“I don’t think any boy should feel ashamed of anything because if you don’t try it, you’ll never know.”Īs regards to sex with men in future, he remarks: “I’m not gonna say never. He adds: “I think lots of celebrities, whether they’ve admitted it or not, have dabbled in both swimming pools…”Ĭonnor wishes any men “scared of labelling” would take a leaf out of his book. “They’d say, ‘oh he’s obviously gay!’ I wasn’t, but from that day I’ve always been open-minded, with a lot of gay friends.” “I did get labelled a bit,” he tells Attitude. I think I speak for most gay men when I say I wish the world shared Connor’s attitude, one he believes stems from being bullied at school for hanging around mostly with girls and not liking football. It was a big thing for him to come and ask me like that, and I’m glad he did.”īlimey. “But I was glad I did it, and if anything it brought us closer. “It didn’t really do anything for me,” he admits, sounding almost disappointed.
“It didn’t go all the way, but we did experiment.Ģ1-year-old Conor says he's always been "open-minded" when it comes to sexual diversity.Īnd so, the million-dollar question: did he enjoy those bits and bobs? “We went on a night out and ended up trying bits and bobs,” Connor grins. Refreshingly, laid-back Connor figured it was “no biggie,” and agreed to meet up with his questioning pal and take it from there. “He told me he thought he might be bisexual, and would I mind if we tried stuff together? I said, ‘What do you mean by that? How far do you want me to go?’” "I’d noticed him checking me out, then sure enough, three days later he phoned me and admitted it,” laughs Connor. An idea I’m choosing not to take personally.Ī fine example of a man comfortable enough in his sexuality to try-bi-and-not-lie is Connor Hunter, 21, the hunky Essex boy from Ex on the Beach, who “dabbled” with a guy two years ago after realising, during a casual threesome, that his mate was staring at him, rather than the lucky lady they were supposed to be, erm, attending to. And so maybe many of my encounters with straight men over the years helped them decide such carrying-on also wasn’t their cup of tea. I mean, keep it between us, but I fooled around with a girl at school. Maybe they were experiencing the same curiosities that I - and many of us – did in youth.
It’s only now that I’m entering my thirties that it occurs to me that perhaps a lot of those men weren’t, and aren’t, in fact, gay at all. And naturally, I assumed each and every one of them - the ones with girlfriends or wives - were all so far in the closet they had the White Witch on speed dial.
Sure, they all insisted they were straight, and some even threatened my life if I ever told another soul (is it wrong that this made it hotter?) but they did exist. There were straight men willing to experiment. As if dating isn’t challenging enough without restricting yourself to a group of suitors who, by their very definition, aren’t interested.Īnd yet, I was not without success. That is just what turned me on, I’d tell myself - and it was true, I suppose. “I only sleep with straight men,” I’d profess at uni, proudly, about my approach to dating, like it was some messed-up badge of honour. However, in my defence, there was much going on to encourage me: a lot had happened since Nick refused to kiss me, shaping these views that I’m now shamefully re-evaluating.Īs I got older, braces removed and acne cleared up, I could actually start being intimate with men who weren’t severely visually impaired, presenting me with new opportunities to be annoying. Yes, I’m afraid to say I might be an example of a gay man who has been unwittingly endorsing and carrying out a less-traditional, but still problematic, form of homophobia. “He knows the words to the new Taylor Swift song,” I’d remark, all-knowingly, smug that I was right about him all along. What if there really are a multitude of levels between gay and bisexual?Īnd, perhaps, one of the reasons so many men don’t feel comfortable experimenting, or admitting to their curiosities about man-on-man encounters, is because people like Yours Truly are standing across the room, eyes-narrowed, whispering cattily about them.
It wasn’t until recently that I considered the fact that people like myself, while officially believing everyone needs to be true to themselves, might be part of the problem. It’s amazing that the irony escaped me for so long that I - the guy who had spent high school silently dreading the moment anyone ever accused him of being gay - had over the years, inexplicably, morphed into the accuser. If I had a pound for every time I’d uttered those words… well, I wouldn’t still occasionally consider faking my own death to escape student loans.