I came out to friends when I was seventeen and most of my family knew by the time I was nineteen. The thing is, when I look back over my childhood and especially my early teens, I can never really believe it took me as long as it did to come out to myself.
Growing up where I did, I suppose I was quite protected from most things relating to sex or sexuality. I lived in an area just outside of the Lake District that was made up of little more than a collection of villages. The only places that my friends and I would get our information from would be from watching TV or from older relatives, whose tales of kissing would have us sat slack jawed in awe.
It was not until I turned thirteen that my house finally got a pretty terrible internet connection. I finally started to see the world of choices at my fingertips and started to get a feel for what I liked. I remember so vividly my parents going out for the evening a few days after it was installed, leaving me sat at the computer on my own for the first time. I brought up an internet search page and decided that my first ever internet search would be for "naked teenage boys".
I look back at that and think to myself `how the hell could you be so stupid to take another four years to figure out you were gay?' The honest answer to this day is I really have no idea. You find so many ways of excusing it, excusing looking at the boys' underwear section of your mums clothes catalogue, excusing watching other boys get changed at school, it becomes easy to just dismiss it as experimenting or comparison.
My intention is not to tell of how I could make box after box of Kleenex magically disappear, it is to tell you about the first guy I ever felt something for.
Throughout my childhood I had grown up with an extremely strong group of friend. All the houses within five miles of where I lived totalled no more than a thousand people. The kids I knew were the ones in my school year, there were only eight of us altogether.
School was such a warm and happy place to be, everybody being so close to each other meant that there was very little ill feeling amongst the group, few angry exchanges and certainly no bullying. I doubt anyone could have got away with anything resembling that, and besides we were a single group of friends, outsiders and outcasts did not exist.
In May 2001 my world was completely shattered. I came home from school and found my mum and dad sat at the cold stone kitchen table with a shattered look upon their faces.
"Sit down Matthew, I'm really sorry..."
My mum went on to tell me that they', whoever they' are, could no longer afford to keep the school running with such few kids attending. I deafly heard the variety of options on the table but all I could truly hear was the idea of being ripped away from my friends and my life.
We were to move to Carlisle, as much for my dad's job as for my school. It is hardly a bustling city, but to go from a setting where everyone was your friend and school politics did not exist, where gossip was based around who was quickest up a hillside to a place like Carlisle, it felt like someone had thrown me in to the centre of London and told to make my own way in life. Everything was so Alien.
I spent pretty much the entire summer crying. The pillow on my bed was discoloured with tears and any consolation from my parents just made me angrier and angrier.
My fifteenth birthday at the end of July was their opportunity to overcompensate, I ended up with so much stuff it was embarrassing. My parents did well for themselves, or certainly my dad did, which looking back would explain how we had afforded a life in the Lakes without my mum ever working a day in her life.
Every present I opened that day just made me more and more upset. It wasn't that I was ungrateful exactly, but each unwrapped present seemed to be a bigger wedge between my old life and my new one. I must have been a nightmare to live with for those first few months. We had moved to the new house a couple of weeks earlier. I felt that I was having a fraud of a life built for me with possessions the replacement for lost friends.
I started the first day of school an hour early with a couple of other kids that had transferred in. There was a guy called Mike who must have been over 6 foot tall, I did very little to endear myself to him when I went and offered to shake his hand. He looked at me like I was holding a gun out to him. The other new starter was Lucy, a lovely girl who got bullied relentlessly for her lisp.
Lucy was pretty much the only person that would speak to me for the next 3 months and became the closest thing I had to a friend. It was probably a very nice cloak for my repressed sexuality that every time my mum asked me about school, Lucy was the only thing I cared to mention.
Over the first couple of weeks, still furious with the world, with my parents, with everything that I felt I had lost, I started to take a route to school through a couple of fields and a small woodland. I had found it in the summer as one of the few places near my busy street where very few people seemed to go. Handy when I had burst in to tears thinking about everything that had happened.
It was the second week of school and I set off to the usual sound of me slamming the front door with a healthy clout of teenage angst. I made my way through the miserable grey streets. I walked past a couple of older looking guys from the school. My school `mates' reactions varied between distrust and hostility throughout my time there. Anyone that has moved schools will know the feeling of being the new kid.
I made my way down the road and crossed over to make my way to the first field on my jou4n3y
"Where are you going, skiver?" One of the older boys shouted across the road.
"Nowhere." Why did I always answer nowhere and nothing when answering questions like that? I wonder sometimes if situations like that were actually an opportunity at friendship. The pessimist in me just expected another torrent of abuse.
"School's this way." He pointed down the main road.
I shrugged and made my way toward the field.
