What I Wish I’d Known Before Growing Up Gay
It’s a given that growing up isn’t the best. Puberty comes and then you grow hair in places and sweat more and then suddenly you start wanting to wank off to things and you don’t even know if you’re doing that right. Why do you suddenly want to wee everywhere when you’ve been doing it a while?
And then you want to start having sex, and getting into relationships. It’s a minefield for every teenager, but imagine having to also hide that. Pretending that the girl on TV wearing hardly anything is sexy, but only because your brother’s sat with you — and then feeling confused when you go to bed because you don’t understand why you don’t think anything about her, really. Telling your parents your many girl-friends aren’t girlfriends but just friends — even though they will come to different conclusions no matter what you say. Or slowly dipping your head and avoiding eye contact with anyone but your friends in school because if you look at anyone else they will probably come out with one of the textbook ‘gay boy’, ‘puff’ or ‘bender’s.
It’s a confusing time; you try figuring it out and seeking information out for yourself — all while trying to keep a low profile. Delete that browsing history, hide that book and don’t try correct someone if they voice a homophobic slur.
The problem, for me, lies in education. The only information I ever got about being gay in sex education during high school was that if you’re gay you could get AIDS, so you must wear a condom. That and that all gay men are fans of anal sex — something which isn’t entirely true and also adds fuel to the fire for the bullies.
I don’t know what the case is now but after talking to my boyfriend and asking a housemate — it sounded like they had a similar experience.
The period of our life that we spend in secondary school helps mould us into young adults quite considerably. Why then, does the curriculum seem to ignore an entire subculture of society — an entire community? We need educating, we need to know how to be safe and most of all we need to know that this is normal. And for as long as we ignore this we will never feel entirely normalised. It doesn’t matter whether you grow up in a pro-gay household or try educating yourself as much as possible; you’re going to encounter homophobia regardless.
Growing up gay was foggy at best for me. I was trying to navigate myself as best I could, but it wasn’t great. I came out at my dad’s 50th birthday party. I let myself get way too drunk and threw a massive Big Brother-style tantrum, which resulted in the party ending and me crying into my best friends armpit in the middle of the street at stupid hours in the morning.
Before that, I wish I’d known that it didn’t matter. Yeah, it did then, massively, I let it consume me I guess. But how can it not when I felt so much pressure to have to come out to everyone before I even TRIED anything with another guy?
That doesn’t matter to me anymore. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I had to tell someone I was gay. It’s a part of my life and I’m so proud of who I am because of it — but no one really cares unless they want to kiss you other places than your mouth.
So that’s what I wish I’d known before growing up gay; that it really doesn’t matter unless you want to be inside of them, or they want to be inside of you.
With thanks to Louise Parker and Toby Menzies-Sacher.
