Proud Pink Sky, page 1
PRAISE FOR PROUD PINK SKY
“Tender and heart-breaking, Proud Pink Sky is centered on a Berlin that could have been—a paradisal Gay Republic that is not all it seems—and it’s absolutely captivating, a perfect blend of reality and fiction, disquiet and hope, caution and celebration. Beautifully conceived and deeply affecting, Proud Pink Sky is a book you’ll want to return to again and again.”
—Calder Szewczak, author(s) of The Offset
“The conflicts and conversations—both micro and macro—will be achingly familiar to anyone who has been engaged with queer or trans movements in recent years, helping us to remember the vital need for coalition and solidarity right now. Please read this book!”
—Meg-John Barker, author of Queer: A Graphic History
“Drawing on an in-depth knowledge of queer history, Proud Pink Sky richly imagines an alternative world that is neither utopia nor dystopia. Barrett’s vertical Berlin is a setting built on dreams, yet pocked with flaws, nuances, and squabbles that make it feel credible and strangely universal. Intriguing and occasionally shattering, Proud Pink Sky defies binaries in more ways than one, making it a compelling and welcome addition to the speculative Queer canon.”
—Christian Baines, author of The Beast Without
“Redfern’s fabulous ‘what if?’ envisions the queerest of timelines—a postwar Berlin that refashions itself as the world’s only gay city-state. This electrifying tour through a would-be utopia riven by its own contradictory laws, traditions, and prejudices is at once deeply celebratory and critical. Like 1984, its distant ancestor, the novel questions and probes but dares to hope for a happier, freer future.”
—Brett Josef Grubisic, author of The Age of Cities
and My Two-Faced Luck
“To enter the pages of Proud Pink Sky is to be engulfed by a tidal power of masterful storytelling, morphing histories, and utopian imaginings. Boundaries of families and colonies, maps and guidebooks, words and sounds, dissolve into delicious, heady outcomes in this vital inhabitation of queer homelands. The crisp narrative pace combines with sensuous contours of language to remind one that to belong to an electrifying urban milieu is to also belong to its many troubled, unspoken intimacies and exiles. Redfern Jon Barrett has composed a virtuosic novel of fearless incantations.”
—Gayathri Prabhu, author of If I Had to Tell It Again
“In Proud Pink Sky, Redfern Jon Barrett demonstrates that utopias and dystopias are not the opposites of each other—they coexist in the exact same space. As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze once said, ‘Beware of the Other’s dream, because if you are caught in the Other’s dream, you are screwed.’ With Barrett’s eye for both history and prophecy, the Gay Republic of Berlin feels as lived in as a real nation. Though they’ve built an imaginative and thought-through alternative universe, they don’t stop there; the yearnings and struggles of their characters are also true and engrossing. Barrett’s novel is a compelling page-turning read and an important warning.”
—Paul Gallant, author of Still More Stubborn Stars
In loving memory of Richard Murray Vaughan:
Berlin is poorer without you.
Excerpt from
The Honest Guide to Berlin
Official name: The Gay Republic of Berlin
Population: 24,549,100
Formed: 07 August 1948 (by UN resolution)
Common myths about the Gay Republic:
“Only men live there.”
Rest assured, the Gay Republic isn’t only for men—in fact, the bustling city-state is even divided into two federal zones: the gay male Senate House is located in Maytree in the west of the city, with the lesbian Assembly found in Delos to the east (see Government, p.16).
“Everyone is homosexual.”
While it’s true the Gay Republic was first formed as a haven for homosexuals, these days it’s home to many different orientations. There have been straight residents from the very beginning (centred around the outer districts of Hetcarsey and Gajo), while bisexuality was legalised in 1969. For the most part heterosexual visitors will feel safe and even welcomed in the Republic, although public displays of affection are best avoided in more conservative areas and certain drinking establishments (see Advice for Heterosexual Visitors, p. 80).
“I need to speak Polari.”
This is simply nix (not) true. Though if you keep your nells (ears) open you’ll hear the gay tongue cackled (spoken) everywhere from street corners to government ministries, most of the population are immigrants to the smoke (city) and arrived with bijou (little) knowledge of it beforehand. That said, Polari is very easy to pick up, and you may even return home speaking a few lavs (words).
“The Gay Republic isn’t safe.”
Those exploring everything the Republic has to offer will find it a fun and friendly experience, particularly during the annual Pride Month festivities. It’s true the city-state has developed a reputation as dangerous, particularly with regard to terrorist attacks, but in reality, these are low-level, sporadic incidents that the average resident is unlikely to ever encounter—let alone a tourist. That said, please stay alert in public, particularly around transportation hubs, and make sure to steer well clear of the slums to the south of the city (see Ongoing Violence, pp. 18, 20, 34, 55, 58, 60, 67, 81-83, 102).
HOMIES LOVING HOMIES
The Great British Kingdom
1998
1.
