'The Red Lady' - Writing Exercise

Today in a third-year university class titled 'Experimental Poetics', we were given a writing exercise.
We were to "envisage a contemporary situation in which one person watches another watching, watching an act or acts of conspicuous consumption".

This was my piece. I called it The Red Lady.

An explanation comes after the piece which is heavy on the detail and particulars. Only read the explanation if you're keen on having the mystery ruined.

I hope you like it:


----

Thumbing through the clothing racks, I caught you, eyes wandering, down and up like a thermometer rising, across the body of those people in the building.

Though different pieces caught your eye, and you pulled them out to weave your fingers through their lace and cottons, none entranced more than the body and the face of that nearby woman in red.

She, a statuesque figure of seemingly effortless divinity, crimson skirt sequinned, elegant design, and you, an acne-scarred adolescent, pant-tears stitched by grandmothers hands, eyes moaning and glimmering blue and chasing hope and dreaming and expectation.

The Red Lady smiled and laughed at the speaker before her, one who slipped fingers between hangers on the racks, donning dresses and shirts with cuts as fine as the lashings of his tongue. One who cast words like spells and plush pillows, beckoning bodies to fall between them, seemingly entranced by his script.

And when the speaker brought out that long lace gown, off the racks you so flippantly thumbed through, with threads that weaved diamonds through your imagination, The Red Lady blushed. As only she could blush. As you might one day blush. But only in your dreams.

Because what you knew, is that this world is but an ocean, with tides ceaselessly throbbing, and you are an outcast stranded in a craft at sea.

And only red ladies gain a sail.

----

Explanation:

I based the piece off a recent experience shooting at a fashion festival.

The festival partially hinges off the selfless acts of volunteers; from dressers to ushers to interns. These people fantasise endlessly about the prospect of becoming important parts of the industry.

And standing before them, so often, are the endless parade of beautiful people. The important faces. The stream of names. The VIPs. The entrepreneurs.

A volunteer might look affectionately up towards these entrepreneurs, who gain access with a flick of the wrist and a name dropped of a successful person whom they've known for years. Thus, the lady in red, being seduced by the salesperson wiles of the speaker, said speaker and seller of garments representing conspicuous consumption.

A volunteer might aspire to be them, and work tirelessly, for hour upon hour a day, at no profit to them, in the hope they might one day make those dreams a reality. Thus, the one being watched who watches another.

But what reality dictates is that so often these entrepreneurs were often born into circumstances well-off enough to allow their goals, strives and businesses to blossom. Whether by luck, by genetic lottery, or by sheer calculated exploitation. Such is the nature of the entrepreneur, one which is becoming far too apparent. 

Like those beautiful people never had to don pants sewn back together by grandmothers hands, so too might the volunteer never don her red dress.

And the red lady gains her sail.

How To Survive The Australian Summer

It was hot yesterday. I know this because when I woke up and logged into Facebook, head swimming through an excruciating weekend wine-haze, I was confronted by the pet hate of most social media users:

Topless selfies. At the beach; at the park. Photos from that day of sun kissed faces on balconies. Guys and girls swigging Club Mate in singlets, shorelines glinting in the background.

Sure signs that summer had almost arrived.

This was unprecedented, and left me with a gaping hole in my stomach, not unlike that which I had chundered up due to mixing drinks the night before.

My heart filled with dread when I realised that I, like so many, was unprepared.

Soon we will all fall ill with heatstroke as the mercury heats up at long last. Which is why I’ve arrived to spill the tea and aid those in need.

Consider this your Australian summer survival guide, or How To Survive The Australian Summer: A listicle by a bitter homosexual.

Prepare to go shirtless.

If you’re not a complete plebeian, you spent the entire winter months of June, July and August getting jacked the fuck up, lifting harder than you’ve ever lifted heavy objects before.

Forget warm overcoats and layering black on black on slightly lighter black: the Australian summer is all about taking every opportunity to go shirtless in the daytime (and the night, if you’re that kind of pretentious alpha-bro). Because what #blessed girls day out isn’t complete without some red hot Instagrammable bikini photos? 

