Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
I knew I wasn’t a paedophile but, according to the nuns and priests that oversaw my education from the age of five, who asserted that the feelings I was experiencing from around the age of thirteen, I was. It took more than seven thousand often torturous days to accept that, whilst I definitely wasn’t the kind of person to go around exploiting children, I was undeniably attracted to men, much as I tried to deny it. The relief I felt when I eventually came out was conspicuous, but that’s for later.
I have no regrets about the twenty lost gay years, indeed it may well be the reason I’m still kicking and screaming, not scattered to the four corners of the world. It’s not so much that exploration opportunities weren’t there, or the fact that I’m not that adept at picking up those kinds of signals. Simply, thanks to my pious indoctrination, I didn’t want to go to hell. I accepted singledom was for me, I never wanted kids in any case, and settled into life.
During my 27th circumnavigation of the sun, I’d overstretched financially, so I pulled on my big boy pants and threw life in the air, no idea of where things would land. I sold the flat that was bankrupting me and headed off for a life-affirming summer as a counsellor on an American summer camp in the Berkshire mountains, planning on returning home to the treadmill when that finished. Well, that was the plan. Life, fate or whatever had other ideas.
The following February, I bluffed my way into two-weeks working, for little more than board, lodging and a ski pass, as a ski counsellor on a winter camp in the Swiss mountains. When I applied, I knew I wasn’t the most proficient skier, I’d only had three weeks of lessons but, after the previous summer, confidence was high on the working with the kids bit. Thankfully there was a worse skier than me, otherwise I might not have affirmed my latest calling, revealed months earlier.
From there I wound up working for a company that organised young people’s education and recreation programmes in several European countries. By 1994 I was running ski camps for a couple of weeks in the winter, directing a summer day camp in The Hague and guiding outdoor education programmes and cultural tours, in spring and autumn, with school groups in Switzerland, Austria and The Netherlands.
Outside of that, I worked alongside one of the company owners who, for reasons I came to appreciate when I met his business partner, decided to work remotely in the Swiss PreAlpes, in a village overlooking the Rhone Valley to the left and the dents-du-midi, the mountain peaks rising above Lake Geneva featured on Evian bottles, to the right. Undoubtedly the best commute of my life!
As time trundled on, I started exploring this attraction toward other men, still in total denial of the fact that it was the male form that had me drooling, scared as I was of the ramifications. If I had stayed close to my hometown, I’d have been within easy distance of London and its then admittedly small but growing network of support. I would probably have found the assistance to get me to the other side of my conditioning. Still, no regrets.
One summer I discovered the gay section of a bookshop in The Hague and found ‘A Place at the Table’, the book’s author highlighting similarities between homo and heterosexuals, advocating to move the debate away from what often appeared to be a fixation on what happens between consenting adults behind closed doors. The lightbulb had gone off but, given I was living in a village with an indigenous population of less than 3,000 off season, the pool was somewhat limited.
In those pre-internet days, I managed to arrange a date with a guy who lived in the valley. A meal on the shores of Lake Geneva that was torturous, saw me give up trying, and facing a rather expensive taxi ride back up the mountain. I put my personal exploration on the back burner until a better strategy appeared. Apparently, I did test the waters by telling a friend I was gay, as he reminded me when I finally came out to myself, and him a second time it turns out, but have no memory of that.
Apparently, In the summer of 1994, I inadvertently outed myself by jumping on a homophobic joke one of my co-workers made, although I have no memory of doing that either. Word got round, and others questioned likewise. Still in denial I batted their enquiries off, explaining that I don’t appreciate jokes that belittle other people. Gay, Irish, black, women, we’re all human, I just don’t find those jokes funny. Still don’t.
Christmas evening that year and, at the end of a day of festivities with all the staff who were not working gathered for a few days, I ended up chatting with Scott, my assistant from the previous summer. He’d come highly recommended along with Eddie, as part of a duo of ex-graduates from the school that was my day camp home. They made quite the pair. I worked closely with Scott over the summer, he managed to keep the whole operation, and me, on track!
That winter season Scott was working the in the kitchen of the chalet where we’d gathered for the festive celebrations and, as I discovered over the summer, he was easy company. Not to mention cute! As the others slowly made their way to bed, we chatted into the small hours. All but one part of that conversation has dimmed to history, the question I had fended off over the summer, the first time he asked.
