Positive Life NSW

Twenty years ago on the bleachers in the Hordern Pavillion, I saw God. That is to say I encountered my very own personally tailored agent of God who appeared to me as I imagined Jesus might look, in a room reminiscent of an expensive Cecil B. DeMille set, replete with a luscious Art Deco backdrop. He reclined languorously on a marble bench as I descended into the room via a curved staircase, the type from which Bette Davis proclaimed ‘Fasten your seatbelts everyone, we’re in for a bumpy night,’ in All about Eve.

While my gay brothers were ascending to ecstasy via lasers and music on the dance floor or descending to delirious Hell in the fleshy depths of the toilets below, I was brokering an entirely different sort of levity. One that to this day remains the most profound experience in my life. Yes, drugs were involved but only one pill and never before, or since, have I experienced the sort of insights I gained that night on a plain-old garden variety ecstasy tablet.

I remember the conversation like it was yesterday (because these encounters apparently take place in a timeless dimension). I quizzed my metaphysical mentor about why I should be given such a privileged, private reception when others meditated, flagellated, genuflected and prayed all their lives for a tiny glimpse into this realm. The answer, like many I received that evening was simple in its truth and exquisite in its manifestation. The path to enlightenment is different for everyone.

He asked me would I prefer to experience this amidst the maelstrom of lights and music at a dance party or after years of worldly deprivation and meditation in a Himalayan monastery. It was a rhetorical question, he knew me too well. It was such a great moment and I felt so grateful for it, that my next question seemed churlish and ill formed but when something like this occurs, it is hard not to gush.

I asked why he appeared to me as Jesus instead of one of the other deities to whom I’d always been prepared to give equal credence. Again the answer made perfect sense; You come from the Judeo-Christian tradition, your primary religious orientation was Christian so was this not the most obvious form for me to take…I can do the others if you’d like? I told him that wouldn’t be necessary and boldly blundered on, ‘And what about this Deco, B. De Mille set thing you’ve got going on here, why choose this? Isn’t this the scene you would have chosen yourself for a meeting of such epic profundity? And of course it was. He was smart this guy, beautiful but without that immediate lure of the lower chakras that distracts so many of us at Mardi Gras parties after a few hours on the chems.

This moment went way beyond the pump and grind of Inner City’s Good Life which I seem to recall coming through the speakers at some point. It made what I was wearing, my hair and the comparative virtues of different spray-on tans vanish into complete insignificance. Madonna herself could have come up to me for a natter and I would have continued on with my new inner friend.

Our exchange lasted for what seemed an eternity. Friends came and went to see if I was ok. And I was so much better than ok. I couldn’t begin to have put it into words. This magical doorway in my mind stayed ajar for a long time and I was fearful that when it closed I would be desolated. I wasn’t. I asked all the questions I thought I needed answers for and, to this day, the door still opens occasionally, just a fraction. I learnt in the year following, that taking more Es was not going to further this dialogue or fast-track me to Heaven and I am not the first or only one to experience such insights.

Since that night I have come to know there are thousands of books about people who have had similar experiences, perhaps most important of all being A Course in Miracles. Everyone from Kahlil Gibran and Marianne Williamson to Richard Bach and Neale Donald Walsch have channelled their experiences into books selling millions of copies and all these works have at their core a call for love, forgiveness, acceptance and gratitude. Ideals I suppose I always associated with the Sydney Mardi Gras.

He was smart, this guy

It is encouraging and liberating for me spiritually and sexually to know that for every fundamentalist preaching fear and hatred out in the world, there is a vast, growing global market of truth seekers who are creating and consuming philosophies that point the way to a much happier reality-for everyone, without exclusion. The type of reality we might hope to create and celebrate each year at Mardi Gras is a proclamation of our own self acceptance; our Christmas, Passover or Thanksgiving if you like. And like all such occasions it requires love, acceptance and forgiveness if it is to bring us the sense of collective spirit and joy we are aiming for.

Of course paradoxically Mardi Gras doesn’t come without its purists and its excluders. Those who want to be free from victimisation themselves, but are not necessarily accepting of the many faces and personalities that make up our own subculture. No sooner do we make some ingress into social acceptability and obtain the liberty required to have a party and celebrate, and instead of the blissful orgy of love, acceptance and humanity, we can end up hearing bickering and moaning about straights, bisexuals, drag queens, lesbians and any other fragment of our human tribe we feel ill disposed to sharing our world with on the one night we thought we could all finally belong. By the time the night has been dissected, the DJs trashed, and the drugs dismissed as not being as good as they were in the 80s or 90s or whenever…A bloke could convince himself it was all for nothing. I say this year let the love shine out because you never know who you might encounter at 3am.

My epiphany, such as it was could have happened anywhere. It is significant to me that it came at a place that has come to symbolise belonging and acceptance for so many of us. In the words of St Augustin ... Love and do what you will.

Neal Drinnan has worked in publishing and journalism and is the author of four novels - Glove Puppet, Pussy's Bow, Quill, and Izzy and Eve, as well as The Rough Guide to Gay and Lesbian Australia and numerous short stories.