Homophobic man sees the error in his ways and apologises.
I received this e mail last week and it did make me stop and think back. It came as a shock at first and when I read it through it spoke the words I have been saying about homophobia and bigotry from WITHIN THE LGBT WORLD and how badly Hamilton Hall and myself were treated by some gay men / organisations hiding behind their computers and never actually brave enough to face me - and I tend to ignore these people filled with envy and resentment as - they made their bed, and I made mine, and if they resent my bed and they want to lay in my bed and want to bitch me to destroy my bed just because they can, then that is childish ignorant behaviour and a HUGE COMPLIMENT TO ME AND MY BED ( if you get my gist ) as envying or resenting someone means they have something you do not, and while I am very willing to share, some cannot move beyond their own abusive head space and allow others to live as they want because they feel they chose the wrong direction in life and hate others who made different choices.
Naked Mates must have been over a decade ago and I haven't heard or thought much about them since, as the group was quite abusive through their incompetant management and the nastiness of a few members who destroy anything good for those they resent and the group leader did nothing to curb this. Here we have one of those abusers apologising decades later and seeing the error of his ways, and it lightens my heart when homophobes realise they like sucking cock too much and realise they themselves are gay and to shut up moaning and picking fault in others and realise thet resenting others just creates disharmony within the very person resenting and this spills out into every area of your life, and it can really fuck you and all around you - up.
Dear John and Hamilton Hall:
I have to admit that many years ago I critisised your venue and I now look back and realise how wrong I was. It was through Naked Mates and there was a group of people who set out to destroy you and your venue mostly out of resentment ( and envy ) and I see that now. As a Grandfather - I was married for 35 years and with 3 grown children and 7 grandkids, I have so resented any out gay men because they were out gay men and I was not, and my wife was very homophobic and nasty every time something gay came on the TV, so I stayed hidden.
( Her brother was gay and she had not seen or spoken to him for 25 years and all because she didn't approve of his sexuality and life choices, which now looking back had damn shit to do with her . )
However after my wife died and I realised for the first time I could have guys round for sex without having to hide as my family are mostly now in Canade and Australia, I am alone much of the time and have had a great deal of time and thought about how I have been living the BIG LIE ( as Trump calls it ) and lived the lie about who I was and what I was about and about my sexuality and even my desires. Over the first few months after my wife died ( 2016 ) a lot of realizations came up and I saw how my life had been and the mistakes made and all because I resented and envied those who were not trapped in a straight relationship, and while I dearly loved my wife and (grand) kids - and would not change a thing, it would have been so different to have lived an out gay lifestyle but I was just so very afraid.
Religious and poor Catholic family from Belfast. 4 of us kids and our parents were religious mad and neither worked and claimed all the benefits they could and I look back now in horror at how they brought us up and how they would also beat religion into us if we misbehaved.
Strict upbringing telling us all that gays were against God and the work of Satan and when children have that drilled into their head night and morning by these child molesting priests ( we now know this but were naive in those days ) and I even had my skull fractured one day by one of the Monks at school because he could not answer my theological question ( I was 14 ) so he hit me so hard I rebounded onto the wall and was knocked clean out and came to laying on the classroom floor where I had been left, unaided, for 20 minutes or so until I came round and this Monk had not bothered to check I was okay and just got on with berating the class about not speaking back and asking impudent questions ( ones he was too ignorant to know the answer to so attacked me instead ) and I suffered from dreadful headaches after that and it was 2 weeks before my fractured skull was discioverew and then blamed on rough and tumble in the playground when we all knew the truth. So a Man of God - a Monk - slapping a child so hard around the face he fractured my skull - and that is how God's workers worked to help children in their care.
Abuse them.
After much soul searching and having now come out and mixed more freely with others who have always been out and not just those envious closeted married men like I had been, I now see the eror of my way and am so very sorry for so much abuse I threw at gay men while lying through my teeth about being straight.
You are correct John when you say homophobia comes from gay men ( in hiding ) and not straight men, as if they are straight and afraid of a gay man, then they are not so straight after all.
I remember really bitching you and your venue all those years ago and look back now with so much regret and realise how I was encouraged by other married but living the lie people also on Naked Mates who egged me on and united felt it was their ambition to destroy those they resented. I was angry. I was sexually very frustrated and locked into a sexless relationship once the kids came along and I put up with it thinking I would get use to it, but the inner anger, the inner resentment and the pent up sexual frustration made me hit out verbally and I now realise I was an outspoken hypocrit - damning those I so dearly anted to be like.
And one of them was you. Having been a prostitute and then running agay mens nake dhotel teavhing sexuality etc. I so hated you for allk you stood for, all you had done, all you had achieved while I was raising my familky and anking secretly night afyter night, year after year alone in the shower - and it makes me cry to realise how foolish and how abusive I was, n
ot just to otherts, but towards m,yself and my family in all sorts of little ways - and I do feel so more relaxed and less pent up now I am not living the lie and while an old fossil these days - I am out and enjoying my gay lifestyle and flt the need, the wanting, to write to you John and apologise and try and put things right. It was a long time ago, and Naked Mates is still very clicky - ( I gave up on that group some time ago ) and have made gemnuione friends a smany on that group are just fake, and life is good. I am hoping to come and visit your establishment and am amazed to see you have ben open for 21 years. Well done to you and of all the people who run these gay groupos etc. and all the hoists etc. none compare to the work you do, the free holidays, the Blog / Newsletter and I have to say that now I realise what a guiding light, what a beacon you are to the gay world and how like Peter Thatchell, you helped create the gay community we now so freely enjoy.
Once again I apologise for my past and can only hope for a better future.
Dennis.
