Nadine's story features on Let Me Tell You, a podcast from SBS Voices. launch on Wednesday June 22. Listen in the , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
I knew Australian boys didn’t go for girls like me. They wanted the tiny white girl that looked like Kate Moss, not the girl that looked like a Lebanese Kate Ceberano.
I know this because that tiny white girl was my best friend in her denim shorts and bleached blonde hair. I would wear long black dresses and glitter through my pitch-black hair and dark lipstick.
I had acrylic nails 20 years before they were cool and wore too much eyeliner. I looked like an ethnic goth. I wasn’t a trend setter, certainly not in a time when girls wore floral skirts with docs and flannelette shirts, when heroin chic and waifs, grunge and beach blondes were in. I was curvy and could not fit into their straight up and down clothes without busting every button.
White boys didn’t know how to take me. I was very femme and “exotic” looking, but exotic wasn’t popular yet. Boys my age weren’t attracted to my big curves and bigger gold hoop earrings - well before the Kardashians brought them back.
So, when a girl kissed me on my 18th birthday, a whole other world opened up to me. A world where I could explore who I was outside of the expectations of the world around me.
Nadine Chemali in her twenties. Source: Supplied
But it was very confusing.
I became a teenager in the 1990s, a time when lesbians were routinely called ‘dyke’ and the worst insult you could use was ‘lemon’. Women were just starting to come out and almost none of them were femme. In 1993 Melissa Etheridge professed she had a female partner, in 1997 Ellen DeGeneres declared her lesbianism to Oprah and KD Lang reclined in a barber’s chair to be shaved by a swimwear clad Cindy Crawford.
You were one or the other on the sexual binary. You liked men or you liked women. There were no out bisexuals and there was nothing in between. The word queer hadn’t been reclaimed yet, it was a word that was spat out only as an insult.
In my own culture your entire identity as a woman was defined by your femininity. My aunts would tell me to never leave the house without lipstick or high heels if I wanted to be respected.
Lesbians were never Lebanese.
My Middle Eastern community was too conservative for me. My Lebanese cousins lived at home till they met the person they were going to marry, traditional ideology defining their lives.
I often sported blue hair, I liked heavy metal and I left home young. I was studying film, an irresponsible career choice without a future according to my family. They did not understand my black boots, my love of music festivals and obsession with foreign film. None of the boys in my community wanted me and I certainly did not want any of them.
In my late teens I volunteered for a youth mental health service named ReachOut!. They flew a bunch of kids to Sydney for a Youth Forum. That experience changed my life in many ways, but there I met someone that had a real and personal lasting impact.
His name was Joe Elias.
Joe Elias. Source: Supplied
He was a staff member supervising us. He was in his mid-20s, a handsome, educated professional living in Newtown. He was an Arab with a visible tattoo; which was incredibly rebellious in the late 90s for the child of Lebanese migrants. And he was openly gay.
I wanted to ask him every question under the sun. Do your parents know? Have they accepted you? Do you have a boyfriend? Don’t you want babies? Where do you live? What are your puppies’ names?
I remember the puppies because one afternoon we swung by his home to let the dogs outside. I remember clearly that night, laying in bed, dreaming of a future where I could be like Joe, where I would have a home and someone that loved me for who I was; and pets.
I am not sure what Joe made of my earnest excitement, but he treated me with respect, answering all my questions. Joe was a unicorn to me. He was the first gay person of colour that I had ever met. He was certainly the first Arab queer I had ever met. He looked like me. He had dark hair and eyes, skin that tanned easily with an olive undertone and a huge welcoming smile.
Joe was open, patient and caring. I didn’t come out to him, I didn’t know what my sexuality was to even do so. But I met someone that wasn’t straight that I could identify with. I asked him if there were other Arab gay people and he laughed, “Of course!” But not many were out, even in Sydney.
I came home to my family and told my mother all about this remarkable Lebanese man, how he was so inspiring and educated (which my family held in high regard), how he was sweet and kind and he happened to be gay. My mum said that she was happy that I met someone that worked so hard to succeed and that he seemed like a good person. Through meeting Joe, I was able to open a dialogue with my family about sexuality and show them that normal, beautiful, every day Arabs were sometimes gay.
Recently, 20 years later, I messaged Joe out of the blue and he remembered me. I was able to thank him for being so brave, for being that person that opened up about who he was.
Nadine Chemali today. Source: Supplied
I still don’t really know what my sexuality is, it has been fluid over the years. But we have all kinds of rainbows behind us and letters identifying us. I no longer need a label and I no longer need to identify a certain way.
The world is so different and diverse to what it was when I was growing up. I revel in the fact that I live in an era that has seen real, tangible progress for queers - thanks to people like Joe, queer people of colour, queer people like me.
Nadine's story features on Let Me Tell You, a podcast from SBS Voices. launch on Wednesday June 22. Listen in the , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
