I did something very very very naughty on saturday night. PLEASE DON"T TELL THE NUNS! I just saw the video - and I kind of realise why none of the bledisloe cup watchers in the pub would meet my eye. I was dressed as the virgin mary (and I meand the full caboodle) - with mayonnaise smeared around my mouth.
It was all in aid of a film project with wife and neighbours. One of the neighbours was filmed waking up in a pool of blood and having a horrible vision - of me, the virgin mary, giving a blow job to some guy on the street - who was actually another neighbour cross dressing. We shot the whole thing in one take on King Street. And you can hear a car accident happening in the background......
This is what happens when I'm politically confused. I dragged Anna to the relationship equality rally on saturday arvo. I was dressed in gingham, meringue and corset. (I really shuld have worn more makeup) Anna Looked like "Animal" from the muppets. We are married
(if you can call our freaky cult wedding a marriage) and we have definitely undertaken a considerable amount of legal paperwork in both our contries of origin to gain legal recognition of our relationship, but we didnt' want to be aligned with the straight queers.
And looking at the CSAHHH or CAAHH, or whatever stupidly long acronym they have (I just followed the link from someones email) website - I kind of cringed.........
check out:
Objectives: The objectives of the Sydney event are to contribute to the national day of action for marriage equality by conducting an event which will assertively and confidently affirm the value of comitted, loving LGBTIQ relationships and communicate that value to the wider community in order to advance the campaign for relationship equality.
What is it? :
- A celebration (of what???? institutionalised homophobia? that's why I'm on the streets - if I wanted to celebrate I'd stay in bed)
- Fun (we did our best but most of the marchers were about as interesting as the festival of light at a mardis gras parade)
- Inclusive - open to all who support our objectives (dodgy working there)
- Looking forward, but not ignorant of the history of August 13 (people in management positions actually should be have their fingers wired up outside of the office)
- Apolitical, but not ignorant or unappreciative of those who support our objectives politically
- (HELLO!!!!!!! wot tha fuck?????? what exactly does it mean when the two major POLITICAL parties LEGISLATE against couples gaining STATE recognition for their relationships?
- A protest rally (could have fooled me)
- A partisan political event (unlike the ALP closet event one in the morning)
- An event purely for the gay community, or seen to be only for that community (Great so Lesbians were allowed to attend - thanks guys)
- An event to promote causes other than relationship equality (What's that old saying from the Nazi holocaust - "first they came for the pinkos but I wasn't a pinko, then they came for the queers, but I wasn't queer, then they came for the jews, but I wasn't jewish but then they came for me and there was no one left to defend me")
And I would have missed out on Kerryn Phelp's great speech, and Kerry Nettle's, and Clover Moores, and that other scary girl who said that her friend just killed himself that week coz of homophobia (and I was wondering if she was exaggerating just a bit - and maybe she could have encouraged him to think less of the struggle and more of psychiatric intervention?????)
ahem I digress. those speeches were good.
Abel Seaman and the other guy with the bow tie didn't wow me. (I had my head bowed - I mean I'm not sure If I'm into giving anyone the right or obligation to kill others - and the question of human rights is very very abstract in such cases.............. I'd rather hear from a prison inmate) I liked Tanya Pliberseks speech - but why is she in a the same party as a bunch of right wing catholic arseholes? (and that is what half of the ALP consists of). If changing things from the inside works - then why don't queers all go to the nunnery???? Why don't we talk more about old queers, poor queers, refugee queers, prison queers - rather than the weirdly aspirational mirroring Kel&Kath queers of AME. How fucked would you be if you were an Afghan lesbian on Nauru???? Well not very. why don't these rally talk more about Fucking????
But it was good to see the queeruptors. and REALLY good - to walk down Okker street on a satterday arvo yelling "we're Here, we're queer, we're not going shopping!!!" But - I felt very very awkward for promoting the rally to queercores Glen and Liz - when it was so obviously a pink picket fence affair. As Liz said "I CAN marry my partner but I'm against it, so why am I here?" (or words to that effect - sorry if I've misquoted you). L&G are very actively involved in constructing communities that are about resisting and challenging the nuclear family model of emotional control and ownership - and so asking for their solidarity on the right for some queers to have access to some benefits of state recognition is a big ask..........
I'm still confused by the changes in australian society. I realise that 2 'straight' relationships I had in the past (first boyfriend was a vietnamese boat person - sponsored into a country town) and last major affair was with a permanent refugee for 5 years ( not the 3 of a TPV). I was able to gain some benefits of state recognition of my homosexual relationship - but only on condition that it conform or heavily dissemble a conformity to an extremely rigid and financially controlled version of emotional custodianship.
Its one that we are still suffering from today. tonight actually, right now as I write its 1am. I've been awake since 7am, and I'm tired, but If I don't write I'll cry, and eat more biscuits. Actually my stomach is hollow. I exhausted myself riding my bicycle yesterday - after spending most of the night before sobbing and reading until 4am. You'd htink my life would be challening enough wihtout this extra shit. things ain't good on the saphhic side right now.
