Non-Fiction

A Live Autopsy

for Voiceworks (print only)

“You’re waiting for me to talk about the autopsy. Don’t think I don’t know. This is a trauma piece after all. Get to the trauma. 

Talk about the waxy sheen of the body; the skin of his torso, pulled back like the flap of a tent; lungs, held aloft, greyish like out-of-date meat. Mention the crime-scene spatter of blood on the pathologist’s hands and the way he wrangles with the liver and the kidneys, flopping like fish between his fingers. Don’t forget the pathologist’s voice—a measured, clinical, metronome tone—the way he talks about the cause of death (cardiac arrest) and the fat built up around the waist, how he jokes about eating too many burgers.”

“I was feeling hollow and frustrated. After 18-years of closeted life I wanted the chance to do romance ‘properly’. To have a crush that evolved into courtship and then into a relationship, and have that evolution be punctuated with big romantic gestures. But, as I quickly found, these experiences were not something the gay scene at university seemed to supply. Perhaps recognising this, my friend recommended I’ll Give You The Sun, a young adult novel written by Jandy Nelson.”

“My uncle and I have built something from I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. It has become an emotional landmark in our relationship. The album is a point of demarcation between when we shared music because we could and when we started sharing music because we couldn’t not. It feels strange that there was a time where I was unenthusiastic about sharing music.”