ON BEING GAY
It’s not like I’m trying to be the Oscar Wilde of the 21st century. But if that’s what you want, I’ll be it. I always wanted to be Andy Warhol. Or “Drella”, to those who knew him well. But now I listen to The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed and I miss Andy like a friend. In the 1950’s when Andy was first precariously employed at a magazine he took his homoerotic Blue Boy drawings to every gallery in New York to ask them to exhibit them. Andy had big balls; this could have ended his career before it had even begun.
My generation includes Olympic swimmer Ian “Thorpedo” Thorpe and late actor Heath Ledger. We grew up listening to the songs of Ricki Martin on the radio. His name always reminded me of another Martin who shot up Port Arthur a year after I visited with my parents. I remember seeing a tall man with a blonde pony-tail there, he sort of glowed. I cut out the photo of him they ran in the newspaper and pinned it up on my wall. Long wavy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, he wore his wool sweater like professional model. Ian Thorpe and Ricki Martin have now ‘come out’ as gay. Heath Ledger just overdosed in his hotel room, following the teen rock star tradition. He probably thought it was the fashionable thing to do. Indeed, the only thing he could do, just the inevitable career progression. Or perhaps he was assassinated by the alleged conspiracy to kill celebrities (think Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, and contemporaneously Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson) for his role in Brokeback Mountain which ‘glamourized homosexuality’.
If you are a celebrity and you come out as gay it is the end of your career. And let’s face it you probably left off telling people until you made your millions anyway. Yesterday a Sport Star or Pop Star: today nobody. Announce that you are gay and you have publicly abased yourself, humiliated yourself, and your social status is downgraded. Conversely an easy way to boost the public’s opinion of you is to kick down on gays (think Vladimir Putin or Tony Abbott) nothing puts you on the inside like hating on those outside. After coming out as a lesbian Ellen Degeneres spent years unable to obtain work before being allowed to host a daytime chat show (so long as she studiously avoids referring directly to her own homosexuality). Watching Ellen (without a smile, like a puppet) cracking straight jokes for a room full of straight women makes my blood turn cold. What I want to tell you is what it’s like to be gay, and I’m not going to glamourize it.
The memory of that night is eating me alive. One night in late May 2002 I took E and washed it down with rum. Watched The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine twice through before throwing it against the wall. Played Garbage’s ‘Beautiful Garbage’ album and I was peaking listening to Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go). Singing: You’re such a delicate boy / In a hysterical realm / In an emotional landslide / In physical terms, in heavy metal vocal style. I pull on leather pants and tuck them into combat boots, spending some time tying garters under the knees to affect the look of Nazi breeches. I powder my face white and then wash it off. I put on a black coat Marduk’s wife gave me which is styled after a Victorian ladies’ hunting jacket. It’s late, by the time I get to the club the lights are being turned out. I end up sitting on the gutter outside a 7/11 in the centre of The Valley Mall, rolling a cigarette. Ian comes up to me, I know Ianhe is a friend of Marduk. He offers me Speed and a Nintendo Game Boy on tick (street credit). I decline but give in and go with him. He takes me to the back of a Church and gives me the zippy bag. When I’ve agreed to pay we start to move on.
A parked car starts up and hoons off, a youth yells “Faggot!!” out the window. I pretend not to notice because to be outed as gay here would mean death. But doesn’t he already know I’m gay? Wait… Is Ianeven my friend? He asks me if I’m going to shoot up now or take it later. He offers to introduce me to another guy who has fits (syringes). He takes me to a white van, asks me to wait while he talks to a posse of young boys inside. Then my handler turns me over to another young man who will shoot me up for a cut (share) of speed. The new guy takes me down another unlit street I don’t know to a squat and asks me to wait while he goes inside. “The guy who lives here has HIV I’ll get some needles off him”. I should have run but I didn’t. I have to stay cool, I can’t run now. He comes back and takes me to service station restroom where he attempts to shoot me up, or at least pretend to, missing the vein entirely and leaving a lump of probably saline under my skin which itches. Now I owe a dealer for a shit deal and a broken Nintendo that I don’t want. And I might have been shot up with a dirty needle. This will be the first HIV story of my life. I will be so affected by this experience- what could have been- that I won’t have sex for the next 13 years.
I walk around the weekend market. I buy a ridiculous new-age jumper to get warm. It makes me stand out all the more. I am the worlds’ last, only, and most obvious drug user. I buy a can of V (which I never drink). I drink it at a table outside an Asian sushi joint (which I never eat). There appears to be no-one else at this market which seems to be closing before it even started. Are they packing up because my dishevelled figure has scared them off? Is it really lunchtime already? I expect the police to come and arrest me, expect it for real, but they don’t come. Is this what it feels like to be dead? I feel cold to the bone like I’m dead. The market feels like my family. My mother dragged me to markets like this as a kid. All through my childhood, until I conceptualised ‘child abuse’. I saw so many familiar faces. I take a train home looking forward to a warm shower. Ironically that shitty morning I actually bought some cool pants at the market for only $20. They are striped, comfortable, and fit me perfectly. I put them on and lay down on the lounge. I’ve got something good. Two weeks later I will be in hospital receiving a blood transfusion for anaemia caused by amoebasis related peritonitis.
Two nights later I took E again. I called Mardukand we took a cab to a gay club. There is a blonde queen in the corner. She opens and closes her legs as if pumping bellows. I put my hand on her knee and slide it down next to her cock. We elope together, alone. In her unit she transforms into a beautiful fit boy. This blows my mind. He is mine, and I stay the night.
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