Disconnected In WA WA Land

Last night I was at a friend's place and realised that I was the only one lying on the bed watching So You Think You Can Dance that had not shagged EVERYONE else present. I was oddly distressed and disturbed. This is not what I am used to.

And with this I realised just how much I am missing the comfort of familiar bodies. Those bodies you slept with years ago and still give you a cuddle, the ones that shared your held breath when you first had a flogging or were suspended, the faggots you dirty dance with in dark sweaty clubs, the bears you snog at underwear parties, the old mates that have held your hand while you panicked, or held you down while you got a spanking, the people who know how much you bleed when your head is pierced and have the paper towels ready, who have witnessed your drunkenness and your sickness and tightened (or occasionally loosened) your cincher through it all, the drag queens that have helped you with your false eyelashes or your body paint, the hands that have cut and swabbed down and slapped your flesh, the thighs and chests and shoulders you have laid across on floors or in spas, the faces you have woken up next to... the familiar scents and tastes and stubble-rashes.

So much of my social history and geography and identity is dependent on these explicitly embodied interactions. Its the way I navigate my way around the ghettos, a form of bonding, of networking, of forging logical families and political allegiances. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, let's shred each other's fishnet cocoons and run giggling arm in arm into the dawn light on Oxford St.

I miss the collective breath and pulse and body temperature of my tribe. I don't have any of that here, obviously, not yet. None of these people have seen me bleed, or break, or blush. We are distant relatives perhaps, different branches of the same tree, we are photos sent in greeting cards and scribbled names inside the bible covers, we know of each other without knowing each other. On a certain dancefloor sometimes I can smell faintly-familiar sweat on tanned hide, feel a brief tickle of glitter or the brush of steel-caps, taste the musk through the machine smoke and bubbles.

It is not just the people either, it is the place itself. I need to bleed on this earth, swim in its ocean, tramp through its bush and piss in its gutters.

My body needs to connect in order to make sense of this all, to find where I belong and who I belong with. I think I know what must be done.