Up Front by Emma Hart

Picture me briefly as Dr. David Haywood’s secretary. It shouldn’t prove difficult: my hair is even currently held up with a pencil.

Dr. Haywood is currently in a meeting*, I’m afraid. He would, however, like to pass on his warmest regards, and remind you that he will be at Arty Bee’s Books in Wellington’s vibrant Cuba Quarter tomorrow (Friday 27th) from 1 – 2pm. I shall of course be accompanying him, because otherwise the poor man would have nowhere to put his pencil.

We will be signing books, and reading from them. I’d recommend popping along and getting your copy of The New Zealand Reserve Bank Annual signed. One day, you’ll be watching the news, leap from your chair and cry, “I know him! The guy in the handcuffs! And I have a signed copy of what I guess we have to call ‘Exhibit B’ now.”

Remember, too, to RSVP for the launches if you haven’t already. Everything going to plan, you should soon be able to do this for the Christchurch launch as well, which is currently down for Monday the 7th of December (or ‘the night before I have a CT scan at 7am').

Those of you interested in the further details of Dr. Haywood’s literary career – for instance, when you can breathlessly catch his upcoming radio spots – may benefit from following my Twitter feed (@Ghetsuhm). I’ll endeavour to keep you all up to date on his comings and goings. I solemnly promise to link to hardly any BDSM equipment shops.

I’m about to climb on a plane and head to one of my favourite New Zealand cities. Please, if I know you but I’ve never seen your face before, do come up and introduce yourself, I’d love to meet you all in the flesh. And then I can vet you for introducing to the person I’m trying to get people to start calling ‘Herr Doktor’.

*By which I mean he’s stuck in the Hutt Valley with no net connection

One of the things I’ve had to learn (the hard way, naturally) to do with my CFS is to look after myself. I can’t do too much physically, or I’ll have a relapse. I can’t take on too much stress, or I’ll buckle and end up sitting on the kitchen floor crying like I just rewatched Children of Earth. That’s why you’ll never see me doing a column like Does My Mortgage Look Like a Slag in This? or Are We There Yet? two weeks in a row. I recognise that it takes a lot of emotional strength out of me, so I mind how many arguments I’m simultaneously engaging in.

I’ve had to learn to pick my battles.

So it interested me when I read Renegade Evolution describing this in gaming terms. The people you see constantly fronting those battles on whatever issue – feminism, racism, sex workers’ rights, homophobia – are meat shields. Tanks. Their role is to be up the front, taking a pounding.

That’s their whole job, running head-long into the fight, grabbing all the aggro, and keeping it while everyone else just mops up amid the mayhem… being the Meat Shield can suck.  There are times you end up face down with the baddies stomping all over you while the rest of the team runs for their lives.

No matter how tough you are, there are only so many hits any meat-shield can take before they have to stagger off to have a wee sit-down behind a crate and down a couple of med-packs.

We all have only so much energy we can use to fight for causes, so we focus it where, as someone whose name I can’t remember said about Womanism, it hurts the most. Devoting my energy to LGBT issues doesn’t make me sexist or racist, nor does it mean that I don’t have the deepest respect and sympathy for those causes and their meat shields. It just means that I don’t have the energy to spare. So often the answer to the (hardly ever genuine) question “Why are you down on this and not that?” is “Because I’m not fricking Wonder Woman okay? I just have the clothes.”

The whole Beenie Man controversy was a fight I wanted to sit out. I have that choice, I can say, “Nope, I can’t hack any more of this right now. I’m tired, I’m ill, I just want to go to bed with a Marguerita and possibly a drink as well.” It’s especially tempting to sit out a fight where my position is middling. It’s closest to Idiot/Savant’s, and yet even there I have reservations. I have them right here, actually:

The answer to speech we disagree with is more speech, not less.

Now, in general I believe this. Despite what I’ve already been accused of after just one tweet on the issue, I’m a Free Speech advocate. But, it’s just not that simple There’s an underlying assumption in this attitude that both sides have the ability to speak. In New Zealand that’s true. In Jamaica, it’s not.

