The bears are back in town

Well another year has just rolled around again and it is time for the bears to descend on Brighton like bees to honey, and the honey traps have been set for yet another great time. By the way did you know the collective term for a group of bears is a sleuth or sloth? I actually think that the collective term for gay bears should be a blunder of bears. I mean the movement not the alternative definition for a mistake! Anyway, I digress.

From looking at the programme of events it looks like another fun packed hairy, alcohol induced and sweaty weekend, starting on Thursday evening and running until Monday at 4am. It would appear that there are going to be a lot of bears with sore heads blundering (see what I did there) their way through the streets of Brighton early on Monday morning.

Every year I like to have a little fun on this magazine and write a piece about the bear’s natural environment or their nocturnal exploits. This year I thought that the late Phil Lynott, showing my age here, would not mind me have a bit of fun with one of his most well known songs and adding my own twist to the lyrics.

Guess who just got back today

Them wild-eyed bears that had been away

Haven't changed that much to say

But man, I still think them bears are crazy

They were asking if you were around

How you was, where you could be found

Told them you were living downtown

Driving all the old men crazy

The bears are back in town...

You know that cub that used to dance a lot

Every night he'd be on the floor, shaking what he got

When I say he was cool he was red hot

I mean, he was steaming

And that time over at Johnny's place,

Well, this cub got up and he kissed Johnny's face

Man, we just fell about the place

If that cub don't want to know, forget him

The bears are back in town...

Spread the word around

Guess who's back in town

Just spread the word around

Friday night they'll be dressed to kill

Down on St. James Street (hill!)

The drink will flow and the bears will thrill

And if the bears want to play, you better let them

That speaker in the corner blasting out my favourite song

The nights are getting warmer, it won't be long

Won't be long till the summer comes

Now that the bears are here again

The bears are back in town...

Spread the word around

The bears are back in town...

Been hanging down at Brighton town

The bears are back in town again

And they sure will be. Have a great weekend my ursine friends.

Meet the guncles!

So apparently the new word for a gay uncle is guncle. Am I happy to be called guncle? Well in short no-ish. I am gay and I am an uncle but the word guncle makes me sound somehow strange. Would a child not expect to find a guncle to be a character in a book that lives in the shed at the bottom of the garden? But then I remind myself on a regular basis that, yes I am getting older and therefore will not always understand what is going on in a younger person’s world.

So, anyway I digress, I was thinking recently about what it is that is expected of me in my role as an uncle, gay or whatever? When I was growing up my aunts and uncles fell into distinct categories. I had the ones that were close and those that were not so close. I think that the common theme across them all was that I would never have dreamt about ever asking them for advice on sexuality matters. This was not only a generational discomfort but also a social discomfort. Remember folks we are talking about mid-eighties rural Ireland, so think fifties Brighton.

So, here I am today with six nieces and nephews of my own and four nieces and nephews through marriage, which includes the spouses. We also have Roger’s great-niece and great-nephew. Would a gay great-uncle be a gruncle? Again I digress. So what should our role as uncles be today? I remember back to my youth and I would have loved to have been in a position where I felt I had any senior member of my family that I could have approached to talk to about my sexuality. So, I feel that as a guncle it is now my role just to be there for my nieces and nephews if they need me. To date not one of them has approached me to ask me advice or even just to have a chat about their sexuality, but I hope that any one of them would be comfortable chatting to me about it if they liked.

The one part of being a gay uncle that I very much enjoy is that every single one of my nieces and nephews have grown up their entire lives knowing that their uncle Mike is Gay and has a husband. I remember one particular story that my sister told me where our nephew asked her a question, in the car to my house one day several years ago. It was the same year as Roger and I had civil partnered so we were basically newlyweds and they were on their way to visit for the day. During the journey my nephew piped up “Aunty, can I ask a question?”, “of course” responded my sister, “can men be married to each other?”, “Yes, they can”, responded my sister, “I knew my friends at school were wrong”, he said, and quietly went back to staring out the window. My sister said that it was a lovely moment to be able just to say yes and that it was completely normal in a six year olds mind.

Fear and loathing in Kemptown

Hate crimes are acts of violence or hostility directed at people because of who they are or who someone thinks they are. For me the greatest crime for people who identify as LGBTQ is experiencing others’ internalised phobia. This type of fear if left unchecked or challenged can be incredibly destructive for the individual who experiences or expresses it, but also to the people around them. Frequently these individuals may initially appear to be quite open and progressive, but given time and space to truly reveal themselves, often results in demonstrations of judgemental, aggressive and hurtful outbursts. These behaviours can give rise to fear, shame, stress and self loathing.

The reason why I have mentioned the above is because of a recent report of such attitudes that someone relayed to me. I was forwarded an email that was written by a gay man who, along with his partner, run a business in Kemptown. These men feel that Gscene magazine does not represent them or their customers. I quote:

“I am sure there is a healthy market for Gscene but it is so full of drag queens and implausibly buff half naked chaps that it does not represent the gay life I am living nor the more integrated view I take of modern Brighton. I'm afraid my customers just don't take the magazine as it has nothing for them.”

