At sixteen, the first encounter of passion has the deadly force of a hurricane. In to the confused vortex you go, along with the whirling, spinning, heady emotions of obsession, infatuation, sexual preoccupation, what you think is love and common sense.
That first informative experience has no predecessor - there is no previous life lesson to draw from. Without rules or expectation, "first love" can segue into the realm of fantasy. Because we know so little about the construct of a relationship or it's mundanities, we allow it licence to stray into a Mills & Boon, Barbara Cartland fancy that can sadly bear only a slight resemblance to the nuts and bolts of it all.
I was sixteen when I met a man, very nearly double my age, called Clive, and developed a frighteningly intense infatuation for him. In retrospect I saw it as falling in love, but to do that demands reciprocity and an altruism of spirit. My feelings at the time, were, not surprisingly, that of a boy - selfishly immature. I met Clive whilst I was on holiday with my parents in Dorset, and I went off by myself to Sandbanks. A Bacchanalian Orgy of gay sex in sand dunes on a naturist beach. I can only say I was goggle eyed when I got there, and felt like a million dollars by the time I left. It was certainly my rite of passage.
Clive and I met again while I was still on holiday several times, he had some crumbly old vintage car and we trundled around visiting different beaches and places like Corfe Castle, which, combined with the sublime Dorset landscape and the beautiful weather, is a period of my life that will always remain vividly tinted and beautiful. However, in a way, our time together was a holiday romance. My mistake was thinking it was a relationship. I'll never regret leaving home at 16 and living with Clive in Southampton, because I would be writing a very different story, but holiday romances are always a bad premise for a relationship. Especially ones you conduct abroad. It's hard to find Greek Tavernas in Smethwick, and I don't think there are many decent beaches there either.
When we returned home, my parents had become aware of my new "gay" status. I told them while I was on holiday, which went down like a lead balloon. My parents evolution regarding the acceptance of my sexuality has been long and interesting. I've never sought to push my sexuality at them, but there have been times where my gay status has almost broke our family apart.
The only thing on my mind back in Shropshire, to the detriment of everything and everyone else was Clive, Clive, Clive. I know now it was nauseating. We had a telephone box at the top of our drive, and I spent most of the time in there, proclaiming my undying love for him, as I didn't want my parents to hear me proclaiming my undying love for him on our house phone. When I wasn't doing that, I literally spent hours gazing out of my bedroom window into the middle distance, with a forlorn expression on my face. This was BBC Jane Austen adaptation standard maudlin. Oh, and I did a lot of self-conscious weeping, with the bedroom door open, ensuring everyone else could hear my angst and distress.
Looking back, I can see that I told Clive I was moving down there. I don't think there was much discussion. He certainly didn't resist, and he seemed keen. I think my parents were so utterly confounded by my am-dram rapid-cycling bi-polar moods, that tilted on a simple premise of whether Clive picked the phone up or not, added to what was frankly a deeply oppressive atmosphere in the house. My brother had suddenly become Charles Bronson (not the actor, the one in prison), acting ultra-hetero, anti-gay, who frankly made my life miserable (sorry Jason but it's true - I know you love me now, and all is forgiven), and my dad was behaving rather strangely, saying odd things like my handwriting was girlish or effeminate or something like that - obviously everyone was in a bit of a palaver. My decision to go was made easier by the day.
One has to look at coming out not as a 16 year old in 2013, where attitudes are are for the majority 180 degrees switched, but from 1990, 23 years ago, when I came out. The stigma around AIDS had pushed back gay acceptance ten years, we had a government pushing through Clause 28. I think my parents were fearful. I think my mother in particular was worried for the prejudice I might encounter and the obstacles it might put in my way. With hindsight, although her fears were unfounded, I understand them.
I did encounter many problems, but ironically, these came far more from the gay scene itself and from the relationships I had. I have never once received any hostility for my sexuality.
But the day came, on the 1st of September 1990 when I left my parents, never to go back. Just as the happiness of that time in Dorset is a vivid to me now as it was then, so was the awful sadness and loneliness I felt on the day I left, and for weeks after, and those days too are burnished into my memory. But they were the beginning of a new adventure, that would see me go to many incredible places and meet some truly amazing people.
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