Football vs Homophobia: A Coming Out Story

“We should do the LGBT+ history of the West Midlands”. That was the starting point for this piece. Proud Baggies founder Piero’s rather bold suggestion as a contribution to LGBT History Month and the launch of this website.

A tiny amount of research made it quite clear that we ought to leave that topic for others to pursue. Instead, I bravely suggested that I would write about growing up gay in the Black Country and my early experiences as a West Bromwich Albion fan.

In the end it’s turned out to be more of a coming out story and the football has got a bit lost in it all. However, it’s the best I can do!

Brave or stupid. You decide…

I was born in 1967, the year that homosexuality was partially decriminalised, so I have lived all of my life in an era where, at least in the eyes of the law, being gay was not a crime.

I didn’t come out, however, until I was 20 and had left the Black Country for the cosmopolitan city of Manchester and the safe, forward-thinking confines of higher education, where being gay was no big deal, and often quite ‘de rigeur’. But even then, in the safe world of the University, surrounded by my uber-liberal fellow social science students, coming out was still a struggle.

I can’t say whether growing up gay in the Black Country was more or less difficult than any other part of the country. If I had to guess then I’d say it was no different – everyone’s experiences after all are unique to each of us and are based on many variables, not just location and era.

I was born and brought up in Halesowen, where I lived until I moved to Manchester aged 19. Adopted, along with my older brother when I was a few months old by my loving parents and brought up in an unremarkable environment in a stereotypical working-class family. Mom stayed at home until we were old enough for her to take a part-time job as a secretary in one of the many large manufacturing establishments then so prevalent in the area; while dad worked his whole career as a draughtsman in a factory within walking distance of our and his mother’s (my grandma’s) house, where he continued to have lunch every working day until she died.

Back then, family was everything! Yes we had school mates, but until we were old enough to be independent, we only saw them at school – there weren’t ‘play dates’ and even birthday parties and the like were rare (unless I just didn’t get invited to any that is!). No, I spent my younger years firmly in the bosom of my close-knit extended family – two parents, one brother, two grandmas and grandads, five aunts and uncles and an army of cousins. Weeknight outings didn’t exist – we stayed in and until we had a telephone installed, communication was limited to the four of us and entertainment was playing with toys or whatever was on BBC One or Two (ITV being very much frowned upon by my upwardly mobile mother). Weekends were spent in a fairly strict routine – shopping, visiting the grandparents and seeing the cousins. We never ventured very far – Birmingham city centre, 5 miles away, might as well have been on the moon. Far too crowded and difficult to get to, and why bother when Halesowen town centre and Cradley Heath had everything you could ever want?

And so my very normal childhood continued into adolescence. I’ve never really made sense of that time from aged 12 when my thoughts were directed at boys, but my brain refused to accept what deep down I always knew was the case. So, I focused on other aspects of life – school, my newly found group of friends that I could now socialise with freely and music; letting others get to grips with their sexuality and all that business whilst I stood idly by, saying all the right things about girls etc. (and kidding myself I believed them) but keeping my dark secret well hidden.

I say ‘dark secret’ because that’s exactly how it felt. At the time, gay men (lesbians existed only in jokes and not in real life) were the subject of nothing other than derision or humour. At school the usual insult of being a poof or queer was commonplace amongst students and teachers – and we all knew what was meant by the term - men who fancied other men – these days many homophobes hide behind the flawed argument that calling someone a fairy or a poof just means they are or were doing something weak or effeminate, for example. Well, I don’t believe that’s true now and it certainly wasn’t back in the early eighties.

It was absolutely ingrained in every fibre of my being that being gay meant there was something wrong with you – every source of information on the topic confirmed that – from the camp comedians on the TV (Larry Grayson, Dick Emery, Danny La Rue, Mr Humphries) who were liked by my family but very clearly laughed ‘at’ as well as ‘with’, right up to politicians and eminent thinkers of the day – there was no escaping the message and there was nowhere in my immediate vicinity to present an alternative view.

Now, as it turns out, I was no stranger to gay men – my Great Uncle Percy. He lived next door to his sister, my Grandma, sharing the same entry to their rented terraces in Halesowen. We saw him infrequently, though he was always there, and as children we were never allowed to go into his house, which I think (although to this day I am not entirely sure) he shared with his lover.

My family’s relationship with Uncle Percy was a strange one – he was, to them, it seemed to me at the time, a bit of a figure of fun, someone to be pitied and he was absolutely kept at arm’s length – never appearing at family ‘get togethers’ of any description. In fact, although I must have visited my Grandma and Granddad’s house hundreds of times during the 70s, I can only recall meeting him a handful of times. I am aware of asking about him – who wouldn’t, when there was such a mysterious Bronte-esque figure in the family? The story as I remember it was that Uncle Percy was a bit strange and kept himself to himself. His sexuality was hinted at amongst my mother and her sisters, but only as a joke. Uncle Percy was simultaneously both a danger and a laughing stock, and whilst it wasn’t 100% clear, I knew enough as I got older to know that he was a gay man.

