These include free-thinking and sexually expressive straight women, who cherish their gay friends as people around whom they won’t be judged. And, this Pride month, I want to celebrate that.įirst of all, I have more friends than I could ever have imagined. Growing up in working class Bolton in the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, I just wanted to take a pill and wake up straight.īut now I can see that so much of what I love about my life is a result of my sexuality. When the bullies at school would beat me up and call me “queer”, I wanted nothing more than to be “normal”. As a gay man, I feel far less restricted by the expectation that men should behave in a certain way (Getty Images)īeing gay is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I never thought I’d say that.
