'Getting caught forced me to come out'

This piece was originally published in full on SameSame.com.au, on July 21st 2015, available here.

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Coming out is hard to do. For gay men like me, it’s an exercise in owning who you are, enough to tell people about it – your friends and your family – in a society which actively instils a sense of shame and wrongness into our gay youth. Coming clean with your truth in a world that actively fights against people like you is no small feat.

I’ve been a young boy, confused and afraid, grappling with who I was. I have thought about suicide. I remember being twelve or thirteen years old, and every night staring up at my ceiling from my bed, praying to God or whatever sentient being watched over this world, that I would wake up and be normal. I remember telling that being – that omniscient presence – that if they would turn me straight; if I would wake up the following morning and not be gay, that I would devote myself to them.

I would have done anything to get rid of that loneliness, that self-hatred, and I swore I would never tell a soul. Because I was ashamed. Many gay men out there feel the same. We know they do, because we’ve been there, and we’ve lived so much of their pain. The anguish of living in the closet, before coming out to the world, is real and devastating.

For some gay men like myself, the coming out experience goes a little differently.

I was fifteen years old. I’d just started dating someone new – I would have been with any boy, so long as I had a chance to feel an intimacy I’d craved. He liked dressing fancy on thirty-five degree days in suits and ties. I had a sweeping side fringe that covered my eyes – my “security blanket” – and I was totally smitten by the fact that someone was paying attention to me.

On one particular scorching summer day – forty degrees on the scale, no less – he agreed to come over for a swim in our backyard pool. He arrived, and we splashed about in escape from the heat, while my parents were inside. Every now and again, he’d pull me behind the cover of a pool toy, and plant a kiss on my lips. It was new. It was nice. But we had to be careful.

At one point, we went inside to “watch a movie” – quotation marks necessary – and as soon as the lounge room door closed, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. It wasn’t safe, however, so I suggested we do the sensible, mature thing – and take our business to a nearby park.

Well, the park idea got scrapped once we felt the goddamn heat, so we settled for around the side of the house, under the cover of trees and shrubberies. At which point we got right down to business, right next to a pair of big black bins.

Little did we know, however, that the family freezer had exhausted its supply of Cornetto ice creams to help deal with the summer heat. We’d run dry, and the freezer needed a restock and clean up – but not before the family had disposed of the trash. This was where things went horribly wrong.

Dad wandered around the side of the house to put some Cornetto boxes in the bins – and walked in on his fifteen year old son sucking some dick.

Try getting a Hallmark card for that.

There was no explanation needed. It’s hard to deny the reality of your sexuality when your own father has caught you in the act of fellatio. He drove my “friend’ home – and a couple of hours later, the sit-down family conversation was terribly, disgustingly real. They were confused at first – obligatory “are you sure you’re not bisexual?” and all – but ultimately, they were fine with it. I’d already come out to my friends, and the rest of the family followed thereafter without my consent (as is the nature of gossiping Greeks).

I’m 22 now, and I am fantastically, unapologetically gay. I am fortunate enough to have a family who love and support me. I am out in the open – homophobia be damned – and life is fucking good.

I suppose I’m lucky that the opportunity to personally ‘come out’ was robbed from me – because with that shame lingering in the forefront of my mind, it might have been years until I came out of the closet.

The closet is a dark and lonely place – but the reality is, the fear of isolation and distress is too often misplaced. Coming out – living openly as who you truly are – is a liberating, beautiful experience. If you are lucky enough to have family who accept you, then that’s bloody fantastic. But if you are not… well, as RuPaul once said of gay people: “We get to choose our family.”

And to any young gay folk reading this, who might feel alone, confused and afraid, deleting your browser history with every few clicks, I’ve got this for you:

Don’t be afraid. Don’t torture your soul any more. Be brave.

We’re all waiting for you.

Just reverted a whole bunch of less-than-quality posts to 'Draft' status.

The world - and an apparent influx of new readers - don't need to see the lame shit I used to write in 2011.

'The True Gay Agenda Revealed'

This piece was originally published in full at YourFriendsHouse.com on July 7th, 2015, available here.

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It would seem that the first world has itself in a spin over the LGBT community. With Ireland’s homos winning the marriage vote, and the United States Supreme Court legalising it across the entire country, the proverbial rainbow is shining bright and true. Equal love for all and same-sex marriage acceptance are topics vibrating with mainstream intensity. We’ve done well, ladies, gentlemen, and all those in between.

