Queer Me!
Halfway Between Flying and Crying
by Tim Trent
Tim discovers to his horror at 13 that he has fallen deeply in love with another 13 year old boy. The coming of age story of a shy queer teenager in the Swinging Sixties in the UK, this true story is the dramatised diary of Tim's teenage school days. The emotional ride starts on his 13th birthday on the 5th of August 1965, in a grey coast town in North Wales while he still is certain he's heterosexual, and ends as he leaves school in December 1970 aged 18.
His parents never understood who he was, never realised he had insecurities, was failing, was in love, was afraid of them, that he needed help. They told themselves he was a perfect China Doll. Queer China Dolls were faulty. In his family faulty China Dolls were smashed. This is the UK when homosexuality was first illegal; then, in the days leading up to its legalisation for consenting adults in the UK in 1967, it was talked about in parliament and the press as abhorrent, a perversion, an abomination.
These were bleak times to be a gay teenager, yet Tim shows his hopes and fears throughout. The places are real, so are the boys. The names are changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.
His parents never understood who he was, never realised he had insecurities, was failing, was in love, was afraid of them, that he needed help. They told themselves he was a perfect China Doll. Queer China Dolls were faulty. In his family faulty China Dolls were smashed. This is the UK when homosexuality was first illegal; then, in the days leading up to its legalisation for consenting adults in the UK in 1967, it was talked about in parliament and the press as abhorrent, a perversion, an abomination.
These were bleak times to be a gay teenager, yet Tim shows his hopes and fears throughout. The places are real, so are the boys. The names are changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.
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