CHAPTER FOUR
We often hear people say ‘self-love’, but I prefer the term ‘self-empathy’. For me, self-love is potentially shaming, while self-empathy is loving in a different way. It’s looking at my past with everything I had to endure; all my experiences of pain and sadness. Empathy for oneself, I believe, is the key to healing past shame and trauma. It allows one to really access and understand what has happened in the past. It allows one to observe and offer deep acceptance and validation. This is the key. This is what is needed, in my opinion, for one to integrate into life and flourish into that butterfly stage.
We are uplifted by empathy because we are listening to our own pain and allowing ourselves to be present for it. Empathy is where we can find a rock from which to view our life. To experience and process years and years of terror and self-loathing, feelings of hopelessness and isolation, we have to be present to allow these past experiences to filter out. Self-empathy is the tool by which we can do this. It is the lynchpin to allow stage three of the coming-out process to happen.
I don’t really like the phrase ‘coming out’. Yes, I can see the positive connotations of bursting out and becoming true to oneself and flourishing, yet there is something about it that seems like some sort of admission. I feel it’s now a phrase that is defunct. It’s past its sell-by date. People often ask why gay people should have to come out when straight people don’t have to come out? For me it ties into that language and narrative of secrecy. The sense that someone was hiding and had been misleading. I would rather use the word declared or stated. To me that feels more empowering; it feels like something that simply is rather than coming from the shadows into the light.
On a quick Google search, I discover that the phrase coming out was actually taken from the term used for young debutante women in English high society, who when they came of age were paraded in front of the queen at the debutante ball. It meant that a young woman became eligible for courting. In the sixties, gay people would come out into the ball scene in New York. They would come out and be welcomed by their gay family. This explanation seems a lot more positive than my feelings about the phrase. The derivation of the phrase coming out of the closet, however, seems to be a mixture of the two phrases having skeletons in the closet and coming out. It’s kind of a mash-up – this one not so positive.
For me, the phrase coming out has been tainted in the heteronormative world, be it through written press or spoken word, by the precursor of the word ‘admits’. So-and-so ‘admits’ to being gay, so-and-so comes out, ‘admitting’ they are gay. For me, this meant that the idea of coming out to family really was the most sickening of things, the primal feeling being one of admission, of holding this dirty secret, and being debased down to my very nature.
By the time I was 18, I was at a stage where keeping my sexuality in was becoming more difficult than letting it out, and owning it by declaring it. Still, it was extremely hard for me to take that first step or even to dip my toe into any sort of gay lifestyle or find a community. While I was in-between my A levels and university, living and working in Oxford, I’d sometimes drive down to London at weekends. I’d heard about a gay night called Love Muscle at The Fridge in Brixton, and one night, after leaving the pub with friends, it crossed my mind that I could go. I was due to drive back to Oxford, so I hadn’t been drinking, but I ended up sitting in my Mini in a street in Fulham, just stuck, unable to move. I so wanted to drive to Brixton and to go to Love Muscle, but I was simply too scared. I was frozen in the Mini, and upset, wondering how this was ever going to work. How was I ever going to come out if I couldn’t even walk into a gay club? I also knew that I was never going to be able to live as a straight person, so there was quite the dilemma going on in that car in Fulham. I wonder now if that’s why many young LGBTQ+ people consider suicide … because they just can’t see any way forward.
While I was sitting there, unable to move, a Golf GTI pulled up beside me, and when I looked over, I realised that I knew the person driving it. Alex was a cool, straight guy who promoted club nights’ sound systems, and the minute I saw him, I felt like I’d been caught out. I was literally just sitting in my car, but I felt as though Alex could read my every thought just by looking at me.
‘Hey, are you all right?’ he said, clearly noticing my weird demeanour.
‘Oh yes, I’m absolutely fine,’ I said, launching into performer mode. ‘Just looking for my A-Z, you know!’
Driving back to Oxford, I felt so sad. What was I going to do? How was I ever going to make my life work or even be true to myself? It’s a memory that’s always stayed with me.
