Looking back, I was probably around 11 when I started to like boys. There wasn’t a realisation at the time as initially it seamed normal; I didn’t know what gay was nor saw it as a label or understood the significance of liking boys. However, around 12 I moved with my parents to a new town and a new school, and the people there were different. I just got a feeling it wasn’t right; so for the next four years I completely switched off that side of me.
I never had a girlfriend, fancied a girl or really even talked to one. I was friends with a couple of guys through my senior-school years and for a while that was fine. It wasn’t until I was about 16 that my gay side started to push back. Towards the end of 1998 I started to accept that I was gay, especially after speaking with people on-line who were gay as well.
I eventually came out a few weeks after my 17th birthday in 1999 to the school after a bit of a drunken accident at a party forced my hand. For alot of people it was a shock, both for the fact that I was gay and that I had come out.
It was a very different time back then unfortunately and it took me a long time to go from knowing, to realising and then to acknowledging being gay. And although I probably regret not coming out sooner, coming out at school when I did was almost unheard-of at the time, let aloneat the ages some of boys come out at now.
