Stories about: relationships
I felt unbridled joy at the thought of it being reduced to smouldering ashes, along with all the heteropatriarchal constraints it had come to represent.
Content warning: This piece describes intimate partner violence. Let me tell you when I realised you were hurting me. It was in our old house, the one filled with the type of furniture four nineteen-year-old students can afford. I sat on the two-seater lounge with my friend Iris across from me on the recliner. “How …
Monday night – hardly prime real estate for a date, but it was December, and so the days were bleeding into each other, weeknights taking on that languorous pace usually reserved for weekends. We sipped our beers, ran through the standard topics. I didn’t particularly like the way he put his hand on my thigh …
I remember my very first time. As I walked up to the house my mouth was dry. I knocked on the door, nervously clutching my character sheet and bag of dice. I was 27, going through a painful and messy divorce, and about to live out a long-held dream: I was going to play Dungeons …
I want to show her one poem which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate, and wake. —Adrienne Rich, from the second of Twenty-One Love Poems Of all my loves, my love for women is my most complicated. You could describe this love using phrases from psychiatry text books—hypervigilance; belief that …
It was a modern beginning. We matched on Tinder then met at a local bar where we drank enough gin to sink a ship. Summer was heating up and I was ready for anything, having finally escaped a difficult marriage. Plus, the brazen way he rested his hand on my leg beneath the table made …
In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson reflects that ‘whenever anyone asked me why I wanted to have a baby, I had no answer. But the muteness of the desire stood in inverse proportion to its size.’ Wanting to be a mother with my partner, Claire, felt like a need. Yet, like Maggie Nelson, I couldn’t give …
I’m concealing a crop underneath my clothing. It peeks out of my skirt as I move into the car, pressing painfully into the flesh of my thigh. “Where are you folks off to tonight?” “Just a club,” we both mutter, looking anywhere but at each other. The driver nods and says no more. He doesn’t …
‘Together’ is an image essay from photographer Luke Austin, which originally appeared in Archer Magazine #11, the GAZE issue. Luke spoke to Hailey Moroney about the series. Your imagery and body of work as a whole is inherently inclusive – not only of the gay community but of the LGBTQIA+ community at large. Is this …
The desires to perform for the camera and for a Dom partner are comparable – and complicated. Naked, adorably chubby and covered in white body paint, I turn to the camera and shout, “I think it’s time for a spaghetti shower!” The footage jump-cuts to show my 24-year-old self pouring canned spaghetti over my trembling body while screaming, “Spaghetti shower! Aaah, I’m gonna get so clean!” This continues for …
I didn’t think of myself as homeless when I finally did stop going home. It didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t feel bad. Over New Years my partner and I went camping. Some nights we were so lazy setting up a tent that we slept in the middle of a private farm under just the …
Each time I hear someone’s story of gaslighting, it’s as if they’re describing my own. Sometimes, those painful memories come flooding back.
To celebrate my resignation from my first full-time job after college, I booked a flight from the Philippines to Singapore for a break. I brought one bag with me for a month-long stay. When I landed I realised how reckless my decision was. I had no idea what I was going to do there. I …
Every time that someone thinks that my romantic partner is my friend, I can’t help but wonder whether this has to do with queer femme erasure.
The rumour around the suburban street was that Nan was a hussy; strangely, having two men in your life wasn’t the norm. For me, though, growing up around the three of them, I knew nothing different. Visiting my grandparents for dinner consisted of Nana, Zaida (the Yiddish word for grandfather) and Leon. I had a wonderful …
I found out the results of the marriage equality postal survey while absent-mindedly scrolling on my phone in an IKEA food hall. My attempt to block out the ugliness of the marriage equality ‘debate’ had meant that I’d also blocked out when the results were being revealed. When my brain finally processed what I was …
For all the good that comes from communities on the margins, it’s easy to forget that these communities, too, have walls. In the West, comics – the most outsidery of outsider artforms – has not been a particularly welcoming medium for queers. It’s especially thorny because, for much of the 20th century, the mainstream positioned …
It’s been a big year for many in our communities. We’ve seen our first legal same gender marriages across Australia, and, with that, the end of forced divorce (in most states and territories) for transgender people wishing to change the gender on their birth certificate. But with the good comes the bad, and this year …
We all live under patriarchy, and its pull towards entrenched gender roles is strong. When working against this pull, being a ‘good man’ cannot be a fixed point. It’s not an end status that one can attain, and then finally rest.
Creatrix Tiara has produced and performed interdisciplinary work in writing, performance art, digital games and music (to name a few) across Australia and the United States. She recently co-produced and performed in all-disabled primarily-queer cabaret Quippings: Not Normcore! in Midsumma 2018 and was a Dandy Minion and Burlesque Dancer for the Helpmann Award-winning 24 Decades …
I was about 16. My mum and I were at Sam’s house. She’s a friend of my mum’s, and I loved visiting her. Her house was filled with mismatched antiques and eclectic treasures from around the globe; patterned rugs covered the hardwood floors, lush Japanese blankets draped the couches, while the smell of incense made …
During the marriage postal survey, I was drowning in a sea of talk about relationship coupledom and romance. Even in my poly subcultures, I often struggle to relate to the competitive search and play for multiple catches in the little dating pool. Queerness is often imagined as existing through coupledom. When I was first trying …