Glamorous – Fergie 2006 - parismarisamadonna

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Last month, as I sunned (OK, cremated) my alabaster cheeks under the great southern sun, I was struck dumb by singular remark.

We’d just hastily ingested two bottles of very cold white wine; we’d spent 3 hours talking almost exclusively about sex. We laughed so raucously and so loudly that the neighbouring tables stared in disgust, and then rolled their eyes in disdain, then glared in envy wishing they were having as much fun as we were. We had not seen each other in eight months, we barely see each other once a year, we never run out of things to talk about, and he is my first Gay Husband. He is Pauli Lupone.

Typical night out with Pauli...Well Stocked Bar. Check.

The words he said, words that stunned me into silence, words that seen from outside are not at all earth shattering, “M, we’ve known each other twelve years you know”.

Twelve years….

I haven’t known a great many people longer than I’ve known my current hairstyle. Switching latitudes as often as I have, I tend to be one of those, ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ kind of people. Not so much a fair-weather friend and a fair-GPS kind of friend. If we are in the same postcode, I’m happy to spend my entire life with you. If not, well that is why we have Facebook.

Not dissimilar to French grammar, for every rule, there are exceptions…

There are the family, those who have had the pleasure of my company since I (or they) was born. Motherbear, the Art-sist-ologer and the Smartarse, UPAD and AGBA and all of the cousins that are now strewn across the globe, are certainly glad that we are blood relatives and thus obliged to see each other only once a year.

I went to school and then university with other people, but I had so little in common with most of them that I didn’t make an effort to stay in touch. I have never read more than one whole page from the Bible, no longer live in the Blue Mountains and I am not the heiress to a department-store fortune. That pretty much ruled me out of long-term friendships with most of my classmates; I wasn’t too sad. The ones I really did like mostly live in other countries so it was difficult, in the Neolithic age (pre-Facebook), to stay connected*.

So all that remained were my colleagues.

The American Coffee Company forged some very long-lasting relationships. I have close friends that are married and have multiple offspring, couples that met each other on either side of a frozen coffee frappe or a Venti something-or-other. Maybe it was the caffeine, or maybe we worked for a company that valued passion and required one to look especially glamorous while wearing a green apron. Either way most of the people I am closest to today look especially beautiful when clothed in primary colours.

So Pauli and I have known each other for twelve years…longer than any other relationship I’ve had with a male I’m not related to. That got me to thinking…Why is it so much easier for a woman to have a gay husband than a straight one?

They buy you age-appropriate gifts...

Blame the media.

Everywhere we look, the telly is telling us to invite beautifully manscaped men into our lives rather than rough it with straight ones who do not know the difference between Marc Jacobs and Makita. On Glee, Rachel shares her Barbra duets with Kurt. Goldie, who gave up on straight men all together has found Bryan and David to create her own version of normal, let’s call it The New Normal. Even back in the Jurassic nineties, Charlotte, the uptightest of uptightiness among Sex & the City’s Cosmo sipping quartet had an Anthony to ensure her Chanel Bolero didn’t clash with her Martha Stewart cupcakes. More recently, Girls’ zeitgeist heroine Hannah has Elijah to tell her that her tattoo looks fantastic even though the rest of us girls are still not so sure.

It happens in real celebrity life too. Elizabeth Hurley may be shagging that manliest of fake-haired Australian men, Shane Warne, but she runs to tell Elton and David about it afterwards. Madonna had Rupert Everett until she binned him for telling her the truth about her wrinkles and Cate Blanchett has professed her love for Ian McKellen ever since Galadriel and Gandalf first made eyes at each other in Middle Earth, sorry, New Zealand.

Why do we love our glamorous boys so much?

So very Glamorous. Always and For Ever.

There is something to be said about non-threatening interpersonal relationships. Relationships where one person can be completely honest with the other without fear of retribution, exclusion or rejection. A straight woman and a homosexual man are like Blue Cheese and Apricot Jam. Each has enough personal strength and unique character to exist in their own right, the one superbly sweet, the other a bit mouldy and rather nasty looking at first glance. Each have their own unique traits, their own place in the world, their own usefulness…but my, oh my, throw those bitches together and you have found the most heavenly spoonful of decadence that your brain melts down in titillated ecstasy. And he won’t look at you sideways if you have a second spoon, or a third…

Not content with only Apricot Jam, I’ve chosen to add Dried Muscatels and Onion Marmalade; I am lucky enough to have three sugary accompaniments to my penicillium roquforti self.

Pauli Lupone, the original and the only Australian, has done his best to convince me that Madonna is nothing more than Liza 2.0 without a good plastic surgeon. Braveheart still thinks Kylie gave rise to Madonna (when it is obviously the reverse) but is gifted with the ability to wax lyrical about the cultural significance of Made in Chelsea and Haggis. Finally, Louis XIV, my French King, listening ever so patiently to my tales of woe and womanhood, well Louis deserves a page all to himself.

Louis was there, banging out messages of self-assurance on the morning after my ill-fated interlude with Soldier Says. He is always ready with a kind word, a glass of bulles and a text message (or twenty) reminding me that the world will still turn even as my will to live, or the contents of my stomach, is stuck somewhere between the U-bend and the sewer. His dedication to making me feel like the Queen I know is buried deep beneath my bitter exterior has kept my chin above water on more than one occasion.

It sounds trite, I know it does, but these three men in all their pop-cultural fabulousness are so very dear to me, I’m not quite sure I could function without them.

Trite, simplistic or plain old stereotypical, whatever you may think, without them, my world would be a little less colourful, a little less melodramatic, a little less sparkly… a little less happy.

*I hate that modern day euphemism too