Saturday 17th November

Today, my aim is to confirm if Scottish Hamish ‘plays on my team’. I’ll likely do some touristy stuff too, but it’s been so long since my Queer Bells rang at anything that I’m curious to find out if they still work properly.

The timid Scot isn’t much to look at, and I know the stammer might put some off, but he seems sweet and kind and I find myself looking out for him whenever I’m in the hostel’s communal area. It’s the first time in years I’ve even had the inclination to look at another guy, and if Hamish is a Gay then he seems like one of the nice ones. Bev and Rachel both insist he couldn’t possibly be a ‘shirt-lifter’, but I told them, “Not all us gays are stylish, handsome and well-manicured, you know,” and they had looked me up and down and nodded in agreement.

5.15pm

We went to Melbourne’s outdoor market today, and Hamish came along with buddy Irish Karen and without any prompting from me either. Score! It’s fair to say that his stuttering Scottish accent and positive outlook made an otherwise disastrous shopping experience a little more bearable.

“Och. This place is all a wee b-b-bit rub-b-bish really, isn’t it.” (I can’t do the accent.)

Hamish is cute but in an unconventional way, which Rachel tells me makes him ‘cugly’. There’s just something about him. When we stopped for lunch and he rammed a baguette down his throat I didn’t know where to look. It’s been a while since a sloppy 6-incher made me blush. Karen ordered a salad and it turns out she’s a vegan. She looks the sort. I always think salad tastes nicer when its accompanied by a pizza. With no salad.

“So, tell us a bit more about yourselves?” I asked, looking at Hamish specifically. “Where did you meet, where have you travelled… who do you fancy…”

“To be sure, to be sure,” muttered Irish Karen through her lettuce (I can’t do the accent). “We only met here last week but it seems like ages. Both turned up on the same bus, so they put us in the same room.”

“We both like the s-s-same music.”

I leaned forward, “So… are we talking Slipknot or Kylie?”

“I never really listened t-t-to pop music growing up,” Hamish said, ignoring the question. “I had quite a s-s-strict upbringing. One of the reasons I got on a plane and c-c-came here.”

Apparently his mum is a headmistress and his dad is the pastor at his village church.

Bev frowned. “What? Like spaghetti?”

I had nearly choked on my chicken teriyaki. “PastOR!”

Turns out Hamish is a little bit churchy, but I won’t hold it against him. Meaning, I’d still totally hold it against him. I don’t know what it is about a religious Gay that puts so many homos off. Maybe it’s an ego thing. Something to do with them having to love another Man? I dunno. It doesn’t bother me though. If Hamish wants to believe that a bearded bloke in a dress rides around in a cloud granting wishes then who am I to argue.

Rachel, on the other hand, has never been one to keep her thoughts to herself, and she and Hamish had a heated theological debate right there over lunch. Who’d have thought! I’m not normally one for confrontations, I’ll do almost anything to avoid them in fact, but watching her getting increasingly infuriated over Hamish’s blind faith and calm smile was wonderful to witness.

“The B-B-Bible is proof of His existence.”

“But that would mean reading Harry Potter is proof of fuckin’ magic?!”

He found out what side of the church I sat on a bit later. I’d been trying not to make a big deal of it and was being proper subtle trying to slip it into conversation, but when Bev giggled and blurted, “he means he’s a knob jockey, you doofus!” there was no going back.

Hamish went visibly pale and the atmosphere got very tense, very quickly. Even Bev looked a bit sheepish, and she’s usually oblivious. It seemed that this particular Revelation freaked him out and the rest of the afternoon was spent in an uncomfortable silence. Did he now consider me to be a filth-peddler, guilty of a sinful life full of debauchery and sodomy? I WISH my life was that exciting.

But once we got back to the hostel, he hesitantly asked me if he could have a private word (he may not have been hesitant, it may have been his stutter), and we ended up having a deep and meaningful over the pool table. It turns out my dodgy Gaydar still works after all.

“I think I m-m-might b-b-be… like you,” he eventually confessed.

