Heading up the dusty trail, a nine-gallon cowboy hat adorned his head while he wobbled around in spurred boots one size too big; Barry remembered the words of his now-deceased bachelor uncle.
‘The trail leads to gold.’
But where was the gold? There was no gold here, just dust, some of which was dirtying his new boots and making him sneeze.
Just as he was about to give up, a building with flashing signage appeared in the distance where the trail ended. As he walked nearer, he could make out its name – ‘Dusty’s.’
Barry’s heart leapt when he opened the venue’s doors, releasing butterflies into his stomach. A brightly-lit room full of music and cowboys, all line dancing together.
Time is the enemy for all of us, especially Mr Kingston, who needs to frantically clean his house before time runs out and his visitors arrive. But why the panic?
A difficult choice of lip colour, comfortable purple shoes, a new green dress, and nostalgic gold nail varnish set the stage for an unexpected encounter.
You’d think that nightlife would be an enjoyable experience and something to look forward to, but that wasn’t always the case for me. Sometimes, not only did danger lurk in dark corners, but the fear of the unknown also played havoc with decisions.
Nights out can be so different to what you expected!
March 1981
On one wet Saturday evening, I sat in my boyfriend’s car. Holding hands with him, we listened to the patter of the rain on the roof as we watched the raindrops splatter on the windscreen. For weeks, we’d both built up the courage to go to a gay bar for the first time.
The bar was out of town and miles from where we lived. However, neither wanted to leave the car and walk up the steps to the bar. Instead, we both sat there, trying our best to peer through the spattering rain and make out the figures going into the bar.
“At least it’s nice and warm in the car,” I sighed.
“Yeah, it’s too wet to get out,” my boyfriend responded. “We’d get soaked.”
We made excuses for staying in the car for the next half an hour. Even though curiosity ran through our minds about what was on the other side of the doors to the gay bar, we remained fixed in our seats while we continued peering through the windscreen at figures entering and exiting the bar.
“What if we bump into somebody in there who recognises us?” asked my boyfriend. “If there’s somebody in there from work, I could end up getting beaten up or sacked.”
Not only did those words strike fear, but I began to worry that if the police raided the bar, my boyfriend and I would be in serious trouble because of my age. We’d heard of police raiding gay bars, mainly in London, but it could just as easily happen here, too.
Although at 19 years old, it wasn’t against the law for me to go into a bar, I questioned if it was against the law for me to hold hands with another man in a public place.
Terrified of the consequences of entering a world where people would have welcomed and accepted us for who we were, we drove off and went home. Hiding who we were and how we lived our lives seemed a much safer option.
It would be months later when we talked about that night again.
“If somebody you worked with had been in that bar, wouldn’t they have been as terrified as we were at being recognised?” I asked my boyfriend.
“I never thought of that,” came his reply. “It makes sense, but it’s still a risk, right?”
Six years later, as I made my way on my own to a new life in London, I left behind a boyfriend who had been secretly sleeping with another man he worked with.
June 1988
Earl’s Court in London was the place to be during the 1980s. Gay men were attracted to the area because it had many bars and a nightclub, but, most of all, it was a safe area for gay men to hang out.
My best friend Neville and I were having yet another Saturday night out, but this particular night would be very different.
When it came to men, it wasn’t rare for Neville and I to be attracted to the same person. And on this particular night, we’d both clocked a handsome man who seemed to be making eye contact with both of us.
Neville made a bet with me that whoever ‘Catch’ (as we’d nicknamed him) asked out on a date, the other would have to do all the winner’s laundry for the rest of the year. How could I decline a bet like that?
I didn’t want to make the first move on ‘Catch.’ I hated rejection, but the prospect of having my washing done for the rest of the year was tempting.
But by the end of the night, neither Neville nor I would be doing each other’s laundry, as not only had somebody else swooped in on ‘Catch’, but Neville had been chatted up by somebody else. He informed me that he was ‘off for coffee,’ which was a code phrase we had for something completely different.
I found myself making the short trip home alone.
“Hi,” came a deep voice from behind me shortly after I left the bar. I’ve been watching you and your friend for weeks and wondered if you fancied going back to my place for a coffee?”
