Shame’s Shadow - Joey Lawson
Knowing I was gay was not a sudden or even shocking revelation but rather an assumption I had understood from the single digits. I used to try to make high heels from sunglasses cases, and one of my first non-fiction texts was ‘Binge’ by Tyler Oakley. Walking around M&S with my Mum, I naturally gravitated to the men’s underwear section to catch a glimpse of tighty-whities and washboard abs, so it wasn’t exactly a shock to anyone that I wasn’t going to have a wife or a passion for football.
When I was in Secondary School, I successfully acquired my first boyfriend. This was a huge accomplishment for 16-year-old Joey and in fact would make up the vast majority of my personality for the next year and a half. Whilst the pre-uni breakup was not exactly ideal (or mutual), I ultimately do have good memories of that period and I believe we were a pretty good couple. He was a perfectly handsome, perfectly kind boy, my parents liked him, as did my friends, and we mostly had a very nice time.
It was only when I got to University when I realised that not everyone had the same experiences as me. It was not typical to not think twice about inviting a significant other of the same sex to family games night, it was not typical to not really have to ‘come out’ to anyone, and it certainly wasn’t typical to have successful, long(ish) term relationship with a boy that you naturally bumped into on your first day of year twelve. Rather, I found that the (very few) gay male friends I had at University had different first experiences: furtive bathroom encounters, grimy older bearded men from Grindr in the dead of night, and ongoing strings of people wanting ‘discreet’ sex. Someone I used to see even joked that I had lived in a ‘gay utopia’ that he couldn’t quite fathom was some people’s reality. My legitimate belief that endless eligible bachelors would naturally fall into my lap during lectures, parties and clubs was somewhat shattered as I understood I too had to resort to dating apps to “keep up” with some of my straight friends.
I clearly had a lot to learn in terms of gay dating culture: of course, nobody really uses hinge, of course you’ll strangely have about 30 gay male mutuals on Instagram and of course you must state your preference of sexual position before a conversation has even begun. My venture into Grindr was even worse, filled with profiles of faces I recognised from the other apps but now with much less clothing on, with their distance (to the nearest metre) displayed in the bottom right corner. Ever seeing the same faces in public would undoubtedly end up in an awkward gaze at the floor and a sense of shame. I suddenly found myself very much missing the homeliness of boyfriend number one. I was jealous of my straight friends - they could meet people in class or in a club, they didn't have to continuously rummage through profiles on dating apps to culminate in one experience that would leave me more lonely than I was to begin with.
Looking back on what things were like for me in first year reminds me of how I never want to experience that again. And I’m glad I’m now living in a different city where I feel this shame isn't so present with my partner who reminds me every day of the goodness of people. I wish I could go back to 18-year-old Joey and tell him that there’s no need to rush, and that all he feels he’s been missing out on is in fact something one should avoid.
Then again, I suppose it was all part of the process that brought me to where I am now.
Written by Joey Lawson
