Gone Fishin’

We are…

Sell the Vatican, Feed the World

Lord!

“…and you know I love Judy Garland.”

GaGa, patron saint be thy name.

Further reading: “For Gay Activists, The Lady Is a Champ” by Dan Zak (Washington Post); “The Gay Generation Gap: Reflections on the National Equality March” by Jay Michaelson (Huffington Post); “The Next Generation of Activists Steps Out” by Julie Bolcer and Kerry Eleveld (The Advocate).

Yazz

Please vote for Tilman Robinson’s song “Thinking Without Thinking” for WAM Song of the Year: http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,26030547-5019216,00.html.

While you’re at it, visit Tilman’s MySpace (where you can also listen to “Thinking Without Thinking”).

If you have more than one e-mail address, please vote as many times as you can… and spread word!

Thanks!

Untitled

I will be patient, kind, faithful and true

To a man who loves music, a man who loves art

Respects the spirit world and thinks with his heart.

Giggity giggity gig-gi-ty!

And you think people who call in sick have poor excuses? Check this out.

The bargain store

Nothing is more distressing than the sound of a sad prostitute.

I regularly visit Darlinghurst and Kings Cross whenever I’m in Sydney – there are fabulous restaurants and bars along every road, convenience is never too far away. These two areas are also frequented after 7pm by ladies of the evening, whose services are offered to a diverse range of the male species: businessmen, married men, lonely men and adolescents desperate to lose their virginity to name a few. Had I not known any better the first time I walked up Bourke Street, it would have been easy to mistake one of these ladies with any of the other young females out for the evening. (As years go by, hemlines get shorter… and there are many females who wear skirts so short you can see what they had for breakfast… yesterday.) The only thing distinguishing the two is that one walks up William Street on the way to the Cross; the other just walks it.

I was walking out of the Cross on Friday with my friend Matt after a fantastic night out, and we were witness to a car full of rowdy young males who screamed “Show us your tits!” to a sex worker outside a bar. Other cars made a chorus as they drove by also, honking their horns and yelling obscenities at her and another young woman just a little further down the street. We both commented that these women are not stupid: one car carrying four males went so far as to stop in front of the first woman but she knew better than to get in. I heard her sigh as we walked past.

These were the same types of idiots who, to some degree, kept me awake in the wee hours of Sunday morning as they persisted in harassing the sex workers outside the apartment I am currently staying in (whether they were the same ones we encountered on Friday, I do not know). These people are the kinds who holler “WHORE!” but probably don’t know how to spell it. (Even as I write this, I hear them. Every night.) With their ridiculously souped up cars and mammoth exhaust pipes (disproportionate to the size of their genitalia I’m certain), they hurled sixth grade insults at these women. Trying to understand the point of this behaviour, one has to wonder if it is as simple as one of the many consequences of too much liquor… or, really, if they are attempting to woo these women into spending an hour with them (or, judging by their sense of style, twenty minutes). To the latter, I can only respond again that they are smart enough not to get in a car with assholes.

I had written an entirely different piece on prostitution earlier that looked at the need for decriminalisation to provide a safe environment for sex workers and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and taking control away from pimps who, as investigations have proven time and time again, rule the trade by way of drugs, money and violence. Perhaps my outlook on this topic, as in many other aspects of life, is influenced by two people in particular: Terence and Dolly Parton.

Terence, in Heauton Timoroumenos, wrote “Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.” Nothing human is alien to me. Dolly Parton has said throughout her career that her image was originally based on the “town tramp.” The title track on her latest album Backwoods Barbie brought this to mind: “I’ve always been misunderstood because of how I look / Don’t judge me by the cover ’cause I’m a real good book / So read into it what you will but see me as I am / The way I look is just a country girl’s idea of glam.”

This goes deeper than the law. End rant.

Jóga

In every litter of piglets, there is always a runt. In Sydney, I am that runt… and I couldn’t imagine having it any other way.

Sydney has become a home away from home this last year. I have friends who live here and I know this city – in the last four months, I was here four times and I’ve visited more often than I’d like to admit. But I am acutely aware that there is a certain type of person who can exist comfortably here, particularly in the gay community. I am not one of those people. I love Sydney precisely for that reason: Black Sheep Syndrome.

What happened yesterday was interesting. Not two hours into my arrival in Sydney and I was a wreck. Silent breakdown? Preemptive separation anxiety? A ball of confusion? Whatever it was, it was not pretty. (And to the handful of people who were subject to my calls of distress last night, I apologise but thank you!) I remembered Meryl Streep on Inside the Actors Studio a decade or so ago talking about the first time she felt her confidence as an actor unravel. I understand that precariousness. It sometimes just takes one thing… but when that one thing hits, it hits hard.

