Pete | 34 | London, England | Creative Director
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I want to start this story at the end, because like all good Cinderella stories it does have a happy ending. I'm very proud to say that I have been civilly partnered (not quite married) to Matt for the last two years and he is the most perfect and beautiful man in the world. I am beyond proud that I am able to tell him I love him and hear him say the same words back to me every single day. My story leads you up to when I was outed by someone who I thought was my friend, but it's less about her and what she chose to do to me and more about the way I handled it. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and find something in here that resonates with you. "I remember being filled with what I can only describe as a warm possessive feeling every time I saw him."I decided to use this submission as a way of tying up a few loose ends in my life and to also address some of the friends and family of gay people reading this who may never have considered how difficult it is for an individual to come out in the first place. I was a very late bloomer; fat kid, next to no confidence, few friends and quite a troubled home life. None of the things that make growing up easy made harder by knowing all the while I was gay. If I'm really honest I always knew I was gay. I vividly remember being four years old in reception class at primary school and desperately wanting my friend Johanna's 12 year old big brother to be my big brother. I wanted his blouson leather jacket, his white loafer slip ons, but more than anything I wanted his sticky up spiky hedgehog hair - It was 1982 after all! So much did I want the hair that I went home one night and hacked at my own bowl like fringe in a rough shod attempt to recreate the look myself. So Mum, now you know! "What on earth got into me one week before my school photo?" Well I wanted to look just like Johanna's brother! When I was six or seven I did all the usual things a little gay boy does (correct me if I'm alone in these acts!) |
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"I studied intently the various bulges and protrusions hidden by underpants in my Mum’s catalogue."
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I stole pants off the washing line of the teenage boy who lived next door and I ‘borrowed’ my friend Jill’s Ken Doll every few days so I could make him play with butch rubber clad aquatic Action Man in ways even Tom of Finland never dared depict. Yep, these are all things I did that filled me with the same warm possessive feelings I didn't yet understand. It was only once I hit puberty I began to realise that warm and possessive feeling is actually what was technically referred to by all homosapians as being ‘turned on’. Suddenly it all made sense. That feeling that started in my stomach now moved its way down and manifested itself in a very different way. The feeling and desire had always been there even before I had the proper tackle to erm…well tackle it. It was just that I had that feeling for other boys and not girls - what could possibly be wrong with that? "Sadly this jarred with the depiction I was given by
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By the time I reached 11 or 12 my genes had kicked in. I was already 5' 9" and taller than either of my adoptive parents. My father hated me for my obvious genetic differences, systematically punishing me for being physically different to him in a variety of inventive ways. Mainly fuelled by alcohol, he seemed to take it upon himself to make me as ashamed of myself as he was of me. He did an amazing job! Add into this toxic mix, a formal Catholic schooling and heavy dose of emotional over eating and you get one hell of a fat 16 year old kid with a warped idea of why Jesus hates fags as much as his father does. Oh yeah and just to add insult to injury my father taught Religious Studies. I'm in no way religious, but other people’s religion has greatly affected my process of Coming Out. It all sounds incredibly draconian like it belongs in a Charles Dickens novel but Catholicism and religion have played too big a part in my life and deeply affected my own view on what it means to be a happy gay man. My own adoption and subsequent placement was handled by a Catholic agency run by Nuns back in the late 1970's. On the forms it actually states that my parents were perfect candidates to adopt as my father was a Religious Studies teacher, second only to being an actual saint in the institution's eyes. This vocation more than made up for the fact that my mum was JUST a Protestant. As an adopted kid you have a twisted sense of the world at the best of times. I had all the usual ‘abandonment’ issues and as I said, fuelled by drink, my father seemed to go out of his way to confirm my worst fears of rejection and me feeling that I was not good enough for him.
