Nothing But My Body

by Tilly Lawless

  I’ll probably see a few of them here today, not that I’m down for it now, I just want to dance and be ecstatic and have nonsensical conversations with people while we slap sunscreen on each other’s backs; you’ve got to remember that hole in the ozone layer, partying responsibly isn’t just about carrying naloxone or keeping your tummy full. We’re dancing under some shade cloth outside and there’s a trans boy I know jostling around at my elbow; I should introduce him to the others.

  ‘Guys, this is Louie.’

  ‘Oh, we know each other! We met in Berlin, right? And Melbourne before that? But I think you had a different name then.’

  He nods. ‘Oh yeah, Melbourne, that was three names ago.’

  ‘Queers, I can’t keep up with the whole move cities, change name thing. I’ve just got my work name and my real name.’ I am teasing or maybe I’m flirting; flirting with this fine day with the blue up above and the colours I’m immersed in, the other partygoers parakeets of rainbows and chatter.

  ‘Yeah, but you’re cis. It’s more of a gender nonconforming thing.’

  True, I say in my mind or from my mouth, not sure which, but before I can determine it the moment has passed and an Egyptian woman with curly hair has put on a house track that makes the crowd collectively drop down into it, knees braced and souls singing. We get deep. You can feel the shared ecstasy; it shimmers above us, a mirage of heat and euphoria rising from all our bodies, trapped between the shade cloth and the sky. There is no place in the world I’d rather be. Actually, I think I am in the best place in the world right now, in this exact moment, I – There’s someone touching my hip. I glance down and it’s a friend of mine in a wheelchair, someone I wanted to fuck till I found out we were both bottoms.

  ‘Oh my god, hey! Wanna dance with us?’

  ‘I’m about to head home; it’s getting too crowded, not enough space for me to turn. I came earlier when the dance floor was empty. Now no one looks down and they keep tripping over me. It’s going to be a struggle getting out . . .’

  ‘Want me to clear the way for you? I’m taller than most people in these heels.’

  ‘Yeah that’d be great,’ they say, and so I strut through the crowd asking people to make room so they can pass through and think about how I take my body and my ability to move through the world for granted, how this venue is accessible but even then they have to leave once the party really gets going, and how I’ve never been able to invite them over because I live in an old terrace with a spindly staircase, and how later tonight I’m going to go to a club that they’d have no way of getting into.

  I kiss them goodbye and as I go to head back inside to the party a woman crashes into me, and it’s the Lebanese lesbian who used to be the receptionist at a dodgy brothel I worked at. She was the best to work under because the clients all thought she was a man and so were on their best behaviour, but all us girls knew she was a woman and so felt comfortable with her in the girls’ room. Really, all brothel receptionists should be butches of some kind, I decide. And multilingual ones, too, I resolve as I remember her berating a difficult client in Arabic and him apologising profusely in a way I would never have been able to get him to.

  ‘It’s so good to see you! Wanna come to the bathroom with me?’ I gesture at my nose so she knows it’s my shout.

  ‘Yallah, let’s go!’

  On the way we grab a Tongan trans girl we both know and the three of us cram into a toilet cubicle. My hands are sweaty and so I gush eagerly as I repeatedly fail to roll the note – ‘It’s so good to see you it’s been way too long how are all the girls is Vanessa still there and what about Sharni and Lexi’ – and she’s answering all my questions and then the Tongan girl takes the note from me and says, ‘Let me do that’ so I give myself over completely to the catch-up conversation.

  ‘Oh, I wanted to thank you for getting that girl to take down that photo by the way,’ she says to me.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m still outraged she put it up.’

  ‘What happened?’ the Tongan girl asks as she delicately sniffs up a bump.

  ‘Wow, you do that so elegantly! My nose sounds like a rusty tap.’ I take the note from her and explain, ‘Well, this chick at work, white queer girl, took a photo of her on shift at the brothel without asking and then posted it on Insta without asking. So fucked. Like, the first rule of a brothel is you don’t take photos of other people – and then to post it online?! And the worst part is she captioned it: This is what a brothel looks like.’

  ‘Nah, the worst part is that we’d just been talking and I’d said how my migrant identity eclipses my queer identity and how I don’t relate to a lot of white queers and then, I guess coz I’m obviously a POC and obviously queer, she decided to post a photo of me to destigmatise brothels or whatever, which I get, but it used me as an object and was completely at my expense. And imagine if my mum had somehow seen that – yi!’

  ‘Yeah, like, using you as a tool in her own political agenda without considering the risk to you? Makes everything she says about community care and stuff like that pretty hollow.’

  ‘Babe, that’s fucked – did you call her out on it?’

  ‘Nah. Maddy just messaged her for me asking her to take it down. I didn’t have the energy to explain to her why what she did was fucked; waste of my time if she didn’t already know how wrong it was. I just hope she isn’t endangering other people’s privacy like that. She can’t just waltz through life thinking everyone can be as open about working in the sex industry as she is.’

  ‘Who’s Maddy?’

  ‘I’m Maddy; she just called me my work name by accident. Violently outing me!’ I playfully flick her.

