This work is about my experiences of growing up gay in the countryside, and the Small-Town Boy narrative that I’d leave for the city with everything I own in a little black case. My journey is represented by a quasi-spiritual map, with the urban and rural existing in relation to one another as two cheeks of the same arse.
In the left hemisphere is Devon, where I grew up. A road meanders through a landscape populated with the structures, beliefs and ideas that encouraged or enabled me to leave. Everything from the safety net of a stable family and free education to boredom and homophobia. Saints of rural dreaming look on - Disney’s Belle is there as Our Lady of The Fields, wistfully yearning for more than this provincial life. Supportive English Teachers promise me future riches, like three Seasalt-wearing witches of Macbeth. I am convinced to leave. RuPaul, the cackling God of queer transfiguration laughs as another oblate passes through the portal.
The City is represented by the grid streets of Manhattan, which are paved with urban opportunities and delights. More boys. Better Boys. Non-Touring Productions. Legendary figures who ‘Got Out’ coax me forward. Quentin Crisp, Kurt from Glee, and Marc from Ugly Betty. ‘Working Girl’s Melanie Griffith grins down the phone to her hometown friend ‘Hey Cyn! Guess where I am!’. Behind them are the tokens of esteem and eminence that await me. Museum and gallery logos. An Oscar. A Blue Plaque.
The Parents appear besides both hemispheres, as Rocky Horror’s Brad and Janet. From their once innocent world, I’ve brought them up to the lab, they’ve seen what’s on the slab, and – proud though they are – they can’t always hide their shock. ‘How did we produce you?’, they cry. I have no idea.