Stories

Modern gay life is hard enough, with homophobia, bar culture and dysfunctional relationships, but how do you navigate it carrying the baggage of the ex-gay movement?

Chris was involved with an ex-gay organisation as a teenager, after a breakdown he broke away from them. Now, as an adult, Chris is trying to live as an out gay man but the baggage of his past keeps pulling him back.

So often the damage does not stop when the abuse does.

This six-part story asks how does someone come to terms with the aftermath of the ex-gay movement.

Sometimes life isn’t fair. Fifteen-year-old Richie Ferguson must learn this lesson the hard way when his mother dies of cancer and he is forced to live with a father who left the family two years earlier for another woman. Richie’s life becomes a storm, whirling around with no sense of purpose or direction. Will the tumultuous winds destroy him, or will he find a calm sea in time to save his own life?

Will Vincent, schoolteacher, exits the closet and finds it leads him to very strange places, for almost out of the door he encounters the beautiful Oskar, cynic and porn star, who is not at all what he seems.

Thirty-year-old Greg Beaumont is still fleeing the ruin of his life fifteen years ago. Now he's sharing a new home with his best friend Nate Sawyer, pouring himself into his work, and avoiding romantic entanglements while claiming he's just taking his time. But when he meets Kyle Wakeham, a fifteen-year-old neighborhood boy, he'll not only face the wreckage of his past but he'll also discover he's not defined by the torments and tragedies of history.

The Leopards have scattered, some interstate and others to different parts of Melbourne, but the events of 2014 continue to bind them together. In the meantime, new Leopards and new friends have their own challenges that must be overcome. This includes one newcomer who is unaware he's being hunted.

While house sitting Jerry has a drunk boy wander over from the party next door - and it changes everything.

Andrew and Ian are college friends. One is sighted and one is blind. They have much to learn from each other.

Nick Jacobs has had a pretty crappy life. His mother is a drug and alcohol abusing prostitute. He never knew who his father was. Sadly, Nick ends up in the foster care system in Austin, Texas. After seven years in and out of different foster families, he ends up in a group home. Everything changes when the White family takes him to lunch and spends an afternoon with Nick at their home. It's a world that Nick had never even dreamed of. Will he fit in? Will he ever experience the kind of unconditional love most others take for granted?

One last journey to the outskirts of nowhere.

Dustin Smith isn't looking for love. He feels trapped in the black hole that is life in the Valley. Will he find light in the darkness, or will the darkness consume him?