How many gay people do you know? Two or three perhaps, if you live in a relatively cosmopolitan area, maybe less if you live in a small town or village. Now imagine what it must be like being that gay person. The one people think of when they want to remind themselves that they are “in-touch” with modern issues, that they posses that hint of new labour which puts them a fraction to the left on the political compass, wrapping them up in their PC blanket.
You almost certainly will have encountered gay people in your life but, as with the blank faces of commuters we see daily on public transport, many do not appreciate the journey that they have had to endure. Contrary to popular thought, you don’t just “come out” and have that be the end of it. Coming out is a huge process and the end result, the actual words “I’m gay” that you hear and gradually come to accept, are just the tip of the iceberg. Inside there has been a huge and incredibly painful inner battle of realisation and acceptance so hard many choose to repress their feelings and desires totally.
I’m gay. I’ve been there, done the coming out business, had the verbal (but thankfully never physical) abuse because of it and I’d hope it has made me a stronger person. This piece is to trigger a thought next time you see a gay person, to think of the path they’ve walked to get a point in their lives where they are comfortable letting others know who they wish to spend the rest of their lives with. However, this can be true of all who are a little different, who don’t fit the mould precisely, so perhaps the lesson applicable to more than just us queers.
If I think hard, with an objective head on my shoulders, I can recall having a fascination with women at about 10 or 11. The most prominent example, and the only one I actually remember, is a teacher who taught at my primary school. She was pretty (or my 10 year old self thought so) with silky straight blonde hair. That’s about all I remember of her, no name, nothing of her being in the playground supervising at playtime, just that she was a pretty blonde. Prophetic? In hindsight I now know that it might have been called a crush although here were most certainly no sexual feelings, just an inexplicably strong desire to be around her.
Feelings like this carried on; crushes on teachers, best friends (the cause of much emotional turmoil) and youth leaders were not uncommon. Secretly I hoped that everybody else felt this way but deep down I knew they didn’t, that I was a little strange in that respect. I tried to write it off as normal and ignored all feelings, throwing myself into a very unsuccessful relationship with a boy when I was about 13.
It was ghastly from the first kiss; my first kiss, which I had to get ridiculously drunk to go through with, to when we eventually broke up, via text message, after no contact for almost a week. After the break-up all I felt was a deep disgust in myself, I felt as though by doing what it seemed everyone else was doing I had somehow done it wrong. In my quest to prove to myself that I was normal I had proved to myself indefinitely that I wasn’t. You could say my plan backfired. I’d shot myself in the foot instead of the gay gland.
After that time I knew. The actual word “G-A-Y” or, in my case “L-E-S-B-I-A-N” (a word which I still loath) had been rooted in my head and would not leave. I had finally connected the feelings I had for other women with the word. The actual word. Lesbian. It may seem completely ridiculous but I did not put me liking women together with the word, it was just an impossibility that would never happen. A ridiculous suggestion; I, a lesbian, or elesbian as I had thought it was until I saw it spelt correctly in the dictionary.
My thought process was as follows;
ME?! One of those FREAKS?! Err, no, sorry mate, you’ve got the wrong girl here. Sure, I have these strange feelings of attraction to people of the same sex as me but doesn’t everyone feel that? I’m normal. I’m straight. I like men. And I will get married, have children, those children will be red blooded, horny, heterosexuals and they will have me some grand kiddies. Those grand kiddies will be hetero’s and have me some great-grand kiddies and I will live the big fat heterosexual lifestyle with the nice Volvo estate car, a 5 bed house in the suburbs and a chocolate brown Labrador for my heterosexual children to play with. There is no way, I repeat, no way, that I am one of those. No. Thank. You.
Summarised, it was complete denial. And I perpetuated this falsity both internally and externally. I stuck posters of my favourite rock stars up on my bedroom walls and said/wanted-to-believe/pretended-in-complete-denial that I had crushes on them. I told all my friends that they were stupid for fancying X from boy band “xxxxx”; it was all about Mr Y. He had the cutest smile. I day dreamed non-stop about my dream hetero lifestyle, the wedding, how he would propose, where we would be, what I would say, I even went as far as imagining my expression when he popped the question. But I couldn’t kiss the man of my dreams in my fantasy, not even at the alter where we would inevitably end up. We’d hug instead.