Venue change

The venue for the rally has changed! It's now at Roma Street, 11am for an 11:30 start.

I just hope you all read this in time ...

Rally tomorrow

Sorry for the late notice, but please try to come along tomorrow (Saturday) to a rally for marriage equality. From the AME press release:

Australian Marriage Equality (AME) has announced that a National Day of Action calling for Same-Sex Marriage will be held on Saturday August 13. Events will take place in 5 Australian Capital Cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Perth and in one overseas capital, Mexico City, Mexico. The event coincides with the first anniversary of the Marriage Amendment Act 2004 which banned the recognition of overseas same-sex marriages and defined marriage in Australia as between one woman and one man.

The rally starts at 11:00am at the QUT entrance to the Goodwill Bridge, Brisbane City.

Please come along! If you are in another capital city and want the details for that location just let me know.

Mum gets the lingo

On Monday morning, I found the number for PFLAG (the support organisation for parents and friends of LGBTIs) in my hometown and called Mum to pass it on. She told me she’d been up until midnight the night before, but didn’t say why. I instantly had a feeling that she’d called Lifeline or some other telephone counselling service. When I told her I had the PFLAG number, she said she already had it, and that she’d called them the night before and left a message. This was pretty exciting news. She’d actually called the Brisbane branch, rather than her local branch, so I gave her the regional branch’s contact number. Mum wrote it down and said she would definitely speak to them.
That night I called again to see if she’d made the call. It turned out that a woman from the Brisbane branch of PFLAG had returned Mum’s call.
‘Was she nice?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Her son is gay. She said she just treats her son’s partner like another son.’
Yes, my mum said partner. She’s getting the lingo. It’s such a small change, but to me it felt like she’d jumped on a Mardi Gras float. The woman at PFLAG also told Mum that if her son’s partner wasn’t invited to extended family gatherings, none of the immediate family went either. Overall, it sounded like a really positive exchange for Mum. I was really pleased. I thought I’d remind her to call the regional branch as well, since they hold meetings in Mum’s town.
Mum wasn’t so sure at first.
‘But I’ve spoken to someone now,’ she said.
‘That doesn’t matter. You can speak to someone else. And these ones are local.’
‘Yes, I might call them,’ she said.
‘You may as well,’ I said.
‘Yes. Get a second opinion,’ she said.
She makes me laugh so much sometimes, my mother. ‘Yeah, a second opinion,’ I said. Just in case the Brisbane branch got it all wrong with their message of tolerance, love, and acceptance.

Reasons to never leave the house

On Sunday evening, after my meltdown, I visited my friend Kylie to talk about what had happened. I’d been feeling melancholy all day, and I just couldn’t shake the feeling. Kylie got engaged herself just over a week ago to her lovely boyfriend Pete (of Medium Hardcore t-shirt fame). She pointed out the stark contrast between our families’ reactions to our respective nuptials. Her family is thrilled, excited, proud. My family is … well, you know.

When I arrived home from Kylie’s place a couple of hours later, Mum had called. Heather had spoken to her for about forty minutes. Mum said that she had spoken to Dad, and told him that Heather and I plan to marry. Mum asked Heather the same question repeatedly: ‘I don’t understand it. Can you explain it to me?’ She didn’t just mean the wedding plans, she meant, I think, that she didn’t understand anything about our relationship. Could Heather explain it?

I need to say now that Heather needs to be beatified really soon. In her kind and patient way, she tried to explain our love to my mother. This despite the fact that Mum asked Heather some questions that would have irritated just about anyone—questions like:
1. ‘But aren’t you going to return to America?’ (No, she isn't.)
2. ‘You don’t plan on taking Michelle with you, do you?’ (See Q1)
3. [After Heather explained that we’ll be applying for Heather to stay in Australia based on our relationship] ‘So, you’re planning on getting residency based on your relationship with Michelle? Are you using Shelly to stay in the country?’ (Um, no.)
4. ‘What about having kids. Don’t you want kids?’ (You don’t surrender your ovaries and uterus when you get your lesbian licence.)

The whole while, Heather apparently walked around the house mouthing ‘oh shit!’ to our housemates, who instantly recognised that this was a Crazy Parents Call. Heather came through like a star, of course. I don’t know if she managed to explain the nature of romantic love generally, and ours in particular, to my mother, but she gave it her best shot. I do wonder, though, if she’ll ever have the courage to answer the phone again on a Sunday night.

