With Mardi Gras at our doorsteps and gays flocking to Sydney's LGBT heartland, it's the perfect time to reminisce on queer culture past and present. Straight-man makeovers, anyone?
Keen to bank off our apparently irrepressible appetite for resuscitating TV shows from the '00s, Netflix last month announced the return of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, ordering a new series comprising eight episodes.
As a gay man, you might think I'd be excited. In fact, I'm anything but.
Between 2003 and 2007, Queer Eye aired on the Bravo network. The premise was simple: Five outwardly homosexual men – known as the Fab Five – gloriously invaded the worlds of heterosexual civilians, revamping their lives, their outfits and their homes, in an effort to impress their partners, families and friends.
There was Ted Allen, the food-and-wine expert; Kyan Douglas, the "grooming guru"; Thom Filicia, interior designer; Carson Kressley, fierce fashionista, and Jai Rodriguez, culture and social savant. The show was beloved by audiences across the globe, winning 2 GLAAD awards and an Emmy. A new Fab Five, who will set alight the lives of a new range of hopeless hetero homebodies, will replace the original cast.
In a decade where television revivals are all the rage – see Gilmore Girls and the soon-to-be-reinvigorated Will & Grace – this comeback serves as no surprise. Yet despite being excited to see gay men returning to mainstream audiences in a popularised capacity, I find myself uncomfortable and questioning: Will the Netflix Queer Eye reboot adhere to modern times for a modern audience – or will it stay true to the original? And if so, is that actually a good thing?
I fear that this reboot won't be a cultural delight – rather GayLite™; a hollowed-out representation of homosexuality, for mainstream crowds who so often shriek, "Look at those fabulous queers!"
The original Queer Eye stands as what one might call a "museum piece" about gay culture; a reflection of the ways mainstream producers preferred to present homosexuals in order to avoid putting off the masses. The Fab Five – though delectable in so many ways – were caricatures of gay men by their very design, sanitised for straight people's consumption.
They were Queer Guys For Straight Eyes, and served merely to solidify the notion that gay men were limp-wristed queers who existed to glitter up your wardrobes and your lives. They represented the gay best friend and the flamboyant uncles who we all recognise in pop culture: those homosexual icons who reflected just enough gayness to be considered comically endearing, but never enough to make straight people uncomfortable.
Though we loved the Fab Five, we never knew them as anything other than our stylists, our hairdressers and our interior designers.
Gay men in the early 2000s were rarely ever depicted as sexual beings, and remained perpetually single. Any reflection of their love interests or sex lives was seen as too unconventional – or worse, degenerate – to exhibit to mainstream audiences. And those shows that did present homosexuals as three-dimensional humans – ones who loved, lusted and lived through crises faced by real-life gay people – were labelled "indie" or "underground", such as the forever-fantastic Queer As Folk.
Yet this is 2017: Gay is no longer a euphemism for flamboyant (or vice versa). And while fabulousness is certainly part of queer culture, it's only one side of a complex movement that continues to gain rights and strengths, while also enduring ongoing ordeals.
We finally have gay sex scenes being aired on television in shows like How To Get Away With Murder, with the same passionate ferocity as heterosexual lovemaking. We have LGBT culture and history depicted for not only its unfamiliar quirks, but for the struggles that we've faced throughout history. Uncomfortable queer topics are at last being broached – like coming out, living with HIV, and the struggle with being seen as inherently feminine in a man's world – in Emmy-winning shows like RuPaul's Drag Race.
These depictions of the "gay lifestyle" don't exist in the modern media as a slap in the face to homophobic audiences. They are present because gay people exist in your lives. These are our struggles and our stories, and after years of having them stifled for fear of sparking discomfort, we are finally having them told.
We have wept rivers of tears for fallen peers subjected to homophobic violence, and we've felt the hand of ostracism from broader society and bigoted governments. In 2017, these welts and bruises are finally on display for all to see – and we love you, our straight friends and families, for openly soothing our wounds.
When audiences cry out with excitement for the return of the Five and squeal, "This'll be so gay!" – know that the word means more than cultural queendom or a flair for hair.
If Netflix wishes to reboot the fabled Queer Eye, it should do so with caution, care, and concern for our history. It should make direct eye contact with its audience; aspire to lead them with not only a sartorial hand, but also one that expresses the nuances of gay culture.
The new Queer Eye must not merely represent our hairdressers, our stylists and our interior designers – it must represent our gay brothers, sisters and friends. And the new Fab Five must embody real-life gay men; thoughtful, independent, and shaped by shared queer struggle. Not cartoonish caricatures for mainstream consumption.