There's a very nasty epidemic in the dyke community that begins with A and ends with M. There are a few others related to eating disorders (why are lesbians either rake thin or fucking fat?) but the piss thing is a worry. I was attracted to Abel initially because she was the first woman I'd seen in a dyke bar who had a healthy looking (muscular, yet curvaceous) body. Ohhoo hum, pity about my own chemical anaesthetisa at the time so I missed the other glaring problem. and then I found she had pretty much intrjected her mothers own anorexic standards of parisian sveltine. Shit.
After we received the first Temporary permanent residency - one of our closest friends said "I hope this means you guys can start to have a normal relationship". you know - independant, not dependant, co-dependant - or without the ridiculous power imbalance that the initial sponsorhip process thrust apon us. But old habits die hard - and bad habits that prop up old habits die much harder. Abel's passivity was reinforced by alcohol. Mayhem cultivates a mask of immovable passivity to hide her growing panic. I sit in my room at night gnawing, and my eyes flood with tears. If I sleep my stomach jolts me awake with searing pain. time to see that stomach surgeon again. Maybe. I know what this feels like. 11 years ago, when I looked 10 years older than I was. The same bodily symptoms. No libido (so she blames me and drinks more). Hair turning grey (It turned black again after the last time). Knife weilding stomach churns. the So I drift off more remote and more controlling and things just get more fucked. Drunk she is from hell. Angry at me, and I can't respond. this feels old, so fucking old. Something deeply atavistic from centuries of Irish peasantry takes over within me. I cower and hunch my back against her insults "Ta Geule! tu me Fais Chiant! Tu m'emmerde! Ta Geule!" I press my lips into a thin saintly silence, and feel my pink bits turn white with rage. Old fucking fierce rage. Hot tears burn my eyes, and I swallow and cower and my stomach hollows out to hold more of it in. No wonder I have gall stones. No wonder the Irish diaspora have been such fierce and feral colonisers. Centuries of drunks and martyrish frigid females let loose in english colonies. I blame the ancestors - because I did not grow up in an alcoholic household and wonder where the hell I learnt to act like this? to put up wth this shit? to cower and cringe and take all this in? Meanwhile she uses the studio as an excuse, and produces muddy excesses of her own sodden kingdom of the self. you think I'm being savage? Its myself I hate. Because every relationship I've had has been like this. Except for the nymph and I hated her for it. I am my own worst enemy. Is it because of my childhood? Yes. Mine was fucked, but how long can I keep blaming my parents? I've had 15 years of my own life, and I'd like to think that 4 years of therapy sorted some of the old shit out.
so its time to take stock and declare myself a fuckup and a failure and that its time to seek change. big change. Probably not thought field therapy or liposuction - or even permanent hair removal (eeeuuuuw! - imagine a life with NO BUMFLUFF?)
I'm going to become one of those Lesbians that advertise for a NS, ND, NA, BSOH in personals ads. This will take some time. and in the meantime?
I have given up a lot of hope. I don't think I or our relationship in its current state can challenge Abel to become less of an alcoholic. It's not only her stubborn french mind. She let herself go from one safe situation of permanent adolescence to another. she says I project my maternal desires onto her as a child/object - but she doesn't see how infantile and adolescent she is towards me (and most people around) - which isn't helped by being a migrant. I don't think our relationship could ever really work in australia. she'd have to go home and grow out of adolescence there. And all the good influence she has had on me, no giving me physical and emotional security is being eroded with every fucking drink she has (that I notice at least). So I don't know. we have a great house, and ostensibly a pretty good lifestyle here in Australia - and we do fun stuff like crazy films and art exhibitions, but at what fucking cost?
What I've written here is airing my dirty laundry and I'm sorry for the blush that crosses any readers who know and love us well - but I'm sick of being silent and stoic for the sake of people sidealised version of what our relatinship looks like from the outside. I am bigger, louder, more confident, more domineering from the outside - but inside she's the one holding the cards. she is the one who can and probably will leave - whenever she gets sick of art school, sick of australia or sick of me not being what she wants. I won't leave her - because I am loyal and loving and probably incredibly lazy ...... (says she with her 3 careers). I woulnd't wnat to inflict this relatniohsip onto children and I don't want to continue to inflict it on myself.
Its such a pity - becasue the work f our relationship the life work - has been incredible. Yesterday I interviewed a 90 years old aquaintance - who knows anna and I as models. He's a WW2 veteran, a bit sexist, conservative in s many ways - and yet he quite clearly made statements giving tacit understanding and support of our relationship. the muslims at our local Epicerie have also done the same. Despite john howard and co. there are many many spaces outside the gay ghetto where we are acknolwedged and welcomed as queers in the community. And its very very hard to do this sort of work outside of a seemingly stable, visible (and reasuringly hermetic) relatioship. single queers are a threat - because of the weird public/private roles of sexuality and seduction - and the threat of our desire to others within heteronormativity........... Most people are like my mum and school firends when I was 19. "How do you know if you're bisexual if you havne't slept with a woman?" "You just want to be trendy". The single lesbian is not a secual being. We are eunuchs - sad single spinsters waiting for something to happen to us.......... Oh god, Its enough to drive one to drink.
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