Coming out was hard to do..

The BBC is awash with commemorations of the legalizing or rather he decriminalizing of gay sex and rightly so, this 50 year commemoration is coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele a bloody battle that lasted almost 4 months and was yet another pointless battle that led to the deaths of over 400,000 men and boys fooled into fighting for leaders who cared more for the land on which the fighting took place than they did about their soldiers.

I watched the BBC drama ‘Man in an Orange Shirt’ the story of two public school boys who were in the army during WW2 and fell in love.  One went on to marry his high school sweetheart (in reality his best female friend) and the other went to prison and on release went to live in France. The married one sobbed when he realized what he had thrown away.  The 2^nd part of the drama has yet to be broadcast so I cannot say what happened to them but despite the setting of the 1940s and 1950s and their class, the story apes my own. 

In 1983 or 1984 I fell in love with a boy, a local boy, same age as me and had always lived close by. We had known each other for years but no longer went to the same school but he lived walking distance from me in the next village.  It started as silly teenage boy exploring and fooling around but continued until the summer of 1988 and it was I who caused its end.  Despite the bullying and name calling at school that I experienced (he didn’t experience the same thing, he was cool and perceived as masculine because he liked cars and football) I didn’t feel abnormal or strange and kids can be cruel and people are bullied for a myriad of thing such as height, lack of height, weight, glasses, clothes, voice, where you live etc. etc. so the bullying I experienced was not exceptional but it was nasty and often included physical beatings including one that happened in the PE department of Oxclose School as the PE teacher kept guard. I was held by my hair and my face was pushed into the arses of the boys in my PE class, this happened around 1984. Now people who went to school with me must remember that I was small and skinny and not at all physical. What happened to me would have been a crime today and that teacher would have lost his job. I kept it quiet but I hate him and every one of those boys in that changing room who was involved. I will always hate them for that. So I continued my school days trying not to attract too much attention, study as well as I could despite hating the place passionately. I didn’t do as well as I should but I did well enough to get my O and A levels and find an escape route. My romance with my boy from the next village continued. We had sex a few times a week, well sex of sorts, not intercourse etc. and well as boys with braces on their teeth can do. I introduced him to a female friend of mine when we were 17 and they got on really well. In my head I thought I was doing the best thing, what we did may be ok in private I thought but it wasn’t acceptable to the wider world. They started dating and in June 1988 he dumped me/ended it telling me he had lost his virginity to her and it was wonderful and how great it would be when I lost mine so we could talk about it. I cried. I asked him to leave and the few months between doing my A levels and going to university were crazy, from seeing someone every few days to never seeing them, it was truly like mourning a lover but I thought when I matured (I was a big kid at 18) I would also meet a girl and fall in love. I didn’t. Sure  I met girls, most of my best friends are girls. I tried to feel something more than affection and with each failed attempt I felt more of a failure.  But I am not a failure. I was finally honest with myself and when I fell in love with my first real boyfriend in 1990 it was wonderful, something awoke in me. A cliché perhaps but it was, I felt like I was 100% me and it gave me a confidence I was I’d had in 1984 when the bullies were spitting on me at school.  As for the boy who married the girl? They remain married, he made a move on me before their wedding, in the summer of 1990 when he told me he missed our ‘private time’ I didn’t miss it, I didn’t miss him anymore. I dream about it sometimes as he remains a significant part of those last few years of childhood that exist in our mid-teens when we listen to pop music, try alcohol, hang out with school friends.  I hope he is happy and I hope one day he can be honest with himself.

August 2, 2017