And this girl is talking to me from before the internet, before that gaudy narcotic display had become the source of everything. All this Yvette has are pamphlets from the school guidance counsellor (pie charts, flow charts, bullet points) and some glossy University magazines, arriving in the mail from various distant postcodes. I knew she was interested in science, like her friend Shelley, that she actually wanted to be an astronomer, that she could think of nothing better than examining the Heavens, but she didn’t have the confidence to even try. Confidence had not been built into her, no one had seen to that. She couldn’t see that if she tried, enrolled, that her physics and her mathematics would be good enough, that her intelligence and work ethic would see her through. It only occurred to her years later that it would have only taken maybe ten per cent more effort from her — then she could have got there. She was smart, she knew that, a succession of teachers had told her so, but she couldn’t think. She didn’t know how to make decisions about her life — no one was steering her, guiding her.
I knew all of this. I knew only too well. How could I change what had already happened? Did I want to? If I did, what would happen to my present? To this life I had?
Doctor Who flashed through my mind. Where was the Doctor when I needed him? I guess this was too domestic for him, no Dalek invasion or creepy aliens eating up space and time like overgrown locusts. No world to save. Only my world. It was up to me. It had always been up to me.
Then the girl asked me, Why are you lighting a fire in summer?
I told her, It gets cold here in the summer, it can rain all summer, you never know what’s coming — a nice mild sunny day, or a miserable rain that makes your fish and chips soggy and your jandals wet.
Jandals, what are jandals? the girl asked, laughing again.
Thongs, I said sheepishly. God, it was true, we Australians knew nothing about New Zealand.
Have you got a girlfriend? the girl asked me.
Yes, yes I have, I said. Well, she is my wife actually. We’re married.
You can get married in New Zealand? the girl asked, not quite believing me.
Yes, yes you can, I said, without a word of a lie. I was thirty years away from her, and it was true. It was.
We’ve been married for eight years, together for thirteen years, I told the girl. I heard a sharp intake of breath. She must have thought I was from another planet.
I knew she hadn’t met another gay girl yet, let alone kissed one (she would, in a year or so, kiss a girl, in her car, on a rainy night) and here I was, married.
What’s it like, the girl asked me in a whisper, what’s it like to have a girlfriend?
What a question. And I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to tell the truth either. I wanted to say that everything was marvellous and that we loved each other so much, that we never fought, that we never went to bed mad with one another and there were no problems, ever. I wanted my adult queer life to be perfect for her. I knew how romantic her outlook was, that was what comes with no one telling you anything or paying any attention to you, you have to fill in the gaps yourself, and she filled in the gaps with romantic notions of BBC actresses and swashbuckling sports stars who would fall in love with her at a glance. I knew these romantic notions would last far too long, into early adulthood, and she would get into trouble carrying around all that naivety.
How could I show her the kernel of marriage? Is that what she even wanted right now? Not everyone wanted marriage, needed marriage, queer or straight. I knew, right now, all she wanted was to hold hands with a girl, kiss her. She had no clue about sex with a woman because there was no information, sanctioned or otherwise she could access, and besides, she was too frightened to even think about sex too much. The feelings overwhelmed her. Better to daydream about meeting a rakish, charming woman in some English manor house, a no-nonsense, forthright woman who would take a liking to her. What could I tell her about the real world of queer love? That women could be cruel, duplicitous, manipulative? That sex and love rarely met? That dating was fun (yes), that sex was fun (yes) but love — love was complicated, beautiful, unique as a fingerprint, dangerous, difficult, a peculiar type of effort over days, years, and decades.
I was getting off track. The girl had asked me about having a girlfriend, not marriage, they were two very different things.
At first, I said to the girl, it’s enough to hang out with gay girls, it’s enough to talk with them about who you like, who might like you, that’s fun, that’s the group you want now, right now, but you won’t get them for a while yet, you’ve got to go out and find them — when you’re ready, when you can. Then, I said to the girl, the next thing is to ask a girl out, or let her ask you out, it really doesn’t matter, as long as it happens. And this is the first awkward stage, as sometimes the girl says no, and sometimes you say no (you can say no — you don’t have to go out with a girl just because she has asked you), and you have to get used to being buffeted about a bit, between the longing and the wanting and the not quite getting. It’s all fine, it’s all normal, it’s all part of it.
