My Mardi Gras

My Mardi Gras

Alexander Brown, 3 March 2010


You have to lose who you are to discover what you can become.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth, 2009.

WARNING: This post contains explicit sexual references.

This year I participated in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the first time. I recently got back from overseas and while having dinner with a friend in Sydney ended up running into his housemates and talking about ideas for the float. My friend lives with a couple of guys in a beautiful warehouse in Newtown. A number of possible themes for the float were discussed but in the end a little pink plastic bag provided the inspiration for our float: Pretty in Pink! I was asked to join the float and happily accepted the invitation.

I traveled up with friends on Saturday morning and we had lunch and chilled out at the warehouse before donning our costumes and heading to Hyde Park to meet up with everyone, rehearse some more and head to the marshalling yard. I dressed as Alexander the Great in a pink tunic tied with a belt, sandals and a wreath in my hair made of plastic ivy leaves and pink flowers. I looked an absolute sight and with make-up and pink hair-spray I was ready for anything! I was curious about what reactions my costume might evoke. My tunic was rather too short for comfort and gave me insight into what women must feel when they wear skirts. I was constantly hitching it down to avoid it riding up and exposing my undies.

We all began arriving at Hyde Park in the agreed meeting place and were quickly surrounded by hords of tourists with cameras who wanted to take endless photographs of us. Spectacle! Mardi Gras is clearly about spectacle, about making a spectacle of ourselves, about subverting heternormative spectacles … but it is very intense to be the subject of such curiosity.

In the marshalling yard the floats were gathering. We were near the front of the parade. Behind us were a large contingent of 'stars' from the ANZ bank and in front were the hoola-hoop gang. The excitement was building and finally it was time for us to march! We stepped out proudly into the street and did a very passable job of remembering the steps to our choreography. It was such a rush. Thousands and thousands of people were lining the street on both sides.

Once the parade was finished I decided to head off to join some friends at a party at the Red Rattler, a new queer space in Marrickville. The vibe at the party was very different from that of the official Mardi Gras. It was darker, more complex in some ways. It felt good to be in the space. The night included a number of performances. Once the performances were done it was announced that a fashion show would now take place with members of the audience as the models. A friend spotted me in the crowd and asked me to join and I gladly accepted. I walked out onto the stage, tried to keep a straight face and walked boldly down to the end of the catwalk. Then I broke into a smile and swung my hips, turned around and trotted off stage! How exciting! To stand up in front of all these people in such a strange costume. To exhibit myself. To make a display of my sexuality and my own uncertainty about it.

Later there was dancing. Mostly to really bad music but it still somehow worked. A cute guy, winner of the above fashion show, was dancing nearby. I glanced at him, he seemed to be doing the same. He slowly moved toward me as we kept glancing at one another and smiling. Then he was standing in front of me. We moved toward one another. Our bodies touched and things began to move more quickly. We began kissing. I was shy. I have never kissed a guy before. I have never actually had a random pash on a dancefloor before either. It was pretty awesome. He was urgent, pressing. I wanted to dance with him, to kiss with him but I was hesitant about going any further. His hands were beneath my tunic, inside my undies, touching my penis. I don't know how I felt about it. I felt so breathless and overwhelmed by the whole experience. I didn't feel any erection yet I did feel very turned on. Well, eventually I felt like things were getting too intense and I told him I didn't want to go any further. He asked me why and I said I wasn't gay. He asked me if I was sure and I said no. We kept kissing for a while. He was so urgent. His face was scratchy and his mouth tasted of cigarettes. I liked the feeling of his body against mine. I kissed him, thanked him for the dance and walked away. I went outside and sat with some beautiful transexuals I met recently and just tried to cool down. The party continued but I don't think I stopped thinking about what had just happened at any point.

So I said I wasn't gay. What does that even mean? What makes a sexual orientation? What separates the different levels of intimacy and attraction that we experience with different people? I feel afraid to explore this aspect of myself. I feel like maybe I shouldn't mess with other peoples emotions by inflicting my own confused state on them. Then I remember what 'straight' dating is like! I hung out with a woman earlier in the week and it wasn't that different. I tried to kiss her, tried to express my desire and she withdrew. Why? Who knows, only that like all aspects of love and physical intimacy it is difficult, subject to constant negotiation and re-negotiation. Fluid, full of conflict. I'm sure that I am a particularly confused person when it comes to sexuality. But who isn't! I was with my former partner for more than a decade yet the process of negotiation, the fluctuating levels of desire, the complex interplay of subjectivity never 'settled' into anything 'stable'. Does it ever? Or do we just kid ourselves at some point that we have 'it'. Get married, try to fix our identities. Banish our deviant desires to the nether regions of our hearts and sit hopelessly by as they bubble out in other areas of our lives.

