A moment that changed me

In looking for a suitable piece for my 'Garbage I wrote for the Guardian' series I came across this - and thought it quite sweet...

Jan tasted of Drambuie, smelt of Charlie perfume and, most importantly, was in the same gay club as me that chilly night in 1978

Me, aged 14

It was 23 December, 1978, and Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody was bouncing off the walls of the Casablanca club. I was only 16, too young to buy alcohol, so my friend David, camp as a row of tents in his bell-bottom Brutus jeans and tight cheesecloth T-shirt, and with tinsel around his neck, pushed his way to the bar to order two pints of lager and blackcurrant.

Maybe because it was Christmas, even the few straight men in the club looked gay. Spirits were high as the lesbians and gays danced and chatted, drowning out the dread of a closeted Christmas Day, during which relatives would ask the inevitable: “So, when will you be getting married?”

I had never been out in Newcastle before, and had travelled to the Toon from my home in Darlington with David, who worked in the same hair salon as me. Prior to that, I had been out only in Middlesbrough, where there was a small club that, once a week, admitted lesbians and gay men.

But on this occasion I had been persuaded to branch out and try to meet a nice girl to kiss under the mistletoe. My efforts at dating in the year I had been out as a lesbian had been somewhat unsuccessful. Aside from fiddling around a bit with a schoolfriend, on whom I had a massive crush – and who was off quicker than a rat up a drainpipe when we were “found out” – there had been only the odd snog in the back row of the cinema with unsuitable, self-hating lezzers I had met through the befriending section of Gay Times magazine.

It was not easy to be out and proud in the 1970s. It was perfectly understandable that the young women I met through Gay Times were scared and short on confidence. The stigma was intense, and being called “queer” and “dyke” in public kept us in a perpetual state of fear.

Meeting David in the salon meant I could have fun, as well as look for political activists. I was already a member of the north-east branch of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), and had been trying to meet feminist activists (which I finally managed the following year). All I needed to complete my life was a bit of romance.

Along we trolled to the Casablanca, passing Christmas party outings, carol singers, and groups of young men in shirt sleeves, despite the freezing weather. I saw a tall, red-haired woman look furtively around her before entering the premises. I could already hear loud disco music – maybe the Village People’s Macho Man, or Knock on Wood by Amii Stewart. What I do know is that Zing Went the Strings of My Heart when I bumped into the red-haired woman by the cloakroom. I fell immediately and heavily in love.

Jan was training to be a nurse, and had recently split up with her girlfriend. As we began to flirt, the Bay City Rollers’ Bye Bye Baby came on and a rather butch-looking woman in head-to-toe tartan asked me for a dance. “She is with me,” said Jan, and I melted at her words. Sixteen-year-old me was captivated by the sophistication of this 19-year-old, educated, utterly glorious-looking lesbian who oozed confidence and smoked French fags through a holder.

We sat on the steps of the club in the cold and rain, avoiding the deafening sound of Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, which I changed in my head to “I wish I could be with her every day”. As party animals pushed past us, shouting “merry Christmas” to puzzled-looking passers by (among the many outrageous outfits, one man was wearing backless, glittery leather chaps, with no undercrackers, and a Santa beard covering his meat and two veg), we leaned in and kissed. Properly. Tongues and everything. Jan tasted of Drambuie and smelled of Charlie perfume.

I could barely breathe with the excitement of being in love. It was so different from a crush, I thought. Crushes are for girls; I am now a proper woman and a bona fide lesbian. Jan asked me to stay with her that night, and I pretended to be nonchalant. This is difficult, I discovered, when shaking from head to toe, and unable to speak.

Our last dance that night was to either Gladys Knight and the Pips or Al Green. I remember the smell of poppers as the boys prepared themselves to go on clubbing elsewhere into the early hours.

Jan told me she had Advocaat at hers and that she would make me a snowball and feed me mince pies, which she did. We had them for breakfast.

I am not a huge fan of Christmas, but every year, as soon as the seasonal songs and snowballs come out I am reminded of my coming of lesbian age. Jan and I lasted only a couple of months, but Christmas will always remind me of falling in love that very first time.