Without the requisite Beach Body all “shredded for summer”, consider yourself wholly unprepared. If you don’t look like an actual swimsuit model ready to stalk a resort-themed runway by December of this year, you may as well just stay inside.

And for those thinking of visiting an (illegal) solarium: Do not spend money on something that comes from the sky.

Optional extras: Mediterranean tan; rampant egotism.

Speaking of nudity:

Fire all your winter cuddle buddies:

When cold plagues the Australian climate, it’s mandatory to enlist at least one or two vague Tinder matches to snuggle up to in the freezing night. However, come the warmer months, mere human contact becomes cursed with sweat drops and pungent odours, often masked with Lynx Africa and your own self-hate.

Unless you’re willing to compromise and risk hyperthermia by cuddling up on a towel by the beach, there is no call for any of this lusting up business. So delete your dating apps and throw away your boxes of condoms, because the kind of athletic sex you’re used to is about to be ruined by stagnant perspiration.

Say goodbye to your winter fling, because if you think it’s bad enough seeing a dude lose his water content at forty degrees on the side of the road: Imagine him touching you.

On that note:

Stay hydrated.

By hydrated, I don’t mean with water. Did you think this was a healthy PSA? Child, please. I mean beer. I mean cider. I mean vodka cruisers in the cool night air.

If there is one past-time Australians have perfected to an absurd degree, it’s the notion of the day drink, or the blissed-out Sunday sesh. Your Saturday nights are about to become extinct, since Australian event promoters nationwide are about to thrust at you with the full force of whatever daytime parties they’ve planned months in advance.

And if you’re willing to fork out the requisite life savings, there are even some fantastic summer festivals you could attend. If you’re fond of sweaty muscle bros, denim booty shorts and the sight of a guy being carried off by his mates after guerning out on too much ecstasy.

Or you could stay home with your friends, and take smiling group photos for Facebook to distract from the reality that you’re all sitting up in front of the fan, whispering “It’s so damn hot” every five minutes.

Post about it on social media.

Because I truly had no idea it was hot outside, and without your constant visual aids filling my Facebook feed of your vodka watermelons and wiener legs at the beach, I might never have picked up on this.

Because sweaty choking heats don’t constantly plague my nights, rather than gentle warmth, as my comfy flannel pyjamas are now suffocating death traps rather than loving cotton hugs.

Because I have literally never seen the inside of a commercial gym, and really need to be reminded of how you’re up to your fourth set of abdominal muscles lining your cheese-grater stomach. (Side-note: How are your arms so big when you’re not even flexing? Stop that.)

Because the entirety of your existence revolves around making yourself look better on the Internet, and if that means posting heavily filtered Instagram snaps of you and your beverage posing at some nondescript balconied-bar (with mates) - then by God, you’re gonna hop to it.

December will see the rebirth of a tradition, a seasonal shift in our cultural awareness, as the sun beats down and cooks our brains until we are rendered inferior forms of life, babbling “Summer’s finally here!” and “Hashtag, warm nights with great friends!”

Though I pray that I will not fall victim to this annual craze, I can only assume that by the time the sunny season rolls around, I will be a fake tanned mess of blonde locks and muscles on my muscles, sipping midday Sangrias with my girls.

Take this guide, and go forth. Be strong, soldier on, and may hand-fans and sunscreen be with you.

Be exactly who you are.

Recently I participated in an evening show on one of Australia's most popular community radio stations. The reason I was a guest was because I am oftentimes given the label of a gay community stereotype, one I do not personally identify with.

I am labelled a twink.

A twink is a feminine, flamboyant young homosexual man, whom dainties about and throws caution to the wind as he chugs his vodka cruisers, smokes like a chimney and parties to Beyonce like no other. He is thin, hairless and prone to high-pitched squealing, and he can often be found at loud nightclubs, dancing it up with other members of his subculture.

I am given this label because I am, to many, a slender party boy. This is not something I asked to be called, and it is not something I identify with. Primarily because oftentimes the reaction by many when accosted by a twink, is amusement and distaste, though that is based primarily on my own personal experience.

