Beau Lamarre-Condon former NSW Police Officer’s writing was first featured at the Born This Way Lady Gaga tour in Sydney 2014 when he threw a letter to her on stage. Remnants of the letter were published in the Sydney Morning Herald that year.1
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Dear Lady Gaga,
It’s me again. However it may be some time since you last read a letter from me. Circumstances have changed as I hope not to abolish the relationship we had established so publicly. I don’t want to create a panorama of pastiche Queer yearnings so I will keep this concise.
Vestiges of correct Australian decisions is where my family found themselves. A socially verdant suburb blinked together by a serpentine of ready-made homes with in-built memories. We were placed on the spit of a bay namesaked by the aphrodisiac, oyster, and a national park named by the system with no foreseeable abdication, Royal. Kirrawee.
Here I stage my next big coming-out for there are only so many gay guy jobs available to the imagination we were sold by you. The heterodox of the mundane is expansive but my slate of options is becoming slim-thick; flight attendant, nurse, media grifter, social influencer, DJ or artist. Notice how I stopped at artist, I was lost, but not a lostie.
The singing of a Lorikeet had pulled my focus onto my balcony, the curse of being embodied or reincarnated as a bird with the ability to strain only one musical note meant this ineffability manifested on its outside. As a rainbow to distract from the prison of its own body. Personally, I think we can dismiss birds as a stoical attempt at normalising heights; a phenomena people on a regional express flight to Melbourne romanticise.
However, my disdain was not only understood but energetically felt. Meaning this bird with almost the brute force of a grecian southerly wind behind it throttled towards me. Here I was knocked unconscious.
Dusty, arid, harsh, remote — this was the hospital I had woken up in. Ads on the back of toilet doors: Know The Signs Of Coercive Control. The reflection revealed my face covered in a flecked blue, a cross between my State of Origin and the body of water I could see from my room. Here is where I would receive my diagnosis.
Are you positive? I was met with an umbrage only a doctor could prescribe as he would say something like you are bleeding blue, you’re just born this way. My finger pulse oximeter whirled into a new BPM, the reality forming of what lies ahead for me. This sempiternal delivery was exonerated by the doctor saying something like nah come on now regulate regulate just go on the website there’s a form, not much you can do about it.
Right, I responded, attempting not to see the gang stalking of medical staff in the corridor at the door of my room. Whispering en-yūgen, contents probably full of evangelical pablum at my results.
Disabled, LGBTQI+, Greater Sydney or Western Sydney, Rural, CALD (whatever that means), Person of Colour, English Second Language, these are some of the options on the website to become a cop. They would never ask this of an artist, or a DJ — especially in this country. I scroll a bit further, intermittently peering above the horizon of my laptop into the forest in which that red-eyed flyer escaped.
Remixing the KPIs, clicking and unselecting all the boxes; what it could mean to be Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Person even just for the training or even a gay one. But I’m trying not to get too thorny and nebula-eyed about what it means to be born this way.
The universe isn’t always sending you a meme Beau. But why can’t I submit my blood-results to the apps I use?
I can’t wait to rid myself of the flâneur I adopted around the Shire and embrace the transience of stop resisting stop resisting stop resisting.
It’s who I am.
I want to be proud. Let them know. Like you said.
How the universe sent me on a fixed path from birth to become who I am today.
It’s in my DNA.
I now understand what it meant all those years ago when you sung those songs.
When you put on your uniform, I submit to mine too.
I am full of passion.
Full of an abstruse Blue, that you can’t put your head under.
You’ll know exactly when you see me, that I was born this way.
Gaga, you're not just my idol but LITERALLY my saviour.
Love from Beau Lamarre. Xxx
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[1] Henrietta Cook, ‘How Lady Gaga Gave Fan the Courage to Come out at Her Concert.’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 2014, https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/how-lady-gaga-gave-fan-the-courage-to-come-out-at-her-concert-20140901-10b5q0.html (accessed July 2024).