I met Harley at the Adelaide Fringe festival in 2020. We were sharing a venue in the Garden of Unearthly Delights; I was doing my standup show, he was performing in a group circus show. I was all set to move to the UK later that year to become a West End star (or something), so I wasn\u2019t looking for a relationship.<\/p>\n
One night I sat in on the circus show and, when I saw Harley in action, I was smitten. About halfway in he performed this stunning rope routine and there was something fundamentally sexy about him rolling around in the air, shirtless and sweaty, coiling and unfurling that rope around him. Obviously, I thought it was really cool art etc, but also, you know \u2013 hot.<\/p>\n
The couple backstage at the 2021 Melbourne comedy festival at a Greta Thunberg-themed lip-sync battle<\/p>\n
When we met in the shared dressing room after the show, I just assumed he was straight. Later we got talking in the artist bar and I casually mentioned that I was going to a Disney-themed night at the local gay bar, Mary\u2019s Poppin. I was delighted when Harley said he\u2019d like to join me \u2013 sending a very strong \u201cnot straight\u201d signal \u2013 and I was further encouraged when his circus friends politely declined to come along, presumably to give us some space.<\/p>\n
When we arrived, drag queens were busting out Disney tunes on stage and I was excited that this handsome, masculine circus acrobat seemed interested in me. We muddled our way through some awkward get-to-know-you conversation and some cute giggling, then were interrupted by an annoying stranger who kept talking to us about how he was studying psychology and thought Harley clearly had daddy issues because I was so much older than him (rude!). Eventually he took a hint and left us alone, and Harley and I got to sharing stories about our lives, our families and our passion for what we do.<\/p>\n
It finally reached a point where I couldn\u2019t wait any longer. With a banger from Wicked playing in the background, I initiated our first kiss \u2026 and Harley kissed me back. Which was really very nice of him.<\/p>\n
Everything would have been perfect except that this was March 2020 and the world was going to shit. The week after our kiss, Covid cancelled pretty much everything, including that year\u2019s Melbourne comedy festival. After my fringe run finished I flew to Brisbane \u2013 even though the comedy festival there had been cancelled, too \u2013 and spent the week in hotel lockdown, simultaneously losing my mind at the news and feeling giddy whenever I thought about Harley.<\/p>\n
\u2018We trust each other, even if we\u2019re not always sure of what we\u2019re doing\u2019: the couple at Banff in Canada<\/p>\n
Before I left Adelaide, I\u2019d drunkenly sent him a text message which read, \u201cHARLEY MANN YOU MAKE ME HAPPY AND I\u2019M GOING TO MISS YOU A LOT.\u201d His first reply was \u201cAll caps \u2026 very yelly\u201d, but then followed up with: \u201cI\u2019m going to miss you too and look forward to you getting back to Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I finally did make it home to Melbourne, we got stuck into falling in love. This proved to be a wonderful distraction from the end of the world. I was confused from experiencing the horror about what the pandemic was doing to society and the excitement and joy of getting to know this brilliant new person, all at the same time.<\/p>\n
I think I realised this wasn\u2019t some fringe\/pandemic fling when, one night during lockdown, we were having a (definitely illegal) lounge room disco in his share house.<\/p>\n
There was a moment when I looked across the dancefloor and saw Harley smiling back at me, dancing and laughing with everyone, and I just knew he was the one. I didn\u2019t know anything else about what was going to happen to the world or what my life was going to look like anytime soon; all I knew was this passionate, sweet, kind and funny guy had come into my life out of nowhere, and I felt so incredibly lucky to have him by my side.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve recently celebrated our sixth anniversary. The nature of what we do means we spend a fair amount of time apart. I spent six months in Tasmania shooting Deadloch<\/a> in 2022, then Harley relocated to far north Queensland for a job for a couple of years, plus we\u2019re both regularly touring all over the country and the world \u2013 but somehow we\u2019ve managed to make it work. We trust each other, even if we\u2019re not always sure of what we\u2019re doing. We always return to the idea that yes, we do love each other very much, and we\u2019re in this for the long haul.<\/p>\n Tell us the moment you knew<\/p>\n Share your experience<\/p>\n Share your love story<\/p>\n Do you have a romantic realisation you’d like to share? From quiet domestic scenes to dramatic revelations, Guardian Australia wants to hear about the moment you knew you were in love<\/p>\n Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For alternative ways to get in touch securely please see our tips guide<\/a>.Show more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I met Harley at the Adelaide Fringe festival in 2020. We were sharing a venue in the Garden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-500779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}