Melbourne

March 6th, 2014

Last night I did a talk for the Wheeler Center here in this fancy old theater, The Athenaeum.

I never know what to expect when I do these things. Maybe 75 people came to my talk at the Adelaide Writer’s Festival cartoonist day event on Tuesday. And I’ve gotten used to large-ish but captive and studious audiences at college events. But last night in Melbourne hundreds and hundreds of people came, many of them lesbians of all ages. It was really cool, like olden days, a very lively raucous crowd.

Afterward in the lobby Joan Nestle came up to me! She lives here now with her Australian partner—I knew that, but had forgotten. She looks fucking fabulous. “I’m 73!” she said. But she looks exactly like she did the last time I saw her, which was in 1997.

I also met the Australian cartoonists Judy Horacek and Kenton Miller.

It was an amazing night. Then this morning I bustled all around town doing 3 radio programs. And visiting the gay bookstore, Hares and Hyenas!

They’ve been around for 22 years. Here I am with the delightful owners.

They gave me this photo they’d taken in 1997 or so at Book Expo America of Judith Katz, Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books, who pubished my work for many years. And me—Hol said I look like an Amish preacher in this pic.

(pic)

God, you know what? This post has been extraordinarily difficult to put together and it is bedtime and I’m exhausted. I can’t upload these photos. Megabytes are apparently like gold ingots here in Australia. Hotel internet costs $30 AUD, and even after forking that over, as soon as you use up 1000MB (by, for example, checking FaceBook) they cut you off the fast connection and slow you to an ignominious crawl unless you’re willing to pay even more! How does anyone get anything done?

For the life of me I cannot upload all these images. you’ll just have to picture them until I get to New Zealand tomorrow…where things might not be any better megabyte-wise.

So you will miss seeing me in the dorkoriffic hat I bought at the botanical gardens to protect me from the relentless sun.