BrisVegas as Blank Slate

its a pretty city to be true, and a touch warmer than we have it in Sodom, but the glorious Metropolis of Brisvegas continuously reminded of other places:

a particular hill near West End reminded me of a particular hill in Lund

parts of New Farm felt like San Francisco

the skyneedle harked back to Berlin

the river made me think of Perth

the botanical gardens seemed like Sydney, or maybe Melbourne, and one gateway made me think of Central Park

and there were numerous sightings of Auckland and London

it was like wandering through a dream, all mixed up, snippets of here and there and everywhere...

Ghetto Grotto Update

As I type our Perth belongings are being delivered by the somewhat gruff moving men. Exactly two weeks after they was supposed to get here. Hmmm, am alternately still very miffed about the shoddy service and jumping about with glee at having it all here at long last. So far it all seems to be present and accounted for, double bonus... Our fridge! Our cookware! Shelves! The second conjugal bed! Chairs! Dining table! Coffee table! Artworks! Oh, its like living in a real house again!

So much unpacking and reassembling to do, on so many levels...

Speaking of which, Monster is planning little trips away all over the place whilst I am stuck here in Thesis Town (Melbourne, Perth). Which made me a little jealous until I realised that a) I am very much desiring to stay in one spot at the moment, to the point of hardly wanting to leave the house (nerd attack of a major fashion), b) I get more Uni work done when she is not here to distract me so a few days here and there on my own will be quite handy and c) I will be in Brisbane in July, Newcastle in October, possibly Perth in October and Melbourne late November. This is probably enough travel for one little Monster for this year, no?

Ghetto Grotto

Apologies for not updating y'all on my whys and wherefores of late-- has been a busy old time! We head back East this coming Sunday, and have found ourselves the lovely Grotto in the Ghetto. 'Tis nice and central, affordable, we move in next Tuesday with the Tempest (the kitty we be keeping) and should have stuff out of storage shortly thereafter. Fingers crossed it all keeps going so smoothly...

It will be good to be back 'home' for the most part. Miss my family a lot, and my close mates, and my supervisor and my library. And the harbour, my fave dumplings, queer clubs and culture, markets (not very many over here), that kind of thing. I miss sitting in Varga Bar talking Kristeva and performance, I miss wandering through the Gardens after a trip to the gallery, I miss my strange menagerie of artists, activists, poets, writers, perverts and dress-up partners. I need to be back in a world of salons and theatre and magic and wonder! Perth is ever-so pragmatic and I miss the mysteries of my hometown-mistress, its the whitewashed anglican antithesis to my decadent catholic tastes...

Having some hard thinking time about some Sydney-ness though. Being away from the 'scene' has given me space to ponder what I value and what is actually really damaging to me, and reassess the communities and habits I have just fallen into because they seemed to be what fitted best (even though they are often quite unhealthy). Sod that. Have an inkling the secret may be in quality over quantity, but its such a tricky balance I expect. Hmm.

Moving Right Along...

Movin' right along in search of good times and good news,
With good friends you can't lose,
This could become a habit!
Opportunity knocks once let's reach out and grab it (yeah!),
Together we'll nab it,
We'll hitchhike, bus or yellow cab it!
(Cab it?)

Movin' right along.
Footloose and fancy-free.
Getting there is half the fun; come share it with me.
Moving right along (doog-a-doon doog-a-doon).
We'll learn to share the load.
We don't need a map to keep this show on the road...

Movin' right along.
We're truly birds of a feather,
We're in this together and we know where we're going.
Movie stars with flashy cars and life with the top down.
We're storming the big town,
(Yeah, Storm is right should it be snowing?)
(Uh, no I don't think so...)

Movin' right along...

-- The Muppets

Cannot decide whether the Monster is Fozzie and me Kermit, or the other way around. Either way, despite the various disasters and dramas of renovating, packing up and getting out, I'm awfully glad we are moving right along together. Syn City, here we come!

Sucker City

your city's a sucker
your city's a sucker
your city's a sucker
your city's a sucker
my city's a creep

want we want is what you want
want we want is what you want
is free tv
want you want is what we want
want you want is what we want
is a case of the ha ha ha ha's...


your city's a sucker
your city's a sucker
your city is stoned
your city is stoned
my city's in heat

what we want
sex with movie stars
what you want
a career in the
ha ha ha ha

--lcd soundsystem

beautiful time at zoo club last night (perth), for the launch of SPUNK magazine... genderfukbel and i did a really silly messy dirty gender-mashing show to placebo's 'new morning', with cream 'girl juice' and possum fur pasties and bike boots and facepaint and some other folk made a HOT impromptu bondage demo on stage and dj needlenurse was a drag king ripping out his heart and... bj photoshoots in the back alley and free champagne and innuendo and flirtation and bears and jock straps and so many people i barely recognised coming up to me 'you're leaving?? no! we'll miss you!' and...

i'll miss them too.