The distance from intellectual comfort is also something to contend with. For some people, adaptation (at least in a social setting) is easy. For a neurotic (doing double duty as a functioning social retard), it is not. I never expect anyone to be interested in anything I have to say. Truly. I’ve often been mid-way through a sentence and have had to interject and say aloud, Okay, I’m boring myself (because the person sitting across the table can’t wipe the look of boredom off their face but is too polite to say anything). I am far from being the most interesting person in the world (quite the contrary!)… but I can honestly say that when my brain feels like it’s just been molested by mediocrity, it’s quite a challenge to remain invested in the conversation.

The dynamic of simply walking down a prominent street is always fascinating to me. Consider: I took some friends out to dinner not so long ago at a restaurant along Victoria Road in Darlinghurst. After our meal, we went for a stroll and it was like sitting in the stands of a livestock auction. My friends, like the men frequenting this strip, are very good-looking and attract attention – the head-turning, up-and-down inspections were reciprocal. Enter me. I’ve said before: I depend on my personality because God knows I don’t have looks to fall back on (Diane Keaton gets me)! A lifetime of being plain Jane has been one of the cornerstones of my existence and in a situation like that, I always feel like Dian Fossey with the gorillas. You would have to ask the people who know me best, but perhaps my behaviour is akin to Tina Fey’s, summed up best in Maureen Dowd’s Vanity Fair feature story “What Tina Fey Wants”:

S.N.L.’s Amy Poehler has described Fey as “monastic,” the type who sits on the side and watches everybody else belly-flop in the pool, and then writes about it.

My friends Carmel, Katie and Mignon were a great comfort through those first hours. It’s the wall I hit. Fourteen years of thinking about it piled up into a reality yesterday. As my friend Phil advised me those months ago: “Make this year 2000-and-mine!” More to come…

Björk soothes in the meantime. Fade to black.

The boy from Tupelo

In some ways, I never thought this day would come. Perth, Western Australia - the most isolated city in the world – has been my home since I arrived in Australia at age two. I love this city for everything it’s given me… but, more importantly, for everything it has not. With less than nine hours until I board a plane out of here, I am thoughtful of the road that lies before me.

I have been fighting for fourteen years to get out of here. On a particularly bleak day in the fifth grade, Anthony Ricciardone exclaimed to the class, “Look, it’s raining!” to which Mrs. Anderson drily responded, “Yes, it is.” As all the kids laughed, I could only stare out the window at that grey sky, rain coming down like bullets, imagining that this could be the view from my loft in SoHo, New York City. At ten years of age, I knew.

I have spent the last three days packing my life into boxes and, in the process, bringing my ten-year-old self into full relief. Cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom in the family home, the only thing that remedies my anxiety is the music of Dolly Parton. In many of Dolly’s songs, the character (be they imagined, real or Dolly herself) yearns for bigger things but cannot detach herself emotionally from home, wherever that may be. “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy,” “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” “Smokey Mountain Memories” and ”Bluer Pastures” come to mind.

I find myself empathising with the characters in Dolly’s songs now more than ever. On Sunday, my dear friends Tilman and Madeleine hosted a farewell gathering for a small group of my friends at their humble abode. I was particularly grateful they had offered to open up their home to me in the midst of my disorganisation and distress, for I had only finally decided to do something about leaving Perth when I returned from another weekend trip to Sydney at the end of June. I have had weeks to pack everything up, sort everything out… yet find with hours left, I seem to have done little in the way of moving on.

Saying goodbye is not easy. Perhaps it was the high dosage of cold and flu medication I had taken just before the party or, quite simply, my nature as a neurotic person that did not evoke outbursts of sadness from me upon the many goodbyes of the night. Or perhaps circumstantial apathy was a way of protecting myself from falling apart.

My friend Alasdair was the last to leave that night. I stood on the porch and watched him walk away. That was hard. He has reminded over these last couple of months whenever I’ve been worried (in lieu of a better word) about the possibility of being so far away from my loved ones that “Nobody’s dying,” and he was true to form as he reminded me again before we parted ways.

This evening. My last goodbye, to Tilman and Madeleine, has been the most difficult (as I knew it would be). This year has been a lesson in gratitude for me – more than perhaps any other year of my life – because it has not been an easy year by any means. Maya Angelou says when you are in the middle of a crisis, stop and say ”thank you”… so it is never lost on me that I am surrounded by a very small group of loyal and supportive people who are not only there for me, but make me want to be better. My hope is that everybody has that in their life. And without getting into detail, I can say in all honesty I am hard-pressed to find human beings I love more. Tilman and Madeleine make me happy to be alive.

You never see it coming… then it does.

When I first listened to Emmylou Harris’ “Boy From Tupelo,” I thought she had written the song about me.

You don’t love me, this I know

Every verse seemed connected to my experience…

Don’t need a bible to tell me so

…and my longing for something bigger…

I hung around a little too long

…and it spoke to me in a way few songs have been able to, exacting the currents of my life…

I was good but now I’m gone

…and the day has finally come.

Prop 8? Prop H8!

We all deserve happiness. Equality for all. One love.

Join the silent protest. This is inspiring.

No H8

Power to the people!

No H8.