Three years ago, an old tutor of mine wrote a piece about his alcoholism - aptly titled The Copulating Pisshead Of Brunswick - in which he reminisced upon the circumstances that led to the image of him naked in a sink with face burrowed in tomorrow's regret, along with his desire to quit the drink.
"I can go without a drink indefinitely but one sniff of the barmaid's apron and I need to drink myself into a stupor. Alcohol has no single definition. The Hollywood version is all about drinkers getting up and pouring a sneaky dram of whisky into their coffee or downing a beer before breakfast. The reality is far from this."
And it is. And it isn't. And it's everything but.
I remember in the week after I first used ice, I felt the pangs of temptation crawl into my brain like an earwig with a mouth that somehow knew how to whisper in my own voice. I remember telling my doctor about the images of the future I was having; of being alone a year from now, a shameful addict down a streetway in St. Kilda. I remember saying that those visions felt utterly real to me, like I were Alice peering down the Looking Glass and if I leaned too far forward I might fall in.
But that was eighteen months ago, and this is a Sunday of February in 2017.
In two weeks I have raised over seven thousand dollars to go to rehab, via the apparently novel approach of crowdfunding. I was public about my substance issues before, but the plea for help and the donations that followed have had me answering a lot of questions.
More than that, however, I've fielded many a side-eye. Sometimes it feels like concern, and other times it feels like suspicion - how addicted are you, and why should anyone give you money? Yet I don't pretend to be anything more or less than an addict.
The Hollywood version of crystal meth abuse consists of three parts: Homelessness, violence and poverty. Those are the motifs broadcast on our screens, of men unable to get out of bed without a pipe, and of angry dogs barking behind chain link fences. Only not unlike the myth of the inherently savage pup, it isn't nature, but nurture, and society grips those folk in cycles of poverty and homelessness by telling them we'll fix them while providing barely any care, then being horrified when they lapse.
That was never my addiction. I never needed a pipe to get out of bed, and I never robbed or stole or aggressed. As an addict, the easiest way to close the gap between you and a nurse in an emergency ward is to clarify, "Just so you know, I'm not feeling aggressive, just suicidal."
My vice continued the same way that it began: in a sleazy apartment and the arms of a stranger after a boozy night out, in trepidation of the consequences, but knowing the thrill of the oncoming storm to be irresistible without the windows down and the chill rain on my face. Then when the deed was done, I'd spend every day thereafter in shame, ignoring the earwig-with-a-mouth whispering sweet nothings, waiting for it to die and fade.
Yet I'd inevitably return to disinhibition and would - sometimes always, other times rarely - lapse. Lapsing is a fantastic way to ensure overdoing it, or to straight-up overdose. It continued this way for eighteen months. Rinse, remorse, repeat.
While this might sound nothing like the popularised addict, it's no less of an addiction. I've met people who used once a week for three months and people who used every day for two years, and they've all recalled the same feelings: gut-churning desire. The propensity towards lapsing when intoxicated. Devastating shame. The earwig-with-a-mouth.
This is the addict that barely any see. This is the addict hidden in a sleazy apartment, using "for pleasure", functional but not frightful. This is the addict ignored by A Current Affair, replaced with sinister gore-porn and hysteria.
Yet it can be no less grim. Some people can use regularly in the long-term and feel no backlash from the brain - but others can use once a week for no time at all and collapse into psychiatric care. Combine any amount of crystal meth with pre-existing mental health conditions - my depression and anxiety, for example - and any use can go from dabble to disastrous in months, not years.
I have fought and raged against the machine, only to fail time and time again. I felt my mental state falter and my will to live abate and my options run out. I saw the ground fall out from beneath me, and I suddenly knew that any more rinse, remorse, repeat, would lead to greater ills than I ever wanted.
And I remember a year after my first time, wandering through a backstreet in St. Kilda wired and flying high, all dirty faced with moon pupils looking for the next sleazy apartment, becoming suddenly aware that I had become the vision of myself I had seen a year earlier. I was Alice, and I had fallen through the looking glass.
So I asked for help to purge the bugs from my brain, and by the grace of beautiful creatures, I got it. I remember my mistakes and their horrible aftermaths. I am nostalgic and desiring and afraid. But soon I will go to rehab, and when I get out I will know that in speaking my piece I will have helped expand the tunnel vision of the Hollywood meth addict and allowed my voice to do good.
And, like the copulating pisshead of Brunswick, I will get up and just get on with making it all better.
Over the past two weeks, Channel 7 has graced our screens with a new and controversial television concept known as Bride & Prejudice. The series tracks the lives of several couples wishing to get married, with the key conflict that their families do not approve, each couple challenging their families' perceptions on age, sexuality, religion and race.
Chris and Grant, the gay couple on Seven's reality series Bride & Prejudice.
