Ahead of the first Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs forum of 2017, Patrick Cash writes about beginnings, from gay boxing to self-worth.
I remember where I was when Ian Baynham died.
I was working at a gay bar on Frith Street. It was one of the regulars – the ex-Army chef, I believe – who announced there’d been a gay bashing in Trafalgar Square. “Teenagers,” he breathed over his cider. “Punched him to the ground, then she did him in.” Joel Alexander’s punch caused the fall that knocked 62-year-old Banyham unconscious, but it was Ruby Thomas who screamed ‘fucking faggots’ as she stamped on his head. Police found his blood on her ballet pumps.
This was 2009. We boys behind the bar heard the news, said how dreadful it was, then returned to layering our blowjob shots; to the safety of which men we’d kissed and who we’d like to kiss. It’s funny how your consciousness protects you from emotional trauma. It’s only now, almost eight years later, that I realise fully how much that news affected me that night. For I’ve returned to Ian Baynham’s death again and again in my writing, in my thoughts and my fears.
Any homophobic killing is confirmation of our enemies. Enemies we’ve never even met, who we don’t even remember making. So when a man walked into that same bar in late 2010, and asked me if I wanted to begin gay boxing classes, perhaps it was that subconscious memory that lead me to say ‘yes’. Dermot was in his early 30s and had been a boxer himself until an injury. He instructed me to meet him on the Monday night at the Scala in King’s Cross.
So it was on the same dancefloor where I’d met my first boyfriend that I threw my first punch. Though now rather than laughing gas and queer indie riffs, it was filled only with Dermot, his boxing pads and a disparate straggle of nervous gays. But it was brilliant. The swing of the arm; the satisfying ‘thud’ as glove met pad; learning to twist the foot because the power stems from the leg. Then Dermot revealed his bolt from the blue: he wanted us to do a boxing show.
Yes, Pink Collar Boxing was to be the UK’s first ever gay boxing show in April 2011. That gave us about six months’ training to fight in front of a paying audience. However much I enjoyed the training, few prospects have filled me more with fear. It was not a fear of being hit, nor a fear of pain, nor even a fear of losing, but a deeper, more ingrained fear: that I deserved to lose. A fear that I was somehow, deep down, not right, and whoever I fought was.
Yet I did it. I did it because Dermot practically begged me to – at 23 I was the youngest and most malleable – and because somewhere along the line I’ve acquired an antidote mantra to that fear: “If it scares you, do it.” And of course the fight itself was fine: the lights blazing down on us, the crowd screaming, the sweat trickling through the head guard, the yearning to hear the bell as the lactic acid ate through limbs. In the end, both our hands were raised.
That all blazed into adrenaline. It was the dark-rooted, terrifying anxiety before the fight that revealed aspects of myself long hidden: how I imagined confidence was approaching the guy I wanted for sex in a club, when really it was a rope far more tangled with self-worth at my soul. I’m still working out these issues. Last November I blacked out drunk and came round without my phone and wallet. When I’d annihilated myself to vulnerability, boxing was no protection.
So I’ve begun another prospect that filled me with fear: I’ve given up drinking. I’m acclimatising myself to talking about my weaknesses, because sometimes it takes the strongest man to let himself be weak. And I’ve renewed my boxing training. I don’t box to seek out fights, but should I be attacked for holding my boyfriend’s hand in Trafalgar Square, perhaps I can soberly defend my right to do so and know that in doing so I am, and always will be, right.
Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs – Beginnings is on Thursday 12 January from 6.30pm at Ku Klub, 30 Lisle Street, WC2H 7BA.
Entry is free and all are welcome.
For more details about Knockout London LGBT Boxing Club, visit knockoutlondon.org.uk.
Recommended for you
