Coming Out

One scene in last night's film held a certain resonance.
It was the drama filled scene when a post teen boy was outed by his parents in the hysterical Aids times of 1984, and the recognition wasn't one from my own life, but one I knew Chris had gone through.
With typical Chris understatement , he merely said when we chatted about the film on the way home " it was a difficult time coming out in the 80s"

I came out in the early 90s.
I was in my late  twenties when I started, so I escaped that parent angst so many men and indeed boys put themselves through. My father died in 1989 and I decided very early on, that declaring my gayness to a mother with her own problems would solve nothing. My sexuality would  have been hijacked by her natural love for drama and made into an issue of hers and not mine.
No, my coming out was centred around the most important people in my life...my siblings and my urban family of close friends.

And I never had a bad reaction.

Of course some of my extended family had their reservations about it all , a fact which,  through patience and non confrontation on my part resolved itself eventually. My brother apparently cried a bit and my sisters, as I knew they would be, were fairly non plussed about it all.
I think it helped that I came out more with a whisper rather than a full on queer-in-your-face bang.

My best mate, who still is a pragmatic and friendly Yorkshire man, just nodded slowly over his pint in the Back lounge of The Dog and Partridge when I told him " I guess you want me go with you to the odd gay bar now" he said with a wry chuckle . He never even paused for dramatic effect.

You cannot quite imagine how wonderful it is to share something like this with people you care about and not illicit a powerful reaction......watching another scene from the film Pride last night, reminded me so much of this coming out time. It was a gentle scene where the elderly Welsh miner Cliff ( the lugubrious Bill Nighy) simply says " I'm gay" to his lifelong friend Hefina ( Imelda Staunton) as they are quietly buttering bread  for a miner's benefit party.  Her buttering knife pauses very briefly as she replies " I know" . and the pair continue their work  in companionable silence.
No hysteria.. No angst.......
Just normality

Yes.......I was very lucky indeed.