No Coming Out Story to Tell

In some ways, I have no coming out story since it was never really an issue for me. And I think that had a significant influence on what I want to write and how I approach writing gay characters.

I always knew I was different, even before I learned that there were words for people like me. I had my first boyfriend when I was nine or ten (but didn’t have a second one for another ten years or so!). We didn’t do much beyond “Show me yours, I‘ll show you mine,” but anyone looking at our relationship would’ve quickly concluded we were more than just friends.

The Proverbial Fruit Machine

I remember my mum talking about “bum bandits” when I was an infant, which I always found funny. Not understanding the slur, I imagined them as some sort of fruit machine. It wasn’t until I was about eleven that the cherries all lined up and, with a massive ka-ching, the meaning finally became clear. Sadly, the revelation didn’t result in a cash jackpot.

Being Gay at School

Starting secondary school meant showers with the other boys when my excuse of “Forgot me kit, sir!” didn’t cut it. Somehow, I had to learn the discipline of having the shower, towelling off, and getting dressed without letting my eyes stray to where they desperately wanted to go. I had more than one night crying myself to sleep while praying to the Almighty, “not to let me be one of them.”

The Almighty clearly didn’t listen, and interestingly enough, any inclinations I had toward religion were abandoned at around the same time as I accepted my sexuality.

Growing Up Gay in a Small English Town

A long fallow period followed. Corby, the town I grew up in, afforded little opportunity for one gay school boy to meet another.

I started my first job at fifteen in the West Gate time office at the local steelworks. Apart from being propositioned by one of my (elderly) coworkers, things there weren’t much better. Still, every Thursday, I’d get to hand out the pay slips to the line of men clocking off home.

Working in a steelworks is hard work, and the faces of all the men were correspondingly tired and worn down, even the youngest of them. I found that out for myself when I was transferred to the tube mills at sixteen. But back then, I watched the men go by and waited for the one face that was different from the rest.

The Boy in the Blue Raincoat

He was a blond boy of no more than twenty, with blue eyes and an open face. He wasn’t crushed by toil or poverty, and he always wore a blue Mackintosh. That splash of colour meant I could watch him approach from a distance or see him vanish across the bridge onto Rockingham Road.

We never spoke, of course. I never summoned up the courage. I often wonder if he was ever unnerved by this lank-haired teenager staring moon-faced at him.

When Gay Fantasy Meets Reality

A year or so later, I worked at the local Co-op delivering carpets. One day, the door opened at the address we were calling on, and there he was before me, tousle-haired and shoeless (and without his mackintosh). But otherwise he was just as I remembered him. A baby lay crying in a cradle in the front room. His life had moved on in total ignorance of my breaking heart. The fantasy life I’d built up about him crashed to the floor along with the rolled-up Axminster I was delivering.

Corby was no place to live as a gay man. I moved on soon after that.

Writing LGBTQ+ Characters Where Queerness Is a Given

So because I’ve never struggled with my sexuality, I simply don’t have a coming out story in the traditional sense. As a result, neither do my characters. I grew tired of tokenistic gay characters in heterosexual fiction and decided to write my own. Authentic and created through lived experience and observation.

My queer characters live and love as they are: how would you imagine stories changing if all LGBTQ+ characters were given that freedom?”

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