The Gay Agenda

This will be the LAST time that I do a Though Bubble web log on homosexuality for a long time. I am well beyond fed up of this shit but the short essay I'm working on called "The Use of Intelligence" isn't finished. I have this blog left over from a few weeks ago and figured that if I've finished it I might as well put it out there, so here we go . . .
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When I was about nine years old I remember being in a car travelling through the middle of Manchester with my mother and she asked me a very important question. It had obviously been playing on her mind for a while during the journey, I could tell because she'd turned off the radio [serious] and conversation on the politics of South African food production had run dry [I'm not even joking].

The question was this: James, what do you think about gay people?

I fell silent for a few moments and gave the issue some very serious thought. I'd met gay people before, some of my mum's gay friends, and they seemed cool. They also seemed really happy. I knew that there was a lot of stigma around being gay, that most religions around the world disliked homosexuals and that in some places it was encouraged that they be murdered without remorse or mercy. Also at school there were kids who thought it was amusing to quickly announce that you'd dropped your 'Gay card' and watch as you instinctively take a look for said missing item - so even my nine year old classroom peers thought it was some thing to be mocked. I also knew there was of people who confused homosexuality with paedophilia though these people were usually stupid and didn't read the Independent or The Guardian. I'd been to a Pride festival before and, unlike other festivals, had a genuinely pleasant time, read my first Pink Paper whilst there and not one person had tried to molest me, not even once. So that was good. I also knew that they had butt sex, which was a bit gross but at the time the concept of sex was quite a disgusting and scary thought regardles of gender so no more so then any other kind. I also knew that they couldn't get married, which didn't seem fair.

But it wasn't these factors that I took into consideration, it was a purely logical and mathematical. I replied: "Well . . . we have a world population problem and they don't make babies so they must be good for keeping the population down. So I think they're a good thing."

Not My Fault, Not My Problem.

When I was eleven years old [at high school] I knew that I was different from the other boys and at thirteen years old I knew that I was gay. I kept it a secret. It was more then taboo, it was dangerous. I was already the subject of bullying at the time and any further fuel to the fire was not something I wanted. So I kept my head down and myself in the closet. I had a couple of girl friends throughout my time at high school but showed no interest in them during our short relationships. In fact, at the age of fifteen I came out as gay two weeks after I'd broken up with a girlfriend [. . . of course she's died shortly after that]. Still, it was kept a secret. But now it was amongst friends.

We got a school diary to keep track of our time tables and home work notes. I used to doodle in my school diary. I wrote a lot of messages and drew a lot of dark art in there expressing my inner frustrations with no intention of anybody ever seeing them. Ever. EVER!

So naturally one day my diary went missing. I searched and questioned people but I couldn't find it anywhere. I thought little of it except the inconvenience of having to memorise my time-table. A month later it resurfaced when a friend gave it back to me. She told me that she'd found it in the science labs, I'd left it on a table after class. At first I was relieved to have it back and then it occurred to me that they knew where it was but no one had returned it to me. It turned out that my diary had been read by almost every person who had gone into that science lab over the last four weeks. There was no secret any more. I was "outed". It was like "The Secret Diary of a Call Girl" except some one had read it. I knew what was coming after and it wasn't a publicist offer . . .

A month later and those who were giving me trouble at school had discovered the information of my sexuality were poking and prodding me for information. The put downs had become more specific and generally make me feel more uncomfortable then before because now their verbal assaults had a basis of truth. It even got to the stage where I was being openly bullied in my German language lessons but the teacher did nothing to stop it because she was a devout Catholic [and also my religious studies teacher].

But then one day I stood my ground after years of feeling ashamed, scared and anxious for my safety. They didn't come after me after that. Instead they went after my little brother. One of them put him in hospital. It was then that I knew for sure that homophobes are cowards and nothing else. Scared of what they don't understand and too chicken to understand it. And if they couldn't get to me then they'd find some thing they could target. Some one smaller then themselves. And that's why you don't find homophobes in groups of less then three.

God Hates Smokers.

At the age of fifteen, feeling a lot more vibrant and liberated in my expression, thus happier as a person, I was flaunting a scarf of my mums at the time and being outrageously camp to make her laugh. She then corned me in conversation about my sexuality. I, with hesitation, told her I was gay. She nodded. Then she called up her friend: "Hi Steve...yeah, he's done it. He's finally out. Sure. You able to pick him up? Great. See you tomorrow."
She then turned to me and said: "James, you're not going into school tomorrow. Steve [I knew who Steve was] is going to pick you up and take you out for the day to Canal Street. I hope you enjoy yourself sweet-heart." She then gave me a massive hug and told me that I could keep the scarf.

My mum is awesome :)

The next day I went to Canal Street for the first time as an openly gay young man. The experience was like the difference between witnessing an idea and realising an idea. Stepping through the looking glass. Tasting the rainbow. No longer was I being a guest in this world, it was now my world too. Two weeks later she threw me a coming out party. Everyone had a great time. We listened to gay music and ate gay food. To coin a phrase; we went on a massive bender. Gay Times magazine gave it a five star rating of "Fabulous!".

Elton John Gave The Dog A Make Over. It Was Mental!