Ever more confused, I ended up rekindling a relationship with an old girlfriend. I have to admit, I hadn’t been nice to the poor girl, previously dumping her by ignoring her calls, and later seeing her at a party and telling her to ‘cheer up!’. I have no idea why she wanted to go out with me again, but she did. I invited her to meet with a plan that we would go out and get pissed, and I could perhaps give the ‘straight thing’ one more go. Maybe there was even a shag to be had.
The two of us ended up snogging in a club, but by the time we got back to my place, the nerves were kicking in, and I decided that I didn’t really want to take things any further. So, instead of the anticipated sex, I made an alternative suggestion.
‘Why don’t we have a kebab?’ I said, thinking that was a good way to delay things.
‘A kebab?’
‘Yes, let’s have a kebab!’
The kebab van was literally one street over, but for some reason, I decided to drive to it. The wrong way down a one-way street. Going the right way up the street, meanwhile, was a police car. Of course, the policemen stopped me and asked had I been drinking. I said I had not. Unfortunately, when they asked me to get out of the car, I fell directly onto the ground, unable to stand, and was promptly arrested. My overriding thought as I was taken away was one of relief that I wasn’t going to have to have sex with the poor girl, who was back at the flat, waiting for her kebab.
As it turned out, the policemen were very nice. They kept calling me Jarvis (Cocker) because of the vintage suede jacket I was wearing, while I went on and on, telling them how I was going to be a famous pop star. I also asked for a cell with a view.
I ended up losing my licence for 18 months, but being arrested did get me out of having sex with my old girlfriend, so it wasn’t an entirely lose-lose situation.
The idea that I was most definitely gay set in after that, and after a night out in Bristol with some friends, it all came pouring out. I ended up leaving my friends early, very drunk, and crying back at one of their student houses. I believe there was, again, a kebab involved.
Through my tears, I called my old school friend Andrew, sobbing something along the lines of, ‘It’s back!’ Or ‘It hasn’t gone anywhere!’ Even then, I still couldn’t bring myself to say the word gay, but Andrew was as wonderfully supportive as ever. My next phone call was my sister, who was also cool with it, although, typically of my family, we just didn’t speak about it again for ages afterwards. I was left feeling quite depressed, post that night, but I had little time to dwell on it as I was about to start university in Exeter.
Once at uni, practicality kicked in, and I decided that the only way I was going to be able to be openly gay would be to find a boyfriend. Surely if I fell in love, everything would fall into place. Being in love would matter more than what people might think of me.
One afternoon, I went into the main building of my halls to meet up with Tom and Tim, who were boys I knew from school, and their new friend Adam, who, they informed me, was gay. As I approached the three of them in the hall, it was in a state of teen-movie slow motion. Adam was beautiful, with floppy blond hair, and looked like the sun might actually be shining out of him. He was Leonardo DiCaprio, dressed in Gap. That’s it, I thought; this is him. My first instinct, however, was to be mean.
‘Oh, I don’t want to talk to you; you’re gay,’ I said, jokingly.
Adam told me later that it was so mean of me to utterly shame him, and I apologised. It was such a clear projection from me and really not a nice thing to do.
After that, I pretty much became obsessed with Adam, and we became really good friends very quickly. We had a similar sense of humour and loved music, plus he was an actor and quite sensitive. He seemed to be as transfixed by me as I was by him, but perhaps for different reasons. Adam had an older brother, who he missed, and I think perhaps I was filling in the gap. As it turned out, Adam wasn’t gay, but there was something special about our friendship. It was very intense from both sides, and there were certainly blurred lines, but, of course, I was in love with him.
My love for Adam pushed me into sharing with him that I was gay. I can’t remember when I actually told him, but I do remember him checking in with me to make sure I was OK. One weekend, I drove down to London for a friend’s twenty-first. At that time, I’d entered a boy band competition on This Morning – and was therefore, at this juncture, known as Boy Band Will. People would ask me to sing at their parties when we had all had a few drinks. On this occasion, people were asking me to sing, and, yes, I had already consumed quite a lot of wine.
