Like in ‘Heated Rivalry’, I didn’t come out – I was found out

I didn't come out as gay. I was found out.

I’ve always regretted that I wasn’t brave enough to tell my immediate family on my own terms. Instead, I was discovered in the worst possible way by the worst possible person – which was entirely my stupid fault.

All I’d say in defence is that I was a teenager, unhealthily besotted with my secret boyfriend and, like many my age (I’m 43), deeply damaged by being in the closet, shame, Section 28 of the Local Government Act and growing up in Thatcher’s hostile Britain. As the pun goes, I couldn’t even think straight. So I took a very silly risk.

I was living in a single-parent household with my body-building, burly bouncer dad. He broke people’s arms in the CCTV-free stairwell of the rough nightclub he worked at if they “gave him gyp”. College peers were scared of him. Everyone was – except me.

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Dad was wrapped around my little princess finger. He’d read me every Roald Dahl story growing up, and later became my unofficial chauffeur and chef. I’d been the ideal teenage son: straight-A student; obedient; virginal. I was his golden boy.

Until I discovered my own golden boys. One in particular.

Twenty-five years ago, aged 17, I stupidly snuck home my clandestine (and illegal) 24-year-old lover – the man who sold me a prepaid credit scratchcard for my brick phone at the local petrol garage, and scribbled his number on the receipt. Four frenetic months later, on that fateful morning, with a sixth sense that something was awry, Dad – unusually – entered my room at 6am, before work.

There, entangled beneath the single duvet – ludicrously emblazoned with Liverpool FC – lay my top-secret boyfriend and I. I was mortified. The guilt has never left me.

Spoiler warning: An eerily similar scene is depicted in the final episode of Heated Rivalry, the “surprise hit” show everyone’s talking about.

The lead character, star ice hockey player Shane Hollander, is found out when his once-proud dad catches him in a tryst with his longtime secret same-sex lover. Shane looks as mortified as I was. It is painfully awkward.

Shane’s story plays out somewhat differently from mine.

All hell broke loose. My dad banned the boyfriend from the house, forbade me from telling anyone I was gay for a year, and told my worried mother his “worst nightmare has come true”. I was marched down the doctor’s – for him, for me – because that’s where you go when something’s wrong.

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What followed was a complicated relationship. I could be difficult. I’d fooled him; created a false persona to convince him I was the straight son he’d have preferred. I was then unfairly impatient, branding him a bigot if he didn’t instantly embrace a sexuality I’d myself taken years to accept.

When the demonised boyfriend and I eventually split, dad came once more into my bedroom. He gently switched off the sad music, handed me tissues and rested his hand on my trembling shoulder.

Years later, he refused a hug after I hadn’t seen him in 18 months following my move to Australia. That stung.

Yet my boyfriends always received the same Christmas presents under the tree as my sister’s boyfriends.

It was a confusing journey of faded glory and occasional tenderness; two versions of masculinity under one roof – messy, sometimes unconditional, sometimes begrudging love.

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When I left for university, he left a letter in my dorm room, praising my “loyalty” and “work ethic”, and the “purpose” I’d given him in “an otherwise dull life”. “I couldn’t wish for a better son,” he concluded.

The last text he ever sent me was in 2015, while I was in Australia. I knew he’d been drinking; it was uncharacteristic. He’d been a stoic, lifelong teetotaller until the final lonely, devastating, chaotic 12 months of his life.

It read: “You’ve always been my best boy.”

I sobbed watching the Heated Rivalry scene.

Shane Hollander’s parents are shocked, curious, understanding and immediately forgiving.

For the first time, I felt both solidarity and permission to forgive myself for the gut-punching way my dad found out.

It was healing to watch Shane say to his parents two words I never found the courage to say to my dad while he was alive: I’m sorry.

Heated Rivalry is on Sky Atlantic