Trying to find who I really am

Knowing I was different
Hating most parts of living with parents
Holiday with the 1st Boyfriend
Last Family Holiday with my Parents
My Young and fit mode
Heterosexual marriage
Acting the content family man
Trying to be very gay
Neither gay or straight
Doing an ill advised C4 Documentary
Trying to straddle two worlds
Professional Photographer Mode
Silly Goth Period
Trying not to be fat
Trying to get fit
Trying to be really gay
First Philippines Trip
Chilling at Home
Last time I ‘worked’

You can see from the pictures which range almost 50 years that I have looked very different over the years. These appearances barely hint at how many perceptions there are of who I actually am. To the point now, in 2023, I also don’t really know who I am either.

As a kid as young as 5 I was very aware that there was something different about me.

I knew for an absolute fact that I didn’t find girls in any way interesting and yet, I found other boys very interesting yet, not their sport or Action Man.

My Dad blamed my difference, from his perspective, on the fact that I was brought up by many women. I was off school a lot, in hospital a lot and that means those who were around at the time, all women, cared for me whoever was available at the time. My memory of my dad was a man who either wanted me to do things I had zero interest in such as sport or the one who handed out the discipline. He would years later tell me outright I was a huge disappointment to him.

I tried to get into sport but, I just didn’t match the other boys mentality who ‘were’ into sport. In football there would be 2 goalkeepers and 19 guys running around a ball. I was the 20th guy who actually had the ball they’d not notice me take running to the other end of the pitch and scoring against a goal keeper who had long since given up the will to live. Rather than seeing any ‘talent’ it was made clear to me by the teachers I was not a team player and needed to sort out my attitude. Same applied to Rugby and basketball. I’d be going it alone before the others even knew the ball had gone. I only ever got critical comment for that from both the adults and the other boys. Eventually I stopped making any effort at all and just sat doing nothing whenever I could get away with it. I never felt part of anything ever.

At home, and I know from the perspective of my sister, this is different, mum favoured me and dad favoured my sister. I likely did get away with doing a lot because I was that bit younger but, I didn’t feel any sort of equality of treatment any more than I think my sister did. To make matters much worse for me, I had zero privacy during puberty and a young man needs privacy during that time. My room was essentially the corridor to my sisters room. It was already small but I had to keep it clear for her to go back and forth to her private bedroom. There was a lot I had to repress back then. I did say it made me unhappy but, even when she moved out I wasn’t allowed a private space, it was and remained her route to her bedroom whenever she came round which was often.

In the early 1980’s we moved to a larger house where I finally had my own room. At 20 I met and fell in love with a younger guy. It was totally illegal back then, being gay was not legal until a man was 21 so, we were both criminals. As such, we kept our relationship secret. When we were together it just felt right. I honestly feel that had things been of a different age this might have grown into something but, as it was, we both went the heterosexual route around the same time. It did mean that in my mind I was now totally comfortable with being gay and yet, to the outside world I was straight.

Soon after I met and got married. We went on to have 4 children and some of my friends knew me as gay, some assumed I was bisexual and she also thought I was bisexual. 9 years later I admitted to her outright I was not in any way bisexual and all this time I was living an act of heterosexuality and it made me incredibly unhappy.

3 Years after that and I had a wandered into the gay world where I discovered things were not what I thought they’d be. I had thought I’d just be accepted as a gay guy who happened to have children (and a wife at the time) but this wasn’t the case with so many gay guys. I so much as heard them say so when they thought I wasn’t listening or, perhaps they said it wanting me to hear. Why was I even there, I wasn’t really gay, I was just one of those guys who can’t make his mind up.

I didn’t know what to wear, how to be gay so went through a few ‘looks’, none of which really worked.

Over time I developed some really good friendships. I lost my gay virginity to one of those friends when he raped me. I want to see it as consent but we never had the conversation ever before the event, I was asleep and woke up to him fucking me anally. He’d finished before I had the chance to react.

I bottled that up, put it down to what gay guys do, what being gay is all about but, must as I loved that guy that memory is still so clear to me.

I see a relationship as ‘love’ and sex is the consequence of that love. I’ve never got satisfaction from casual sex, it’s not part of the way my mind works.

Am I messed up though because, the majority of men seem to think that casual sex is totally the way to be whether they are gay or straight. Is it unusual to be wanting love, respect and follow on that from that, mutual sexual satisfaction?

