 The downside of GLBTI rights – winning them, if that’s the
right verb – is that many of us won’t know what to do with ourselves. I have a
friend who has a friend who says homosexuals were born outside the law, aren’t
given the same rights and opportunities as heterosexuals and so aren’t obliged to
obey the same rules. We are born rebels, he says.
I told this guy (he’s English) that sex between gay men was legalised in
the UK in 1967, so he couldn’t have been born ‘outside the law'.
Criminal cool irritates me. Real rebels don’t advertise their contempt for the law, they can't afford to.
This guy - he’s hot in a surfie way, with an
unexpected (from a surfie) British accent - countered by saying homosexual acts
between consenting adults in private are legal in the UK, but cruising or chatting up in
public is still, technically illegal. I looked it up, he’s right.
Hot and smart...
I’m told he does drugs like there’s no tomorrow and does
something with his phone through his computer that gets him free calls anywhere,
any time. The drugs don’t harm him, he says, or anyone else and from what I’ve
seen, he’s right. He’s fair with blue eyes, fit, handsome and he surfs a lot,
according to my friend. He smiles a lot, nice teeth, but never uses his charm
as a tool like many gay men do. He’s got the outsider's steady gaze, and pounces on what he calls the 'straight gays' and their heterophilia. He came to Australia about eight
years ago and says the worst thing about us is we’re too worried about fitting
in, being “good blokes”, to take a stand on anything. When he says this he
makes you want to join his gang or something – you’re back in high school,
ready to follow him onto the footy field against the team that's going to pulp you into the ground, or over to the other, forbidden, side
of the fence, outside school boundaries. I should add that every time I’ve met
him I’ve ended up drunk as Candee on a long weekend Monday.
Beer goggles or not, it’s easy to romanticise this guy – let’s
call him Jordan. His outlaw status, my friend says, stems from his home life.
His parents, a lazy pair of breeders who ran a failing B&B in Devon, brought him up like
he was someone else’s dog they were looking after. When they sold the place to a developer he left home, at 24, and came to Australia. He got a job selling
computers and now he works for Telstra (ironically, considering his hot-phone set up). He goes to Cape Patterson a lot for the surf.
My friend says Jordan’s getting less and less interested in the gay clubs and doing coffee in Chapel Street, all that lifestyle choice stuff. Jordan
says gays and lesbians are all about getting equal: getting married, getting
babies, getting a mortgage. He says he'll put together a band that does gay
punk. He’s going to do real songs, about not getting married, not having babies and living in sharehouses. Dogs in Space, but gay.
I’m no rebel, and the few times I’ve met Jordan have made me realise that these
days that’s a good thing for me. The gay rebel will soon be without a cause, and where’s
that going to leave Jordan? Somewhere out west, looking for the last straight bar
that won’t let him in because he’s a poof. It'll make his day.
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