Liam (he/him) is a 28 year old gay man and fox, who lives in North Petherton. He is ex-RAF and works as a rail planning engineer. Alex tells us he is energetic, cuddly and persistent.
Alex (he/him) is a 34 year old gay man and bear, who lives in North Petherton and works as a paramedic practitioner. Liam tells us he is caring, sleepy and driven
HOW DID YOU MEET?
Alex - I think we met on Grindr, but he (Liam) thinks we met on Growlr. That just tells me how many dating apps he was using at the time! We met at an RAF base. There were men with machine guns, which was interesting…
Liam - We are in our 7th year. We got engaged after 2 years. [Looks down at Alex’s hand jokingly].
Alex - My ring’s upstairs, I just had a shower!
Liam - We’re still engaged. We’re that couple that people are like, ‘When are you getting married?’
Alex - As soon as I finish paying off the fact we just bought a house!
ON LOCKDOWN LIFE
Liam - Alex started working from home at the same time as me, which I really liked. I was always really keen to talk to him, even if he was taking important calls on the phone!
Alex - I would literally be talking to patients and Liam would be like, ‘Do you want a drink?’ and I would be like, ‘No!’
Liam - I found it really nice to have him around all the time, it didn’t get old for me.
Alex - I was shielding and was not allowed outside. That was hell. I completely lost my temper with it around July. I was done with it. One of the things I used to do before going to work was walk round the block. Out the back gate, round the side and into the front door. I just needed to commit to going to work.
Liam - Maybe the best way to describe the start of our Lockdown is if you imagine everything going on in life as a piece of string. Imagine all the strings cross over and bash into each other. They stayed tangled up in the first few months of Lockdown and then we started to pick them off bit by bit and get back on track again. We drank a lot of wine.
Alex - We drank far too much wine. Well the things that got panic bought were wine…
Liam - and Vimto!
ON VISIBILITY
Liam - Just before Lockdown we found a group of people called the Taunton Gay Group [tauntongaygroup.weebly.com] . They meet in various pubs to chat and sometimes do pub quizzes. In the first pub we met in, there was a little rainbow flag on the side of the stairs, like a little secret bat cave symbol and I was like, ‘Aha!’ Weston-Super-Mare is opening up too. Now there’s a gay bar called Proud Bar. [www.proudbarwsm.com] They have 2 resident queens and are doing well!
Alex - And in North Petherton we are not the only gays in the village! [To their dog, Mr Dogo the dog] 'Umm, come on now, on your bed.’
Liam - I think as soon as things go back to normal again, smaller prides like Taunton [tauntonpride.co.uk] and Weston [www.facebook.com/westonsupermarepride] are going to really come back swinging.
ON INTAMACY
Alex - You’ve got to have date night in Lockdown, it's the only way you are going to survive.
Liam - I would lay the table. Candles, wine…the lot.
Alex - I spend a lot of my time grinding my teeth quietly telling the world to F*** off. I like a little bit of space and time to myself. I think Lockdown has made people more conscience about communicating with each other. Lockdown has made me more aware of actually making more contact with people, because I am not seeing as many people day to day as I used to. I have more tolerance to talk to people who I actually want to talk to.
Liam - After this you will stay out clubbing with me till 2am then?
Alex - Nope. That is well past 9.30pm.
Liam - I would feel comfortable walking around Taunton holding hands. And around here in North Petherton, it’s fine.
Alex - We get treated pretty much no differently. We have been quite lucky in terms of the people that live around us.
ON REPLICATING PRE-COVID EXPLOITS
Alex - We love going to London or Manchester to feel our like our most uncensored selves.
Liam - We had a lot of plans cancelled due to the pandemic. We were meant to go to Glastonbury, Boomtown, Wilderness and BearBash. BearBash is a bear event in Manchester that happens every year. Over Lockdown we did a few dance parties, yoga and lots of Zooming.
Alex - We did virtual pub quizzes with our London friends. In some way we have seen more of our friends that we can’t usually see in person easily. It’s not the real thing though is it.
Liam - You either have no sandwich or a cucumber sandwich.
ON LGBTQIA+ VISIBILITY DURING LOCKDOWN
Liam - I suppose one thing that you can nod to now is that everyone is getting their own face masks with personalised bits on them. You see more and more people around town with rainbow ones. Our ones have a little bear on the side.
Alex - People are kind of fashion accessorising their masks, but it makes me furious that the pride flag has been used for something that it isn’t for. I just feel like saying, ‘Go and find your own logo!’.
Liam - Even in this small village, you can walk around with a little badge on your mask saying, ‘Hey I’m a gay, beary person,’ and there’s loads of other people walking around town with their own message.
Alex - Like face masks are the old gay hanky code, kind of thing.
Liam - I think it’s enhanced my own identity. We are also more present with our friends from our community and we socialise with them more.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST THANKFUL TO YOUR PARTNER FOR THROUGHOUT LOCKDOWN?
Liam - Just being a leaning post.
Alex - Stability.
Liam - Stability, yeah. No matter how f**d up things got there was always a nice safe place to come back to.
Alex - We could always reset together. We very much picked each other up when we needed it.
Liam -There was no one person that has been this stoic role, it always swapped over.
