About Me

I was born on 31st July 1972 at 5:52am at The Firs Maternity Hospital in Nottingham. I am the middle child of three and very much suffer from ‘middle child syndrome’ with all the insecurities and neuroses that are associated with it.

As a child I was always very quiet, and it is a well known family anecdote that I didn’t speak until I was four years old. Some people may have thought me retarded, but I had an elder brother, by 18 months, who did everything for me and we always communicated non-verbally. I’ve never really minded this anecdote as it is always pointed out that Einstein didn’t speak until he was four, so I am in some illustrious company.

My education was conventional. I went to Primary school aged 5-10, Secondary school, aged 11-15 and College, aged 16-17. I was never very vociferous as I child and preferred to keep my head down, as a result, my teachers always underestimated me and never thought I would pass all my GCSEs or A-Levels. My A-Levels in particular shocked many of my teachers, but it is always the quiet ones you have to watch.

It was while studying for my A-levels that I began writing, nothing particularly spectacular. I was studying Physics, Maths and Biology so my education was very science based and my first success came when I was awarded Runner-Up in a science writing competition in the ‘New Scientist’, my piece concerned the Human Genome Project. I also received an honourable mention in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ with another similar piece on the project to map the human genome.

University provided me with my first taste of freedom. I read Physics and spent the first year studying and drinking. Unfortunately after the first year the drinking seemed to take precedent and although I did graduate with a BSc(hons), it was not a good grade. But I took away more than just a certificate, I had some good experiences and I learnt a lot (such as how to build an atomic bomb – in theory at least).

I left University in 1993 and put myself on the job market. After dabbling with teaching, both in an FE College and Secondary School, I seemed to have settled in Finance and am currently turning myself into an accountant. I know, I am now officially boring.

Sexuality

As you will probably have gathered from my writing, I am gay. So I suppose I should say something about it.

I’m not very well read regarding different perspectives and experiences, so I don’t really know if mine is normal. Naturally I never knew or understood the word ‘gay’ or any of its other euphemisms, both positive and derogative, until I was aged about 12. But looking back, I knew I was, what I now understand to be, gay by the age of five. I knew I was different and I knew I looked at other boys my age differently to my friends. So if I’m ever asked the ‘Nature/Nurture’ debate I tend to fall down on the nature side.

So, I went through school tainted with my extra knowledge that I was different. I must have known even at five that I shouldn’t say anything about my urges; after all, the oppressive homophobic society we lived in was bound to have some subconscious effect on me. I say tainted, as it affected my friendships. I never really managed to form any great friendships at school as I always had my secret in the back of my mind and was fearful of getting too close to people in case I was found out. Not that I didn’t have any friends, I had a few but I tended to remain on the periphery of the group.

I had my first crush when I was thirteen. He was a friend whom I met at secondary school and I always quite fancied him. I fancied many other boys but just fancying them isn’t really a crush, is it. I don’t know how or when it happened but suddenly I think I began to love him. I wanted to be around him every moment of the day and the moment that really scared me was one time in class when we were working together, very closely on a science experiment, and I almost kissed him. I have no intention of laying myself open here and detailing all the stupid things I did, such as the notes I photocopied from him on a class I missed due to illness, and looking at his handwriting for hours hoping it would bring us closer. That’s one stupid thing you got out of me so let’s just leave it; we’ve all gone through the same in one way or another. I don’t think I ever really got over that crush and spent the last few years at school thinking about him.

I tended to repress by sexuality at first, believing the homophobic diatribe that was prevalent around me. I closed myself off so that even if there were the ‘it’s ok to be gay’ messages around at the time, they never got through to me. It was also around the time when AIDS and HIV was first mentioned and the now infamous advertising that scared me half to death with worry that if I would die if I ever had gay sex. I suppose it all reverts back to the neuroses of ‘middle child syndrome’; we are delicate flowers who need to be told we are just as good as our older and younger siblings, but very rarely are.

It took me years to come to terms with being gay. I became much better informed and started to like who I was. For years I tried to conform to stereotypes, both hetero and homo and none seemed to fit me. My brother would take me out drinking and clubbing with his mates round town and the pressure was always there to chat up the birds and take one home for a shag. (That was during my ‘in and trying to be a red blooded hetero male phase’) Needless to say, I never chatted up any birds nor shagged any.

So, now that I’m fully reconciled with myself, and living away from home and on my own, I start to look for boyfriends. I can’t change my personality and am never going to be the life and soul of the party, so am pretty stuffed when it come to finding a boyfriend. That is where the net helped. I became a member out www.outintheuk.com and began to talk to others who, like me, were not really scene oriented. I hit it off with a few people, at different times I might add, and found it quite strange that others found me interesting and even lovable. I will always be grateful for my few boyfriends who taught me not to be so hard on myself.

And there it is, found my first boyfriend and became a fully paid up member of the queer club.