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Religion and Gay came to a head when I was 15. It was a right of passage at my secondary school that you WOULD get confirmed. To be Confirmed meant you stand up in church with all your peers and in front of your parents and the congregation you declare your loyalty to the Catholic Church, to God and in all that they believe… Yeah I know??!! I knew that I believed what I was being taught was total crap, I also knew by this point I was most likely gay myself, so standing up in a church and declaring my love for two guys in dresses felt like something I should reserve for my first trip to a really good drag show! I couldn't do it, unsure of what I was destined for, I walked out of the Confirmation class and never looked back. In a weird way this was me Coming Out silently to myself. I knew the Church disagreed with me and everything I suspected I was: I think this is when things shifted in my head slightly and it was empowering.
I knew I was OK with the possibility of being gay - I just had to convince everyone else. In hindsight I wish I had been strong enough to come out then but there was no support to do so and I am pretty sure things with my father would only have gotten worse. I didn't need to Come Out to make that happen - things got worse for my father all on their own!. |
After losing his job due to drink (water into wine!) our dysfunctional family collapsed. My father spiralled out of control and there were quite a few more hurdles for us to get over before my mum finally petitioned for a long overdue divorce. You Go Girl! It was the 90's by now so I can legitimately say that! She became all strong and amazing and finally got rid of the man that had made all our lives a misery for the last decade. I was very proud of her and now look back on how brave she was to do this alone. Her very own ‘Out and Proud’ moment.
I ran away to Australia for a year, like all 18 year olds who'd grown up with the Neighbours/Home & Away sales pitch wanted to do. What better place to Come Out? Home of Kylie, Priscilla, Muriel, Mardi Gras and 10,000 miles away from my old miserable life. But no. I just lost a shed load of weight and I kissed a man old enough to be my Grandad and called it a day. I returned home the following year and University beckoned, but I was in no way prepared for what that sort of life would throw up for me and expose all my insecurities for three ‘straight’ years. I hadn't dealt with any of my earlier problems. All I'd done was have a very long holiday in sunny Sydney and decided a fresh start was all it took. |
"With a new wardrobe, David Beckham hairdo I was good to go."
Uni was actually a lonely time in my life as I was still hiding who I really was. I look back on those brief years with far more sadness than I have for my entire childhood. It brought about a different sort of pain only someone who is struggling with their sexuality can relate to. I was about to experience being outed by someone who I thought was a friend for life. The thing I still struggle with is that I had the choice to Come Out taken away from me. I lost the control over it which I think we can agree is the only power we have over our own sexuality and it is our choice to share it with others when and if we feel it is right and safe to do so. I started Uni thinking I was my own person. Somewhere in my head I had a plan for how I wanted to tackle Coming Out. In hindsight Newcastle in 1998 was maybe not the best location for meeting open minded and metrosexual people. No ‘Geordie Shore’ back then!!! I honestly expected there to be some other gay people on my course - on my corridor - in my building even? It WAS an Art School after all! But no. Not a single one. I had the thought in my head that being gay would come up at some point and in the incredibly rude, upfront, antagonistic way only a straight girl can ask, it did. "Are you gay?" I planned to say yes for the first time safe in the company of other out gay men. But no one wants to be the first to jump ship. So I clung onto the sinking ship of my straight life and when asked if I was gay (which seemed to happen very bloody often) I just used it as a pick up line and shoved my tongue down their throat to shut them up and to some degree prove them wrong.
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I wanted to be cool and accepted, so I sought out the company of the ‘cooler’ people on my course. After losing weight while I was away I was still getting used to being quite attractive underneath all that fat and the cooler people seemed to accept me, which for someone like me was a huge novelty; I was flattered to be in their company. One guy especially stood out to me as he seemed so cool and sorted. A typical Geordie Boy; all chat and swagger and I desperately wanted to be like him - It was Johanna's big brother all over again! I don't think any of the people I socialised with were real friends; I just wanted to be like them and thought through association that would happen. Don't get me wrong, they were predominantly nice people but they just saw the outwardly confident 6' 2" handsome-ish guy that I still feel like I am pretending to be 13 years later. I ended up moving into a house with them. I know at the time I was flattered to be asked and I actually dropped my dorm friends to take up the offer (not something I ever thought I'd do) but I was at Uni determined to be a new version of myself. Big mistake. I don't believe these people ever really knew me and I played up to what I thought they expected. But when you live with people and work together 24/7 you can't keep that pretence up for long. However, the one girl I thought I could always rely on was Leanne. |
In some ways we were polar opposites but in others we had so much in common. One way in which we were very different was our confidence. She was all flirty and determined with the opposite sex and knew what she wanted. I'd watch her manipulate boys and she was damn good at it too. I don't think I have ever been as taken with a girl before. She'd had a pretty weird and twisted up bringing herself. Her Dad was a strict hard nut ex-military type and she was a boarding school kid with an older Brother who was a bit lost and attempted suicide multiple times, so she felt like a kindred spirit to me. But she had a hardness to her that I thought I could get past.