So, the queer friends are more important, I said, it’s the queer friends that will get you through, those queer girls you love fiercely but you’d never go out with them (and when you try it’s a disaster), that’s who you’ll remember with great fondness later on, they are who really matter in the end. And you know what’s really nice, I add, what I really loved when I finally came out? I could go to a party, or a dance, or a nightclub and I could just look at girls. The freedom to look at girls, that was the most wonderful thing, the most liberating thing of all.
Don’t worry, I said to the girl finally, you will have a girlfriend. A few, probably, that won’t be so difficult, in the end. Don’t worry.
The girl didn’t know what to say to all of that. She lived to worry. Her life was all about worry. Too much silence. Too much isolation. It made a person afraid, unable to move. After a time, she said, Wow, that helps. Thank you.
Thank you, I said.
She laughed. For what? she asked me.
For everything, I said. She’d saved me. She didn’t know this. Without her, I wouldn’t be kneeling by a wood burning stove in a farmhouse in New Zealand, feeding cypress into a fire. The girl was me, and I was the girl. Her sadness was mine, and my happiness was hers.
The girl asked if she could call again sometime.
Call again, Yvette, I said. Call whenever you like. I’ll be right here.
The girl said she would. Then we said goodbye. My wife was out in the garden. I could see her walking through the trees, the cat and the dog following. I would make her a cup of tea soon. We would chat about the day. The gratitude I felt for her love, expressed day after day in the simplest of moments, was without measure.
MELANIE RODRIGA
Melanie Rodriga, Antipodean film-maker and emerging author, was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and is of Eurasian (Malay-Chinese-Portugese) ancestry on her mother’s side and British ancestry on her father’s. She has lived in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She describes her sexual orientation as fluid, and currently identifies as lesbian or queer. Her story relates to her extended family and its relationship to the broader questions of their heritage and is a contemporary take on her own experience of high school in Sydney, in the 1970s. Melanie writes, ‘I wanted to challenge the assumption that sexuality is biologically or genetically driven. I believe that allowing young people the freedom to make up their own minds about their sexual preference(s) is the most important thing.’
DNA
Sunday. Lunch. Dad’s place.
He’s lived in this flat in Rose Bay since my mum divorced him last year. It’s small, but has a vintage-retro sort of vibe plus it has a garden, which is good because there are a few of us at these lunches. Dad’s side, this is.
Mum’s side (the Asian side) has lunch every other Sunday. The two sides have never mixed all that much. Maybe Boxing Day or something. It’s always awkward.
So at Dad’s, it’s usually me (Michelle), my younger brother Adrian and older sister Julie, Auntie Susie (Dad’s sister, also divorced), Uncle Neville (Dad’s bro, also divorced — I should just put ‘a.d.’ after all references to adult family members on Dad’s side) and whichever cousins turn up. Blonde freckled ones who have usually come straight from Bronte or Maroubra, or wherever the waves are.
Me and Adrian and Jules are not blonde and freckled and we are not lovers of the beach, although Julie has been in the swimming carnival maybe twice, and I will get sand in my shoes if there is ice cream involved. Adrian is too young to know what he wants, except about getting his own way with everything. I see a great future ahead of him. Not so much me. I’m supposed to start uni next year and haven’t even chosen a course. Something in science maybe. Dad says we can do anything, and be anything, but I’d like to see him try to navigate Sydney Uni’s friggin’ useless website.
Sunday. Lunch. Our place.
There are, like, way more people at this lunch because Mum’s five sisters and their SUV-loads of kids all, always come unless there is an avian flu epidemic or a mob of them are in Singapore or KL or at the Buddhist temple in Wollongong. Our house — the house Dad doesn’t live in anymore — is awesome. Dad inherited it from his parents. I never got to know my Anglo nana-pops, but their house is in the Eastern suburbs since it was a place where people with average money could live. From the deck, you can look at the Harbour for real, which is good, because phones are not allowed at lunch. So we look at the view (you get blasé after a while) and look at the food (never blasé about that) and look at each other and I have to say, we are a handsome bunch.
