The truth about the Hogmanay kiss

Twenty-five years ago, my life changed for ever.

Photo by Chris Flexen on Unsplash

In November 2013, my partner had a serious, and lengthy, operation that saved his life. He spent the following weeks recovering, which mostly involved sleeping. That New Year’s Eve would be the first in a long while that I hadn’t spent out out. I didn't mind, really; it was a relief, in a way, to check out of the anxiety of making plans, shivering on kerbs waiting for taxis, of the impending hangover. In the early evening, I watched my boyfriend sleep soundly on his sofa and I sat in his black armchair.

In the fairly sedate Chiswick street where my boyfriend lived, I could hear people beginning to leave their houses to head to meet friends, or the first rumblings of New Year parties starting up in delightful kitchen extensions, but inside his flat, it was utterly quiet, save for his gentle sighing as he slept and halting, light clunking rhythm of the central heating. I felt strangely optimistic and wistful and I started thinking of New Years past. Some of them had been endurance tests, days-long benders, stomach hurting from laughing. There had been the odd drama, too. But one had been seismic. It had happened a whole sixteen years earlier, I’d never really told many people about it and, surprisingly maybe, never written it down. I thought it was too personal, that I might give too much of myself away (I was writing anonymously at the time) and that it was too late, the moment had gone. But New Year’s Eve is essentially an annual funeral for your memories; long-gone moments become timeless and demand your attention again.

As uncomfortable as I am with nostalgia, and certainly reluctant to discuss this particular event in person, I took myself back to that New Year in 1997 – a Hogmanay, in fact, as it happened in Scotland. It sounds strange, maybe, but regressing sixteen years to a time that felt like it belonged to somebody else was the perfect escapism from what had been a grim year. Without stopping even to get up and go the loo or refill my glass, I tapped away as gently as possible on my laptop – a struggle, I am a clattering typist – trembling, my heart racing, and every nerve-end tingling as I wrote. And when it was written, I read it back just once, found an old rights-free image on Flickr to illustrate it, and hit publish, tweeting it out and breathing a sigh of relief to have finally put it into words.

The night that changed everything. The night of my first gay kiss.

And here it is again.