There was a huge hail storm which interrupted my chat with Stu a few weekends ago but that didn’t stop us from tackling the big subjects. I have never really had the chance to connect with him on this level so it was an absolute joy to talk through all things queer, fantastic, dark, hopeful and hereditary. In this first interview, Stu takes us through his family history, not being accepted for his homosexuality as well as just how much love he has for his partner (and cat).
These are the first 8 of 25 questions I asked Stu and we get straight into the nitty gritty of life.
Stu’s pronouns are “he/him”.
Before we start, let’s get to know you in 30 seconds.
Stu. Almost 40. Massive nerd. Bald. Been bald since I was 20. Mentally ill. Yay! Always wanted to be something but don’t think I ever will be. I’m a gig promoter and I run a club night in my spare time for my sins. I’m a big, massive queer.
What has your experience with COVID been like?
Oh this is going to be really short. It’s been great. I’m incredibly lucky to have Alessio [partner] and I cannot say that enough. As two people who suffer from mental health issues, when one is down the other one supports. The fact that we are so similar in terms of our interests means that we can sit down and complete a video game together or watch a whole series of something. I think we have completed horror. Every night without fail we would put the projector on and trawl through. I know there are a lot of people who are having a bad time and really suffering. I do miss my friends. I haven’t seen my mum and my auntie since August which is tough. He [Alessio] hasn’t seen him family since August and that’s even tougher because they are in another fucking country. I’m really lucky in the sense that we respect each other’s space. He can go into the room and play switch and I will go to find him later because I am super needy. When I got made redundant, there was no point where he felt like he really had to push me to get a job. It made me feel so much better because, even though I was fucking stressed out, I do feel like I have landed on my feet with this one. He is ridiculously supportive. I also realised something the other day when someone wrote on one of my statuses saying they felt guilty because some people were being really prolific in this lockdown. Loads of my friends have created businesses but I just wanted to get through it. I just wanted to survive. Maybe I needed this time to just chill out. I don’t want people to feel bad that other people are being prolific now because maybe we were entertaining them whilst they were sitting on their asses before all of this happened. Maybe it’s their fucking turn [laughs]. I don’t feel like I’ve had too bad a time.
Reflect on your mental/physical health. Do you look after yourself enough? What methods do you practice to ensure you’re well?
HA! Physical health, I’m currently a blancmange trying to fit into a pair of slacks. I’ve always had a weird thing where I don’t want to rave about body positivity because I’m not always particularly proud of my physicality. I have to say being the size I am is incredibly difficult to find clothes which makes me feel like a bag of shit. However, I don’t let it stop me from doing things I want to do. I don’t think my size impacts my confidence too much when I have things to say. I don’t look after myself physically too much but I do like to eat relatively well. My problem is that I eat really healthy but I don’t exercise so I get really fat.
Mental health wise I try to take care of myself much more. I have suffered from depression since my early teens and it comes in waves. I got to my worst at 17 – my parents were splitting up which was a whole thing. I was really messed up and in a dark place. Ever since then, it’s felt weird that nothing has ever got to that point again. Whenever it comes, it’s always like aftershocks. Little ripples. It’s not as bad as it has been before but it’s bad enough for me to recognise it. The good thing is I can recognise when my mental health is suffering and I do try to combat it. Usually company helps with me so just having someone to chat to or just sit down and watch a film with helps. I do try and look after myself in a way that I don’t overrun myself with the things to do which I know I won’t achieve without stressing myself out. Also, I feel I’m in a place where I can identify when things are going tits up, I can talk about that with people. I either can or can’t explain what is happening in that moment but I can say “I’m having a bad time mentally and I need to do this or this to feel right again”. I feel lucky in the sense that I have never had to medicate myself. I’ve had brushes with suicide in my teens and I never want it to get that bad again so I am not opposed to medication but I feel lucky I’ve never have had to have done it. Overall, I think I look after others moreso than myself in some respects but I know when I have reached my limit so that’s when everyone else can fuck off basically!
Do you consider yourself to have a solid support network?
I think I’m still making massive errors of judgement in people. I’m still making mistakes in terms of how close to keep them. I’ve got such a good support network of people and strangely that has come from Punka [Stu’s queer night which he runs]. The people which are the closest to me are the performers and promoters. It’s weird to think of that. I have become more than a person who has hired them: more than a boss. You want them to do well and you want to support and represent them because they are representing you. In some cases, it’s gone way beyond that. These friends are some of the only people I have seen in lockdown. I have friends of 20 years who haven’t text me since lockdown started. It feels like with these Punka friends, we are all in the same boat. You all understand what you’re trying to do and what you want to do. When you find out you have things in common then you work on that friendship. I have a good support group but it’s something which has only happened in the last 3 years.
What type of relationship did you have with your family whilst growing up?
