I was fifteen when I told my parents I was gay: I was 'out' for my birthday. My mum and dad were at a local bowling club and they were absolutely intoxicated. My mother had to be carried up the stairs and put to bed, and my dad just came down the stairs and asked me if I was gay. My father, he's like a real… he's a game-keeper, he's a grave-digger as well - he's a real, hard butch man, and then there's me - who's not! And he just asked me if I was gay.
And at first, I lied and said 'No, I wasn't' and then I says 'Well, why should I lie', so 'Yeah, I am'. So I asked him 'Well, how do you feel?' and he said he felt like killing himself. Here's me - 'Why?' Here he is - 'Em, it's the whole, what's his friends going to think, what's his family going to think…'. Because I come from a mixed marriage and my mum and dad had a lot of problems in the seventies, a lot of my aunties and uncles still don't speak to my mum to this day because of her religion. I think that's why there were so understanding.
So my dad said he was going to shoot himself and he went…I told him, 'Just go for a walk', and then he came back and he said to me 'Right, three things. One, you'll keep it out of Ballywalter' (which was a bit late because I was already going out with somebody from Ballywalter!) 'Two, you won't tell your mum' - well, I'd already told my mum two weeks ago, so she already knew and she hadn't told him; and 'three, that I'd look after my mum if anything happened to him'. I said 'Sure, I would do that anyway'.
And then that was it, everything was grand, really understanding, and then the next day, my mum was still in bed, and I went upstairs and told her I'd told my dad and that was it, everything was grand. And I have a totally open relationship with my mum and dad about being gay: I'm very lucky 'cos I know a lot of people who aren't lucky, like 15 / 16 year olds who have told their parents and they've been thrown out; or there… there's a guy who I know who told his brother - actually his brother found out he was gay - and his brother kicked the hell clean out of him for being gay.
I can walk round Belfast in a dress during the day, and I have done, and I will be doing it again, and people look at you, yeah, but that's only because they're not used to seeing it - it's like "Oh my God, there's a seven foot man wearing a see-through dress walking down Royal Avenue with a pink fur-trim coat!".
Attitudes are definitely changing towards it over here - there's more venues, whenever I was here in the past there was what? Two? Two venues? And they were only gay on a Saturday night, and then you had the Limelight which was gay on a Monday night, and that was it, and then you had one gay bar. Whereas now you've got more choice - a lot of the straight venues are more gay-friendly. So you do feel more comfortable, you can go in with gay friends. If I can walk into Morrison's and Robinson's in a dress, I can walk in anywhere really.