QUEER as FUCK

I was going to talk about how T-shirts with this slogan were all the rage in the seventies. A quick perusal of Google shows they are still around, available on the net. Of course I never wore such a t-shirt, although the idea appealed to me. Just like I never camped on Premier Neville Wran's front yard at his Vaucluse home, though the idea of that also had appeal.
The t-shirt was night time 'dress-up' accessory. Wearing it in the daytime you risked the ire of our upstanding police force. And of course it was upstanding in the seventies, wasn't it?
Well now we are on the other end of our youngster's plea: "Don't try and dig what we all say." Well we said it first, not only that, we put it into legislation. It's true - gay lawyers are the best lawyers around. Don Dunston raised eyebrows when he entered Parliament in red short shorts. He didn't need the t-shirt. Nor does Bob Brown. He likes talking about his sexuality, to anyone willing to listen. And we know he has god on his side.

We haven't yet fffaded away, but it's of some dismay, that after all those years of nurturing and reclaiming our queerness, we have found the 'gay' word has been misappropriated by todays youth, to mean inadequate, or sub-standard. What message does that give about today's gay society, and the 15% of children who are realising that they are gay? Or should I say 'queer'?
I guess we have no right to change language use. We have to accept change. 'Our sons and our daughters are beyond our command.' Yeah, right. How truly sick.

Browsing through Google also brought up sites on Queer as Folk. This was a gay series that finally got it right, though the name change from fuck to folk was inevitable. I don't know if there will be a follow up series, but somehow I don't think it would work. The first series was complete, it tackled a lot of key issues, and stopped just short of showing real sex. Our TV is not ready for that yet, but it will happen eventually. Maybe when watching TV will be thought of as 'cute'.
Whenever it happens, I hope they don't include gay porn. Nothing is more boring than most gay porn. Some people dismissed Shortbus as a porn movie. It was anything but that, because it was real. This a major difference from homoerotic flicks, like those of Fassbinder, which rely on our imagination. Shortbus left nothing for our imagination. It was made for a gay community, who've been there, done that. Straight people maybe didn't get it, it was too far from their reality. Well...it wasn't really made for non-queer people
I thought it was truly sick. (Hey, don't you just dig this cool lingo).

More on Shortbus, here's how David reviewed it on At the Movies (ABC TV)

DAVID: Well, I was quite taken aback by this film.

I mean, I liked HEDWIG and the ANGRY INCH quite a lot, but not as much as this. This was, above all so much fun, this film.

It is, as you say, sexually quite explicit, but, at the same time, the characters in it, I mean, they go through a lot of ups and downs in their personal relationships obviously, and they are looking, searching for things. But the general feeling is of such a lack of inhibition.

MARGARET: And exuberance.

DAVID: And exuberance. Yes.

MARGARET: Yes, there is.

DAVID: Yes, and it's really lovely. I was interested to discover the way that it was - there was workshops in the Mike Lee tradition and so on in the way the casting - people were only cast together if they really sort of liked one another.

MARGARET: Didn't you find it, sort of like, overworked the Sofia character trying to find an orgasm?

DAVID: No, I thought she was an interesting character, actually.

MARGARET: I thought she was good, too, but I just sort of felt at a certain stage, "Enough, already".

DAVID: Maybe but I found it pretty enjoyable. But, certainly, it's confronting at times.

MARGARET: He says that there are seven orgasms, real orgasms, and one fake one, and you've got to spot which is which.

David gave it 4 stars.