Stop Murder Music is the campaign that’s been driving and organising opposition to dancehall music internationally. It was put together by OutRage!, the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group, and a group called J-Flag - Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays.

In 2006, J-Flag’s founder Brian Williamson was found hacked to death in his home. Coincidentally, a Human Rights Watch researcher, Rebecca Schleifer, was on the scene shortly after his murder, and described what she saw:

She found a small crowd singing and dancing. One man called out, "Battyman he get killed." Others were celebrating, laughing and shouting "Let's get them one at a time", "That's what you get for sin". Others sang "Boom bye bye", a line from a well-known dancehall song by Jamaican star Buju Banton about shooting and burning gay men. "It was like a parade", says Schleifer. "They were basically partying."

Speaking back in Jamaica, one of the most violently homophobic countries in the world, can be a death sentence. The situation in Jamaica is so bad that several Jamaican homosexuals have successfully gained asylum in Great Britain, on the grounds that returning to Jamaica would be a death sentence. J-Flag say they know of 30 gay men murdered between 1997 and 2004.

These deaths are not, of course, caused by dancehall music or homophobic lyrics, any more than video games cause mass murder. (Michael Law’s verbal trolling is so patently ridiculous that yes, that’s a fight I feel I can skip in good conscience.) The music is a reflection of the culture – but it’s also a symbol of it, and a perpetuation of it. In 2001, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding used Chi Chi Man by TOK as a campaign theme song. In 2004, Buju Banton was accused of being personally involved in an assault on five gay men – a case which was dismissed for lack of evidence, in a country where the police have been known to encourage and participate in mob violence against gays.

And no, boycotting murder music artists isn’t going to magically fix Jamaican culture. Nor does a protest at a rugby game bring down Apartheid.

What all this brings home to me is that I have the option. I can choose not to fight, because I’m safe. I’m privileged. You have to go all the way to the provinces to get a taste of this kind of fear in New Zealand, and it’s just a taste. I still remember the terrified teenager I was, and I owe her a debt, to fight the fights she couldn’t, because she was too vulnerable.

The price of fighting in Jamaica is death. Can I really not

be arsed getting out of bed to be a meat shield for them?

A few weeks ago I took a trip home to visit my mother. I went along to rehearsal with her and saw my old English teacher, a man I love partially because he taught me the difference between ‘immoral’ and ‘amoral’ and opened up the Third Way for me.

Somewhere, though, there must surely be a limit, a line I won’t cross. Some piece of tarty shameless self-promotion I won’t indulge in. There still might be, but this isn’t it. I just came into possession of a box full of pictures of my breasts. Not Safe For Work is available to buy now: get in quickly and compensate for the simple fact that my mother is never going to speak to me again.

If you have an old favourite column, it’s probably in there. If you have a new favourite, it isn’t. There’s also a bunch of brand shiny new content, including a new Up Front Guide and Advice for Children that will see me going straight to the Special Hell. Curious as to what it is that rugby has taught me about sex? Of course you are.

There are a whole bunch of people I should thank for ever getting to this point, not least my surgical team. Fortunately, though, I don’t have to do that here. I can do it in major centres in the company of wonderful people and drinks.

The Up Southerly Front Book Tour is launching Not Safe For Work alongside The Reserve Bank Annual, a cunning plan that will make me look harmless and downright sane.

Wellington PASers will be able to join us in, I shit you not, the Grand Hall of the Beehive from 6-8pm on Friday the 27th of November. From 7:30 onwards, however, people are welcome to gather at the Thistle Inn for the Hubris-organised portion of the evening, which I’m conservatively going to predict to be ‘less formal’. Jo and I have been in the same room before and no-one died, so that’s bound to happen again.