If Dad’s family are the blonde and sandy part of the Aussie gene pool, Mum’s family range from half-brown types to jet black hair and pale skin. I’m an in-between one, a bit of everything. When Sunday lunch is at Mum’s, she always puts oranges in front of the Kuan Yin statue in the hall and lights a joss stick to make her sisters think she’s devout. Her Kuan Yin statue is really old. It belonged to Mum’s grandmother, who brought it over from Penang where she said she found it in an antique shop (so it must be ancient) and my mum kind of looks after it for all the sisters.
There are extra flowers in front of Kuan Yin today as this lunch is for my Auntie Rose’s fiftieth, and there are flowers on the table too. Rose is the least devout of the sisters, so there is a greater possibility of fun, and even outrage. Today she has brought a new boyfriend, Len, whom she found on some business trip in Thailand. Len is Vietnamese, but they talk Thai to each other, which is cool, if a little overwhelming. I have no Thai, no Mandarin, no Cantonese. Heck, I barely have English. Thank the Goddess of Mercy I have science.
Monday. Chemistry.
My teacher is Mr Yeo. (‘Yo, Yeo’. ‘Yo! Yo!’).
I like his class (I like him), but then today he shattered my high expectations by bringing up Harry Potter. In chemistry. Why do teachers think that if they use a Harry Potter example we’ll understand stuff better? Mrs Delaskie did it in English, some ‘Goddess Hermione’ thing; but she had a point in that Hermione saved Harry and Ickle Ronnie so many times and yet Potter is the hero? Not Hermione?
Anyway, Mr Yeo used a muggle-wizard, full-blood-half-blood-mudblood reference in order to talk about genetics and DNA. Aka deoxyribonucleic acid, which not only makes up chromosomes but accounts for genetic characteristics in pretty much all, well all, life forms. It’s a kind of spiral ladder of nucleotide strands with rungs of purine and pyrimidine, all carrying everything we have been and ever will become. ‘DNA is what makes us who we are,’ says Mr Yeo. Awesome, really.
It took great skill on Mr Yeo’s part, I thought, to keep the discussion on-topic. Yet, in all his Harry Potter comparisons he never mentioned that Voldemort is actually a muddie. Like me.
Sunday. Lunch. Dad’s place again.
The shit hit the fan, as Dad would say.
In fact, he did say it, right after freckled cousin Glen thought it would be funny to say ‘Asians are so soy.’ Anyway, Glen thought he was being super-ironic but he didn’t know he’d just truly insulted me and ma sibs. And then all the freckled cousins joined in, ‘Asians are soy, Asians are soy,’ and we suddenly had a racial incident on a massive scale. People were leaping up out of their chairs.
‘Dude, don’t go there!’ Adrian warned Glen, grabbing a bit of his shirt. So Glen and Adrian were about to take it outside when Dad started in on Uncle Neville for raising Glen the wrong way and then Mum arrived to pick us up, Mum had an extra go at Dad and then Mum, Adrian, Julie and me are sitting in the car fuming and Mum says, ‘What’s this Asians are soy business?’ and Adrian says, ‘It means fucked, Mum. Cousin Glen meant Asians are fucked.’
Sunday. Lunch. Auntie Grace and Uncle Stephen’s place (and Stephanie and Michael and Wendy as they’re home from, respectively, uni, uni, travelling the world).
Auntie Grace is the best cook of all the sisters. She even makes Uncle Stephen do his own barbecue duck as the great place in Chatswood is not up to her standards.
There was a bit of tutting about the racial incident at Dad’s last week and then we moved on to the mediaeval topic of marriage equality. Auntie May burst in late at that point — she’d come straight from Temple — and was all fired up about marriage equality because she’s always been against it.