I’ve tried to keep up with the trends embracing trendy, fit, emo and goth. I quite liked my fit look.

To manage my parenting role over the years I discovered quickly that not mentioning the ‘gay’ thing was the best thing to do. Teachers and social workers are not trained to deal with diversity, they certainly were not when it most mattered to me. I got asked once by a social worker, considering my ‘condition’ whether it was appropriate to take my son into the toilet to change his nappy! I want to say that attitude was uncommon but, it was more often that not. Even now I still get letters home addressed to ‘Mrs’ and often in my old surname of Williams as it matches that of my two disabled kids so, they presume they are writing to their mum despite her having no direct parenting role for 23 years.

I have had relationships (with men) since my heterosexual divorce. They either didn’t support me enough in my parenting, they cheated on me, they lied to me, they got physically violent or made a point of letting me know I was not sexually attractive to them.

I have real serious trust issues!

Sexually I am unable to enjoy it as I have a mental block that it’s all about them, that none of it is going to be about me and, as such, it’s crap. So few made the effort to resolve that one so it just enforces that feeling.

Over the past decade my health has declined. I have effectively become yet another person.

I like to say that I would define myself as Steve or I am who I am. That would work except that I have presented so many versions of me over the years, I don’t really know who or what I am any longer.

I’m living a life trying to be the me everyone individually believes they know which is different depending on who ‘they’ are.

But, as I started this I shall finish it with me knowing I am different, that knowing this makes me feel crap (not depressed just crap) and I have no idea how to find out who I actually am now.

Gay Rights again takes a nosedive!

I wonder how many I have looking at my blog are in their late teens? From distant memory it was seen as a huge success for a teen 16+ to bed a much older woman, to have their own ‘milf’. Society seems to accept that this is OK, some might even argue, it’s good to have a woman with some experience to show them the way and then we have Huw Edwards!

I do not pretend to know the man. This said, I am a bit of an expert on gay dads. Many will have known about their sexuality before they got married. They will have lived in an environment where even for them to accept their sexuality was not acceptable, just not a realistic option. They would have to give up everything familiar. Mr Edwards is the same age as me more or less. Back in the 1970’s there were very few parts of the UK where being out and proud was an option. The vast majority of men will have suppressed their sexuality, got married (to a woman they no doubt love) and had children and as life progressed the very real difficulties will have hit.

Sometimes, when we are young, it’s really difficult if not impossible to comprehend what a lifetime actually is, just how long it is. What we think we can manage in our late teens or early 20’s eventually catches up on is.

Many men will just leave their wives and go it alone but for most, they’d already have children by this time. They will have realised that they are performing with their wife but they still love her and absolutely adore their children, they struggle on managing their repressed sexuality as best they can. Sometimes with their wife’s knowledge and sometimes in secret they will find a way to satisfy their need to be with a man or even convince themselves that doing it virtually is enough.

Would it have been a news story so enormous as this if a newsreader had a distance fling with a younger woman? No, it would barely have attracted a mention. Maybe, as was the case with me, the wife is fully aware and accepting because it maintains their life of respectability. We just do not know but ‘The Sun’ came at this from the outset with their suggestions of what went on. To read what they wrote there was a newsreader obtaining sexually explicit images with a teenager. For many reading that they would have presumed the teen in question to be around 14, very much still a child. As it was, nothing illegal happened, both were of legal age and consenting.

I was listening to the radio this morning. People phoning in to explain how disgusting it was for this married man to have sex with a teenage boy … not that there has been, as far as I am aware, a fact that sex occurred but, even if it did, how is this in the public interest?

If Mr Edwards had spent his career being homophobic and challenging same sex relationships then yes, that is in the public interest but, again, AFAIK, he never did. He and his family have struggled through trying to have their private lives.

Then people are saying victim blame is going on, how so? The alleged ‘victim’ was legally able to consent to what he did AND had said prior to the printing of the story by the sun, that the story his parents told is just untrue. We cannot blame a victim who doesn’t exist?

Those who feel gays have got full equality need to understand from this story that they don’t. The UK press will still see their activities as a scandal, their life choices are not private.

‘Gay’ Pride’

Yes it grabs the attention, makes people look but … one question I get asked too often is “which of you is the woman?”

I do not want my sexuality confused as a gender issue.


Thanks to my lovely husband in the foreground.

My own perspective on gay pride and, indeed the so called ‘community’.

