Proud To Be Pride

I’ve been proud and very loud for many years now, spending my days telling jokes on stage about what it means to me to be a part of the Pride community. But I didn’t always lead with it out on my sleeve. Once upon a time I was nervous and cautious about who I told, effectively spending years in the closet, even though everyone knew.

It surprises even me that I was nervous to tell people. I was raised by loving, supportive, and open-minded parents and I attended my first Mardi Gras when I was sixteen because as mum put’s it, she had an inkling. I grew up in the theatre, surrounded by artists where no one assumed heterosexual as the default. I realized that I wasn’t straight when I was fifteen. Yet there is a ten-year gap between when I realized it, and when I first said the words out loud, ‘I’m Bisexual.’ I’ve given a lot of thought over the years as to why I was so nervous to tell my world of supportive and open-minded people my truth. It was all internalized bullshit.

I spent years being bullied, changing schools, and feeling like an outsider like there was something wrong with me. And to me, this was just one more thing that made me different. Being a bisexual, I didn’t have to come out. I could hide in plain sight. I could ‘pass’ as they say. So before I came out I had to get comfortable with myself. The Catch-22 of it was that I couldn’t get comfortable with myself until I started coming out. Thus my Pride soundtrack is not just full of anthems, it’s also full of songs that are a part of my journey to being out and proud about it.

Now I didn’t do the whole coming-out thing properly. I didn’t just declare it and be done with it, think less fireworks and more a slow burn. Coming out to my mum was relatively easy because she asked me point-blank. ‘Are you?’ And despite the lack of context or any lead-up, I knew exactly what she was talking about. She asked. I answered. She told dad. Problem solved. And through the family grapevine, everyone’s suspicions were confirmed in a matter of a few weeks or so I thought. There were two exceptions, one being my grandma.

Coming out to Grandma was triggered by the marriage equality vote in Australia. She needed help filling out her form and she asked me to tick ‘No’ and I froze. And then I rambled for about five minutes while I explained what a bisexual was and that I was one. She in turn explained that she was fine with that but she was taught that marriage was between a man and a woman. She hoped that everyone could marry whomever they loved. She just wanted it to be a different word because it was a bit too much for her.

Now I know that doesn’t sound like the massive win it was in my mind. But for her, that level of acceptance was huge. She’d grown up in a small country town in the nineteen twenties and thirties, when being gay was an actual crime, one that people often dispensed their own justice for and treated as a mental illness if you were lucky. And nowadays when I visit her she asks me if I am dating a boy or a girl like it’s no big deal. And that day we sat and her kitchen table and first talked about it, ‘Same Love’ by Macklemore was playing on the radio, a bit heavy-handed by the universe in my opinion, but it was playing a lot at the time so maybe it was just a coincidence. So that is my first song for my Pride Playlist.

MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS - SAME LOVE feat. MARY LAMBERT

My second has to do with my sister. Remember how I trusted the family grapevine to tell everyone… well that was a mistake. We were leaving Hannah Gadsby’s Show ‘Nanette’ at the Sydney Opera House. Not the big one upstairs that was filmed for Netflix; we had tickets to the tiny one downstairs in the playhouse, front row center. My sister had got me the tickets because she knew what a huge fan I was of her humor. (I may have tried to follow her in an art gallery once.) And at the end of the show as we were walking out my sister turned to me and said ‘Wow, I guess we could never really understand what gay people go through?’ And I was like. ‘Well bisexuals aren’t exactly the same but I think I have some idea.’

And that was how I came out to my sister. Turns out the family grapevine never quite reached her. Since I always kept my love life really private and I wasn’t yet talking about being bisexual on stage, she had no idea. So enters the next song on my playlist, ‘A Better Son/ Daughter’ by Rilo Kiley. This is the song that played at the end of Hannah’s first Netflix special and every time I hear it, it reminds me that when you’re not living your life out loud you’re not giving people the chance to know you. Which is a huge part of the reason I’m now so vocal.

RILO KILEY- A BETTER SON/ DAUGHTER

I still remember the first time I did a joke about being bisexual on stage. Despite the fact that I had alluded to it before and the people that knew me in the audience were well aware, I was so nervous and my palms were so sweaty I almost dropped the microphone. And yet at the end of the night as everyone was filling out I had a woman stop and say ‘Thanks for the bi-visibility.’ While her friend nodded and said, ‘I’d never thought about any of it that way before.’ Sure the uproarious laughter I got during the show was technically my accolade but their softly spoken words of support were more meaningful to me.

At that moment I realized that I was in fact the person in my community I had wished for when I was young. Someone who was confident, vocal, and proud of who they were. And it made me realize that it was time I stopped worrying about what strangers thought about my sexuality. If I was going to be a public figure, then I wanted to be the kind that had the gumption to say ‘This is who I am! You can be supportive or you can keep your mouth shut.’ Not just for myself but also for everyone who was ever like me, feeling like the pressure of being liked was more important than fully embracing myself.

And so arrives the next song in my playlist ‘Under Pressure’ by Queen featuring David Bowie. Which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Not only is it the collaboration of two ultimate icons but the words hit me harder each time. To me, this is a song about feeling the pressure of society to be a certain way and how painful it can be to play along. And that if you ‘Sat on the fence, but it don’t work’ then the answer is love. Love is what inspires me to live my life out loud even when I’m nervous or uncomfortable because I am in a position of privilege to have the ears of those in the wider community.

QUEEN- UNDER PRESSURE feat. DAVID BOWIE

Despite the fact that I’ve been proudly telling my story on stage for a little over four years now, I do still get nervous. I still sometimes get bad reactions to what I say. I still get the inevitable ‘Why can’t you pick a side?’ But in those moments I try to remember that anything that is said to me is just a reflection of where those people are up to and nothing to do with who I am as a person. And that their words only hurt if I believe them and take them on board. So my next song is ‘Brave’ by Sara Bareilles. I love this song and its message. The song talks about the importance of speaking up, and not letting what other people say stop you from being brave and speaking your truth.

SARA BAREILLES- BRAVE

There is one last song I want to tell you about, although there are tons more in the playlist. And that song is ‘When I Find Love Again’ by James Blunt. And this song I dedicate in my mind, every time I hear it, to the first girl I ever really liked. And I did like her. So much. But I wasn’t ‘out’ yet and I was still wrestling with myself and my own issues too much to be proud of the fact that this beautiful, smart, funny, and ‘evil’ girl liked me. I can’t say that I regret it, because I know that it was a step on my journey to being who I am now. I had to still be hiding then so that I could learn in time how important it was to me to be out and proud. But I do regret that I never got the chance to be with her.

JAMES BLUNT- WHEN I FIND LOVE AGAIN

So those are five of my songs. There is so much more I could tell you about the journey to being a proud member of the Pride community. There are a lot more songs in my playlist. But these are the ones that stand out in my mind as pinnacle moments. These were the moments I learned more acceptance of myself and who I am. And I hope a little bit of my story might inspire you to Proud to be Pride.

My Five Songs

1. Same Love- Macklemore

2. Better Son/ Daughter- Rilo Kiley

3. Under Pressure- Queen, David Bowie

4. Brave- Sara Bareilles

5. When I Find Love Again- James Blunt

My Full Playlist