Personal Protective Equivocation

I'm not sure if writing here is all that bright. I can always not post it. Or unpost it.

When I think of what I'm going to miss about the UK probably the overwhelming thing, or perhaps underwhelming thing, is that its okay for me to be queer here. And its not to say that its not okay for people to be queer in NZ, its more that it felt not okay for *me* to be queer in NZ. Which of course is mostly my own baggage, but somehow (and certainly not deliberately), in the 50kg I packed coming here I didn't pack that. Or maybe I did, but I'm not taking it home with me. 

The humming stress around that is similar to what it feels like working in a hospital with covid I think? Like, over the years I've made minimal micro adjustments and got on with things. It's no great oppression to go round all day wearing a mask. 

When I arrived here there were rainbow flags freaking everywhere. I am old enough, and closeted enough to remember catching a glimpse of the flag in the corner of a chaplains office in 2006 and recognise that I would be safe there. It's very dramatic to say it, but nonetheless true, that at that time it was probably a life saving gesture. So when I arrived in the UK 2021, alone, mid lockdown, with no one to explain to me otherwise, I assumed all the flags everywhere for the NHS was simply an incongruous outpouring of capital P pride. 

So I would talk about my girlfriend as often as I would talk about church. And it was fine. It didn't matter.

And yet. 

How can something that doesn't matter matter so much?

Like working in the pandemic, some rooms need more than a mask. They require gowning up, wearing a more impenetrable mask, adding another face shield. Standing a bit further away. Again, no great suffering for making things more secure. 

But this approach cannot continue for people I want to know. 

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