I Am What I Am

I often get asked what my coming out story is. I have never thought of it as very interesting but here it is anyway, (I have changed the names of people for obvious reasons).

People always ask if I always knew I was gay, I often reply 'did you always know you were straight?'. I suppose deep down I always knew but when I was a child and even a teenager I had no comprehension what sex was let alone sexuality, I neither fancied men nor fancied women so in that respect I can't have known.

Also, as discussed in a previous post, I was brought up in and around an environment where to be gay was 'bad' 'wrong' and 'against nature' so to me, with all it's negative connotations I could never be gay because it was dirty. This was the way at school and at home, it was my mom smacking me around the head and telling me 'boys don't do that' that made me realise I shouldn't roll around the floor on top of my best mate Lee when I was seven. It was a boy at school called Kirk who punched me in the face and kicked me in the stomach that made me think being gay was filthy, probably because thats what his mom told him.

I was bullied at school just because I had mainly female friends and because I didn't want to play football, watch football or talk about football. My best friend was a girl called Jo. We got on so well, had the same interests, liked the same things, we were great together. Everyone said she fancied me, to be honest it was fairly obvious, so I asked her out, she said yes. To be fair it shut a lot of people up.

When I was about seventeen I started to have sexual feeling towards men, mainly men in the media, especially Mark Owen from Take That but all the time I tried to convince myself that I admired him more than fancied him. I had posters on my bedroom wall of him and when my dad asked me why I replied it was just because I liked Take That, which was true to be fair.

I fought so hard to stop any feelings I had towards men, whatever it took and in the end I ripped down all my Take That pictures and replaced them with Pamela Anderson posters and more appropriate bands and singers, but deep down the realisation was starting to come to me.

I was happy in my relationship with Jo, I loved her very much and we stupidly spoke about kids and marriage as many do when they are young, foolish and in love, I think we even pretended amongst ourselves about a pregnancy scare, daft really as the closest we had come to sex was a spot of fingering and a sly wank when my mom was out, definatly nothing that was going to get us pregnant.

We finally had sex when I was seventeen (almost eighteen) and it was far from wonderful. Two teenagers groping pointlessly on the settee of someone we baby sat for to the Jaws theme music. The funny thing was the theme tune lasted longer than the sex. But I had done it, I had slept with a woman, I was a man, I was not gay!!!

Yeah right!

The thoughts and feeling grew stronger and stronger and I tried and I tried to fight them, to make them go away but they wouldn't.

Then a little show called Queer As Folk hit channel four, and hit me like a tonne of bricks. It made me realise that there was a gay world out there, a big, bold, camp gay world that I knew nothing about. That show introduced me to rimming and lots of other things that have come in useful over the years and I started to see that to be gay wasn't a bad thing.

I remember driving home from Jo's one night, I drove around and around the block thinking, and talking to myself and I remember stopping the car and whispering 'I'm gay' then I said it again, and again and again, louder and louder and louder until I practically screamed it out. Then I cried, and I cried and I cried some more.

I had admitted it to myself, I knew what I was but I had no idea what to do about it!

I didn't know any gay people. The internet was not big at the time, we had dial up but didn't know what to look on or what to do. I had heard my mom mention a gay bar in Walsall once as we drove past the police station, but I didn't know where it was, and even if I did I couldn't have gone on my own. I was very quiet then, painfully shy. So for the time being I carried on as I was, but inside I felt better, a bit anyway, because at least I could admit to myself what I was and who I was, even if no one else could know.

Everything changed when Jo got a job at a pub, that shall remain nameless, and started working with a chap called, well lets call him Him for the sake of this tale. She wanted to start spending time with Him out of work, me included, at first I wasn't in the slightest bit interested, until I met Him. After a few hours in his company it was obvious that I fancied Him, it was also obvious that Jo fancied Him, yet I didn't care, I just wanted to be around Him. He had this attraction that is hard to describe but I was quite fascinated by Him.

So for weeks we hung around as quite a pathetic looking threesome. Me moping after him, her moping after him and Him, well I'm not sure what he was moping after.

Then one night we went out, got drunk and he kissed me. Or maybe I kissed Him, I can't remember, but neither one of us tried to stop it.

The next day I was at work, confused, happy, sad, ecstatic and disgusted with myself at the same time. I didn't hear from Him all day and I thought that he must have regretted it once the 20/20 had worn off. In the end I couldn't bear it anymore so I text him, saying that I didn't regret the kiss. He replied the same and invited me to his that night as his mom and dad were out for the evening.

I wanted to say no.

I should have said no.

But I went anyway...

From that moment I knew what I wanted. Once I stepped over his threshold and got into his bed I knew my life would never be the same.

The next day I went to see Jo and told her I wanted to be on my own. I couldn't tell her why, it would have killed her, so I lied and said we were to young to be together, I needed space, some freedom to decide who I was. It wasn't a complete lie I suppose.

I spent everyday with Him. We got on so well, had similar interests and just enjoyed spending time together. Life felt good. I felt free and happy and I knew that this was what I wanted, that this was who I was.

A few weeks later Jo made contact with me and asked if we could be friends. If I was honest I did miss her. She was my best friend and we had been through so much together. We started hanging around together, chatting and listening to music as we had done before and without the baggage and problems a relationship brought I started to enjoy our time together.

One night I was round her house just chatting rubbish as we so often did and she asked me if I was gay. I was mortified by the question, I had only admitted it to myself, not even to Him at this point as I didn't want to over analyse what we had. I remember throwing a pillow over my face, not wanting to answer the question. She prized the pillow from my hands and said 'tell me the truth, I need to know, it won't change anything'. I told her I was confused, bisexual, the usual cop out story when a gay is in transition, that I still fancied women, even though I doubted I did. I wasn't ready to put it out there just yet and I wanted to save her feelings at the same time. I felt good that Jo knew, that someone else knew what I was going through. She had always knew 99% of everything about me, now she knew the lot.

A few months later I had picked Jo up and we were going to the cinema but I realised I had forgotten my wallet so we pulled outside my mom and dad's and I asked Jo to run and grab it from my mom. She was ages on the doorstep chatting, I assumed it was because they hadn't seen each other for ages. When she got back in the car and I asked her what took so long, she looked me in the eyes and said 'your mom just asked me if you were gay... I told her you was'.

I felt sick.

I felt dizzy.

I felt terrified.

We never got to the film, I just drove around and around screaming, talking, crying, then minutes of silence followed by more shouting and crying.

I left it as late as I could before I went home and as I pulled up on the drive at 11.30 all the lights were off and I breathed a sigh of relief that everyone was in bed.

As I snook in the front door the hall light came on and I saw my mom stood in the hallway. I bowed my head, unable to speak. She rushed over and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back as she whispered 'it's ok, we don't care, your still my son and you always will be'.

With that we both broke down and cried.

I was so happy that my family now knew, an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I now felt free to live the life I wanted to with my boyfriend by my side.

I thought now that we could get on with our relationship, I was falling in love with Him, but that in itself was about to bring me a lot more trouble and a great deal of heartache, but that, as they say, is another story...