As I turned around, butterflies in my stomach started rioting as my eyes were met by ‘Catch’ smiling at me.
It wasn’t long before I found myself in a taxi on my way to ‘Catch’s’ place. He’d insisted I go back with him rather than both of us making the short trip to my place.
As soon we reached his apartment, I’d hardly given ‘Catch’ time to close the front door before grabbing him and telling him there was no time for talking. “Where’s the bedroom?” I asked.
An hour later, Catch asked, “Would you like a beer, Peachy?” ‘Peachy?’ Was he talking to me? “You can stay the night if you like?”
As much as I wanted to stay, I only wanted to get home and tell Neville that he’d be doing my laundry for the rest of the year!
Several minutes later, I grabbed my clothes and walked to the kitchen, where Catch was getting us something to drink. I realised I still didn’t know Catch’s real name. Should I ask or wait until he asks me for mine? After all, he couldn’t know me as ‘Peachy’ when we went on our first proper date.
“Would you like to make this a regular thing?” ‘Catch’ asked.
I had a fleeting vision of Neville doing my washing, so it didn’t take long to respond.
“You bet!”
“Good, I was hoping you’d say that.”
After a final kiss, which I never wanted to end, it was time for us to part, and Catch escorted me to the front door.
However, stopping in his tracks, he turned around and told me to wait while he wandered off, muttering about forgetting something. I watched as the man of my dreams disappeared back into the bedroom.
With my heart playing the drums in my chest, I thought I felt Cupid’s arrow strike my heart. Catch was probably writing down his phone number for me.
Then, it all started to go wrong.
I couldn’t take my eyes off ‘Catch’ as he walked towards me. “Here you go,” he said, thrusting a wad of money into my hand. “You didn’t tell me your fee, so I hope there’s enough. I’ve deducted a little for the drinks you had here. I hope that’s okay?”
Shocked, my jaw hit the floor, and I was speechless for the first time in my life! ‘Catch’ had mistaken me for a rent boy.
Still openmouthed and unable to speak, Catch pushed me out the door while muttering he’d recommend me to anyone looking for the same kind of fun.
I never saw Catch again, and nor did Neville do my laundry.
October 1992
“There’s a new gay bar in town. Shall we try it?” asked Shelley.
Even though the building was old, the bar was very posh. Shelley had been told that it served some of the best food in London. To cap it all off, the bar staff were some of the best eye candy I’d seen in a long time.
“Are you sure this bar is gay?” I asked as I looked around.
“Yes, why?” asked Shelley.
I didn’t answer her question as I was already making my way to a window table that had become vacant, but I was beaten to it by an elderly couple who had just walked into the bar.
An hour later, not only had we enjoyed a marvelous pub dinner, but the elderly couple by the window had asked us to join them in sharing a bottle of champagne as they celebrated their Ruby wedding anniversary. Shelley had struck up a conversation with the woman in the toilets. She and her husband had lived in the area for over 30 years and had been coming to the bar for most of that time.
Everything had been perfect that evening. As Shelley and I left the bar, it started to rain, so we quickly put on our coats. But just as we hooked arms under Shelley’s umbrella, two youths appeared, both holding bricks.
We watched in horror as they shouted out awful homophobic slurs and threw the bricks they held towards the window of the bar where the elderly couple were still sitting.
Rushing back inside, we were shocked to see the elderly couple we’d spent a lovely evening with covered in blood from the wounds they’d received from the glass of the smashed window. One of the bricks had also struck the man on his face. It wasn’t long before an ambulance arrived, along with the police.
We never saw the elderly couple again.
Months later, I was still blaming myself for what happened that evening. Had the bar not become ‘gay-friendly’, the elderly couple would never have been hurt. There were several other attacks on the bar before somebody set fire to the place one night.
One hundred years of history disappeared just because some people could not cope with people living lives differently from theirs.
Notes from the author.
I wanted to share these three nights out of my life because of the different aspects and emotions they produced.
I had many other nights out, most of which were fun-filled without incidents.