People oftentimes choose to identify with a label - indeed, in a recent study published by the Australian Research Centre for Sexual Health and Society, it was found that, of 1,000 gay men between the ages of 18 and 39, asked whether they identify with a label, 20% identified with 'twink', compared to 9% who identified as a 'cub' - because it provides them a greater sense of community. They feel at home with those among them, and whether or not they actively seek twink counterparts - which I don't personally feel is the case - it helps to know that there is a group that they fit in with.

It is interesting to note that while 20% of the participants identified as twinks, and only 9% identified as cubs, that cubs were more likely to be organised as a group through meetings. That they were more likely to congregate and form friendships. And you know that it's the norm. There are no 'twink bars' that I know of, but bear and cub haunts aplenty. Entire bars filled with a certain determined 'type' of homosexual man, catering to their subculture. So, from that, you could assume that although twinks may potentially occupy a larger spectrum of the gay 'community', they lack that sense of community itself. That sense of belonging.

It runs right back through to high school notions of cliques and wanting to feel like you belong. There's quintessential sociology and psychology at work. Knowing this, and knowing it's a perfectly normal characteristic of human beings - why don't I fit in with the facet of the community I am perceived to belong to? Why don't I try to fit in?

Maybe it's because I don't appreciate being pigeonholed. I don't want people to make assumptions about my personality. I have gone on dates with men who, within the span of our meeting, have come to the actual conclusion that I am vacuous and airheaded, purely because of my body type, because of the subculture I appear to belong to. I quote, "You're such an airhead twink". I've been told this within minutes, to my very face. Like I'm meant to agree, and falter into a giggling fit. Oh god, you're right! I'm so silly.

Which is why, when put on the panel for the radio show, I was bizarrely confronted when I realised that my detest towards this label might, in fact, be part of a problem. A problem that I have.

I might hate labels, but I'm sure as hell ready to label others.

Nobody wants to be seen as anything other than the convoluted, unique individual that they are. Yet, in the spirit of attempting to belong, we assign ourselves labels - some less so than others, as 56% of the participants in the above study did not self-identify with a label - and we succumb to the merciless stereotyping committed by others, others in our own community.

"I don't want to be that person, because that person is seen as gross. That person is vacuous and childlike and reckless and embarrassing to be around. I don't want to be that person, and I don't want you to view me as that person, because that person is a flicker of a human being, a mould of someone who was once flesh and bone. Don't make me into a type."

Yet, in the same breath that we utter these words, we create an image. And when we look around at the people surrounding us, we start to see that same image. We notice the same trends viewed of us by others. When I go out to a gay nightclub, I see the slender arms and the flouncing stride, the characteristics of a stereotype, and suddenly, I'm perturbed, I'm embarrassed, I'm revolted.

Maybe not revolted, but you get my gist.

Look at that little twink. What a laugh. What a joke. I'm nothing like him.

I should point out at this point that I think it's perfectly acceptable for friends to bandy about terms and assign each other stereotypes amongst themselves - in the spirit of a joke, of playful camaraderie and jest. Because you know the person you're talking to. You recognise their intricacies and their uniqueness and the complexity of their mind. You see them; who they are. Not a stereotype.

One of the hosts on the radio show asked me a question based upon a finding from the study; that many gay men who did not self-identify with a label were found to feel less positive about being gay. That many of them were found to have less self-worth. He asked me, in a tone so casual that it could have been the drunken banter sprawled out across a bar along with a bottle of vino - and I'm paraphrasing here - do you feel like you hate yourself because of your sexuality?

What a question.

Is the reason why I choose not to self-identify because, on some level I hate myself, and am ashamed of being gay? Is it because I don't want to fit in with the cliques and the stereotypes, said cliques and stereotypes I dole out unto others as though those others are not walking, talking, three-dimensional, convoluted and too-often-misunderstood human beings? The same complicated meat sacks of firing synapses and original thoughts who suffer the same derogatory dalliances with other people presuming their personalities that I do? Was I once alienated, and in turn began to alienate others?

I didn't think much of it at the time - we were all laughter and jokes and intelligent discussion, and it certainly wasn't a question posed in any negative spirit at all - but later, as I wandered the city streets on my way home from the station, I started to really think on what I'd been asked.

