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I arrived back from holiday in Bali a little bloated, a little sunburned, and extremely starved for a drink other than Bintang. There’s nothing wrong with Bintang. It’s cheap and plentiful, tastier than a VB or a Coopers, and if you’re lucky you’ll have a choice—small or large. (Always go for small; large heats up too fast.) But much of the time, it’s the only alcoholic beverage on the menu, and after two-and-a-half weeks of near-exclusive Bintangs, I was desperate for something else. This is why, on my first night back out in Melbourne, I had five different kinds of alcohol, six if you count orange wine and chardonnay as different, which I didn’t at the time. On the night in question, I was operating under the strong conviction that I “wasn’t drinking.” This conviction, or delusion, lasted up until 2:30am, when I went to bed after my sixth and final drink, and even into the next day at a yoga class, when—with the hangover I did not believe I had—my heart began racing after exerting myself in child’s pose.
After the orange wine and the chardonnay, which I drank at the pub nearest my house, I moved onto an interim martini at a friend’s apartment. Being in a residential setting contributed to my ideation about sobriety. Is it really a martini if you drink it out of a double-walled Bodum latte glass? This friend didn’t have any olives, either, so we used the brine from a jar of pickles instead. The resulting beverage was “dill forward,” as my friend politely put it, like eating a cheeseburger alongside the martini. Oh well—at least we’d almost lined our stomachs.
As well as cocktails, I’d been craving lesbians. I’d gone to Indonesia with my partner Kat. In the lead up to the trip, we enjoyed saying “Indonesia” until we were gleefully called out by a friend. “Um,” she said. “You’re not going to Indonesia with your partner. You’re going to Bali with your girlfriend.” In Bali, though, almost without discussing it, Kat and I became “just friends.” We had done the same in isolated parts of France and Greece—slipped into the closet, quietly, reflexively, not because of any overt homophobia, but because it’s easier to play it safe when you’re unsure of on-the-ground sentiment towards gays. The same applies to my home town in Queensland, where I’d hesitate to walk hand-in-hand with a partner. In Indonesia, there is the added consideration of a new criminal code, due to take effect in 2026, that, among other things, prohibits extra-marital sex. Because same-sex marriage is illegal in Indonesia, by default gay sex will be illegal too. You can only be arrested after being reported by an immediate family member, so queer Indonesians with phobic parents or siblings are the most exposed. Tourists, much less so. It’s complicated—and there are better places to learn about it than a Narrm-based gossip column—but the sense of impending, legally-sanctioned homophobia does give one pause before a tipsy poolside pash. Apparently PDA isn’t much of a thing in Indonesia anyway, even if you’re straight. It’s something drunk Aussies do with the missos—a classic tourist faux pas.
It was therefore extremely difficult to spot lesbians in Bali. Lesbians walked among us, we were sure, but since we were pretending, they were likely pretending, too. But on our first few days in Ubud, Kat and I were snapping a selfie in the monkey forest when a pair of unmistakable dykes in matching basketball jerseys swept in and offered to take it for us. One was tall and blonde with an undercut, the other was short and dark-haired. They spoke in a friendly American drawl, and clearly knew we were of their ilk—understanding passed between us, unspoken, ancient. They took the photo and vanished into the jungle. This was the first and last time we saw confirmed lesbians, and technically, it wasn’t even confirmed. Gaydar malfunctions in 30 degree heat. In flip-flops and a sunburn, every Westerner resembles either Kathryn Worth in Unrelated (2007) or Emma Thompson in that photograph with Hannah Gadsby.
One evening, Kat and I became fixated on a wine bar called BACARI in downtown Ubud, where we imagined we would meet other lesbians. In images online, BACARI looked dark, chic, and minimal, with a goopy painting of a woman with her tits out above one of the booths. Very Narrm. Gearing up for the night ahead, we went on Hinge and swiped through: straight cis men who had set their preferences to “woman seeking women” in order to catch unsuspecting dykes who might be turned onto heterosexuality; gorgeous, tanned ladies in flowing white gowns—influencers and wellness gurus—who I figured, problematically, as the kind of fake lesbians who would date the men pretending to be women; intrepid backpacker girls in cut-offs and shaved heads; a Melbourne hipster with stick-and-poke tattoos. Where were all these people? Why hadn’t we met any of them? We had to get to BACARI.
Unfortunately, at the time we formulated this plan, we were already at a bar/restaurant in Ubud, trapped in a kind of compound from which it was difficult to leave. Earlier that day, we had flagged with the gracious host at our hotel that we might like to go to a restaurant that night. She offered us a drop-off and pick-up at a local place, highly recommended by her personally, called “Bebek Joni.” The van turned out to be a party bus—no, a party truck, with a small cab, huge speakers blaring pop music, and a row of seats in the tray. Three glamorous sisters, also hotel guests, climbed onto the tray and ignored us completely.