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I was still the only gay guy on the course and finding it challenging to locate anyone or anywhere to discover more about myself and what I was supposed to do next. It's all very well knowing you like men but where do you go to find them? I'd exhausted the library’s one shelf devoted to gay issues. At this time we were on the cusp of the internet age; it was dial up. It was slow and it was an anomaly to me if I'm honest. It was the birth of the iMac and everyone in my student house seemed to acquire one in various lurid colours via their generous parents or some sort of dyslexia grant. I am sure you've all heard that hilarious story of someone borrowing a friend’s computer and looking at porn, forgetting to wipe the history. Yep that was me. I'm that story. But please bear in mind that the closest to any sort of homo-genital action I had up to this point was kissing a grandad at Mardi Gras in Sydney. I wasn't particularly looking at anything too hardcore, I'm not sure it even existed back then. My personal taste lies in the hirsute and hefty gentlemen. Very manly, big, butch and masculine. Cowboys, Lumberjacks, Carpenters and various other Village People types. So that is what I hunted down on my first few log ons on Leanne's (my best friend in the whole wide world) iMac. I also used the computer to search for info on Coming Out to people, how to deal with feelings I was having and what to do next. There was no real support or information out there that I knew of. |
One particular night when we went out Leanne pulled a guy off our design course; her 4th I think. Told you she was good! She went back to the guy’s house which meant I could sneak in to her room and use her computer, admittedly without permission, to have another look. Two days later Leanne stormed in the lounge where all six of our housemates were sat, to announce that someone had been on her computer and she wanted to know who… I didn't know about the friggin web HISTORY!
Not once did she mention GAY or porn, which at the time I was grateful for. I thought she was being kind. My world just crashed and my heart fell into my stomach. It was like the room was shrinking around me with all eyes pointed in my direction. I left the lounge with my legs like jelly as I walked up to her room, no idea what to expect in her reaction. This was the first time anyone close to me had ever seen into the part of me I was so ashamed of and I lived in terror of seeing it all unravel. I knocked on the door and proceeded to tell her how unprepared I was for all this, that I was unsure if I was gay, straight or bi, my confusion and fears. In that moment she was pretty good. I remember thinking to some extent, she was cold and off about me sharing my most private feelings but she also offered to go to gay clubs with me. I think it was her way of ending the scenario; I asked her if we could keep this to ourselves. I still wasn't ready for everyone to know and wanted to take it one step at a time, possibly taking her up on the offer of support. I still didn't know if I wanted to live my life from that day forth as an Out Gay man. I wasn't strong enough yet. I left the room that night very unsure of how things would turn out, which on reflection is not how you should feel when leaving the company of your best friend.
It turns out Leanne was no friend. She must have spent the next two weeks telling anyone who would listen what I had begged her not to. She had traded in my friendship for a good story. I noticed people shrank away from me. The girl I had been "seeing" politely made her excuses. The offers of nights out with the rest of the housemates disappeared. Joint shopping trips to Sainsburys vanished and walking into Uni together evaporated. I was essentially frozen out. The two other boys in the house I assumed were just uncomfortable with me, but I still couldn't understand why Leanne just looked at me like a leaper. The overwhelming emotion I remember being addressed with is disgust; something I wasn't prepared for. I thought we were further on than that. The only one who didn't respond like that was Rachel. She was my saving grace. I'm still unsure as to how many people Leanne told or how far her story about me spread. From that point on I never again discussed my sexuality with anyone. To exist in my shared house I lived in my bedroom. I kept food in my room and came and went as an individual living in a house of strangers. I didn't want to come out if this was how my entire life was going to be. I couldn't take the risk of my family and friends back home reacting in the same way. It filled me with absolute horror and fear that Leanne may contact them.
