At this stage of my life I didn’t know anyone who was gay, openly or otherwise. The only exposure I’d had to gay men was watching the likes of Larry Grayson and John Inman on telly, those Eighties stars of the small screen who camped it up for laughs, but even then no one actually referred to them as being gay or homosexual. I just could tell that they were a bit … well, different. But from an early age I had known that the feelings I had for my idol Madonna were very different from those I had towards the movie star Rob Lowe, whose poster also graced my bedroom wall. I worshipped Madonna and loved her music, but when I looked at Rob Lowe … I didn’t know if I admired his talent, wanted to look like him or even to be him, all I knew was that I just found that face incredibly appealing.
Throughout my early teens the thought occasionally crossed my mind that I might possibly be bisexual, but I wasn’t tortured by it. There was no particular angst or guilt that I was living a lie. When I was with my girlfriends I certainly wasn’t pretending they were blokes – I really did fancy them. But just before my sixteenth birthday something happened that would drastically shift my whole perspective.
It was one of those incredibly hot summer evenings, 9 p.m, but still light, and I was riding my bike back to Armthorpe after visiting friends in a neighbouring village with my mate Robert Connor. It was getting late, so we decided to take a shortcut home across a stretch of rough ground. Soon the grass got too thick to ride so we got off the bikes to push.
I think we may have had a couple of sneaky beers earlier in the evening and the conversation quickly turned to girls and sex. The heady combination of underage booze and the sultry heat of the evening had an immediate effect, and it was soon obvious that both of us were getting turned on. Minutes later we ended up behind a hedge touching each other.
It was almost over before it started, but I remember thinking it didn’t feel wrong. Quite the contrary: it seemed completely normal and natural to me. For the first time in my life I thought, ‘Hang on a minute – am I gay …?’
Robert and I both picked up our bikes and continued the walk home in sheepish silence. But as I lay in bed that night going over and over what had happened I made a conscious decision. Okay, so I might well be attracted to guys, but I knew that I definitely wanted to get married and have kids. Besides, I still really liked being with girls. I vowed the events of that night would remain a secret – after all, it wasn’t as if anyone would suspect that Gary Cockerill, Armthorpe Comprehensive’s answer to Mick Jagger, was actually gay!
It was only recently that I found out that when I was younger my Granddad Joe would tell anyone who would listen: ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs if our Gary doesn’t bat for the other side when he’s older …’
* * *
I breezed through secondary school. Bar a few girl-related incidents (I had a lot of lectures from a lot of different dads during my teenage years) I was a hard-working and well-behaved student, even being made a prefect in the final year. I did well in my O-levels – apart from Maths, which I took at CSE level and barely scraped a grade 5 – and gained A-levels in Art and English, taking Art a year early and still getting an A grade.
While my friends were planning on becoming electricians or plumbers, I was dreaming of a career as a graphic designer or illustrator. The school career advisers were quick to sound a note of caution – ‘There aren’t that many opportunities round here for that sort of thing, Gary. Why don’t you get a trade?’ – but I was determined I wouldn’t end up on the YTS or in an apprenticeship. I was going to go to art college.
Mum and Dad were as thrilled as I was when I won a place to study design and illustration at college in Doncaster. They certainly weren’t the sort of parents who would have supported the idea of dossing around India on a gap year. Sure enough, although I had three months off before the course started, any hopes I might have had of enjoying my last summer of freedom were dashed on day one of the holidays when Mum came into my room, dragged me out of bed and said, ‘Right, time to get off your arse and do something useful.’
I signed on the dole, but that wasn’t enough for Mum, who was still badgering me about getting a job, so I decided to do a City and Guilds course – that way I’d earn a bit of money and learn a new skill at the same time. I flicked through the list of dull-sounding courses until I spotted one in Hairdressing. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do as a career, but it sounded slightly more artistic than other options like ‘Warehousing and Storage’ or ‘Drink Dispensing’, which is how I found myself in a Doncaster city-centre salon called Mr Terry’s, learning how to cut, blow-dry and set hair.
Getting a formal training in what had up until then been just a hobby set my creative juices flowing and triggered a period of serious experimentation with my look. One particularly striking style was a sort of mullet with benefits: short and spiky on top, arrowhead-shaped sideburns and longer bits at the back that I would then perm. It was the Eighties after all. I also put streaks into my mousy hair with Sun-In spray, although they ended up a garish orange rather than the sun-kissed surfer blonde I had envisaged.
Still, I thought confidently, at least my daring new look would help me fit in with all the cutting-edge creatives I would be meeting at art college …
* * *
Doncaster Art College was housed in a forbidding red-brick building – more Victorian lunatic asylum than vibrant centre of creative excellence. Inside it was always dark and cold, even on the hottest summer day, and the warren of gloomy corridors echoed with the drip-drip-drip of long-neglected plumbing and the lingering smell of damp and disappointment.
I had assumed art colleges would attract exciting, passionate people, bubbling over with creativity and imagination. That may well be true, but not at the one I went to. It quickly became apparent that my course was a dumping ground for wasters who had gone to college because they couldn’t be arsed to get a job and reckoned art would be a soft option.
The teachers weren’t much better. I was there for five full days a week throughout term-time, but the work I actually did in that time could have been completed in half an hour. I had gone on the course to prepare me for a job in design, but the teachers were completely out of touch with the realities of the industry. They convinced us that we would walk into an amazing career as a designer or illustrator on graduating, but there was no preparation for how tough things were in the job market for new design graduates – particularly ones from the North.
I can’t even look back fondly on the social side of college life, as I only made two friends on the course and went to perhaps a couple of functions a term at most. This wasn’t me being unfriendly: most of the other students were only interested in getting drunk or high, and to be stuck in a room full of people off their tits on Ecstasy when the strongest thing you’ve had is a couple of vodka tonics is to experience a new level of tedium.
Perhaps my own expectations had been unrealistic – and I’m sure things are completely different these days – but I can’t tell you what a disappointment those two years at college turned out to be. True, I gained a BTEC diploma in Design and Illustration, but I can’t think of one useful thing that I learnt. The only positive to the whole experience was that it kept me off the YTS.
* * *
Thankfully, I had something to keep me sane during those dark years at college – Kim Foster, the girl who would very nearly become my wife.
I met Kim at a youth club party during my last months at Armthorpe Comprehensive. I had gone to the party with Robert Connor (we were still friends, having made an unspoken vow never to talk about what had happened on that summer evening bike ride) and we were hanging around by the edge of the dance-floor, nodding along self-consciously to ‘You Spin Me Round’ by Dead or Alive, when I spotted a girl I had never seen before. She was petite and girl-next-door pretty with lots of curly blonde hair, a sprinkling of freckles and very white teeth. In other words, right up my street.
‘Rob, check her out.’ I nodded