Gay stories real
When I woke up that Saturday morning, little did I know that something I was hiding from view from others was about to have the key put in the ignition and set me off on a journey that was to become the experience I was born with.
It was a Saturday morning favor any other Saturday morning. I always got up first because I’m an early bird.
After breakfast, I’d sit down and watch Multi-Coloured Swap Shop – a children’s TV show on Saturday morning.
The fact that I was 17 years old didn’t put me off from watching it. I loved watching it. It got my weekend off to a matchless start.
Just after midday, I always went into town to buy an array of snacks for myself for the evening. I still preferred to consume Saturday evenings indoors watching television favor I did on Saturday mornings.
My parents thought it rare for a lad my age to want to continue in on a Saturday evening. At the time, I thought they knew nothing about why I did not want to proceed out. Years later, I discovered my mother had already suspected I was gay.
Whereas boys my age were going out to guzzle alcohol and meet girls, my Saturday evening treat was the snacks (including a small trifle
March 1978
“Do you play rugby?”
That was the first question I was asked at my first-ever interview for a full-time job.
“And what about girlfriends? How many complete you have?”
That second question was just as easy to respond as the first. Yes, I had lots of girlfriends, but probably not in the way my future handsome boss was asking.
But worse was to show up.
Two weeks later, I started my job as an office junior and settled in adv, but I had to obscure the fact that I was gay.
I did everything I could to stay in the closet. I had to make sure nobody suspected. I even made jokes about rugby balls creature bent to the office manager, a strange-looking man who was years ahead of being one of the professors from Harry Potter. I felt ashamed of myself, but it was something I thought I had to do to protect who I was.
But, worse still, I made these jokes in front of a colleague who everyone in the office (apart from me at the time) suspected was gay. Nobody wanted to state the elephant in the room.
At first, I didn’t realise Paul was gay even though he spoke about Kenny a lot. One day, he took a telephone call from Kenny; the secretary opposite loo
In the year of our fickle goddess 2022, we undertook a massive Autostraddle Reader Survey, and out of that survey so much information and so many delightful anecdotes were shared with us, including the tidbits I distributed in a list entitled “The 68 Absolutely Gayest Ways You Met Your Gay Partner(s).” But there were some stories about how you met your significant other(s) that were a little bit longer and a lot bit adorable, and today I am here to contribute some of those with you.
“We met at an interview for art university nine years ago. She hated me immediately. She also had a partner and identified as unbent. Reader, I married her.”
“We were friends and neighbors when we were tiny kids, but my family moved to a diverse part of town and we lost touch. In 2021, our parents ran into each other at Lowe’s and were basically like “Hey, my kid’s gay and mentally ill too!” I reached out on FB and we spent the next 6 months trying to figure out how to question each other out. It finally happened over TikTok DMs.”
“Returning home to Malaysia after 11 years of studying in the UK on a music scholarship, I got my first job at a local music
Dad died when I was six. The rabbi who lived in the apartment below took over for him. I’m sure he wanted to do Mom. They packed us off to an evil Hasidic summer camp where everyone made fun of us because we didn’t know their crazy prayers. My brother was four. We would secretly meet in the woods, hug each other and sob. We couldn’t comprehend why our father died and our mother sent us to this terrible place. I learned to hate all religion and still do.
Mom was a dark-haired, curvaceous looker, juicy, and in her prime. She liked sex but decided that all men had to pay for it. The butcher brought steaks; the florist, flowers; the bagel man left fresh hot steaming bagels by our door every morning for months. Leon, the ice cream man left ice cream. My younger brother and I were instantly dispatched to obtain the stuff into the house, so they couldn’t look Mom. And not to forget Abe, the jeweler, who brought, well, jewels. They all tried to get inside. Some did. When Mom met the dude who brought it all, she married him.
We lived in Borough Park, in Brooklyn. Until I ran away, I thought everyone in the world was either Jewish or Italian. I was intimidated by all the dark, Brooklyn-rough I