As a kid, I was preoccupied with escapes. Whether this was in the literal or fantastical sense, I was always thinking about how to be anywhere but where I was. This didn’t come from any dangerous urgency – I just had a relentlessly absorbing imagination and tended to be obsessive.
Also, I knew I was a gigantic homosexual, and so would often imagine alternate realities where this was a totally normal and acceptable way to be and feel.
Sometime in early high school, I got my hands on a copy of The Sims. I’d played simulators before and enjoyed them – they let me project a gay fantastica onto a small digital world of my own design. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer level of minutiae I’d be allowed to manage in The Sims, though, so my constantly-pumped-for-anything brain was set alight with absolute pleasure at the prospect of making my Sims, gasp, homosexuals.
I started small – after all, I didn’t have my own computer. It was The Family Computer and so it lived in the den, in full view of everyone’s roving eyeballs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAJjGzkP1cY
My aunt was living with us at the time. She never used the computer but would often peek over my shoulder, asking questions. No matter how banal my activity, this shoulder-perching inquisition always left me in a cold sweat. I felt that somehow a pop-up with all my gay sins would suddenly appear and I wouldn’t be able to clear it off until it was too late, and the horror of my perversion would be on display for all to see.
Anyway, of course that never happened, and I went on my merry way, making gay families in a town I’d innovatively called… Mount Gay.
I quickly got bored of my first couple, two handsome men who were both lawyers and spent a lot of time cooking and fighting and eventually, thanks to my neglect and a restriction of their free will, ceaselessly pissing themselves.
So I made a couple of gay women and was now front row in what I felt was my directorial debut in lesbian porn. I wanted them to woohoo so bad. I felt a bit pervy making them shower more than they needed to, but hey, puberty had me in a death roll – I was powerless.
Then my aunt saw my Sims making out and shat so many bricks we could have built another house.
She immediately screeched at my poor mother, who was minding her own business at the kitchen table, doing a crossword.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DAUGHTER IS DOING?!”
My mother lifted her head and asked what was going on.
Cue my aunt’s insane rambling: “She’s making poofters kiss each other! And lesbians!”
My mother, bless her heart, stared at my aunt long enough to make us think that she hadn’t heard her. Then she said, “OK?”
My aunt: “It’s a game called The Sims!” She grabbed the CD case off the desk and held it threateningly in the air. “SHOULD SHE REALLY BE PLAYING THIS?” Then she turned to me. “Arca, are they having sex in this game? Gay sex? Ew, gross, I don’t want to know… are they having sex?”
“No.” I said, “They were just dancing. Obviously.”
Exasperated with my defiance, she turned to my mother (who’d gone back to her crossword). “Don’t you care about what she’s looking at? What are we going to do about this?”
My mother then sagely offered to take her to the next dyke night. At this, my aunt just about passed out, sputtering out a succession of how dare yous and fucking hells and what do you mean by thats.
A few months later, my aunt introduced us all to her new girlfriend.
This Week
On Friday June 23, head over to The Shift Club on Oxford Street for Hellfire: The United Colours Of Bent. It’s billed as a cavalcade of decadence, debauchery and diversity. Be literal, be lateral, be part of creating a space where all the colours come together – whether it’s shiny black latex and leather or the most fantastic fluorescent fetish fashion creations. More details to be announced.
On Saturday June 24, get down to the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville for Girlthing x Girlie Circuit Festival, bringing a special piece of Barcelona to Sydney. Tunes and entertainment from Elise Tali, Beth Yen, NatNoiz, DJ Sveta, Cunningpants, Andea Darling, Porcelain Alice, Honey Riders and more to be announced. Pre-sale tickets are available now.
Also on Saturday June 24, Max Watt’s is hosting Dragfest 2017. International sensations from the megahit TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race are bringing you the Dragfest Eleganza Tour 2017, now in its second consecutive year. There’ll be meet and greets, chances to get photos with all the queens, and of course, the queens are gonna bring out the claws and the glamour live onstage.
