The Beginning -

Now you could be asking yourself, what does a 30-year-old have to say about life that can’t be said in a single tweet or Facebook post? Or maybe you are 20 years old and asking yourself how someone that old could possibly only have one book worth of interesting stuff in them, and God you hope that you are never that boring by the time you are that old. Well the answer is: if you asked yourself either question then you are a basic bitch and totally wrong. 30 is the perfect age to start a biography, old enough to have seen a bit and done a bit, young enough to still remember it, and with projected life expectancy the perfect starting point for any epic trilogy.

So, without further ado, here is my story thus far, mostly ordinary, sometimes extraordinary. Where’s yours?

While this is a biography based on true stories, no man is an island (unless he is a fabulous gay man and the island in question is Barbados in the 70s or Ibiza in the 90s). So, the stories I am going to tell are probably less about me, than the people I have been lucky enough and at times unlucky enough to meet. They are not famous (and if they are, they have been anonymised because I’m aiming for serious but relatable author situation, not gossip rag ‘journalist’) but the lessons I have learned and the laughs I have had, while being ordinary, are the stories we all have inside of us #SuchAnEveryMan.

I grew up in a pretty typical middle-class family in Cherrybrook. Two parents, Two kids’ yada yada. For those of you who are not familiar with the demographic specifics of an outer Sydney suburb you have probably never visited or heard of, your lack of general knowledge is appalling and you need to put away your phones and go back to school, you are grossly unprepared for life and are probably a Millennial or whatever generation is currently being blamed for all the problems of the world while you read my book. To save you the seconds it would take to google Cherrybrook, it’s the bible belt of Sydney and the spiritual home of Hillsong. In Australia the bible belt is middle class, and fond of tithing 10% of their income to a re-branded version of Christianity that is an ad man’s re-imagining of what it would look like if you crossed evangelical with rock, while keeping the conservative moralising and mistakenly believing the addition of an electric guitar to your choir band made you cool. Thus, Cherrybrook is a place of conservative ideology hidden behind a veneer of modernity, where you won’t find socks with sandals on people’s feet, but you might find them on their souls. Back to me, I have one older sister and a loving mother and father, who I love with all my heart and socks and sandals hating soul. I left Cherrybrook when I was 24, I now live in Dee Why, a suburb on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Because I am a thoughtful guy, and I’m thinking of your mobile data limits, I will again save you the google search.

The Northern Beaches is an outer suburb of Sydney and it’s a beautiful place. Home to Narrabeen Beach (a famous surf beach), Manly (the backpacker mecca of Australia), the Sea Eagles football team (possibly the biggest salary cap cheats in Australian football but they are mostly hot and sexually degenerate so it’s ok) obviously I don’t live in one of the nicer suburbs, I live in Dee Why. Dee Why is where the poor people live, recent immigrants, gay men who spend more than they should so need to live with flatmates etc I live with a dear friend (If you don’t get the joke then you need to Google Joe Lycett data limits be damned) called Zenas who will henceforth be called Charles Waterstreet (if you know your ancient Greek and your Australian tabloid gossip then you will know name change is apt). I have known Charles for 10 years; we have a roommate from Newcastle (The poor Northern cousin of the Northern Beaches) who won’t get a name because third wheel room fillers never do. My sister lives in Newport, which if you have been paying attention is a nicer suburb. My parents will soon be moving to Narrabeen, so their days will soon also be filled with semi-dressed fit men and we will have more to talk about.

You could say I am a very emotional, semi grounded person. You probably would leave off the semi-grounded person bit if asked to give an opinion of me after you met me but you haven’t been asked and I am the one writing this so it’s going on the record as emotional but grounded. I at times get overwhelmed and can lack control (remember its semi-grounded people not feet of clay). Being gay in the Bible belt doesn’t give you a lot of healthy outlets for your feelings. These days I deal with emotionally intense stuff in healthier ways, such as borderline alcoholism. Thank you, Frank Sinatra. When you are young and everything you feel seems heightened and unfixable, you blame the world and the people in it for your problems. I am now old enough and wise enough to know the answers are there and the solutions are in me. Growing up in the Bible belt in the 80s and 90s, being gay was probably my biggest demon. My father worked in IT so unlike most kids of that generation I had pretty constant access to the internet. Through Yahoo chat I slowly learned that there was a name for what I was and what I was feeling. I learned what gay was, and that there were other people like me out there, but they were apparently not in Cherrybrook so while I felt connected, I also felt very alone.

Meredith was my first gay friend, and pretty much showed me the non-sexual ins and out of being a closeted gay man in bible belt country. Meredith and I worked at the cinema, I know, total drama/theatre/actors and the gays cliché. By the time I started working with Meredith I was semi-out. I was out to my friends, but still absolutely terrified that my family would disown me if they knew. Growing into your sexuality when the message around you is that you are sinful is hard. Being a teenager is hard enough without the added ‘who you love and who you are makes you bad’ message. Over time I have learned not to need everyone’s approval, and that who I am is ok, but it took hating myself to get to that place.