Clicking My Heels

And so I have missed Mardi Gras for the first time in a long time. The photos are slowly creeping onto Facebook-- the Femme Guild, the leather crew, the dancing queens, the hoop stars, the glitter and sparkles and costumes and hugs. The ENERGY, the smiles, the sheer utter joy and celebration of it. Marshalling time, all camera flashes and 'I LOVE YOUR OUTFIT!' and catching up with folk you haven't seen since the last Queer Christmas. Swapping eyelash glue and stick on rhinestones, last minute cable ties and beers.

Tonight in Perth I was meant to be going to Zoo club, the one night of the week when the freaks (such as there are here) come out to play. Monster is unwell, and all of my friends have piked for one reason or another. In Sydney this wouldn't matter, I'd be on a bus doing my eyeliner on the back seat, walking up Oxford Street to Phoenix or some other scene of filth and wonder. Even on a Sunday, any Sunday, the laneways and gutters are alive. Here it is GLBT, no Q. Monster has a shirt someone printed years ago. It reads Queer As F&^K, some spiky haired androgyne next to the text, a pair of interlocked + rings alongside a pair of -> rings. Two boys OR two girls, sealed same sex couples, the ultimate in West Aus queer seems to be when the dykes mix with the queens. Nothing is fluid here, not gender or sexuality or politics or passions, and I am still surprised when I smell sweat on the dancefloor. If there are queers in this city beyond my immediate circle, I don't know where they hide.

My hair is spiked and my fishnets ready, all dressed up for another night on the couch. Mostly I am used to it now, I have my routine of lesbian drinks nights and women's reading groups and hanging with my new crew to get me through.

Tonight though, I'm conjuring the smell of amyl across the Nullabor as I settle down on the couch with DVDs and the Monster. Ah, the Monster. Somehow she makes even this okay.

Wandering, Wondering

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window. It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this question of removal is one which I discuss incessantly with my soul.

-- Charles Baudelaire

A friend of a friend posted this as a comment in reply to a message about wanting to emigrate. It fits perfectly with my own soul-searching about my semi-nomadic lifestyle, and the imagining of who one will be if one is located somewhere else. As I prepare to return 'home' I can't help but fear that familiar places will bring about the return of my less desired elements as well as some I miss...

My City Valentine

It is overcast here, with sprinkles of rain and threats of storm, and nowhere near the 35 degrees predicted by those supposed to know. We spend Valentine's Day eating muffins and drinking coffee and demolishing our mates' shed with jackhammer, sledgehammer, crow bar, angle grinder, tin snips and brute force. There's a narrow escape for some other and myself when a large wall unexpectedly falls, the panicked survey for damage to life and limb before the adrenalin kicks and we return to work faster than ever. In the middle of all the laughs and innuendo and casual camaraderie I find myself more homesick than usual.

When we get back to our house I hide in my study, looking for sanctuary on the internet and downloading Cure songs with a hope that they will carry me to more familiar places. The Monster nurtures me with chocolate and tea and I realise I miss my city like a lover, her-water-her-moods-her-tastes-her-smells-her-dirt-her-tides-her-perspectives-her-humour-her-nuances-her-seductions-her-people-her-architecture-her-excesses-her-possibilities-her-promises...

'and i forget how to move when my mouth is this
dry and my eyes are bursting hearts in a blood-
stained sky oh it was sweet it was wild and oh
how we...i trembled stuck in honey honey
cling to me so just one more just one more go
inspire in me the desire in me to never go home' (the cure, homesick)

I leave her so much these days it seems. And every time I return she is somehow new, but always the same as ever.

Trip Pix- The Beginnings

Lots more pix to be seen of FB in the very near future!

Zoo-Mobile

Sometimes the comfort of a room
Sometimes I'm quite alone
I pack to leave a foreign town
It seems I'll never know

But I'll rent new accomodation
We'll make plans for mobile homes

Slow boats moving with the tide
Drifting far from shore
It's the nature of this country life
I've never known before
Still we'll make plans for buildings and houses
From mobile homes

Plant life
My life
Still life in mobile homes
Plant life
My life
Still life in mobile homes

The sound of wildlife fills the air
So calm and dry
The bushland burns in this southern heart
Like an open fire

Still we'll make plans for buildings and houses
From mobile homes...mobile homes

-- Japan 'Still Life In Mobile Homes'

I began the year in London, returning to Aus via Sweden, San Fran and New York. I stayed with my folks, couch-surfed, found a home that seemed to offer some stability, was thrown out of that home in a matter of months, couch-surfed some more, house-sat, and then moved to Perth, with two trips back east so far and another in less that three weeks.

