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Darren Hayes: ‘Come out. In your own time.’
Posted On 13 Mar 2014 11:58 By : Nick Levine Tags: coming out, contributors, Darren Hayes
As a gay man I’ve come to accept that you never really stop coming out. As someone in the public eye the question of my sexuality is matter of fact. It’s Google-able. But it wasn’t always that way.
I’m a strange kind of public person: famous for some songs or performances but largely not a celebrity. My level of recognition varies wildly depending on the context. There are many moments when I’m buying flowers or sitting next to a stranger on a plane who has no idea what I do for a living and I have the opportunity to clarify who I am just like anybody does. It begins with answering and asking questions.
“Where are you from?” “What do you do for a living?” and so on.
If you chat for long enough invariably the conversation will launch a polite investigation about significant others. Now, while the public ‘me’ is very much ‘out’ – the stranger sitting next to a stranger on a plane is not yet. I’m very much aware in that moment, it’s still a choice to reveal or not. If it makes sense organically I obviously choose to clarify who I am but I’m often struck by the fact that I have to.
It’s been my experience that revealing your sexuality is a bit like peeling back an onion skin; there are layers of intimacy to get through. Also, not everyone likes onions! Hell, for a while even I didn’t. Perhaps a more apt comparison is the way we group our friends together on Facebook. Each of us has a circle of friends and family we invite in to the inner circle of our private lives and the level of intimacy decreases as we move outward through those concentric circles and on to ‘acquaintance’. It can be a conundrum. How much do you share? Not just about sexuality, but all of it really. Political opinions, position on religion or your review of that recent film. It’s a delicate minefield if you don’t know your audience.
Here in America, where I’m largely anonymous, I’m often in a position where I have to ‘come out’ in regards to my pop career. Recently I’ve been attending acting classes where the first day is always some form of ‘getting to know you’ game – which can be awkward for me simply because of my career. Most of the kids in class were too young to remember it – or if they do they look at me with a sort of dewy-eyed nostalgia and refer to my pop career as though it died. Bless. Yes I see the humour in it. But I also see how our revealing our back-story, whatever it is, is still a choice.
Some of my new friends in America have come out to me as being quite conservative. Some are Christian. I myself am not. Recently I had to do my very best not to get angry when a well-meaning classmate cried for me because she didn’t ‘want me to go to hell’ when I told her I was in fact married to a man. I didn’t judge her. I got it. I mean, honestly I was probably the first gay person in her circle of friends and I had an opportunity to get angry or educate her. I could have remained anonymous about many aspects of my life – but I chose to go into that class and reveal my whole self – bad 90’s haircuts, Civil Partnerships and all.
Yet living your life with that bold confidence is not something all of us can instantly embrace. It takes time. It took me a long time.
Although in 2014 most of my gay friends are out and proud I do still have some friends who, for whatever reason, have not yet or do not feel comfortable enough to be out in their work place.
One friend who works in the corporate world is surrounded by colleagues who never ask about his private life. To them he’s either a single man in his late forties who never mentions a wife or girlfriend, or he’s gay. But it is never mentioned. The reality is he’s deeply in love and in a committed long-term relationship with his male partner of a decade. Yet in the culture of his industry, this is still something that is just not spoken about.
I feel sad his industry wants him to keep up a façade. Yet I also see from his point of view there is a wall of old thinking he is up against and this makes it hard if not impossible for him to be completely himself at work.
I had a Twitter follower share with me their awful experience of being harassed online for being gay. In a naïve chain of events, this handsome lad had posted a shirtless picture of himself that attracted the attention of some severe homophobic abuse that necessitated police involvement. Because of the severity of the incident the experience resulted in him having to file a police report and in turn, confront immediate family and co-workers about his sexuality. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It was awkward and sobering and I presume because he was suddenly and without warning thrown in to a situation where he had to reveal himself to even the most casual acquaintance.
Up to that point he was someone who didn’t think he held any sense of shame about who he was, but the scenario and circumstances of his coming out made him have to put it all into context in a lightning speed. Suddenly he went from being ‘out’ to just a close circle of friends to letting all of his co-workers and some relatives know who he was. The sheer act of filing a police report meant committing in writing on a legal document that he was gay. No big deal but then a massive deal at the same time. This seemingly innocuous act had a profound gravity.
For every generation it becomes easier to come out, but nothing can really take away from the fact that it’s a deeply personal journey and one that doesn’t exists in a linear format. In some ways, coming out is the easy part. It’s the day after and through the rest of your life that you realise there’s still an ongoing process – even if it’s just navigating around other people’s reactions.
