Staying Negative

Darren

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I’m 31 years old and have lived in Melbourne all my life. I come from a sheltered background with Catholic parents and an education in Catholic schools. My family background meant that I was very much part of the Catholic Church and grew up with many of the values that the Catholic Church espouses.

Matt

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I’m a 35-year-old gay male who identifies 100% as being homosexual. I grew up in the eastern suburbs in Melbourne. I was the oldest of three: one younger brother, one younger sister. I grew up in a very middle-class family that strived to send their kids through private schools. So we never had a huge amount of money but we were given the option - we could either have holidays or we could go to a private school. All three of us wanted to go to private school so we forewent the holidays and things like that. But I had a very loving home environment, particularly on my mum’s side of the family; we were a very close-knit family unit.

Michael

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I was born in Sydney but I grew up on the Mid North Coast of NSW. Firstly it was a tiny little town called Wauchope. Then I moved into the larger nearby town of Port Macquarie, which is about half-way between Sydney and Brisbane. Wauchope was a little town of a few thousand people about 15 minutes drive out of Port Macquarie. Port Macquarie is your usual coastal tourist retreat, the kind of place families go to for holidays year after year.

Jim

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I came from a home with a lot of domestic violence and alcoholism in Brisbane.
It was a very narrow-minded community. I got a lot of anti-gay abuse at school
and from my family so childhood was quite a homophobic experience. (Family violence) (Homophobia)

Glenn’s story

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a minister and I had a really nice upbringing and stuff, as far as my family goes. However, the whole Christian home came with a whole heap of burdens mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So that caused a bit of conflict in my life and led me to different paths at various stages.

James

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in England. I was born in a scungy place called Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire. It was a steel-working town; very working class. My dad was a carpenter by trade but worked in the steel mill. Mum did many things. I remember her being a postie and working for the British General Post Office. I was the fourth of five children but we’ve lost three of my siblings. One of my sisters died of a hole in the heart at six months. Then two of my brothers had cancer. The brother I was closest too, in affection and age, died when he was five years old (I was four) and the oldest brother died much later, he was 45. So by the time I was four or five years old, mum and dad had already lost two of their children. So there was a big gap between me and my oldest brother.

Wayne

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in the NSW town of Wagga Wagga; it was basically a very conservative country town. My childhood was good because I didn’t know about my sexuality, so growing up was pretty easy-going. When I was a teenager and started having an attraction to guys, I was unsure about my sexuality. I think it was hard to seek support back then because of homophobia.

Lawrence

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in Frankston with one brother and one sister. My brother is 10-and-a-half years older than me. My sister was seven years older than me and I just lost her in august last year.

Sam

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in Sydney in Bronte. My parents split when I was quite young so I grew up with my mother. I only got to know dad when I was 15 or 16. I’ve got two half-sisters on my dad’s side but again didn’t get to know them until I was older.

Rodney

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up on the north-west coast of Tasmania. I spent my childhood on a dairy farm near Sheffield. I have a sister who’s four years younger. However, both my parents were from quite large farming families so I have a multitude of first, second, third, fourth and fifth cousins. There’s a grain of truth in every stereotype, and one stereotype of Tasmania is that everyone’s related. So I went to school with lots of people who were my cousins. The frightening thing about it was that my mother and father could identify instantly what their relationship was to me, even if it was as distant as a fourth or fifth cousin.

Ben

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I was raised in the Sunshine Coast which is quite a beachy surfey sort of place. It was a pretty cool area to grow up in during the nineties. My mum always raised us with a really open mind; she taught us a lot about sex education and stuff like that. For her open communication was really important, which I think in a lot of Chinese background families is a rare thing. My mum can be incredibly frank about that stuff would talk to my sisters about the importance of vaginal hygiene from a young age. So I think that was a good and important part of our upbringing.

Raymond

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I was born here in Sydney, Australia as an only child. I’ve always known I was a bit different, but it was never really acted upon because I had things to do, a whole world to explore. I remember when I was really young, as a kid back in primary school, I kissed a boy and I liked it. We sort of crashed into each other and kissed. It was really odd. We were walking past each other and then he went left, I went left, I went right, he went right. It was very in the moment. It wasn’t like, I kissed then he kissed. It was sort of both at the same time, ‘Let’s pucker’. We both didn’t know what it was so we just sort of kept on playing. We were young.

Andrew N

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I had a great childhood. I lived in a quite suburban street in Melbourne. I remember being a very effeminate young boy. I had this white taffeta dress with white patent leather clogs and I would walk up and down the driveway. My Mum would scream at me “Andrew come inside!!!” and I’d turn on my heal and say “Stop calling me Andrew, my name’s Jenny! So I knew I was very different. I had lots of girl friends growing up because I found them easier to hang out with. I was incredibly uncomfortable because I knew I was attracted to boys and had been from a very young age.

