Woman in the Making: Panti's Memoir (22 page)

Many of the most vocal homophobes who argued against the decriminalisation of homosexual sex and
every other advance for gay people since you’ll now find amongst the ranks of those who argue against same-sex marriage, and it’s quite the spectacle. They know they can’t come right out and say what really drives them – an animus towards gay people and our relationships, and a disgust at what they imagine we do in bed – because they know people would roll their eyes and ignore them. So, around the world, the anti-same-sex-marriage crowd are forced to scramble for any other reason they can think of to argue their case. That gay people will destroy the institution of marriage (they won’t, obviously); that gay people will adopt babies as accessories (sigh); that children raised by gay people are at a disadvantage (despite ample evidence to the contrary); that allowing gays to marry will destroy society (it hasn’t and won’t); that marriage has always meant one man and one woman (it hasn’t); that marriage is solely designed for one purpose and one purpose only and that’s children (it wasn’t and isn’t); and many more, including my own favourite, that the word ‘marriage’ is defined in some dictionary or other as meaning a union between a man and a woman and therefore same-sex marriages aren’t marriages, which is a piffling argument against words and dictionaries and not an argument against same-sex marriage.

Apart from religion, the other real driver of homophobia is a disgust at gay sex, gay male sex in particular (lesbians just get caught in the homophobic
crossfire, guilty by association): what they really don’t like is anal sex. Buggery. Sodomy. And they imagine that that’s all gay men do. They feverishly imagine that we spend all our time buggering each other. They obsess on it. In fact, they reduce us to this one sex act whether we do it or not.

We aren’t people, with the same hopes, desires and feelings as everyone else: we are simply walking sex acts. Earlier this year I was invited to take part in the St Pat’s For All parade in Queens, New York. It’s a wonderful grassroots inclusive St Patrick’s Day parade that was started in response to the ban on gay groups taking part in the famous Manhattan St Patrick’s Day Parade. All kinds of Irish-American groups can take part in the Manhattan parade. Irish policemen can take part, Irish firemen, Irish community groups, Irish football players, Irish volleyball players, Irish dancers, Irish book clubs, Irish
anybody
. Except Irish gays.

The parade is organised by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a kind of Catholic Orange Order, and I’ve seen one of its members on television defending the ban. He seemed like a nice ould fella, and he had a nice wife. They seemed happy together. And when I looked at them I saw a life lived together. I imagine that if I asked him about their life together he’d remember when they first met, how nervous he was on their first date. He’d remember the day he asked her to marry him, and how proud he was seeing her walk up the aisle in the dress
she’d fretted over so much. I imagine he’d remember the day they moved into their first apartment and the day they finally bought their own small house. The time she went so far past her due date she threatened to bounce on a trampoline till the baby bounced out and they laughed hard. The time their youngest broke his leg and screamed crying all the way to the hospital, the time she got sick and he couldn’t sleep in the empty bed and went back to the hospital even though he knew they wouldn’t let him see her. He’d remember a life and a relationship full of all the things that make a person a person. And when I looked at them I imagined all those things too. But he doesn’t look at me that way. He doesn’t see gay people that way. As far as he and the organisers of that parade are concerned, gays are nothing more than sex acts, and sex acts have no place in their parade.
²

On 11 January 2014, I appeared on RTÉ’s
The Saturday Night Show
. The producers had approached me and we’d had a couple of meetings in the weeks before Christmas to talk about it. All of the discussion had focused on what kind of performance I would do – a stand-up bit, or a number, or something more theatrical. I suggested doing something similar to the kind of silly-but-fun stuff I do in my regular Pantibar show, where I re-edit scenes from movies and TV and recreate them as nutty lip-syncs. The producer and director were onboard immediately. There
would be a sit-down interview with the host Brendan O’Connor after the performance, too, but everyone, including me, considered that the simple part. After all, it’s a chat show, they interview people every week and I’ve been interviewed many times. What could go wrong?

