Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships by Juno Roche

Author:Juno Roche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2018-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

KUCHENGA

I’m travelling to interview someone recommended to me: Kuchenga. Kuchenga is a writer and activist, and ironically (to me) lives on a roundabout that I used to drive past most days in slow traffic. I’d wonder: ‘Who lives in a house like that?’ ‘Who lives in a house on the roundabout?’

Kuchenga does. She has a strange little triangular house, with triangular rooms, on the edge of the roundabout. As I enter her domain, I feel instantly like we are in a story full of content. And as soon as she starts to unfurl her words, I remain almost spellbound for the next two hours or so. Unfurl her words she does with a kind of languid confidence that is sonically beautiful. All the way through the interview she brushes her hair, occasionally patting it.

I don’t really know you at all so I wonder if you could say a few things about you?

Kuchenga: Sure. I’m 32 in a couple of weeks. A writer – I did a creative writing course with the Open University when I got out of rehab in 2014.

What were you in rehab for? (Do you mind talking about it?)

Kuchenga: Absolutely. No, I don’t mind at all. [Kuchenga is incredibly definite when she is definite. Her speech is only punctuated by the different noises coming from a line of phones laid out in front of her on her daybed.] I was an alcoholic and I was deeply into the chemsex scene from 2103 onwards, the crystal meth. A methedrone whirlwind swept me up. I was working in bars. My recovery feels like a miracle. It’s been 20 months clean and sober.

Congratulations, I know what that means.

Kuchenga: The fact that I am alive after all of that means everything.

For me it’s coming up to 17 years of clean time. It felt at times that I’d never get clean, so I know how amazing each clean day is. I do a lot of work around HIV and hear many conversations, certainly conversations around PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) and PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis), which are centred around the chemsex environment(s), but it’s not a world that I know. My drugs of choice were fairly binary – heroin and crack cocaine – and my addiction was very textbook.

Kuchenga: Do you mind if I just empty my bag? You’ve reminded me about my PrEP [she lifts her bag and empties the contents out in front of her]. I just need to get everything in order.

Chemsex came way after me. It isn’t a world or language I know. Can you tell me about your experience in it?

Kuchenga: I was presenting as a high femme gay man at the time. I was socially transitioning. From 2012 onwards I was the highest femme gay male I could be in terms of presenting. I was too scared of what was happening. I could feel this urgency inside. I would be travelling on the train from North London to go out to work in bars and doing my makeup on the train, through Tottenham.

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