BLUE BOXERS
By Kath Duncan (10 min max)
Performance piece for Quippings, wed, feb 2nd, hares n hyenas, midsumma 2011
Start with Dirty Three: “The Restless Waves” (5:16)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6byhkpCFvfs&feature=related
Why am I here? I always wanted to go to Woodford folk festival and mingle joyfully with the ferals and the hippies but I didn’t think about 20,000 people in a valley of rain and mud.
We have set up our camp in the disabled zone which is a sea of slop and every step is precarious. Stomping my way through this mess means I watch every step.
As for the festival program on offer, well that’s pretty theoretical for me. The mud has meant that exploring the site is impossible for me. I cant even get to the loo cos theres a 5meter moat – not deep, wide – between me and the loo. My assistant and friend Jally builds me 2 bridges by the third day..
So I catch the special disabled buggy up to the main gates and through them, but everywhere I go is full of mud raddled straight teens, older folk and bogans, very well dressed in amazing wet weather designs but even with their all their color and movement all they are are obstacles in my dreary course, and I hate them all.
I need to get away and be by myself somewhere but everywhere slides away from me. As for my friends, it seems to be some green-linin thinking n prayin – and no im not talking bout pot – point of pride not to give in to the stinking awful conditions but to carry on wading and sliming, to see one more band, do one more workshop, enjoying while drowning. My campmates are so dirty and happy
Not me. Im on a fun strike. I am keeping to my camp site, smoking too much pot and watching in high growly mood as everyone else has a great if sloppy time.
I look at people and hide from them at the same time.
Fuck it, if I was in Melbourne I would be pursuing my limp romances with Romaine or Julie or Rita or Michelle… going out, hanging out, maybe… maybe… maybe…
Here I cant see anyone special for the crowds.
My favorite place…every day I sneak outa camp and using my walker, scrape it thru the 5 metre moat that leads to the main road – glassy clay with gravel – and make it to my haven, the disabled toilet. How I adore a disabled toilet. The space, the mirror – usually but not here – the acres of toilet paper for us freaks, the shower stall and toilet, the not too disgusting drainage, the rails, and most of all, the powerpoint.
There is no individual power source at Woodford. You can pay to get your mobiles or computers charged up 5000 ks up into the site… or you can beg the wet helpers in the 10cm mired in bog Disability Camping Area Tent to suck at their power outlet.
Talking to people, urgh. Asking for stuff bah! Having to be friendly, no way. I try to make myself do all that hopefully all at once every day for oh about an hour. That’s as much as I can take.
Ok, I know I havent made this sound very exciting but it kind of is, with hundreds of performances and workshops per day and an endless stream of good-looking if damp young folk past my tent every day, but I just don’t care.
It doesn’t touch me. Im too haunted by my past year. Im still bereft over my last breakup. I haven’t got over her, I cant move on.
So.
Here it is new year’s eve and Im crying in the disabled toilet. Alone.
I exit my friends and their jolliness as soon as I decently can after the traditional Woodford 3 minute silence with candles at 11:30 moment followed by the interminable midnight screaming and hugging ritual. It is over, I and my walker have got away from it all as fast as I can – which is not very fast – to get to the muddy, fetid disabled loo.
Hello again my old friend.
Just as I close and bolt the door, the clouds open and there is a mad storm going on out there, thundering rain on the corrugated roof, a sound so loud and intense that I figure no one will hear me howl.
Im sitting on the loo, my clothes up round my knees, partly for convenience but mostly to escape the brown red lumpy skid-marks on the floor.
Im wearing the blue boxers.
I found these amazing undies on the first day it stopped raining.
Euphoric. I couldnt resist.
They are extra large and shiny teal blue with stripey blue and white edges. They have:
this pic of a busty ranga pinup ‘Whisper’ showing you her black stockings;
a stage ad for the Midnite Spook Show, guaranteed to scare… Ghosts!;
as well as text: no marks;
tormented and unavailable;
speak to me lover of all you desire.
Well to be straight with you all – as straight as I and you get – Im a lil under the influence. I sit on the dunny, roll myself a scoob, think fuckit, light it and puff.
The thudding of the rain gets louder, I see my own breaths in the tropical air, the air swirls around me like a twister, the winds pick up and Im taking it all in while rubbing the blue boxer fabric.
Right here.
What Im thinking about is hell, I miss her.
My X.
If she’s here right now we will find some crazy way of getting off in this dunnny…. Im looking round and rubbing and stroking the ghost show and seeing the erotic potential in this filthy space and the storm is building
and we dammit lose power but the moon full
and the lightning horrifying –
And there’s a bang at my door.
Shit.
I hope its not the cops. Oh no, don’t tell me some idiot upstanding qlder has called the cops on an innocent tragic crip blowing a joint in the dunny… It sounds like a cop’s knock…
Better front up to it, bluff it up.
‘Ahh, Im a bit busy in here,’ I shout.
The voice comes back.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Aah,’ I say. ‘Look, are you disabled?’
Flash of lightning and an almost instantaneous thunderclap.
And then I hear the voice.