A few days before the show aired I took the tram out to the studio of a sound engineer and we spent a few hours putting together a soundtrack for the performance, splicing together unrelated lines from various movies and TV shows and snippets from different songs to paint a picture of a woman becoming unhinged. The performance would begin with Panti in a dressing-room set, thinking to herself in voice-over when a phone would ring, interrupting her. She would answer it with a line from a movie, and another phone would ring, then another and another, faster and faster, Panti becoming more unhinged as each phone rang till eventually it reached a deranged crescendo. It was surreal and silly and fun.

As is usual, I did a ‘pre-interview’ on the phone with one of the researchers a few days before the show. It gives the researcher an idea of what kind of questions to prime the host to ask, and gives the interviewee an idea of the kind of questions that are likely to come up. And the kind of questions that were likely to come up were the usual things about how I got started in the drag business, what it’s like being a drag queen, maybe a little about my background, where I’m from. There was some
discussion about growing up gay in Ireland and what it’s like for LGBT people now, but nothing that threw up any flags. All simple been-over-it-many-times-before stuff. Clearly I was intended to be a light segment in a light-entertainment show, and I can do that!

On the day of the show I went out to RTÉ with nothing more serious on my mind than what colour lipstick I’d wear. When I got there I chatted briefly with the researcher and the producer, then put my face on, got into costume and went down to studio to rehearse the performance. On the studio floor I bumped into the show’s host, Brendan O’Connor, and we exchanged pleasantries before I and the crew rehearsed the performance, which was being shot on a small set in front of the live audience. There were a few adjustments to be made as we worked out camera angles and all the prop phones, but after a few run-throughs we were happy and I went back to my dressing room. At that point the researcher popped in and showed me Brendan’s cue cards for the interview, which had on them all the questions he might ask me. There was nothing out of the ordinary so, after glancing through them, I amused myself by posting a silly ‘selfie’ on Twitter (What? All the kids are doing it) while waiting till the audience were in the studio and we were ready to shoot. The performance was being shot ‘as live’ about thirty minutes before the show went out to give me time to get out of makeup and costume because they wanted to do the interview with Rory rather than Panti. (People
don’t always appreciate that Panti is just a version of me. She’s me refracted through another surface, and the lines between us are blurred. Her back-story is my back-story. The gay community understands that because they are so familiar with the kind of drag I do and have no difficulty speaking seriously with Panti.) The taped performance would be played, then Rory would come out to do the interview live.

The performance went smoothly and the primed studio audience responded enthusiastically. Then I took off my makeup, changed into a shirt and jacket, and went to the makeup room to get made up. I always do my own drag makeup because it’s a specialised, special-effects job, and no one knows my face better than I do, but I’m happy to sit in the makeup chair for a light Rory TV face. Then I headed back to the studio and stood side stage with Brendan, chatting idly while we waited for the intro music. Then I waited a bit longer while he did his opening monologue and introduced Panti’s performance. After that he introduced me and I walked into a shit-storm.

Not that I knew it immediately because at that point the shit-storm was only on the horizon and I didn’t see it coming. The interview
seemed
to go fine. Brendan asked me some questions, I answered them, we bantered a little, the audience laughed. Along the way Brendan asked me what it was like growing up gay and coming out when I did, and from there we wandered into a discussion about
how attitudes to gay people have changed in Ireland since. It was in that context that I said that one of the only places where it’s still okay to be ‘horrible and mean’ about gay people is in newspaper columns, at which point Brendan asked me which columnists I meant. In response to that direct question I mentioned
Irish Times
columnists Breda O’Brien and John Waters, then the Iona Institute (a Catholic lobby group whose members include Breda O’Brien) who regularly appear in print and on the airwaves to argue against same-sex marriage.

Brendan said he wouldn’t have considered John Waters to be homophobic – a word I hadn’t actually used – and in response I … well, it’s probably best if you see for yourself exactly what I said:

Rory O’Neill: ‘… but of course I’ve met people who have just absolutely had awful, terrible experiences coming out to their families and …’

Brendan O’Connor: ‘But a lot has changed, hasn’t it, since then, like?’

