Matt | 31 | Brighton, England | Administrator


My name is Matt, I’m 31 at the time of writing live in Brighton with my husband, Andrew. We have just celebrated our first year of marriage. Some might say civil partnership, I say marriage. So far, so Gay. My coming out is not a story of trials and tribulations, barring the jangling nerves before I did it, and one nasty incident which I’ll go into more detail later.

Coming out doesn’t have to be difficult. That's the message I hope to convey, especially to those who are going through the coming out process right now.


I knew I was gay at a young age – five years old, to be precise. How did I know? At the age of five I didn’t have the vocabulary, or the experience, to know what gay was but something inside me knew because I was attracted to boys: It was a deeply physical feeling and it never bothered me. So at ten years’ old I met the first person who I knew, even at that tender age, was gay. He knows who he is: I won’t out him because he already is out. In fact he’s recently started an inspiring website that shares the experiences of coming out and celebrates it. Small world, innit?

I then spent the next six years struggling with hormones and spending every day with the dull ache of longing, hoping that I might meet a boy who, if not gay, at least wouldn’t mind helping out. I didn’t, of course, because despite living twelve miles from Brighton, the small town I grew up in was not known for its embrace of the different. Add to that heady mix of hormonal overdrive and loneliness an almost paralysing shyness and things could have turned out very differently for me.

"Then I met some female friends who I would spend my latter teenage
years growing up with, sharing that longing for the touch of a boy
but with me never daring to say that I was Gay."

It wasn’t even an acceptance thing, because when I first met this group of girls I knew I would eventually come out to them. I just couldn’t bring myself to shout it out.

I’d just spent several years being bullied by the British equivalent of American Jocks, and somehow children can smell the weak spot – I was tall, broad, but never seemed to show an interest in fumbling with girls behind bike sheds, so I was of course immediately labelled as ‘gay’. And not in any way that could be construed as being positive. I had withdrawn into my shell before I met those girls that saved my teenage life.

We started with a mutual interest in Victoria Wood. For those who are too young, she is a talented comedian, screenplay writer, songwriter, performer – the list goes on and I don’t work for her PR Company so I won’t continue. In short, we loved the alien, Northern humour, her switched on observations, and that she was a bit of a big lass, instead of being some skinny bimbo. We laughed like drains every lunchtime, the girls supported me when I took to the stage and started doing Drama and I really came out of my shell – I shaved my head, I was in a (terrible, sorry Tom if you ever read this) band, I became confident about communicating with other people.

"I’d like to tell you that the moment I came out, several of my female friends wept because I was so handsome and they told me that they would forever mourn the loss of me as a potential mating partner. Then a Pride parade turned up outside the school gates and I was whisked up on stage by a muscled hunk of a man wearing tight briefs and a bow tie, whereupon I sang my heart out with a handful of drag queens as backing singers. Then the heavens opened wide and rain poured down, students were seen dancing in the playground, and then the sun came out with a giant rainbow blazing across the sky. And finally, several boys who I fancied decided that they could finally find the courage to come out, because I was an amazing role model, and we all skipped down the road, hand in hand, ready to party into the night."


Of course, what really happened was less of an event. I took friends out in pairs onto the concrete playground and told them. The playground was a bit damp as it had been raining the night before. There were hugs, followed by smiles, laughter, and a lot of ‘We knew.’ In fact it was a bit like a Victoria Wood sketch, but then again I may be trying to embellish this important moment in my life. I’ve always been a bit of a drama queen.

So, my message still stands: Coming out doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s scary, nerve-wracking, terrifying and heart-racing but not difficult. I would advise you to have a good friend on standby, and probably tell them before the parents. It makes it easier, each time you do it. And then, one day, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you don’t need to do it anymore. I often find this happens at work, when I’m on the phone to someone I’ll never meet, and we’re chatting and they make an assumption that I like women. I could ‘correct’ them, but why bother? Coming out is just so blasé.