“What, chubby and English?”

Of course, I knew what he really meant.

Many of us find it impossible to use the word ‘gay’ at the beginning. The word has so much weight you need to be strong to tie yourself to it. Even now, with a few years under my belt, I’m more likely to describe myself to people as a bender, a knob gobbler, or a big fat queer. Shocking and self-mocking, but never serious and scary.

Over the course of our pool game Hamish opened up more about his life. How he grew up in a small Scottish village with strict religious parents. About the struggles between his beliefs and his ‘unnatural’ desires. About how he was spending his gap year travelling the world to try and figure out exactly what he wanted. And what He wanted. His story tumbled out in frustrated bursts as he raced desperately against his own stutter to unburden his long-held secret, and it was equally heart-breaking and frustrating to listen to.

To summarise, Hamish is a couple of years behind me on the Path To Imminent Gaydom, still lost in the struggle between what he wants to feel and what he actually feels. The pre-coming out stage for any conflicted gay guy, I guess, the time when you are coming out to yourself. I remember having the same emotional turmoil, not so long ago, only in my case I’d confessed it all to my dog.

          “Why can’t I be normal?”

          “If it’s just a phase, when will it end?

          “Quit licking your balls!”

I remember desperately trying to convince myself that I couldn’t possibly be A Gay. I didn’t want to be, surely that had to count for something. I even lied when writing in my early diaries. Not in case someone else read them but in a desperate attempt to re-write my own life-story. I didn’t fancy that boy at school, I was envious of his physique. And it was his impressive muscle-tone I was staring at in the showers.

I have a problem with the phrase ‘sexual preference’. It gives people the notion that being gay is a choice, like ‘chicken or fish’. It’s why many small-minded people still think we have a say in the matter. To be fair, it took even me the whole of high-school to figure out that we don’t, so there’s no wonder the Straights don’t get it.

          I can’t be a poof. I want kids some day.

          I’m not a homo. I’m clueless about interior design.

          How can I be bent? I’ve got no fashion sense!

At least Hamish is smart enough to understand that these thoughts are based entirely on stereotypes. There is no Gay Exam. You can’t fail it. You either qualify or you don’t.

Hamish has now arrived at the biggest cross-roads of his life. Will he burst out of the closet with pride and enjoy being young, single and gay, fully accepting himself for who he is and who he was born to be? Or will he duck back into it and lock the door behind him, hiding there until he’s middle-aged, possibly with a family of his own, and in the midst of a massive mental breakdown? It’ll come out one way or another.

Or will he take door number three, the ‘Bi Now, Gay Later’ option? The coming-out version of dipping your toe in the water. Declare himself to be bisexual, ease everyone into it, then slip out of the closet completely when everyone’s backs are turned. The option I tried to take.

“Why not tell your family something they may be a little happier to hear?” I suggested. “Tell them you’re so full of love that you can’t limit it to half of the population? It’s what I did.”

Well, kinda. My bisexual phase lasted about an hour. I’d been clubbing with my then-best mate when I decided to have my first ‘outing’, as it were. I downed three jaegerbombs for courage before blurting out, “I fancy everyone in here, not just the ones I’m supposed to.” The idea being that I fancied the boys as well as the girls. Unfortunately, he’d misunderstood. He thought I meant I fancied the “munters” as well as the “babes” and he’d laughed and called me a “dirty wrong’un” before offering to find me “a fat chick to bang”. The conversation that followed was one of the most painful I’ve ever had and it ended with him storming off in disgust and promising to tell everyone I was a pervert. I’d gone into complete meltdown, texting my nearest and dearest “FYI I’m GAY” before turning off my phone and speeding off in mum’s car. I’d woken up the next morning in a carpark in the Lake District, the windscreen iced over on the inside and close to freezing to actual death. Ah, fun times.

