Sex and Sexuality- An Introspective Volume 1

There’s something very Sarah Jessica Parker about sitting here with that title in front of me, but I’m sure I’ll get over it. No, the reason I’m writing this is kind of an attempt to understand who and what I am in a romantic/sexual kind of way and hopefully move forwards.

Anybody who knows me in any detail (there may be one or two of you, but generally I follow a policy of being different things to different people so I don’t think anybody ever gets the full picture) will know that the question of sex and sexuality is something which has troubled me for the best part of twenty years now- and as a thirtysomething virgin (that was easier than I thought it’d be), it isn’t going away. I’m trying to work through how I’ve arrived at such an anguished state in the hope that it’ll lead to a more straightforward approach with ladies and gentlemen- but if it does, it’ll be the first thing that has. I wanted to start by looking at things chronologically, but I really don’t feel comfortable going into how I felt at age 11 and comparing it with how I felt at 15. Instead, I think I’ll look at the evidence for gay, straight and bisexual and try and reach for some kind of conclusion.

I first began to consider the possibility that I might be gay at secondary school. Being educated at a boys’ private school involves lots of communal changing and showering, and without going into the kind of detail which gets people arrested, I was interested. In fact, I hated having to play rugby, so the communal changing and showering was kind of a bonus. The atmosphere, however, was hardly conducive to any kind of homosexuality- although it happened, it was at the age and time when “gay” or “queer” was shorthand for stupid or second-rate, so there was no incentive to pursue my inclinations. There were boys I was interested in, boys I would occasionally dream about, but nothing ever happened because I couldn’t allow it to happen. On reflection, I was touched up once, but that was about the size of it.

There were also the teases. Certain boys would, for reasons best know to themselves, pretend to be gay and proposition me in front of other boys because my reaction would be inevitably prudish. One of these (I’ll call him KD, because although those aren’t his initials, they’re pretty close) made a play of teasing me over the best part of five years, even coming to my room while we were on a choir holiday together. I’ve never dared to believe that there was anything genuine in it- he was far too good-looking for there ever to be any substance to his come-ons. But I used to dream of him all the same. Some of the boys who dabbled are now happily married- it’s bound to happen when sexuality is emerging in an all-male environment.

After school, I have to say that the number of my gay attractions dropped quite noticeably. The only guy I’ve ever admitted to fancying (after about five cocktails and a couple of pints so I forgot that I’d done it for a couple of days) was someone on my course at university and he was very civilised about it because we’d known each other for years at that point. Living in an all-male hall for three years did lead to a few fantasies, but nothing more as I’d rediscovered girls after not speaking to a female of my own age who wasn’t a blood relation between the ages of 11 and 18. But again-and most importantly-this was the time when arguably I would have been most able to put my sexuality to the test, and I didn’t- because all through my three years, I wanted a girlfriend because it seemed to be the thing to have, and came packaged with the kind of social life that I wanted too. It never happened. But in my third year, something else came along which made even more certain that I would never indulge myself- evangelical Christianity.

In the last ten years, I have practised a faith which makes this aspect of my sexuality at best a weakness, at worst a heresy. This is not to say that I’ve ever stopped being attracted to members of the same sex, just that there’s been a brake in my head which says “No, that’s wrong,” just as surely as if I’d been about to put a housebrick through the window of the Bradford and Bingley. I’ve tried so hard to go along with the Christian ideal of finding The Right Girl, marrying and making little Christians, but in the last few years I’ve started to admit the possibility that it might not work. The Christian line is that you have sex with your wife and nobody else, so it’s been a struggle to have a sexuality at all. Which pretty much brings me up to the present- I’m probably more prepared now than I have been in a decade to admit that I’m attracted to some members of the same sex, but at the same time I don’t feel the need to do anything about it. Being “out” is meaningless, because the only people whose opinion of me would be changed by indulging this side of my sexuality are my Christian friends What it comes down to is that there’s nobody to be out for- nobody I particularly fancy at work at the moment (OK, one, but he got married a fortnight ago) and nothing to be gained by doing it on principle.

End of Volume 1. In Volume 2, Women and the possibility of swinging both ways.

25th January 2004