LET’S start from the very beginning! Columnist Aled, from Justaled.com takes us back to the start
Such a tragic musical reference and yet a modest cliché!
Turning 30 something this year, really has opened my eyes to most things in my life, in particular my continual and monotonous reimagining that is my single life and the difficulties of dating other gay men in wales.
This is probably just a situation that I’m personally experiencing due to me being naturally overly fussy and will eventual die a lonely old queen surrounded by Japanese pugs and French bulldogs.
But isn’t being fussy ok?
Why should I just date someone for the sake of dating?
Why settle down with any Tom, Dick or Harry!
Some have quoted, my mother to be more precise, that beggars cannot be choosers, I’m still not sure if this is an underhanded, and yet viperous comment designed by mother dearest as an indirect but equally direct insult?
I’m in the early stages of my 30s and have, what can only be described as, a rather eclectic life, and I feel I’m forever seeking a new way or new platform to vent, especially when it comes to my tragic attempt to seeking a suitable life partner.
I was a considerable a late bloomer when I decided to exit the closet, jump onto the vega bus and enter the fabulous world of all things homosexual.
During my teens I became a recluse, living in my bedroom, away from my family, almost like a queer version of Harry Potter, forever holding onto my own wand, actually! Exactly like Harry Potter! I also have the scarred forehead to prove it.
I went to school, came home, and if I wasn’t out with my straight mates! Lads lads! I would be locked away from the world, locking away the truth that was inside of me, a truth that I was not ready or wanting to release to the world.
I come from a working-class background, with my family, being devout Labour supporters who had very strong views on such things as the traditional male and female roles, moderate racism and of course the dislike, or to be clearer, the ignorance and misunderstanding to homosexuality.
These are people who lived during the 80s and the AIDS epidemic and not forgetting the horrific propaganda the media created. So naturally, they were under the illusion that all gay men had, or had the possibility spreading the disease through simple means such as touch or possibly a slight graze of the shoulder, thankfully we know we now know better, well I hope we do.
My family home was like Piccadilly circus, people would come and go by the droves. My parents were and still are popular people in the village as well as my dad has his own business on site, and so we always had friends or customers in the house.
In my early teens, I remember people conversing in the kitchen about gay men or gay men that they knew of at the time. Poofs, Fairies, Arse bandits were just a few of the terms I had heard being used to describe gay men as well as how dirty and filthy they were.
“It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” a man in the house disclaimed.
“It says in the bible, that man shall not lay with another man”, said a white-haired, white middle-class white pensioner.
“Oh, he’s one of them” a very common saying, I still wonder what is one of them? What is a them?
“Your arse is for shitting not for shoving things, like a cock up there, can you imagine having shit on you cock, sweet corn in your J**’s eye,” this was the comments from probably one of the most disgusting human beings I’ve ever met.
Hopefully, from these wonderfully toxic quotes, you will understand why it became rather difficult to come out in my household.
A place where I should have felt safe in coming out yet surrounded by some of the most homophobic humans on the planet.
I must at this stage mention, that these comments were made mostly by the visitors and not of my parents, however, they cannot deny using the terms poof or fairy! To this very day, the word fairy offends me and I will attack you if used… You’ve been warned.
From my understanding, anyone quoting anything from the bible as fact is someone, we all should be very worried about.
Quoting passages from the Bible as fact is the equivalent of me going around quoting a chapter from Harry Potter, however I’m pretty sure Harry Potter is by far more factual than the Bible but that’s just my opinion.
If there were, say a Steve living in the Garden of Eden then maybe Adam could have stayed with him when Eve ate the forbidden fruit. And anyway, if you truly read the Bible, then you would know how much God actually dislikes women, forever portraying them as people who are not to be trusted, devious whores and of course prostitutes.
I digress, my disagreements with the Bible is an on-going battle, mainly between myself and my mother, the devout Christian.
For years, people and when I say people I mainly mean the straights, have disagreed with the way the LGBTQ+ community have lived their lives.
Their dislike and hatred of our community has always fathomed me,
Why the hate?
How is the love between same sex couples having an effect on their lives?
I believe this is the million-pound question which I don’t think, well not in my lifetime, we will ever come to terms with, but I mainly blame ridiculous religious notions and of course those who take the word of God as factual, blabbing about a mystical man in the sky who impregnates a young girl from a far. But like I said, I digress!
I repressed my sexuality from my teens to my early 20s until one day, one intoxicated and moderately medicated trip to Amsterdam, resulted in a tragically poor attempt to end my life.
As you see, before your very own eyes, I live, I breathe and of course I’m fabulous.
In the long run, the attempt was differed by my is who I eventually came out to as being “bisexual”, foolishly what I thought at the time was the first stage of acceptance for a closeted and repressed homosexual, however these were baby steps, for me and of course my family, however mother and father were still yet to find out.
Don’t forget to check out my latest blog post on justled.com, updated weekly.