Some days I feel like the eye of a storm.

Syn City, Without The Syn

But with plenty of other fun! Highlights of the past 9 days:
* Film shoot with Necrotitties, Mimoiselle and the Naughty Nurse
* Art show and dinner with the delicious Y-- mentor, muse and mate
* Spending a lovely evening at Madame's new apartment, with piles of Mexican food, a darling Darkling, Mayhem on the telly, a walk by the bay, falling asleep reading Winterson and waking to coffee and a nice walk through Darlingithurts
* Catching up with a long-lost mate (as in, 15 years or so lost) at Coogee and spending a few hours swimming in seawater and sunning ourselves before sitting in the park with a big soy smoothie
* SO MUCH quality family time! Cable and Coco Pops, cuppas and cuddles and couch-sleeping! BBQ at my bros, my mam's birthday celebrations, and lots of chilling out and chatting. Yay!
* Kooky, of course
* High tea at the Sheraton with my mam and my aunt
* The usual catch-up coffee with Schwee, and seeing Biggles for a bit
* Uni stuff-- paper and review went well, and came back 'home' with tons of new ideas, and printed matter to engage with, and perhaps a new way of structuring the tome
* Random retail adventures: fairy lights, wig, another hula skirt, big black swooshy skirt that makes impressive rustling sounds when walking etc
* Beer and coffee with This Charming Man-- sweet!
* Just being out and about, wandering King St almost amazed at just how many freaks there are back east! I mean, you know, tattoos and piercings and silly haircuts and op-shop chic (not vintage) and scruffy anarchy and the general air of trashiness and sweat. Felt right at home!
* Monster waiting for me at the gate, and me sniffing behind her ear and cuddling up to her all night...

One More Sleep

Until I get on that plane heading east, and I am excited and silly at the thought of seeing my family and all my mates and the harbour and my library and dancing at Kooky and maybe getting to the women's pool and eating dumplings and going to the markets and...

I miss Monster already. Smitten. Absolutely smitten.

Spunky Monk-ies

This coming weekend be the time Monster and I get to the Pinnacles. And we plan to stop at New Norcia on the way there. Check it out here: roadhouse, ale and all!

Festing Season

Virgin must love me- booked MORE tix yesterday, this time for our festing jaunt. I get to Sydney on the 17th December, Monster on the 23rd. And we both fly back on the 7th of January (I think)... So, plenty of time for kith and kin, markets, pub food, bbqs, beers, dancing, camping, Trop Fruits, opening pressies, coogee, icecream etc. Means I will be back here just in time to start organising my Birthday Show at Zoo!

November Spawned A Zoo Tour

Zoo will be in Sydney from early Wednesday Nov 19th to late-ish Thursday Nov 27th. Find me somehow, and show me pretty things...

Home, Sweet Home

Things I miss about Sydney (and to a lesser degree, Melbourne), and had almost forgotten:
* Dancing with furry faggots in frocks, trannies, freaks, queerlings, perverts, all dressed UP and vogueing to Mel and Kim or Wham in an underground bar.
* Queer performance. Just being able to head to a bar like Slox or a club like Tranni Panic, or any of the fundraisers/performance nights/sex parties etc that are on EVERY week in the Harbour city and see amazing quirky fucked-up rebellious DiY subversive transgressive political and most of all very very very funny shows.
* Spontaneous acts of perversion. Going clubbing, then heading back to someone's place where suddenly you are covered in wax/flogged/violated with pointy things or otherwise set upon, or somehow end up doing the same to others. Or dancefloor spankings-- when was the last time you saw one of those in Perth? Not at a specifically specified bdsm club or party, just randomly in any place freaks gather.
* Flirting. With and without intent. With everyone, with life, with your own reflection...
* Large false eyelashes on people who are not identifying as drag queens. Pasties on people who do not perform burlesque.
* Leather folk.
* My mates. Mad as they are, its the same kind of mad as me.

Its Not A Tumour

Things coming out of my head. So simple, yet it so amused me. Still does, but not as much as when I was taking these.

There's A Bear In There...

And a Wolf as well. Taking my hat off at the Lone Star Saloon in San Fran, and getting up close with the wildlife models at Skansens in Stockholm.

Biting The Big Apple

Two of my favourite food groups can be found in NY, NY.

PS Read the label on the bottle of stout.

Coney Island Baby (In Pictures)