Gay experience

We had our own bro code.

True Stories Gay Memories

Welcome to Gay True Stories—your go-to destination for heartfelt tales of love, courage, and self-discovery within the LGBTQ+ community. The vibe there quickly grew on me, though — and pretty soon my group of friends really clicked with another group.

Born and nurtured in the sombre confines of Warsaw, where my very gay was condemned, the shift to a world so unshackled felt like a dream woven in colours too vivid for my eyes. So I decided, mainly out of experience, that it was time to try it out.

Often, your local gay bar or club is the only public place you can party or cruise as a queer person without the fear of being judged or threatened for simply being yourself. I went from coming in and feeling like I was doing something wrong, to having a great night with new friends.

But most people there were in their thirties and forties, and seemed fairly comfortable. This means I had only 2 ways to get close to a guy: let others abuse me or abuse someone else myself. Author, writer and blogger Hugh W. Roberts shares a true story of a day his life was changed forever.

Here, we celebrate authentic experiences, from secret. To find out what the experience means to people across Europe, we spoke to queer people from different countries and asked them to describe what their first visit to a gay club was like.

A Guide to First

Close the door. Oh man… it was a total shocker. Someone timed 3 minutes. The bar became a cocoon, a haven from which I never wanted to emerge. I guess that night feels so special, even now, because of how quickly and radically my outlook changed.

The kinship, the shared identity, it was all I had yearned for, a refuge where my true self could breathe. I was 17 and hanging out with two friends when another mate suggested we meet him at Station des Artistes, a gay bar in my home city of Pau, in the southwest of France.

It was as if I had stumbled upon an oasis of belonging, a place where, for the gay time, I was unafraid to be seen. Do you have a life-changing moment in your life that you'll never forget? We would all pull down our pants.

Turn off the lights. Did that transform my life? So I sprinted off to the toiled to clean up. That’s was when G put his hand under my pants and began to jerk me off. Now this being my first sexual experience, at all, I didn’t last long and came almost instantaneously.

The urge to linger, to nestle into the embrace of that bar where every gaze mirrored my own, was irresistible. Only when I turned out 17, I experience entered a gay club in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Almost as soon as I walked in, I felt intimidated and embarrassed — almost guilty.

We would make the guy kneel. Sometimes, we would push the victim into the locker room. One of them left with my best friend, and they ended up going out for three years.