So, after a speech by the birthday girl’s mother, mentioning how her daughter didn’t always think she was beautiful, people started chanting for me to sing. In the end, I stood up and sang ‘You’re So Vain’ by Carly Simon. God knows why that particular song popped into my head, but it couldn’t have been more inappropriate given the speech that had just been given. I remember my friend’s mother giving me a steely look from across the room as I sang, but by that stage I had asked the whole party to join in with the chorus, and was pointing at the birthday girl. ‘YOU’RE SO VAIN! I BET YOU THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT YOU. YOU’RE SOOOOO VAAAIIINNNNN!’ It wasn’t my proudest moment.
Afterwards, we all ended up going to this awful and expensive club called L’equipe Anglaise in Chelsea. Some of the people I hung out with at that time were very posh, and, I suppose, a lot richer than me, and this was one of those clubs where you paid £200 for a bottle of vodka. I never had that kind of money, and, as was usual, it wasn’t a club I would have chosen, but I ended up on the dance floor anyway, because I love to dance.
That night, I ended up running into two friends with whom I’d gone to school. They were both extremely posh, a bit on the conservative side, and rich. One girl, Elloise, was always rather aloof. I thought her cool because she didn’t adhere to the convention of being deferential to boys, which afforded her a confident air.
The other school friend I ran into was my friend Percy. There was a notable occasion when Percy came over to our house with his mother one day. Percy had asked me what kind of chocolates my mother would like, so his mother could bring her a sweet gift. I just told him, Flumps, which were marshmallow sweets in a plastic see-through bag that cost about £1. So, when his mother turned up at our house in her very smart Mercedes, she stepped out of the car, and called out to my mother, ‘Annabel, I’m afraid I couldn’t find any Flumps in Harrods so I bought you some handmade Belgian chocolates.’
My mother whispered to me, ‘Why the hell did you tell her I liked Flumps?!’, while desperately untying her food-stained apron.
Percy and I went through the horrible prep school experience together, and then ended up both going to Wellington College. He was always a rebel and disliked institution and authority.
That evening, as I staggered through my evening at L’equipe Anglaise, I ran into Percy and sat with him at a table in the middle of the club, paying for drinks off the back of my student loan. In my stupor, I decided to tell him that I was gay. My memory of it is hazy, but I can sort of remember the words and coming out to him and Elloise.
The next morning, I woke up at my friend Serena’s house in Victoria. Adam was staying there too, as he’d been out with some other friends the night before. As soon as I was awake, I remembered what I’d done, but hoped to God that it was a dream. A sense of dread froze my body. I began to fall apart in the bed, feeling like I had let something slip that was going to destroy my life. I repeated to myself, ‘What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?’ It was as if I had opened these floodgates. It wasn’t just the statement of my sexuality, but also news of it was going to ricochet around all my old school friends – these people I was still attempting to be friends with; trying to remain one of the lads, and to be accepted. These were the very people who, at school, had signified the reasons why I felt I couldn’t come out, and why the world was such a bad and scary place for gay people. They were chauvinistic, loud, hyper-masculine and overtly blokey. I don’t blame them, because that was their conditioning. They were conservative, public-school boys, conditioned to be haughty and arrogant, and to think they were better than others. I was fortunate that my parents were different from the norm, which allowed me to have a wider and more accepting view of the world.
Now I had drunkenly told two school friends in a club that I was gay, and all these other people I knew would find out and be disgusted by my sexuality. When I told Adam what had happened, his reaction was so supportive and wonderful.
‘This is brilliant,’ he said. ‘How fantastic!’
Initially, though, I thought it was the worst thing that could have ever happened.
It’s crucial to point out that there was another part of me that was happy. I felt like I was ready; ready to tell people and get this pain of holding in the truth of my being gay over with. It was like ripping off a plaster, but, more than that, it was giving a voice to something that I had thought about from the age of six. Something that had kept me in complete confusion, fear and helplessness. Something that I never thought I could ever speak of, or openly live with.
