LIVING WITH A TRANSSEXUAL WIFE

Well we're not actually married yet, but it's on the cards. After three years and four months, it's no longer a case of "maybe" but "when".

I remember us walking out of Westside Private Hospital after her sex reassignment surgery and wondering what lay ahead for us. How long would she take to heal; how would our makeshift sitz bath work; how would the operation change her; how would it change me, and more importantly how would it change us?

Well I can report that everything is going fine, and to the surprise of some, we are still as in love as ever.

Twenty-two years ago, after a TM group meditation, a group of us went to Sydney's best ever macrobiotic restaurant, The Source, at Bronte Beach. This was where I met this tall god, and there was an initial attraction, a good mix of chemistry, so we became friends. The problem was me being queer, and him hetero, we soon went on our own different paths.
In 2002, after two marriages, Paula was born and decided to look me up. I was still single and queer (though labels aren't my thing, I guess I was sometimes bisexual during those twenty-two years). Well the attraction was still there, and certainly the friendship took off from where we had left off. And the rest is history.

I guess you want an explanation of how a queer guy can live with a transsexual woman, and even contemplate marrying her. Surely, you say, that's a recipe for failure - is it not? Actually no, it's not. When you start with friendship, add chemistry, attraction, respect, maturity, life experience, and mix with a good sense of humour, heaps of TLC, and discover that you're best friends on top of everything else: Voila!

We had the support of friends, relatives, gay and lesbian friends, transsexual friends, straight friends. And not a few fans from our very public stint on Channel Nine TV and the photographic gallery exhibition Intimate Encounters.

Now you're still puzzled.

Are you still gay, or have you been somehow converted?

Silly question! A gay guy is queer for life. His sensibility is gay. He is a great cook. I still enjoy gay movies, gay novels, gay friends, but then so do bi-guys, and not a few straight guys.

Queer guys make the best lovers, because we are totally opened to our feminine side, and we always aim to please. Paula has never tried to "convert" me, she likes me too much as I am.

I still watch "Queer as Folk" religiously. Who would have thought that Brian would decide to marry Scott?

My lifestyle has changed drastically a bit like Brian's. No more serial monogamous short-term tragic love affairs. No more having to be out on Saturday nights. Now I'm content to stay at home with Paula. Change is what life is all about. If you don't change, you die. I've given up my "cheap thrills", but I have gained so much. And I've finally learnt about and embraced "commitment".

I know gay guys who are real couples, and I used to envy them, but it never worked for me. Now I have invented a different (for me) type of couple. A man and a woman. The man has a disability and is queer. The woman is transsexual and straight.

It's perfect!

THE FREE WORLD AND MORAL AUTHORITY

Harold Pinter gives Wilfred Owen Award Speech - 18 th March 2005

This is a true honour. Wilfred Owen was a great poet. He articulated the tragedy, the horror and indeed the pity – of war – in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more pitiless.

But the “free world” we are told (as embodied in the United States and Great Britain) is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches 100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi dead. As General Tommy Franks (US Central Command) memorably said: “We don't do body counts”.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East”. But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well President Bush himself answered this question only the other day when he said “We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation”.

I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.

What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?

I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.

Harold Pinter

EXECUTION AND FIRST WORLD MORALS

For decades, Australia has outlawed capital punishment. This is right and proper, and we share this outlook with other enlightened countries. The US is one notable exception, and we recall that President Clinton had to conduct an execution, on his political path to becoming a President.
“Conduct an execution” is a euphemision for state sanctioned murder.
In Australia recently we have again revisited this can of worms. We have witnessed our (much hated) Prime Minister shed crocodile tears over the grief of Van Nguyen’s mother. We stood by and saw his inept attempt at seeking clemency from the Singaporean authorities. He changed his tack when he read the Neilson polls that showed 47% of Australians supported the murder of one of our citizens. “The message “ he said, “is stay away from drugs”. That was so deep, such an insight; it just made it clear why we hate our PM so much.

Singapore is a tin-pot dictatorship. Gatherings of more than two people are not allowed. They have an average of one hanging a fortnight. The population is kept ignorant and downtrodden. It is a clean antiseptic environment, brisling with expensive armaments. The type of island state that Howard only dreams of controlling.
Typically, Howard has blurred the relevant issues, and while feigning opposition to the death penalty, mouths the platitude that Australia has no right to tell another sovereign country how to conduct itself and how to apply their laws. This is not an issue. The issue is that Howard and his cronies have a duty of care to ensure that none of out citizens is subjected to cruel or unusual treatment, in this case State authorised murder.
If Howard’s son had been tried for a similar crime in Singapore, or any other totalitarian regime, he would be flown back to Australia the same day. A human life is a human life, except when it has blue blood. Then it’s more valuable. The German government had no trouble extricating one of its citizens from Singapore for a similar crime. It also demanded and got its citizens out of the Guantanamo Bay hellhole, as did the French and the English. Why not David Hicks? Howard doesn’t like him. He has already (illegally) implied that he is guilty. And his mate George Bush might rouse on him if he tried that.
Howard is a paper tiger. Asian countries know that, and he knows it too. Trying to convert our Asian neighbours to value human life, to follow the UN imperatives is beyond him. They laugh at him and wonder how such a coward ever got to hoodwink the Australians into voting him into government. Well we wonder that too. Often.
The issue is not so much about capital punishment, but about our right to extradite our citizens and deal with them as we see fit. We owe them that, and nothing less.
The law council is annoyed at Howard for not doing enough to save Van Nguyen. Howard would just rather watch cricket, and wait until all the fuss blows over.
It won’t blow over so easily. The Bali Nine are next to face a brutal regime. We are watching to see how our Government squirms out of this one. Also there is that guy in Kuwait. Yeah that’s the country with a marvellous Utzon designed parliament house. Trouble is they haven’t got round to using it yet. Democracy is so much trouble in places like that. And why do you need democracy when you have a US base on your home soil.
Howard will say it’s not in our region, not our concern. One day Teflon Howard might realise that...no it’s not Teflon…it’s shit.