pope gone homo
finally, finally, catholic world youth day week fiasco (deceptively marketed as world youth day) is behind us. all that is left is a few stray red orange yellow backpacks wandering around and a general sense of trauma. and, hopefully, a precedent for ridiculous laws to be challenged, and some atheist pride.
i didn’t really do much about the organising. i went to the meetings at newq, but i didn’t put my hand up for much, and i didn’t go to many meetings at other venues, including the important one, that happened to be on my birthday. the group i started so recently went on without me. i keep feeling like i should be apologising, but in fact it’s a spectacularly good thing, that i kick started something that is able to run without me.
i also didn’t get to most of the events i wanted to, even when it was no longer illegal to be ‘irritating’, and i stopped hiding under the bed waiting for it to all go away. i missed the world truth day event, world heathens day at unsw, the welcome, the kiss-in, and even the heretics’ bbq that sydney atheists put on right at the end. the time got changed a couple of hours beforehand, so i drove in early to check for people wandering around lost, but both gates were blocked off, so i wandered off to meet alex and we went and sat in a park in newtown. when the new time came and we tried to go back, there were roadblocks everywhere and we ended up going in circles. i got summoned by sms so we tried again, and it was even worse – half a dozen road blocks, with a river of pilgrims passing in front. some you could pass, if you waited, but you would always find another.
the one event i did get to, though, was the big protest on saturday. that was good. queer people and atheists, and queer atheists, which is a beautiful sight to see. and some who weren’t queer or atheist – the friendly catholics, the raelians (yes i know they call themselves atheist), the polish news team with their wyd lanyards flying agressively. standing around at taylor square went on for long enough to chat to most people i knew, and marching to the park felt positive and strong. not so being let into the enclosure, ringed with police, chanting across the barriers at the tide of pilgrims swarming down the mardi gras route. just wrong, really. we were using old forms of showing our displeasure, with watered down, ‘friendly’ messages. the tshirts may say pope go homo, but the message of the day was exhorting them to protect themselves. i don’t think many of them would care, even if they could hear and understand what we were chanting for all of a few seconds as they walked by our contained protest. mostly, from what i saw, we were laughed at and blessed, which was very unpleasant, as we watched in horror as the hordes just kept coming. if anyone was looking for a show of strength, i was certainly reminded of the way the world works. despite a respectable turnout, as protests these days go, they outnumbered us, by probably a thousand times. they also out-niced us, as wishy washy as our vocal messages were. of course, that’s not quite such a reflection of their church. still, there was one incident, to keep it lively; a pilgrim managed to jump the fence, get past the cops and take a swing at one of us. and for the first time ever, the police defended us, and took him away in handcuffs. handcuffs that he held up in victory, but handcuffs nonetheless. the police in this country have been helpful when i’ve been broken into or had my bag stolen, but not so great when i’ve been assaulted or crashed into. i have had them be sometimes friendly, sometimes incredibly abusive on the road, and when i’ve exercised that old democratic right to protest, i’ve seen them range from officious to menacing to planting a horse’s hoof five centimetres from my face. so sometimes it’s nice to see them doing their job, and think that maybe here, unlike many places, i won’t be dangerously discriminated against for being an out atheist.
a room of one’s own
there’s a new reality in my life, that i’m having trouble dealing with. well, i’m told it’s a reality; i have yet to see the evidence, but it’s giving me trouble regardless. i’m usually open and honest about what’s going on in my life, but this i feel plenty of people won’t understand. i’m having to assess even my closest friends, choosing whether, when and how to out myself. so now i’m putting it out there, so i can get it settled in my mind, talk to the next person like it’s not a big deal, and get on with not having secrets.
so the big deal is, that when i spend my saturdays looking at open houses, it’s to buy, not to rent. everyone who knows i’ve moved home keeps telling me about their friends who need flatmates – only $150, $170, $200 per week… i turn them down, i couldn’t afford that much, i moved out of my last house when my room went up to about $130. not only was it an insulting increase considering the state of the place and the circumstances, but i don’t consider it to be reasonable to spend half one’s income on rent. i earn $270 per week. it’s not much more than the dole, but i’m comfortable with the lifestyle.
yet here i am, looking to spend $300,000 in one hit. or something.
blogs
so it seems i’m back to the blog. i’ve already angsted about the meaning of writing to the imaginary public, but it seems i’m enjoying doing it, putting my stories in order and collecting them in a nice format. but now i have an accessible version of my narrative, that i am able to delete but am very unlikely to, how does that affect the real, conscious version of me?
i remember at the beginning of my latest relationship, reading my new girlfriend’s blog. i wanted to know more about her, and went back throught the archives, meeting different versions of meela, getting a feel for who she was, or at least how she presented herself, through time. i like people’s stories, and i was glad to hear hers.
i found her an engaging writer, but it wasn’t actually me she was engaging with. most of what i read, when she wrote it she hadn’t even known me. knowing the facts of her life is not the same as listening to her tell me about herself. and when she did tell me stories, many of them i already knew. if they sounded the same as the version i’d read, the narration was just as impersonal as the blog, but if they were too different, i didn’t know what to think. torn between her own sincere opinion, and prior gossip, also from her, and presumably just as sincere.
for myself, i’m not too worried about my story changing. part of the attraction of the blog is to be able to monitor that kind of thing, and have a record of how things seemed at the time, once time has done its work on memory. but the intimacy of revealing our stories and opinions with someone we want to really really understand us is something that can’t be approximated. i hope a future partner never reads this until i’ve already told them every story i’ve written here.
as for others, maybe i can draw another line in the sand of what actually makes a close friend: a good friend is one with whom you take the trouble to exchange your stories personally, rather than just reading eachother’s blogs.
