Bad Stereotypes - 1. Saturday 1st June 2013

It could have been worse.

I know that, really I do. For loads of kids out there, it’s really bad. You hear about the girls and boys teased until they switch schools, kids who think about and try to, kill themselves. People who get beaten up by homophobes and rednecks. It so could have been worse, but people’s reactions to coming out are strange and diverse.

My father stopped inviting me to watch sports with him. Stopped taking me on shooting trips. My mother and my sister squealed with delight and demanded that I go shopping with them. I went from being the slightly geeky little brother to everyone’s camp-as-fuck gay-best-friend-forever overnight. And I hated it.

I am not camp. And hair, make up, looking good for women and Gok Wan are all things I either care nothing about or actively dislike. After a month I found myself stereotyped into a shoebox painted pink and covered in glitter. My sister told everyone at school and I was invited to join the glee club, the drama geeks and the choir all in one day. I can’t even sing. I went out for track team and got put into gymnastics, a group of sports I find tiresome and silly. A girl in my year asked me to check if her bra matched what she was wearing. I ran.

I came out, and everyone expected me to be suddenly different, as though I’d been hiding who I was this whole time. I hadn’t been hiding anything. I liked sports, I loved to run. I liked being outdoors and playing computer games and I thought that shopping was boring. I liked heavy metal and action movies. And there I was, pigeon holed into the school’s out-gay-kids section with a bunch of people I hadn’t been friends with before and whom I didn’t want to be friends with now. We had nothing in common apart from our sexuality, and if that is the only reason to hang out with someone, well then shoot me in the foot because spending my free time with a bunch of skinny little scene-boys with bad hair and shrill voices made me want to puke.

I did the sensible mature thing… I ran away.

Alright so not literally. But my Godfather is always telling me to come and spend the summer’s with him, and I was eighteen now, I could work in the bar, get a job and maybe some wheels, so I called him up, packed my bags and took a sleeper train across the country. Like I said, mature and sensible. Sure. Maybe the mature thing would have been not to delete all my social media accounts, remove myself from the circles of my so-called friends, the people who’d ditched me when I’d come out on the basis that I wanted to be camp instead. The internet has a lot to answer for, and television is worse, making everyone who’s gay out to be a fashion-theatre-house music Queen. The only Queen I like are the four guys with drums and guitars and facial hair.

So I took my laptop, my stereo, my running gear and about four sets of clothes and a bunch of clean socks, and arrived in the city on the hottest day of the year so far. It was June, and three months of sweltering heat lay ahead of me like a salty promise. You read books about people’s summers, the time’s they’re lives changed, the wealth of new experiences before they went off to find proper jobs and education. I wanted it to be my summer. And of course, every kid leaving college and sixth form thinks that, especially the ones who move across the country to the city by the sea to be in the heat and warmth, away from parents and friends who know all your past and embarrassing moments from when you were a kid.

Dale met me at the station. My uncle is my Dad’s best friend, or was when they were at school and I was little. Like most adults, they’ve grown apart, but Dale had always been a great Godfather, phone calls, birthday cards and awesome Christmas presents. He was there for me when my exams were stressful, helped me find the kind of music I liked and was the first person I told about being gay. He claimed to have always known, and said it didn’t change a thing. Other people said that too, but Dale was the only one who hadn’t lied so far.

“Bay!” I got quickly enveloped in one of Dale’s huge all-encompassing hugs. Dale’s a big guy, he was a bouncer before he bought the club and it shows in big oxen shoulders and slabs of hard muscle. He held me back by my shoulders to stare me up and down, “You had another growth spurt since Christmas.”

“Yeah.” I ducked as Dale tried to ruffle my hair, and slung my fallen bag back over my shoulder, “Thanks D.”

My godfather fixed me with a hard look, his deep grey eyes meeting my own brown gaze. He frowned, then poked at the worry between my brows.

“You don’t have to mention it kiddo. I’ve been wanting you here for months. You are always welcome here.” Dale wrapped a big arm around my shoulders and lead me out of the station. Though the club is slap bang in the centre of town, a popular spot, the house wasn’t with it, so I was surprised when, instead of getting into the car and turning towards the west and the cliffs where Dale’s house was, we turned into town and pulled up behind the bar.

“D?”

“Got a surprise for you buddy.” Dale took out his big ring of keys and began to unlock the back door of the bar.

South Alaska is my kind of bar. It’s sort of old fashioned in that Dale does alcohol and bar snacks. A few years ago there were buyers who wanted to turn it into a little gastro restaurant thing but Dale stuck it out. Somebody has to serve decent beer and shots and play loud music in this city full of hipster and pseudo-hippies. So we do onion rings and cheesy chips and more types of salted snaks than you can shake a stick at. South Alaska is the rock bar in the city, the place to go to stand out wearing black, drink with your mates and come party downstairs after, until the small hours of the morning. The main part of the bar had a wide curved polished wooden counter, the bottles all lined up and gleaming. The insides of South Alaska were painted dark grey with deep brown wood work and leather booths. I’d cleaned up around the bar before, sat in the big booth with Dale and my dad while we yapped about sports. I grimaced to think that one way or another, those days were over.

Downstairs was the club, but Dale lead me through the bar into the little corridor that led to the store room, kitchen and little office. There was another door there which was fitted with a lock all its own. I’d never seen it open before. Now Dale let me go up the narrow stairway first.

“D!” I stopped at the top and turned to look at my smiling Godfather, “This is awesome!”

A little studio apartment opened up at the top of the stairs. A decent sized longue-cum-kitchen with a cool open plan Swedish look to it. There was an OK sized bathroom with a walk in shower that was really really white compared to the homely gloom downstairs and steep twisted staircase. I sprang up the open ironwork stairs to find a cool loft space with nothing but a built in wardrobe and a big double bed.

“You like it Bay?”

I hung over the half wall to stare down at my Godfather.

“Does that meant what I think it does?”

My answer came in the form of a flying bunch of keys.

“Yours for the summer. Or as long as you want it. Get some rest. I’ll be back at four to show you how to open up ya? Gotta work for a living now buddy.”

Clutching the keys in one hand, I fell back on the bed, grinning. It was going to be a good summer.