Canned

As I was chatting with some friends in the office, someone else walked past and said ‘it smells like a fish canning factory around here.’ It was amongst the oddest comments I’ve heard at work, but it was amusing. I checked and didn’t personally have a fishy scent.

I had dinner with my gorgeous friend Nelson, who I’ve reconnected with on this trip. We have talked a lot about the psyche of gay men and relationships. Volumes and tomes could be written about this subject. My view is that until non-heterosexuality is completely normalised in society so a child is surrounded by positive messages about it from the moment of birth, people who identify as anything other than heterosexual run the risk of having a romantic life that’s not fully embedded in other parts of their life.

This experience is exacerbated for people who only discover their true sexuality relatively late, and for whom talking about relationships and emotions isn’t instilled young as the norm.

I feel like being gay involves a measure of secretiveness and separation that others don’t have to endure. And that’s not at all confined to places where homosexuality is outlawed. As a benchmark measure it’s where two men can’t walk around holding hands without self-consciousness or staring. And where they can do that may only be in limited locations worldwide.

I think we all have a responsibility to proactively normalise two gay men holding hands, and if you think about how often you notice this as you go about your business, there’s a long way to go.

It was a lot to chew over as Nelson and I ate salmon and pasta.