Welcome back to the Absolut Show All Your Colours Tour, the most wholesome tour you’ve ever witnessed.
For a little over a month, we’ve been venturing to rural towns across Australia to hear the stories of LGBTQIA+ folks who grew up in towns with tiny populations, ultimately bringing Mardi Gras with us to host a party dedicated to each person we meet.
For the first time since the tour commenced, we flitted over the Bass Strait down to New Norfolk, Tasmania, to meet Henry, a queer transgender man with a passion for acting and theatre.
“I didn’t even know what a trans person was,” Henry admits. “I feel like if me at 15 was able to look and be like, ‘That person exists, this identity is a real thing’, I would’ve had some clarity on what the hell was going on.”
Henry called his mum in the middle of the night and had a heartfelt conversation about his realised self, and the reception was everything a kid could hope for.
“I had a phone call in the middle of the night, very upset and emotional,” Henry’s Mum recalls. “He broke down and said, ‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you.’”
“Henry was just crying at three in the morning, and said, ‘Mum, I think I’ve decided I want to live as man,’ and I thought, ‘Oh thank god, thank god you’re alright.’”
The second-eldest of three brothers, Henry has nothing but praise for his brood: “Mum is just this wonderful matriarch of my entire family because we’re all just a bunch of boys who don’t know what’s going on half the time.
“Since my Dad passed away, especially, she has been raising us – two kids with special needs, me with all my arty, trans bullshit.”
Despite younger years of uncertainty, Henry’s perception of his true self has rarely wavered.
“When I was coming out as trans, I had a huge amount of people that knew me before I started going by male pronouns and had my name changed, but who I was, I was just me.
“I’ve always just been Henry.”
To stay updated with how the rest of the tour pans out, head on over here.
