From shy boy to hi boys! (1987-2007)

Friday, April 20th, 2007

How could I possibly have let the twentieth anniversary of my coming out as gay go by without so much as an acknowledgement of it on my blog? Yet I did. It was actually a few days before my 20th birthday back in 1987 that I came out to someone for the very first time. I’m two months late. Perhaps, given the nature of the anniversary, I should say fashionably late, sweetie…

I came out to my ex-girlfriend before anyone else. She has since turned out to be a raging lesbian (she was always, I must say, a bit on the butch side) who called me up after not having been in touch for over a decade, a few years back, to ask me for my sperm. I declined to provide her with my reproductive fluids but was secretly pleased and complimented she thought of me as tadpole provider after all those years. She obviously considered me good stock. That, or she just wanted her kid to grow up to be six foot two with an aptitude for language skills…

But anyway…

So much has happened in the past twenty years. Some of it fantastic, some of it… less so. I’ve fought major battles and lost as many, no doubt, as I won. I’ve seen ex-boyfriends rack up like stamps on a score card, breaking my heart only to be forgotten within years if not months or even weeks. I’ve had two long-term relationships, well, by today’s standards—certainly by gay standards of the past—one of them being five years long and that was four years too many, the other coming up to nine years of damn fine milky bar goodness. I met SunnyD in the eleventh year of my regeneration as an out gay man. He’s been good to me and for me.

I think I was being told by unseen forces to remember this spectacular life event today when I started listening to Barry Manilow’s I Write the Songs and I Made It Through the Rain–especially the last one, wow, that song is pertinent to the lives of most every gay man I have ever known—followed by Scissor Sisters’ Take Your Mama Out and Erasure’s live rendition of Oh L’Amour blended with their cover of Baccara’s Yes Sir I Can Boogie.

I’m gobsmacked that I let this anniversary go by without a murmur until now. I intend to rectify the situation with a party, and soon. I must ask forgiveness from the gods of queerness—a libation of Bolinger, no doubt, poured over a copy of Vogue. Or perhaps I will buy that statuette of Madonna.

I’m so gay. Not all the time, only when I want to be. That’s freedom, choice, electing to be whole and true. And I love it. No offence intended to my straight friends, but I would hate to be straight because, well, because I’m not. It isn’t about the bedroom, what you do in it. It’s about so much more than that.

Talking of virgins—okay, Madonna, like a virgin touched for the very first time, tenuous I know, bear with me—I lost mine, virginity that is, after I came out. Not long after, mind, but it was definitely not before I’d accepted the idea and voiced it as personal truth. The kitchen table of an Anglican chaplaincy in Bangor may not sound very romantic—and it wasn’t—but it was certainly an eye-opener that proved to me everything I ever felt and knew was natural, and right. I was, for the first time in my life, complete as a person. I was finally able to ditch years of self-loathing and bullying by others, to build a confidence I had never known or thought I could achieve before.

I went from shy boy to “hi boys!” in a matter of weeks. This being 1987 it wasn’t long before I was parading around central London in BOY cycle shorts, baseball cap and heaps of attitude that said, what are YOU looking at? I would never allow myself to be boxed in, made to lie, ever again. I threw the expectations of others out the window.

I Am What I Am.

I never looked back. Je ne regrette rien. Piaf. Now there was a torch singer, a true diva. Don’t get me wrong, I wish the terrible things that happened to me along the way of my life journey had never been. For the most part, though, I didn’t choose them. I didn’t make mistakes, other than to walk down this dark alley on the way home, or make friends with people who weren’t trustworthy or honourable.

The bad things in my life chose me. A man across the dancefloor taking a shine. Someone seeing ‘mug’ written on my forehead and going for gold…. The test of a life, though, isn’t in how often you’ve been a victim or victor. The truth is, it’s how you respond to everything life throws at you that makes you who you are. If you’re alive today, if you’re breathing air, you’re a winner.

