March 1978
“Do you play rugby?”
That was the first question I was asked at my first-ever interview for a full-time job.
“And what about girlfriends? How many do you have?”
That second question was just as easy to answer as the first. Yes, I had lots of girlfriends, but probably not in the way my future handsome boss was asking.
But worse was to come.
Two weeks later, I started my job as an office junior and settled in quickly, but I had to hide the fact that I was gay.
I did everything I could to stay in the closet. I had to make sure nobody suspected. I even made jokes about rugby balls being bent to the office manager, a strange-looking man who was years ahead of being one of the professors from Harry Potter. I felt ashamed of myself, but it was something I thought I had to do to protect who I was.
But, worse still, I made these jokes in front of a colleague who everyone in the office (apart from me at the time) suspected was gay. Nobody wanted to mention the elephant in the room.
At first, I didn’t realise Paul was gay even though he spoke about Kenny a lot. One day, he took a telephone call from Kenny; the secretary opposite looked at me and made a limp wrist impression while pointing her eyes towards Paul. I was made to feel very uncomfortable.
But it wasn’t until I witnessed the first injuries Kenny inflicted on him that I knew for certain that Paul was gay. I’d overheard other telephone calls from Kenny that sometimes seemed affectionate and other times abusive and threatening. But I continued to believe they were simply housemates. However, as the injuries mounted, I had my suspicions.
Although Paul would come into work with injuries such as a black eye, nobody asked any questions. However, the staff would give each other strange looks. I was desperate to ask Paul (or anyone else) about his injuries and violent boyfriend, but a strange atmosphere in the office whenever Paul came in injured kept my mouth firmly shut. It was as if the whole office were ashamed to talk about it. Nobody cared about him.
I’d witnessed men being violent towards their wives and girlfriends before, but never seen a man being the victim of domestic violence by another man. This and my work colleagues being ashamed to talk about Paul’s life outside of the office made me sad.
But, shortly after, when I overheard my handsome boss on a telephone call saying that he was sacking Paul, not because of all the off-putting injuries he couldn’t allow clients to see but because Paul was a homosexual (but said in a degrading way), I knew my whole life could be blown apart if anyone suspected I was gay. After all, not even my family knew.
The following day, Paul failed to turn up for work, and my boss informed us that he’d sacked Paul for breaking company policy.
‘Policy? What policy?’ I wanted to ask. Was nobody else going to ask? Nobody did, and it had me wondering if one of the company policies was that no employee could be gay.
Gone were the chances of speaking to somebody else about the terrible life I thought I led by believing that I would always be lonely and never have anybody to talk to about who I really was. But my life was nowhere near as terrible as Paul’s.
A week later, I handed my notice in.
September 1986
My fourth full-time job was my second venture in retail, but it differed from the first. Instead of working in a small shop with only four other staff (including me), I worked in a large department store, one of London’s biggest.
On my first day, I immediately felt at home. Even the three straight guys I was working with in the typewriter department welcomed me with open arms when I announced my name, followed by telling them that I was gay.
“Oh, we already know that,” they announced, “and it doesn’t matter to us. Why should it? You’re amongst friends here.”
I felt like I’d left prison and was free again.
But I felt even more welcomed on my morning break that first day. Sitting down and pouring myself a cup of tea from a bright red plastic teapot, I felt like I was sitting on a throne as staff came over to introduce themselves.
From guys who I’d never have guessed were gay and who would have looked better working on a construction site to flamboyant guys who could have been the twin of Mr Humphreys from the TV comedy, ‘Are You Being Served?‘ all introduced themselves and cracked jokes about each other resulting in lots of laughter. They even put their arms around my shoulders, hugged me or shook my hand. What a welcome this was. Far different to previous jobs.
“You looked rather overwhelmed,” said Robert, who decided he was taking me under his wing. During that 30-minute break, I must have made over 20 new gay friends, more than I’d made in my entire life.