I’m from a family who are quite big on my mum’s side and on my dad’s side – not so much. I don’t know either side very well. My nan was the oldest of 11 kids so there were a lot of aunties and uncles. Every year for the past 40 years, they have spelt my name wrong. The cards are either formula 1, football or golf. That shows how much I don’t know my family. I’m very similar to my mum because she is really nerdy. She has a decent sense of humour and a very short fuse. The older I get, the more I respect that because she doesn’t suffer fools. The older she gets, the more she is calming down so people are walking over her which is frustrating. In my teenage years, we butted heads a lot but now we are really close. She is the best. Super supportive. I was always the weird kid: like most of us queers, you feel like something is wrong. I grew up in the 80s in a small town and didn’t know what gay was. The problem was my dad wanted me to be like him. A lot of parents think you are going to have a carbon copy of yourself. What they don’t understand is that your kid is a sum of those parts but it’s essentially a completely new being: it might not be like either of you. My dad realised I was not like anything he had come across before. I was always drawing and reading comic books. My mum was like a crack dealer for comics. If I ever did well in school or did chores, she would put in a comic in our little cupboard. She used to nurture this thing I loved about art and drawing. She knew that’s what I was into. My dad was like “why the fuck aren’t you playing football?”. They grew apart quite quickly and the problem is the fact that I would have been the youngest of three: my mum had two miscarriages and almost lost me. That created a big rift. I am “technically” the youngest child and we know that the youngest child is the gay one. Unfortunately [Ed: “not unforunately, we are fucking great.”] they ended up with the gay one. My dad didn’t like that and wasn’t on board with a lot of what I was into. I was in college before they split up and I did my final show where I turned an area into my own exhibition. I made a website of my work, like a rudimentary website from the 90s, and I was super proud of it. My mum saw it and was like “not even because you are my son but you have smashed this” but my dad saw everyone crowded around it, shook his head and walked out. In the end, we left and my mum said “me and your dad fell out because he was watching some lads playing football and asked why you weren’t doing that instead.” He wasn’t a fan, he just didn’t get it. It turned out that he was the first person I came out to. I wanted him on board and wanted his approval. After they split up, we went to the cinema to watch “The Faculty” and I really enjoyed it. He was fidgeting the whole way through so I knew he didn’t. He used to say “pie in the sky” which was his term for bullshit. It was bullshit to him. I stupidly said “we don’t have a lot in common, do we?”. And he said “no, you’re not the son I wanted.” He listed off loads of things to do with the things I was into and how he didn’t understand them. He told me “you’re too emotional, I feel like I’m raising a poof” and I told him he was. He dismissed it all, saying the break up was too stressful. He told me not to tell my friends because they wouldn’t want to see me anymore and said that neither did he. I didn’t get upset. I was in shock. I remember getting out of the car agreeing not to see eachother anymore. I went to the back of mum’s house and I remember something in my brain switched off. It was my sexuality. I knew I was gay but I was going to play it straight for a while because that’s what I was meant to do. That led to me faking that I was into women but almost coming off as asexual for years. I didn’t come out until I was 33 because of it. You just lock it away. If my dad can’t even take this, what now? I have not seen him since that day. I haven’t seen him since 1999. My mum was invited to a funeral from my dad’s side recently and she went. It took her 15 minutes of watching this old man to realise it was my dad. She could not recognise him. The years hadn’t been kind to him and maybe that was the bitterness? It’s been a weird road of figuring out those past traumas that can do things to your brain. I wouldn’t say it’s messed me up in any other way than my sexuality. It taught me a massive lesson about people and the names that we give to people. Just because someone is your dad doesn’t mean they can’t be a piece of shit. They can still disappoint you and they don’t have to be in your life. If they are toxic and do things to mess you up, you don’t need to keep them around just because you are related to them. It made me realise that family isn’t always who you are related to because of blood. It helped me when I came out because I could create a chosen family and I am just as close if not closer to people who I have just met and who have had the same situation as me. You go through that separately and the trauma can help you grow together. I am much richer in terms of family because I don’t limit it to who I am related to.
Where do you find daily inspiration?
I would say new music. I tend to get sent a lot of music because of what I do and it’s nice that people have found me quite trusting in that sense. They will send me the mastered version of their EP before it’s released. That makes me realise I can reach out to other people and be inspired by what they are doing too. Music is a massive inspiration for me. Music inspires me to do other stuff. Like a song will make me want to make a poster or start a playlist or create a YouTube video. Hearing one song can mess me up for months!
What do you do for a living? Is it your passion/something you really enjoy?
Firstly, what I do now for a living I’ve only been doing for a week. I’ve just started as a claims handler for DPD. It’s not what I want to do but I’ve slowly come to realise that that isn’t always the best thing. Whereas before, I was on furlough and working in TV. I had been working in TV for 5 years. I had always wanted to do that. I’ve got a degree in film and I got several jobs when I finished uni which weren’t to do with TV. My brain and my confidence didn’t let me go for it. Then when I got into TV, I realised it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to do. It’s a weird industry. It’s very much “who you know” and it’s a really strange place to go if you’re looking to get ahead without stepping on people. I’m not a fan of that. It turned into a bittersweet thing about being in the industry you like but deep down inside you know it’s not the one. I realised though that your job doesn’t have to be fulfilling and you can do stuff you care about outside of work.
What do you think is the first thing people notice/think about you?
Bald. BALD! Fat and bald. That’s about it. I don’t feel like I’m particularly remarkable in the way I look. In terms of my personality, I find that people feel I’m quite disarming. When I worked in films, I was a runner and whenever we had high profile clients coming in, my boss would get me to go in there. He always knew I was unflappable and wouldn’t get flustered or make a tit of myself. I would be reasonably professional if they wanted a chat and wouldn’t make it awkward. I knew how to handle the situation. The younger runners might have tried it on to get contacts and being all *jazz hands*. Even though I don’t like being the centre of attention, I do like being heard and seen. Disarming in that way.
What is the biggest hardship you faced in your life?
I don’t feel like I’ve had a particularly tough life. I know we didn’t have a lot of money when we were younger and we gave up a lot to give my dad his dream. That time was tough. The hardest bit came when my parents separated and I realised I couldn’t go to uni. I got into a course and got a job in Virgin Megastore in Nuneaton and had to start again. Me and my mum had no money. That monetary hardship was the worst. Having to build yourself up from ground level. There was a shame in going to college and not being able to afford the dinners and having to use your loan smartly. In terms of emotional hardships, anything before me coming out I found weirdly tough. Just because I knew I wasn’t being my genuine self.
Stu’s next 8 questions will feature on Wednesday.
You can catch Stu on his Instagram page or his YouTube channel.
Punka, his queer night, can be found on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
HOW TO BE; 