Auntie Rose then accused Auntie May of being a conservative mainlander so, Auntie May, spotting my new rainbow fringe, turned on me instead and hissed, ‘Why don’t you even have a boyfriend yet?’ Everyone went quiet for a moment.
Then I shot back, ‘Why identify as sexuality- or gender-anything when nothing is set in stone?’
It’s the DNA image Mr Yeo showed us in class. It got me as fiery as Auntie May as I told her, ‘I mean, look at the stuff DNA is made from, it has no beginning and no end. And if DNA is the basis for everything, then how can anything be for always?’
Adrian likes to challenge Auntie May as well, so he stuck up for me at that point and the shouting really began. I tried to shift Auntie May to the safer topic of the relationship between language, gender and sexuality. You can’t separate them, incidentally — Google it and see — ‘But can you always keep them together,’ I said, ‘and do we really have to?’
Auntie May wouldn’t be distracted though, and went on and on about how marriage should be natural this, and families should be natural that, and I’d wanted to scream at her, ‘I’m natural! I’m as natural as you are!’ But I didn’t.
When I think about that twisty-turny DNA strand, I think of Voldemort again and how he disintegrates right at the end of Deathly Hallows 2. He turns into tiny particles that fall apart and just float away and it’s kinda slow and beautiful and haunting (Bellatrix falls apart faster and sharper, more like glass) but it’s also really, really, awful. I’m feeling it, and I realise I’ve been feeling like that for a while now, that I’m made up of tiny particles that are falling apart in a slow and mysterious fashion.
Wednesday. Chemistry.
Mr Yeo looked good today. Not as good as Mrs Yeo though. I was moping in the corridor after school and it turned out we were both waiting to see Mr Yeo. So me and Mrs Yeo had a chat. And she’s looking at me with this look on her face and I just know, because I know that look, that she’s asking herself, Is Michelle Asian? While I’m looking at Mrs Yeo and I’m thinking, Am I attracted to her? Am I attracted to her because she’s Asian and she reminds me of one of my aunties, and is that a bad/weird thing?
Meanwhile she’s saying to me, ‘Mr Yeo says you’re all studying DNA now,’ and I am not really listening because I’m still staring at her but I say, ‘Yeah — I mean yes. But he never actually said Voldemort is a mudblood … which is a gap in our learning I think …’
And I study the colour of her eyes. Blue. No one on Mum’s side has blue eyes. This is quite disarming. ‘Your blue eyes,’ I say, ‘did your ancestors live near the Black Sea eight thousand years ago?’
She laughs and s
ays Mr Yeo should stop using the eight-thousand-year-old blue-eyed Black Sea Asians as a teaching example and we talk about our real ancestors for a bit — hers from Hong Kong, mine from Singapore and KL and Sydney.
Sunday.
Sunday lunch at Dad’s does not happen this week. The Soy Wars are still raging. I have to feel for Dad. Although it was his brother and nephews who were out of order, Mum makes it all his fault, all the time. Listening to them shouting on the phone, it’s like we are back in the break-up days, when they were falling apart and taking us with them. Little things became that much bigger than they should’ve because you couldn’t think of anything else except the incomprehensible fact that your world was ending. It kind of layered over everything with an explosive effect — loud noises, angry colours, lots of missile-like debris that made your brain unable to function at anything beyond survival level.
Today their argument moves from their own shortcomings to how fucked-up their kids are. Never Julie, who is a jewel among girl-children; just me and Adrian, my smart and beautiful little-bro, who might be queer. And they talk about our flaws even though it was their DNA that produced us after all.
So, no Sunday lunch at Dad’s. When he comes to collect us kids, he acts like the shouting match with Mum never happened and he takes us to a film in town and tells jokes and tries his best to makes us feel as normal as a broken family with one princess and two almost-certainly queer kids can be.
Monday. Chemistry.
So I ask Mr Yeo, straight up, ‘Mr Yeo, you said that DNA makes us who we are? Then how does DNA cause people to be not heterosexual?’
Meet Me at the Intersection Page 9