  ‘Fuck, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s all g, I don’t care. Just do yours already and let’s get out of here. I wanna dance!’

  We go back out and the dance floor is heaving, and I know that I have a wonderful life and a wonderful future ahead of me, and a camp gay I know looks me up and down and exclaims, ‘Bodyyyy!’ and I feel powerful within it because I know it’s brought me so much. I was just a country girl who moved to the big city with nothing but my body, earned it all ten toes down and legs up, hamstrings strained and tight from horseriding, no familial connections or money, climbed that ladder one dick rung at a time, the ka-chiiiing of my pussy its own kind of art, just as valid as the art pumped out by middle-class kids with a family home and inheritance waiting.

  I think of all the men who have beached themselves, sperm whales, upon the crest of this arse, defeated in doggy, lying exhausted and prone and sapped of their virility, gently lapped by my blonde beach waves in their post-orgasm comedown, my pubic hair seaweed-slick to rest their head upon, their fingers pruned from reaching to get back to the waters of the womb from whence they came; did they want to climb inside me? I wonder. Tuck themselves up behind that same shelf of bone that I struggle to extricate my sponges from? Hollow me out till I’m nothing but a domestic chamber to play house with (in)? Do they want to swallow me or be swallowed by me?

  Three thousand and counting, grains of sand that have burnished and furnished my golden life, forgettable as individuals but meaningful in their multitudes. I think of the person that I sent this arse to as a booty call years ago, someone I should’ve kept as a friend and a fuck but I skinned and pulled taut on posts and stretched them into a (pleather) partner, tanned and tended them because it’s what we both wanted. I think of this arse pushed up against someone who can fill me right up, between our rape play and lingerie. Sex worker/writer/mother. Who says thoughts of pregnancy have to be untarnished, somehow chaste even in the midst of a sexual act, thinking only of that greater act, missionary and medical? Thoughts of pregnancy get me on all fours, wanting and dripping. What better climate to create in?

  It’s all play because everyone I want to fuck can’t actually creampie me, though I gag on their strapon more than a flesh and failing dick, and beg them to take me raw. Maybe that’s why it makes me so hot for it: bec
ause it’s all just womb-aching and not womb-making. My child will be conceived with careful planning, its own kind of love more stable than romance, a different kind of fairytale. I’ll spin my hair into gold and turn tricks with this arse, flip them over till they’re guppy-mouthed, gasping for breath as I wipe up their mess, like a baby having its nappy changed, infantilised.

  And someone is spanking my arse now, and I turn around to find a beautiful redhead friend of mine who has already said yes to giving me his sperm, how serendipitous, just when I’m thinking of my children-to-be, surrounded by my family-to-be, here’s my donor-to-be right up against me. Not that he’s the one and only; I have a few more gay friends who’ve said yes, and then there’s also that straight friend of mine in Sweden who I want to ask. I’ll say to him, Hey, I know your lifestyle doesn’t work for having kids, but if it’s something that interests you in a nontraditional way, like being a distant dad with me as the primary carer, I feel like we could make it work coz I know there’s mutual respect and trust and we’re both quite pragmatic and responsible. I would happily sign a contract so you know I’m not after financial support in any way, and you appeal to me because I know you wouldn’t be up in my business wanting to be with me, you’re smart and diligent and, most important of all, treat women well, and you could knock me up just by fucking me, it’s a lot cheaper and more statistically successful that way. Damn, I’m into fine-tweaking this pitch – can’t wait to actually deliver it!

  ‘What are your brands?’ someone next to me asks, and I must’ve been carrying on a conversation while my imagination was off frolicking in my future, and so I say, ‘I’m not really into brands.’

  ‘No, I mean what are your pronouns?’

  ‘Oh, right, lol, sorry – she/her. You want to get up on the platform with me?’

  From the vantage point of these seven-inch heels I can see over most people’s heads but I want even more, I want that change of perspective, want to see the undulations of the crowd beneath me, be the observer and the observed, feel the might of a height I never normally have in this petite body, with my clothes and personality always bigger than me. I want my physical presence to match the strength I feel within, want to be carried up high with elation, float like a balloon above this day that I love, these people I feel close to even if I don’t know them.

  The person next to me hands me up to a babe with sharp acrylics and I wouldn’t mind being tied to their apron strings, hope they don’t let go of my hand, I don’t want to drift away on the breeze, astral projection a distinct possibility if I keep smashing that ketamine; pace yourself, girl. My phone buzzes in my hand and ‘Superstylin’’ begins to play and I open the text to find that a friend who has been going through a rough time, barely staying afloat through addiction and mental health issues and financial struggle, has texted me and something else has gone wrong for them, I don’t know why they are so jinxed, life keeps knocking them over, won’t cut them any slack, and here am I in my jubilation and my wonderful life that I hold in my hands and shake with excitement like a dog worries a ragdoll, all grip and boisterousness, and I wonder how can I be having this most marvellous moment while my friend is suffering, and I can feel that I’m crying silently because there’s nothing I can do to help them and I just want them to be as rich in their life and future as I am.