As for my family – well, my two, older sisters were a doddle. I’ve always been able to share things with them: They were the next obvious choice on the list. My parents… well I’d just like to make a startling revelation – I have never officially told my parents that I am gay! It all came out piecemeal, with clues being left around the house for my parents to find before I came out to my friends. So, Mum and Dad, when you attended our Civil Ceremony last year, Andrew and I are both Gay and now we are a legally-realised couple. But I jest.

I found it difficult to come out to my parents for fear of rejection. Because I watched too much television, I assumed my father would disown me and my mother would secretly support me. My sisters did their part in helping me come out to the parents by easing them both into the idea that I might not fancy girls. For the first two years we didn’t directly speak about it, although one late night I was sitting in the living room with my Dad and he came out with a cracker: “Do you think I could be gay?” I could have frozen up and run out of the room but I just burst out laughing. My dad knew I was gay and he thought, at the time, that some kind of blame should be attached to him and my mother for it. My instinct for knowing that being Gay wasn’t something to be ashamed of kicked in and from the age of 18 my Dad and I started to get on for once. My mother, on reflection, found it a harder thing to accept although she has never been a person who would say so. She once told me that she was surprised because I was such a masculine boy. It was a sweet, if somewhat back-handed, compliment. And so we started talking about being Gay, and that perhaps Gay men didn’t have the same role models in the public eye as their straight counterparts. This was a few years before the likes of Will Young, Graham Norton and Alan Carr appeared as very Gay presences and my mother had been brought up with Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams, John Inman and Larry Grayson as the only public, effeminate, Gay characters on telly. Several years later, when she joined me and the boyfriend at the time with some friends in a Gay bar in Brighton, I felt that her education was complete. She was certainly no Denise Black but she was my mum and she now understood that being Gay did not involve men dressing up as women and calling each other duckie.

"My Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and even my two Grandmothers, do not know I’m Gay
inasmuch as I’ve never come out to them. I have never felt one nagging need to tell them.
They’re intelligent enough people to figure out why Matt’s never had a girlfriend.
The most important people who I want to know that I am Gay already know it."



My mother’s mother, shortly after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years ago, asked me the same question she has asked me ever since I grew pubes and started needing to wash regularly, but with a slight twist: “You going out with a nice girl, Matt? … Or a boy?” My dad was with me at the time and we just exchanged a smirk. Of course she knows I’m Gay, she’s my grandmother. Some things don’t need to be said and there’s a time when coming out doesn’t even factor into my life anymore.

I’ll finish up with the one time I faced direct persecution as a Gay man, because every good story needs a moment where the Hero faces a seemingly insurmountable problem and prevails.

I was 17 and walking home from college with one of my fabulous female friends, Isla. A gang of young boys had heard that I had come out so took it upon themselves to taunt me on my way home. The school was divided into two sites and by the time we had reached the other site the taunts had grown louder and they’d started throwing stones. No, we hadn’t been transported to Medieval England or to another country where being Gay is illegal: We really were being pelted with stones. Isla didn’t break away from me for a second. We approached the gates of the school and I saw that one of my teachers was standing there herding kids on to a school bus. I was shaking with anger by this point, determined not to engage with the little bigots who were stoning me, and calmly walked up to the teacher. I informed her, with a trembling voice, of what was happening and she hurried me inside. I said goodbye to Isla and thanked her for sticking by me.

I received nothing but positive support from the teachers at my school / Sixth Form College. I think it helped that one of the teachers was Gay and he told me that they had recently changed the school’s discrimination policy to include discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. I was given a cup of tea, had a good cry, and declined a chaperone home. I told my parent straight away and they offered me support and love. The next time I had a sociology lesson, my tutor informed me that all of the boys had been identified by witnesses and letters had gone out to their parents. They had been formally warned that if they tried anything like that again, they would be expelled. I could have let it happen, gone home, bottled it up and carried it with me. But I didn’t. Thanks to a fantastic friend, a great support network at the school, and to all those witnesses who thought it appalling that I was having stones hurled at me, a clear message that it’s not acceptable to do that to anyone hit home. I actually saw some of the boys a couple of years later, when I was walking through the town with my Dad. They tried shouting ‘Faggot!’ at me. My Dad offered to ‘sort them out’. I politely declined but was grateful that he supported me.

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