Tuesday - Sexual Orientation

The Long Way Out

One World Week is about celebrating in and learning more about other people and their culture. Both these stories are from Imperial students, the first one about the less-well-known side of the gay scene in London and the second about coming out.

For more information and guidance visit the union pages or download a copy of IQ's Out and About guide (2.2 MB).

First Night Nerves

I’m standing on the staircase of the Coronet Theatre, Elephant & Castle. Yet another coffin is carried up the stairs by 4 pallbearers. No, I’m not at a funeral; I’m at Duckie’s Gay Shame - the "Annual Festival of Homosexual Misery", a tongue-firmly-in-cheek anti-Pride celebration. I’m scared shitless. Not only because every hour another coffin is brought up of someone who’d just faked their own death on stage, but because this is my first proper experience of the London "gay scene".

Now this may not seem the most traditional of first scene experiences, but in retrospect I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Having grown up as a confidence lacking country boy from a tiny village in the North West, I was completely fed up of the stereotype presented on TV and knew there must be more to homosexual culture than one big pink sea. Not that I was particularly tempted to explore it. While all my friends started progressing from drinking cider in the local park on the Friday night to exploring Liverpool’s nightlife, I shied away, keeping to my studies. I was that cool.

It’s 2nd July 2005 and I’m in London with a friend to see New York singer Justin Bond at the Soho Theatre. Going down to London as often as I could was more my way of having fun, rather than drinking myself into a stupor (how things change). We thought we’d make a weekend of it to celebrate finishing our GCSEs. It happened, by coincidence to be the weekend of London Pride. Equally intimidated and uninterested by the OTT display of homosexuality, I avoided it at all costs. While I was comfortable, I didn’t yet feel confident enough to be "proud" of whom I was.

It just so happened that after Justin’s show he was performing his drag cabaret act, Kiki & Herb at Gay Shame, the antipride - aimed at "Sad Old Queens, Lonely Lesbians, Closet Cases, Bitter Bull Dykes, Men who have sex with Men, and their Friends and their Fans" - perfect! Intrigued and terrified, my friend persuaded me to go along. After adding a few years to my age with some Black Kohl eyeliner, I tried to stop my nervous shakes as I walked past the bouncers standing between my first scene experience and me. As they looked up and down me I was convinced they’d ID me. By some miracle they didn’t!

Fresh from our under-aged success, we headed straight to the bar and with some much needed Dutch courage, we hit the dance floor. Expecting the place to be filled with attitude, it was refreshingly attitude free. Everyone was having an amazing time, with awesome music - Primal Scream to Girls Aloud. It felt liberating to be at a place where you could actually be whoever you wanted to be and not be judged in the slightest (You may want to pick up a sick bucket for the next sentence...). I felt freed from the shackles of conformity! As we worked away towards the stage, the performances began. Every hour, a different homosexual would "commit suicide" on stage in a variety of ways. With fake blood splattered everywhere, a mixture of sailors and freaks came on stage, dancing as the body was placed in a coffin and then carried through the audience. I’d never felt so laid back about my sexuality. To see so many people being comfortable and proud of whom they were, yet able to poke fun at themselves was a revelation. As the night drew to a close, we stumbled out of the Coronet and caught the night bus home, on a high all the way.

Since then, I’ve not looked back.

A Long Night

"I’m gay"; not the easiest words one ever has to say. For some people coming out is as natural as a sunrise and to everyone around them the fact that they’re gay is just as obvious as one. The rest of us are left with the long night beforehand.

Being thirteen is never easy but it was a particularly tumultuous year for me. In the space of a year my parents were divorced and I was living on the other side of the world to pretty much everything I had ever loved. And there I was, lonely, in a dank and grey Midlands city; wondering how my lot could get much worse. Then puberty hit me like a punch to the groin. I couldn’t imagine a worse time to become a moody little brooder.

At first, though, things were pretty normal for a boy of my age, you know...ummm...’exploring’, ‘discovering’ and other such euphemisms. But then a disconcerting thing happened. It dawned on me, rather suddenly, that I was much more attracted to men than women. The difference in attraction was akin to that between a dingy and an aircraft carrier. An aircraft carrier full of sailors...

Scared by this sudden realisation, I decided to hide my discovery away. I couldn’t deal with it myself; how was anybody else supposed to? Even thinking the word ‘gay’ was difficult. Something vital to my being was locked away in a dark and secret place, left to slowly stew. Years passed, where I tormented myself with my secret. It gnawed away at me from the inside. Lies were woven but eyes seemed ever watchful. I had to keep my tongue in check and not get caught.

And so it was for five years. What was left to stew came steadily to a boil. Depressed and angry I knew I had to set my secret free on the world, though still I hadn’t the courage to do it. Then I left home and arrived at university, scared, lonely and depressed, I saw a chance to change it all. To throw off those years of confusion, anxiety, anger and sadness and be who I really was.