The wooden chair was hard and designed to dig between the shoulder blades. It was a seat for instilling shame: without armrests its occupant was forced to either hold their hands meekly in their lap, or else fold their arms in outright defiance. Placed at the very centre of the overstuffed, overly warm office, it directly faced the headmaster’s desk: an antique leviathan of oak and walnut, crisscrossed with ancient scratches.
A sickly afternoon light fell through the window, glazing the stolid furniture and hiding the old man’s face.
“Come on William, there’s no need to drag this out.”
William’s hands were in his lap. His school shirt clung with sweat, sticking to sore bruises. He could have told the story in seconds: earlier that day he’d poured his adolescent heart onto a scrap of paper. He’d folded it, over and over, and dropped it to the bottom of his bag. No one was supposed to see it; no one was supposed to read it. But the usual boys had snatched his satchel, bellowed and jeered and tipped it upside-down, spilling an array of pencils, notebooks, a ruler, and, of course, the offending note. It lay on the scuffed wood floor like a prize, and a dozen hands had grasped for it. The note was read aloud.
His form teacher had arrived as William cowered on the ground, trying to shield his head from each kick.
“Well?”
“I don’t know,” William answered. He knew the headmaster wanted the truth, and he knew it was important he didn’t get it. The truth would lead to no good. No good at all. The faded portraits of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and First Minister Powell watched him from their gilded frames, hung so high upon the wall that they almost touched the ceiling.
“I already know what happened, William. I want to hear it with your own words.”
Confession, that was it. The other students had punched him to the floor and kicked him in the back, shins, gut. Now they needed his confession.
“Nothing happened.”
“Then why did they attack you?” the headmaster questioned, with all the cold patience of authority. “They didn’t just attack you for no reason now, did they?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know why.”
“You wrote something. I want you to tell me what it was.”
William felt sick. Everything smelled of shoe and furniture polish, and there was no other escape, no route free from this strange and dismal room.
“I wrote a note.” He had to choke the words out.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. What did the note say?”
He couldn’t say it. There’d been no punishment for the other students, nothing more than just a few verbal barks from the form teacher. He knew it was important not to confess—not out there, not in here.
Several painful minutes passed before the bell clanged, followed by the distant stamping and hollering of the day’s end. The sun’s glow sank into shadow, highlighting the pocks and lines of the headmaster’s face, his gaze as still and constant as the twin paintings. Finally, the old man stood, posture perfect, and flicked on a brass standing lamp.
“Before I came here, I was in the military. For a long time, we were stationed in the Cologne Republic. Things were different, back then,” he added, lost for only the briefest moment.
“There was this one soldier in our unit. He looked a little like yourself: the slender, pale, nervous sort. More importantly, he kept to himself, always staying at the barracks, never joining our jaunts into town. He made us curious. Secrecy makes people curious.
“One evening we told him we were going out. We asked if he wished to come with us—knowing he would refuse—then, instead of walking the three miles to our usual nightspot, we waited in some bushes and watched the gate. Eventually he stepped out of the barracks to begin his secret journey. We followed him.
“He arrived at a perfectly ordinary townhouse. We saw him knock on the front door and go inside. But we were soldiers, and that couldn’t be the end of it. We burst in, expecting some hidden poker den, or e lse a backroom burlesque show, something we could understand. But he was in bed. With a man.”
William couldn’t look his headmaster in the eye. Instead, he squeezed one hand with the other, wishing this would end.
“For a few seconds nothing happened. Then one of us started shouting. Then we all were. He scrambled for his clothes, he tried to hide what he’d been doing, but we were sick with rage, William. We were unable to control ourselves.”
The old man paused.
“All our training, all the discipline we endured, in that moment none of it mattered. Some rules aren’t just enforced from above. Some are so basic, so fundamental to our survival, that they’re enforced by human nature itself.”
He stood; William mirrored him, legs near buckling with the effort.
“Regardless, I’m suspending you for a month. If I see you anywhere near the subject of your confused perversion, you’ll be expelled. Do you understand?”
William nodded, his face burning with shame. He tried not to cry.
• • •
The school was the same as a hundred others scattered over the south coast of England: a grand, grey-faced, utterly symmetrical edifice topped with a greening copper clock tower. Few other structures could convey this same devotion to discipline, the same austere disdain for nonsense of any kind. Its narrow, brick-lined hallways were empty by the time William left the headmaster’s office. It was already getting dark.
Gareth was waiting for him at the bottom of the school steps, beyond the high iron railings. On seeing William approach, he wrapped his hands around the bars like a criminal, his face a mask of mock misery.
“I’m glad this is funny to you,” William greeted him. He didn’t stop; he couldn’t stop. So he kept walking down the street, Gareth hurrying along beside him. It took effort; Gareth was shorter and broader than the lean and lanky William.
“It was a joke, right, I was—” Gareth stopped mid-sentence. “William, are you crying?”