RO’N: ‘So much has changed. And I think, em, a small country like Ireland, sometimes we get a bad rap because people think, Oh, small conservative country blah blah blah. But actually I think a small country like Ireland changes much faster than a big country because absolutely … I’m … Think about it. Every single person in this audience has
a cousin or a neighbour or the guy that you work with who is a flaming queen. I mean you all know one. And it’s very hard to hold prejudices against people when you actually know those people. And Ireland, because it’s such small communities grouped together, everybody knows the local gay and, you know, maybe twenty years ago it was OK to be really mean about him but nowadays it’s just not OK to be really mean about him. The only place that you see it’s OK to be really horrible and mean about gays is, you know, on the internet in the comments and, you know, people who make a living writing opinion pieces for newspapers. You know there’s a couple of them that really cheese—’

At that point, Brendan asked:

BO’C: ‘Who are they?’

And I said:

RO’N: ‘Oh, well, the obvious ones. You know, Breda O’Brien [
Irish Times
columnist] today – oh, my God, you know banging on about gay priests and all. The usual suspects, the John Waters [then
Irish Times
columnist] and all of those people, the Iona Institute crowd. I mean I just, you know, just … Feck off! Get the hell out of my life. Get out of my life. I mean [applause from audience], why … it astounds me … astounds me that there are people out there in the world who devote quite a large amount of
their time and energies to trying to stop people, you know, achieving happiness because that is what the people like the Iona Institute are at.’

I’m afraid I lied to you. You can’t see for yourself exactly what I said because the lawyers won’t let me show you any more. Not because, as people have been led to believe, I named anyone as homophobes (I didn’t) but because what was said next would become the subject of an almighty furore and legal action.

But I can
tell
you what happened next.

Brendan introduced the term ‘homophobic’, saying he would not consider John Waters to be homophobic. It wasn’t a word I had used or even given particular thought to, and I felt uncomfortable when he brought it up. I hadn’t gone on the show to talk about any particular individuals, or label anyone homophobic, so in response I chose to talk in general terms about homophobia, and gave a nuanced description of what I believe the term to mean – not in relation to any individual or group, but in a general sense. I am aware that the word ‘homophobia’ can be provocative and it needs to be given context, which is what I sought to do – and to keep the tone neutral and general, not personal.

Homophobia, I said, like any form of discrimination, can be a subtle thing. I said I didn’t believe that homophobes are all horrible monsters who go around beating up gay people, and I suggested that we
all
have a tendency towards homophobia and the best thing we can do is to be aware of it and work on being better.

My
position has always been that if you argue that gay people should be treated differently to everybody else, or that their relationship should be considered in any way less than everybody else’s relationship, then although you may be a good person, and although some of your best friends may be gay, I’m sorry but yes, you do have a problem with homophobia. And that, in a nutshell, is what I said – my honestly held opinion.

It had gone out live, and before I had even left the studio Shirley Temple Bar had taken the ‘selfie’ I had posted online from the dressing room and reposted it, overlaid with a quote from the interview, ‘FECK OFF OUTTA MY LIFE!’ but, still, for the most part the interview was light and uncontentious and, as far as I was concerned, it had all gone well. And it was clear that those involved in the show thought so, too, because after the segment they were very happy and there were thanks and air-kisses and hugs goodbye. And if, over the next few days, you had asked me how it had gone, I would have said casually, ‘What? The TV thing? Yeah, it was fine.’

The first inkling I got that something was up was a day or two later when my sister, who hadn’t seen the show when it was broadcast, called and said she had tried to find it online but it seemed to be gone from the RTÉ website. I assumed it was just a technical glitch and I didn’t give it much thought. Then, on maybe the Tuesday, I got a call from someone at the show to check
my bank details (I was paid the standard appearance fee that all performers get) and in passing I mentioned to her that the show wasn’t online any more, and she mentioned that it had been taken down on foot of a letter from John Waters. I was taken aback, but even then I assumed it was a simple matter and something entirely between Waters and RTÉ.