Of course, I wish now, looking back that I knew more about Uncle Percy. He died long before I was out amongst my family. I would dearly love to know more about his life and can only imagine how difficult things must have been for him during his life, and whilst he wasn’t entirely estranged from his family, I wonder how he must have felt being kept on the edge of his family, just out of reach.

My interest in football started quite late. My dad was not a sports fan, in fact quite the opposite, he loathed it! He was a gentle man of peace and thought the passion and emotion that sport invokes to be vulgar and unbecoming. His job required him to be level headed calm, deliberate and precise and I never saw him get worked up about anything in his entire life – even when he was diagnosed with lung cancer twenty years after he gave up smoking, he took it calmly in his stride and was more concerned about playing it down so his family wouldn’t worry than letting it bother him!

Dad’s dad, my grandfather on the other hand was a football man and a lifelong Albion supporter. He had however, stopped going to matches before I would have been old enough for him to take me, so consequently I didn’t go to a game until I was old enough to go with my mates.

If I wasn’t going to games, I was certainly starting to take an interest in football as the 70s wore on. I suspect the interest started with football stickers at school – if you didn’t collect then you were basically a nobody! So, I used to collect them as we all have done through the generations, and the interest built from there. When it came to watching, I was stuck. With only one television in the house and parents with an active dislike of the game, Match of the Day was definitely off the agenda. So my earliest memories of watching football were on FA Cup Final days when the entire morning and afternoon was dedicated to the match and mom and dad were out of the way, busy doing other stuff. As my dad used to say, Cup Final day was the best time of the year to go shopping as everyone else was at home watching! 

My brother was an avid Manchester United fan for reasons I am not entirely clear about other than that they were obviously one of the big teams back then. For me, the choice was obvious and not one, like most of us, I consciously made. My school, in Halesowen, was almost entirely made up of West Brom supporters – in fact I only recall one Wolves fan, another Neil who must have had to put up with a lot – but his family were all avid Wanderers fans so I guess he didn’t have a great deal of choice in the matter either! It was a bonus that Grandad was also an Albion man, but not the reason I started supporting The Baggies. However, I have very fond memories in later years of chatting to him about the games and comparing notes.

I don’t remember the first game I went to. My football brain doesn’t process or retain that kind of information – I can barely remember the score from the previous week! It was sometime in the late 70s and early 80s when I was old enough to go on adventures with my school friends. It was when the wheels started to come off for the Albion – after losing Big Ron to Man U after finishing 4th in 80/81 (but only the 2nd best team in the Midlands that year!), things have never quite recovered since!

The things that stick out for me during that period are firstly that I always seemed to be at night games – it’s always dark in my memory of standing in the Brummie Road; and secondly the intimidating atmosphere and the violence.

The aggression and violence had a particular effect on me. I was never involved directly in any fighting or violence but it was always there, hanging over you, and the fear was very real. In football’s darkest decade, terraces were not a comfortable place to enjoy a game, there was an edge to everything.

The worst game I ever attended was vs. Millwall, October 1983. Millwall had a deservedly poor reputation for violence and I remember the night very well, not the game though. Google reminds me that we won that game 5-0, so the Millwall fans weren’t very happy – so unhappy in fact, that they decided to climb up onto the roof of the Smethwick End (remember - we were all penned in by high fences back then) and run across to the home side and slide down the supporting pillars to fight with our fans. Now, whilst I was safe from harm in the Brummie Road as far away as you could get from the ‘action,’ that night had a profound effect on me, so much so, that whilst I did go to games after that, my interest in live football significantly dwindled and it was many years and many changes to both stadia and football culture that eventually drew me back to regular live games.

I had another excuse for not attending games from 1986, securing (scraping more like) a place at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) following my second attempt at A Levels (either I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block or places were harder to get in those days – I’ll let you decide).

Lots of LGBT+ people will tell you that University was the making of them – and this was entirely the case for me – although it took a year and a lot of soul searching but I was finally, eventually able to admit to myself and a small but significant world around me that I was a gay man – the irony being that the first people I came out to were a handful of close friends from back home in the Black Country who had also secured places at Manchester!

Everyone’s first coming out story (I use the word ‘first’ since coming out is not a finite process, I’m still doing now, almost daily, thirty years on) is unique and personal and writing it down rarely does justice to the pain, anguish and deliberation that accompanies it. However, here goes my version.

In my first year at Poly, my personal battle with my sexuality stepped up – I took the view that in order to deal with the matter I needed a girlfriend – surely that would solve the issue. I’d had girlfriends previously but nothing serious. Mistaking friendship for attraction, I entered into a relationship with a fellow student from my course. Let’s call her Lisa. Well, Lisa and I got on just fine until it came to the inevitable. I had managed to avoid us sleeping together for what must have felt like a ridiculously long time in the context of student lovers. We did share a floor one night at a party but I managed to feign drunkenness and avoid any awkwardness. I knew deep down that I was putting my feelings to the ultimate test – get a girlfriend, sleep with her, problem solved. Everything changed for me one night in Lisa’s room, in her shared house in the shadow of Old Trafford.