During the 1980s and 1990s, there were some areas in London where gay men felt safe when going out for the evening. But the majority of gay bars were in dangerous parts of London. Bars were often raided by police wearing rubber gloves because of the AIDS epidemic.
From the late 1990s, as attitudes towards gay society changed, going out became much safer. And as it did, gay bars sprouted up in many areas. Other bars saw the ‘pink pound’ as a way of making more money, so started offering ‘gay-friendly nights.’ One hour, a bar could be straight, the next gay.
Of course, ‘gay-friendly’ gradually became ‘all welcome’ as time went on, and although there are still many gay bars and clubs, sexual orientation no longer matters.
Since the opening of the first gay bar in London, ‘The Cave Of The Golden Calf,’ in 1912, not only have gay bars come and gone, but gay nightlife has taken on a dramatic change, not always for the better.
Next month: – Pride. Gay Pride now plays an integral part in the calendar, but in its early days, Pride was very different to how it is today.
Where would we be without friends in our lives? We all need them, don’t we?
As a gay man, I’ve had my fair share of both male and female friends over the years, but some of those friendships were not what I thought the true meaning of friendship was all about.
How many friends have you had during your life? But how many of those were what you would call ‘Best Friends?’
Friends come and go. Some enter and exit our lives quickly, while others stick around for a long time.
Over the 60 years of my life, I’ve had many friends. Three of them stick out more for various reasons. But why? You may be shocked when you find out.
You can choose your friends, so nothing can go wrong, right?
Tasmin – Friend or foe?
I don’t cry much, and it’s hard for me to do so, but the breakup of this friendship had me in floods of tears for the wrong reasons.
The day Tasmin joined my team at work, we clicked. We’d have been years ahead of the awful TV show ‘Marriage at First Sight’ if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was a gay man and she a straight woman.
We enjoyed working together, but most of all, we enjoyed our nights out. Tasmin loved the gay bars; she always felt safe in them, but I didn’t know our friendship was taking us down a dangerous path.
October 1987
As soon as I picked up the departmental telephone, Tasmin’s face told me that the call was something I’d never have expected, and she knew it was coming.
“Leave my wife alone, or you’ll end up in hospital,” were the first words I heard.
“Pardon me! Have you got the wrong number?” I asked.
“Is that Hugh?”
“Yes.”
“Then no, I haven’t dialled the wrong number…”
I was so shocked that I couldn’t respond. I won’t repeat the rest of the words from the other end of the phone line before it goes dead.
Although I’d never spoken to or met Tasmin’s husband, I had a horrible feeling he had just made the threatening call. Tasmin must have mentioned to him I was gay, so why on earth would he believe I was carrying on with his wife? Crossed wires?
I watched as Tasmin walked away. That feeling that she seemed to know the call was coming stayed with me for the rest of the day, unlike Tasmin, who had just walked out of my life for good.
The following morning, my boss called me to his office and told me that the company Tasmin worked for had moved her to another work location. She’d requested to be transferred immediately.
“Had I done anything wrong?” I asked my boss?
“Why? What do you think you’ve done?” he asked.
“Break up her marriage?’ I asked while shrugging my shoulders.
My boss’s look told me he was shocked by what I’d just told him.
“You’ve been sleeping with Tasmin?” he asked.
“What do you think?” I responded.
I never saw Tasmin again and, for weeks, wondered why her husband had threatened me instead of the person she was having an affair with.
Tasmin had told me about the affair not long after we met. At first, it was all about the excitement, but that changed the evening she introduced me to him. Like Tasmin, Tom was married. The wedding ring was a giveaway.
“This is Hugh, my best friend,” she’d told him. “It’s not him I love, it’s you.” Those words seemed to propel me to dizzy heights before bringing me down to earth with a bump. I’d had a few ‘best friends’ when I was growing up, but this was the first time somebody had told somebody else I was their ‘best friend’ in front of me. It was the first I’d heard the love word, though.
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone about Tom,” Tasmin asked. I kept my word and didn’t tell anyone. After all, we were best friends, and I had shared secrets with her that I believed she’d never shared with anyone else.