Earlier that day, if you can’t make it or like to fondle books before you buy them, Dr Haywood and I will be available to condescendingly scrawl our names across frontispieces* and possibly practice hilarity-ensuing readings at Arty Bees Bookshop on Manners St from 1-2pm. Yes, Wellington, you get a whole lot of lovin’.

Then we’ll be taking the Book Tour up-country and hitting Auckland. We’ll book-launch at the Velvet Room on Sale St on the 2nd of December, looking at a 6:30 start. (Somebody has to sprint from some kind of television studio or something.) I’ll be in Auckland for some days after this for further shenanigans, but that’s a secret until it isn’t.

Oh Christchurch, we haven’t forgotten you. Nor are we ignoring you like we are Hamilton and Dunedin and all those other towns. Date and venue for the Christchurch launch are still to be confirmed, but we’re looking at the second week in December.

But all this talk of alcohol and girls in low-cut dresses should not distract you from today’s serious business. Go, mark your calendar, and then come back to your keyboard, and buy my bloody book. Who else is going to keep my children in Apple products? Not their grandmother, that’s for sure.

*I’ve now had it explained to me that ‘frontispiece’ is not, in fact, a euphemism.

A "white pride" group, Right Wing Resistance (RWR), claims to be patrolling New Brighton streets that "the police and the system has all but given up on".

Come in, come in, have a seat. Now, you can rest assured, this is a safe place. There’ll be nobody judging you, we just want to talk. I’m here to help you.

Now, to begin with, I’d just like to show you that really, I understand where you’re coming from. Everyone talks about the hate and the violence, but at heart, you’re just scared, aren’t you? You’re afraid of the Other. That’s a basic drive, and nothing to be ashamed of. You’re like a little dog, yapping at anything it doesn’t recognise.

You have a deeper fear than that, though, don’t you? You’re afraid you’re a complete and utter purposeless failure. I mean, you’re near the bottom, aren’t you, and in a class-conscious city like Christchurch you’re never allowed to forget it. You have to take all this fear and resentment out on someone, and it’s clearly going to be the only people below you, isn’t it? Because basically you’re a bunch of cowards.

No, now, don’t get angry, you need to accept this to move forward. I mean, seriously, you’re looking for Polynesian crims in New Brighton? Have you considered Aranui, or Upper Riccarton? Of course you haven’t, because you’re afraid you’ll get your arses kicked, aren’t you?

And these ‘sporadic patrols’ of yours. Let me guess. You have a few mates round, drink a few beers, shout at each other about coconuts, and then somebody says, “HEY! Let’s go on, y’know, patrol-thing!” And you stumble around a few blocks scaring old ladies until you get tired and go home. Alone, because you’ve been wearing the same matted black fisherman’s rib jersey since 1987 and no woman will go near you. No, you prefer to hang out with ‘the boys’. Have you considered… no, perhaps we’ll leave that for another session.

I find it intriguing, too, the way you’ve simply imported American prejudices about African-Americans and applied them to Polynesians. They’re big, they’re dumb, they’re violent, they hang out in large groups being intimidating, they have no respect for other people or the law…. does this remind you of anyone? No? Interesting.

Your capacity for self-deception, too, is simply fascinating. You said, didn’t you, that:

If a European youth was found vandalising property: "We'd probably say `Hey, what are you doing? That's not really the white way'."

Now, you know that’s total bullshit, really, don’t you? The first time I read that, I thought it was some kind of performance art. Do you actually think all the vandalism in ‘white’ suburbs is done by ‘brown kids’ driving down the Crime Motorway? We don’t even have one of those. We have a Crime One-Way System. The complexity of which suddenly explains to me why you haven’t made it over to my side of town.

But listen. It’s not your fault. You don’t exist in a vacuum, any more than Nick Griffin does. You’re getting traction because people are afraid, and they’re afraid because they’re told to be. When a German magazine describes Christchurch’s “Frenzy of the Youth” and our terror of “car-based terrorism”, what kind of a mayor would possibly say, and I’ll admit I’m paraphrasing here, “Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. Stay home, tourists, we suck.” I mean, how could a politician possibly have some kind of interest in keeping their constituents permanently disproportionately terrified? And what does that fear do? It lets people like you get a toe-hold. Still, according to Bob Parker, you don’t exist. How does that make you feel?