Seth

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in a really small town of five hundred people. It doesn’t even have traffic lights. The closest big city is a couple of hours away and it only has 20,000 people in it. It’s really isolated and rural where I live. I went to a very small school of only two hundred people and there are about forty kids in my class. Obviously there are not a whole lot of people my age. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone and you don’t really have many friends, rather you have a few, really close friends. At school you talk to and interact with everybody, but not the same amount of people who sit at your lunch table are going to come to your birthday party.

Neil

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I was born in Sydney in 1948 as an only child and came to Melbourne when I was eight. My best friend was the girl next door. She is about four years older then me and we’re still good friends. I went to a catholic school where if you did anything wrong they belted you. When I was 15 I was raped by a guy in his home. I think my parents may have suspected that he was homosexual but they asked me if he tried touching me and I said “No”, because I was horrified to think otherwise. It’s never been a real problem I guess. (Sexual assault)

Keegan

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in Tamworth, which is the country music capital halfway between Brisbane and Sydney. I spent the first 18 ½ years of my life there. So it was a relatively small, isolated place and I always had dreams of getting out of there and moving to Sydney. I think like most people who grow up in a rural area, realising that you’re same sex attracted is a difficult process in itself. I think the isolation is really the hardest part particularly being same sex attracted. I felt like I was the only one. I remember when we got access to the internet at home I was in year 9 or 10. Before that my access to the net was very haphazard and I couldn’t really look up anything gay as it was mainly at school or at a friend’s place. So I can’t even imagine what it must be like now having the internet and being able to look up stuff. I do remember the first time when I’d snuck onto the computer with a dial up card and got on mIRC. I found some guy in Sydney to chat to. As a result of my sporadic access to the internet I’d get home and spend a whole weekend typing up massive emails so that I could then get to the library and very discreetly email it, hoping no-one was looking to see what the attachment was called or what the email address was. So there was a degree of paranoia about the consequences of getting caught. I felt like if I got caught I’d lose friends and be subject to abuse whilst at school. I’d have to go to this place for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, front up and cop it. That would have been a terrible thing.

Scott

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in a little country town in the NSW Hunter Valley. I came from an established family so we’d been in the area a long, long time. I’m related to about 35% of the population which made the coming out process really easy - no one was particularly bothered. So it was just like “Oh yeah that’s Scott, he’s my cousin”. There was always some link to everybody in the town. I’d been there all my life! So when I trotted home with my first boyfriend and brought him back to live in my apartment nobody seemed to blink an eyelid. I was pretty lucky. I’d led a very sheltered life until then.

Mal

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in Ringwood where I still live in my family home with my sister. There’s only my sister, myself, my mum and my dad. I’m very entrenched in my family.

Francois

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I grew up in the south west of France in a small country town called Cognac (like the alcohol). I was a very happy little child and had a good childhood. I have a sister and when we were very young our parents divorced, which is never easy for children. After my parents divorced, I didn’t really see my father very often. As a teenager I was very introverted and I was very lonely. I spent most of my time in school on my own. I didn’t have many friends. It was a very little town so I didn’t have many opportunities to meet people. I was very feminine as well and I was very artistic. So I was a very sensitive child and very lonely. I had my cats and that was it. I was afraid of boys but I was attracted at the same time. I realised I was gay around 12 or 13 years old, but because I was so shy I didn’t want to talk to boys, I was too afraid. I was also getting picked on at school so I would try to make myself invisible by blending with my surroundings. I tried to be as discreet as I could because I was afraid that people could see my sexuality. I didn’t want people to know that I was gay or sensitive so I would stay away from people. I think I was also afraid of myself. So when I was with my family I was in a good atmosphere but when I went to school it felt like a trapped atmosphere. I didn’t really have much personality at that time. (Isolation)

Peter

Staying Negative — SSSSSS

I’m fifty one years old; I was born in country Victoria in Bendigo. I have an older sister who’s about 7 years older. She moved out when she was twelve so in many ways I grew up as an only child. We were living in the same house until I was 12, then, as she was 7 years older, she moved to Melbourne. I went to school in Bendigo, both primary and secondary and then started at university in Bendigo too, but then moved to Melbourne when I was 18 to study graphic design at the Caulfield Institute. I had to move as the graphic design course was relatively new up there and it was marginal so I decided to apply for either Swinburne or Caulfield both of which were the best schools of the time. I was accepted into Caulfield so I moved to Melbourne as it would give me better opportunities.