Many months after Tasmin exited my life, I felt not only scared that her husband was still pursuing me, but I also thought I’d lost my way in life. I felt lonely without her in my life. Our paths would never cross again, although I saw Tom a few years later with another woman on his arm. Wife or new girlfriend? I had no idea, and I didn’t want to find out. Fortunately, he passed me by without recognising me.
Neville – A friend for life?
Neville was the best friend any gay man could have, at least that’s what I thought when I first met him over a mug of tea and a slice of cake in the staff canteen. I hadn’t long moved to London, so he took me under his wing and decided he wanted to look after me.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with me,” he said in his sexy ‘Gordie’ accent.
“Safe?” I asked.
“Yes, safe. Safe from all the homosexuals who work here and want to get you into bed.”
I was shocked by that statement, but it wasn’t long before we laughed while attracting other people’s attention.
And, yes, I was safe with Neville, but probably too safe.
As our friendship developed, Neville and I went just about everywhere together. If Neville was there, I wasn’t far behind. Rumours started, and it wasn’t long before people began gossiping that we were sleeping together. And they were right, but not sleeping together in the way they were thinking.
I loved Neville, but more in a brother-like way rather than a partner, or so I thought.
Our nights out together were always memorable. Although we were attracted to the same men, this never caused any problems.
We laughed, joked, danced, took London by storm and got the most out of what the city offered us. As I mentioned, although we often stayed with each other after a night out, there was never any talk or desire to do anything else but fall asleep together in bed.
But something else threatened the foundations as our friendship deepened—and it wasn’t another man!
We seldom went out without one another, but what I thought made Neville more special to me than anyone else was the jealousy I felt whenever, on the rare occasion, he’d go out with somebody else rather than me.
That may sound strange, given that no love existed between us. We were just terrific friends, but the thought of Neville doing something without my knowledge was probably what I later believed to be blind love.
I started getting jealous of Neville’s other friends. I wanted him to myself. I kept asking questions, such as why they were trying to take my best friend away from me, and I couldn’t work out why I felt so jealous of him going out on nights out with other people.
Finally, I found myself distancing myself from Neville. I’d go out of my way to avoid him while trying to make him think I was going out with other people. I wanted to make him think I had other friends to see if he’d be jealous.
As the months went on, my life went downhill quickly. Everything suffered because of the situation I’d got myself in over Neville. I would sink even lower if I didn’t tell him the problem.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” I told him as we sat alone in my flat. It had been long since we’d both been alone with each other without anyone else in the same room.
It took a lot of courage to then tell him how I felt.
“I think I need help.” were my final words.
When I saw the first tears trickle down his face, I only wanted to hug him. I was more concerned that he’d storm out of my flat, so I was shocked when I saw the tears.
“Oh, my god! Come here and give me a big hug.” I did not expect these words.
We stayed up talking all night that night. Just before daylight, we drifted to sleep in each other’s arms.
The following day, everything seemed to be back to normal between us. Talking had helped.
We picked up our friendship and promised to look after each other, and what developed was more of a brotherly love between us.
Seven years later, I sat at the back of a cold, dark church as I said my final goodbye to Neville. Convinced I’d broken my promise of always looking after him and being there for him, I’d decided the back of the church, away from his family and other friends, was the best place for me. I was heartbroken and couldn’t understand why he’d been taken out of our lives so early.
Although Neville’s life ended too soon, as the months after his death went by, time taught me that I was doing it all wrong. I should be celebrating what life had given me in having such an extraordinary best friend like Neville, not being depressed. I had much to be thankful for in knowing what being and having a best friend was all about. Thirty years later, in the present day, Neville still brings me many happy memories. Others may have forgotten him, but I never will.
Janet – The shortest friendship of them all?
Janet and I got on so well that she even introduced me to her parents when they unexpectedly called into the office where we both worked.
What was strange about the introduction was that Janet didn’t introduce any other staff to her parents. That evening, while having drinks in the pub near the office, we joked about it.
Although I’d taken Janet to my flat a few times, it never dawned on me that she felt threatened being alone with me. After all, she knew full well that I was gay. However, what I didn’t know was that it was me that was in more danger, not Janet.
