11 - Home.

When I turned eighteen my sister took me to a bar in the city. I was a year older than my friends so didn’t really have anyone to go out with. I wasn’t really that interested but she insisted it was her civic duty as my older sister to take me out to get drunk.

I had never been “out” before so had no idea what the dress code was like. I lived in the suburbs and had only ever been to RSL's and soccer clubs so my perceptions of "going out wear" were pretty skewed. I wore white loose corduroy pants, suede brown leather boots (before Timberland made them famous) and a baggy jumper. If I were Snoop Dog maybe it would have looked cool, but I was not, so i indeed did not look cool.

The bouncer stopped me at the door. I got my ID out proudly and showed him. He looked me up and down and said I couldn’t go in dressed like that. I watched the men around me wearing jeans and jumpers getting shuffled past and looked back at him confused. I didn’t know what was happening.

“Fuck em’ this place is shit anyway” my sister said loudly to the bouncer and dragged me out of the line.

I looked at what I was wearing compared to the other women...“Can I not dress like this in clubs?” I inquired feeling embarrassed and clueless.

“Um some places have a dress code and bouncers can be dick heads but that doesn’t matter, you’ll probably prefer pubs anyway” she reassured me, trying to protect her little sibling's plummeting self-esteem.

I didn’t really prefer the pubs. People stared at me there too. I felt stupid and out of place. No one looked like me and I certainly didn’t act like any of them. I didn’t know how to dance or be sexy. That seemed to be all anyone was doing. Standing around trying to look desirable. I felt annoyed. Was I going to have to fight and defend my place in every fucking space I occupy from here on in? This was worse than high school. There was no room for me here. Being in public was exhausting. Fuck this I thought, clubbing was bullshit so I avoided it for another year or so.

Dating a woman however did mean I inevitably found myself in queer spaces. After high school the gays started to creep out from the closet and when they did, they came and found me. As the first fleet, we explored uncharted territory together. We started asking each other questions we had always been too shy to ask anyone else. We talked about sex the way sex was for us, not how we saw it on TV. What it looked like. What it felt like. Who we wanted to fuck. Completely uncensored.

When you spend your entire teenage years suppressing these thoughts and feelings, they burst out of you like fireworks when you are in a safe space. It’s like going through puberty all over again, only you are less surprised about your pubic hair. Having queer spaces is so important for personal growth.

I eventually returned to the clubbing scene, only this time I went ‘gay clubbing’. Turns out, I didn’t hate clubbing - I just hated straight clubs. They made me feel invisible. Gay bars made me feel sexual. People didn’t gawk at me like I was a foreign object, they looked at me like I was a sexual object. For the first time ever, I felt fuckable. And sex was everywhere. I finally understood why people got white-girl wasted and put their hands above their head when they danced and cried “woo!”. It was so much fun!

I got addicted. I went out every weekend for as long as my body could counter the sugar overload of Smirnoff Black with raspberry cordial. Up until then, I’d never danced. I was too embarrassed. It had too many consequences. Too many connotations around being feminine and lustful to men. I didn’t want that so I pretended to be a robot with two left feet so that I could avoid it.

But in that safe space where men shook their hips and brought the dance floor to life and masculine women were treated like sex symbols – I came alive. I was home.