THE FRIENDSHIPS, THE PARTIES, THE SENSE OF SELF, THE HUMOUR… THERE’S SO MUCH TO LOVE ABOUT BEING GAY SAYS LOTTE JEFFS, AND YET WE RARELY SEE ENOUGH QUEER JOY. ON THE RELEASE OF HER NEW NOVEL CELEBRATING JUST THAT, SHE LOOKS BACK AT UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS
WHAT WAS THAT GIFT WE GAVE EACH OTHER WHEN OUR EYES met? The possibility of sex? Yes, but something else. Validation. To desire and be desired in return. Maybe we’d slam into the ladies together. Or we’d come up out of the club for air, finding some doorway in Soho Square to kiss in the shadows. I’d feel the night inside me then, reckless moonlight, thrilling pinpricks of stars.
It was the year 2000. I was 18 and out in every sense, a veteran lesbian by then, having confirmed my sexuality sometime before my GCSEs. London’s Soho was my playground.
I started kissing strangers on dancefloors circa Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’. ‘And I feel, and I feel, and I feel like I just got home. And I feel…’ That rush. I was young, good looking and loving the heady cocktail of excitement and safety that finding your people brings. Being gay was the best thing in my life. In many ways it still is.
Oh, the parties! The beauty! The humour! The culture! Drag! Pop! Camp! Lesbians! According to facts, all the funniest and most interesting people in the world are gay. All the best-dressed people are gay. We have the best sex. The nicest homes. We are the most emotionally smart and intellectually evolved. Why would anyone be straight?
If this brazen hubris makes you uncomfortable, it’s worth considering that we’re more familiar with the idea of ‘gay shame’ than of ‘queer joy’. There are so many tragic stories of LGBTQ people leading unfulfilled lives. I’ve lost count of the movies and novels where the lesbian character dies at the end. I wanted to subvert all these sad tropes in my debut novel This Love.
Iknow that it’s rare to have such an uncomplicated relationship with otherness. I was born into a family that made it easy for me to be myself. I grew up a short bus ride from the centre of queer city life, and I went to a state school where I was one of a number of gay and bisexual teenagers. I’ve met enough other LGBTQ people, with very different stories, to appreciate my privileges.
I’ve always seen my sexuality as a kind of magic power. I’m not just ‘proud’, I’m really pleased I was born this way.
The portal to queer Narnia was first opened by my best school friend, Will, who had come out as gay when he was just 14. Through him, I was introduced to the kind of world most people only discover once they’ve left home. In year nine, we started going to an LGBTQ youth group in Hackney. It didn’t take long to be swept up into a scene of nascent drag queens, baby butch lesbians, wannabe twinks and boys
