Say It Out Loud

After a stint in prison as a younger man, his life was on track. The horseman from the Central Coast was running a successful business, and while working as a wrangler on the film Ned Kelly he had found a new world opening through his friendship with actor Heath Ledger. But the cowboy was braver in the saddle than out of it. He was embarking on the hardest journey of all -“ coming out.

In this extract from his memoir Say It Out Loud: Journey of a Real Cowboy, co-written by Neil McMahon, Sutton reflects on those early days as he nudged at the door of the closet -“ and, as a wide-eyed country boy, began discovering the tempting delights of gay Sydney.

I’d gone from being a man without a gay mate in the world to one who had established firm friendships. I knew a gay farmer. I knew a gay couple. I was finding new friends all the time. But it was Scotty and Alex who first took me under their wing. I think they both understood quickly that I was a handful, and needed gentle guidance. I was na?, but also like a bull at a gate, charging forward without stopping for long to consider the consequences. For all I had changed, I was still never far from trouble. On our second night out at The Entrance, Scotty had to pull me aside and tell me to calm down; I was knocking people flying on the dance floor, and in moment of over-exuberance had picked up Shelly Legs Diamond, a famous Sydney drag queen, and held her above my head until she all but screamed the place down.

There was another major breakthrough at that club: one night I ran into an old mate, Ben Bryant, who I knew through Pony Club years before. Benny was straight, but he ignored labels like that and being in a gay bar didn’t faze him at all. Seeing me there did. But I told him the truth and he didn’t blink. It was a brief moment, but a major lesson. By telling him, I hadn’t lost a mate -“ I’d found a better one.

The next step was obvious, and Scotty and Alex made it happen: what about a night out in Sydney? That meant Oxford Street, the gay golden mile in Darlinghurst.

I’d been there once under very different circumstances a couple of years before, and there is no pride in the memory. After going to a rodeo event at the Sydney Entertainment Centre one Saturday night, a bunch of boys decided to continue the party. We found ourselves at Taylor Square, the epicentre of gay Sydney, but we barely registered where we were until we started playing pool in a bar called The Oxford. A man walked past and brushed against me; one of the other rodeo boys saw it and commented on it. Shit, we’re in a gay bar.

The same man walked past once more and touched me again. I grabbed his hand, bent his fingers back until he was in pain and told him there’d be more to come if he touched me again. We left then, me the hero with my mates because I’d had a go at the poofters. It was one of the saddest and ugliest moments I’d experienced. I’d done it only to save myself in their eyes, and later that night when I was home alone I cried at what I’d done, hating myself for it. How could I loathe a part of myself that much that I would go to those lengths to keep it hidden? Two years on, I knew I’d moved way beyond moments of madness like that. I was ready for Sydney now, or thought I was. I think Scotty and Spiro were more worried whether Sydney was ready for me.

ARQ nightclub is at the heart of Sydney’s gay nightlife, the venue the community converged on late at night on weekends to party through till dawn. They called it Sydney’s superclub, a place to rival the biggest and best venues in Europe and the US. I’d never seen anything like it: behind the humble and non-descript entrance in Flinders Street was a three-level palace built to feel like a corkscrew: a circular gallery at the top wound down to the main arena, and then curled down another level to a lounge area with a smaller dance floor and pool tables.

This really was like stepping into another world. I couldn’t believe the number of people flooding the place late on a Saturday night, or the energy that surged through as the crowd grew and the music soared. I was an innocent, but not too na? to know that the energy was fuelled by recreational drugs. But the energy was positive and uplifting, with none of the aggression you’d find in a bar where alcohol was altering the mood. It was hedonistic and narcissistic, but it was also surprisingly friendly. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, but it didn’t matter if you were a stranger: people talked to you anyway. Shirts came off, and the party carried on: it was eye-popping, sensual, silly, but irresistible. I kept my shirt on, and stuck to beer, but was exhilarated by it all anyway.

As many had done before me, I found moments of absolute freedom on a dance floor, in a place that was meant for me and people like me, where I didn’t have to worry what anyone thought of me or what anyone might say. That was true even though I couldn’t see myself in the people around me; there was no question I was from somewhere else, in my jeans and cowboy boots, nursing a schooner of Tooheys New. But it didn’t matter, and I gave Crazy Adam full reign. He’d protected me all these years, helped me survive in all the other worlds I’d rolled through. In this new world, he could stop working so hard. I didn’t need him to protect me any more; instead he could just be crazy for its own sake. My two halves were becoming a whole. I must have met dozens of people that night. They’d stare at me from a distance sometimes, wondering who the mad bastard was who didn’t dance like everyone else, who jumped and hopped and spun like a washing machine on the spin cycle.

But I wasn’t there just for that, liberating as it was. As much as I was trying to find myself, I also knew that underneath I was searching for something else -“ someone else. I was 28, and still alone. I’d always been alone. I’d never held someone’s hand, or bought a present for someone I cared about romantically. I’d never woken up with someone next to me. I’d never taken someone home to meet Mum and Dad. I’d never said I love you. No one had ever said it to me.

That was the truth at the heart of me. I wanted to love someone, and be loved back.

Say It Out Loud: Journey of a Real Cowboy is released on 1 March.