Firstly, understand the history of pride. It started when gay people finally took a stand against the homophobia they were subjected to. For many years gay people were unprotected, no laws gave them equal rights not even the laws of the lands they lived in as citizens from birth. They were seen as criminals and generally people with severe mental health issues and deviants.

With slow progress in many countries we got some kind of equality or, at least legal protecting from prejudice to the point many who don’t recall when it wasn’t there really believe we’ve already got there and Pride has become nothing more than an in your face celebration of a job well done!

We are no where near that point yet and to make matters worse, we are diluting the cause and allowing it to be taken over by issues which are not our issues.

Over recent years our fight for equality for those with differing sexuality has had added to it, the fight for gender identity. What real connection do we as gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women do we have with the multitude of current gender identities?

Don’t get me wrong, I support that battle separately just not inclusively. If we follow any natural progression some trans might take we get this scenario and this is merely an example:

Mike is trans. Right now Mike is gay he is part of the LGB community. However, Mike is transitioning to Michelle. ‘She’ is living as a woman who is attracted to men. When she fully transitions she will be and wants to be a woman. At this point, Michelle becomes a straight woman, no longer a part of the LGB community. Of course, it’s way more complex but, we have to call a spade a spade.

Gender identity should have remained an issue in of itself. They will have their supporters and those in the LGB community will have theirs. Sometimes they may be the same people.

Does it help that leading many Pride events (which used to be pre woke, called ‘gay pride’) we have drag queens? I’ll wager that the majority of gay men have no desire at all the wear female clothes and yet, as far as society sees us, we come across as cross dressing weirdos. Not as we are, just the men and women you work with, who you see every day or pass by in the street. Again, don’t misunderstand me, no issue with drag queens, some are great but, would be put the Royal State Coach at the head of an environmentally friendly car parade? It’s overkill and suggests totally the wrong thing.

Beautiful and grand but, not taking us into the future

If you’re selling EV’s you don’t use the State Coach to promote them!

In short, Pride has been taken over by those with heavy egos who don’t even realise this is still a struggle.

How many gay men would feel comfortable walking through the Grosvenor Centre holding hands with their husbands? I see the ladies doing it but, never us men. Is that a rational avoidance or is it justified considering recent attacks on gay men in the town?

Gay men ‘afraid to hold hands in public’, survey finds

We’ve police forces up and down the country recognised for being institutionally homophobic. That on top of how generally ineffective the police are anyway and it matters not what laws are passed if the police and CPS do not enforce those laws.

We still do not have marriage equality, under law religions cannot perform same sex marriages. That was as much a government decision as it was the religions involved.

In many countries around the world our rights range from tolerance to a criminal offence punishable by death. Our government and monarchy still counts those countries amongst our ‘friends’.

I would like us to get back to being the LGB community fighting our own causes.

Not ‘always’ women & girls

Earlier on today I was listening to @lbc and they were asking if the safety of women against predatory men had come along any further in the last decade?

The programme continued mentioning ‘all men’ and then, doing a hasty apology of ‘not all men obviously’. The fact it got mentioned at all created adversary.

As the conversation went on, one physically sexually abused woman after another I became reminded of a warning and apology they often give out at LBC for any triggering episodes their shows may cause. I thought about it as something which happened 25 years to me suddenly got triggered.

Sadly, there is no way to tell the story here without the person concerned being identified to those who knew him and he’s no longer with us to defend himself.

In 1998 I really was going through the process of living life accepting I was a gay man. I had made a lot of gay friends but, in reality, I wasn’t really much experienced. I had certainly not had gay sex and for sure I had not answered that question in my mind.

My dear friend, I really thought of him as such, took me out to London for my birthday to a gay club. I really enjoyed it but did get really very drunk.

I was staying at his though, I don’t much remember going to bed. Some time later I woke up to him thrusting inside me and as I woke up, he finished and, by finished I mean in the sexual sense. No protection, just fucking. I was not asked if I wanted it and had no opportunity to agree. By the time I was aware the deed was done.

Really I honestly didn’t want to lose his friendship and we continued to be friends until he died years later.

Over time I came to accept that I was raped. I never wanted it, he didn’t ask he just fucked me because he wanted to do. I thought of him as a good man but he was my rapist and it has never been OK. I do still feel ashamed of that night though I know I had no control over it.

During the radio programme I did get upset, why is it always about women getting abused and men being the guilty ones?