Apart from being shocking to read such disappointing views from a gay man, my next thought was that he completely missed the point. Gscene is not for gay men nor is it designed to make him comfortable in his Brighton. Gscene is a resource for everyone. This magazine has helped numerous people to express and accept themselves. It has provided many with the signposts they needed to find help with dealing with difficulties around sexuality, identity, sexual health, mental health, addiction etc. It is really so sad that this individual lacks any emotional intelligence that he felt it was appropriate to put these very narrow views in writing.

In an era where Donald Trump feels that it is right to bar transsexuals from the US military, it is upsetting that a gay man in Brighton feels that a progressive magazine is not suitable in his establishment. He may be right and many customers may not choose to read this magazine, but what harm would it be to allow the minority to pick it up, read it and perhaps benefit from it.

I had several good experiences in this particular business, including my wedding. However my last visit, about two years ago, was very upsetting, because of this gentleman telling me, in less the polite language, to leave and not to return. This outburst was as a result of a complaint due to a total shambles of an evening for me and four other gay men. I have naturally never felt the urge to return and spend my hard earned cash in a business that treats themselves and their customers in such contempt.

Depression, a first hand account.

Do not confuse “being depressed” with the medical syndrome of the same name, this would be like misunderstanding the difference between sleep and a coma. No one who has suffered from Depression harbours any doubt that they were seriously ill as this account of his illness by my friend Mike Wall will demonstrate.

“When it eventually happened it felt like a sudden explosion going off in my head. I had known something wasn't quite right for some weeks, perhaps about a month. Looking back now I think that there were probably signs of my mental deterioration for longer but it was gradual process until the last few days. While writing this I am still experiencing some slowness in my thought processes, which is not surprising as this was the symptom that eventually forced me to accept that I was not feeling right. For me the first signs were probably about twelve months before the ‘big bang’. It was around that time that a friend commented to Roger, my husband, that he felt I seemed unhappy. When Roger said this to me I was a little shocked because I thought that I was hiding it very well. I admitted to Roger that I did feel sad but that I couldn’t explain why. At the time I put it down to anxiety, which I had been experiencing regularly since homophobic activity at work led to my having to take time off with symptoms of severe stress a couple of years previously. At that time I was also starting to become aware of a reawakening of demons that I had been struggling with since living through some traumatic events in my childhood. I had been successfully suppressing these memories and emotions for so long, I felt that I would be fine this time too and just get on with things.

Six months passed by and I was still feeling unexplained sadness on occasion. My sleep pattern was also a mess, I found it difficult to fall asleep and when I did I would wake in the early hours and find it almost impossible to go back to sleep. This too had been going on for some time. When I think it through I can now, with the benefit of hindsight, see that at around that time there were other signs. I lacked any motivation to do things that I previously got a lot of pleasure from and I was feeling tired all the time. For example, I used to love spending time at my allotment but now I lacked the desire to go there at all. I thought that this was mainly down to tiredness. Then, about three months before my breakdown, I was finding it very difficult to focus on things. At work I would find myself reading sentences over and over again, I needed to spend a lot more time preparing for meetings as I was losing confidence in my ability to offer input and I began to doubt my own judgement about the simplest things. Most days I would wake up feeling uneasy about everything but I have never been a morning person so I just put it down to that. However looking back now I realise that I felt the same most evenings too. My mornings and evenings were plagued by sadness and I would find myself feeling quite tearful for no apparent reason. It was affecting me so much that I could be sitting watching TV for an hour and have little or no idea what I had just seen. Now that I understand depression better I now realise that there were physical symptoms that could also have been linked. I never would have associated regular headaches, feelings of nausea and tummy ache as being connected to something going on in my brain.

The final month was the most difficult. Whilst I had been drinking more and more over the last twelve months, during the last few weeks I was increasingly drinking to get drunk rather than drinking for pleasure. I guess it was an attempt to self-medicate, to turn my brain off so that I didn’t worry so much about my lethargy, lack of motivation and dread of being in social situations. Usually a sociable person I truly didn’t want to be around people, not because I was afraid as such, but because I just didn’t care to be around other people and could not muster any enthusiasm for conversation. I also feared that I would lose my patience or even worse my temper, as I was starting to find that I was getting more and more irritable and my mood swings were quite unpredictable.

In the end the crash was quick, over about 48 hours it felt like my brain gave up. I couldn’t think clearly, I started speaking gibberish and I truly felt that I just didn’t want to go on. Luckily for me Roger was there and he took me straight to my doctor. My doctor immediately diagnosed me with depression, prescribed some medication and gave me and Roger some excellent advice. Thankfully Roger was there as I wasn’t really taking much in. My doctor also referred me to see a counsellor, which was very useful”

Some people have the misfortune to be genetically predisposed to developing depression but Mike’s illness, coming on after a period of stress or as a reaction to a personal disaster, is more typical. He developed all, or most, of the expected symptoms caused by a gradual depletion in the natural brain chemicals that enable nerves to interact, enabling our thought processes, controlling our body clock and physical activities. What often makes the diagnosis, or our own realisation, difficult is that not everyone develops these symptoms in the same order or to the same extent. One of our aims in writing this article is encourage anyone who recognises this pattern of symptoms in themselves, or people close to them, to seek advice.