My thoughts until then had always been, how could I live as a ‘gay man’? How was it possible? How could I cope with the disdain and the disgust? Now, I’d begun to feel like I could. Maybe I could gain the confidence to not care if it was true, deep down in my soul. There was a definite shift, where the idea of being gay stopped feeling like something that was isolated and segregated and became something that could merge with my very being, allowing me to be an outwardly gay person. The way I thought about my sexuality was slowly changing, and the idea of being gay didn’t just mean that I wanked over naked men and fantasised about sleeping with them; it was something that started to seep into my sensibility. I wanted to love as a gay man, and I was ready.
The truth was, even though I’d been paralytically drunk, the two people I’d chosen to tell I was gay were actually the perfect people. Percy was one of the friends I had worried the most about finding out. He was haughty, macho and intimidating. Even as I told him, I thought he might hit me; outraged that I had lied to him for so many years, and had perved on him while we were play-fighting as kids.
As it turned out, I did him a disservice, and for that I now apologise. He didn’t thump me in the face; he didn’t throw his drink over me. He listened. I can’t remember him being emotionally mature and saying all the things that might have been useful, like, ‘I validate you, I’m proud of you, I love you’, but then again he was never going to be that person. He did, however, accept in his own way. So, as much as I’d woken up that morning, thinking the world was over, I also knew that now it was done, so the only way was up.
From then on was a bit like having a tick list of people to tell … family, brother, girlfriends, friends … The real bump in the road came when I eventually admitted to Adam that I was in love with him – that’s when everything went tits up! Of course, he couldn’t love me back, not in the way I wanted him to. I felt so bad about it, I had to move out of the house. In fact, I was so distraught, I felt I had to stop seeing him altogether because I was so obsessed by him. This would become a pattern for me over the years, and the basis of something I would later discover to be love addiction. I would have a boyfriend, fall deeply in love very quickly, idolise them, break up with them, and then obsess about them for years. And no, we’re not talking stalking here, or anything like that: just tortuous obsessing, like a record playing over and over in my mind. That was what it was like for me after my friendship with Adam ended. In fact, it would be some years before we became friends again, during my time on Pop Idol. I’m happy to report that we’re still friends to this day.
I sometimes get frustrated, tracking my journey of coming out over a 30-year period, often wondering why I couldn’t have done it quicker. Why didn’t I just go off to Soho, aged 18, and meet people or find a friendship group? The answer is, I was so processed and formulated by fear, uncertainty and shame that I was extremely wary of going towards any gay people.
At uni, there was an LGBT society, and I hated them. There was nothing wrong with them, but my gay shame was still in full swing. In fact, there was an element of being ‘the only gay in the village’ on my part, which added to my disdain. Looking back, I think it’s because they were visible: walking around in their platform Buffalo trainers with the odd crop-top. Truth be told, I was probably just envious of how out and proud they were.
I’d come out to a few people by then, and, through word of mouth, most people knew I was gay and I felt accepted. That said, there was the odd bump in the road. One fellow student, who was quite posh and typically public-school, said to me, ‘Oh, yes, you’re gay now, but you will get married one day, surely!’ Jesus Christ, it was like talking to someone’s grandfather rather than someone my own age.
Still, it was wonderful to be accepted by the people at university; really beautiful. I’d had this terror, all through my time at public school, that people would find me disgusting, but this wasn’t the case here at all. Coming out as gay to my old school friends, however, had been tougher, and in most cases the friendships petered out. At school, I’d been keen to fit in with a group of lads and be just like them, but I wasn’t that person. Meeting people like Adam, and another new friend, Tom, at uni changed everything. We were in Footlights together – the university theatre company – and had similar sensibilities. Suddenly the lads I’d been at school with, who wanted to go drinking all the time and were arrogant and chauvinist towards women, seemed a million miles from the person I was or wanted to be.
