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You are here: Polari Magazine / LGBT History Month / Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 21

Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 21

21 Feb 2013 / Comments Off / in LGBT History Month/by Eva Monkey

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact on their own stories.

‘Sunday Morning’ – No Doubt
by Eva Monkey
………………………………………………………………………………………….

You came in with the breeze …

The first girl I ever asked out I invited to a No Doubt show. She couldn’t come because she had a shift on the tills at Sainsbury’s, but she ended up becoming my High School Girlfriend, and the random stranger I took instead ended up becoming my Queer BFF. Gwen Stefani Saves Lives.

Ilford is a lonely social desert for a little queer kid, and the early ’90s were the Ilford of my lifetime. By the ‘9os I had thrown myself body and soul into Film, my internal life was entirely based on the imaginary social life I built through my dad’s dodgy Sky hook-up. I skulked around school with a faux grunge attitude to fend off the knuckledraggers that were my peers. I cultivated an attitude of mournful weirdness, and hoped that no one asked any probing questions. I have always been the kind of queer that can’t quit. I couldn’t ever figure out how to tone it down, so I slapped a layer of false cool on it that fooled no-one. I’d never heard of Nirvana, The Cure, The Smiths, I didn’t get the subtext of REM songs. I didn’t really give a shit about music, I just listened to leftover hand-me-downs from my equally disinterested parents, and I had no friends to transmit Bikini Kill albums to me like a much needed virus. I had River Phoenix, and that would do.

With no connection to the alternative, the cure had to come to me through the mainstream. No Doubt were a hot breath of peppy, poppy, Californian ska-punk, into my very grey and deliberately unobtrusive existence. Bright, unabashedly straightforward, jumpy-up-and-downy fun with the obligatory ‘life’s tough’ lyrics and hook-laden bounciness. Until I got into No Doubt I hadn’t realised I was supposed to be Having Fun. I started going out just to dance to them, to jump up and down at the alternative nights in shitty Essex nightclubs (holla Romford!). I bought ridiculously bright idiotic clothing, and learned the greatest lesson in the queer handbook – Get In Their Faces. No one will give you a break because you are being quiet. Get loud, Get Re-dickerlous. Dance on their fucking hatred, and you may not win, but you will have a better time than them.

When there is no alternative you will take what you can get. I used to get books about AIDS out of the library when I was 9, because they mentioned gays in them. I was obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer because my dad’s copy of The Sun said he was ‘Homosexual’. I developed an alarming fixation on the Joan Jett-alike scruff Jo from the dreadful TV show The Facts of Life, to the point where I cried because she got a boyfriend. When in a queer desert, you search for water. You’ll run towards any mirage just to get closer to the well. I was looking so hard to be saved from this solitary world of out-of-date imaginary boys I could be, and girls I could love. I remember how deep I thought the lyrics to ‘Sunday Morning’ were, how the video was ‘genius’, (why is Terry Hall on that swing chair?), but there is no denying that it is a hell of a lot of FUN. And god knows, as a 16 year-old, fun was all I wanted.

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Tags: day 21, lgbt history month 2013, no doubt, polari magazine music choice, sunday morning

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Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
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  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

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