Not once did she mention GAY or porn, which at the time I was grateful for. I thought she was being kind. My world just crashed and my heart fell into my stomach. It was like the room was shrinking around me with all eyes pointed in my direction. I left the lounge with my legs like jelly as I walked up to her room, no idea what to expect in her reaction. This was the first time anyone close to me had ever seen into the part of me I was so ashamed of and I lived in terror of seeing it all unravel. I knocked on the door and proceeded to tell her how unprepared I was for all this, that I was unsure if I was gay, straight or bi, my confusion and fears. In that moment she was pretty good. I remember thinking to some extent, she was cold and off about me sharing my most private feelings but she also offered to go to gay clubs with me. I think it was her way of ending the scenario; I asked her if we could keep this to ourselves. I still wasn't ready for everyone to know and wanted to take it one step at a time, possibly taking her up on the offer of support. I still didn't know if I wanted to live my life from that day forth as an Out Gay man. I wasn't strong enough yet. I left the room that night very unsure of how things would turn out, which on reflection is not how you should feel when leaving the company of your best friend.
It turns out Leanne was no friend. She must have spent the next two weeks telling anyone who would listen what I had begged her not to. She had traded in my friendship for a good story. I noticed people shrank away from me. The girl I had been "seeing" politely made her excuses. The offers of nights out with the rest of the housemates disappeared. Joint shopping trips to Sainsburys vanished and walking into Uni together evaporated. I was essentially frozen out. The two other boys in the house I assumed were just uncomfortable with me, but I still couldn't understand why Leanne just looked at me like a leaper. The overwhelming emotion I remember being addressed with is disgust; something I wasn't prepared for. I thought we were further on than that. The only one who didn't respond like that was Rachel. She was my saving grace. I'm still unsure as to how many people Leanne told or how far her story about me spread. From that point on I never again discussed my sexuality with anyone. To exist in my shared house I lived in my bedroom. I kept food in my room and came and went as an individual living in a house of strangers. I didn't want to come out if this was how my entire life was going to be. I couldn't take the risk of my family and friends back home reacting in the same way. It filled me with absolute horror and fear that Leanne may contact them.
"I could tell that she got some sort of sick enjoyment out of what she'd achieved.
I'd see it in her eyes when she looked down from her high horse of straightness."
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So that’s how I was forced out. Over the coming 18 months I built friendships with other people on my course. Things got better socially but I was still hiding who I was, too scarred by my first experience. I was lonely and damaged for a while and in hindsight I wish I had just owned what happened to me. So what, I looked at porn, I looked at some semi clad muscle men on my best friend’s computer. I wish I had taken the power from Leanne and just been proud of who I was maybe apologising for borrowing her dial up!!! My one big regret was not cutting her off there and then. In my final year I met Craig, a guy in the year below on my course. Out of the 90 people on my course we were sort of thrown together due to our gaydars. Craig was amazing. He was the antithesis of my over thinking and self doubt. He's confident and sure of himself; a fantastic mix of Will Young and Oscar Wilde. We were never meant to be boyfriend and boyfriend, but the brief time we were together in a very PG ‘Lucas & Walliams’ sense he made me look at being gay in a different light. He's an amazing individual and still one of mine and Matt's closest friends. He even read out a personally written, disgustingly blunt poem at our wedding! He made me see the good in being gay, not the negatives I was used to seeing and I'll always be grateful to him. I wish everyone out there could meet a Craig! |
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Jump forwards quite a few years and a good friend from Uni finally confided in me what Leanne had actually spread around my small group of housemates and a few others. She had obviously realised the lack of impact of telling people what I had really searched for on her computer and decided to invent the drama herself and twisted the truth into me looking at kids on line - young boys. She took my admission to being attracted to proper grown up, butch hairy and meaty men and did what people who live in the dark ages in fear of homosexuality do.