I would not change anything I did, or anything that was done to me. If I did, if I were able to go back in time, I would risk unravelling who I am today, losing the friends I have, the lover I hold so dear. I could lose everything by wiping out one abusive event, one past relationship. No way.

Why?

Because I am happy with who I am. It is good to be me. I am not only a survivor, I am the champion of my own destiny. I make mistakes but so does everyone. Here’s to me, in a sentence that may be construed as egotistical but hopefully not inexcusably so. Here’s to gayness, and my contribution, small as it may be, to the overall shape and colour of it around the world today.

Now, where’s my glass? Make sure it’s got a straw in it and a cherry on a stick.

categories: gay

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12 comments on “From shy boy to hi boys! (1987-2007)”

Spicy Cauldron Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 11:46 am

I guess I should do the speech proper now. Well, thanks to darling D, obviously and my Mum and Dad… Dolly, may she rest in peace… Heaven nightclub… G-A-Y nightclub, for being the place I met my darling D…London… Manchester… Preston, albeit all the gay pubs and clubs were and remain tacky and incestuously cliquey in that place…. Khlari, for showing me you don’t have to be gay to be a quirksome outsider and proud… the many ladies down the years who offered to take the turkey baster, and my apologies for having had to say no on every occasion to date…. the men who treated me well… the men who were honest…. Pet Shop Boys, Annie Lennox, Marc Almond, Boy George, Andy Bell, Jake Shears…. BOY clothes…. Soho… Durex… Mates… Gay Times, for featuring me as the first-ever editor of a gay online community in the UK… Attitude magazine, for employing me for three years as its first-ever technology editor… Boyz, for having me as its first-ever gay website reviewer for well over three years with my own column… Lowdown magazine, for being fun while it lasted… Planet Patrol and Dobedo, two great online communities I helped shape…. QVision, for being great experience in web journalism and for introducing me to the guy who designed the cover for Duran Duran’s Rio album but not for making me chase my pay every month… Madonna… Cher… Sigourney Weaver… Priscilla Queen of the Desert… To Wong Foo… Wayne G…. Darren, for several moments of reasonable happiness in the early 90s… and, of course, the lovely people who, like myself, share some of their luvverly photos on Flickr publicly so cheeky rogues like me can borrow them with due acknowledgements, as here…

Um… I could go on. But I won’t. It could get even more glittery and undoubtedly rather tawdry.

Spicy Cauldron Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 11:49 am

Tell you what, though, reading the above I realise my contribution to the UK gay community has been somewhat historic at stages. And nobody really knows about it. Unless they read this blog entry.

MsDemmie Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

That is quite a CV you have there !

Congratulations on your anniversary sounds like a damned good excuse for a party.

khlari Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Say it out loud! You’re gay (and a quirky outsider!) and you’re proud ! I know about what you’ve done, because I’ve been around for a lot of it! A lot has changed in the last twenty years for anyone who is considered ‘different’ in any way, some of it fantastic, some of it awful…but we’ve been around to witness it, document it, and above all live it. Happy Anniversary!

khlari Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

And I too fully intend to have “Je ne regrette rien” on my gravestone, when I expire at the age of 107,(by then) illegal cigarette in one hand and bottle of Bollinger in the other…….it’s all about being true to yourself.

amethystdragon Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

Party - did someone mention party

amethystdragon Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

Attempting to be vaguely serious - I cannot imagine what it was like to have lived as a Gay man during a time that was so anti-Gay due to a Government with a pre-occupation with Gay sex due to the rise of AIDS and HIV in the population - never mind coming out just in time for Section 28 - Talk about good timing!!

Yet it must have also been an amazing ride as well - Some amazing highs and some awful lows making you who you are today, yes you are sooo Gay - when you choose to be but then I can’t really imagine you as anything but you - Does that make any sense at all ?

I’m firmly in the same camp as Khlari - “Je ne regrette rien” - except she can say it in a much better French accent than me