My coming out was a torturous affair. I was married to a woman when I was 23 and I’m proud to say to this day she is still one of my best friends. I was madly in love with her at the time but I was deeply confused. People would assume that I was gay and I would reply with genuine offence pointing to my wedding ring, stating that I was indeed not! Truthfully I had no idea. My own self-hatred was so deeply ingrained in me that I managed to shelve my sexuality so expertly that it was a shameful secret even to me. It wasn’t until I became a musician and started travelling the world that I met other gay men who reminded me there was a place for me in this world. That’s when I had to go home to my wife and admit that something was up.
It was a very sad time for me. I had always been deeply monogamous but I couldn’t deny that in my twenties I had married too young, I hadn’t finished growing up and ultimately I was potentially going to ruin both of our lives if I didn’t own up to my true self and make some choices.
All of this coincided with the apex of my fame in Savage Garden and solo career.
There I was, a millionaire, with number one singles and the spotlight of fame, and in my private life I was still struggling to come to terms with who I was.
I left my wife, I ‘came out’ to my family and friends but I was not happy about it nor had I truly accepted it. But then I was in the public eye, where journalists were asking me to comment on my sexuality!
I guess there was an assumption I was hiding something when the truth was, I was still struggling. Many times during those ‘wilderness years’ I asked my wife to take me back and I contemplated having relationships with women because it seemed easier. Being an adult, wanting to have children and finding myself essentially a teenager trying to go on a first date was not very enticing. Not many rainbows or glitter cannons of joy for me back then.
My experience of being gay, newly single and in the public eye quickly turned to depression – a dark cruel prison space I occupied for much of the mid ’90s. I would venture out to gay bars or try to date, but I was a babe in the woods. I was like some overly romantic character from a Jane Austin novel trying to make my way through the gay scene. I know it’s controversial but can I just admit this now? I really don’t like going to clubs! I’ve never loved dance music. I realise this is only one fragment of the gay community but for me back then it was all I saw and the only way to meet someone.
I was not traditionally handsome and I did not have a great body so you can imagine how most of the time I felt like an outcast trying to fit into the one part of gay subculture I was exposed to but didn’t belong to. I’d come home from a night out with a bruised heart, then rock up to a press junket or a magazine interview and the journalist would ask: “So is there anybody special in your life?” Ha!
Thank goodness I had the enclave of foggy San Francisco with its wonderful queer culture and bizarre inclusiveness to understand there are billions of different types of gay men. I was the kind who liked
Star Wars, nerdy things and TV dinners.
I’m proud that I never lied about who I was – but I resented very much the expectation that I should not only know who I was, but that I should also make a public declaration about it. The truth is I was so depressed about it I often felt suicidal.
I’m lucky that, through a strong network of friends, family and professional help, I was able to work through my feelings and emotions and come out on my own terms the day I announced I married my husband Richard.
But it could have been a very different scenario.
I think it’s public knowledge I was very nearly outed by comedian Simon Amstell during an interview for now defunct TV show
Popworld and I have to say I’m so grateful that I wasn’t forced to come out that way.
That awkward portion of the interview was left on the cutting room floor and looking back I’m so glad because truthfully I don’t think I would have survived the aftermath at the time. In retrospect I don’t blame the host – he didn’t know the back-story to my life or the headspace I was in. But it was upsetting to say the least.
It’s terrifying when the decision to come out is taken from you. Imagine how a young person, going through the depression, anxiety and fear as I was back then, feels when they’re dragged out into the open to declare something about themselves they’re not even comfortable with yet. I don’t think I do want to imagine. I’m just glad I was given the grace period I needed.
Coming out is like any other journey in life – it’s a process.
I held back some pretty deeply-seeded thoughts of shame about my sexuality. It had nothing to do with fame, or my career – it took real love, and a stable relationship for me to heal those parts of myself that I was ashamed of. When I met my husband Richard, I felt strong enough to face up to any bully. I was so proud of our love I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. So I did. The fact that I was able to proudly come out, on my own terms and in my own time is why I feel so content and devoid of shame today. I was allowed to process all of it and stand up to the world and embrace who I was with dignity and a real understanding of my soul.
Just realising you like boys is one thing. Understanding the greater social context and preparing yourself for the journey beyond that revelation is, in my experience, the real coming out and it’s one we need to be sensitive about.
If you take my job out of the equation – what difference is there in my situation and, say, my friend who works in banking? For whatever reason, we must allow each other the time, grace and space to come to terms with who we are in our own time.
Yes we should support coming out. It’s wonderful, inspiring and aspirational. But it’s not always easy. Just Google my It Gets Better video to see how much I’ve changed since the days when I was spat on as a child or beaten up because I was gay. So much has changed and all of it within me.
I’m glad it’s 2014. There are ever-evolving steps in the right direction of equality and I’m glad we are more elastic in our understanding of human sexuality. No matter how many countries allow equal marriage, or how many television shows represent gay characters – independent of how our society moves forward in its view of human sexuality there is no shortcut for the individual on the road to acceptance.
Be proud. Be Out. But be patient. Everyone is on their own journey.