One of these couples is an Australian man named Chris and his American partner Grant. In Monday nights' second episode, Chris confronted both his parents and requested their attendance at his wedding – which both of them refused.
His mother cited religious beliefs as her reasoning, while his father made vague disavowals hinting at homophobic "old-school values".
Not only did Chris' parents reject the concept of his marriage, but they went on to reject his very being – decrying his sexuality as a tragedy. The scene had audiences shaken, with dozens of commentators leaping forward on social media to defend Chris' decision to marry, and to express their anger at the sheer burning dismissal that his parents made clear.
Of course, you wouldn't do that. You would love your child no matter what their orientation, and embrace them no matter whom they loved. To you, this might seem utterly unreal.To heterosexual audiences, and particularly to parents, this rejection might seem like an impossible affront. How could a mother, who gave birth to a child, and a father, who together with her raised that child to adulthood, go on to reject their flesh and blood because of who he loves? My own aunt – bless her - cried, "How could a mother be so bloody cold?"
Yet to people like myself, and so many gay viewers across the country – this scene was far too real, and represented a burning fear come to life before our eyes.
It's a panic that resides in the heart of every single homosexual, bisexual or transgender person ever born into a family unit. That our families will reject us should we choose to live openly, and that the strength we've gained from familial bonds will wither away and leave us to fight life's battles on our own.
As we grow up, we're taught very quickly what a man should be – and what he shouldn't. A man can never be feminine. He can never prance, never show emotion – above all, he can never be gay. From when we first begin to comprehend the world around us, LGBT people are caught up in the homophobic bigotry that our society has instilled in us all.
And because of that, the very moment we figure out what we are – homosexual, gay, faggot – we descend into psychological self-torment, terrified of what it means, and what kind of life we would be met with should we ever choose to embrace it.
We understand that some people hate us, and that some even want us dead.
Our forefathers had it worse than us – the AIDS crisis associated gayness with death and disease, stirring up existing homophobia until families the world over disowned blood relations in fear and disgust. In this time, in this decade, we think we've moved beyond seeing parents disown their children over their sexuality. But it's still going on, and most never surface in either viral videos or on television.
Even suspecting disapproval from your family is to feel like a black sheep, reading hostility where there may be none. It's to live in trepidation that the penny may one day drop – that your own blood will run cold in the veins of your parents; that they'll reject you over a crucial part of your humanity that you simply cannot change.
And it is crucial. We haven't grown up in a world rife with homophobia only to devalue our sexualities as of no importance. We understand that some people hate us, and that some even want us dead.
Our sexuality is nothing, because it should never be a reason to hate – but it is also everything, because of the pain we have suffered. We carry it as both a burden and a strength, built from weathering a lifetime of homophobic abuse. We gain empathy from our struggle and use it to love more passionately.
Nothing, no-one, could harm us more than our families – the ones who swore they'd love us forever, no matter our ills – spurning us because of who we are.
Heterosexual families might view this all as a morbid impossibility, the rejection of their child utterly implausible. But when Chris in Bride & Prejudice sat in stoic silence as his parents rejected his plea for their blessing, it was a stab in the gut for every gay person watching; a realisation of the sickly fear each of us have held in our hearts since the moment we knew we were different.
Wrote a piece for the print edition of The Sunday Age, which was published on The Age's website on January 21st, 2017. Available here.
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Last weekend, a batch of ecstasy pills began circulating the Chapel Street nightclub district. These pills were laced with a combination of the drugs MDMA and GHB, and saw three dead with more than 20 hospitalised. Emergency departments flooded as unknown chemicals sent revellers into collapse.
The story, while tragic, is not new. Every few months, a new and dangerous drug invades the nightclub scene with distressing effect. Media pundits and civilians alike go on to decry the disaster: what could we have done? Why did they take the drugs if they didn't know what was in them? Why take drugs at all?
Drug-testing kits can filter out bad batches by educating nightclub patrons on their contents, thus limiting the risk of hospitalisation – or worse. Photo: egon69
These criticisms, too, are not new.
I have worked in Melbourne's nightlife as a photographer for over six years. When you're tucked in bed, I'm on my way to work, and when you're up and traipsing to Sunday brunch, I'm a bleary-eyed mess heading home. In hundreds of weekends documenting the nightclub circuit, I've seen my share of bad pills, panic attacks and overdoses.
The prohibition of pills, like those consumed last weekend, ensures that drug users never know what they're truly taking. There are no regulations in the criminal economy. These drugs are brewed in kitchen sinks, filled with cheap toxins, and then sold at prices vastly higher than the cost of production. It's a lucrative business with devastating results.
