It’s my friend’s fortieth. We’re eating upstairs in a restaurant’s private dining room. I’m especially pleased with what I have chosen to wear: some wide crinkled black shorts that almost look like a skirt, in black, of course, and a sleeveless layered black floaty top. Also in black. I’m also wearing black DM boots. I don’t think I’m in mourning although I have decided this attire would be wonderful for any funeral. I’m pleased for many reasons. I feel very masculine and sexy, yet also feminine and sexy. I’d mused in the mirror an hour previously, that I was now at a stage where I felt like I was really expressing who I am as a person. I don’t really care what people think of me; I just want to be authentic to myself. In amongst all this, I still felt terribly anxious about the evening ahead. Social anxiety is something I’ve always felt. I’m not sure if I can relate it to growing up gay, but it is there and I just have to handle it as best I can.
At the table, I take the opportunity to look around at the assembled company. I’m sitting with two gay women either side of me. Their journeys to being where they currently are with their sexuality have been very different. Opposite is the birthday boy and his husband. He was the first ever man to mention his husband in an Oscar speech. To his right are his friends, who are a heterosexual couple, and to his left is an American man with a moustache and a kilt. I am, of course, immediately supportive and delighted at the kilt.
I look around, and despite my earlier anxious state, I think about how great it is that I’m now in a place I never thought I would get to; hanging out with such a brilliant mix of people … to be with other gay men and women, and for it to be so natural, with us all simply existing together, and enjoying each other’s company.