Once, aged nineteen, I headbanged so hard โ headphones plugged in, so as to not wake my usually-indignant flatmate โ that I whacked my head against the corner of my laptop.
When I looked back up at the wall-length mirror in my tiny, overpriced room, I saw blood mapped half my face, from the miniscule cut above my right eye. It was 1am; I was a young queer, living in an unfamiliar city Dublin. I was single. I was lonely. They conjure an adolescent universe of emotion.
What had come before will persist, again and again, whether we want it to settle or not. Not enough casual sex, too horny, not horny enough, averse to gay clubs, etcetera. Chronic eczema distorted my body image, made me feel inadequate, failing at twinkdom. Community-making was always a searching. I never felt I could fit. For so much of this queer melancholy is illogical; it lives in the stomach. Hence Gut.
The story of the queer body is never done, in Gut. Its closer, The Sound of a Blooming Flower, exemplifies this. As queer people, we do this all the time: accept the darker currents underneath our daily experience, be they social homophobia or psychological religious shame. We persist. About us Advertise Get involved Magazines Contact us.
Get Tickets for The Skinny events! Baths, Gut and Queer Melancholy One writer explores the companionship he's found in Baths' music over the years, catching up with Will Wiesenfeld to discuss new record Gut and queer acceptance. Feature by Ian Macartney 18 Feb