Janet liked everything I did. She liked anything I wore, the pictures on the walls of my flat, even the bedding on my bed. She’d even compliment my choice of towels and crockery. Sometimes, she was the only one that laughed at my jokes. I sometimes felt like some kind of god to her.
“Why don’t you introduce me to your parents?” she announced unexpectedly one day.
“Because they both live in Wales and, anyway, I don’t have any contact with my father anymore since he found out I was gay.”
“I can still meet your mother.”
“I’ll introduce you next time she comes to London,” I responded. “Is there any reason why you want to meet her?”
Janet never did meet my mother, which I was thankful about. Janet knelt and proposed to me the night before my mother arrived in London.
At first, I thought it was a practical joke, so I looked around for the hidden TV cameras while laughing out loud. But when the atmosphere turned tense after I finished laughing it off while wiping away the tears from my face, I knew Janet wasn’t joking.
Three months later, I moved to a new area in London and got a new job.
Back in the 1990s, nobody would have believed it if a gay man said he was being stalked by a woman.
Like Tasmin, my path never crossed Janet’s again. But I was thankful for that.
Notes from the author.
‘Thank you for being a friend’ is the theme of the 1980s classic TV sitcom ‘The Golden Girls.’ If you’ve never seen that show, it’s friendship at its best.
‘Friends are an essential part of life. Without them, life may not seem essential.’ – author unknown.
I’ve had many other friends, but I wanted to share Tasmin, Neville, and Janet’s friendships with you today to show how different friendships can be.
While we can’t choose our family, we can choose our friends. As with anything else, caution should be taken whenever somebody new comes into our lives and shows more than a healthy interest. The signs are there. It’s just a matter of wanting to see them.
I often think back to friends who were a part of my life and wonder what happened to them. Sometimes, we get to the part of their story where we exited, so we don’t find out. And even though most of my past friends will never read this post, I want to thank them all for the friendship they offered me, even when that friendship simply taught me important lessons about people and life itself.
Next month: – Nightslife. Nightlife is a vital part of a young gay man’s life, but it doesn’t always go to plan.
I hesitated several times as I approached the front door of my mother’s house. How was she going to react when she saw me for the first time since I announced in a letter to her that I was gay?
You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.
After ringing the doorbell, her footsteps seemed to take forever to reach the front door. It was as if life had gone into slow motion, making me wait even longer to find out her reaction.
“Why did it take you so long to tell me?” were her first words as she flung her arms around me. “The kettle’s on, and I’ve got your favourite biscuits in,” she started to sob.
I’d been expecting a completely different reaction, expecting to be on the next train back to London, but ended up staying a few days.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked as I took my first sip of tea. “When can I meet him? I’ve always wanted to go to a gay bar. I hear they’re so much fun and much safer than the bars around here where women get hit upon all the time.”
“Mum!” I said astoundingly.
I couldn’t quite believe that my mother was treating me as if she’d known I was gay all my life. She probably had, but the fact that nothing had changed was a welcome relief. Her love for me was as evident as it always had been. I crossed my fingers and wished and hoped that all my family would react like my mother did.
“Have you told Phil?” I asked.
Phil was my stepfather, and the way my mother was acting, I doubted she had told him.
“Oh, yes,” she announced. “He can’t wait to see you. He’ll be home in about an hour.”
But not all my family were like Mum and my stepfather.
September 1987
‘Your mother has told me’ were the first words after ‘Dear Hugh.’
From there, the letter I’d opened went downhill quickly.
‘People like us are not homosexual or gay or whatever you want to call it. Nobody here is homosexual. You don’t belong here anymore. It’s not the sort of thing that happens to men in our family or area…’
I couldn’t bring myself to read anymore. I tore the letter up and threw it away.
How could a member of my family say that? Thank goodness I was living and working in London. But I was concerned that the letter writer had my address. My mother had probably given it to him. Should I tell her what he’d written? I felt that the family member who had written the letter had just blown my family apart. It brought me down to earth with a painful bump!
But it didn’t end there. A few weeks later, another grim situation hurtling towards me at a hundred miles per hour finally caught up with me. But this one was different. It was a silent rejection where nothing was said. But the reaction to me coming out as gay contained all the words that told me what was about to happen.
