How important is it to know a hotel is gay welcoming when you travel?

This was in spite of the fact that my dad’s youngest brother, twelve years his junior, was gay himself. I clearly remember querying my mum one-day on my uncle’s sexuality after a rare interstate family function. I distinctively remember her exact response to this day. She swung around from the front passenger seat in the car whilst driving home and sternly said in a hushed voice, ‘yes he is… but we don’t talk about it’. And that was that.

It wasn’t until the age of 19 that I’d actually decided to act on my curiosity about the same sex. I was living with my sister and ex-girlfriend at the time. They had both gone out to their respective parents leaving me alone wondering what I was ever going to do that night. I suddenly felt as this was going to be my only chance to do something about it. I could sneak out without explaining my absence to anyone. I could test the waters and get a taste of the gay lifestyle I had only ever heard about or envisaged within my own mind. I knew within myself that I wanted to be gay, but aside from the fact that I would be dating a male, I still wanted to be the same person doing the same things that I would anyway in my life now. I didn’t want being gay to exclude me from the things I were doing in my life at present. I didn’t want people to view me any differently.

I drove to the one and openly gay bar that I knew about. Parking car around the corner, I walked to the door of the club. I was extremely nervous, but only to find that the doors were locked. Cars were driving past and I felt so exposed. Here I was standing outside a known gay venue when anybody I knew could have been driving past. It wasn’t for about another hour before the club actually opened. Once I finally got inside, I sought the shelter of a darkened back wall to hide and observe… listening to the music. As much as I wanted to be there, I couldn’t wait to leave because I felt that people were looking at me. A couple of guys came over and introduced themselves to me. These were the first gay people that I’d spoken (aside from my uncle), and I looked forward to the next time that I would catch up with them and hear about their experiences. As I was leaving the club, one of my new ‘friends’ gave me his number and asked me to give him a call if I’d like to catch up sometime. We ended up speaking a number of times during the week and within a couple of weeks we started seeing each other. It is clear to me now that his intentions of providing his friendship that night were not as innocent as what they first seemed. For a 26 year old, a 19-year-old male attending a gay venue for the very first time was an easy target.

For my first gay experience, this relationship lasted for five months. What I found whilst actually being in this relationship was that whether you’re dating a male or a female, I was doing the same things as I had before in my day-to-day life. The only difference was that while I was dating this guy, to everyone else he was just my new friend. Nobody picked up on any change in my behaviour during this period, which just re-enforced the fact that I could still be me whilst being gay at the same time. The only clue that gave my secret away to my sister (whom I was living with at the time) was when my boyfriend was coming to stay over in the middle of the night all too frequently. She confronted me about it and of course I denied it at first. She kept re-enforcing the fact that she didn’t care, and eventually we sat down and discussed what had been going on in my life. This discussion went on into the wee small hours of the morning. There was a lot to talk about. We both decided that the next time that our father came to town on business that we would sit down over dinner and tell him the truth.

When this time eventually came around, we went out for dinner and explained the whole situation to him. After many rounds of drinks to celebrate the occasion the only question that he had for me was ‘who is going to tell your mother’ with a grin from ear to ear! And of course I told him that he would inherent that unenviable responsibility seeing as she was at there home interstate.

For me, this coming out process was quite easy and well taken by my immediate family. I am very grateful for their maturity and acceptance of my new found lifestyle after just four short years from that car ride where my mum had pronounced that homosexuality was not a topic for discussion. Little did she know that her one and only son, whom she loves dearly, would end up being out and proud?

© Trent 2002 and © Gay Australia 2002