“No,” William insisted. Yet when they were out of the school’s visual range Gareth pulled his reluctant friend into a hug, squeezing him close. The street was empty, but net curtains and high hedges hid prying eyes, and neither dared hold the embrace for more than a few seconds. After pulling themselves apart they walked side by side through the suburb, one arm brushing against the other as their hands hung close, never quite touching.
“Did he tell you the soldier story as well?” Gareth asked. “Did you believe it?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” William replied. “It makes no difference. We still can’t see each other.”
“Y’know,” Gareth said, after a few moments had passed, “you’d be less of a target if you acted more like a lad. They can see how you walk, how you’re holding yourself. They’d never’ve even found that note if you hadn’t stood out in the first place.”
William said nothing; he felt as though he were back in the stuffy head teacher’s office.
“So, why’d you write it, anyway?” Gareth asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean...” Gareth paused his inquiry as they passed a woman struggling with two small children, “you’ve never written me a love letter before.”
“It was a poem,” William corrected.
The streetlights flickered on, bathing the road orange.
“A poem,” Gareth teased, his arms spread wide in sham grandiosity as they crossed the quiet two-lane road. “I do feel special.”
Grasping at Gareth’s shoulder, William stopped him in the middle of the intersection. For the past few hours, he had clasped his emotions inside. Every pitch of shame, rage, and despair had dwelled and swelled within his skinny ribcage, and he could no longer hold it all within himself.
“Don’t you dare, don’t fucking dare make fun of me for that. I wrote it because I care about you. I care about you, do you nell me? Because I—”
“Keep it down.” Gareth’s tone was urgent and calm as he pulled William to the side of the street. “What happened today’s bad enough, don’t let them hear you using words like that.”
“Nell,” William cried. “Nix, trade, homies—”
Gareth placed a strong hand—a hand rough from sports and woodwork—over William’s mouth, keeping the taboo flood inside. He spoke softly, his face almost touching his lover’s.
“Right, if you keep talking like that, they’ll send you away. You’ll go to a special school at the other end of the country and we’ll never see each other again.” Gareth’s eyes shone; his skin aflame in the glow of gas lamps. He slowly took his hand from William’s lips, with the same uncertainty used on the familiar but potentially dangerous, a beloved pet gone rabid.
They walked the rest of the route in silence, listening to the evening birdsong from nearby trees and the clatter of pans from kitchens they passed. When they reached the corner they parted, Gareth glancing all directions before nudging William’s cheek with a kiss.
• • •
Every house on the street had been built at once. Each came with a handsomely gabled roof, bay windows in both the downstairs living room and upstairs master bedroom, red-brick walls, and terra-cotta tiling. With an assuringly middle-class aesthetic, they were houses for people who valued comfort, yet saw pride as mankind’s original sin. The Dovetrees’ ascension to this street a decade before had been more than a move of house; it had been a change of status, a shift in the order of their world.
No one greeted William when he returned, and he was glad for it. He gently raised his jacket to the coat stand, placing his shoes beneath, all the while listening for signs that his parents had returned home earlier than usual, or that his brother had skipped the Boy’s Brigade. Hoping he was alone, he crept up the stairs—running the tips of his fingers along the textured floral wallpaper—and slipped into his room. All that remained of the sun was a distant ink blue, retreating along the horizon as he pulled the curtains closed.
Waiting a few more moments for the creak of a floorboard or the kettle’s gargle, he heard nothing. Satisfied, he turned on his bedside radio and brushed through the distant crackles.
A voice whispered to him, echoing across a thousand miles from a land that could scarcely be real. William removed his shirt as he listened, inspecting each plum-purple bruise across his chest and stomach, each berry-red graze.
... a space for those like us. More than anything, we provide safety. Not because it’s kind, not even because it’s bona, but because we have to. This is survival. It’s not altruism. It isn’t choice. Every year we take in thousands of homosexuals, providing space for the millions who would otherwise have none, a sanctuary for those in danger.
I don’t need to cackle that we live on a hostile planet. We must barney for mere survival in a heterosexual world. Just look at the dozens of countries who refuse to recognise our very existence. We face proscription, jihad, and crusades. We are the victims of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists alike, detested by both presidents and dictators.
Yet to those homophobes I say: you can never win. Even when we were arrested for loving one another, you didn’t win. Even when the priests and clergy made us fear our own desires, you didn’t win. Even when Wilde was killed, his mortal body sacrificed for the crime of loving men, you didn’t win.
You didn’t win because you never stopped it. You never stopped us. Despite the laws and sermons, despite the mobs and police and prisons and death camps, you could never stop us from loving one another. The whole force of your churches and your states could never stop fruits from coming together. That is how weak you are. That is how strong we are.
And if tomorrow you destroyed everything we have built, if you rounded us up and killed us by the thousands, if you burned our bevvies and took our children and preached our sin across the world, you still would not win. Because whatever you do, whatever extremes you go to, men will still love men. Women will still love women.
