Naturally Tan Page 4

  Bam! Tricked ya, bitch. I thought I was so smart (insert eye-roll emoji).

  I actually got a really good grade—I got a B plus, which was shocking because when it came to the arts, I thought I was a very strong F student, and I prided myself on my consistency. That B plus was very exciting for me. But because I felt so nervous, and because I had given away my secret, I decided not to go back to drama class the following year.

  Looking back, it wasn’t just the singing, dancing, and acting that were problems. From the moment I arrived at performing arts class, I always felt like I didn’t really belong. I was one of the first brown people in my town to do it, as people in my community generally discouraged performing arts. My family at least wanted me to do whatever was going to make me happy—as long as I was willing to balance it out with something academic. When you enroll in sixth form, you have to choose three subjects, so I chose psychology, sociology, and performing arts. As long as I was pursuing something in the medical field, they were happy to entertain my ludicrous fantasy, all the while knowing, for them, psychology was the goal.

  Still, when I arrived at the first day of class and saw that there were no other brown people, I thought, Something is weird here. The other kids were also wealthy and very cliquey. My town had a few different parts to it—a working-class part of town, where I lived, and a part with much nicer homes—all of which were represented in my high school. The kids in the performing arts class were the fancy kids who had taken ballet and music classes their entire lives. They all knew each other already, and I felt very much excluded. No one was ever mean to me, but they clearly had no interest in being associated with me.

  My own very short foray into music was the violin when I was eleven. There was a successful violinist at the time called Vanessa Mae, who I thought was so talented, and I wanted to be able to play the violin like she did. Her take on pop violin really was my weird preteen jam.

  It had been so difficult to convince my dad to let me do it. The violin itself was expensive, and we didn’t have a lot of disposable income. And the classes themselves cost a lot. More importantly, I’m sure my dad was hyperaware of what a complete lazy shit I was and that there was no way on God’s green earth that I would commit to learning a new skill. I swore that I was going to excel at it, and it would be great for university applications.

  About two classes in, I thought, Holy fuck, I’ve made the biggest mistake. My dad is going to kill me. I stopped taking the classes, but because I didn’t want to deal with the confrontation of telling my family, I continued to pretend I was still going.

  My dad passed away very shortly afterward, before he found out I was quitting the violin, so I never got in trouble for it. If I remember correctly, horribly, I used it as a good time to announce to my mother that I was going to quit the violin, so I was able to bury that nugget along with everything else that was going on at that time.

  But performing arts class wasn’t entirely bad. Even though the majority of the kids were different from me, it was there that I first noticed there was another gay student at our school. He never mentioned it directly to me, but he was rather effeminate and loved a Judy song. He was the first person I got to know who was gay. At least, I think he was gay. Maybe he was just a very effeminate straight guy. No, he made a killer friendship bracelet. His fucking bracelet-making skills were insane, yo. He had to have been gay.

  Everyone in class was very loving with him. They were kind and inclusive and laughed at his jokes. And the more flamboyant he was, the more people enjoyed him. He was the first person I encountered where I thought, Oh, shit, I’m not the only one in school. I knew there were other gay people out there in the world at large, but in our school, I hadn’t known anyone else. They were all clearly doing what I was doing (even if it was not quite convincing). Playing it straight. I had thought I was very much alone, and it was nice to discover that I wasn’t.

  He and I never really spoke, as he was one of the kids from the other side of the tracks, but it comforted me to know that I was not alone at school.

  Recently, I was going through a pile of old belongings when I stumbled across my record of achievement, which is a folder containing your high school grades and certificates and records of your achievement that you’d present to each potential university or employer after graduation. I hadn’t seen it in decades. For part of it, you write a cover letter, and in my letter, the very last sentence is something along the lines of: “I want to study psychology and sociology at university, but my true passion has always been to be in show business. My hope is to be a host or a presenter on TV someday.”

  I hadn’t seen this since I wrote it at seventeen years old. Now I look back and say, “Who the fuck was that? Who wrote that?” I don’t remember writing it. I don’t even remember thinking it. I distinctly remember wanting to be Bollywood’s next answer to Tom Hanks, but a host? Still, it’s very bizarre that that’s where I’ve ended up. The weird thing is, I didn’t mention clothes or fashion design, which I so desperately wanted to get into. I find it strange that I left that out in favour of TV. Bollywood wasn’t meant to be, but it appears I always knew I was destined to wind up in entertainment.

  NOKIA 6210

  By the age of seventeen, it was clear that the performing arts were not my calling.

  But I knew that I loved fashion, and I decided to find a way to make that a thing. So after my first year, I dropped out of sixth form and signed up for fashion college in my hometown. I didn’t tell anyone what I was up to. I did it for a whole year before I had the courage to tell my family, “Guess what? I’m not going to sixth form anymore! I’m not doing something academic. I’m not going to be a doctor of anything. I’m going to fashion college.” I knew that news wouldn’t be well received, and I was right. In our culture, the only options are to be a doctor or lawyer. So I didn’t ask anyone’s permission before moving forward, because I knew they would say, “What can you possibly achieve with this?”

