18 Apr 2009
Intercity Epiphany
Recently
on a train journey home to Galway, I was reading a magazine in my
usual lazy nonchalant fashion that I seem to adopt automatically on
public transport. For some reason, I seemed to attract the glances of
an elderly fellow traveller for more than a few seconds – you know,
in that kind of “you've got something on your face” way that
granny's occasionally get. I looked away and delved into the intense
ten seconds of paranoid self analysis that usually follows such
awkwardness for me. I made some random guesses as to what it might
be. I believe my initial theories ranged from body oudor to garlic in
my teeth. The last of my guesses was the fact that I was sporting a
copy of GCN. All of a sudden I was reminded of a time when this would
have been the first thing to come to mind.
I
remember vividly my first contact with this magazine. I was a
confused teen in search of information and I obtained it as
secretively as humanly possible in an independent second hand book
shop. I was acutely self concious in acquiring it and threw it
quickly into my backpack. When I got home, I devoured it. It was like
some kind of odd social porn. It seemed to be an access point to
another universe. It's strange to think of it now but this may have
been an indispensable segway in what was eventually to be my coming
out.
And
so for what it's worth this entry is dedicated to the closet cases
out there as way of a possible atonement. The above reflection
brought me back to a time over three quarters of a decade ago, when
even the word gay was laced with menace and self doubt. Every now and
then we all come across people whom we can be ninety per cent sure,
share our sexual orientation but they have yet to come to terms with
it themselves. We may often snidely make dated Family Guy references
(Tom, you are so far back in the closet you're finding Christmas
presents!) or the like either to ourselves or behind the person in
question's back. The fact of the matter is, the process of coming
out, or for that matter being honest with ones self in many regards
can be tough. Whether it happens in your teens or it takes you till
your late forties a lot of self realisations can be tough to make.