Still not quite ready to reveal that reprehensible part of me, I once again put the matter to bed, changed the subject and the night ended. Hindsight suggests fishing was occurring, not for the first time in my closeted cocoon!
The spring snow saw him bring Eddie to ski in my village, staying in my studio a short walk from the mountain base station. The fresh spring snow made for a great, somewhat exhausting Saturday on the slopes. In a rare move, Eddie ducked a night out, saving himself for more skiing the following day. After dinner the last two standing headed out for the night. Although we were walking on the road, under a canopy of stars whose usual brilliance was dimmed by a full moon illuminating the valley, it’s only recently struck me how romantic that hike up the mountain was. However, I just wanted alcohol! Passing the company’s chalet, my first residence in town, empty now the season had finished. We took a flight of steps carved into the mountain to the similarly excavated club in the basement of a hostel.
Before I had the chance to think about taking my coat off the manager, a friend, approached. He’d been let down by his DJ and asked, knowing I’d been deejaying at a local radio station, if I could man the decks for the evening, offering free booze all night if I did. I introduced Scott, got him included in the deal, and we spent the evening entrenched in the booth, him picking the music, me playing it and us shooting the breeze.
I did think it odd that people approaching the booth weren’t met with his usual charm, he seemingly snarled at them, but dismissed it. Little did I know! We spoke about anything and everything, something that was a feature of our friendship, short as that was. The night soon came to an end. At least at the club.
Descending home took little time and, as we approached the door, we decided on one for the road. However, with Eddie sleeping inside and it being an open plan studio, there was nowhere to sit and talk but outside. I quietly grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, and we settled into one of our many, epic, conversations that went around the world and back, lounging under the eaves of the house in the cool night air.
Eventually he asked that question and, once again I thought I’d successfully batted it away. I went to get a couple more beers. As I was opening them before returning to the deck, he asked a third time. ‘Are you gay?’. I turned and his jeans were around his ankles, our eyes met, and we started making out under the stars. Now, if only Eddie wasn’t asleep in the apartment, dammit.
We made our way, post haste, back to the company’s chalet we’d passed earlier. No groups were in and, given the hour, anybody staying there should’ve been asleep. I don’t remember the conversation, my brain was scrambling, debating the relative demerits of joining what I had been conditioned to believe was the dark side, versus the tunnel of overhanging trees, illuminated by streetlights. A sign, if there ever was one! We followed the light. The indoctrinated shards of my life reassembled during an encounter that could best be described as catastrophic, the result of a life of terrified inaction to date. As bad as it was, I walked onto the balcony before getting dressed, and stood in wonderment under the moonlit, cloudless sky. I waited to be carted off to the depths of hell and, when that didn’t happen, the penny finally dropped.
The following day I felt a lightness of being not experienced since childhood. I all but skipped to the office where I was accosted by Sam, my assistant, on entry. She pronounced something different about me that morning. She wasn’t wrong, I’d noticed it in the bathroom mirror earlier. A huge weight had been lifted, I felt renewed, and it showed. I wanted to share the news, but not in the office. We went to lunch and her observation was the same as many of my family and friends’ words since, ‘I wondered when you’d accept it’.
As much as I loved living in the mountains, the time had come to leave. I had achieved everything I could with that company, My future was settling onto another life treadmill, and I’d got away from one of those years earlier. The only challenge appeared to be ever declining budgets for programmes. I was at the same intersection a decade or so on. The time had come to cut and run.
As I boarded the train on my final day, I reflected on my years living in a mountain paradise. I was going to miss this place, some of the people, not so much. Reflecting on the success I had made of the Netherlands day camp, not to mention the other programmes I ran to glowing reviews I had received over the years, I smiled.
To those that said the reason I left what, on the face of it, was perfect employment, was because I thought my newly accepted sexuality made me unsuitable to work with children, I point you to the two years spent as Outdoor Education Director on return to my American summer camp, the recompense of which paid my mortgage, and other programmes since. I was delighted to leave your backstabbing circle behind.
I left because, when I looked forward, I could see doing nothing but what I had been doing for the past four years. I’d achieved a life goal, running my own summer camp, and much more. The time had come, once again, to throw life up in the air and see where it took me, and what an adventure that has been, so far.
Whilst I was sad to leave my Swiss family as I departed, I looked forward to the big gay adventure awaiting when I returned home, and what an escapade the past thirty years have been. I often wonder if some of the things that happened were influenced by coming out on April Fool’s Day.
Some pictures to follow soon...