For a gay boy firmly strapped into London’s commuter belt, 2013 held great promise. The unrelenting seven-year slog of secondary school would finally come to an end – and with it, the homophobic white noise I’d grown accustomed to, along with the evenings spent cocooning myself in A-Level practice papers. This was it. A moment framed by society with unicorn-shaped helium balloons and tiered rainbow cake, but that felt compulsive and shameful like vomit. I was finally ‘coming out’.
Freedom glistened on the horizon. Even more exciting than the university course I was due to start in September, was the prospect of a rollicking Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents-style getaway. Globular fish bowls with tufts of neon straws. Adidas trainers dancing on the tables. Moonlit snogs on PVC sun loungers. Straps of scorched skin proudly brandished like tribal tattoos. In the hours I’d spent gorging on trash TV, these sordid fantasies had crystallized in my mind. It was truly (and believe it or not, unironically) the epitome of cool. Not just for me, but for most of my fellow Grammar school graduands, clutching at personality.
“You going on a lads holiday?” The question simmered on the playground and ricocheted about my sixth-form common room, menacingly. Every inquest was a sharp reminder that I’d never had a clique of lads to call my own, that this was, therefore, a rite of passage not meant for the likes of me. And so, as the relentless drone of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines ushered in the buds of spring, I reconciled my disappointment. Yes, I was coming out. But I was heading nowhere.
A decade has now passed, and countless consequential trips besides; a zoetrope of transitory romances, perspective-shifting expeditions, and pilgrimages to resilient gay villages where braver generations once broke fresh ground. However, standing at the tail-end of my twenties, looking back at a decade spent earnestly soul-searching, I’m still hung up on the trip that never was. Had that long-awaited summer been spent on an expedition of hedonistic self-discovery, I wonder if I might have found my way in life a little more smoothly.
Discourse on lads holidays has muscled its way back into the cultural ether recently, prompted by Molly Manning-Walker’s film How to Have Sex which follows 16-year-old Tara and her clique on a rip ride through Malia. Over the course of two hours, a plot that initially sizzles with sexual frisson gradually turns cold as Tara grapples with sexual coercion and a creeping sense of isolation and shame.
It is not Mamma Mia, but Molly’s depiction of the lad’s (or ladette’s) holiday struck my lonely teenage heart. Sprinkled among the film’s undeniable darkness are moments of tenderness, triumphs despite adversity, deep platonic love and affection – all the mushy moments younger me had pined for, trussed up in the trash of a sunset strip. Was I just being delusional, or had I really missed out on something here? What might that trip have looked like for a younger me living through a more progressive age?
“Some of the best times of my life have been at parties,” says Molly, who identifies as Queer herself. “We shouldn’t slam party culture, but rewrite how we exist within it.” She achieves this artfully through the character Em, whose cutesy same-sex holiday fling contrasts jarringly with Tara’s anguish. “We conducted these amazing workshops in development to understand teens better,” Molly explains, “and realized that although the conversation around consent hadn’t moved on, the conversation around being Queer seemed a lot more accepting. And we wanted to depict that.”
The Queer travel entrepreneur Aisha Shaibu-Lenoir is all for Queering the lads holiday. “It’s a coming-of-age experience,” she tells me, “and it’s one Queer young people do miss out on. When you’re navigating your [internal] world and you’re unsure of who you are – your sexuality, your gender – traveling really helps with personal growth and development.”
Since 2018, Aisha has been radically shifting the narrative on nightlife travel through her company, Moonlight Experiences. Designed first and foremost for Queer people of colour, each itinerary plunges attendees into the heart of the urban underground – cabaret shows, Vogue balls, nightclubs and poetry slams – but in a way that is nestled in the values of safety and inclusivity intrinsic to Queer spaces. Whether confronting intersectional history in Johannesburg or shimmying through hidden gay bars in Paris, the impetus is never alcohol-doused high jinx but meaningful connections.
“Often, as a Queer person in straight spaces, when there’s alcohol, you don’t feel safe. That’s maybe when homophobia might slip out.” Or, as Molly’s film makes clear, other sexual transgressions. Naturally, Aisha’s tours have found an unintended audience of straight women. “It’s to do with safety,” she says. “Queer people have done a lot of hard work to make spaces that feel safe, and it’s something straight people just haven’t really adopted in the same way.”
The most refreshing aspect of Aisha’s tours is the way in which they situate Queer nightlife within a broader political and historical context. Revellers rub shoulders with cultural instigators and activists on the frontline of modern civil rights struggles, creating those electric moments of resonance that are pivotal to young people teetering on the cusp of adulthood, Queer or not.
At school, my only exposure to Queer sexuality had been a grainy documentary on HIV fetishists which, of course, planted the seed for a flowering of obscenity that percolated the usual ‘banter’ like weeds through tarmac. And then there was the occasional bit about ‘Adam and Steve’, once illustrated by a biology teacher with that good old poky-poky finger and hole gesture. Yep, you know the one.
As for James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood; the thousands lost to government negligence during the AIDS Crisis; the crashing waves of activism that ensued, and all of the smaller ripples that had preceded them? These I was left to uncover myself – over the years piecing together a complicated history that gave meaning to my awkward experience in the world thus far.
At the risk of falling into a pit of self-despair, one real upshot of my aspirational suburban upbringing was that university had always been an option. Among the looming edifices of York, I found lectures and worldly professors who, sensing my discomfort, nudged me towards these characters and stories. However, for too many Queer people, especially those circumstantially precluded from such milestone moments, isolation and loneliness leads them to shadowy ends.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in the UK are more than twice as likely to harbor suicidal thoughts than their straight peers, with nine in ten young trans people likely to consider the same. Consequently, if that’s not startling enough, broader mental health research points to even higher rates for those from poor backgrounds. More than a market opportunity, such figures present a social responsibility.
I’m not such an industry mouthpiece that I honestly believe a travel package can vanquish inner demons, but who can deny travel’s therapeutic potential? Lads holidays themselves offer catharsis in the extreme. Teenage angst uncanned. A spanner in the hamster wheel of school, exams, and expectations. Sacred, especially to those in the depths of personal angst.
For older Queer people with pockets jangling full of ‘Pink Pounds’, such opportunities abound. There’s the Premium tour operator Out of Office, where a two-week jaunt can set you back £10,000. Where are the identity-affirming trips for those on piggy bank budgets?
Did we all miss out on lads’ holidays? Like, really? I present it, tentatively, to my small but perfect clique of lads as we lurch into the folds of rural Sussex on a weekend escape befitting our 28-something years. For a moment, the car’s vacuum-sealed air is pregnant with contemplation. Then, as the car rumbles onwards, thoughts tumble out. We piece together the chips on our shoulders; fleeting moments of otherness and isolation coalesce, giving way to giggles that erupt into overwhelming belly laughs. We can’t come to a logical conclusion, but what of it?
Chalky landscapes once seduced in paint by Duncan Grant and his Bloomsbury contemporaries brush up against the car windows. We’re having our lads holiday. It just took us a little longer to get here.