"She successfully turned my Coming Out into something dark and cruel that satisfied her homophobic fears."
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In the same moment I was filled with relief and deep deep sadness at what my friend had just told me as I realised I hadn't experienced homophobia all those years ago it was just people distancing themselves from me based on the lies they had been told with me shrinking away from them as a result. |
I still don't know why Leanne did what she did to me; I still give it too much thought and often have daydreams of retaliation. It was obviously a personality trait Leanne wheeled out over and over again. Just 12 months later another mutual friend was forced to move out of the house she shared with her due to a very similar scenario of Leanne abusing a confidence and exposing a weakness to her own gain. In a way it vindicated me, but at the same time I hated that I had not warned my friend about what Leanne was really like. Like me I think my friend coped and came out of it stronger and wiser and now has a lovely family and a great life. Leanne on the other hand is still alone and now a woman of a certain age married to her career who will probably never experience half of what her multiple scorned friends have been able to enjoy over the last 10 years.
Again I escaped my situation and came to London to start anew, but this time I was determined it was going to be different. Leaving the mess with Leanne behind I was going to find friends who accepted me for me and I knew that being gay in London was far less of an issue than it would be anywhere else in the UK. My celibacy continued, but most importantly I made the effort to identify myself as gay, so I no longer hid from it like something to be scared of. In the first week of my new job at a very modern marketing company I met Matt. Matt was a conundrum to me. He was unlike any gay man I had ever met in real life or on seen on TV. He was just a normal guy and not defined by being gay - he was like me. I felt comfortable with Matt and secure and I became really good friends with him. It was easy to Come Out to Matt and I did it clumsily stumbling around Kentish Town one night. It wasn't news to him, but I felt I just needed to say it out loud. It was good to say it and know the reaction would be positive. Easy A! After a tumultuous end to our working relationship (I was made redundant and Matt got all shouty and quit) he decided to go travelling. I was much happier now and had a great circle of friends. Craig was down in London too and I had a great job that made me happy - so Matt leaving was sad, but I knew I would be OK and it would be amazing for him to travel the world. But God I missed him.
We emailed each other very often, probably more than you should with someone who is just a friend, but it was tough not having him there with me in London. I felt by emailing we actually discussed things and talked about stuff I don't think two blokes would ever say to one another in person. I'd promised to pick Matt up from the station on his triumphant return nine months later. I was in no way prepared for what happened next.
Again I escaped my situation and came to London to start anew, but this time I was determined it was going to be different. Leaving the mess with Leanne behind I was going to find friends who accepted me for me and I knew that being gay in London was far less of an issue than it would be anywhere else in the UK. My celibacy continued, but most importantly I made the effort to identify myself as gay, so I no longer hid from it like something to be scared of. In the first week of my new job at a very modern marketing company I met Matt. Matt was a conundrum to me. He was unlike any gay man I had ever met in real life or on seen on TV. He was just a normal guy and not defined by being gay - he was like me. I felt comfortable with Matt and secure and I became really good friends with him. It was easy to Come Out to Matt and I did it clumsily stumbling around Kentish Town one night. It wasn't news to him, but I felt I just needed to say it out loud. It was good to say it and know the reaction would be positive. Easy A! After a tumultuous end to our working relationship (I was made redundant and Matt got all shouty and quit) he decided to go travelling. I was much happier now and had a great circle of friends. Craig was down in London too and I had a great job that made me happy - so Matt leaving was sad, but I knew I would be OK and it would be amazing for him to travel the world. But God I missed him.
We emailed each other very often, probably more than you should with someone who is just a friend, but it was tough not having him there with me in London. I felt by emailing we actually discussed things and talked about stuff I don't think two blokes would ever say to one another in person. I'd promised to pick Matt up from the station on his triumphant return nine months later. I was in no way prepared for what happened next.