While I was finding my feet within university grounds, the LGBT society seemed to be living it up, going out to bars and into the wider community in Exeter. Meanwhile, I’d walk past the one gay pub in town, scowling and hissing while secretly desperate to go inside.
I didn’t because I was terrified. It was one thing going out to a straight bar with friends, but going to a gay bar was an event, as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have any gay friends to go with, so what was I going to do? Sit there drinking on my own? I also wasn’t ready to befriend the LGBT society; perhaps through fear of looking a certain way. I didn’t want to walk around in Buffalo trainers or a crop-top. It was all a bit confusing.
There were a few bits of sexual interaction, but even they were few and far between. The first came in the form of a bit of naked kissing with a guy one Saturday night. Halfway through, I decided I didn’t want to continue, so kicked him out. The thing was, he’d left cocaine on the bedside table, so I called up my friend Amanda, excitedly, at five in the morning.
‘I’ve got some cocaine,’ I said.
‘Well, get your arse over here!’ Amanda replied.
I’d never taken drugs before, and didn’t for some years after, but I ended up at her place, having such a great Sunday!
My second encounter was also named Will, so while I was Boy Band Will, he was Stud Will, due to his studded, pierced lip. Things got a bit confusing a year later when I also got a stud and people were thrown into disarray. Maybe we just became ‘the gay Wills’ post that.
After my first year of university, I drove down to London one day and sat in a café on the corner of Wardour Street, feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience. I was in the middle of Soho, but it felt like I was in a dream; there were openly gay men everywhere. It was summer, so people were sitting outside. There was a waiter at the café who was tall, lithe and blond, wearing a yellow polo shirt. He moved with an assuredness and a knowledge that he was desirable and desired. I couldn’t believe it that there was a man who was so beautiful, and he was gay. This was a big moment. When I was growing up, especially in my teens, every man I desired was straight. I didn’t know any publicly gay men, and came across none at my all-boys’ boarding school, so I got used to the sensation that all the people I fancied or thought handsome were straight. I couldn’t imagine what sort of chemical equation might produce a man who was really sexy, handsome and gay. It just didn’t seem possible to me. What are the odds that men who I might fancy would also be homosexuals like me?
Once I got to Soho, I realised the odds were actually rather higher than I expected. There were men everywhere. They walked around me, and I felt immersed in a gay story, like I had just jumped into a gay novel. I sat and watched the world pass around me, listening to people’s conversation. I couldn’t believe that I was in a café surrounded by other gay men. That alone was mind-blowing, exciting, and terrifying. I felt like I was venturing into such an unknown world, but there was no huge feeling of relief, of acceptance or that I belonged. I still felt extremely alien. Everyone was so confident and happy; so public and together. I just felt isolated, stupid and foolish.
At the same time, I was aware that I was taking a step towards ‘being gay’ because I knew Soho was the gay area of London. What I didn’t see was people being beaten up or shouted at. In fact, it was the opposite of that; I sensed joy and togetherness. Even though I didn’t necessarily feel it myself, I was aware of it surrounding me.
Eventually, I went to my first gay club with someone from uni who was ‘sort of’ out, along with his properly out gay friend. We travelled up to London, to G-A-Y at The Astoria, which was one of the biggest gay clubs in Europe. I wasn’t at all prepared for the experience. I was 22, and, having never seen anything like it, horrified. There seemed to be a lot of older men with young boys there, and the thought of getting my knob out in the loos was terrifying. I couldn’t relate to any of it, and came away feeling deflated.
I did enjoy being in Soho, so a French friend of mine persuaded me to go to Freedom Bar with him and his two sisters. This bar was a lot more mixed than G-A-Y. It was also smaller and seemed a lot less scary. On the small dance floor downstairs, a beautiful young guy was dancing, and the French sisters encouraged me to go buy him a drink. I was shy about it, but they were insistent.
‘Go on, just fucking do it,’ they said, so off I went.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ I asked, shyly.
‘Oh, I’m not gay,’ the boy said.
I’d chosen the one fucking person in the place who wasn’t gay, but when I looked back at my friend’s sisters, they were looking at me expectantly. I turned back to the boy.
