Backpacker Culture

Me: “Ya, our hostel in Hobart was right next door to a gay club. Then, in Launceston, the downstairs bar of the hostel was hosting some sort of homo-night.”

Alicia: “Hahaha, wow, Australia must be your gay awakening!”

Me: “Um, ya...well not yet...”

Alicia: “What do you mean?”

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There's an odd balance between the backpacking experience and being gay.

As a backpacker, when you arrive somewhere new, as a complete stranger to the place and people, you meet lots of other travelers from different parts of the world. You’re eager to make friends, talk, hangout and so are they; you’re all in the same boat.

For the most part it’s all amazing. You share your experiences with one-another and also talk about your own little part of the world. Often you poke fun of one-another’s stereotypes: for example the French, Belgians and Swiss love to say how funny and cute the French Canadian accent is when speaking French.

I wanted to makeout with the German on the left.

When it comes to sharing your own experiences though, I only go so far. I hold back the parts of "My ex used to say that all the time. He would..." because people are offput by the idea that your gay. They want to meet new people and have fun, but most often you want to find people that are different in a non-threatening way. Who wants to put effort into challenging their own preconceptions of gay people when they can just ignore the gay person and instead take some shots with the hilarious British guys.

Has this bothered me much? Well, not really....but it's still there.

I've had opportunities to check out a local gay bar, but because I rented a car with some backpackers, I opted to hangout with them instead of walking away and risk explaining to them why they later saw me grinding with some guy. Would I really want to feel the tension of sitting in a car with 3 other people that feel awkard around me? Oh course not. Don't get the wrong, those temporary travel mates were awesome but I knew by their jokes that they weren't going to feel completely as ease with a gay guy.

The Dutch, the Swiss, the Italian

Would my view of this be different if I wasn't traveling alone but instead with a friend from back home? Who knows.

The Day It Stopped and the Day I Started

If you think waayyyyyyyy back to the beginning of my blog, I mentioned that I used to periodically get, what I call, intense depressive attacks. I suffered these episodes from about the ages of 17 to 22 and they happened every one to three weeks, or so. I attempted to describe what I felt exactly during these episodes in this post. I don't know what any of you think of it, but I am very proud and really like how I stylistically wrote that old post.

That 17 to 22 age range is a relevant number. The age of 17 corresponds to when I first started, ever so slightly, to not bury away my gayness deep-down inside of me. If you recall, that's when I first started CEGEP and began testing the potential for coming-out to my new friends. The age of 22, on the other hand, corresponds to the day when I finally had an epiphany. This post is about that moment of clarity.

Let us first backtrack to an evening in February of 2008 (about 1 year ago), the day before the conversation that led to this epiphany. That night I had a depressive attack. I pretty much stayed in my room the whole night. The episode was just like the others: untrue thoughts and irrational feelings, that in the moment felt like indubitable truths. I felt intense sadness and fear over the fact that I knew my family would erase me from their memory when they discovered I was gay. At the same time, there was so much rage inside me because I knew my closest of friends didn't respect me and could never accept me for who I really am. As a whole, I knew I was the only person who was like this and that somehow this was a well-deserved punishment. For this time, the outside world didn't exist; I was alone, as I brooded and wallowed in my emotions and teary eyes.

There's no real point of getting into the nonsense of that above stuff now, because it's only in the deluded, depressive moments that any of that could make perfect sense.

Let's now fast forward to the next day, when I'm sitting in a car with Fiona and another friend. We had just finished catching lunch together. Our mutual other friend was giving us both a lift back to our respective homes.

The event of the night before was still in my mind. The intensity, the emotions, and, surprisingly, the awareness that I shouldn't be thinking like that. Up until then, I had never really mentioned my depressive attacks before to anyone, but I wanted to say something to get some opinions over something I thought I needed.

Me: I don't know really know how to say any of this... There have been these things bothering me lately...and I don't like it. I get into these sort of mini depressions. I know it's not normal and I'm tired of feeling like this. I think I want to see a psychologist or psychiatrist so that I can get some help.

This was definitely a new situation for myself, the driver and the other passenger in the car. I wasn't sure how to express my thoughts, without exploding out at all of them all at once and I know that neither Fiona or our other friend was used to me saying something like this.

The friend who was driving, decided to pull the car over to the parking lane and turn to look at me. Don't let her nameless status typecast her as unimportant in this memory, because he words are key.

Friend: Do you really feel that your problems are so bad that you really can't speak to any of your friends and instead need to seek out a stranger?

That is the moment when it hit me.