And on that first evening, after the store closed, I was whisked away to a gay bar, a stone’s throw from the store, where all who had introduced themselves to me that morning were enjoying drinks and having a great time.
For the next three years, I enjoyed every day of that job. Never once did I fear somebody finding out I was gay. I could be who I was. I made even more friends and had the time of my life. So why, then, did I feel the need for a change?
November 1989
Back to the world of office jobs, my next job meant more money and the vital fact that I no longer had to work every Saturday. That meant I could go nightclubbing on a Friday night and not worry about getting up for work the following morning.
But from the moment I sat at my desk that first morning, I was whizzed back to my first job in 1978.
For the next ten years, I once again found myself hiding the fact I was gay from all my work colleagues because none of them ever mentioned anything about gay life. But why should they? Although I was living in London, probably the safest place to live in the UK as a gay person, some of the staff seemed somewhat too conservative for me to declare I was gay. Some of them would have keeled over or had to go for a lie down in a quiet room for the afternoon if I’d told them. That’s how they seemed.
Even the primarily young women who worked at the front reception desk and switchboard, whom I’d grown very friendly with, believed I was a jilted bridegroom (I’d found out later), so I never mentioned any girlfriends to them.
It wasn’t until 2001, after winning an online competition and taking my work colleagues out for a lunchtime drink to celebrate, that one of my colleagues looked me straight in the eyes and asked, “Can I ask you a personal question?” She said this in front of the whole team, and I knew what was coming, yet I felt unprepared for it.
“Umm, yes.” I hesitated.
“Are you gay?”
The bar floor opened for a split second and swallowed me while I thought about how to respond.
I had visions of my first boss and that conversation I’d overheard him have in 1978. But this time, I was in London, not in the same place I was in 1978, where I believed nobody else was gay.
“Of course I am,” finally came my reply.
“I thought so. I told you all Hugh was gay,” she announced to the team. “You owe me £25, Adam.”
What shocked me more than the fact that Stacey had bet money on me being gay was how life carried on as if nothing had just happened after I’d answered her question. Even though I’d just come out to the whole department, they continued enjoying the drinks my prize money was buying. I wondered if I’d wasted the previous 11 years not coming out of the closet.
Six years later, all of my department wished me well as I left work the day before my partner and I had our civil partnership. They’d even held a ‘Hentag’ (stag and hen combined) party for me and sent me on my way with cards and gifts for my partner and me.
Notes from the author.
If you’ve heard the saying ‘sign of the times,’ this post covers three time periods in my working life where society’s views towards homosexuality were different. It also depended on where you lived and worked at the time. What happened to me in my first full-time job was unpleasant, yet I’ve since come to accept it as it was during that time.
Fast forward to 1986, and although times and society had changed, I had learned that you had to live and work in a particular place to feel safe as the person you were.
Although things should have been better in the job I started in 1989 and continued throughout the 1990s, I believe the scars of the late 1970s stayed with me during that time.
Today, I look back and have no problem about wanting to have protected myself from much of a society that saw being gay as a threat even though they laughed and enjoyed TV appearances of gay people such as John Inman, Larry Grayson and other gay actors and entertainers of their time.
Today, nobody should be afraid of telling their employer or work colleagues they are gay, yet in some areas, such as premiership football, gay people still feel it unsafe to come out of the closet.
One day, I hope that everybody will be welcomed as who they are and not what they are when they start a new job.
Next month: – Family. Coming out to my family was something I feared more than anything else. And while I had good reasons to be afraid, some surprises were in store for me.
If you enjoyed this entry, you may also enjoy reading, ‘True Stories: Gay Memories – The Day My Life Changed.’
Last month, In this series, the subject was boyfriends. Click the link below to read it.
True Stories: Confessions Of A Gay Man – Boyfriends
Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, partners. At some point, we all have one. The challenge is, how do we know when we’ve found the right one?
Please feel free to ask me any questions by leaving me a comment.
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