The only conclusive thing I can draw from this is that I would quite like to make out with a guy again. Maybe in a slightly more relaxed manner. I'm not that interested in casual sex with anyone, whatever there gender. I am more interested in intimacy. It is also very hard for me to know what my desire feels like because I feel so sexually numb after the end of my long-term relationship, despite the fact that that happened nearly a year and a half ago.

I heard a lot of critiques of the official mardi gras at the Red Rattler party and before and after it. I don't disagree with the need to critique. I have never identified as queer and so I have never really confronted the many contradictions and forms of oppression within the gay and lesbian community. However, I feel that many of these criticisms are too strong. The official Mardi Gras stands accused of becoming too mainstream and commercialised. I'm not sure that this negates the radical content in and of itself. I think the celebration of sexuality and love is a powerful experience. For me, to march down the street with a bunch of gay, lesbian, transexual, queer and straight people all dressed in pink, to wear an effeminate constume and show off my legs and get complimented by both men and women on how good I look was a powerful experience.

I suspect that for many young people who are still coming to terms with their sexuality to have queer sexuality and love celebrated in a 'mainstream' event, on national television, in the streets, is transformative and helps give them confidence. I suspect that for older participants who remember much darker times than these, admittedly still dark, ones find the acceptance of the Mardi Gras to be a powerful affirmation of their struggle against their exclusion from society. It is possible to argue that a march which began with mass arrests and police beatings and is now a mainstream cultural festival is a sell-out. It is also possible to argue that maybe it has achieved one of its aims. That it has contributed to a reduction of homophobia in society at large. I fail to see how that is a bad thing. Indeed, I think it is probably the very success of these movements of gay and lesbian liberation that have opened the space in which even more radical discourses around queer sexuality become possible.

I marched in a float in which pink Australian flags were mounted on the truck. This was profoundly disturbing to me. It highlights what the critics of Mardi Gras are saying about the failure to engage with broader struggles for liberation, struggles which must attack nationalism. Yet I think we need to remember that struggles have to start from where people are. Perhaps I should have spoken up about the flags, or abandoned marching with the float entirely in protest against them. I did neither because I felt that for a 'straight' man who was not close friends with more than a couple of the float participants and organisers it would have been inappropriate. And I think it is important to think about why some people chose to mount the flags. I reject discourses of Australian nationalism yet many people don't, indeed they have become particularly prevalent in our society. Perhaps for people who don't have a broader critique of nationalism what they are doing by flying these flags is subverting the meaning of the flag. Typically it is seen as a symbol of a white supremacist and heteronormative community. I think the pink flag can be seen as a rejection of both white supremacy and heteronormativity, even though it fails to critique the importance of the nation-state in maintaining these and other forms of oppression. I find it a constant problem when working with the more radical elements of the left that only 'pure' politics are acceptable. We need to be able to engage with people who are active around particular issues even if they don't share our general critique of capital and the state.

I spoke with a woman from Germany at the Red Rattler party who told me about some of the alternative and critical parades and events which accompanied the more 'mainstream' gay pride parade there. I think it is important that these critiques be advanced, but I hope they can be undertaken from a position of solidarity. It is hard for me to understand how mardi gras can be so vigorously critiqued when homophobic violence remains such a potent force in our society. Indeed, the scope of this form of violence in Australia is bad enough but in much of the world it is far worse. Gay pride marches are not even possible in many countries and I think that mardi gras still serves as a protest against this violence. Many young people continue to experience tremendous suffering and uncertainty over their sexuality and are subject to forms of oppression when they try to express their desires. The influence of the religious right in maintaining these prejudices is considerable. I think Mardi Gras can be seen as challenging these oppressive views and opening up a space in which desire and love can be celebrated.

Mardi Gras changed me. It helped transform my subjectivity and queer my identity and it was a lot of fun. I think that radical critiques ought to be a part of the discourse of how best to challenge homophobia and heternormativity and the broader project of countering all forms of discrimination, alienation and violence. I think we need to stand together and work where people are at and not reject less radical forms of protest but rather stand in solidarity while arguing for a more radical politics.