Returning Home

Copenhagen is a beautiful city, a calm city. It almost has the ere of how movies seemed to think the future would be in the 70s, with slow moving monorails surrounded by grassy expanses. South East London is not calm, everyone is almost screaming at you trying to grab some kind of duality of both being validated and undisturbed…

The other week I went to watch a movie for a queer film festival in Copenhagen, afterwards I went out for a drink with the other attendees – I didn’t really know anyone and my mind was full of the stress of wanting to meet new people. I had hoped attending this film festival had meant I could ‘find my people’ so to speak.

I don’t think my behavior that night was very congruent to making friends, however one Danish boy did explain to me that Danish people are never direct in how they talk to people – they don’t ask about emotion, they don’t want to talk like that. I’d like to think that the way I am when I’m drunk is perfectly nice and acceptable, and that other people are the problem but the truth is that I don’t think I take other people’s feelings into account nearly as much as I should, and that maybe this isn’t only a problem when I’m drunk… Mix this with the stress of wanting to make new friends, to find new people, and I don’t remember much of that night I enjoyed or was proud of even near the beginning.

Anyway, I left the first bar to go to another by myself – I don’t remember much about what happened there so we might as well skip this section of the story and move to the actually interesting part. Out on the street when I was walking home I was stopped by the police, I remember having the strong impression that they were being homophobic to me and I told them that if they wanted to behave this way they’d have to arrest me. This was when they dived at me. We had a scuffle which essentially was them attacking me trying to get me to submit and just let them do whatever, whilst I screamed at them “arrest me, arrest me, arrest me”, which they quite clearly didn’t want to do. Eventually after it became clear I wasn’t going to give in they did arrest me and took me to the police station, where they introduced me to a man in a suit who gave me a piece of paper and told me I had to read it. I don’t really remember what was on the piece of paper so I can’t say for certain that I was right in what I was thinking at that moment, but I deemed it too homophobic to read and told the man ‘I’d rather die’. They then forced me to get naked and remove all my piercings. This is the last thing I remember before waking up in a holding cell wrapped in a blanket…

I want to believe that I was too drunk and just got confused, and a strong part of me doubts that story I woke up telling myself – however a man pointed out to me in a bar, that if it was that I got too drunk they’d have given me an arrest report because they’re supposed to do that with everyone they take in… So, why didn’t they? What didn’t they want me to have record of…?

Anyway, the next day there was a Halloween party in my accommodation and I decided to go in an a dress, I told two of my Australian friends about what had happened to me the night before and then went to a club with them and their flatmates etc… What was weird about this night was that for the first time I can remember clearly I felt the need for those around me, I didn’t feel like if I wanted I could just fuck off and go home, I didn’t feel like behaving selfishly and I knew that I was there with them. I by and large was the most silent I’ve ever been in a group, and I wasn’t scared in the way I usually am…

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think potentially I’ve spent my entire life terrified of everyone that I’ve ever spent time with – terrified of the power we have over eachother, the fear of literally needing them (to get home, to feel happy, to go out and do things) and the burden of responsibility we can place on eachother. But no matter what I’ve done to assert my independence, to be my own or to care for my needs above all else, this didn’t stop the worst happening to me… This didn’t stop me being attacked and arrested for being queer, and moreoever if I had been in a group this likely wouldn’t have happened.

I thought this realization, this circumstance had changed something in me. That I was moving to becoming happier and more comfortable with needing others, that I was going to be nicer, quieter and more compassionate – but after going out for my birthday in London and seeing myself reenact the same patterns I always have, I don’t know how true that is – perhaps whoever I am outside of London is just that, the person I am outside of London, and that returning forces me to think, feel and behave exactly how I would have always behaved.