It would be over 30 years before I saw or said anything to my father again. Not even a surprise visit from two of my aunts (his sisters) some months later could heal the division, although, to be fair, I don’t think they really understood the whole picture.
Sadly, that was the last I saw of one of my aunts. She passed away before my father accepted the situation of who I was and not who he wanted me to be.
The other aunt was more tolerant when I visited her for the first time after reuniting with my father. However, there was no mention of me being gay. Not even the partner I’d been with for over 20 years was mentioned. But during other visits, things gradually came to the surface.
“Isn’t it about time I met John?” she asked. “I’d have thought he would have wanted to meet me by now.”
Crosswires came to my mind. I hadn’t wanted to push things. While all my aunt was doing was wanting me to take the lead in introducing her to my life. We both ended up laughing about it.
Days before she passed away, she’d tearfully told me how hurt she had been by not being allowed to stay in touch with me for all those years. ‘I couldn’t take sides,’ she told me. I never found out what she meant by that.
The one I had to allow to get away
My grandmother was the family member I thought would be the most accepting of my coming out. But, sadly, I never got to tell her. Life had dealt her the dementia card, and I didn’t feel it was right to tell her, even when she was in the early stages of this horrible illness.
Ever since I can remember, I felt she was looking after me and guiding me. Even after she died in 1994, I continue to feel her presence (not something I’ve felt with anyone else). I guess being her first grandchild has something to do with it.
Directions and decisions
After visiting my mother in May 1987, visits home became less frequent. Unfortunately, most of the family had not reacted kindly to me being gay, and I had decided that the best thing I could do was to keep away from those who were upset by the life that I was proud and thankful for. In turn, I accepted that I had to allow them to live their lives as they wanted.
As the years passed, I regained contact with some of those family members who had not accepted me and, thankfully, had the changing face of society and the improvement in attitudes towards gay people to thank for bringing us back together. It was tough, but I was thankful that things were changing and that my family accepted me for who I was.
Other family members
The fact that, in the past, there had been other male members of the family who had never married never seemed to raise any suspicions that our family could have had gay people as a part of it. It may have been talked about, but never while I was in the room.
“Isn’t it obvious that there must be gay people in all families?” I’d once asked an aunt. She only nodded her head and would quickly change the subject.
I doubt if any of those bachelor male family members ever ‘came out.’ It would have been difficult at the times they lived. I was thankful that attitudes towards the LGBT society were changing. Plus, of course, it was no longer a crime to be a gay man.
This made me more determined to live my life how I wanted to, not how others wanted me to. Family or no family, I was who I was.
Notes from the author.
‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.’ I hear this quote often and always tell myself it whenever I find myself outside of the family circle.
I’d always been independent, which helped me get through the parts of my life where I had little contact with other family members. During these times, friends and even work colleagues were my new family.
Fortunately, I was never short of friends. Most people seemed to take a liking to me, and I never worried about those that didn’t. Just as those who had not accepted me as gay, it was their loss, not mine.
I was lucky. I always had friends I could turn to when I needed them. Talking always helps and has always got me through difficult times.
Today, I am lucky and thankful to be surrounded by family I know care and love me very much. And while many of those family members who rejected me when I first came out as gay have since left this world, I forgave them for the directions they took. Things were different back then.
But thank goodness that things for the LGBTQI community in the majority of the world have improved and are much different today. Family, though, that’s a different matter.
There is an abundance of support available for the LGBTQ+ community. One fantastic resource in the UK is the Gay Switchboard, where individuals can seek assistance and guidance. They can be reached by phone at 0800 0119 100 or by email at hello@switchboard.lgbt.
Please feel free to share support details for LGBTQI people in other countries in the comments section. Let’s spread positivity and acceptance together!
Next month: – Friends. I always found it easy to make friends and developed many friendships over the years. Some were great fun, while others led me to situations I’d never thought could have happened.
In the 1970s, I faced discrimination in my first job for being gay. Progressing to a more accepting workplace in the 1980s, I finally came out openly to colleagues. But even today, despite the changing times, fear and discrimination still persist in the workplace.
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.
True stories about life as a gay man.
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.
Hugh's Views & News 