So, when Did You First Realise You Were Gay?

“So, when did you first realise you were gay?”

It’s the inevitable question that really shouldn’t be inevitable anymore. The woman asking this time is sincere. It’s just her way of getting to know me — the man she’s been sat next to at a dinner party.

I have several stock answers. The easiest option is just to give an approximate age. I usually say: ‘when I was about 10’, which invariably elicits a surprised, ‘Really? That’s young.’ If I’m feeling a little more confrontational, I’ll reply with a question of my own, ‘I’m not sure, when did you realise you were straight?’ This inevitably causes so much confusion, the conversation briskly moves on. Or ends.

On this occasion, I go for option number two, not to be confrontational, but because I actually like this woman and I’m curious to know what her answer will be. As I hoped, she takes time to consider my come-back, but then just agrees that it’s very difficult to give an exact time and date.

I remember one of the first times I was aroused by a sexual image of a man. It was when I was 12 and I found my first porn magazine in some bushes over the local park. I was with Gary Donaldson as I usually was back then. Even the usually emotionless Gary showed some excitement at the find.

Although I made the right noises and lewd comments, I found nothing attractive about any of the women featured in the grimy treasure. It didn’t stop me looking – I was 12 years old, and curious. But it wasn’t until a picture sent in by a reader, showing herself and her boyfriend posing boldly for an invisible photographer, both naked and aroused, that I felt a genuine surge of pleasure.

I tried not to stare too hard or for too long.

But was this the exact point when I realised I was gay?

Or did my gay awakening start with a kiss - at the age of ten, on the seam where the hard playground of my junior school met the sports fields? I was running, William was chasing. Breathless, I had fallen and William, yellow-blond hair hanging across his jubilant face – a face I can barely picture now – had fallen on top of me. And then came the kiss - just a rapid peck on the cheek.

‘Why did you do that?’ I screeched – because that was what you did when another boy kissed you.

William responded with a shrug. And then we were surrounded by other boys, clamouring for the game to continue, oblivious to the fact that my world had been set spinning.

Weeks later, I told William I was gay – although I used the world homosexual – and that he was the cause. This was definitely the first time I told anyone I was gay. It was also the last time I told anyone for a very long time.

William seemed to take the revelation in his stride. He was 10 – he probably didn’t understand. I only knew the word because I’d watched an episode of Penmaric, a TV costume drama where the term had been used to describe two men. My older sister had filled me in on the meaning.

But William just wanted to be a 10-year-old boy– kick a tennis ball around the playground with his mates; play kiss chase – with girls; talk about how much he fancied our teacher, Mrs Waterlake. If he fancied Mrs Waterlake, why had he kissed me?

But one lunchbreak I told him I loved him and he said he loved me too. I thought this was it, that William was finally admitting his feelings for me.

‘Don’t send me a Valentine's card though!’ William laughed. I laughed too, although I didn’t see why not. The next day, when I mentioned our joint declaration, William said he’d been joking.

My feelings for William weren’t based on anything carnal; I was a genuine innocent, with a regular early bedtime that protected me from anything post-watershed TV might have had to offer – I’m not sure how Penmaric and its homosexual heroes slipped into my awareness, but even they were just two men who loved each other – I never really thought about them having sex. So, perhaps this wasn’t the beginning of my sexuality taking form. Wasn’t it just a platonic crush, like millions of other boys have, who go on to be totally heterosexual?

It was an intense crush, though — a lot for my 10-year-old brain and heart to take. I thought constantly about when I could return William’s kiss.

We were walking home in the dark from school when the opportunity arose. William’s younger brother, Andrew, was with us, but other than him the road was deserted – we’d stayed late to rehearse for the school play. I kept whispering that I was going to do it – and I don’t remember him objecting – not to the idea of the kiss itself, just the presence of his brother.

William lived on the corner of Brompton Road, less than two-minute walk from my house. As he and Andrew stopped opposite the entrance to his road, looking left and right as they prepared to cross, I planted the kiss on his cold, smooth cheek.

I turned and walked away the second my lips left his skin. My legs weighed nothing and I thought I was going to fall. I made it to the driveway of my house and glanced back. William was laughing and rubbing his cheek.

William had a birthday party a week later. I wasn’t invited.

‘My mum says I can’t be your friend anymore,’ William told me when I protested, ‘Andrew told her about you kissing me.’

‘You kissed me first,’ I hissed. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just sloped back to my desk, already carrying the weight of loss, and hurt – and the taint of guilt and self- hatred that would mark me as an outsider throughout the remainder of my school life.

And that is partly of the problem with giving anything close to a clear-cut answer. Growing up, the last thing I wanted was to be gay. I spent years pretending I wasn’t attracted to boys, which makes pinpointing the age at which I fully realised my sexuality almost impossible. Because even when I did know for sure, I was trying to convince myself I’d got it wrong and that one day I would wake up wanting nothing more than to make love to Debbie Harry.

Certainly, once I moved up to secondary school – a pretty rough all-boys comprehensive – the feelings I had for other boys became less platonic. Although I was so naive, any sexual fantasies I had were pretty tame. And the romantic feelings never rose to the levels they had with William. They were transient yearnings, with one subject replaced with another within weeks.

But can I even say with absolute certainty that my sexuality had fully formed during this time. There was another major crush to come before my school life finished, and just to confuse the issue, it was on a girl.

My college crush was called Laura. She was full of energy and humour, and a bundle of insecurities, combined with an apparent boundless confidence. I loved her, I’m sure of that. When I found out she was dating another boy, I was devastated. If I tried to talk to Laura about him, I couldn’t even bring myself to say his name, my jealousy was so acute. I wasn’t sexually attracted to Laura, but if she’d been romantically interested in me, I would have been delighted, and I definitely would have dated her, maybe ended up in a sexual relationship, who knows, I may have ended up married to her. How often must that happen, that someone who knows they are gay forms a crush on a girl at an impressionable age, enters into a serious relationship, only to devastate her years later with the revelation that its other guys they actually fancy?

Perhaps that’s my answer. I genuinely knew I was gay at the point when I stopped separating romantic love and sexual love. Once I started having sexual relationships with other guys (later than most, at around 20), I stopped having crushes on girls. Once I allowed those lustful floodgates to open, my crushes were for guys only, and always a combination of romantic pining and lustful longing.

So, next time I get asked the question, ‘When did you realise you were gay’, maybe I’ll give a truncated version of this essay. Watch their eyes glaze over as I recall each crush, each early lustful dream, and analyse them before judging if they marked a genuine sexual awakening, or just another step towards one.

Or perhaps I’ll just ask them: ‘When did you realise you were straight,’ and let them do the hard work while I eat my dinner and sip red wine.