A goth on the gay scene

TRANSCRIPT

ANDI: So, as soon as I was able, I left York. I left York at 19 and moved to Leeds, and that was just so different, you know. It was right in the middle of, kind of the big, you know, Marc Almond, big kind of goth explosion. So there's all these guys… I remember going to the Warehouse and there was like all these guys with nail varnish on and make-up and I remember going to the toilet and going, just asking this guy, 'Can I borrow your eyeliner?' And it was just like, so hugely liberating to be somewhere that people were expressing themselves in that way. Because York was so conservative and you know, there was not that forum or a place to go and do that. So - yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Did you encounter any other sort of styles of fashion or looks that people had back in 80s Leeds, associated with, maybe, gay culture?

ANDI: Well, so, back in the late 80s, before I'd lost my hair [laughs] I did, you know, sort of had various, kind of Mohicans and kind of gothy black, crimped hairdo's and you know, and then I, you know, sort of, as I am doing now, dressed a lot in black. And I remember going to... Rockshots or Bananas, one of those, when that was going, you know, and people just like, 'Do you not -?'… asking me if I knew I'd come in the right club. And I was like, 'Yeah!' And they were like - you know, at that time there was a very big clone scene, there were lots of people with moustaches, checked shirts, that sort of, that kind of look. And I didn't kind of fit into any of those kind of looks. And I certainly didn't feel like I… ‘Oh, I can't be gay, can't be gay coz I don't cut my hair up and I don't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a moustache’. And so - so then, trying to find where you fit in within the kind of gay scene, as it were, was quite tricky. Which I didn't, and I still don't! [Laughs] Still struggle with that one!