Week 5 - Greg + Tom A-C
I met Tom at 10 Tib Lane in town. I had arrived early and Tom was running late so I decided to go for a wander, which served to remind me of my terrible sense of direction. I really don’t know central Manchester at all well and keep promising myself that I will spend a day acquainting myself with the streets down town.
I have know Tom for over 20 years. We met on the dance floor at G-A-Y at the Astoria in London. I had tasked my friends Curt and Annabel with “finding me a man” and they presented Tom. It was clear from the get go that I wasn’t his type. My friend Curt on the other hand… 20 years later we are still friends and now both live in Didsbury, south Manchester, where he lured me about 18 months ago.
Tom is one of the most successful people I know. When I met him, he was working in Tesco and had secured a place at university to study biology, something I only found out during our meal. He decided that uni wasn’t for him and enrolled on the Tesco management training scheme. When he moved to East London to live, the commute to Welwyn Garden City proved a little arduous so Tom got a new job at Gaydar. For those not familiar, Gaydar was one of the first gay dating websites and existed long before the advent of the mobile internet or mobile apps. If you were a gay man in the early 2000s then you would have almost certainly had a Gaydar profile. Tom worked in their customer services team and was responsible for reviewing people’s profile changes and answering email enquiries from customers, before moving to their marketing team. He stopped working for them when he moved to Manchester and started his own business while also working part-time in a branch of Sainsbury’s, a job which he said was one of the most satisfying he’s had, due to the ability to problem solve on the fly and spend quality time with colleagues. After that Tom worked for a digital marketing agency where he worked his way up to the position of COO. He now works for a mega advertising agency doing something that none of us fully understand, but is something to do with consolidating operations across the organisation.
Gaydar were a little slow to embrace mobile apps and got somewhat pushed out of the market when Grindr launched in 2009. Tom and I discussed how the gay dating world has completely changed since then. The Astoria has now been demolished to make way for The Elizabeth Line and numerous other gay bars I used to frequent no longer exist: The Nelson’s Head, The Joiners Arms, Ghetto, The George & Dragon, Barcode, The Green and The Green Carnation but to name a few. Manchester does of course still have a thriving gay scene, but most people now tend to meet via apps. I’m a little sad for what’s been lost, but nostalgia has a big part to play in that. More tolerant attitudes (at least in big cities) also mean that venues have become more mixed which is no bad thing.
We spoke a little about some of the less rewarding jobs we’d had in our past. When Tom moved to Manchester he temped for a while for a newspaper who were digitising their archive. His job was to review the information captured by the OCR software and correct any mistakes / fill in the gaps it couldn’t read. This was all day, every day. I had a similar job clearing cheques for NatWest. We would be given a tray of cheques we had to process through an OCR machine and it would stop on any it couldn’t read, with us filling in the blanks. From memory, we only had to get supervisor approval if a cheque was over £10m in value. It wasn’t a thrill a minute, but someone had to do it and I was paid for a whole day’s work despite the cheques usually running out at midday which meant I could go home, or (more often than not) head to the pub.
Tom and I shared our coming out stories. I came out to my friends at school but waited until I was 21 to come out to my parents and decided the best time to do so would be during a BBQ we were eating in the garden. My sister, who already knew I was gay but hadn’t been pre-warned about my impending revelation, was sitting opposite me and looks mortified as I uttered the words “I’ve got something to tell you and you’re not going to like it”, a line I would repeat three more times before finally saying “I’m gay”. My parents’ reaction was “that’s fine”, although my mother did ask whether that meant I wanted to be a woman, a question she hasn’t been allowed to forget since! I had expected a little more drama, and if I’m honest, was a little disappointed by how smoothly the whole thing went. I now of course realise that I was extremely lucky and that other people have a far less pleasant time coming out to their family.
Tom decided the best way to come out was via a handwritten letter which he left for his parents before school one day (he was only 15). His news was also well received, but it was decided that he shouldn’t tell his sister until she was a little older. When the day came, she admitted she’d read the letter already, didn’t understand why he had to disturb her, and that he should immediately get out of her bedroom.
Tom and his husband Ben (see Week 3) have a daughter, Thea, who was born via a surrogate and they would like her to have a sibling. Tom and I discussed the surrogacy process and how it varies significantly by country. In the UK surrogacy is legal as long as the surrogate doesn’t receive a fee (although she can receive expenses). Canada have a similar system. In the US and a limited number of other countries, surrogates can be paid, sometimes a significant amount of money and some clinics also guarantee success. Once you’re outside of the UK the options vary dramatically so significant research is required. Several organisations exist in the UK to help surrogates and intended parents meet and Tom and Ben are members of Surrogacy UK who are one of the largest. There’s a common misconception that surrogates are often reluctant to give up the child they have given birth to. The fact most surrogates are carrying a child to help another couple who can’t conceive means that they have the opposite concern - i.e. that they will be left holding the baby (for want of a better expression). I’ve known several couples who have been through the surrogacy process and it’s always gone as smoothly as could be expected, but requires a huge amount of consideration in advance of the pregnancy, something that can’t always be said for a natural conception. My friends have said that one of the most nerve racking parts of the process is obtaining the parental order from a judge, which in the UK takes about a year from the child being born. In theory up until that point, the child could be removed from your care. Tom mentioned that there is new legislation planned which should make the process more straightforward. Georgia Meloni’s government in Italy have just made surrogacy illegal and done so in such a way that could mean even Italians living overseas fall foul of the new law. They also now fail to recognise the parental status of existing same sex couples who have had children via surrogacy. I’m really not sure how such cruelty benefits society, but I can see how such dog whistle policies might summon a few extra voters to the polls.
Tom and I ordered the following, all of which was delicious. I also basked in the smugness of knowing what a beignet is (a type of choux pastry doughnut):
Beignets, Templegall
Cantabrian Anchovies, Chilli, Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Beetroot, Whipped Buttermilk, Pickled Blackberry, Walnut, Bitter Leaves
Ex Dairy Sirloin, Burnt Onion Sauce, Roscoff Onion
Hash Brown, Sour Cream & Chive, Roe
We were presented with the bill and clearly weren’t paying attention as the waitress returned a couple of minutes later to inform us that it was in fact someone else’s. The replacement was significantly cheaper which made it feel like we’d saved some money when in fact we’d done no such thing.
Thanks Tom for an excellent Greg Plus One, not to mention the last 20 years of friendship.