I was always reserved about my sexuality and problems. From the first time I came-out, to the last person to know. The vast majority of times that I spoke about any related topic to homosexuality, it was always others asking me questions and me trying to find the words to describe what I felt. Don't get me wrong, I made lots of progress over the years, with different people, but I was always holding myself back. For 5 years, my friends were always having to fish out answers from me. At the same time, the resounding things that many of them told me was always along the lines of I'm Okay with who you are and I just want to know you. From Fiona, to Liz, to Alicia, to Tim, to Xav, to Mike and to countless others who's names I have never said. All they wanted was for me to be comfortable in my body and to just share my worries, likes and musings in relation to my gayness. Whether laughing over the awkward moment I had with a crush or consoling my worries about my family, the only thing they had asked me to do was tell them.

It wasn't this specific friend that made the difference, but her words put the final Click into my mind: I just need to talk with my friends.

So for the first time, in that car, I talked about my depressive attacks. I told them how insane each episode felt and how it did mirror my real fears. And then I spoke to them about other problems I had been having recently. And then I told them about the awkward and hilarious hook-up I had before Christmas. And then I told them about anything else I had held back.

And then when I got home, I found Alicia online and I retold her everything that was said in the car. And later that night, I met up with Xav, Tim and Mike and told them all as well.

Since the epiphany that day, I've never had another depressive attack. I still have high days and low days, but I consider those normal. My comfort with sharing my gayness has skyrocketed since that day, because I stopped looking for clear moments when my friends were obviously interested in hearing about "gay things". I don't undercut myself, by thinking that they don't want to hear about this... I just say what I want now, and I know they like to hear about it.

Reminisce

My ex and I met up a while ago, to "have coffee and talk". Neither of us drinks coffee but we both like using the saying. It was really enjoyable: catching up on each others' happenings and reminiscing. We dated about a year and a half ago, and our break-up was more due to circumstance than one of us losing interest in the other. There were no hurt feelings in the end, so that didn't dampen the situation. We had a happy 3.5 months together.


Talking with him then, I realize that our personalities, lives and interests are so incredibly different. It was probably one of the points of why we were so into each other, but realistically it would probably have been a reason why we would later break up, if he had not moved away. He came from a hippy-family, all grown-up. By comparison, my family was the Anglo-Saxon stereotype. We sparked each others' interests because we found each other radical different. Openly out to his friends and family since 14 (!), queer people had been a normal family topic for him. For myself, I had never even gotten accustomed to my brothers even mentioning they had girlfriends in front of my parents, so when my ex wasn't bothered by public displays of affection (PDA), clearly I had something to learn and get used to.

Anyway, our conversation showed me that it was obvious to me we had little in common as friends. All his friends were very much gay, queer or some division under that umbrella. You should all realize by now that my own friends are pretty much all straight men and women. It was an actual utmost reminder that I've never personally understood people who have been able to remain friends with people they've had relationships with. I would love to still hangout with my ex, but we really have nothing to even talk about in terms of mutual likes. It wasn't like that when we were dating but now it was all different. By the end of our 50 minute talk, we were just done. Nothing else to share.


I do admire those people, especially the gay ones. I've said this once before: dating all the gay guys you know leads to never having any gay friends. It's true, although I wish it weren't so. Apart from being both guys and gay, my ex and I really had nothing else in common. Our interest, hangouts, ideas of good times don't overlap at all. It's unfortunate really, but at least I accept it.

With my previous group of gay friends, including my gay ex-roomie, we slowly stopped hanging out. I didn't get it at the time but it slowly became obvious. Beyond being gay, we just had nothing to say to each other (or at least that was true for me). As fun as it was to go to bars, drink and dance, if you have nothing to talk about it gets boring.

There are still a lot of fond memories of my ex and I, in my mind. I would love to post pictures of him, unfortunately I only have a handful and none of them do justice to his hotness. Shaved head with brown hair, green eyes, stubble if he chose to let it grow and a body that he didn't even realize was super fit and muscly. Really, a guy who doesn't realize how sexy, cute and perfect they are is the best kind. I would be lying if I didn't say I liked the sex, but also the general physical contact too. Just normal touching, hugging and physical contact makes me really happy.

Maybe I'm getting a bit to explicit for my own comfort, but I loved walking up to him and hugging his from behind. I would get an instant hard-on as I pressed my chest against his back, wrapping my arms around him and holding him close. My dick would be at the perfect height to slide up and down, between the curves of his ass. I could also kiss him on the shoulder and neck - starting from lower down and then moving up. That would always make him give this little moan that was so cute and such a turn on. He would turn his head around and I could kiss him on the lips, pushing my groin a little harder into his ass. Oh, that felt so good.
When lying down though, the feeling would be 10 times better.


He is the number 1 reason why I got comfortable with guys I am romantically linked to (the few at least). Public touching, kissing and talking about "gay things" were huge no-nos in my mind before. I would go into my "state of alert" when he used to kiss me on the cheek in public, just in case there was a potential threats nearby. I would always feel anxious when walking with him, as if people could see I was gay. After all, I definitely didn't want people to identify me as gay. But now...I just don't care. It's become normalized and relaxed with me, for the most part. There's no need to care (at least in this city). It's so much better now. As Alicia once told me:

"I'm so happy to be back in Montreal! In my first hour of being back in town, I got offered a free shot of tequila, had some guy offer my weed and then saw two guys making out on the street corner. Oh Montreal...