As soon as we arrived, we realised we’d been tricked. An enormous operation, Bebek Joni consisted of several gigantic pagodas set within a rice field and luscious gardens. Each table was on small raised platforms surrounded by moats; you were separated from other patrons by several metres of water, as if to stifle any fellow feeling that might arise between jilted diners. The menus were vibrant, lengthy, and full of stupidly expensive Western delights. Mosquitoes swarmed up from the moat. We ordered starters—samosas and spring rolls—and they came out tiny and rock-hard. Teenage waiters strolled around the grounds, lackadaisical, unbothered by the patrons. While I kept watch, Kat concealed our food in the bushes. We analysed our dejection. Did our host—with whom we had had long, expansive conversations—think we were just like every other tourist? Did she think we came to Bali to eat spaghetti bolognese? Finally, we flagged a passing teen, paid our bill, ordered Gojeks, dashed past the party truck driver, and leapt onto the back of the scooters.
BACARI is on Jalan Goutama street, a long mall in central Ubud that is extremely popular with tourists—think Bourke Street crossed with Diagon Alley, but make it tropical. It feels like it should be pedestrian-only but, as is standard in Bali, scooters and even the odd car zip through the narrow street. We dismounted outside an acai bowl place, which seated its patrons in low-slung swings. They spooned up their slop like complacent toddlers, rocking gently, with the ambient discontent of tourists indulging in treats. We wove in and out of hand-holding straight couples and squabbling families. Suddenly, the crowds thinned. Facing us, at last, was BACARI. It had large panes of glass enclosing it on street level, and through these windows we could clearly see that there was absolutely nobody inside. The only semblance of life was several disconsolate waiters slumped at the entrance smoking cigarettes. Either side, backpacker pubs heaved with drunken Australians. In instant, silent agreement, we kept right on walking, then went back to our hotel for a Bintang.
I told all this to my friends, buzzing from the pickled martini and two wines, as we Ubered to Flippy’s, which is not a mirage like BACARI but a real queer bar in Brunswick. Flippy’s looks like a chic nightlife hotspot from a 2000’s New York City rom-com. It has purple and lime-green walls, immaculate mood lighting, and white pleather couches. There are always fresh flowers on the bar, and the toilets host some of the city’s finest loo graffiti (bawdy sapphic odes dominate, naturally). This is where I had drinks number four and five. When we arrived, it was early, 9pm, and the bar seemed quiet for a Saturday night. This is the big question in the queer scene at the moment. Why Has Flippy’s Been So Quiet Lately? It’s not just a Flippy’s thing, of course—bars all over Melbourne are quiet in the winter—but, because the cooler months are also slow for gossip, it is a conversation the community likes to have. There are two popular working theories. The first is not very interesting and goes like this: everyone’s broke. Flippy’s clientele seem to be mostly youngish, underemployed queers. It’s not exactly a bar for successful Southside realtors. If there are gainfully-employed people there, they work in philanthropy or policy or, like, community mental health. Still, having no money doesn’t usually stop queers from propping up bars. Queer people have their priorities straight, meaning cocktail budgets are usually the last to go. But, lately, seeing as we’re all spending three-quarters of our income on rent and the rest on bills, even a happy hour schooner is out of reach.
The second theory—less likely but also less depressing—is “Beans.” Beans is a new bar on Smith Street in Fitzroy that bills itself as “Melbourne's first dedicated lesbian, trans, non-binary and neurodivergent friendly bar.” There is a lot to unpack here. Most gravely, this is Flippy’s erasure. Excuse me, Beans—Flippy’s exists! And before Flippy’s, there was Girl Bar! And before Girl Bar, there was Val’s Coffee Lounge! (And so it goes.) Beans’ ahistorical claim is softened only by the addition of “neurodivergent” to the tag line. There’s no way Beans is the first queer bar in the city. There is a strong possibility that it’s the first queer bar explicitly targeted towards neurodivergent people as well as lesbian, trans, and non-binary people. But this lets it off on a technicality. When I dropped by recently for a late afternoon margarita, the owner said she’d “heard of Flippy’s” but had never been. Hmmm. Nursing my marg, which tasted somehow like Le Tan Coconut Sunscreen, I looked around the establishment. A cold, white space bedecked with plastic ferns and Edison bulbs, it had the feel of an unusually large bathroom, perhaps decorated by Anko. Flippy’s quiet months have coincided with Beans’ entry to the scene, and though they’ve surely cornered different markets, I couldn’t help but wonder: have we lost some of our own to a bar whose sense of queer herstory is as lax as its interior decorating?
