I Wanna Play!

I'm feeling a little left out with all my fellow bloggers coming out of the closet electronically. So, I've decided to share some of the diary I kept when I decided to bust forth onto the scene almost (fucking hell!) ten years ago.

Let me set the scene: I was living and working in the desert in Western Australia. My backyard looked like this:


A few months before in Broome, heart a-quiver, I had bought my gay magazine and decided to come out. You join this rather sad predicament after I had already broken off my long long term relationship with my girlfriend and resolved myself to tell my parents:

28 October 1996
What a strange time to begin to write a diary, I mean I have only been living in Jigalong for the past nine months. Really this should have been started back then and then all the monumental events of the past year could have been covered as they unfolded. Unfortunately hindsight is little compensation for the loss of opportunity and it now falls to me to write about the myriad of ideas constantly adrift in my mind in no justifiable order.

Spurs- what has prompted me to set my thought into some palpable shape? Well my life it is a changing and living in Jigalong has necessitated this as an outlet for my mind otherwise I am quite sure I will go completely mad. But right now all I can think about is going to sleep so I shall have to continue this tomorrow or whenever.

29 October 1996
So pour out all your thoughts if it be your whim. Where to start? The fact that I am gay and cannot tell anybody up here about it. How do I explain to three men who only want to get there rocks off with anything with tits and one guy who proports to be open minded but nearly looses his lunch every time that he sees any fag action on the television that I couldn’t give a fuck about women and that I would rather have something more substantial between my thighs.

I really couldn’t give a fuck about what they think and there are only two things stopping me from shocking the whole damn lot of them. The first is the fact that I haven’t yet told my parents and I really couldn’t handle them finding out from anybody else purely because they might be upset that I didn’t confide in them. Personally I am beginning to feel that this might be indicative of my very optimistic view of how the whole revelation deal is going to pan out, but really how else can I survive in life if I don’t have some faith in my family. Secondly I really don’t know how the community and the kids would react to my homosexuality. My greatest fear is that they would no longer allow me to teach here any more, maybe that is being rather more pessimistic but it gives me a decent excuse for me to keep my little secrets if that is what I am sub-consciously desiring.

Well I suppose I have explained why I am now writing this diary, hopefully it will prove to be a window into my caged soul and somewhere I may go to confide my problems to the world.

Well let us discuss what I want in life now that I have reevaluated how I am going to live my life, that is really how it turned out to be because although I have known I am gay for some time it has only been in the last few months that I have given any thought to the way this will impact on my life. In fact I have only in that time considered that a wife and three kids simply will not be a part of my future, and that is a shame and somewhat depressing every now and then when I stop to think about it. So what is going to take the place of this life of normality which I have always taken for granted would be mine? What can I say? I have nothing to role model such a lifestyle and that makes it very difficult to think of a gay lifestyle after the age of thirty, surely there must be some elderly fags around maybe I’ll see them when I hit the scene.

But how do I see my life being happy without a socially accepted girlfriend? It has been one of the most freeing consequences of breaking up with Melanie to find that I now consciously think of my next relationship being with a guy and it is truly amazing how liberating that feels- to dream, to live to experience love and pain and desire. All the feelings I had cut off in order to survive now return and I burn inside to feel them for the first time. I imagine myself with some other guy to be able to run my fingers through his hair and to actually want to kiss him rather than ashamedly try to ignore all the advances. Too be able to touch and squeeze and rub without wondering why I don’t feel excited over the whole affair. Of course finding a guy I can do this with is another matter especially since I know not where to begin, and I am not willing to have meaningless sex with a horde of men to find Mr. Right, strange that I still cling to my romantic notions in the strangest of situations.

SBLJ, what a different headspace. Do you want to know more? There are plenty big dramas to come...

Tags: diary, coming out, gay