Eating Fire
Michael Riordon, 2001
First published in Canada in 2001 by
Between the Lines
401 Richmond Street West,
Studio 277
Toronto Ontario
M5V 3A8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) CANCOPY, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-897071-84-7 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-897071-85-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-896357-45-4 (print)
Cover and text design by David Vereschagin, Quadrat Communications
Cover photo from EyeWire
Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
W E LIVE IN A RELATIONAL UNIVERSE. T HE SUN FLARES, A HAWK swoops over Manchuria, and in an ice-shrouded Ontario barn, a pig suffocates. These events, we know now, are connected by mysterious cosmic threads. Moving through our lives, we define ourselves not only as the insular I, but in relation to others: parent, friend, teacher, priest, lover, nurse, cop, boss, and all the rest. To navigate this crowded landscape, but without the usual map, we queer folk have to improvise as we go. This is a gift, and one of our talents.
In writing my previous book, Out Our Way: Gay & Lesbian Life inthe Country, and in reading from it across Canada, I kept hearing how hungry we are to know more of each others lives and survival tactics, both rural and urban. Along the way, people have often expressed amazement that my partner Brian and I have been together twenty years, yet still delight in each other. Luck of the draw, I say. Well, maybe 90 per cent luck; the rest is work. And theres no particular virtue in duration, I argue. Weve all seen people imprisoned in marriages or their equivalents that should have expired years ago. Still, they say, its encouraging to know that our relationships can work. A fair number of people have also said, You really ought to write a book about that.
Here it is.
My journey with Brian is my starting point. But since Ive never considered myself exactly a supermodel in the relationship department, I also set out to explore how others create and sustain the amazing range of connections and families with which we people our world.
To find stories, I asked a few well-connected folks to suggest potential contacts. Those contacts led to others, and they to others; this is family on a grand scale. Then I went on the road, and travelled about eight months, all told. This isnt a survey or a comprehensive study. I missed whole provinces, whole races, and many people in unique relationships that Id like to have met. As always, I depended on the random kindness of strangers willing to share their stories. EatingFire is a series of glimpses, brief encounters, most of them face-to-face, though a few people I could reach only by phone.
A book takes a while to create, in this case four years from first impulse to the package of words now in your hands. In that span of time, its inevitable that some people whose stories fill these pages have moved on to other houses, places, jobs, relationships. Some of us, Im sad to say, have died. All of us have aged, and Ive added a compensatory couple of years to peoples stated ages since I met them; I ask forgiveness if Ive rendered anyone old before their time.
Years ago my elderly English godmother, who made bitter marmalade and had antimacassars on her overstuffed chairs, read an article Id written. Oh, Michael, she said to me in her rather mournful way, why must you always talk about what you do in the bedroom? Like most things I write, the article dealt with some aspect of injustice and resistance. Cousin Enid was one of the last people on earth with whom I would ever have discussed what I do in the bedroom. She would have had the vapours. Along the same lines, this book is a little about what we do in the bedroom, or wherever else we may happen to do it, and a lot about less technical, more elusive matters: who we are, what we do in other rooms of our lives, and what we offer to the world.
Where people have asked me to protect their identities, for their own sake or their childrens, Ive put pseudonyms in quotation marks the first time they appear.
Thanks to everyone who provided leads and contacts, the connections that make possible a book like this, and our lives. Im especially grateful to the folks who trusted me to convey their stories. Thanks to Between the Lines for its stubborn survival and independence in an increasingly grey world of mindless conglomerates, and to both the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for continuing to support work like this which doesnt even register on the screen at the mindless conglomerates. Thanks also to the Lesbian & Gay Community Appeal of Toronto, for supporting a project whose boundaries went far beyond that city. And to Maureen Garvie, who edited the manuscript gently and with finesse.
My deepest gratitude to Brian, my Brian, without whom well, I cant imagine.
Michelle Hart provided the title. During our brief encounter at the Black Orchid in Calgary (see ), Mike Hart told me thats what Michelle does on special occasions: she eats fire. As proof he sent me a spectacular photo: there she is, a dragon in a vinyl sheath, uttering a huge tongue of flame. Next day on the Greyhound heading north to Red Deer, swishing through rain-soaked, spring-brown undulating fields, it occurred to me that here was the perfect title to embody the thrills and perils of family life on the queer side: Eating Fire.
I N THE YEAR 2001 THE C ANADIAN GOVERNMENT FINALLY PASSED legislation it could no longer avoid, rendering same-sex couples equivalent to the hetero variety in a wide range of existing laws. But under intense pressure from right-wing primitives in its own and other parties, at the last minute the reigning Liberals tacked the defence of marriage amendment onto the bill. It defines that institution, which previously made no mention of gender (everyone just
