Confessions of a Gay Overeater: ‘My body was a manifestation of my inner shame’

“Je Suis Fatty Gay..”Je Suis Fatty Gay is an anonymous contributor who, every month in Attitude, takes us on a very personal journey that began in the closet – and the fridge. You can read his last column online here – this is the third instalment…

In my final year of primary school, aged 10 years old, I had a crush on Gary Burrows, the boy I sat next to in class. I was drawn to his goofy grin and piercing blue eyes, hidden by a ridiculously floppy blonde fringe. That term, someone in class had introduced us to ‘Nervous’– the game where you put your hand on someone’s leg, moving it up or down toward their groin until they decide to shout ‘nervous’  – meaning you have to stop. Of course, when I got to play it with Gary, I didn’t want to stop. My hand curiously continued to linger on his thigh for a while after he’d called it. Feeling awkward that I’d outstayed my welcome, I sheepishly took my hand away. No doubt he sensed I was getting more out of it than he was, and he didn’t seem up for returning the favour. And that was that. We only ever played the game once. I retreated back to crushing on him from a distance – with Peter Cetera’s Glory Of Love playing in my head over and over.

The next thing I knew, out of the blue, a day later, my headmaster, Mr Martin, called my parents to arrange a meeting at my house. I made no connection with it being anything to do with Gary, and wondered why he was coming to my home. This was a different kind of nervous. The minute he walked into my home the following evening, I sensed something was terribly wrong. In military style, he marched into the front room with my mum and dad, shutting the door in my face, completely ignoring me. What was this all about?

Eavesdropping outside, my heart was racing. Then, I heard it: “I have reason to believe your son is a HO-MO-SEXUAL”. Gary had told his mum that I had ‘touched’ him, and she had freaked, fearing that I might have infected him with AIDS. I was frozen, couldn’t move. I felt sick. I was found out. I had nowhere to run. It was over. My parents would disown me and throw me out. My entire childhood was about to disappear. I was called into the room where Mr Martin, a small man in stature, seemed to tower over my parents like a giant, who sat on the sofa looking tiny and disheveled. I collapsed into an empty armchair, crying, shaking and spluttering. Mr Martin didn’t waste any time. “Are YOU a HOMMO-SEXUAL?” he boomed. I couldn’t answer, so he went on. “Because you’ll have a very lonely and unhappy life if you are. And you’ll get AIDS”. I continued to weep, so he asked me again. I denied it of course, but that didn’t change anything. My world had already fallen apart.

I don’t remember much more about that night. It’s all a blur to me. I reckon I unconsciously pushed the whole thing down because I couldn’t process what was happening. How on earth could I? I was only ten years old. And what better way to keep all those feelings down than with food. I was already eating sweets and chocolates to feel better about being bullied. This of course was never a conscious decision – it just seemed to happen. But after that night, something broke inside me, and I transgressed the boundaries of normal eating into full on compulsive over eating. There was no longer a line between the two; I had no off-button. Normal eating became overeating and I lost control. I couldn’t stop.  People thought I was greedy but it was more need than greed; I ate to sedate. I ate to survive. I feverishly got my hands on whatever food I could, whenever I could.  I no longer knew what physical hunger was, because I was always hungry – yet not for the food itself. I was craving to fill the void. The more I ate, the more I craved and I seemed powerless to control my hand-to-mouth action. It was like I was being physically taken over. I was possessed.

By the time I started secondary school at 11, I was verging on 11 stone. My weight increased year-on-year to match my age. Looking back through photos, you can clearly see my transformation from a normal looking child, to a chubby kid, into an overweight teen and finally, settling on a clinically obese man. I was Jabba-the-Hut, and my disfigured body was merely a manifestation of my inner shame and discomfort.

Gary and I ended up in the same secondary school, where my crush continued. On the coach, during a school trip, he very publically told my class what had happened the year before. Ashamed, I burst in to tears and denied it all.  But no one believed me. With the odds against me, I retreated further back into the food to numb my feelings. My teens were just around the corner, and in order to survive them, I would have to change. From that moment, I became the class-clown in a hope that if I made them laugh I wouldn’t have to cry ever again.

Share your own story with us as jesuisfattygay@attitude.co.uk.

You can read the latest instalment of ‘Je Suis Fatty Gay’ in the current issue of Attitude – available in shops now, to order in print from newsstand.co.uk and digitally from attitudedigital.co.uk.

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