  It was the best thing I ever did. Within the first couple of months of attending the college, I’d gotten to know so many people. I had a crew of creative friends who were great. They were a little more flamboyant than other people I’d encountered, and there were loads of gay people at the college. None of them seemed to want to be my friend, but who cared? I had found my place. I loved my courses, and it felt like the right move for me.

  Still, I knew if I told my mum, she would try to get me to drop out. To tell my mum I had enrolled in this two-year fashion course was as bad as me saying, “I’ve gotten a girl pregnant.” It was such a big deal.

  Sure enough, when I broke the news to my family, they said, “Why are you choosing to do something creative? This is a course for girls! You can’t make a living out of this!” Some people are so concerned with their kids pursuing an arts course, like you’re just flitting through life if you’re doing something creative. Gone are the days where that mentality is even plausible. There are so many great creative roles out there where you can earn a truly good living. There is no reason to think this way.

  Back in the day, people saw art college as a risky move. I remember having a conversation with my whole family, sitting them down and saying, “You know me. You know I’m responsible. I don’t make decisions lightly. If I say I’m going to turn this into something, you know I’m doing it because I truly believe I can.”

  I assumed blood would be shed and I’d have to hide my family’s bodies in the backyard. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Although no one took it super well, they did all come around after a couple of days.

  That was always my way. I am very good at talking people around. It wasn’t manipulative; I was just a really good salesperson, and I could show them why my way was better. I think had I been from a stricter South Asian family, it would have been a problem, but my family was willing to let me see it through. When they saw how much effort I was putting in, they were really accepting.

  Still, I had been wise to wait to break the
news. If I had told them initially that I was dropping out and starting fashion school, I think they would have had a heart attack. You see, kids, sometimes lying is for the greater good.

  A lot happened to me at age seventeen. It was a really good year. I enrolled in fashion school and started something I wanted to do, I had a great-paying job for a seventeen-year-old, I got my first partner, and I traveled to New York for the first time. Fashion school is also where I came out for the first time.

  When I came out to my best friend, Kiri Pearson, it was a big moment for me, as it is for anyone. I had been dating a super nice guy from work called Dave. A few weeks into dating Dave, I was desperate to tell my best friend. I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. But I didn’t have the balls to tell her to her face. I tried so many times to say the words, but every time I got close, I started to feel like I’d throw up, so I’d bottle it.

  This was back in the day of the Nokia 6210, which is a tiny little phone where I could type out a text with one thumb and not even have to look. I would use it under the desk and compose a whole message with no mistakes. I didn’t have many skills in life at that time, but I was very proud of that one.

  One day we were in class, and I said via text, “I met someone! We’re dating.”

  She replied, “Oh my gosh, what’s her name?”

  I wrote back, “His name is Dave.”

  Without skipping a beat, Kiri said, “That’s wicked, tell me more about him.”

  And I felt this incredible sense of calm wash over me. She wasn’t treating me any differently. I turned to her, I gave her a hug, and then we gossiped like any friends do when you first start dating someone.

  I went home that night on top of the world. I could finally tell other people. I realized I could tell my friends, and they wouldn’t hate me, they wouldn’t judge me for it, they’d just accept me no matter what.

  I’d love to say that I told everyone in my life, and they were all happy and we all lived happily ever after, in our open-minded, loving world. But not all my friends were so great.

  I had two other close friends, both of whom I’d known for over ten years. I loved them and assumed they loved me unconditionally. After I started dating Dave, they decided to follow me one day after our friend hang, as I’d been rather evasive about why I’d been less available to get together. I only heard about this after the fact, but apparently, they trailed me home from school and hid across the road to see where I was going and watch whatever was about to happen. When I gave Dave a hug and kiss, they realized. The jig was up.

  These two friends were South Asian and were raised in homes with similar ideals to my own. They weren’t used to seeing gay people, and they didn’t know how to process this news. They stopped talking to me that day, and within days, I heard from a couple of mutual friends how disgusted they were and that they’d started to spread rumours. Immediately after they followed me, they started to tell people I was dating a guy, and more and more people began to find out.

  These girls had been my friends since I was seven years old—which, by age seventeen, was the majority of my life. They knew what their rumours would do to my reputation in my tiny South Asian community. I was heartbroken. I went home and cried. I didn’t want to leave the house for days, but when I finally did, I sought comfort in the friends who loved me unconditionally.

  They tried to call me a couple of times over this period, but I chose not to answer. I knew their comments would be mean. We’d never talked about gay people before, and I didn’t know what their feelings were. But once the rumours started, I knew.

  We never spoke again after that time, and I haven’t seen them since. I’ve never so much as run into them on the street. One of them tried to reach out via Facebook a few years ago. She tried to add me as a friend, and I rejected it immediately.

  I think the world has changed, and by now they’ve probably had more exposure to the gay community. When you’re seventeen or eighteen, you have opinions about everything, and sometimes those opinions change. But I was so hurt by them at the time that even if they have different views, I have no desire to hear that now. That’s for their new friends and family to benefit from; I have no desire.