"Fuckin' weirdo." I hadn't heard language like that from a real person before. It felt pretty weird. I walked away as fast as I could.
I made my way in to the field, the crops were fairly high and surrounded me. When I felt myself welling up again, I knew I would be fairly sheltered from accusing eyes.
I stopped as I walked in to the woodland and sat down by a tree in an attempt to compose myself. The more I tried, the more the tears seemed to come.
Footsteps...
I wiped my eyes on my jumper and tried to regain my breath, As I saw him approaching my stinging eyes dried instantly, but my breath seemed to be lost forever.
There walked a fourteen year old boy, probably a few inches shorter than me, most beautifully nonchalant tousled brown hair and deep but warm eyes, He moved in a way that suggested poise and experience he couldn't have possessed.
Could he see me crying? Probably. Could he see me staring in awe, jaw agape? No doubt.
He didn't say a word, he didn't change expression, he just looked at me a couple of times while never breaking stride.
I couldn't think about anything else for the rest of the day. If I'm honest it was pretty much all I thought about for weeks.
Some days I would see him and other days I wouldn't. Every now and then I would see him around school and he always looked at me with a look that, to me, just screamed `you emotional bender'.
I thought about telling Lucy about him, but I didn't feel like giving anyone any more ammunition. As trustworthy as I knew she was, I worried about someone overhearing my story and destroying me for it.
I got bullied for the coat I wore, the shoes I had, the way I wore my hair, the fact that I wore briefs instead of boxers and every time that something bordering on bullying would crop up I would tell my parents who, as opposed to standing up for me or reporting it to school, decided the best way forward was spending money on `fixing' my problems.
I ended up looking how other kids dictated that I was `supposed' to look. I hated it, I cared so little and hated that I had to try just because of what other people thought. I was a short, blonde haired, blue eyed generic idiot. I don't know if changing my appearance made anyone else feel better. The bullying seemed to get easier as a result but I was miserable a lot of the time even without it.
I wondered if the boy from the woods noticed the gradual change in my look over those first few weeks. I spent so much time thinking about him. I used to fantasise that one day he would smile at me, or that he would come over and start to hold my hand or something more. But it never happened. The days and weeks drove on through autumn and no matter what dreams went through my head, the reality of the walk to school never matched up.
By this point I had taken to leaving home early in the mornings but walking slowly, looking back frequently until I saw him. I took to pretending to tie my shoelaces just so I could watch him walk by and then follow him to school. Christ, it makes me feel like a stalker thinking about that now.
It didn't take very long for this plan to backfire.
It was a fairly cool September day and as always he was wearing no coat. I even loved that about him. I walked in to the field and did my usual trick of tying my shoelaces. Perhaps he finally noticed what I was doing, or maybe he had figured out long ago and had finally had enough and decided to call my bluff.
He walked on by as I performed my shoelace stalker trick. He stopped and looked back at me as I got to my feet. He stopped in his tracks and casually put his school bag on the floor. He bent down and went to tie his own shoelaces and looked over his shoulder at me briefly before looking back down at his shoe.
My heart skipped a hundred beats, a hundred more so when I noticed the outline of his briefs in his grey trousers. It took little more than a second for my hormones to take control of the situation and the unintended consequence of having been bought boxers soon became apparent. A cripplingly obvious rise suddenly appeared in my trousers.
I had no idea what move to make next, I was frozen where I stood. I knew I had to do something and started walking awkwardly towards him. The other thing I knew I had to do was to stop rudely pointing at him. I began to try and hide my shame via my pocket, I expect it made it look like I was doing something much worse than I actually was.
As I approached and walked by he looked up at me, his usual steely expression beamed in my direction. He looked down to my waist and what I was doing, back up to my face and then back again. I was mortified and I could feel the tears welling up again. I looked at him and then started walking away. My pace quickened, faster and faster I walked until the strides became a sprint. I could hear the cool wind whistling past my face and could feel my life coming to an end.
I saw him at school between classes that same morning. He was stood by a wall in the school yard speaking to somebody. As I passed, he looked over at me and instantly turned away. His friend looked over shortly after. That was it, everyone was going to know what I had done.
But nothing happened, no comments were passed, or at least no more than usual, and no odd looks were flashed in my direction. I was so thankful to him for that.
Over the coming weeks the weather started to set in and my emotions went along for the downhill ride. I still used to see him most days but gave up on my shoelace tying trick for fear of a repeat of what had happened.
One thing that didn't change, as the cold northern mornings began to bite, was that he never wore a coat. I found that strange as September closed in, but getting in to November it was getting to the point where I was getting worried. Worried! Ha! Worried for someone I had never even spoken to! I felt so stupid but that didn't stop me concocting more fantasies in my head about me comforting him, or me offering him my coat and then embracing him as he wept in my arms thanking me for what I had done.