Like with all signs of progression however, there have been groups rallying against the cause. Australia remains the last English-speaking Western country to legalise same-sex marriage. Ministers and members of our own community are actively holding us back, not just religious conservative groups.

Eric Abetz, the conservative Liberal cabinet minister, was the last person to make such a public opposition, making the ominous statement that same-sex marriage seeks to “undo the institution of marriage”, and that it’s “the latest fad” which would have “other consequences”.

“Other consequences”.

Bigoted men like Eric Abetz continue to pound away at us, time and time again, thrusting hard and fast from behind with the whipping force of their anti-gay opinion. As though us homos have something to hide. As though our goals are not ones for progression and equality, but for a unique and citrusy blend of chaos and control. Men like Abetz speak as though we have some sort of vile scheme up our sleeves. For so long, this has been the suspicion.

Well, friends: I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of living in the dark, as these old and ridiculous men pick away at our cause like fleas, trying to scrape downward to the hidden messages beneath. I’ve had enough of inequality, and of the suspicion, the ridicule and the anti-gay sentiment.

It’s time I came clean, for all of us who have been sworn to silence. It’s time I spilled our communities’ darkest secrets, ones that were written by our elders many decades ago, scrawled on the walls of toilet cubicles far and wide. It’s time I revealed… the true gay agenda.

Eric Abetz, you claimed that same-sex marriage would create “other consequences” – that it would open the Pandora’s Box to unions like polyamory. And to that say I say- Abetz… you’re not thinking big enough.

The homosexual forces do not just wish to legalise same-sex marriage and pave the way for polyamory. Oh, no. We wish to desecrate all of your precious heterosexual unions. We will tear down the institution of marriage itself, hurl gasoline upon its decrepit frame, light a match – and cackle wildly as the cinders of your beloved rituals turn to fire and ash. At which point we will then fornicate in unison, as gays cannot sustain loving relationships with a single partner.

To the Christian lobby, I say: gays don’t want to simply destroy your Christian marriages. No, no. You’re doing that well enough without us as it is. No, what we desire is the destruction of your churches and the conversion of your good Christian children. Because, like the demons you write about in books, our flesh burns to a crisp at the mere sight of Church spires, so we must remove them from our new world.

At which point our lesbian women will transform into winged bat creatures – their true forms – and pluck your good Christian children from your crumpled church houses, carrying them off for their conversion, screaming into the night.

In the big gay war for humanity, the public toilet blocks, where all gay men once lived to spread disease, will become conversion camps for the children of tomorrow. They shall be trained in tolerance and loving acceptance – hush now, don’t cry, my dears – and schooled in the homosexual arts, like sodomy, witchcraft and interior design.

And, when marriage and the Church have both fallen – the fundamental basis of all functional societies – we shall install a new world order.

Homophobia will be eradicated. Advertisements of all kinds depicting heterosexual couples will be removed, replaced by adverts containing homosexual couples. Straight people will be used as furniture. Heterosexuals will be the butt of most stand-up comedy jokes, and straight comedians will elicit crickets from audiences worldwide.

Your governments will be destroyed in one foghorn cry of “YASS, QWEEN” – taken down with ease and fashionable finesse. World leaders will be replaced by LGBT icons, like Kathy Griffin, Laverne Cox and Margaret Cho. All national anthems and political nationalism will be wholly eradicated, and the world will unite under the euphoric trance anthem of ‘Believe’ by Cher.

We won’t just legalise same-sex marriage in this bold new world. No, no. We shall legalise ALL forms of marriage. Man and woman! Man and man! Woman and THREE men! Man and kitchen condiment! No one will be safe.

And those who would rebel against this turn of civilisation would face cruel fates. For lesser crimes, such as refusing to provide services for a gay wedding, you would be forced to sit through two seasons of Golden Girls. We might even force you to marry a gay person, as was always our plan.

For those who commit more heinous crimes, such as using Joan Rivers’ name in vain, the punishment shall be fierce and debilitating. You will be forced to stand front-and-centre in a gay pride parade; dance, cheer, and chant songs like Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’ and other Godless hymns.

So, Minister Abetz, I don’t believe you’ve gone far enough. Polyamory is not the only evil hiding inside our trimmed and waxed Pandora’s Box. These are our plans, and our communities’ darkest secrets. If you bow to our demands, we may show mercy…

But if you refuse us, then you will face the effeminate wrath of one thousand angry homosexuals.

You cannot resist us, for we are many. You cannot fight us, for we have already won.

And we are coming, Abetz. We are coming.