We were alone, in her room, together. No excuses. I was trapped. Rather melodramatic I know, but that’s exactly how it felt. It truly was a now or never moment. I bottled it, of course. Making some excuse (I don’t remember what) heading home early; in a final twist of irony; to watch ‘My Beautiful Launderette’ on Channel 4 – the ground-breaking film depicting the mixed race relationship between two men.

And so after that I knew for sure inside that I was gay. However, having spent the previous eight years and my entire adolescence in denial I wasn’t about to fling the closet doors open and run screaming “I am what I am” to the world. But what to do? Telling someone felt impossible, admitting something I was conditioned to believe was wholly wrong to myself was hard enough, imagine the thought of telling others. Like most people in this situation, I truly believed that if anyone knew then they would despise and disown me – I had a lifetime of evidence that being gay was unnatural, barely legal, and at best a bit sad and pitiful.

There was no doubt in my mind at this point. I was absolutely convinced. Telling someone was not an option.

Months passed. I carried on as usual. I ended the relationship with Lisa - giving her some lame excuse, finished my first year at Poly, and spent the summer back in Halesowen. Business as usual.

My second year started in September 1987. Joining me in Manchester was another friend from college in Halesowen, Joanne. Student housing was in short supply in Manchester back then so you kind of had to take what you could get, so Jo ended up sharing with some strangers in a house a short walk from mine in Chorlton.

Thank you, Manchester housing shortage! Turned out that Jo’s new housemates were two lesbians and a gay man – all happily out of the closet and loving life. This was a huge turning point for me. Sounds odd thinking back, but these three people were the first openly gay people I had ever met and there they were being accepted and seemingly very happy. I couldn’t get enough of Jo’s stories about them and their adventures.

So, problem solved: Jo was my obvious confidante. She clearly had no problem with gay people, quite the opposite, and yet I still could not face up to admitting my secret, months after I had resigned myself to accepting it personally…

The weeks passed, and the pressure built up. I had already decided that Jo would be the first person I came out to. The evidence that she would accept me afterwards was overwhelming, yet I still felt that I couldn’t take the chance. Better to maintain the status quo than risk ruin, even though I was desperately wanting to taste the life of Jo’s friends that I was hearing about on a regular basis. I continued with this internal struggle for weeks until one night, fuelled by alcohol, I decided enough was enough.

I was out on Saturday night as usual with my mates, this time at Manchester’s Bier Keller. I don’t know why then, but I just decided it was time to tell Jo. So I left the party without telling anyone and jumped in a cab. Back at Jo’s and we sat in her room. It was close to midnight, and Jo was getting ready to go out. I sat on her bed while she did her make-up. I couldn’t look at her, and told her I had something to say. The standard build up really - tell them you’ve something important to say ,which is easier than actually saying it, and it forces you then to carry it through.

Eventually, facing the wall and looking down, I blurted out “I’m gay”.

I had imagined every kind of response except the one I got. Jo rushed over to the bed, laughing and giggling like an over-excited toddler, hugging me and forcing me to look up. Her response was characteristically sublime. Still laughing, she looked in the eyes and said, “So am I!”

In any other circumstances, having my thunder and the limelight stolen in this way might have been a huge disappointment but I have honestly never heard a better response in a coming out story. The tension of the moment was instantly relieved for me and the focus shared, the spotlight shifting slightly to shine on us both now.

That I was petrified of coming out to a close friend who shared her home and much of her life with the gay community says more about my 20 years leading up to that point than words on a page can ever do justice to. This is not an unusual story either, one that I still hear today 30 years later. So much has changed but equally so little.

From that night on everything changed. I was introduced by Jo and her friends to the gay community and an army of people just like me. I still remained firmly in the closet with everyone else and lead a double life for a while – but that’s another story, along with first boyfriend, meeting my soulmate and partner of the last 30 years, being a gay parent, and the many other twists and turns that my life has taken.

As for the football, well apart from a few games I largely kept away from the terraces from the end of the 80s and early 90s. I had a new life to live and sport was neither a priority or popular in my new social circles. I always kept up with Albion’s progress (or lack of it) and eventually was drawn back to the game in the mid-90s as we commenced our climb up the ladder of success.

Finally, any memoir of gay life in the 1980s and 90s wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the AIDS pandemic. By the time I came out, there was enough information and concern around to ensure that I was kept safe. You simply couldn’t miss the messaging, nor the opportunities it afforded for homophobia to continue and maintain mainstream acceptability. Unlike many others, I didn’t lose lots of friends, but we all knew people who died or were dying and my thoughts remain with them and their families.

Had I been able to come out to my straight peers at the time, I would have been entering a gay community that was blissfully unaware of the risks it was taking at the time and I could very likely have been one of its victims.  So, in a bizarre and supremely ironic way, the homophobic culture I grew up in during the 70’s and 80’s - the environment that wracked me with guilt and kept me from being able to be the person I was - was the very thing that probably saved my life.