Flush with Becoming: Queerness in Aotearoa

‘There aren’t many like you here,’ my creative writing lecturer and fantastic author, Paula Morris, admitted to me during her office hours. Her words came after I asked for additional feedback on one of my creative nonfiction (CNF) pieces. Frustrated with the ‘bicurious’ Kiwi men who saw my transitive identity as ample ground to experiment on, I took to this CNF assignment to interrogate not only their wanton desire, but also my own, patterned attractions. Why do I keep gravitating (toward) this archetype? Where is the line between my own willingness to wax and theirs to wane?

Queerness is inherently relational, attempting to alter whatever is deemed ‘normal’ in popular culture. Thus, I attempted to answer my questions in the one way I — as both a queer writer and an avid hiker — do best: a disillusioned and wandering second-person investigation of this archetype’s behaviour in the bedroom. I’ll spare you the details, but I did include a scene where the male character brutally mansplains the illegible Mulholland Dr. (which I could not recommend more — don’t expect to understand it!).

Paula, notoriously nitpicky to a glorious extent, enjoyed my piece, but told me to push the envelope and sprinkle in some more urgency, which brought about our conversation about gender. While her feedback honed my piece, yes, I began to think more broadly about queerness in Aotearoa New Zealand — where, as she says, there aren’t many like me.

Referring to my journal, I’ve had seven seperate ‘flings’ over my time here: coffee dates, talking stages, dancing at bars. Five of them constellate in the pattern I mention earlier. I serve as some man’s detour from rigid heterosexuality, where he ultimately decides queerness comes with too much baggage, or interrogation, or grief. This is fair. But to reiteratively bring my baggage to these connections — to be swiped away again and again in favour of what’s deemed normal — is exhausting.

Once, I met a guy on a tramp, we’ll call him C, and he woke me up to watch the sunrise with him. Along the beach, we shared secrets; we flirted teasingly; it was romantic. Yet after two or three coffee dates, he said he wanted to have a family someday, a biological one, uninterested in relationships with non-women. That didn’t stop him from liking a shirtless photo of me, or calling me one of the most gorgeous individuals he’s ever seen. In sexual terms, to be diluted only to my queerness while I seek out genuine intimacy violates my boundaries at best, and erases my humanity at worst.

I think of the ‘gay bars’ on K’ Road, where most folks aren’t even queer because the ‘straight’ bars are ‘boring’ nowadays — talk about borrowing culture. I think of the amount of times I’ve explained my they/them pronouns, and how gender is ultimately a performance — hence my repeated allusions to film and other forms of media in my writing. I think of the straight girls who, upon clocking me as queer, start inserting ‘slay’ or ‘queen’ into every other sentence, completely flatlining my personhood into a caricature. I think of the IES Abroad trip to Rarotonga, where Christian and colonial scars still dictate gender roles — where I have to subscribe to a false identity or face discrimination.

While all of this is just as common in the United States, this came as a surprise in Aotearoa New Zealand, commonly cited as among the most progressive Western nations. I am not attempting to talk as a (queer) monolith by any means. To be able to study abroad is a privilege within itself — even more so to articulate my experiences along the way. But you bring your life to the table, wherever you may go: your identities, your grief, your love. It’s that famous Hemingway quote — ‘you can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another’ (The Sun Also Rises).

And frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My queerness, stapled onto everything from my haircut to my fashion choices, also locates the most vital, beautiful connections. For those who refer to me correctly, who don’t need me to explain the ins and outs of queerness — and, as a bare minimum — who treat me like any other person, I am grateful. The majority of my friendships in Aotearoa New Zealand are like this. At the end of the day, I only want to get outside and take in the native bush.

Throughout the semester, I was in cahoots with this other guy — we’ll call him G — who I thought was straight, but a great friend regardless. We met on a desperately muddy tramp and raced ahead to set up camp before dark. At first, we could not have been more different people: his hands-on jobs and passion for woodworking, my interest in the intangible and unspoken through poetry. However, the more we talked over the months, the more we understood how similar we really were. We both loved 70s music, sending loved ones songs and road-tripping to handmade playlists. We both found extroversion a painful necessity to distinguish close connections — something we both value to an idyllic extent. We both adored The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Yet above all, we both kept each other in check: he slowed my racing thoughts down, I cracked open his reservations. On that same muddy tramp, once we lost sight of the triangle trail markers, I began to hallucinate voices in a stream. His steady wisdom buoyed my rumination and kept me propelling until I collapsed at the campsite’s wooden bench, exhausted. We watched the stars poke through the cold, July night, laughing in hysterics. He was a close Kiwi friend — one of the few men I met here who I didn’t feel the need to compromise around.

The last time I saw G was a one-on-one day-walk along one of the most gorgeous tracks in the North Island. Our conversations went subterranean, discussing our patterns and dissatisfactions with past relationships. Afterwards, he texted me how things would be different between us if I was staying here. Now, a day away from my flight home, his words keep me guessing our every interaction: was I blind over the entire course of our friendship?

But G taught me maybe the most valuable lesson abroad: I never have to domesticate my personhood to feel or be wanted. While I may be punished for knowing myself too well with guys like C, feeling grossly tokenised along the way, I can also keep G’s ordinary devotions close to me. He offered to get me ice cream. He rolled down all his car windows to scream Steely Dan choruses with me. He took a scenic route back to my dorm, just to spend another fifteen or so minutes talking together. (See Maggie Rogers’ The Argonauts for more on ordinary devotion!) He, in a word, was my rock.

While I leave Aotearoa New Zealand a bit heartbroken, left questioning what if and what could’ve been, I am also flush with becoming: alchemizing my aliveness again and again, acknowledging the fact that I can be both loved and unyielding. It’s this sort of unchecked baggage I’ll stow away on the plane ride home. Like the ending of my favourite Eileen Myles poem, ‘I squint. I wink. I take the ride;’ past all my shortcomings and frustrations, I drive forward into the miles of gratitude I know I will feel — not only for G, but my nearly five months in this corner of the world.

Queerness in Aotearoa may not be as visible as, say, in the more outgoing United States — but it exists in the quintessential, Kiwi way: introverted, in pockets, and once encountered, unforgettable. Ngā mihi nui!

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As a sort of epilogue to this piece, Paula — alongside her TA, Ruby Porter (her novel Attraction is a must-read!) — encouraged and impassioned my writing so much so that I hope to continue my creative practice beyond the undergraduate level. I highly recommend their course to you, reader, if you plan on applying for this program. While challenging, it is one of the most illuminating courses I’ve taken — not only for my writing, but also my humanity.