Didn t know i was gay

I didn’t know then that I was gay, or that Elizabeth Bishop was

Elizabeth Bishop,

I was at that quintessentially American institution – summer camp – when I first heard an Elizabeth Bishop poem. I was twelve, anxious about my confused identity, away from home, mawkish in an adolescent way, and I had no idea that Bishop’s work would, in the decades that followed, lend clarity to my thinking even as it embodied complexity. I cathected to that first poem (‘The Fish’) and read it aloud later in the summer on a campfire night. I didn’t then know that I was gay or that Bishop was; I didn’t know that she had been able to become herself largely through geographical displacement (mostly to Brazil) as I would ten years later become myself largely through geographical displacement (to the UK). I didn’t speculate how closely despair and beauty, awkward twin obsessions of my own, cohabited in her function and life.

I was a university student when I obtained copies of the four slender books that were her lifetime’s entire work, each named to honour place and peregrination: North & South

Gina Battye: How I Knew I Was Gay

By Gina Battye

 

It all started when I was 9 years old.

I didn’t know it at the day but the tell-tale signs were present.

Signs That I Was Gay

My primary school organised one of those adventure holiday things for kids in their final year; like a summer camp. We went abseiling, horse riding, canoeing and did loads of army boot-camp type activities.

You need to know something. Back then, I was a super shy, calm kid. I know, I recognize – it’s hard to consider. But it’s true.

I was anxious about two things around the trip; I had long hair and struggled to tie it into a ponytail on my own and I was worried about being away from place. It was my first day away from my mum for an extended period of second and I was really nervous about it.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry at all. I had a really wonderful teacher and LOVED doing archery, quad biking and building rafts out of sticks and barrels. It was really good fun.

I was an avid photographer, even back then. I loved to take action pictures of my family and fri

'I'm 26 and my family doesn't know I'm gay'

'I am gay.' Three words I can speak to myself without hesitation, and when written down seem so simple. But when given voice in certain situations they suddenly become weighty, charged and genuine. I'm a few years introverted of 30 and I am yet to come out to my family. 

But only to my family. To friends and colleagues and in actual fact anybody else I meet that isn't directly related to them, I am completely myself. I am a gay man. 

Undoubtedly so. In some respects I've always known,  (I was 8 or 9 when I requested an equestrian doll set for Christmas. Female rider, of course), but it was at the age of 14 when I made a resolute decision about myself.

My secondary school experience was a largely positive one, which I am very grateful for as it made the process of coming to terms with being gay a very natural one. 

Having been at school in the preliminary 00s, it had become a more common occurrence for a boy in the upper years to come out. Even one of our Head Boys was openly gay. 

That's not to utter that growing up in this way was without upset an

I’ve identified as gay for years. Not anymore.

Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” is a bop — it topped charts in 25 countries and became one of the best-selling singles of all time. It’s also a monumental LGBTQ anthem in which Gaga embraces her bisexuality and affirms other LGBTQ identities, singing “I’m beautiful in my way / ‘Cause God makes no mistakes / I’m on the right track, baby I was born this way.”

“Born This Way” also came out around the equal time I did, at least to myself. I had a crush on Christian, a charming boy in my grade with mischievous eyes and a perpetual smirk. Then it was Jackson, the nerd-jock crossover of my wildest dreams. Then it was Joseph, a boy in my choir class who kissed me a few weeks before eighth grade ended.

Those boys made me realize that I was queer. It was not something I thought much about before middle school. Bullies teased me for being gay when I was younger, but when a six-year-old boy calls another six-year-old young man gay, he means “weird” or “gross,” not “has sex with men.” Sure, it wasn’t a very nice thing for that boy to say, but it didn’t ma