|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
Tea with Mother Abyss As she stood up the nun said to me in a gruff voice, "I'm merely admiring the fine embroidery ... not the organ." This was my introduction to Mother Abyss of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI). A month ago I was having tea with Mother Abyss in Caf‚ 911, chic central hub of Oxford Street in Sydney's gay ghetto when a straight out-of-towner came over and asked of Mother, "I want to know if you're the head of the nuns." And indeed that's what she is. Mother Abyss leads the Sydney order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), gay male nuns against guilt. These are sodomists in traditional religious garb performing necessary rituals in fagland. Mother Abyss founded the order in Australia and for the first 10 years was known as Mother Inferior. She became Mother Abyss at the tenth anniversary of the SPI, an auspicious and disruptive anniversary of the Order. Also present at our night-time tea was another nun, Sister Third Secret of Fatima, a close cohort of Mother Abyss and a founder nun and member of SPI. Sister Third Secret of Fatima (Saint Fatima told two prophetic, apocalyptic secrets but never revealed her third secret) is acknowledged as being the most highly politicised and most intelligent of the nuns. Fashion is crucial to the SPI and much of their impact in Australia is because the traditional black and white habits have not been seen for 20 years and so invoke a certain nostalgia in people. Sister Fatima staged a radical fashion coup at the tenth anniversary, presaging an accompanying political schizm in the order. This radical new order, called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Reform Movement (Spirm) made their appearance at dinner wearing modern habits. These post-Vatican II outfits are made up of sensible flat brown shoes, thick stockings, concertina-pleat mid-length skirts ("Short skirts are the end of any order," puts in Mother), blouses and cardigans all in dreadful shades of brown and beige. This topped by a vestigal veil. Apparently the scene caused was terrifying, with nuns turning on each other. Spirm accused the old order of having become the monster they were intended to caricature. There were too many rules (lesbians could not become sisters but had to become monks) and restrictions (liquor is banned at luncheons) and hierarchy in the traditional order. Mother adds: "There's a dignity to ordering people about." Spirm, although anarchistic, does have one rule: No straights. This order publishes an annual calendar, drawing on 15 religions for daily observances. I asked Mother Abyss what holds the SPI together now and true to form, she says, "They're all waiting to do me in. That's what keeps most orders together." I asked Mother why her order does not have showy postcards and calendars like the American nuns and she says, "We are not against commercialising, we are just very dreary." Mother tells me how Sister Gloria Hole stole $3 000 of collected Aids funds from the order, adding "You can't trust anyone from any church with any money." These stories of politicking and pocketing start to sound a lot like real church talk. One hundred and twenty nuns have passed through the order and a dozen have been lost to plague. There is fond talk of carpet wounds from the thurible at Sister Daisy Chain's funeral; gossip about lunatic nuns and sex-worker nuns; homage to international sisters like San Francisco's black nun Sister Freda People and the visiting English sister Sister Lily of the Valium and lost Jewish sisters Sister Moses of the Parted Cheeks and Sister Miriam Gaza constantly occupied by Israeli soldiers. There is also Sister Desmond Three Three, who is a real-life undertaker from Fiji and Sister Nina Shemoans, a Hindu lesbian sister. The SPI order now admits lesbians to any position, a lesson learned from their reformed sisters. It only gets familiar to a South African context when Mother Abyss tells me of an encounter with skinheads. One night in habit on her bicycle, a certain nun (I ask, "Was it you?" and Mother says, "In humility, we mustn't say.") so, a certain nun was attacked by furious skinheads, thrown in the street and beaten and kicked. While they were abusing the nun, the skinheads were shouting: "You shouldn't dress up like a church, mate!" And while Mother Abyss relates this, in a ridiculous, funny and dry Vatican voice, I sense the strength and resolve and remarkable dignity of the man inside the carefully pinned wimple. Fabian Loschiavo is a strange treasure of Australian culture and has distinctly influenced both gay and straight societal notions and politics. The image of a smiling rightwing politician shaking hands with a dignified and transgressive Mother Abyss was national front page news. Mother's career flourished and the politician disappeared. There is a one-hour Fabian Loschiavo Mother Abyss documentary nationally broadcast in Australia which deals with the deeply spiritual and brilliant man and his loopy order respectfully. I have seen Mother Abyss in a pink habit singing Volare accompanying herself on a squeezebox, leading a tour of gay Sydney city centre. And walking the parade with a holy relic of gay matrimony - the urinal from a destroyed popular cruising toilet, "where so many unions were consecrated". I've oohed and aahed with Mother Abyss over her enormous collection of religious tzatzkes which fill her house, once fire bombed. There is a memorable image of Mother Abyss in Pieta pose with a dying young, HIV-positive man in the National Art Gallery in Canberra. Mother Abyss is a weirder-than-New-York character whose rituals can dramatically alter a desperate faggot existence. I know. After tea I asked Mother Abyss to accompany me to a sex emporium The Toolshed where I bought an anal dilater and asked mother to bless it. With amazing low-key grace, Mother launched into a blessing ceremony, which ended with a plea for "lasting elasticity". Leaving The Toolshed, it struck me how diverse our lives are, how differently people in South Africa would react to Mother Abyss in her flowing vestments accompanying Princess Menorah in stilletoed virginity along the main road. How perverse it feels to be a South African in drag smiled at and greeted by passers-by. Mother Abyss bade me farewell with a kiss and parting words of recruitment
to join the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - she's such a nun at heart.
And what a heart. A previous indulgence
|
|
||
|
| |
|
| www.q.co.za |
|
our years ago at the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Fair Day, I had a stall selling
my cock-printed textiles. At one point I looked over the trestle table
to see a full-blown nun in traditional habit inspecting a Catholic chasuble
I had printed with huge cocks and sighing saints.
