Beautifully Unexpected

by Lily Morton

“Denmark was rather different,” I say. “Much more relaxed. It was the first country in the world to legally recognise same-sex registered partnerships. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I lived with artists who were thoroughly relaxed about everything. Then I was sent to live here, and I was horrified. I was suddenly a teenager at a single-sex boarding school who knew he liked other boys, and I was living in a country where homosexuality wasn’t spoken about and then it was even banned from being discussed in schools. Like we were fucking criminals. Then came AIDS, and to some bigots, we were actually fucking lepers. Don’t get me wrong, I was a little young to experience the worst, but I do remember seeing the hatred and the abuse.” I sigh. “It was terrifying for a teenager who knew he was gay. I won’t forget it, and I refuse to live according to the ideas of narrow-minded bigots. They don’t get a say in my life, and they never will. They need to look to their own lives. They must be quite narrow if they’re so obsessed with what grown adults do in their own beds.”