I was sat with Lucy one lunch time looking out in to the school yard and watched as he wandered by. Everybody that was outside had coats and gloves on, some even hats and scarves. All except for him.
"He never wears a coat." I tried desperately to claw at the words, trying to get them back in as they fell out of my mouth. My cheeks burned red, certain that my secret had just escaped.
"Who, John?" Lucy looked out at him... She knew his name!
"John?"
"Yeah, I hear his family are fucking mental."
"How do you know his name?"
"He's Mike's cousin... Or something like second cousin... I dunno... he doesn't really get involved with him."
"Why?"
"Don't think he wants to get a reputation for being related to him."
"A reputation...?"
"Yeah, he's a bit weird, Mike says his family spend their money on other stuff than him, not much of it legit."
"What do you mean?"
"Come on Matt..."
His name was John.
I thought about what Lucy had said for a couple of days. I didn't really get what Lucy had meant, but I concocted a picture in my head of neglect, drugs, drink, violence and other things I tried not to press my imagination for.
I was sat eating my breakfast on the Friday of that week as my mum came bounding in to the kitchen.
"Have you seen it outside?" she said, pulling the blinds up on the window. Frost had covered the ground, and snowflakes had started to fall. I knew what I had to do.
I tossed my cereal bowl on the side of the sink and dashed in to my bedroom. I grabbed my bag and shoved a couple of books and folders in. I ran out of my room and grabbed my coat and gloves. I started searching frantically in cupboards. I couldn't find it anywhere... I dashed back in to my room and started rummaging in my wardrobe. I found it shoved under a load of old clothes.
I dashed my way out of the house and down the road, through the field and in to the woodland.
I stood and waited for about half an hour, freezing.
At first I was filled with a kind of excitement that I had never felt. Then the anxiety and fear hit me. What if he didn't come? What if he hit me? What if he walked by without stopping if I said something? What if he didn't need it?
Finally, footsteps...
I saw his frozen face appear through the chilled air. His hands were forced under his armpits struggling to search for any slither of heat they could find. He looked up at me, shaking as he walked on by. I couldn't say a word, I was frozen solid. I finally started after him.
"Wait..." My voice was strained with the cold, my first word to him had the sound of a puppy yelping, but I had said something to him!
He stopped and turned to look at me, shivering horribly where he stood.
I threw my bag to the floor and started babbling "Look, you're always coatless..." Coatless? That's not even a word I thought to myself... "Erm... never mind... Look, I always watch you..." His face filled with a look of embarrassment and shock at this and I finally got some warmth back in my cheeks as the blood rushed in. He started to walk away without saying a word.
"No, wait..." I started after him again... "Look, I'm not weird..." a classic thing for someone weird to say... "What I mean is that when I saw the weather this morning, I couldn't believe you wouldn't be wearing a coat... But here you are..."
"Look, fuck off will you?" My heart broke with the first words he had ever said to me. "I get enough shit from people I do know about that."
I realised what I sounded like. "No... No, I didn't mean that... Look, I'm rubbish at words, just let me try to do this without talking."
He still had a look of disgust about him. I walked back a few yards, grabbed my bag and came running back over to him. "Here..." I said unzipping my bag.
I pulled out an old coat which I had from when I used to go walking in the hills around my old house. It was dry and warm. It was also old. I had a sudden realisation of what I was doing. I was offering a gift to someone I had never previously spoken to properly and I looked at it with horror and embarrassment. What was I doing?
I tentatively offered it to him, to John, and his mouth dropped open.
"Are you serious?" I couldn't tell if his tone meant he was angry, sickened, frightened or pleased. I could see that he had stopped shaking.
"Look, just take it." I said rather too aggressively, thrusting the coat in to his frozen hands. My hand brushed one of his, my chest was on fire my heart was racing so much.
He took it and stood staring at me. I couldn't deal with the situation. I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to hug him. Instead I turned and ran away. I looked back once to see him still stood frozen in the same pose I had left him in.
I got to school in tears, Lucy asked constantly what was going on but I couldn't speak, not that I cared to explain. I had never been so relieved to get to class as the bell rang.
Lunch time came and I sat eating a lonely sandwich thinking about what had happened that morning.
A group of boys walked by laughing and joking, teasing one of the group about something.
"It's about bloody time... minus two hundred million degrees and they finally get you a coat!"
I looked up with wide eyes, turning to see John stood there. He looked straight at me and did what I never thought I would see him do.
He smiled.
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