Beans-derived or not, the lull that night at Flippy’s made it easy to get a drink—too easy. Usually, you have to inch forward, pressed on all sides by bolshier punters, until you get close enough to yell your order across the bar. But on this night, it was so calm that the action of acquiring drinks barely even registered. I remember standing up and, moments later, settling back on the couch with a hot toddy, which steamed from its mug like a science experiment. Between these two actions, there’s a blank in my memory, as if the whole operation happened subliminally. This is also why I thought I “wasn’t drinking.” It’s useful to wait in a queue—the bigger the better. To get through the line you have to make a commitment to drinking, and by the time you reach the front there can be no self-delusions.
The thing is, I was still kicking myself for not getting a martini at Naughty Nuri’s, a famous barbecue rib place in Ubud. Nuri’s is a timber shack on a busy street that nods towards French bistro while cheekily undercutting the facade with ramshackle Balinese stylings; the walls are covered in photographs of celebrities and framed sketches of martini glasses, but the food is served on brightly-coloured plastic plates. Out the front of the restaurant, at least on the night we went, there was an open fire in a half drum tended by a pair of middle-aged ladies, who handled the grill like dads at a BBQ, chatting and gossiping, a bubble of private good humour forming around them. To one side, clear plastic boxes were packed with marinating pieces of chicken and pork. Every so often, they would fish out a dripping chunk of meat and lower it into the flames. Ribs were served with half a lime and a side of potatoes. They were delicious—fatty, impossibly juicy, the sweet marinade transformed by fire into a sticky, caramelised shell.
Also on the menu: martinis. The pairing may seem unnatural, but martinis are ideally ice cold and astringent, perfect for cutting through the richness of the meat. I found out later that Anthony Bourdain once spent a charmed evening at Nuri’s and claimed their martinis to be the best outside of NYC. But on the night I visited, I “didn’t feel like drinking.” I was in the middle of writing my previous column, the one on Frank Moorhouse, and despite the fact that Moorhouse would never have missed an opportunity for a novel martini experience, in that moment the Narrm grindset took over. As I ordered a coconut juice, I had the sensation of some other force speaking through me—a steely, obsessive work ethic, which had, until this moment, been successfully banished.
At Flippy’s that evening, the opposite was happening. I had arrived back in the city ready to knuckle down: to work my job, write on my days off, hit the gym three times a week, cook dinner every night, watch only Mubi films (not get sucked into The Idol or the new season of And Just Like That…), keep up with the chore roster at my share house, check in with all my friends, call my parents more, get up early, not drink too much, and mindfully enjoy my leisure time. I was in that post-holiday state of suspended reality, during which it seems possible to radically alter one’s entire life and personality. Everything you do feels fluid, experimental—a bold step in a new direction, even when you’re treading the same old ground. So there I was, tipsy at the lesbian bar, convinced that I was gearing back up for the rat race, even as I started on my fifth drink. A friend had bought it for me, and who was I to refuse? It was a blush-pink Paloma in a tall, cold glass. The holiday spirit could not be suppressed.
Around 10pm, a wave of people entered Flippy’s. At first they seemed like regular punters. But even for a dyke bar, they appeared to be unusually tall and strapping, carrying about their persons a green whiff of grass and the metallic tang of blood. Heads turned as they swaggered up to the bar. The Gougers had arrived. The Gougers are part of Melbourne’s pub footy league, a network of Australian Rules Football teams, each attached to a pub, who compete in rambunctious winter matches. They used to be affiliated with the Railway Hotel in East Brunswick, but recently switched to Flippy’s, and are now called the Bar Flippy’s Eye Gougers. There had been games that day, and players were commiserating and celebrating in pubs all over the inner north. I wondered if, eventually, Beans would have a pub footy team of its own, and if Bar Flippy’s Eye Gougers would defeat, say, the Beans’ Bar Baddies in a nail-biting quarter-final. I’d watch that game. Maybe I’d even play in it—the Gougers welcome all types, no matter how unsporty. As one player said to me that night, to join the Gouge all you need is footy boots and Ambulance cover.
I was due to meet up with Kat, and made my exit just before midnight. In the Uber, I dozed off a little, replaying holiday memories of scooting down mountain roads on our patched-up rental, Kat driving and me on the back, my hands slipped between the buttons of their shirt and resting on warm skin. Kat was at their place, setting off fireworks for their housemate’s birthday. I arrived just as the first one shot up and broke apart, raining down a shower of red sparks. They handed me my final drink: mango wine, thick and sweet, mixed with sparkling water. The night grew cold, and we huddled together on the couch under blankets. The conversation turned to the rest of the weekend. What was everyone up to? Going out, staying in? “Is anyone doing Dry July?” someone asked. I had forgotten all about Dry July, but just then, it struck me as a great idea. “I’m doing it,” I replied. It would be easy. After all, I hadn’t had a drink all night.
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