He declined to be interviewed in person. He says he comes from a fairly wealthy white family.

Like almost everyone else, I went in for a certain amount of the homosexual experimentation inherent in the all-male boarding school environment and common in most other environments. Like all my friends I thought little of it, assuming it to be quite normal and `just a phase' -- as it was for most of the rest.

Indeed, I went on to university quite oblivious of my sexual orientation.My rather practical mind saw the pointlessness of `getting involved' when I was going to have to spend several years away. Like everyone else home for vacations, I went to dances, flirted and the rest of it. I had a series of girlfriends.

It wasn't until I was involved in a more serious relationship that I began to realise that nothing was quite ticking. Even then, because of the closed nature of the Bermuda scene and the lack of anything at all in the way of available information, it never occured to me that I was gay. I hardly knew what gay was beyond some sort of unmentionable horror that people never talked about.

With hindsight, I now know that there were other gays in my remoted family.

They were ignored or treated very much as though they were incompetent and insane. They were certainly social outcasts.

I think if I had been aware enough to realise that I was gay at a younger age I would have been driven mad by it. The horror with which I had been, however unconsciously, brought up to regard homosexuality would probably have driven me to suicide -- as it still does many other teenagers. When it finally dawned on me, in New York, that I was `one of those', it was a sickening, devastating realisation the memory of which the years haven't dimmed. I can only imagine that a comparable experience would be to be told that one has incurable cancer or more appropriately, leprosy.

Anyone who has lived through a similarly destructive piece of self-recognition will know that homosexuality is not a lifestyle that anyone chooses. It is something that however hard one may try, one cannot avoid. To suggest otherwise is to deny the homosexual even sub-normal intelligence.

Today most people recognise their homosexuality at a much earlier age than was the case a generation or two ago. This must have special problems of its own, but on the whole it is a climate that seems preferable to the terrifying isolation in which I remember finding myself.

There may be few people designed for celibacy; I was not one of them. There was, however, nothing much to be done about it in the Bermuda I lived in back then. At first, I barely knew the very few `role models' available at the time and wouldn't have known they were gay anyway. If there was a gay community I wasn't aware of it and wouldn't have dared seek it out anyway. So deeply rooted was my horror of myself that it took years of brief hole-in-corner relationships in other countries before it began to dawn on me that I was stuck with my life had to live it according to my own standards, not according to standards set by those who had absolutely no concept ot all of my situation.

I have never discussed my sexuality with my family, who must by now be fully aware of it. Some of them seem to have a problem with it, others seem not to.

I cannot be bothered one way or the other. If they have a problem with it, it's their problem, not mine. Similarly, my friends must be aware of it. They are still my friends. Many have no doubt at all and are also entirely supportive. They are those for whom I care enough not to wish to hold back an integral part of myself. Presumably, there are others who avoid me because they do have a problem. Again, it is their problem, not mine. It probably never occurs to them that they are doing me a favour.

I still cannot describe to myself, still less put down on paper for others to read, the years of my youth given over to self torture because I couldn't come to emotional grips with the inescapable fact that I was `one of those'.

Slowly, however, I discovered that the gay world consisted of more than the tortured and tawdry. There were men of talent, ability and integrity who had cometo grips with their inner demons and gone on to real achievments. Now of course, many such men are admired public figures, even in Bermuda, but a generation or two ago, whether people thought they knew or not, their sexual orientation was never mentioned.

It has been a long rough road, one I could have made smoother and shorter had I known then what I know now. Fortunately for the current generation they have information and help that was unavailable to mine.

RG MAGAZINE MARCH 1993