Coming Out

I suppose coming out was the most difficult things I have ever had to do. I knew I had to at some point, but I had to come out to myself first. Sometimes I wished I was outrageously camp so that I wouldn’t have had to, but I’m not camp (although a boyfriend did tell me I have ‘flashes of campness’ – ooh er, get him) so I had to struggle to tell people.

I had always been very close to my younger sister and she was the first I told. She wasn’t surprised and told me she knew. A week later I told my mother, on her own, again she had suspected. It was all very emotional and wasn’t shunned like I had feared. I had never heard my father and brother say anything good about gays so I thought they might have a problem. I chickened out telling them and my mother told them. They rang me later that evening to tell me that everything was alright and I was relieved. Although they accepted it, they don’t really understand it and don’t think they ever really will. They have been so indoctrinated into their cosy hetero world that homosexuality is only now something that is tolerated. Well, I don’t want to be tolerated I want to be accepted. At least me being gay has opened their eyes a little.

Health

My life is hanging by a thread. Well, as I told you, I suffer from middle child syndrome and so am a chronic hypochondriac.

I tend to suffer from depression, which is generally worse in winter. I know its SAD related but not as severe as actual sufferers have to bear. I also suffer from Crohn's Disease. It began to manifest itself about six years ago with an abscess which developed into a fistula. After several operations to try and sort out the problem they finally began to investigate further and get to the cause of why the operations were unsuccessful. It was then that I had to undergo several uncomfortable tests, an MRI scan, a sigmoidoscopy, a colonoscopy and a barium meal to ascertain the extent of the fistula and the underlying colitis. The results of the tests are contradictory, some suggesting Crohn's Disease and others suggesting Ulcerative Colitis. But at least I am now on medication to help ease the symptoms and control the disease. Unfortunately when it flares up I need to take steroids which come with their own problems and so need to try an minimise their use.

Writing

I mentioned previously, my writing properly began when I was about sixteen or seventeen. At the time I wrote those two very serious essays on mapping the human genome, I also wrote part of sci-fi novel. Alas it is still unfinished and will probably remain so. I also began dabbling in short stories and one of my first, From Within the Shadows, is on this website. At the time I was very much into thriller novels and it was my attempt at emulating some of the books I’d been reading. I also tried my hand at a couple of pseudo-erotic short stories based on a dream I had, these also remain unfinished.

When I went to University all writing stopped; not enough time what with the drinking. But when I came back I started a James Bond Fanzine. I am a huge Bond fan and my head is filled up with so much trivia I can easily turn into a Bond bore. I enjoyed writing the fanzine and included other writers’ articles as well. It was very much a magazine style of writing and we, I and the other contributors, received some very positive feedback; it’s a pity that I never carried on with it. We sold mainly in the UK but also had buyers in the US. I still get a little kick whenever I go to a Cult Fair and see the little fanzine on sale like some collectors item. We only did six editions I think. I remember we started in 1995, just prior to the release of GoldenEye and I think it lasted until 1998. It’s actually very hard work to put together a print magazine and I salute anybody who does.

After the fanzine sorted of fizzled, I took another break from writing but started to keep a diary. It was very enlightening when reading it back after several years. Writing a diary helped me to put so much of my life into perspective and I wish I still kept one, perhaps I might start again.

Then, just after the millennium, I began writing again. Gone were the days when I wanted to emulate other writers or genres, now I wanted to write what I wanted to read. I read plenty of the erotic stories on the web and many just left me feeling cheated; I wanted characters not just animated bodies. Thankfully I found some sites I liked; you have to really look for it these days, but there is some good stuff posted on the web. This current writing phase of gay erotic stories is helping me find my own style and genre. I have had the chance to experiment and am finding it very useful, I am also reading a lot more than I used to.

I am not a very productive writer who can write thousands of words a day, I tend to write whenever I feel like it. Sometimes I can write a short story in an afternoon, with later polishing and editing, other times a story will be written over a week or more.

My inspiration tends to come from what I observe around me, sometimes my own past serves as a basis for the story but none are ever autobiographical. The nearest I have ever got to an autobiographical story was ‘A Ride Too Far’.

Should any of you have read this far and are even consider taking the step of emailing me, please feel free and feel free to say what you want, good or bad about the stories I’ve written. There can be no more a harsh critic of my work than me; I know exactly what is wrong with a piece. I don’t know who said it but someone said, about a painting, they are never finished, just abandoned. I suppose that’s what I think about writing, you have to abandon it before you edit the soul out of a piece. Reading my stories again, I think there are some that still need a little work but at the time, I abandoned them at the right time and it is only with hindsight and experience that I would change things.

I think I’ve rambled on too long now, so I’ll stop. It has taken me so long to write this page because I don’t talk about myself very well. Like most of us I could reel off several hundred aspects about myself I hate, but I need to think hard about what I like about myself, here’s one, I have a very sarcastic sense of humour, but people don’t always like it. As I say, people only call sarcasm the lowest form of wit because they aren’t intelligent enough to understand it properly.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, along with my stories.