As nightlife workers, we have a duty of care to the people in our venue. We also know that if someone is going to take criminalised drugs, you won't be able to stop them. And given their illegality, it's often too deep into the negative side effects when we're told of what they've taken, because patrons are too scared to speak up, whether due to fear for their reputations or of legal reprisal. Of the 20 or so reports from last weekend, there's no telling how many more stories went untold.
The creation of environments where patrons feel comfortable disclosing their use is key. A sensible approach floated by many is the idea of on-premises pill testing – or better, provision of self-testing kits. When revellers choose to take illicit drugs, these kits filter out bad batches by educating patrons on their contents, thus limiting the risk of hospitalisation – or worse. Many believe, however, that venues introducing testing kits might somehow encourage drug use.Partygoers fear punishment from the law, believing their confession will see them shoved onto the street or sent to the police station. This leaves frightened revellers seeing no avenue for aid, trapped in throbbing crowds, concerned for their safety and their lives.
Yet unsafe substances causing hazardous states creates a liability for venues. They want to avoid crisis for their customers and their friends. Drugs also reduce money spent at the bar on alcohol – a substance made less dangerous through legalisation and regulation – so the idea of kit testing endorsing the consumption of drugs runs contrary to their interests.
The decriminalisation, testing and regulation of these substances has proved effective in reducing complications in countries such as Portugal, where drugs have been decriminalised for 15 years. Yet it seems Australia isn't ready to take that step. If this country isn't ready to decriminalise, then the best course of action is to minimise risk.
I never want to hear of another patron at work going home after taking a bad pill, before falling comatose in their bed. Through testing kits, collaboration with the police and government, and through the assurance of shelter for our friends and peers, we can create secure and hospitable nightclub environments. So that the next time a batch of dodgy pills arrives on the scene, we'll be more than prepared.
This was a piece of prose published to the community website of 56 Dean Street, Europe's busiest sexual health clinic, as part of their Wellbeing programme, on the 7th of January 2016.
A couple of years ago, I twirled and danced through the community that you and I both know so well. I fell upon faces and names and so many lovers, twisting and writhing in the dark. And yet even though I met so many, and danced under moonlit nights holding hands and bodies, I could never quite find someone game enough to hold my heart.
So it should come as no surprise that in that darkness, that loneliness, I fell upon something that made me feel – for a moment, at least – whole. Something that made me feel better. Braver. Stronger. More open to love.
In a cloud, it engulfed me, and though I scrambled for a door through which to escape, I could never break that exit. And so I stayed, in sickness and doubt, trapped between four walls and heavy curtains too strong for me to lift.
Addict. That is what I’m called. It’s a name for the feeble, the seediest among us – the scum, the low, and the lesser. It turns heads away and tells people that I’m gone, distant, ill, forsaken, aggressive, possessed. They leer.
But I am not possessed. I am not gone. I am not a monster. I am an addict.
There’s a poltergeist hanging over my shoulder: a vampire suckling at the nape of my neck. It hides under the mattress between these four walls. It dampens the light from outside and holds the blinds shut. It whispers cruelties, knots my stomach in twisted agonies, and keeps me inhaling that acrid vapour.
It tells me I’m not strong enough, not good enough, that no one could ever hold my heart.
Can you understand that? How I’ve ended up this way? Would you dare to try? To think of loneliness and sorrow, and the isolation of our community – one that, despite being so brave and ferocious to fend off the most terrifying ills, struggles to reach out and fold warm hands over hearts?
We’ve been ripped and torn asunder more times than we can count – so is it any wonder that we flee connection? That we sometimes chase away intimacy in a smoky haze and inebriation? That some of us, though we’ve fought for so long, might wind up lost within four walls, fed lies by a vampire, crawling in the dark?
I am not torn. I am not lost. I am not weak. I am an addict.
I’m tired of reaching out, only to be pushed back on the bed by this ghostly thing. This nasty creature intent on holding me still, telling me I’m worthless. I want to burst out from between these walls – to feel the light on my skin, so euphoric, to taste the air and hear flurries of birds chirp in their flight over sapphire skies.
I want all of these things. I want to feel the sun again.
But I need your help.
I need you to break down this door. I need you to rip the shutters open until the light beams down on my wrinkled face. Then whip around and hiss at my spectre, that if it’s going to linger, it better be ready for a fight. Pull me up from my nest of bones – if I slip, hold me steady, if you can. Haul me over to the window, and remind me what the sun feels like.
Then I can begin to heal. I can come out from behind these clouds. I can learn to dance again, and look up at those sapphire skies.
Because I am not a monster. I am not lost. I am an addict.
We have fought greater ills than wicked ghosts. We are stronger from our pasts. You can hold my heart in your hands.
