The night I Fell
Thirty two days to go.On July 15th, I’m getting married. Conjoined. Hitched. Spliced.It’ll be Five thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty One days since I first set eyes on him.I was much much younger then than I can ever remember being, and (based on some photos I found in one of the ten thousand storage places in the house), much much cuter and slimmer than I can ever recall being. But such is the cruelty of time; it’s only years later that we think “If I’d known I was that hot, I’d have been shagging like a rabbit instead of worrying that my smile wasn’t bright enough.â€
And, along with being younger and cuter than I can ever recall,  I was fed up; fed up of being a crap homosexual, who constantly failed to live up to the role models I’d been fed by both the straight world and the gay. I wasn’t tall and gorgeous, tanned and lithe, muscular and perfectly groomed. I looked crap in a leather peaked cap, and couldn’t grow a droppy moustache to save my life. I was neither independently wealthy nor cute enough to be kept by someone who was independently wealthy. I wasn’t too upset by the casual sex; it’s just that I wasn’t getting that much casual sex, and when it did occur, I realised that I liked the idea of a bit of romance to go with it.
The only Gay Role model I’d really associated with was Oscar Wilde; like me, he came from Ireland. He moved to England, where he reinvented himself in London society. Me too! Just like me, he was witty and clever, and, like me, he had an ego the size of Richmond park. Of course, Oscar got to shag rentboys and minor members of the aristocracy, but then he never lived in a dodgy bedsit in Putney and pissed in a binbag when he was too drunk to go down the three floors to the lavvy. Or, if he did, Ellman forgot to mention it in his biography.
So, there I was, floppy center-parted hair, fey (just a tad – ye gods! The feyness!) and myopically searching the popper-scented nightclubs of 90’s London in search of Romance.
But of Romance, there was nary a sight. Till Thursday July 10th 1990. In a dark nightclub on Tottenham Court Road. To the sounds of Wham, T’Pau Yazoo and other 80’s classics by bands with one-word names. And remember, this was after the 80’s were fashionable in the 80’s, and before they became fashionable again in the late 90’s, so we were really trailblazers here. That, or really sad outsiders. But I digress…
I was getting over a broken heart by playing the world at its game: I was on a mission to break someone else’s heart. Then I saw him.
He was standing in a shadowy corner, and scanning the dancefloor. I didn’t have my glasses on (there weren’t many spectacle-wearing gay role models; this was before they discovered that Clark Kent was a big ‘mo), so I shuffled a little closer.
And squinted. He looked OK. He was young. He was dancing. And most importantly – he was alone…
Â
to be continued…