Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (34 page)

To help these young men out, John and his housemate invited the soldiers to use their house as a refuge in their plight and in doing so, for a number of years, helped what became a growing number of Household Cavalrymen cope with having to live in an environment where they could all be criminalised simply for being themselves. I allowed myself to imagine how relieved those men must have felt enjoying the privacy of a house like that, just a few hundred metres away from where I’m writing this very chapter right now, which gave them all the space to be free. The house still stands; I walked my dogs past it recently and wondered if the current occupants knew about its secret history. If ever a property deserved a blue plaque, that one certainly does; and as for John and his unnamed friend, I find it incredible that this paragraph is probably the only recognition the pair have ever had for providing the facility for fellow humans to enjoy their lives without fear. John and his friend are heroic and I’m grateful for the letter that found its way to me that autumn morning last year.

Towards the end of the year, an ominous email landed in my inbox from somebody at the City of London Corporation, inviting me to accept a very special award. There were no further details, so I called the number provided and was incredibly surprised to hear the words ‘Freedom on the City of London’ down the line. My response: ‘… What is it?’

Of course, I knew it was important and I was honoured to
have been thought of in such a way. They wrote to me formally, and very shyly, I accepted the invitation. I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody, which was tough, and the whole thing disappeared for what seemed like forever. Finally, everything was confirmed and, in early February 2014, the Corporation of the City of London made me a Freeman, for which a grand lunch and family gathering was held. The corporation awarded it in recognition of my services to the LGBT community, and the parchment certificate takes pride of place in the centre of my mantelpiece. I’m forever telling people that Nelson Mandela was awarded the same certificate. It was truly wonderful and, again, I’m not sure how I can ever repay or thank the countless kind people who make these gestures. This is the kid who grew up on a council estate in Wrexham.

Amid the excitement of becoming a Freeman and the prospect of herding sheep over London Bridge, 2014 seemed to be going smoothly. Occasionally I found myself contributing to a documentary or a news broadcast, mostly to do with same-sex marriage, which was then being legalised. My mum and I even featured on
The One Show
on BBC1, which was just about the most exciting thing that ever happened in my mother’s house, a film crew and studio being assembled in her living room. I’d obviously gained a little bit of a reputation post-
Out in the Army
off the back of my few TV interviews over the launch period, and people trusted me to talk sense on camera. The slight elevation of my opinion also led to me being invited to write one or two columns for the
Times
newspaper and, excitingly for me, a regular article for
Winq
magazine, a publication which was well established in Europe and was to be launched in the British gay market in the coming months. I accepted the offer, agreed the terms and pondered what my first feature was going to be about. Then came Saunagate – a month I could happily forget!

My first column in
Winq
was based on my feelings that gay saunas should be consigned to the history books: I argued they were no longer relevant and were actually counterproductive to massive gains in equality for the LGBT community. I went further and suggested they gave homophobes an excuse to be homophobic. My article was picked up by a national newspaper and was generally received like a cup of hot sick. The gay community overwhelmingly hated it. I caused quite a stir and went from hero to zero in a matter of minutes. I wasn’t at all prepared for the reaction.

The first thing I want to mention about this episode is that I feel we all have an inherent right to express our opinions, even if those opinions are unpopular. What’s really key about opinions, though, and most of this book talks about this, is the fact that we can all change them, for a million different reasons, and it’s very OK to do so. Take my nan: she changed her entire thought process on sexuality over the course of a few years, and I love her for that. I realise today that I perhaps wasn’t the best-placed individual to comment on the relevance of saunas when I wrote that article in
Winq
magazine, and for a number of reasons, some of which I am ready to talk about, most of which I’m not, I’m absolutely not ashamed to admit that I now consider my outlook on the matter was wrong.

My original argument was based on feelings I have held for a number of years. The root of those feelings lay entirely in an experience of mine from back in my late teens, not so long after coming out and going a little off the rails. I met a guy in a Soho bar and, for a few reasons, neither of us could host the other in our respective homes: my roommate was very much tucked up in bed back at the barracks; the guy I had picked up lived way out of town and wasn’t yet out to his folks. Struggling for an option, he suggested going to a sauna and he explained to me
that at such a place we could get some privacy and ‘get down to business’ as it were. I, of course, thought it was a great idea and the two of us hurried on down to a place in Waterloo, just a short walk from the bridge. Once there, we did indeed find somewhere which seemed private and the two of us were getting on just fine. In the midst of all the romance – picking up a stranger can be romantic, if only for a few minutes – I became aware of a small number of other men standing in the doorway to the little cabin we had made our base; these men were watching us get it on. I’m not entirely sure why, but in my drunken state I didn’t stop what I was doing and effectively, the two of us put on a bit of a show.

Due to the lack of protest from either of us, one of the men went a stage further and entered our small cabin, and without invitation he began touching both of us. I know all control of the situation had been lost because neither of us stopped him. And once it appeared OK for him to join in, soon enough all the guys at the door entered in and the whole thing became a little messy.

The following day I was horrified by the activities of the night before. Admittedly, I had been living life to the extreme in the weeks leading up to that night, but I’d never been involved in anything like that. I’m not making any accusations – indeed, I fully let it all happen – I just regretted it completely, almost immediately. This silly choice of mine when I was eighteen has always informed my opinion of gay saunas.

By the time I expressed that opinion in my
Winq
column, I had been civilly partnered to Thom for over four years. Our daily life together involved eating nice food, watching reality TV, walking our dogs in the park and, most evenings, sharing a bottle of red wine. In our somewhat secluded life in the countryside, I’d lost sight, and forgotten to an extent what singledom can be like for many people, and what liberal opportunities city life can offer. Basically, I’ve come to realise that my idea of a normal life for a
gay man in his late twenties was a whole world away from what other gay men might consider normal. Towards the end of the summer in 2014, my life, the norm I’d been living day to day and had become accustomed to, changed. I became single.

