How did your parents react to you coming out as LGBTQ?
I came out as gay to my mum when I was about in my early 20s, so this was about 35 years ago roughly. I had just got a new boyfriend, and I was about to stay with him over Christmas. So, I left my mum a note just as I was leaving for the weekend. I told her that I was gay and that I had a new boyfriend, and that I was going to spend Christmas with him.
When I got back after the weekend, she’d put a note on my bed to say thank you for telling her, that she had guessed a long time ago, (in retrospect, I think she’d known longer than me), and as long as I was clean and discreet, I was still her son, and she still loved me. And she baked a Christmas cake to take to Trevor’s, (my new boyfriend). We never really mentioned it after that. But I do feel guilty for disappearing for days at a time. Not from the point of view of my mother, but from the point of view of my dog.
I never came out to The Old Man because he was an ignorant, selfish, self-centered, not very intelligent cunt, and because he was very deaf and would never wear a hearing aid. So, I didn’t fancy shouting at him at the top of my voice that I was gay. And in any case, in the words of Patrick Swayze in the film “To Wong Foo”, his approval was neither required nor desired!