Day 24: Blood Brothers Count Down Day 24 of 28:An Extract - Growing Up Gay And Catholic.
My new Book - Blood Brothers is to be launched on 1st October. This is day 24 of the countdown to the launch and today it is a little extract. Here, rock star, Julian, in 1982, is trying to explain his sexuality to the very young Jenny.
"Jenny, I come from a very religious family. I was brought up a Catholic. And, no, I wasn't a little boy who was touched up by his priest. All our priests were lovely and I could even talk to one of them about what was happening to me. I could never tell my mum and dad; they would never have understood and they would have been broken hearted."
He'd been to a Catholic boarding school and it was there he'd realized that he was different. At first, he was appalled by what he felt. He had tried so hard to be a good Catholic boy – just like everyone else. He punished himself day after day for what he thought of as a sin; a mortal sin for which he was going to hell.
"It was that one priest that saved me. Eventually, I found the courage to confess what I was going through and luckily it was him I told. He didn't believe I should do anything about it, but he did believe it was OK for me to be who I was. It wasn't wrong to have the feelings even if he thought it would have been wrong to act on them."
The priest had told him that you didn't lose the love of God just because you were born gay. And, no, it didn't mean he was going to hell.
There was a lot Jenny didn't understand about all of this. She knew more about homosexuality than she did about Catholicism. But she felt incredibly sorry for the young man beside her and the child he had been. She could feel how the years had hurt. Right then, he was as far from the rock star in her wall poster as it was possible to be. But she found herself caring as a friend far more for the person beside her. She held on to his hand in hers very tightly. The gesture made him tremble but he fought the urge to cry; he wanted to tell her the rest and why he still covered up his identity as an adult.
"I'd always been a musician and I can't remember a time when I didn't write music."
Music was where he put all his passion and the pain. The first rock concert he went to was a revelation; it was so loud and so absorbing that there was no room for anything else. It was like playing Beethoven very loudly on the piano; it could drive everything else out. Then, he had come to London, originally to uni. but that hadn't lasted. In the first six months, he'd gone completely crazy; picking up one unknown man and then another and then suffering agonies of remorse. With everything else there had been drugs of various kinds. Somehow, through it all, he'd kept playing the music and he'd started singing with a band around the pubs in Camden.
One night, Rod, the leader of the Glamerines, had turned up. They were already an established band and they were looking for someone who had the voice and looks to be their new frontman.