An unexpected eruption

After that somewhat disappointing phone call with my mother, I got upset. I thought about the exchange for about ten minutes before I called her back. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise how upset I was until I was talking to her. The minute I began to speak, I lost the plot and started sobbing and swearing. I was so upset that I can’t actually remember what I said. All I can remember are some of the key catchphrases of my one-woman fracas. Slogans of remarkable lyricism, like:
‘I’m so fucking sick of this!’
‘You’ve known about me for years. It’s time you got used to the idea!’
And my personal favourite: ‘I just want some fucking acceptance!’

In response to my horrendous bawling, Mum was quite upset and remarkably sympathetic. She told me how much she and Dad love me, and how sorry she was that I was upset. She said she felt that she couldn’t really talk to Dad about it. ‘How do you know that?’ I asked. ‘Mum, you haven’t tried. You don’t know—maybe he’ll surprise you.’

Poor old Dad, meanwhile, was in the bedroom, listening to Mum’s responses on the phone down the hall. He had no idea what was going on, but knew that I was terribly upset. He chose this exact moment to pick up the bedroom phone.
‘What’s the matter, Michelle?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘See,’ Mum said. ‘You can’t talk to him about it, either.’ She had a good point. So, democratically, I began to yell at Dad too. I don’t remember what I said, exactly, but I do remember telling him that I was sick of him ‘asking about fucking Axel all the time.’
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ I yelled. ‘Do you think I don’t know what you’re asking when you ask that? I’m with Heather, and that’s the way it’s going to be!’
If Dad made any response, it was very, very quiet because I don’t recall one. Mum told me she was really sorry, and she felt terrible that I was so upset. She said she’d talk to Dad when she got off the phone. She said this twice, and for once, she really seemed serious.

I hung up the phone and went outside. Heather was reading the paper. Silently, we looked at each other for a second. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked.
‘Sweetie, I think the whole neighbourhood heard that,’ she said.
For the first time in days, though—ever since I caught the flu—my head felt clear and I could breathe. Nothing like an emotional meltdown to get that mucus flowing.

Running out of air

Much has happened since my last post.

Heather and I went shopping on Saturday to buy more cards and paper to test-run our invitations. We went to a couple of stationers and found that Eckersley’s seems to be the cheapest—and they were really helpful, too. Later that afternoon we found some nice white gold wedding bands at Michael Hill in the Myer Centre. (We’re still broke, so we’ve put them on lay-by.) We were particularly pleased because the woman who served us was really friendly and didn’t hesitate to talk about commitment ceremonies—in fact, she broached the topic first, not us. At other jewellers we’ve visited, the staff have skirted the issue and not known quite what to do with us, so this woman’s unprompted recognition was really affirming.

And that brings me to yesterday morning’s events. I called my parents, and spoke to my Dad first. We talked about the car (it’s making a funny noise) and our health (he had the flu for three weeks, and I have it now). Then he asked after my friend Axel, and whether I have seen him lately. Now, Dad has never met Axel, as far as I can recall. Regardless of this, he has hoped for many years that Axel is my boyfriend. I even once said, ‘Dad, stop asking about Axel. He’s not my boyfriend, and that’s that.’ But no. Dad persists. Apparently, he now hopes that Axel can save me from my lesbianism.

We finished up our conversation, and then I had a general discussion with Mum, the aimless kind of talk that ends with one party saying, ‘Well, I don’t really have any news’ even though they’ve been telling you their non-news for ten minutes. Since I did, in fact, have news, I decided to mention yesterday’s shopping expedition. It was important to me because, hey, this is my wedding. So I just started telling her.
‘Heather and I bought some invitations yesterday.’
‘What for?’
‘Well, you know how we’re getting married when we go overseas, and we’re having parties to celebrate afterwards? We need invitations to invite people to the parties.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘And we put our rings on lay-by, too.’
Silence.
More silence.
I suppressed my desire to end the silence. As I waited, I could almost feel the 700-odd kilometers that stretch between us. Finally, she spoke.
‘I can’t really say anything because I’m still getting used to the whole idea.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘But you also need to know that this is really important to me. I mean, this is my life.’ I waited for her to say something, anything, that would make everything right.
‘Oh, that’s what I was going to ask you,’ she said in a great rush. ‘Have you seen the news yet? Those poor bloody Russians in the submarine. I wonder if they’ve run out of air yet.’