  As more and more people heard the news, I was essentially dragged out of the closet, so I had no choice but to leave town. Thankfully, this all happened toward the very end of my fashion course, while my family and I were making a long-planned move to Manchester, so I was able to escape my small town before the rumors made their way to my home. I wasn’t quite ready for that conversation. Baby steps.

  SWEATPANTS

  When I was in college, I got an evening job at a call center. I would go to work Monday through Friday, straight after my classes, which is something I wish more students would do. It teaches you structure and responsibility, and it affords you some extra money to spend on new shoes.

  I had already been working there for a few months when one day, my friend was driving me to work. As we pulled up to the building, I saw this guy and his friend walking out the main doors. I remember thinking, Holy shit, who is that? He’s beautiful. He had fake-tan skin and blond hair and was dressed nicely (for that time, because the early 2000s weren’t known for great style moments) in a nice-fitting T-shirt and jeans. He was clearly on the daytime shift, as he was just leaving when I arrived. Just as quickly as I saw him, he was gone. But I kept thinking about him. I thought he was the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen in person.

  Just from the look of him, I could tell he was gay. There was something about him. Perhaps it was the way he saw me notice him. The first time he saw me, he looked back at me and smiled, and I thought, Ah, he’s gay, and It. Is. On. Or maybe it was all just wishful thinking? I didn’t know, but my gosh, I wanted to find out.

  The call center was large, with probably three hundred or four hundred people working there. The lower floor, where we worked, was full of rows and rows of these little cubicles, and the second floor had a balcony where you could look down onto the sea of them. The cubicles came up to about chest height, so when you sat in them, nobody could see you unless you stood up.

  I kept thinking about him and how I could find a way to talk to him, but I wasn’t going to act on it. For one, I wasn’t out to the world yet, and I was too scared of anybody knowing. But I needed to find a way to see him again. A few days later, I went to work early. I planned to hang out in the cafeteria and eat before my work started. But after I got my food, I strolled up and down the aisles, looking around like I was searching for something other than this guy. I was so smart and not completely obvious about it at all.

  Then he stood up. And I saw him.

  He was wearing his little headset, as he was on a call. We looked at each other and smiled.

  For the next month, I would go to work early every few days. I would stroll around looking for nothing in particular until Dave would stand up and smile. (For the record, his name isn’t actually Dave, but he was a generic white guy, and Dave sounds pretty generic to me, so there you have it.)

  And then I heard some gossip about him from somebody we both knew. They’d said that he was possibly going to have to move to another sales team, as people weren’t getting along with him. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was the only way I could think to have a conversation with him. So I wrote him a note, saying something along the lines of, “I need to talk to you about something being said about you. If you’d like to get together, here’s my mobile number.” I was so nervous walking up to his cubicle. As I walked down the row, a few people looked at me like, What the fuck are you doing in our pod? Finally, I got to his desk, where I basically dropped the note and ran. I felt like I was going to shart my entire organ structure out of my body right there and then.

  He didn’t text me for a couple of hours, even though I knew his shift was long over. I started to panic, thinking, What if he’s not gay and knows it was clearly a pickup? What if he told people at work and now everyone will know?

  Finally, I go
t a message. “Hey, it’s Dave. I’m interested to hear what you know.”

  I wrote back, “I’d rather talk in person.”

  He immediately responded, “Do you want to come over?”

  I was like, Fuck yeah I do.

  So I went to his apartment. I was so nervous. I was only seventeen. At twenty-two, he was a full-grown man. That felt like a big deal at the time. He lived in a large four-story house with a bunch of friends, including a couple of other gay guys. It was the first time I’d ever hung out with gay men.

  He took me straight up to his room, because it was his only personal space in the house. The room was super neat and tidy. That didn’t surprise me. He was really well kempt, so I assumed his home would be, too.

  I told him the gossip, which wasn’t a big deal. We established that he was gay and that I was gay. And then we kept talking. He had a sweet personality but was more direct than I was expecting, and he had a sassy side to him. He didn’t work out but was naturally in great shape, and I remember thinking his legs were great. And he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I had to stop myself from staring at them.

  I had my first kiss, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t anything too much—a slow, long kiss on the lips. The perfect, first, rated-PG kiss. By the end of the visit, it was around two in the morning. I had to go because I had college in the morning, but I told him I liked him and if he wanted to go out sometime, I would love that.

  We agreed to meet the next night. We continued to meet every night for the next few weeks, but it started out just at his apartment. Living in such a small town, I didn’t want to risk bumping into anyone I might know, so we usually just hung at his place with his friends. Then, a few weeks into our relationship, I started joining him and his friends on nights out to the bars and clubs in neighboring cities. It was all so new to me, and I didn’t think I liked it. I knew I had to go if I wanted to keep him in my life, as this was something he and his friends loved, but I only went to be a good partner. Don’t get me wrong—I sometimes had a blast. If the music was great (and by great, I mean ’90s hip-hop), I would tear up that goshdamn dance floor, but usually we went somewhere that only played club music, and so I would just hang at a table hoping for the night to be over. On the whole, I knew it wasn’t the life for me.