And then I remembered when I nearly went under the knife to change the way my face looks. To get my nose hacked off and my jaw realigned. Because when I looked at strangers in the dark of a nightclub, who looked something close to the picture perfect homosexual man, it made me angry, and sad, and yearning. Because I thought about how they might not want to ever know me, just because of the way I looked. Because I wanted too badly to "fit in" - to be seen as attractive to strangers who don't even know my name yet, let alone my story.

And I remembered when I changed my mind entirely. When I cancelled my surgery, one I'd been planning for years, the week before it was due. Because I didn't want to be the person who tried to assimilate into a culture which pulls in and isolates and estranges one another based on their physical characteristics. Because I wanted to be the person who values every single person for their unique characteristics - for the parts that make them interesting. Fascinating. Wonderful. On the surface, and within.

How strange, then: the very concept of sitting in a radio station, speaking into a microphone on Australia's most popular community radio show, considering all of my past experiences, passively deriding homosexual men for prejudging me over my looks, while at the same time going to every effort to distance myself from the very stereotype I've tried so hard to insist does not befit me, casting that stereotype upon faceless characters in the dark of a nightclub.

I guess this kind of thing takes time.

Jimmy at the bar is studying law. He's got his whole life ahead of him, just like his mother always told him, and he knows where he wants to end up. He likes video games, playing with his dog, hanging with his friends, and the smell that wafted in from the trees outside his childhood bedroom window after a storm. When he was sixteen, he came out to his parents. His mother was fine with it - you know it's a dangerous life, Jimmy, it's a dangerous life, but I love you, and I'll protect you - but his Dad gave him one hard look in the eye, then walked out the door. When he came home, he took all of Jimmy's video games, and threw them out his bedroom window. With the trees and the scent of rain on the air.

Later that week, Jimmy moved out, with some friends in a sharehouse. He's a little too young, but he's trying, and because if there's one thing he knows, it's that he's got his whole life ahead of him. Just like his mother always told him. I'm sorry, Dad, I'm sorry you never got the football-playing ladies' man that you always wanted. I'm sorry we couldn't work out together. I'm sorry we couldn't kick the pig skin, or whatever. I'm sorry I'll never have a wife. I'm sorry I never got the chance to develop a taste for beer with you, because you could never accept me for who I am. I'm sorry I've got bigger dreams than whatever broken ones you've flayed out on the floor, that you keep trodding on, trodding, trodding, trodding, trodding, trodding...

Jimmy at the bar is studying law. And you're rolling your eyes and clenching your teeth because he's skinny, because he's small, because he's feminine. Because he's not what you want to be. Because he's not what you think a gay man should be. Because you think you know him. Because you think he's not worth knowing.

And that's a tragedy. Not for them - for you.




I won't be self-identifying as a twink any time soon. I'll call out any motherfucker who wants to typecast me as an airhead, all because I'm thin, and I'll refuse to allow anyone to view me as anything other than clever, brilliant and three-dimensional, irregardless of my size.

But the next time I'm out at a nightclub, and I see before me, a slender and dishevelled, flouncing dancing queen: I'm going to take another look. Refrain from clenching my teeth.

We have been conditioned towards treasuring masculinity and demonising femininity in gay men. It's something many of us have tried hard to avoid, but inevitably collapses out of our rears at the unlikeliest of times, just when we think we've unlearned it. We have been also conditioned into stereotyping others, and placing them in categories. This is both a blessing and a curse - and unfortunately for some, has a habit of somehow determining their perceived worth.

But you can't ever be held to someone else's standard of beauty. You are better than a body or a type, and you are worth so much more. After all, are we not an incredibly diverse community, awash with colourful characters and whimsical personalities and beautiful stories and shared struggles? I'd like to think so.

Be exactly who you are. Because you are beautiful. Everything that makes you, you. I won't judge you.

This was for every person who has ever felt like they weren't good enough, or fit enough, or lean enough, or muscular enough, or attractive enough, to fit into this community. This was for every person who has ever felt like they were not worth knowing because of the way that they look.

This was for you.