
Gay Love
It seems strange to talk about it now -- to take something
so private and place it in such a public place -- particularly since keeping
it secret was so important when I was younger.
I imagine I must have been about sixteen, and I had just about figured
out that I was gay. Tony was nearly fifteen -- I went to school with him,
although he was in a different year. I met him at a society at school.
He was everything that I didn't feel that I was: confident,
athletic and attractive. I had been incredibly quiet ... it was an all-boys'
school and being gay was not really an option. I just tried to keep out
of everyone's way, out of the firing line. No one knew, but my reticence
and retiring nature were apparently as worthy of derision.
Tony, I guess because he was younger than I was, didn't
have any of these preconceptions, and I felt more confident with him.
He treated me like a human being. It was fun and completely liberating.
I was vulnerable and desperate for some form of affirmation.
So I suppose it was inevitable that I should fall for him.
The next year there was a school trip to Greece, and we
both went. I introduced him to heavy drinking (on Greek brandy) and I
got to know some of his friends. I was slightly uncomfortable with their
age, but at the same time it was such a relief not to be relentlessly
judged. I listened to bad songs and felt that they meant something to
me. I wrote relentlessly in a little red and black book, which wandered
between teenage confessional and clumsy porn novel.
I never told him, although I think he knew.
Shortly after leaving school I finally came out to a friend
of mine, who was then introduced to this interior world. He found it extremely
funny, and with him, I came to realize exactly how trivial the whole thing
was. And when I went to University I completely forgot about it.
Ten years later, it still seems so trivial.
He had been the major crush of my teenage years. I still
see him now. He has not achieved the heights that my hormone-dazed eyes
thought he would -- he is, after all, a flawed and clumsy human. But I
still feel an astonishing fondness for him.
I didn't really think it would happen but -- even as I
have become entirely comfortable with gay dating, had relationships, succeeded
in my work and generally become a more open, gregarious and confident
person -- he still occupies a part of my head, and I feel warm when I
think about him.
It's not the same by any means ... god knows I am not
in love with him anymore.
But loving him was what I built my gay identity around
-- and in some ways, I could not have asked for surer foundations.
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