So, for our future sessions, I’d like to suggest we try some phobia therapy. If you were terrified of spiders, we might give you a picture of a spider, then a VR spider, then gradually work our way up to locking you in a room full of spiders and not letting you out no matter how much you scream. In your case, of course, the problem isn’t spiders. Unless it is? Because I’d really like to watch that. Or we could treat you like we would a yappy little dog – with a shock collar.

And when I said no-one was going to judge you? I lied.

It might seem a little perverse, but I’m taking the fact that I haven’t slept for three days as conclusive proof that I am Better. My body is almost entirely back to working the way it used to before somebody actually used a power drill inside my skull.

It’s been a protracted convalescence, aggravated by not spending it in the south of France getting charmed by roguish floppy-haired British aristocrats even a little bit. Six weeks ago I woke up with my scalp stapled together, my right eye swollen nearly shut, my left arm purple to the elbow, and ‘in’ and ‘out’ tubes installed.

I had surgery on the Monday, and by the Friday, given I could see, walk, eat and pee, I was sent home on weekend release. That worked a treat: by Sunday afternoon I was back in hospital and back on morphine and i.v. anti-emetics. Hospital, it turns out, is not such a bad place to be when you really need to be in hospital.

I had blood in my spinal fluid. Having stuff in your spinal fluid really pisses your body off. It was three weeks before I could walk comfortably, four weeks before I could come off the pain-killers and realise just how much they’d been clouding my thinking.

Not that I’d have been without the morphine for those two weeks I ended up spending in hospital. It didn’t make me giggle at the ceiling like whatever they gave me to ‘relax my veins’ pre-anaesthesia, but it did take the edge off the wanting to die. Also I had Louise, the Best Nurse in the World. Louise’s pastoral care was so wonderful that, after witnessing her do my neuro obs and inject morphine into my butt, my partner watched her leave, turned slowly back to me and said, “What the hell?” Cheers Louise, you were fabulous.

People were fabulous to me, almost enough to damage my Feature Cynicism. My best friend came down and kept me occupied, and also demonstrated the healing power of doing pretty much everything you really Shouldn’t Do. People kept bringing us food. I didn’t have to do anything for weeks.

There was this lingering irrational fear, though. They’d been in my head: what if something in the complex electrical wiring of my brain had changed, and I was different now? What if I was no longer me? I had these little moments, where I wanted to impulse-buy a kitten, or craved chocolate, where I got really anxious. It hasn’t really let up yet: yesterday I bought shoes and they were pretty.

Step by step, though, I’ve been coming back to myself, and every little bit is precious. My first thought on being confronted with the phrase ‘vegetarian lesbians’ was filthy. I have my sex drive back, which is a huge relief, up there with regaining the ability to spell- and grammar-check my own work. 7 Days is still funny when I’m not whacked on codeine. And now I can’t sleep. It’s fabulous.

There are still one or two little problems. I still look like the aftermath of a Barbie haircut. Because the muscle in the right side of my face was cut, I can’t get my jaw open more than about half an inch. I have this weird tight numb tingly feeling in the right side of my scalp. On the whole though, it already feels like the whole thing is curiously remote, like it happened to somebody else. No way can I possibly have had my face peeled down and my skull opened up like the roof of an observatory.

Yesterday I went back to my ophthalmologist – who, it turns out, reads my columns, which was awkward. (The sexy guy in the waiting room, I assert, would still have been sexy if he hadn’t been sitting next to a prison guard.) Turns out I can see. The difference between my visual field results for June and October is so profound it looks like magic – the sort of magic you make out of hard science, competence, and a little bit of luck. I am profoundly grateful to everyone involved.