Teenagers by Chris Brickell

Author:Chris Brickell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2017-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Pashes, Physicians and Policemen

One of Doris Carne’s brothers usually watched over her when she attended church dances. In his role of MC he glanced in Doris’s direction now and then. ‘I wasn’t able to get up to any nonsense there!’, she said. ‘They had me fenced in, I tell you.’ But soon something happened to lessen her family’s concern: Doris made friends with a young gay chap by the name of Harold. ‘Whenever he needed a female on his arm, I was the one! We even danced on the stage at the Town Hall together, a demonstration of ballroom dancing. And when I was young I always felt very safe with him.’127 Doris and Harold roamed the streets and dance halls of Dunedin, and Doris’s brothers stayed out of the way. Doris’s parents knew Harold and trusted him. This friendship opened new doors at a time when few New Zealanders openly discussed the topic of homosexuality – but Doris’s parents sensed Harold’s secret: ‘I think my mother was quite happy because she might’ve known more than I did!’128 Doris’ and Harold’s story hints that changing ideas about same-sex relationships accompanied the new patterns of dating and mixed-gender socialising. Some parents, including Doris’s, regarded a gay friend as a reliable consort and a safe pair of hands.

Attachments between girls and among boys also took a range of forms during these decades. The ‘smash’ or ‘pash’ had emerged in the dormitories and classrooms of girls’ schools in Western Europe and North America during the nineteenth century, survived the weakening of gender-segregated cultures and became noticeably apparent in New Zealand during the 1930s.129 At Wellington East Girls’ College, Shirley Albiston’s friend Nancy ‘was very thrilled’ when she realised that Olga, a student from Russia, ‘had such a “pash” on her’. Opposites attract, Shirley figured, with ‘Olga so passionate and Nancy so reticent’.130 Pashes could be fleeting, but sometimes they turned into a friendship of a more enduring kind. Shirley had her own intense attachment to Nancy: ‘I have leant on her, all the time she has been a kind of protection for me from the outside world’, Shirley confided in her diary. ‘It was like creeping inside a good strong hollow tree during a storm – you know you are safe, the tree can never bend.’131

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