Salient

Queer Highlights of 2007

By Pachali Brewster | 15 Oct, 2007

National UniQ Conference: Learning interesting things and meeting attractive people by day, and getting shit-faced by night.

Pride Week. Enough said. Pride Week is the week that you go out 7 nights in a row, and have to drag yourself out of bed the next day in order to get to the next event. Luckily there were few events scheduled during the day this year, but that doesn’t mean we hit it any less hard.

The High School Prom: One of the nice things about the Ball is that you can dress as you like (whether it be in a hoody and jeans, a $40 dress from Pagani, or whatever you dredged up from the reject Sallies’ bin), so the mood was really comfortable and upbeat. Someone brought a riding crop, it wasn’t long before everyone was spanking everybody else.

Those awesome films from the Short Shorts night. Some are on YouTube, the others you can find at the Film Archive. I was absolutely blown away by Twilight of the Gods, but also good were Venus Blue, Little Gold Cowboy, Together, and Boy.

The Candlelight Memorial: seeing the queer community all brought together like that, extending across the generations.

Shoes by Kelly Likes Shoes. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry, it’ll change your life. You should watch it; it’s on YouTube.

Anika Moa coming out. It’s true. It was on gaynz.com.

The cream cheese wontons from Our Bar. Ohhh god yeah, so freakin’ delicious.

Biggest Queer Laugh Story: Driving to the National UniQ Conference: The twenty-hour journey there and back in a packed van. On the way there, Paul Brown wore a black wig in the style of a bob, a feather boa, and Aviators, and whistled and hooted at the older, male road workers we drove past. On the way back being torn between wanting to listen to the hour’s worth of tales of deviant acts (sexual and otherwise), and wishing that you were dead because you haven’t slept in three days.

Queer Lowlights of 2007:
Stupid people doing stupid things.
Our Bar closing. There goes another community treasure. Also, no more wontons. Or story-time with Sharon. Sigh. I’m going to miss them both so much.
The whole A-Team and Sam Archer debacle. Haha.
The possibility of losing the Queer Rights Officer (but then the sweet taste of victory when only a handful of people voted in favour of the amendment).
Jay from Shortland St getting murdered by the serial killer. Somehow, the show got a whole lot uglier.

Biggest Queer Sob Story: Thinking that Wellington was a huge place when you first moved here, and happily having sex with many people, but then realising that it’s actually quite tiny, and they all know each other and have joint bank accounts.

By Pachali, Laressa and Emma.