am a gay woman. It is who I am. Like having blond hair or fair skin, it is me. And that is what my mother needed to understand. So I drew a line in the sand. “Fuck it, this is who I am and it’s a little bit late to stop me now.” Having raised a feisty kid, she realized I wasn’t going to back down or compromise who I was.
“If you have that much of a problem with it, then you don’t have to see me,” I told her. That was it. Mum’s not a fool, she wasn’t going to lose a daughter over our disagreement, and while it took some time for her to warm up to the idea, she didn’t disown me or stop speaking to me. It was a long rocky road, but ultimately, I was lucky because even though mothers are supposed to accept their kids, as many gays and lesbians know, it doesn’t always work out that way.
Ironically, I have now come full circle on the marriage thing, as well. When I was young, I thought getting married and having kids was for other people. And let’s face it, my parents didn’t exactly provide me with the best example of marriage. I wanted to travel the world and do hair and be fabulous and date beautiful women. And I have done all of those things and then some. More recently, however, my priorities have shifted. Call it age, call it being in love, call it whatever you want, people change. So I have become involved in California’s marriage equality campaign, doing public speaking engagements and other PR work to try to make sure that gays and lesbians have the right to get married. Whether or not I personally want to make that kind of commitment is my choice, not my neighbors’, and it is shocking to me that a legal right can still be withheld from an entire group of people. So I have also come to realize that being part of a “community” isn’t so bad when you can band together to create a political movement and find power in numbers to effect real change, like Stonewall did or as the marriage equality movement is doing. Although you’ll still never see me and my girlfriend (or my wife) wearing matching outfits!
As I think most people know by now, I don’t like being told what to do, especially when what I’m doing isn’t hurting anyone else. So, even though I am not a gay parade kind of girl, I am all for a good public protest when we need to get something done. I am not quiet and I am certainly not suggesting that anyone else should be either. We all need to stand up for who we are and what we believe in—whether it’s together or on our own. It’s just that, personally, I would rather leave the lapel pins and bumper stickers at home.
I’m not judging anyone who likes a witty bumper sticker. It’s just not for me. And, hey, the gay community has formed its own opinions about me, too—what kind of fabulous queen doesn’t have a few things to say?
“You don’t look like a lesbian.”
“You dress so fabulously . . . for a lesbian.”
“You’re so much prettier in person than on TV . . .”
I have been out for years and I’ve even won awards for that, but still people say, “I didn’t know you were gay. You don’t look gay.” Okay, so we gays are judgmental, too. Thank God everyone really is the same after all.
Some people cruise through life unwilling or unable to acknowledge who they are, and that, to me, is no way to live. Marrying a man when you really
want to be with a woman but are afraid to lose your job, or pretending to be straight for your parents’ sake when you know you love your best friend—I understand those are real-life concerns. But if you’re disingenuous with yourself, you might as well be a zombie. You don’t have to shout from a soapbox—although sometimes that is important, too—but you do need to own who you are and know you’re okay.
You don’t need to have a coming-out party or fly a fucking flag or even march in a parade once a year to announce who you are and how you choose to live your life. You just need to be honest with yourself and hold your head up while you live your life the way you want to live it. Don’t let anyone, gay or straight, tell you who you’re supposed to be. The only person you need to make the announcement to is yourself.
Photographic Insert
THE FIRST TRANSFORMATION WAS MY OWN . . .
Here’s me at five years old, proudly sporting an ABBA T-shirt.
At six, with my greatest inspiration, my mum.
At ten, traveling with my sister-in-law Viv.
At fifteen, a curly-haired redhead wearing equally bright red lipstick.
And just one year later, a platinum blonde standing with my mum at a major hair show.
This is my eighties look.
This is my nineties look.
My new millennium look.
Me with legs and new boobs!
And, of course, me now.
BACK TO MY ROOTS
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