When I was asked to describe a specific moment in my life for the Tale of Men project, I immediately thought of my coming out, because it represents a turning point in my life.
From my childhood, I remember the many friends, the music, the activities; always in a group, always accompanied and yet so alone. A complex balance between joie de vivre and a shadow that follows me.
A strange feeling of being different.
My teenage years were marked by numerous parties where we got drunk, discovered ourselves, and questioned ourselves.
Those girls so beautiful but so frightening, those boys so different but so attractive. Who am I?
I don’t want to be different. The secret begins.
As an adult, couples form. Popular, I respond with humour, skilfully dodging questions about this strange loneliness.
I don’t want to be different. The secret grows.
Questions about sex make me uncomfortable. I am ignorant. Should I lie, invent a life for myself to be included in the group?
Loneliness weighs heavily on me, it will end badly. I find the courage to sign up for an app. I encounter a man’s body; his muscles, his hair, his smell, his power. There is no more avoiding it. In the privacy of a bedroom, I am finally myself. I want more, I want to discover everything. Sex, more and more sex, years of sex in the night. When daylight comes, I have to face up to it.
I don’t want to be different, the secret is suffocating me.
Among all these men, I will see one regularly, I will sleep with him, I will laugh with him, I will live with him, I will love him, I will suffocate him with my fear.
I want to be myself, the secret is no longer tenable.
A party just the way I like them. Friends, alcohol, dancing bodies. I find myself alone with a friend. She says to me, ‘I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me one.’ She’s setting a trap for me. But isn’t it time to lay down your arms? Don’t you have the right to be yourself, in peace?
- ‘I’m gay!’
- ‘We always knew.’
So many years of loneliness, depression, wanting to disappear for so little. How can you do that to yourself just out of fear?
Yet that simple, liberating sentence saved my life.
Today, I like to pose naked, without a shell. To show the body I’ve learned to love so I no longer have to hide.