If You Love Your Gender Set It Free (Lismore Part Three)

Have been meaning to tell you about the actual parties part of Tropical Fruits, so here goes, starting with NYE:

Got frocked up at the hotel room of Ms Succulent and SlamminSam, in my new haircut and silver-flecked dress and shiny belt and stick on stars and glitter. (Not a brilliant photo, was more sparkly in the flesh). The set-up was the same as last year. Cafe area with lots of beds and comfy couches, women's space, men's space, cocktail lounge, two pavilions of dancing, art hall, and plenty of other places to lounge and lurk about. Palm trees lit up from underneath in the colours of the rainbow, strings of blue fairy lights everywhere, a sparkly silver archway at the entrance and a pool made from hay bales and filled with big inflatable balls. Fireworks were brilliant again! Can't describe them really, just lots of oohs and aahs and bangs and bursts and some pretty ones at the end that were formed like love-hearts. Yay! Art exhibibition was nothing too exciting really, though I did pick up some stickers that said 'If you love your gender... set it free' and 'Every cunt's a winner', so it wasn't a dead loss. A Certain Boy was DJing in the Slippery Nipple cocktail lounge, a big clubhouse with the walls covered in black plastic and lots of UV decorations. His set was great, and we hung out and danced there intermittently, though you couldn't smoke or bring your drinks from outside into the room so it took a bit of negotiating to get more than two of us in there at one time. Wandered briefly into the middle dance hall, but was all a bit too much like Arq for my liking- shirtless hairless boys and not much else. Sveta played 12-3 in Trade, incredible as ever, which brought every dirty dyke and pervert in the place to the front. Danced hard, and watched the floorshow provided when a young hussy of our acquantaince was captured, stripped, and gone down upon by some of the local ladies (quite consensually of course). Oh yes, and something was happening with a chupa chup, though I couldn't quite see what! After Sveta came Lloyd (?), and more dancing.

All in all it was a great party. Is much more chilled and friendly than Sydney affairs I think, and the crowd consisted of a little bit of everything and everyone all mushed up together (one of my fave outfits of the night was a BrisVegas girl in boardshorts and a leather harness!). Had a line and a half a cap of sparkliness and so was pretty bouncy (with only a brief jelly-legs moment at the end). I didn't get up to any dirtiness at all, just a few midnight kisses from friends when the new year was counted down, but enjoyed the generally debauched flavour of the party all the same. Was perfectly happy cruising about, drinking beer and chatting and dancing and schmoozing and dancing and wandering back to the campsite and back to the party and more sitting about talking and drinking coffee in the cafe until the sun came up.

Didn't make it to the pool party. Kidney infection had really started to hit by that point and I couldn't do much but lie about in the tent all day. Did make it to Recovery though, and danced as much as the pain and exhaustion would allow, then went back to camp and lay in bed with a Nimbin cookie listening to the end of the party and the cows across the road. Nice.