"As I walked towards Highgate Station there was that familiar feeling again,
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I didn't exactly know that at the time as I'd never been in love before, and it took my friend to explain it to me that what I was experiencing was love and not food poisoning. I was lucky as over the next few months our stuttering romance turned into a relationship and one night I just blurted the words out. It felt amazing and incredibly easy. I was in love with Matt; the fact that he was a man was here nor there to me. A few months later Matt said the same 3 words back to me. I don't think I have ever felt happier in my life. Dating Matt was easy which is how it should be. As a friend he'd already seen me at my worst and at my best and he'd made me laugh more than I ever had before; he knew me inside out. He got me so there was no way I could pretend to be someone else which up until then I had been expert at. Most importantly he didn't laugh when he saw me naked!
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Matt healed so much of what had happened to me in the previous few years simply by being my boyfriend. When it came time to actually Come Out officially to the people in my life I cared about I didn't give a jot about what happened next. I was so proud of Matt and our relationship that it just seemed ridiculous not to tell everyone. My Coming Out was easy in the end as I did it knowing I was in love, I was secure and unbelievably happy. Anyone who couldn't see and understand that I didn't need in my life anyway. No one blinked. Everyone was totally underwhelmed. My mum had a brief stumble out of the blocks by blurting out the statement, ‘But I thought you wanted children’. It didn't take her long to see the irony that she herself had adopted two kids and with that we laughed! |
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I know I am lucky. I have something with Matt that my parents never had. We're an equal partnership and we're only as strong as we are separately because of that. Apart from each other we are useless but together we can take on the world. Finding the person who makes you brave enough to be yourself is probably the greatest feeling in the world.
When Matt came into my life I became a better version of myself and I think I did the same for him. |
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Matt proposed to me after we'd been together for five years. As a kid I grew up thinking I would never get married and probably never fall in love as I never saw any positive examples of this. I grew up with a feeling of improbability in my heart that the way I felt for a man would never be as important or as significant as my straight counterparts. We are civil partners, but I refer to Matt as my husband and I look forward to the day I can marry him. What's good for the goose is good for the gander (and the other gander he wants to marry!)
So anyone reading this who has it in their head that being gay is hopeless, or who believes the negativity and disappointment people like to hang on a homosexual relationship need to know that romantic and emotional love between any adult couple of either gender should be equal in every way.
Today has been one of those days that has been challenging to be gay. I woke up to the news that North Carolina bans same sex unions, I watched the infamous YouTube video of how Tom and Shane’s five year relationship in the US amounted to no more than room mates due to a family’s innate homophobia to their son and his partner. Then I read of the News of the World’s blackmailing of a closeted gay man to come forward as the guy George Michael met on Hampstead Heath. It leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth but things are still heading in the right direction, slowly yes, but surely. I'm lucky as I know I go to bed tonight with my husband safe in the knowledge that those who are important to us respect, acknowledge and support our relationship.
I hope you can see through my waffling and recognise the point I'm trying to make is that no matter how bad it seems before you Come Out, once you have taken that step your life will become better. I promise.
Follow Pete on Twitter - @PSJF
So anyone reading this who has it in their head that being gay is hopeless, or who believes the negativity and disappointment people like to hang on a homosexual relationship need to know that romantic and emotional love between any adult couple of either gender should be equal in every way.
Today has been one of those days that has been challenging to be gay. I woke up to the news that North Carolina bans same sex unions, I watched the infamous YouTube video of how Tom and Shane’s five year relationship in the US amounted to no more than room mates due to a family’s innate homophobia to their son and his partner. Then I read of the News of the World’s blackmailing of a closeted gay man to come forward as the guy George Michael met on Hampstead Heath. It leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth but things are still heading in the right direction, slowly yes, but surely. I'm lucky as I know I go to bed tonight with my husband safe in the knowledge that those who are important to us respect, acknowledge and support our relationship.
I hope you can see through my waffling and recognise the point I'm trying to make is that no matter how bad it seems before you Come Out, once you have taken that step your life will become better. I promise.
Follow Pete on Twitter - @PSJF
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