Eventually, my ex and I hugged and went our separate ways. He's a good person. I have no doubt he'll find someone good for him.

They Impress Me Again

I've always been somewhat protective and careful of my sexuality when around one of my main group of friends. Tim and Mike are two members of this greater group of people. It's a way of acting that I've always had around the group, even though they know I'm gay. It's nothing in the realm of me pretending I'm straight - no, nothing like the old me. I don't know why I'm like this with them in particular; it probably has a lot to do with me knowing the core of the group since highschool. I've briefly written about these people in one of the first WindsThatYouRise blog posts, here.

Around them, I kind of just let my sexuality take a backseat. I don't really bring it up, but if they ask me something specific, I won't hesitate to talk about it. Mike and Tim are exceptions to this, since we're real close (today, I freely tell them anything about some guy I like or my personal issues regarding sexuality). Anyway, when the group all starts talking about something related to gay people or homosexuality, I typically just listen in to what they have to say. I find it pretty interesting to see what they think, since I don't usually jump in to impose my view (which personally usually I think is right). This way I also feel like I'm learning what they really think about gay-related things and people.

From what I've heard from them recently, my feelings are a little mixed, but in general I'm really happy with them.

For a long time, I've wondered if this group of friends is accepting of gay people in general or if their acceptance of homosexuality only extends to me as an exception. It's kind of like saying I like Obama, but I hate black people. I know that none of them really talk about other gay people they know, assuming they know any. I also know that although I'm not some super, macho guy, I'm not really representative of the gay stereotype either. Because of that, the group might not even think of me as "truly gay", but instead an exception, like with the Obama example.

Although I haven't heard it recently, a few of them used to like to say "well that's gay!" when talking about something stupid (I would murder the kid who first thought of that expression, if I could). Tim even used to say that, although recently he once said it, and I just looked right at him and stared him in the eyes. He then looked really nervous and said You know I don't mean it as an insult to gay people, but just to mean something stupid, right? I just kept starring at him. He has never said it since.

This group of friends had dinner at a restaurant last week. During the dinner, the topic of gay marriage, the US-ban on gay marriage, coming-out, and the origin of homosexuality came up. I swear, I had no hand in introducing these topics. Like usual, I kind of listened in and let them state their own opinions and differences, although they would all eventually look at me waiting for some sort of comment "from the expert", since clearly if I'm gay I know everything *I roll my eyes*. Their general consensus was that they all thought:

• it was pretty pathetic to ban gay marriage, since it was ruining two peoples' chance to be happy.

This view isn't too odd, since we're all a young generation of people and Quebecois notoriously tend to live together as couples, have kids and never bother to get married, since there's a general dislike for organized religion, in particular Evangelicals and the Catholic Church.

• being gay is purely genetic.

Being a biology major, I'm actually against this view. I think it's a combination of environment and genes working together. After all, if one identical twin is gay, the other only has a ~50% likelihood of also being gay (there are problems with the study, but anyway...) Of course, by environment I mean it's something that happened in the mother's womb or before the age of conscious thought in the baby. The idea that they all believed being gay was purely genetic is probably a weight on the their opinions for these other topics.

• it's sad that there are some adults (they focuses particularly on men in their examples) who lie to themselves and their families all their lives, to eventually come-out at the age of 40 or above.

This really interested me, because they kind of ignored the alternate viewpoint of the other spouse. When I think of this type of situation, I feel sad for both the gay person and for the wife/husband who genuinely did love their spouse, only to discover he/she is gay. A little part of me is even mad at the closeted person, because they've made someone else's life a lie. I would expect straight people to empathize more with the straight spouse, "who was lied to", than the gay person. In the conversation though, my friends only really thought of the person coming-out at a later age, and how terrible it must be to have been dishonest to themselves for so long. They kind of saw it as a life with wasted potential, since he/she spent so much time hiding and running from what he/she wanted.

It seemed that my guys friends were much more into the conversation than my lady friends. I found that the women were much more quiet, but that's also because their attention was focused on my friend's really cute 10 month old baby, who was trying to grab a knife and stick it in his mouth. He's a good kid - I hope he makes it to the age of 2.

Maybe it's the laziness in me, but I like that I don't need to be a preacher with this group of friends, or any of my friends in particular. Obviously, they say some off-comments sometimes or opinions that come straight from idiocy, but I look at them and usually tell them how I actually think it is. Maybe my presence as a gay person has changed their opinions or maybe they've always thought like this (pfffft, ya right...) or maybe they've matured with age. Either way, I'm pretty lucky.