First encounter of the Queer type

          I left Truro at 18 to move to New Zealand. I was not out, still trying to find if there was more Gay people in this world other than me, John Inman and Larry Grayson. For passing my exams the old coffin dodgers which are my parents paid for me to go with my grandparents to stay with my aunt and uncle in Auckland for a time. After hanging around with them for 6 weeks and losing the will to live, I plucked up the courage to go into the centre of Auckland one Saturday to try and find some life and make friends. Noticing a couple of times before in a mall a male boutique with this screaming Queen working in there, who overtime had given me the Gay eye. Gaydar is one of those things that Gay men have and we know straight away when we are talking or looking at another Gay man. Don't ask me how we do it but it's just that queer eye.
        If I minced up and down that mall once I was up and down it a thousand times like a hooker's knickers on a Friday night. Trying to pluck up the courage to go in to his shop. Once in I slide over to him and asked if he would like to join me for lunch and straight away with the biggest squeal I had ever heard and he said yes. Now I am not blowing my own trumpet if I could I would but I was not bad looking between the ages of 18-26. Over 6 foot tall, blonde hair and blue eyes and very slim, not an ounce of fat to be seen. Oh what wonderful days they were, I do miss them. As I figured out in years to come Gay men are not so different from straight men when it comes to blonde's.

          Taking me down stairs to the food hall we picked our lunches and sat down. Making it very clear at the start that I was not interested in him as a date but could he show me around the Gay scene in Auckland. John was not a bad looking guy but oh he made me look like the Terminator which as you are becoming aware is a very hard thing indeed. Well, dear reader I was over the rainbow with excitement. An understatement really I was so excited I felt like a teenager flicking through his first copy of Razzler. I went home to tell everyone I was going out that night with friends. To be very honest my excitement got a luke warm response so I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening tarting myself up getting ready for my first night out. Every item of clothing was flung onto the bed and I left the house with half of bottle of perfume all over me, spraying parts most people cannot reach and wearing a jacket that had bigger shoulder pads than anything Joan Collins would have worn. Please remember that it was the 80's.
          I waited nervously on the street corner  trying to avoid the looks from men in the cars that crawled passed. In their dreams, I'm a good Catholic Gay boy I don't charge. After 30 minutes, boredom had started to creep in and feeling I had been stood up. Then from a distance I could see and hear a group of men walking, well I use that word "walking" very loosely towards me. Screaming and chatting every one of them was dressed in their best. Hair perfect  and not one crease on any of them and that included their faces. If Botox had been around then I would swear these girls had bathed in the stuff. Before I could draw breath I was in the middle of the group being introduced and being dragged off to my first Gay bar.
        My head was spinning, these guys were a mixture of butch and camp, young and old all talking at the same time and I understood them all. Men are from Mars and Woman are from Venus but Gay men are from.........lets leave that one up to you to put in. I drank and smoked, danced and got chatted up all in the space of a couple of hours. Ok dear reader one thing you have to understand is that in New Zealand at that time there was more sheep than people. I was fresh meat on the market and the attention was Fab.
       Looking back on that night all these years later I was lucky, John could have be a psycho or I could have be kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. Now that would be an interesting blog.
Before I go I just want to point out that I am a Gay Man who is 43 and every story is true and I'm not a middle class grey haired woman bored with her life pretending to be someone else.
     Until the next blog dear reader. Remember always have a Fab Gay time what ever you're doing.