After the whole sauna debacle, Thom and I took a week out of our lives and flew away to sunnier climes. It was a much-needed chill-out, lounging around on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and it really did a lot of good. The sad fact about our perfect holiday together in the month of May 2014 is that it was the last few days in which the two of us felt comfortable in each other’s company. Upon our return, for a number of reasons, Thom and I fell out of love.

It is impossible to pinpoint any one event or lay blame with either party for the ending of our relationship. If I’m honest, I’d noticed a change in the two of us months before and we even held a discussion once or twice about where things were going wrong. After a row, we would ignore each other for a day or two, exchange some unfair remarks and generally try to make the other as upset as possible, but we always promised never to do or say those things again … and then a week later we’d do it all over again.

Having had so much attention paid to our civil partnership, having featured together on an
Attitude
front cover promoting gay marriage, and having received constant messages of support on Twitter and Facebook, choosing to do the right thing for the sake of both our happiness was the most difficult decision we have ever had to take. In the dying weeks of our relationship, we both felt trapped because ours had been such a publicly celebrated union. In the end, it made what was already a difficult time just about as suffocating a situation as one could ever imagine.

Three weeks after my break-up with Thom, I was moping
around feeling unhappy with just about everything in my life. I was in the phase of hoping everything could be fixed and all the unhappiness we both felt could be put away; happier times could prevail, surely? But the fact was, the damage between us both was well and truly done. There was nothing in the world either of us could do and I just had to accept that my life would be different. The safety net that was Thom, which had been there in the months after leaving the army, was gone. But I just couldn’t let go; I just couldn’t shift the feeling of utter dread in every joint of my body. I needed to do something; I needed an activity to help me close the door, to finish the chapter. And I found that thing, that answer, that ending of the story of Thom, in Berlin over the course of a long weekend in August.

I decided to travel to Berlin at about midnight one Thursday and I found myself boarding a plane at Heathrow the following day. I had a handful of clothes, some hurried-together toiletries and an American Express card. What else did I need? As the plane took off, I promised myself that Thom would not feature in my thoughts at all during my weekend away and, with some military discipline, I forced that rule into effect. I had no idea what was in store, who I would meet or whether or not the whole thing would work. I do know, however, that it worried the hell out of my mum, who thought I was completely insane. I put her through a few days of worry while I was away.

I got there and checked into the apartment I had arranged to rent: a nice property based in the middle of Schöneberg, perfectly located just above a gay bookshop, in which I picked up a travel guide to help me navigate around this new city. At the till, I was met by a nice man and, just over his shoulder, a few copies of this book were neatly lined up. A somewhat strange feeling… I signed the books and the nice man gave me the travel guide for free.

According to my guidebook, I was smack bang in the middle of gay Berlin and I was able to work out my bearings using the map and the bars I could see on every street corner. I felt this amazing feeling of belonging, despite the fact I was in a country I’d never visited and completely alone; the people were nice.

The following seventy-two hours were exhilarating. I found myself in environments that were the polar opposite to the life I had lived through my twenties. I made friends; I got so unbelievably drunk I took my shirt off and danced around a club semi-naked to Kylie Minogue without a care in the world; and I learned that my own company was actually very good company. For the first time in weeks I had a smile on my face. Berlin had certainly worked in cheering me up and taking my mind off things. I found out a lot about myself.

In the middle of all the madness Berlin has on offer, I understood that I’d been wrong to judge people for choices they’d made as adults. I found that Berlin offered everything you could ever imagine in its gay nightlife (nightlife isn’t the appropriate word: I visited one club that didn’t close – ever), but it offered it all with an understanding that you had to treat all these opportunities with respect. I found I could do anything I wanted, and with it, I had to understand that everything was my own choice. At the age of twenty-seven, I feel confident that I’m at a point in my own personal development to make those informed decisions – something the eighteen-year-old me was not. That was the moment I regretted my position on gay saunas. I’m now of the belief that actually, if it’s legal, grown-ups should be left to make their own choices. That includes whether or not to partake in anonymous sex in a gay sauna.

Something else happened to me in Berlin, something I wasn’t expecting: I made a friend who, in a matter of minutes, managed to bring to a full conclusion everything that had happened in the
previous four or so months. He was a beautiful Frenchman called Sebastien, and he was visiting Berlin like me, alone.

We met in a nightclub in which fifty shades of everything was happening all around us and we danced together for hours. I really like the fact that we met each other in this setting and I’m pleased to say that I have been to Paris to visit him and he has travelled to London to stay with me. I found a really pleasant guy who is becoming a very good friend and he’s been very much to do with my moving forwards in life. I’m thankful. Two weeks after Berlin, I moved out of the house I shared with Thom in Windsor into a new place in Camden; I still find it incredible how different my life is today. The change has happened in a relatively short time, but I’ve found this real sense of happiness with where I am in life. This wasn’t the plan, but actually … what was the plan anyway?

When I think about the four and a half years Thom and I were married, and everything else that happened between us before that, I disregard the final few pages of our story together. I’ve got great memories of my time with him and I will always miss the closeness we once shared. There isn’t a person in the world who knows me like he does and I hope he feels the same. I just wish the rush of love and happiness we felt for 99 per cent of our time together could have won through, but that tiny bit at the end, the things we both did and the damage that was inflicted on our lives together, was just too overpowering. I will miss him and I wish him well with his life.