Confessions of an Amateur Melodramatist

Sunday. Diary day.

I suppose I should warn you, there's no sex in this adventure for another two years. Don't stress though, I wasn't a very regular diary entrier.

What do you get today? More melodrama spurred on by unhealthy conjecture.Oh, the world was so crushing back then.

1 November 1996:
Well a new month, how fast this year has transpired and what a year. Only five weeks until I have my seven weeks of holidays in Perth- should be some gay times... hopefully. I hope the vigour that I felt in Perth just before I was sent back up here returns to rejuvenate my soul the minute I get off the plane, especially now that I know that Donald is not going to be in Australia for the first three weeks which will make my getting on the scene so much more difficult, we’ll see once I call him this weekend.

It is strange thinking about this now that all of my spirit has been sapped out into the bull dust around this wasteland, now that I seem to be the guy I was before I decided to come out to my parents so soon. I see now that this has impacted on my life so dramatically- and that is only the decision to come out not even the act itself. Still I am rather apprehensive about the whole affair, about how everyone will take the news. The only people that really matter are Mum, Katie and the Adelaide crew- the latter can wait until April unless mum needs somebody’s shoulder to cry on but I don’t think that she would speak to anybody but Uncle David and Auntie Julie over there seeing she hasn’t even told Granny about her and Dad, but who am I to talk about keeping secrets. (I have no idea what was going on then. My parents are still together, roaming the wilds in their caravan, so it couldn't have been that important.)

I really don’t know if I could take mum not wanting to see me anymore, not that I see that as a likely situation. What would I do? I don’t know, go to Melanie and try to reconcile the whole situation in my mind. To tell the truth I don’t ever think that I will be able to know what I would do because it would be such a devastating blow, needless to say that I could not rule out a suicidal mind and I would have to talk that through with her before I did it and I don’t think she would have me kill myself on her behalf, besides that would be an incredibly selfish thing to do to her.

Enough of that, what about Katie? Well she has come closest to finding out so far and I definitely believe she would have the biggest problem getting over the novelty of having a gay brother, that and the idea of gay sex which she could never really stomach (boy, does she let everyone know it). Dad, Christopher- who gives a fuck, I have no plans of telling them, no doubt they will find out somehow and as long as they don’t resort to violence I couldn’t care less what they think, I mean I wouldn’t like for dad to stop me from staying at home on the holidays at the holidays but apart from that they may upbraid me all they will.

Papa and Dorothy will be and interesting exercise, to see if prejudice can win out over love and leeching. I suppose that it would pain the soul to be shunned by Papa but it is not that I don’t expect it so I have prepared myself for that eventuality. in saying that I would be crushed if any of my other relatives were to follow his example (even though such a split would add one more layer to the difficulties of Adelaiding). That is any of mum’s family, dad’s I haven’t even thought over those revelations and I really don’t have any plans to let them know.

2 November 1996:


Here I am sitting on the back porch with my laptop on my lap, in the warm breeze being blasted by the demonic street lights which seem to destroy any possibility of tranquillity in this camp of camps. Truly the whole effect is rather soothing and it would be hard not to miss this in the city, though I would prefer a few more trees, mountains and a river or two.

So I called Donald today and the conversation was not all I expected it to be, then I don’t really know what I expected. On reflection the whole conversation was incredibly grounded and had nothing of the transcendence which I expected. But for all the commonness of the phone-call I found myself strangely at ease, despite the constant push to add into the conversation every thought that had been flying around in my head for the last few weeks. The most amusing thing was that Donald took about five minutes to really get his head around my coming out though he was in a bit of a state from the night before.

So many things to talk about, so many new ideas, so much new information to shatter any dream I had that being gay was going to be easy. Is a wholesome relationship out there? Yes but it takes a lot of searching and most of the guys are already in relationships at the moment. How the fuck am I going to be able to search? Maybe I will just have to become the regular socialite and do the rounds. The only thing that scares me about that is that I am not willing to be promiscuous to achieve that final satisfaction, I just don’t believe my soul could take the constant denigration- though I am reasonably sure that my body could. Not having ever made love it is harder for me to say, one way or the other, whether I could sleep with a man who I don’t feel anything but lust for- but if I am in the heat of lust I don’t really think that I am going to be that perturbed that I have no emotional attachment to the guy. This is fast becoming far too cerebral for the present topic given that I have no grounding in reality at this point in my life. All that being said I could not imagine the first time being anything but an expression of emotion, even if that emotion is based solely in infatuation- here’s hoping.

Donald also talked to me of the time that it takes for people to become settled in the knowledge of a close relative or friend suddenly revealing themselves in all their glorious deviancy if that is not too dramatic a term. Sparked of course by my allusions to suicide (which of course were merely conjecture at the time) Donald’s words did make sense and have placed the seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether my mother will take the news especially well. This is healthy I suppose- here’s hoping.

Previous diary entries:

I Wanna Play

Tags: diary, coming out, gay