Of course, I didn’t tell Hamish any of this. As the common room grew busier, we abandoned our game of pool and moved into the fire escape to continue our conversation in private, accidentally interrupting a blue-haired biffa smoking something almost as fat and fragrant as she was. She dropped it in her rush to go and I snatched it up when Hamish was wiping his tears with his sleeve. It looked like a new experience just waiting to happen. Unfortunately, it meant that from that moment on I was distracted. Hamish was talking about his stern, God-bothering parents, really opening up his soul to me, and all I could think was ‘fuck me, I think I have a joint in my pocket!’

“You can stop worrying, God loves us Gays,” I said instead. “Otherwise, he’d never have made us all so cute, right?”

Hamish managed a small smile. “If only it w-w-was that easy…”

Poor bloke. Your mum and dad are supposed to love you unconditionally, but it doesn’t always work out like that. Some folks seem to think disowning their kid makes for better parenting and that’s just fucked up. No one can predict how religious people, like Hamish’s mum and dad, will react. They’re often the least accepting of all. Funny that.

By this point, Hamish was curled on a step, head on his knees and rocking so hard he could’ve been doing an abdominal workout. I couldn’t help but cry a little too as I remembered I’d done exactly the same thing, only in my case I’d been panicking about how to break the news to my girlfriend. At least he didn’t have that bombshell to drop. She’d flipped out worse than I’d feared, trashing her room, although with hindsight I probably shouldn’t have told her I’d been fantasizing about her brother the whole time.

Finally, Hamish fell silent. He looked exhausted. We sat there for a bit, bodies squeezed together on the steps, legs touching, my arm around him. He lifted up his t-shirt to dab his eyes dry and he flashed a bit of stomach. God knows what was going through his mind, but all that was going through mine was, Fuck me, I’m horny. And it’s the first time I’ve thought that in years.

“I’m honoured you confided in me,” I told him instead. “I hope it helps.”

Hamish bit his lip, stared at his feet and wiped some snot from his chin. It made him all the more adorable. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“I’ll help you out with anything, you know,” I pressed. “Anytime. Just ask.”

I put my hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze, silently wondering how I’d gone from nervous Born-Again Virgin to Predatory Gay in just one conversation. He didn’t seem to hear me though. Instead he closed his eyes and said, “If God leads me to it, God will lead me through it.”

I wish I had an imaginary friend like that.

He looked at me with clear green eyes and my tummy did a little flip, and after a moment’s hesitation he gave me a quick peck on the cheek before blushing furiously and rushing inside.

“Thanks, Kev,” he said quietly over his shoulder. “I’m really pleased to have met you.”

Meanwhile, I was forced to stay on the steps a few moments longer as my trousers had become rather unexpectedly tight around the front. When I finally re-entered the common room, I was confronted by an over-excited, gossip-seeking Bev.

“Omigod, did Hamish just kiss you on the fire-escape?” she squealed.

“No,” I told her, innocently. “He kissed me on the cheek.”

3.30am

What a terrifying evening. I spent it watching my first ever rugby game, squeezed into a pub full of hyped-up heteros, on a packed first floor that felt ready to give way, wedged beneath a glistening armpit and coated in flying perspiration and beer. It’s made me realise that I feel just as uncomfortable in a room full of Straights as I do in a room full of Gays and I’m not sure where that leaves me.

The girls have gone off to ‘console’ a couple of Aussies, so I’ve come home alone. One of these days I’ll go and do some consoling of my own and surprise everyone. Myself included.

I called Mum as I knew she had watched the rugby too. It was nice to have a quick catch-up. She sounded clear but there was a two second delay which made chatting stilted and it left me feeling further away than I had been. After a few minutes, she somehow made me being in Australia all about her, so I made my excuses and said goodbye. In other news, Michael snogged some randomer that wasn’t me which is fine but we usually talk about these things rather than email them. I told him I was dating a Scotsman so he’d know I was cool with how we left it.

WAIT! I totally forgot! I’ve still got that dodgy ciggie in my pocket that I picked up earlier! Who the hell needs a man’s tongue in their mouth when they’ve got a… I believe it’s called a ‘doobie’? Let’s give this bad boy a go.