‘I was told to come here and talk to you. To you… Will you let me in?
It’s a strong voice; sounds like a performer.
But is it a man or a woman?
Why is this not creepy? Lets just say its new years day by an hour or so and maybe someone knows me
and maybe maybe maybe
I get up and open the door.
Im looking at this gorgeous person. Im gobsmacked.
Its like I order him/her from God.
I cant work out quite who or what this is
and the power flickers on and off and holding isnt helping.
‘Can I come in?’ She asks quietly, respectfully.
I look around and the rain is still pouring, the lightning is around the valley near and far and I see a few people straggling thru the downpour like always.
‘Uh, ok,’ I say. ‘But Im leaving the door open.’
‘Suit yourself, ‘ he says smugly.
He struts in. There’s something about that gait. Hmmm
‘Ok,’ I say. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Do you recognise me?’ She asks.
Im looking over this nearly 2 metre, strongly built man with tits, a woman with a man’s energies and running thru my broad array of mental data files who’s who.
‘Have we met before?’ I say quizzically, yes, we sort of know each other. There’s something about him.
‘Often,’ she says. Confidently.
I hope he’s not that drunk pilled-up big dyke I refused at a tragic party a while back. Or a psycho facebook stalker.
Dark hair, cut short at back and slides, floppy on the top, enough to pull on and play with.
‘I think I remember…’ I say. ‘Didn’t I ask you if you were a performer at that… at that… maybe maybe maybe…
‘And you wanted me,’ he says. ‘But it wasn’t right…’
‘And now it is…’ I say and this is crazy cos I don’t do strangers, or not strangers like her, like this, not for oh ten years…
‘Now it is,’ she says. The air is buzzing between us. The storm is slowing but the rain pelts down and really we’re shouting to be heard.
‘Have you been crying?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘I miss my X a lot. Especially tonight. We used to squeeze at the stroke of midnight and watch the fireworks go off.’
‘Ah, the X,’ she says. ‘Do I remind you of him?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, you do.’
‘That makes tonight your lucky night,’ she says. ‘Im available. I could wash that X right out of your hair.’
I realise I am staring at this mystery person’s pants. There is something moving quietly in there, something feral, something thick. I feel almost hypnotised.
‘Yesss, I say. I think you could.’
‘Tell me how much you want me,’ he whispers.
Fuck.
I realise I don’t remember what you’re supposed to do, how you speak of, how you touch someone with desire. Why does it feel so complicated?
Torturous. Im stuck for words.
I close the door.
‘Uh, I don’t know if I do want you um…’
‘No wonder you broke up,’ she says bluntly.
‘What!’ Im pissed off
He breathes hard. ‘Lets take a reality check here – its pissing down outside. Im offering myself in whatever way do you want. Have you got anything better to do?’
Well he’s right. I don’t.
‘So, how much do you want me?’
‘Ok, I want you a lot…’
(argument)
Its getting heated and then while Im regrouping my thoughts – theres a lil click and there it is, she has me up against the wall with a flick knife – mmm nice 1 too, clean and polished… Civil war – freaked out and searching for the door and calculating how long it will take to get there… and too stupidly aroused – dammit the fuck! – and I hate myself, getting damp…
Her fierce eyes are inches away…
‘Aaaah, I really really want you…
‘Where?
‘Everywhere please…’
‘Strip’, he says. ‘Entertain me…
(Kath strips off to track Sirena – The Dirty 3 (4:06) while talking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn8eN02nBss
How mad is this and Im in the toilet and the ground is muddy so I gotta leave my dirty boots on but I do it cos what the fuck…. Etc…
Kath – after that well, we had lotsa fun. Use your imaginations. At some point she just made me get down and on the floor and suck her cock and then she turned me around on that dirty toilet seat and she fucked me long and slow and hard and fast and every which way….
And by the time the seat was talking to me and the frogs were rising and the floor was moving and the walls were sweating and the water was slowing and the air was vibrating and I was saying all sortsa crazy shit like,
you’re beautiful
I’ll never forget you
you’re the love of my life
I forgive you
Roll in Dirty Three – Sea Above, Sky Below (6:10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6mkjocat84&feature=related
(and hold in under dialogues till the end)
I go off like a nuclear explosion of the combined energy around me…
And the last thing I feel is his lips on my arse and she kisses me and says, happy new year….
And a cool breeze.
It takes me a minute to get myself together….
And I go to the open door and its dawn and there are hundreds of stragglers chasing the sun and I see him and her among them…
And then I leave and except the bit that Ive told you which I haven’t told anyone…..
believe me I couldn’t wait to leave, its the best part of Woodford, leaving.
But then the car Im running away in explodes into flames in northern nsw. It really does.
While my driver friend Heidi is running for help, Im hauling everything out of the car. Others join me. We save everything but my leather hat and Heidis phone. In 15 mins the car is ablaze and a right off.
Guess what Im wearing? The blue boxers…
Im wearing them now.
With the magic of the blue boxers, the magic of our combined queerness, plus the combined diversities in the room, let us wish each other everything we desire in 2011.
Thankyou….
superbushpig 
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