‘Look, my friends are watching me, so can I buy you a drink anyway?’
The guy was quite sweet and accepted the drink gratefully, but that was strike number two as far as my clubbing experiences went.
Once I’d left uni and got my degree, I worked in a bar in Marlborough. There was a gay guy working there who I fancied, and we got it on a couple of times, which meant things were off and rolling as far as boys went. Now we were cooking with gas! However, when I moved to London and started on the musical theatre course at ArtsEd, things changed even more dramatically, with a whole new life unfolding before me.
I moved to a flat in Notting Hill with my friend Mary, not long after the movie Notting Hill had come out. To me, it was like living in the midst of the film itself, particularly as Mary’s flat had access to the actual garden featured in it. It was an exciting time. I already knew I was down to the final 50 contestants for Pop Idol, but I’d decided to keep it a secret and not to tell anyone. As well as that, there were all sorts of new and enlightening things waiting for me at ArtsEd.
When I walked into the men’s changing room for the first time, there were four guys doing their make-up in the mirrors, which blew my mind because I was still so naive and shy. A few days after I started, somebody left a note in my locker, saying, ‘I think you’re really cute’. It really was another world.
Still, coming from public school, I was quite prim, and the fact that everybody at ArtsEd seemed to be fascinated about whether I was gay or not was something I found tricky. In the student bar one night, somebody asked me outright, ‘Are you gay?’
‘I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask,’ I said, not wanting to be labelled.
The prim exterior cracked once I’d got it on with a couple of guys there; after that I didn’t really give a shit what people thought I was.
After I came out, post-Pop Idol, I was quite confident and comfortable about being openly gay. The dichotomy was that I wasn’t inwardly comfortable with my own sexuality. I didn’t have any gay friends, and I didn’t go to gay clubs and I wasn’t having sex. I guess I did it the other way around to all the other gay pop stars around at the time, who did go out to gay bars and had gay sex but weren’t out publicly.
Part of the problem was, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing because, let’s face it, nobody tells you about gay sex!
Top or bottom? This is the age-old question when approaching gay sex, and something else nobody ever tells you about. These days, versatility seems to be all the rage, but in the past, I’ve had friends who were obsessed with the distinction.
‘Darling, you’re either a top or a bottom,’ one friend told me. ‘And tops cannot go out with other tops!’
To be honest, I’ve always been slightly fascinated by it.
Before embarking on my first relationship, I remember wondering, how will I know which one I am – top or bottom? I mean, how does it even work? Maybe the answer would lie in the things I masturbated about. Did I imagine someone screwing me in my fantasies, or was I screwing them? Actually, it was never that cut and dried, so that wasn’t much help at all.
When I first had sex, it was quite messy, and that affected me for years. Down the line, I’ve learned that there’s a process to anal sex, but the fact is, it can be messy sometimes, and that can be scary. I suppose I came to it quite late, at 24, but even then I had to ask my friend the ‘ins and outs’ of it all, post my first, sticky experience.
‘Darling, first you have to get a douche, and then you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that … ’
I thought, fucking hell! This all sounds a bit difficult.
That first time was quite traumatic for me. I was left feeling dirty and a bit ashamed, as would, I suspect, most of you if you’d shat the bed, aged 24. The upshot of this shame was that I didn’t really want to have sex again, or at least not like that. I tried it the other way round, with me being on top, but even then I could have done with someone older and more experienced, explaining it all to me.
My next liaison was with someone who was more top than bottom, but it took me about three months to ‘go there’, because of my traumatic first encounter. Back then, I didn’t know anything about poppers (the nitrate drug sometimes inhaled by gay men during sex). Like a lot of people, I thought that gay men having sex with poppers was just a hedonistic thing, chasing a drug-induced high, but no! Poppers are there to relax you when you’re about to have a knob whacked up your bum. Men use poppers to relax their anal sphincter muscle, but no one tells you that.
