Queer UP — Stephen Gately #24
I’m 17 and my head is spinning, ears still reverberating from the industrial sized speakers of the Krazyhouse, legs tired from dancing. I curse the Pilgrim’s cheap trebles knowing the hangover they’ll generate tomorrow. As I lay in bed, I instinctively reach for my phone. Through the haze, the acid green screen forms a halo and I manage to type out a short message.
I am gay. Sorry! Love you x
I send it to my mum and after a brief second of panic, the void takes me and I fall asleep.
I wake up and haul myself out of my pit in the mid-morning before sloping down the stairs and into the kitchen. The radio is on and my mum is cooking breakfast. Without saying anything she hugs me and then I remember the message. Fuck. She does that mum mind-reading thing, strokes my arm and tells me it’s fine and that she loves me. Then she asks me if I want red or brown sauce on my bacon butty. The rest of the day happens. I’ve come out.
Coming out as queer is a paradigm shift in your life. It is a stepping over the threshold. It is a leap of faith into the unknown. As heroic and as mundane as saving someone’s life; only the person who’s life you’re saving is your own.
I’m talking about the coming out you do to your nearest and dearest here: parents, grandparents, siblings, close friends.
It’s important to remember that queer people are faced with the imposing question mark of coming out every day. It’s not always a text message to your mum at three in the morning.
It’s your boss telling you about her wife; it’s the person you chat to you on your commute mentioning his boyfriend; it’s the person who owns the shop correcting you on their use of ‘they/them’ pronouns.
It’s a big deal for a reason — it changes your life, and not always for the better.
I never really liked Boyzone. I’m not being snobby, just honest. I never really enjoyed their music (too many ballads, in case you’re wondering) but I knew who they were. I remember them. But I remember Stephen Gately more. I remember him coming out in 1999.
Besides George Michael, Stephen was the first person I witnessed coming out in the eye of the public. I remember the headlines in the newspapers and the reports on the news. I was 11.
I can remember feeling excited that someone as prominent as Stephen was doing this. I’m not sure why but I felt re-assured by it. If Stephen could do it as publicly as he did, surely I could manage it when the time came. In some way, his coming out probably laid some of the foundations for when I took my own (drunken) leap of faith and texted my mum.
In 2009 after Stephen died, of what turned out to be natural causes, a journalist wrote an article basically implying his lifestyle was somehow to blame. It was an offensive article. The author, one of a minority of people who think (incorrectly) queer people actively court an early death through the way in which they live their lives. This person’s article would be enough to frighten anyone young and impressionable enough back into the closet for decades.
I take heart that the publication of the article garnered over 25,000 complaints and was widely condemned as the homophobic trash that it was.
And Stephen — thanks for coming out when you did.
