I’m no good at being gay, but I’m still trying

I’m no good at being gay. Now, before you scold me – quite sensibly – along the lines of ‘‘Phil, being gay is not something at which one can be good or otherwise – it is merely something one is!’’, bear with me while I explain.

Like all gay men, I have a coming-out story. But mine takes an unfamiliar, decidedly non-heroic, turn. After telling my then-wife, along with family and friends, that I am indeed a gay man, I shuffled straight from the closet to the nearest (straight) pub – well, not strictly the nearest, since I ran away to Melbourne on the grounds that the anonymity of a new city might make it easier to drink myself to death. You see, at the time (I was 27), I felt with certainty that, despite my ultimately unavoidable same-sex attraction, I was ill-equipped to prosper as a homosexual.

In fact, I had spent my life until that point as a fairly vituperative homophobe, all the while striving to build as heteronormative a life for myself as possible. I dated girls, yelled at rugby, mastered the intricacies of the LBW rule, and drank beer and only beer like a real man. Deep down, feelings towards guys simmered, and once in a while rose to the surface, but I was masterful at batting them away.

As a teenager, I remember as if it were yesterday the shame-soaked butterflies that took hold in my stomach just by glancing at the LGBT section at Wellington’s Unity Books. As a student at Vic Uni, I would have no more entered a queer space than taken up astrophysics. I never dared act on my feelings. A double life seemed so fraught with fear and shame I couldn’t imagine pulling it off.

It was only when we got the internet at home that my inner demons, fuelled by a dozen or so cans of DB Export Gold, found a late-night outlet in the form of rudimentary chat rooms where other closet cases congregated. Soon after – weeks, not months – I became resigned to the appalling truth about myself. I was gay – but I didn’t have to like it.

Even opting for Melbourne was bound up in my deep-set internalised homophobia. I knew I wanted to bolt to Australia as soon as possible, but I rejected Sydney as an option purely because it seemed such a cliche´ d destination for a recently out man. Melbourne seemed less gay, and that sealed my choice. How perverse it all seems now.

In Melbourne, I drank copiously in corner pubs and dabbled in political and public relations jobs to more or less cover the tab. This was between 1998 and 2006, during what I’ve come to call my Amber Period.

After sobering up, I briefly transferred my compulsion from booze to physical fitness, attacking the gym with the monomaniacal ferocity only a recovering addict can muster.

I shed heaps of weight, grew a fleeting six-pack, even becoming something of a clothes horse. This I call my Kate Moss Period. Still, I failed to make many gay friends, kept the ‘‘gay thing’’ at arm’s length; stayed marooned without any sense of belonging.

New York, where I moved to in 2010, offered another chance to fully inhabit my gay identity. And for once, I gave it a red hot go. Battling depression, I sought out a gay therapist who spotted my self-loathing from five city blocks away.

As treatment, she suggested I do something proactively each week to engage with the gay community. I went on a gay-themed walking tour of Central Park one Saturday morning; attended screenings at queer film festivals; joined a gay men’s therapy group; dragged myself to LGBT-only AA meetings.

I spent more and more time in New York’s gay Mecca, the West Village, as if osmosis might do the trick. I even booked a holiday in Madrid to coincide with its Pride celebrations, where my now-depleted abs might have come in handy.

So I slowly got better at being gay, but I’m still pretty bad at it. Despite a liberal upbringing, I had somehow imbibed a perniciously negative view about homosexuality that I struggle to shake. Maybe it was society’s fault – the Aids panic, and the absence of role models outside of Mr Humphries on Are You Being Served? certainly didn’t help.

But I haven’t entirely given up. I volunteered at Wellington’s Pride March last year, and hope to again. Since coming home, I’ve forged a handful of friendships with fellow gays, something that had eluded me to date.

All is not lost. Indeed, who knows? Perhaps my long-sought Rainbow Period lies ahead.

Despite a liberal upbringing, I had somehow imbibed a perniciously negative view about homosexuality.