Tan France - Naturally Tan

Straight people love to ask, When did you know you were gay? Maybe some people do have an epiphany. I am not that person. For me, when somebody asks me this question, its the same as someone asking, When did you know you were a boy? or When did you realize you were a human?

Because I breathe.

Ive always known.

It sounds clich, but I never had that Oprah aha moment. I always knew that women werent for me. Dont get me wrongIve always loved women, in that I wanted to surround myself with females, and they are the people who have molded who Ive become, but there was never a time when I thought a woman was a viable option for my romantic future. I also never thought that a man was not an option. Even when I was very young, I assumed I would get married one day and it would be to a man. Why wouldnt it be so? It was men I was attracted to and loved, so it stood to reason that I would eventually marry one. I never thought that might not be legally possible, nor did I think it was problematic. I was very matter-of-fact about it, as I was with most things in my life, and still am. Throughout this book, youll realize that maybe Im not the zero fucks given kinda guy, but Im definitely the very few fucks given guy. Its a quality I like about myself and dont plan to change anytime soon.

I grew up in a small English county called South Yorkshire, which is in the north of the country. It was mostly white; there were maybe ten other South Asians in my school and one black student. My parents were both born and raised in Pakistan until they moved to the UK with their respective families in their teens. My dads family moved to the north of England in the 1950s with very little money. Eventually, he saved enough money to buy a home and start a business, and he became relatively successful. My mums family was already in a nearby town, and my parents met andthis is very bold of themhad what is a called a love marriage. In a culture that favours arranged marriages, sometimes even among cousins(Calm the frack down. I know, I know, that sounds crazy, but I cant get into that right now. More on this later.)this was an entirely unconventional way to start their life together. We lived in a home adjoining my fathers brothers, so I was raised alongside female cousins that I one day might be called upon to marry.

Our home wasnt super religious, but we had a profound cultural connection to our Muslim heritage. Every day, I would get out of school by 3:30, get home at 4:00, and then go to mosque, where I would stay until 7:00. It was like that every day, Monday through Friday, and weekends, too. Even when white school was on vacation, it didnt matter. Brown school doesnt take any time off.

At the age of six or seven, we started to wear modest clothes called shalwar kameez. The pants have an elasticated waistband. If you open them up, theyre massive, one size fits all, and they are really bunchy and baggy, tapering toward the bottom with a cuff like a harem pant. Over them, you wear a tunicfor men, plain and over the knees or longer, and for women, looser still. As an added layer of modesty out of the house, women also wear a jilbabessentially, a large sack. There could be a gust of wind and still you will not see what you should not be seeing.

The only time I was permitted to wear anything other than shalwar kameez was at school, where I wore a uniform, or when we broke out the fancy Western clothes permitted for events like weddings or birthday parties.

Beyond this, we were supposed to conduct ourselves with modesty in all aspects of our lives. We werent allowed to have sleepovers or hang out with our friends outside of schooland we werent allowed to date. Of course, this was no problem for much of my adolescence, because I didnt like girls. Actually, not being able to date was a blessing at the time, as it made it so easy to cover up the fact that I wasnt into girls. I just couldnt date. Im single because Im not allowed to date and not because I dont fancy girls. So thats that. Nothing to see here, folks.

There were five of usI have two sisters and two brothersand I was the baby. Out of all my siblings, I was always the surest of myself. My parents worked a lot, and so when they werent around, I watched a lot of TV that was not permitted, like Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, and ER, all of which had much more mature subject matter than a child should be watching. They dealt with subjects like sex and drug use, which my parents would have been completely shocked to discover I understood, never mind that I was learning about these things from TV. These topics were never discussed in our culture. Because I watched so many shows, I became weirdly worldly wise. My vocabulary was different; I knew things even my oldest siblings didnt know. I was definitely the cockiest one of the family. I would correct other peoples spelling and grammar and the way theyd speak. I was the obnoxious sibling. I was a nightmare.

It was clear from an early age that I was different and that I had a particular affinity for personal style. Growing up, my favourite movie was Dirty Dancing, which no other eight-year-old boy was obsessed with. (Their loss. That movie is still incredible and holds up like no other.) I also had lots of Barbie dolls, but no one outside the house knew about that, which is probably a good thing, as my school was definitely not ready for that in 1990. Weirdly, my dad got them for me. (I know that sounds insane, but here goes.)

My dad and his brother were super close, but strangely competitive. They each had children of similar ages, and the cousin closest to my age was female. She and I were in the same classes throughout school, and we were encouraged to compete with each other when it came to our grades and exams. That competition spilled over into gift giving from our parents.

When my dad learned that my cousin had been given a Barbie house and a Barbie doll, the following week I had a bigger Barbie house with five or six Barbie dolls. I also had two Ken dolls, one black and one white, and a black doll called Cindy who was a popular UK Barbie knock-off. No one saw this as peculiarwhich, looking back, just shows how oblivious we all were to Western culture and how that would have been considered out of the norm for most sons to receive. I, however, was over the freaking moon. It felt like all my Christmases had come at once. I wondered when my dad would realize that playing with Barbies wasnt what he might have wanted for me, so I always did it in secret. I pretended to be totally unfazed about the Barbies when anyone was around, but as soon as the coast was clear, Id run up to my bedroom and play house with my new favourite toys. It was a really happy time.