Bodies in Motion

Guest writer Moirra reflects on queer club culture, authenticity, and sweat.

Picture this for a moment:

You are sixteen. Your peers are performing a Cirque du Soleil act on Snapchat at a school dance, dressed up and down, The Weeknd and Miley Cyrus - the soundtrack to their late teenage joy. 

You are instead dancing to Pansy Division in the safety of your bedroom; shirt off and binder on, a strap-on harness you spent too many months saving up for buckled securely over your boxers. On your walls, your icons watch on – a faded picture of Leslie Feinberg printed from the library, an NGV postcard featuring a Frida Kahlo self-portrait next to a grinning Condoman and, hidden behind a student’s study copy of the periodic table so unwanted eyes won’t see, a glossy magazine cover plastered with Tom of Finland’s image.

Growing up, my country town didn't have enough cuhnt to it; it had no clubs and even less queer culture. Not even a leathered, straight motorbike daddy or carabiner-swinging butch for fourteen-year-old me to fawn over. No, my town was all badly-paired Ghanda clothes and Kmart jeggings. Masc meant masculine and masculine meant violence. 

You weren't supposed to be a queer.

Pronounced with a hard 'k' sound, forced through disgusted pursed lips or bared, clenched teeth; a word enshrined with so much contempt it ensured its very connotation would never be affirming or even neutral. Yet the very nature of my body, the way it moved, how it looked, was outrageous enough. In primary school, before my mother took me out to be homeschooled, I was a dyke for my disinterest in the feminine and a he-she for the amount of body hair I refused to shave. I jointly became a faggot and tranny in Years 11 and 12 for the gender transition I never had a chance at hiding. 

My queerness was never deliberately or consciously performed nor embodied.

The visual aesthetics and flagging of queerness were not afforded to me until I moved to Naarm in March 2022. I knew of them; I had certainly explored my alarmingly voracious sexuality by thinking about them late at night – but it wasn’t until I started going to queer club nights months later that I was given space to explore it.

The queer club scene would be where I experimented with myself – awkwardly imitating the bejewelled and leathered outfits, bright colours or seductive darks – striking makeup designed to make you stop and stare.

It’s a little difficult to articulate what exactly is queer fashion in motion and how I fit within it. A friend once described it as “everything is worn like high fashion, irrespective of whether it comes from a designer label”. I think, ultimately, it’s about deliberateness. The considered moulding or breaking of conventions, the play on gendered rules or conformity, is all a part of it.

Choosing to wear one earring instead of two, or poking enough piercings into your face to set off a security metal detector. Cargo shorts or sweats become irresistibly attractive on butches, masculinity tweaked for a particular crowd. The ceaseless blend between feminine and masculine. Doc Martens, fishnets, carabiners, cocked wrists. And everyone knows about the gay mullet - styled to be just tasteful enough to sever itself from its bogan association. 

Granted, you might take my word with a grain of salt, considering I can count the number of club nights I’ve been to on one hand. Even still, they leave their impression on me for days afterwards – I replay them hazily in my head over and over again like a favourite record. The pre-club prep of choosing which hideous double-denim number I’m going to wear and waiting for the femmes to finish getting ready - which of course, will take two hours minimum even as I’m assured it’s just a low-key look for the evening. 

And then we get in, music already pulsing through my body like your favourite vibrator setting. Each time I am surprised by the immediate temperature change; sweat and heat cloying to skin and pressing into your space. People packed in densely like tussock grass, swaying to the beat of whichever song is currently blasting through speakers, like anemone tentacles flowing with the current. Even when I am not close to another person, it feels as though the faint imprint of their body still clings to me. I like it – in a room filled with the anonymity of strangers, I am intimately cradled in their warmth and their energy. It’s electrifying. It feels safe. 

Most of the queer club spaces I’ve been to have predominantly been filled with queers of colour, celebrating both ourselves and our communities. This may be why I’ve never really had a bad club night experience, something my friends with more veteran experience can’t say for themselves. The vibes are different when it's queer people of colour running and dominating events, and largely, these queer club spaces are places for us to be uplifted and celebrated. 

Amongst friends, and a wider group of queers of colour I am in community with, I know that outside of maybe being sized up for a “scrape dere?”, no one is watching me, no one clocking my high voice or slack wrists. If I dance like shit, no one particularly cares. If I’m annoyed by Miss Thing trying to bust his way into my pants, there’s at least one femme nearby more than ready to use her acrylics as knives. I can laugh loudly and it'll be echoed by the people around me. I can be Blak and queer and fearless.

Once upon a time, I danced half-nude in my bedroom; sometimes crying, always lonely. Now, I sway my hips arrhythmically to a thrumming beat amongst other sweaty bodies in various stages of dress and undress. In a transsexual body that I am intensely conscious and aware of, I become both dissociated and connected. The queer club provides an opportunity to feel in tune with my body and its sensations without self-consciousness, and simultaneously the experience of feeling beyond myself. This is particularly impressive, seeing as I’m usually unbearably sober at most events, and have no liquid courage to loosen up my usually anxiety-ridden attitude.

Often in the heat of it all, I slip away to the bathroom, just briefly. I glance at my reflection as I wash my hands and think about that younger self; clumsily twisting to a poorly-recorded punk beat alone in xer bedroom, dreaming about one day moving around other queer, weird bodies.

Back in the present, I return to the club floor, laughing. I am able to desire and be desired for my queer body – with its denim-ed fashion and singular, dangling earring. I am entangled in my friends' limbs and our collective, queer joy. My feet hurt from dancing.

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Written by moirra.

You can find their work and follow them on Instagram here.

This essay was commissioned by ruhmantic as a part of the March 17th Mothprocess: Queer Qulture event. The title of this article takes some inspiration from Pansy Division’s ‘Surrender Your Clothing’.

Edited by Naavikaran and Levi Kohler.