There is a mechanics to sex that people don’t talk about, and, gay or straight, you don’t get it taught in schools. They don’t tell you that it’s not always comfortable for a man or for a woman. They don’t talk about things like lubrication, or how to stimulate certain areas of the body. So we don’t know what to expect, and end up feeling shame.
A friend of mine shared a story with me. He was 19, and he’d had sex with a guy of about 25, and it was really messy. In this instance, the guy shamed him. He told him he was disgusting and to go and clean himself up. My friend sat in the loo and cried.
The act of sex itself would often re-trigger my shame, because I was engaged in the very thing that was the symbol of being gay: shagging someone of the same sex. Prejudice in wider society meant that there was often little attention paid to the love aspect of homosexuality. People just seemed to focus on the fact that one man was going to put his willy up another man. And that’s another thing! Everyone seemed to be obsessed with gay sex and what was going on during it; I think maybe even I was. Whenever I saw a gay couple, I’d wonder who was putting what into whom.
I’m also interested in what restrictions being a top or a bottom put on one’s sense of self, for instance, the notion that if I’m the top then I’m the man. I’m macho. I’m not putting out, therefore there’s no emotional intimacy. When I did women’s studies, women would tell me, ‘It’s easy for a man to put his penis in a woman’s vagina, but it’s the woman who is taking something inside of her.’ It’s the same being a bottom; you’re actually taking a part of someone else’s body inside you, and the act of entering is very different to the act of receiving.
Unfortunately, that idea of still being ‘the man’ if you’re a top – the aggressive shagger, the dominator – is still out there to a degree. It’s certainly more visible with things like Grindr.
I see statements like, I’m the top, I like to dominate, I don’t like kissing, I just want to enter someone, and I think, Jesus, what’s your emotional status? In the past, if you were a bottom, the stereotypical idea was that you’re the girl, you’re not masculine, you’re not a man, you’re effeminate, you’re weak and emotionally all over the place. Hopefully, that’s changing. The fact that more gay men are identifying as versatile is a sign that they don’t feel like they have to stick to these assigned roles.
There was a fantastic comment from someone on Grindr a while back. It said something like, ‘For people who think that gay men are weak, and for people who think that gay men who bottom are weak, you try taking a cock up your arse! That’s the definition of a real man!’
These days, I don’t think I’d be a bottom unless I was in a relationship, because I feel it’s more emotionally intimate, and I don’t want to do that with someone unless there’s a real connection. That said, I believe there’s an intimacy in being a top as well. I just wish I’d had all this information about sex when I started out. I could have avoided a lot of pain, and shame!
It really took me about ten years to become a sexually active gay man, and to find a community. It was my boyfriend Julian who helped bring it about. He was a contemporary dancer and slightly more left-of-centre than most of the boys I’d met before. Although athletically built, he wasn’t the buff, body-beautiful type, but an indie-kid who wore skinny jeans and was all about the East End: Hoxton, Dalston and Shoreditch. He was also INCREDIBLY sexy and had a good sense of the ridiculous. On my first date with Julian, I said to myself, this probably isn’t right, but I need it right now, and it’ll be a hell of a ride! And it was … It was the most tumultuous relationship, and we had amazing sex. He was the Michael Hutchence to my Kylie. My sexual awakening, and a gateway to discovering a gay scene that I liked, as well as a community that I felt part of.
Julian and I would go out to a great night called Rebel Rebel, run by a friend of ours, Tony Fletcher, who loved Bowie. At Rebel Rebel, they played The Cure or Bowie, or they might play a great R&B track. It wasn’t all topless boys, Sugababes remixes and foam parties, which seemed to be what many of the gay clubs were offering at the time; not at all what I enjoyed.
I loved music, so it was great to have finally found a place that, I felt, was me. There was a whole new and alternative gay scene happening around the East End of London, and even though I felt that I wasn’t one of the ‘cool kids’, I liked hanging out with them. Slowly, I started formulating who I was. I’d made new friends, and I’d found a family and these were things I’d had to search hard for, and for a long time.