My mum knew for years of course I knew that she'd been on to me for a long time, the clever women had left traps like the mother-hunter and I'd taken the bait like the gay deer. Plus Internet cookies never lie. At that age I assumed Internet cookies were a digital chocolate digestive. Really wish some one had told me how to delete those back then . . . ¬_¬

There were plenty of signs as I was growing up that I might have been a little limp wristed.

• When I was six I attended a school that made the students wear a white shirt and tie. One summer I asked for pink buttons on my cuff links - obvious sign number one.
• Number two - I'd steal my brothers Action Men to put them sun bathing on my window ledge.
• Number three - I had as much interest in girlfriends as horses do with accounting.
• Number four - By the age of ten I'd asked for a 'Polly Pocket Magic Moving Fairy Land' for Christmas [in my defence I'd like to say that I was always a bit of a nerd. I loved science and understanding the natural order of things. The object itself was magnetic and the pieces moved around quite freely without touching them directly and I was fascinated by this wizardly and wished to know it's secrets. But it was pink.]
• Number five - I had a very obvious crush on a boy at primary school and sent him a valentines day card one year.

Number Six - My Favourite T.V. Show, swiftly followed by 'Ellen' and Queer As Folk

So after all that, here is my point: This summer it's been ten years since I came out of that cold and musty closet and I am yet to receive my copy of the Gay Agenda. WHAT. THE. HELL?

I'd like to think I'm a pretty good member of Gay; I've attended the meetings, paid my annual dues AND converted at least three new members to the cause [thus pushing me up the pyramid of power and closer to knowing the dark and terrible "Gay Secret"]. I've suffered through high school, I attended the protests to abolish Section 28 and attending Pride events but even after all my efforts and years of toil I've received nothing. So where is my copy of this Gay Agenda everyone has been talking about my entire life? It's not like no one knows it exists, I've heard the spiel my entire life from American politicians, right-wing journalists, religious nuts and bloggers and people who should know better then me. You go gay, you are part of Gay Agenda. Simple. I'm soooo writing to my Gay representative about this injustice!

I assumed when I signed up to Gay that it would be in my 'Welcome Pack' along with my official 'Gay Card', fashion sense and love of musicals but was it fuck. Well, I am sick of waiting any longer. I guess I'll have to work out the Gay Agenda myself because it can't be that hard to figure out if all those slightly inbred looking people on the tele-box have had it sussed out since the 80's.

But looking at my own life is all I can really do to work out what this agenda is meant to be. After all, who else will know what I want but myself? So here is a list of my daily routine. This link is to a previous blog in which I list the first part of my busy schedule: My Morning Hell

BE WARNED - if there is ANY cross over between this and your own life - you might just be gay.

My Daily Schedule Part 2
10:30 a.m. - Leave graveyard and head to the shop.
10:35 a.m. - Buy a morning paper and milk.
10:42 a.m. - Arrive home, put on the kettle for a third cup of morning coffee and prepare breakfast.
10:50 a.m. - Eat breakfast.
11:00 a.m. - Read the news paper, skipping out the business section and diving straight into the comics pages.
11:35 a.m. - Log onto my laptop and open a fresh blank text document to start writing my blog for the week.
12:01 p.m. - Continue to stare at a blinking cursor and blank page.
12:20 p.m. - Give up at wasting time not writing by having a shower.
12:25 p.m. - Initiate part 1 of showering by washing myself.
12:29 p.m. - Initiate part 2 of showering by spending another forty minutes pondering the meaning of life.
13:09 p.m. - Have life changing epiphany.
13:10 p.m. - Get out of shower. Prepare to look fabulous by offering tribute to our Lord and saviour, the lady Madonna.
13:15 p.m. - Looking faaabulooous.
13:16 p.m. - Feeling alive and refreshed, head back to laptop to commence writing.
15:24 p.m. - Break for lunch. Enjoy a high protein diet with a bottle of water.
16:00 p.m. - Back to the grind stone.
16:30 p.m. - Break from grind stone. Enjoy a work out whilst watching motivational examples of well built men working out on the Internet.
17:00 p.m. - Finish work out. Drink protein shake.
17:04 p.m. - Still looking fabulous? Yes I am!
17:05 p.m. - Whilst researching blog article get stuck in a YouTube loop of cats being cute and dogs doing stupid stuff.
18:59 p.m. - Realise the day has been wasted. Panic. Publish whatever badly structured non-sense I've written.
19:05 p.m. - Watch trashy television whilst dinner is cooking.
19:35 p.m. - Watch Q.I. whilst eating dinner to balance out the trash from before.
20:00 p.m. - Cabin fever has long since set in so leave the house to visit a friend.
20:40 p.m. - Meet with appointed friend.
21:03 p.m. - Crack open a bottle of Chilian malbec and proceed to get very, very sloshed.
23:35 p.m. - Arrive home drunk and stinking of sweat, cigarettes and vomit and won't shut up telling Mike about how great my night has been without asking him how his days been [despite all the fresh blood and wods of cash].
23:45 p.m. - Start crying for no explainable reason. Receive patronising consoling from Mike that I'm really not that fat at all and that he's sure that Internet cat would have found its way out the bin eventually.
23:59 p.m. - Pass out from dehydration.

So that's it. Somewhere in the mass of fear and self-loathing is the Gay Agenda. I hope you find it because I can't see the forest for the trees. To me the gay agenda is my agenda and my agenda is this: To do what I must to live without fear of abuse so that I can get on with living my life.

Now if you'll excuse me it's time for my work out . . .