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

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.