GSCENE 33
A VERY QUEER COUPLE
was dancing to Divine and Culture Club in the clubs, I was at the Mean Fiddler dressing as Boy George.
Maria Rosamojo recounts a relationship between two people who have been transcending boundaries for most of their lives
Carl came out as a lesbian at 16 before he ever came out as trans some 12 years later. Meanwhile I had a very short-lived, boozefilled affair aged 17 with a drag queen trans woman called Annie Rexia. We got married at Heaven then ‘divorced’ the next day. After that I dated pretty, long-haired guys on the rock and goth scene who wore make-up before I came out as gay in my mid-20s.
odd that, as a girl, I was being called the ‘P’ word by other girls for doing ballet.
) I first met my partner Carl more than 15
years ago at Transfabulous, a queer night in Bethnal Green. He had cheeky, sparkling blue eyes, a sunshine smile and was unintentionally hilarious. Carl is trans but I see him first as the kind, funny person who happens to be the man I fell in love with. Like Carl, I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, him in Swansea and me in Harlesden. We have many similarities despite our different backgrounds. We both share horrors of having to go to school. Carl missed a lot of school because of anorexia, anxiety and his refusal to wear skirts. I was also anorexic and missed a lot of school because of meningitis, asthma, and being bullied for being mixed-race. I knew there was something queer about me when I was little. I painted my Airfix plane models with glitter stars, wore my mother’s bra after stuffing water balloons inside the cups, and fixated on the beauty of John Hurt in the film The Naked Civil Servant.
“I was a mixed-race cis queer girl who was weirdly worried about looking too camp. It was also odd that, as a girl, I was being called the ‘P’ word by other girls for doing ballet” Meanwhile, in Wales, Carl was a shy boy in a girl’s body. He would spend his truant days at his nan’s entertaining her by ‘dragging up’ as her lady friends and mimicking them while parading around in assorted hats, handbags and scarfs. I was also painfully shy, so much so my parents signed me up for ballet classes in the hope they would give me confidence. But by the time I was 10 I gave up. I was already suffering racism for not being properly white or properly black. I didn’t need more attention. My fears at the time would have been understandable if I’d been a boy. But I wasn’t. I was a cis girl. Looking back, I was a mixed-race cis queer girl who was weirdly worried about looking too camp. It was also
Clearly, my difference was visible to them as mixed-race, but now they also seemed to subconsciously suspect differences between mine and their gender formations and burgeoning sexualities. The truth is, I actually did feel like a sensitive boy who liked girly things instead of it being a natural by-product of being a cis girl. It wasn’t my fault I had an over-protective Spanish mother who made me wear American tan tights to school under my white knee-high socks, or that my psychiatric social worker father had a brief identity crisis after coming over from Barbados during Windrush, and insisted we were middle-class even though we lived in a run-down flat in one of the roughest and most notorious crime hotspots in London. Around the time my queerness revealed itself, I was obsessed with imitating my beautiful, black, gay neighbour Earl’s wiggle, strut and bent wrist. He would defiantly strut down Harlesden High Street in tight red leather jeans and kitten heels, earrings in both ears, with his head shaven. This was particularly rare in 1970s Harlesden when every other black man had an afro. Then my belly flipped at the sight of an older tomboy who lived on my street. Despite my intense shyness, she managed to initiate a close friendship with me. My mother became increasingly concerned, especially after I asked her what a lesbian was. I could tell by my mother’s reddened face that the word ‘lesbian’ must be worse than prostitute and almost as bad as the F word. I remember calculating in my childlike head that if a prostitute was a bad woman, and the F word was an unutterable obscenity, then lesbian must be… the beautiful temptation of a badass woman! To be a badass woman and walk like Earl was my new goal in life. But in Harlesden, I wasn’t as brave as Earl so had to do it all the inside. As my teens beckoned, I discovered Siouxsie & The Banshees. Our love of goth and alternative cultures existed in parallel worlds. Back in Swansea, Carl had discovered them too, and was gloriously being thrown out of their tour van with his best friend Terry. While Carl and his friends were going to goth and gay bars in Swansea, my best friend Louise and I were heading out with her gay brother Diarmuid, dressed in our convent school uniforms at 14, to the Mud Club, Heaven, Kit Kat Klub and Taboo. When Carl
While Carl was dating women on the gay, then trans scene, I identified as queer femme and mostly dated butch women, and some andro, femmes and transmen. When Carl had been transitioning, I was a blossoming queer burlesque storyteller and performer as Dyke Marilyn, the bastard child of Monroe and Hendrix. It was during one of these performances where our worlds spectacularly collided.
“I was obsessed with imitating my beautiful, black, gay neighbour Earl’s wiggle, strut and bent wrist. He would defiantly strut down Harlesden High Street in tight red leather jeans and kitten heels” Today we feel especially lucky to have found each other. It’s a rare blessing to recognise one another’s queerness as an innate entity. I identify as a queer woman and Carl is a queer, camp man. Relationships have always been difficult for me as I have mental health and chronic physical disabilities. Carl also suffers from anxiety, but our relationship works because we have similar boundary requirements. We recognise our individual needs around personal space and recuperation, while still managing to support each other. It also helps that we don’t live together, although we have been cohabiting in lockdown. Twelve weeks and counting.
MORE INFO ) Maria Rosamojo is a multimedia artist,
writer and musician currently studying an MA by Project in Art & Design at The Cass, London Metropolitan University, where she is completing a hauntology of her own queer mixed-race identity and mental health through film, memoir and performance. ) Carl Mogg works as a drop-in facilitator at
The Clare Project, a trans support centre in Brighton. They both share a naughty terrier called Hendrix.
