BETTER NOW THAN NEVER
After he was caught kissing another Catholic schoolboy in the calcified 1950s, Stephen Wall shut his homosexuality away forever. Or so he thought.
I only came out a few years ago, in my early sixties. I was brought up as a strict Roman Catholic in the Britain of the 1950s so when, at the age of ten, I was caught kissing and being fondled by another boy at my Catholic boarding school, this was treated as a serious moral lapse and a grave sin. I was made, under threat of being caned, to name the other “sinners”. I became the school pariah. It was the unhappiest time of my life.
As a result, I shut down on anything to do with sex. When, in my late teens, I knew for sure that I was sexually attracted to other guys and not girls, I tried to convince myself that it was at best a phase and at worst something illegal (which it was in Britain), immoral and unacceptable that I had to fight at all costs.
After university, I joined the British Civil Service where to be gay was a bar to employment because of the perceived risk of blackmail. So, for several years, until my late twenties, I lived a repressed, celibate existence. Then, I married someone I loved. But the overriding attraction to men was always there and marital fidelity was a huge struggle.
You would think that as you get older it would become easier but as I approached my sixties, I found my frustration grew ever stronger. Not just because of my sexual attraction to other men, but because I felt that being gay was such an important part of who I am that I did not want to go on concealing it.
In the end, the problem was solved for me. My wife found copies of a gay magazine (not DNA, I am sorry to say). As one of my friends said later, “You could have claimed that they belonged to the gardener, but you don’t have a garden.” I told my wife that I had known all my adult life that I was gay. We decided to try to stay together as best friends, though not as lovers. She, generously, gave me the space at last to explore my sexuality. I finally felt that I was being the person I was always meant to be.
Happy endings? Not quite. Only about five percent of marriages where the husband comes out as gay survive beyond three years. We have done four but have concluded that, for both of us, the strain is too much. For me, because of the constraints of being out as a gay man and yet still married and, for my wife, the sense
“For most DNA readers, my story will, I hope, be a historical irrelevance: a world of intolerance, fear and guilt that has been left behind.”
of hurt and humiliation which has become worse over time. So, for both of us it will mean starting over again in our sixties.
Regrets? Yes, for the hurt I caused. Regrets at coming out? No. For the first time in my life I am happy in my skin. Coming out has been hard but not once have I regretted it. At no moment since I came out have I wished that I was not gay.
For most DNA readers, my story will, I hope, be a historical irrelevance: a world of intolerance, fear and guilt that has been left behind. But even in Britain there are still cultures where my experience is replicated among young gay men who dare not come out for fear of bringing shame on their families and disgrace on themselves. The gay revolution from which I have benefitted has a long road still to run.