It’s 7am on a crisp, autumnal morning. The sun is beginning to warm the honeysuckle, snaking around my window and filtering gently through my bedroom blinds, causing me to stir. There’s the gentle hum of an electric milk float doing its rounds, purring away down the street. All is well in leafy south London, until …
‘NELLY, PLEASE DON’T HUMP MY FACE!’
My two-year-old dachshund wakes me up every morning by placing her long sausage-like body across my face. Essentially, she attempts to suffocate me on a daily basis. This morning, such was her excitement, that her intentions became more amorous.
‘OK, you got me; food time!’
That’s it! She’s off scampering down the stairs towards the kitchen. Esme, the Border terrier, follows in hot pursuit – carrying one of my slippers with her, I notice. This is my daily routine each morning.
Once recovered from potential ‘death by sausage dog’, I sit down, coffee in hand, to peruse the emails that have come in to ‘Homo Sapiens’, a podcast that I did with my best friend, Chris Sweeney. Scrolling down, I alight upon one from a 22-year-old in Finland who discusses his gay shame. It’s a common occurrence, and seems to come up almost every episode. In fact, I’d just got back from America where we interviewed pop star, Sam Smith, who spoke of their own gay shame.
‘That’s it!’ I proclaim to the dogs. ‘I’m going to Google gay-shame therapy groups. There must be some in the world.’
The dogs don’t care, FYI. But I do. Gay shame was a part of my life from the age of six. It has clung on to me like oil to a dying cormorant. It has literally stopped me truly flying in life. Years of hearing that to be gay was wrong, whether it be at a Bible lesson, in the playground, on TV or heard amongst adults, has wounded my very soul. The very essence of who I am has been defined as evil, disgusting and wrong. Growing up within a heteronormative society has crushed my being. My gay shame, foisted onto me by others, has internalised and created its own gloopy tar-like substance, covering any light within. I have lived with a deeply repressed and under-explored belief that, by simply living, I am wrong and unlovable, purely by being alive. I’ve also realised I am not alone. So here I go! Let’s see what can be done. Let’s see what is out there. The answer is … nothing.
Well, that’s not strictly true. I come across an old workshop, held in New York in 2016, which addressed gender norms, focusing on what it was to be a gay man or woman. This was, however, two years ago. My next discovery is far more interesting. ‘GAY SHAME! HOW TO REDISCOVER YOUR TRUE SELF!’ This is more like it. I enter the website and it’s all looking good.
‘Has your gay shame held you back in life?’
Yes.
‘Do you want to rid yourself of this yoke and come back to your natural self?’
Another Yes.
‘Then this is the programme for you! Get rid of your homosexual tendencies and learn to control your urges!’
HOLY SHIT! I realise I have unwittingly alighted upon a gay conversion website. Based in, well, the southern United States, of course. Now, such has been my own journey with gay shame that I am not triggered by this, but instead rather fascinated and amused. I decide to drop them an email.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Greetings from the UK. My name is William and I would love to start getting on top of my gay urges and homosexual tendencies. Please can you help me?
Yours shamefully,
William Young
All flowery writing and Googling aside, this morning is the morning when I decide to write a book on gay shame. As I’ve said, gay shame is something that I have lived through with every cell and fibre in my body. Even as I think on how I might approach this topic, ALL THESE STORIES start flooding back to me. ALL THESE MOMENTS of prejudice I experienced, and ALL THESE MOMENTS where other people’s thoughts and feelings on what it was to be gay, and the shame that that’s brought up in THEM, was dumped onto ME.
There were times, dear friends, when it almost destroyed me, but ultimately it did not, because I faced it and took it on. Through many years of facing my gay shame, I found strength. I reached out to others and expressed to friends and even strangers how I felt. Talking about my addictions, from porn to shopping, from failed relationships to always feeling less-than. I was spurred on by others’ bravery in sharing their deep shame of themselves, and realised that I felt the same. Instead of feeling alone, I actually began to feel empowered. I cried a lot. I felt sick and ashamed a lot. And I heard a lot of other gay people’s stories that helped me out of the darkness. But even through all of that, I was often the only gay person in a therapy group or indeed a treatment centre. It took time for me to find my own kind, where I could work through this specific issue of gay shame, and my development in abolishing gay shame was often sporadic and disjointed. Still, I got there in the end, and I’m here now to tell the story of just how I got there. I have no pretensions, but I come with authenticity, ownership, and a huge amount of hope and love.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not so brazen or arrogant as to think that I know the right way to be gay; how could I? Everyone is different. What I want to do here is to track my life; to time-travel back to various times where knowing I was gay, or being gay, was difficult, painful, fun, terrifying, etc.
For me to be a gay man has been a constant journey from the age of four. It has involved so many layers of questions and internal wranglings, layers of shame that have turned into self-hate and loathing. To be a gay man has been a constant disappointment and occasion after occasion of embarrassment and hiding. In writing this book and using my life as a sort of blueprint, I hope that others might find moments of connection and resonance and perhaps glean some understanding and empathy for their own road through life. I know I have – it has led me to a newfound respect and admiration for myself and my sexuality.
Things that I’d completely forgotten about will, no doubt, surface, or perhaps things that have been triggering, but I’m looking forward to analysing and documenting how I survived them; how I got through school, and university, being at home, or even just hanging with friends. It’s sure to be a weird process, but an incredible journey.
A journey that I’m inviting you to join me on … and Esme and Nelly …
… but to be honest they don’t give a shit.