W I C K E D W O R D S
At Wicked Words in Naarm, eighty-odd punters heard from key figures in the community who shared their writing about sexuality, personal awakenings, queer adventures, and erotic encounters.
Each storytelling was documented by Chris Tynan, who set up an easel on stage and sketched their response in charcoal as tales were told. This added a glorious salon style component to the night.
Annaki shared her story about growing up in the burbs of Melbourne and coming out as a teen lezzo. She recalled pivotal moments in her early queer life as a conch calls from Poseidon in the form of queer anthems.
Bumpy shared a work of erotic fiction starring a motley crew of trans and gay characters as they get ready to attend Mardi Gras. Tomoko shared two gorgeous spoken word pieces with slide show images that had the audience sighing in delight. The first was about her first crush, she took her classmate on a date at age five. The second was about watching women apply makeup in the dressing room of her family home as a child.
Maude dressed in a lime green flowing gown to perform ‘Frogs in the Pond’, an incredibly erotic spoken word piece impossible to describe. It was another ‘you had to be there’ Maude moment.
After a break, we saw an excerpt from Rebis, a surreal videopoem by ReVerse Butcher & Kylie Supski with VR images of suspended figures. Then Gavrill shared some of the gains and losses of transition and taking T, a generous and insightful investigation of gender on many levels - personal, physical, and social. Many in the audience later commented that they related to his reflections and were grateful to hear his perspective.
Next came Jinghua with eir erotic queer poetic riotous words shared on the dating app LEX. Some of my favourites:
@lithic
Footscray, VIC • Feb 17, 2024
I miss fisting
I don’t know Morse code but when you swallow my wrist and squeeze my knuckles I
think I could learn.
@lithic
Footscray, VIC • Jun 18, 2024
Don’t worry twinks
ageing is delicious. Every year I am more myself, unrushed and unbothered with
nothing to prove and no potential to waste. Calmer. Tougher. Full from reaping what
I’ve sown. I’ve grown deep, sturdy roots; I’ll never become a man or woman. You
can be your precedent. There’s room.
#Advice #ForFree
@lithic
Footscray, VIC • Jun 19, 2024
Hot & Cold
Damn can we all commiserate re how hard it is to dress for kink when the
temperature is in single digits? (50F, Americans) I seriously considered strapping
over thermals. Like a sock and sandals dad but leather over merino
#SummerFling
Each speaker has contributed to the Naarm queer community in some way. Tomoko performed as a drag king, Bumpy ran King Vic for a decade, Annaki was born in Naarm then defected to Sydney where she ran Gurlesque, a strip club for dykes, Gavriil is an out and proud transman who is also a bushland conservationist and disability advocate who lives locally. Maude is a Naarm-based creative who has worked actively in the theatre for decades producing and performing in shows such as Gender Euphoria. She and Annaki each won the title of Ms Wicked in the early 1990s.
I was super excited to finally get Jinghua on stage at Wicked Words. Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese-Melburnian writer who investigates race, resistance, art, desire, queerness, and the Chinese diaspora. Ey has been a performance poet, a radio broadcaster, a television journalist, and an arts critic.
Then I read my piece in response to the photograph of a show I performed at Ms Wicked more than 3 decades ago that shows me full of joy on stage, laid back in a leather sling held up by four strapping young dykes dressed in a pink nun’s wimple.
When queers gather, we form pockets of resistance. Founded in deep personal acceptance, our communities are sanctuaries. These sanctuaries are lighthouses that illuminate the many ways colonization, capitalism, patriarchy, religion, transphobia, and rising right-wing forces are all connected.
Right now, it seems wrong to seek beauty while we bear witness to genocide. Struck by overwhelming feelings of helplessness, we try to find ways to help. We stand by our Muslim friends. We take to the streets, share Instagram stories, gather to protest, sell cakes to raise money to send to kitchens in Gaza, and send sim cards. We watch in horror as Zionist powers exert their control across the globe.
We gain the perspective of the outsider. We garner support from each other to stay strong and healthy.
We make time to gather and share personal stories of reverence and love. Time to gather and talk and dance and make music and walk and make sure we stay connected to our soft bellies and strident strong thighs. Time to put down our screens and face each other in the flesh. Time to immerse ourselves in our culture.
A few dashing revellers went out for drinks afterward. We recreated the Last Supper with me as Bejesus surrounded by a posse of queer disciples then ended the night by ripping up the dance floor until 3 am at the mixed night at the Laird.
We are confronted by thousands of images and stories of hetero propaganda every day. Our culture is drenched in it. Surely we deserve to have the occasional antidote.