  ‘Are you okay?!’ the babe next to me asks.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I’m actually great, but I just got a text from a friend who is going through a bad time and I feel so sad – I just wish I could give them a slice of my life or what I’m feeling right now because life hasn’t been fair to them and really I have so much, I am so happy.’

  The tears are streaming down my cheeks and I don’t bother wiping them away because it’s a testament to my friend that I feel this sorrow, because they deserve more from life. So many of us do. I have at points, and now I’m finally milking it, and here I am drunk on an excess that I never thought I’d have, filled myself straight from the teat of the divine, let it froth on my lips, and now I wish I could churn it into cream to share with all my friends, till they were all fed and satisfied with the smug smile of a cat. That’s not how life works, though; sometimes we can only care for the people we love, not fix things for them. And everything isn’t meted out as it should be.

  Three Aboriginal drag queens perform as the sun goes down and people are beginning to move inside to where Ayebatonye is finishing her set or heading to various kick-ons scattered across the city or chilling in the gutter talking about what next, but not me, I’ve got another club calling me, and this one’s dank and claustrophobic, down some steps and through a tight corridor with poor ventilation and clogged toilets, where everyone smokes in the bathrooms and gender is irrelevant and you sweat out all the toxins you’ve consumed as if it’s one mass sauna because that one broken fan never works and it’s thirty degrees if not more in there, your clothes sliding off you till you’re in nothing but underwear, drenching the tarmac with sweat when you go out to the street for a life-saving breather. If today was light and goodness, tonight is promiscuity and a smear of caked white scum across your face, refuse from your nose that’s stuffed from one too many lines. The side of the queer community that people want to clean up, brush off, put in a suit so you can get a rental, cram into a beige turtleneck and shove a glass of champagne into your hand, talk about the art we make that straight people buy. I don’t want that, though. I want to keep the dirty, the glory holes, love seeing a girl peeing into a sink because the cubicles are all taken by orgies or rack fiends; I’ve been that girl peeing into the sink.

  ‘Why are they dressed like prostitutes?’ a straight guy who had never been to a queer club once asked my friend. ‘Well,’ my friend answered, ‘it’s a queer club, but a lot of them are prostitutes.’ That’s because there’s a huge crossover between working-class queers and sex work, I barely know one who hasn’t dabbled in it. The flow between black queer culture, trans culture and sex worker culture is vibrant and unending. Our clubs are full of whores. To pretend otherwise is to pretend that the economic disparities don’t exist, to pretend that I don’t sell a lesbian fantasy to my clients, capitalising on and contributing to the continued fetishisation of Sapphic relationships to fund my lesbian reality. Here I am now in my high femme garb, knowing I can move through the world as a middle-class person, know I am afforded that by my whiteness and tertiary education, knowing that I wouldn’t have the latter without sex work, which allowed me to transcend my welfare years and drop the references to travel and culture that other people get through their parents’ wealth. Here I am, dancing to Honey Dijon in a basement in Woolloomooloo, hemmed in by other bodies that have hustled like mine and hearts that have felt and minds that have rankled and wombs that have bled tears of melancholy and tits of silicone that glow in the dark and cat eyes that are smudged from fingers that have grasped a face with lewdness and tenderness, and there’s a white lesbian with age crinkled around her temples tugging at my bodysuit wanting to ask me something, and I bend down to hear her say, ‘Are you one of those girls . . .’

  ‘Am I one of those girls?’

  ‘Are you one of those girls that are just here for the night . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here for tonight,’ I say eagerly.

  ‘Are you one of those girls … that are just here for the night … that aren’t really gay?’

  I’m shocked into silence. I’m used to not being seen as queer, to my presence being interrogated because I’m ‘straight passing’, but on Mardi Gras?! What is with this overemphasis on aesthetics in our community? I understand the need to signal to others through coded dress, but when that excludes those who either don’t have the will or don’t have the means to access a certain look, where are we? Left with a reading of other people as authentic or inauthentic based on what they wear – what a flimsy way to perceive sexuality! Everything I wear is inherently queer, because I am queer – in the damp of my pussy, in the crook of my elbow, in the sprigs of my v
eins. Clothes are simply a garnish for this body, not the summation of it!

  Whatever, who cares. I’m at the epicentre of the world right now, molten figures all around me, melding in this heat into one amorphous mass of skin and bliss. I look across at one of my friends, who is wearing nothing but sneakers and a loincloth, and I see an expression on his face that I can feel on mine, one beyond words, and I know everything has been worth it to make it to this moment, all paths led here and there is a greater purpose. I feel God in the room, just as I feel God as I gaze over the rolling hills of Dorrigo, and know God is between and with us sometimes when a partner and I make love. Forget the false idols; we should love ourselves and each other like this always, because we are made in God’s image, in all our flaws and follies, only human – and, yet, isn’t it incredible to have this chance at life? I am so lucky to be alive and to be surrounded by my community, to be held by my community, to be passed from hug to hug with a hey hey hey hey hey let me lean on you for a sec so I don’t fall over in these heels.