the nicest possible indication of climate change
july 6 is by definition not picnic weather. but the sun shone for hours and about twenty people came and brought incredible amounts of sweets and had pleasant conversations in the park. and we were not cold.
then on wednesday a bunch of us followed it up with high tea at the sly fox. we took a table at the front, set up with a tablecloth and tea and cakes, including the substantial remains of the picnic. a few of us were dressed in incredible finery, some corsetry, fascinators, tails. i was wearing twelve of my grandmother’s square dancing skirts, seamed stockings and heels. strangers kept coming up to me to ask about the skirts, feel them, lift them, count them, but when i walked past people i knew on the way in, they didn’t acknowledge me. i felt a little immobile, so i sat down with the people who understood, and didn’t push the issue. karen did come up and wish me happy birthday hours later.
the evening’s entertainment was not as good as the view we had of it. the slightly misogynistic drag queen mc pointed us out to laugh at us, but then her response to being in room full of dykes was to make lesbian jokes. wife came through as usual, but the rest of the performances were all drag queens; traditional and unsubtle, a frock, heels and a ton of makeup dancing, frenetically, to the music. man i feel like a woman and mad about the boy, can’t remember the other two but they were the same. maybe the performers are endlessly amused to be dressed as a girl and making a fuss about boys, just because they’re (presumably) boys underneath the stage name, but frankly, it just reminds me of all those millions of straight girls i’ve known, who feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to only relate to me as a sounding post for their current boy fixation. are they trying to tell us that yes, you can play with your gender if you want to, but the way to be a girl is to fuss about boys? how that must ring true for this audience. in many contexts it does seem to work that way, but surely our small dirty smelly drunken patch of girl’s night doesn’t have to celebrate that. i’d say that the performers don’t understand their audience at this end of newtown, but considering they get louder applause than i remember most of the interesting, queer performances getting, when they were common, maybe the audience has changed.
yet the demographic hasn’t changed. the average age may be younger, but more likely it’s just younger-than-us. it’s still largely queer women. are the newer, more vocal regulars less educated in politics and gender issues, or have they always lived in the newtown bubble and not noticed that you need more in your life than spectacle, especially as a minority. is our cultural life so impoverished that we can’t see the variety, and think as the nightly news does that a drag queen is a perfectly good symbol for anyone and everyone whose sex, gender or sexuality doesn’t fit the straight ideal? or maybe they’re all so drunk that they can’t think anything at all.
maybe that’s it. it’s my birthday and i’ll rant if i want to. still, i’d really like to understand why mere spectacle is enough on stage, when off stage, people get embarrassed to see me dressed up.
but despite all irritations, including twelve waist bands, slipping suspenders and skull-rattlingly loud music, being there with someone who is not part of that world did make me appreciate how special and rare it is. it’s important that we have it, maybe that’s why it can disappoint me so.
next in the rolling birthday will be dinner at amani’s restaurant a taste of egypt, which everyone at the picnic was convinced would be scrumptious, but which of course i’ve been expected to organise. it’s not like i don’t have enough to organise already, but i’ve wanted to go since i heard of it over a year ago, so organising a dozen interested people to go and eat egyptian should be one of the better tasks on the to do list!
29
i just took a look at the list of goals i wrote here a year ago. i never finished the list, mine are alway longer than that, but it has the big ticket items. and on that, i’m doing pretty well. with one year left of my twenties, i’m in the middle of getting goals met, whatever it looks like right now.
i have a job. i’ve had it for five months, and though there are issues, it’s puttering along, businesslike. i’ve lived in newtown, in the heart of things. i’ve spent eighteen months living in a big well known share house, pretty good though it’s not a co-op, and i’m looking to get my own place, which, it seems, will actually happen. i’m also looking at getting my car all fixed up, it takes money and i seem to have it. i’ve learnt a bit about it and helped fix the brakes, and i’ve learnt the basics of welding.
i’m being useful with my family, which has become more important recently. i’ve had a reasonable number of relationships, enough of them with girls, enough to learn about myself and the world, and be happy being single again. i have made good friends and learnt to open up and to be touched. i feel comfortable that living here, i’m going to find out who my real friends are and who aren’t.
i have sold my creative work, though i really should do more of it sometime. i finished my escritoire! i have learnt tango and rumba and swing a bit, though i must do more, and to lead a bit, though there’s a long way to go with that, too. i have cooked up a tap dance with a friend, and had regular practice. it’s on hiatus while she’s overseas, but i have high hopes we’ll perform it. there’s another performance on the boil with someone else, too.
i’ve been around the world – not everywhere, and nowhere recently, but enough to be travelled. and not just easy travelling, either. russia, morocco, turkey. i’ve lived there. and of course, i’ve hitchhiked. all over europe, a bit in turkey, and even at home.
i’ve gotten a degree, and a million other interesting qualifications and skills. i’m nearly finished a diploma in mechanical engineering. i’ve also taught many subjects in many settings. although i’m not teaching regular classes at the moment, i’m still teaching fairly frequently. maybe i do need to do cert four in workplace training and assessment.
i’ve put my ideals where my mouth is. lately i’m creating queer community at NewQ, making atheism important and interesting and radical again with Sydney Atheist Action Group, changing education with the Student Association of the biggest tafe in the country, and everywhere they’re letting me go.
going back
back at tafe again
back at my parents’ again
feeling more female again
discovering old friends again
hearing my voice lifting again
talking to people who knew me as a child again
getting close to an old parner again
sorting through forgotten belongings and memories again
letting my hair get longer again
falling into old habits again
but it’s all as an adult, walking around in my old life with recontextualising adult feet. reconciling more aspects of myself, again.
it’s much better than it used to be.
