This weekend, London’s G-A-Y bar will close. Its owner, Jeremy Joseph, says he is sad but Soho is losing its LGBTQ+ identity and he must concentrate on his nightclub, Heaven. The news is leading many to predict the death of the queer scene, not just in the capital but across the UK.
If this happens, I’ll be devastated. Having grown up in the 1980s as a bullied outsider in a small town in the north of England, the queer scene saved my life. My first experience of it was in Manchester’s Gay Village, in a bar called Manto that would later become G-A-Y’s northern outpost. This was a rite of passage. I felt excited, fascinated and aroused, but also terrified. I’d been told terrible things about gay men – that we were perverted, disease-carrying sexual predators – and part of me still believed them. The scene helped me shake off that shame, and even more so when I moved to London.
