As a 16-year-old from rural Devon, I should have been delighted when my mum and dad took me to San Francisco. So why did the drag queens and Dykes on Bikes make me so miserable?
I came out very early as a teenager and immediately wanted it all. I wanted to work for a fashion magazine and trot urgently across city streets with takeaway coffees. I wanted to dance to London Bridge by Fergie on London Bridge. I wanted to have sex with men. I had big dreams. But I still had my GCSEs to do, and we lived in a tiny village in Devon. I was fuming.
So, when I turned 16, my parents very sweetly took me to San Francisco Pride. They were exceptional. Before I was born, they lived for a time in Provincetown, Massachusetts (sort of an American Brighton). There, my mum, a miner’s daughter from Barnsley, and my dad, from an underprivileged suburb of Boston, became ingrained in the town’s queer scene and its colourful cast of characters.
