I’m a Londoner born and bred. I knew deep down I was gay when I was about 11. But the 1950’s was a very difficult time to be gay. Obviously it was illegal, but more to the point, it wasn’t something in any way admirable - gay men were figures of fun, they were derided. Gay life at that time was very much literally subterranean. Gay men met in basements. Society as a whole very rarely came across them.
Having been born just after the war, I’ve been lucky in a sense to have crossed many different eras. I’ve gone from being not just closeted - going to a psychiatrist and wanting the ‘gay cure’ - to what could be described as, at one point in my life, a promiscuous gay man.
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