He learned the truth at just 19, that love ain’t meant for beautiful queens. 1991 was the year of his first sexual experience with a man. It could almost be a contemporary gay porn fantasy; the other, a straight-acting, rugby-playing, heterosexually-celebrated friend’s older brother. But this was no fantasy; he was raped. Having been plied with gin, the only thing besides being fucked he clearly remembered was that somehow, being gay, he was meant to want this, and the friend’s brother was defiantly entitled to want this, safe in the knowledge no one would ever know his secret.
OPINION: Ray O’Neill The Grindr Effect
There is a shadow of so much hurt, anger and shame from growing up in a time in which gay sexuality was defined by being fucked, and thus weak, perverse, criminal. I abhor this legacy where for too many people their first and early male sexual experiences only reiterated and reconfirmed such hurt and shame.