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 RuPaul (AAPimages)
This is almost a fact of life amongst our tribe where, despite having to confront the very core of our identity at any age where most kids are just dealing with hair sprouting in strange places, most of the gay men I know still don't know who the hell they are.
Even in my mid-thirties, I still don't know who I am.
Sure, I know all about my own “drag” which involves a lot of polo-shirts, straight-cut jeans and a need to make people think nice things about me, but is that really who I am? Or is it the overweight, glasses-wearing geek who spends his days in front of a computer building websites? Is it the melancholic introvert who would rather watch Discovery Science than head out for drinks with friends? Or maybe it's the guy who looks lovingly into the eyes of his man every time he walks in the door? Is it all of these things?
Whilst coming out is about the scariest thing we ever do, surely the search for our own identity is right up there. Dealing with such a core issue as this when you're freshly out of the closet is probably the last thing any of us wanted to do.
Yet my therapist (very 80's of me, I know) would say that this is exactly what we should have done when we came out. That it's a watershed moment like this that gives us the chance to work out who we are and what we want.
Yet how many of us really did that? I hazard that most of us just fell straight into pretending to be nice to everyone, pretending to be interested in activism, pretending to use condoms and pretending to want to catch up for coffee tomorrow with a guy who we just want to be violated by in an alleyway on the way home from the club.
Hardly surprising when we hit a point where, after a few years of that, we're ready to come out all over again as something different... still gay, but now with a twist. The twist could be the end of your first major relationship, or it could just mean that it's time to strap on the harness and buy that first pair of leather chaps. Either way, it comes with a new set of goals we want to achieve, a whole new life we want to live. And often with a whole new identity that we want to put on.
In hindsight (beautiful thing that it is), I wish I had used my coming out period as more than just an opportunity to snog any guy that would have me. I could have used that time to address my real problems and perhaps prevent the 15 years of stupidity that followed.
But it's that 15 years of stupidity that makes my story worth telling. It's the mistakes, the fights, the stints in ex-gay ministries and the oh-so-bad-in-hindsight decisions that make me who I am today. And that may seem to feel like it's a hodge-podge of experiences and strapped-on identities, but isn't that the case with all of us? Aren't we essentially the sum of everything we have lived through, done and tried to be?
So maybe we are fated to pretend that we've got it all sorted, rather than admitting that every one of us is just as confused and scared and insecure as each other. Maybe this is the “drag” that we all put on when we head out and face the world.
Or maybe that's just my drag and the rest of you are all OK.
Which is fine, because if what I saw on Fashion TV last night is true, “freak” is the new chic anyway.
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