When Neil Met Adam

It was supposed to just be a night out clubbing back in July 2003 when The Sydney Morning Herald journalist Neil McMahon ventured to Arq, but it would turn out to be a night which would change his life.

For it was on the dance floor that McMahon got talking to Central Coast horse wrangler Adam Sutton. Within minutes of the pair meeting, Sutton picked up McMahon and hurled him across the dance floor.

That was the thing he tended to do in those days before we knocked the country boisterousness out him, McMahon says with a chuckle at the memory. The pair have been close friends ever since, and McMahon has penned Sutton’s revealing memoir, When Adam Was A Boy, which has just been released by Random House.

McMahon first told Sutton’s story in the pages of the Herald a year ago, on Mardi Gras Saturday, revealing the young gay cowboy as the real-life inspiration for Heath Ledger’s performance in the movie Brokeback Mountain.

Months later, McMahon introduced the tale when ABC-TV’s Australian Story featured Sutton and his family explaining the troubled experience his coming out had been. Such was the response to the documentary, a book deal was made.

Five months of writing, and four months of editing later, McMahon’s book is now on the shelves.

This is not something I ever imaged I would do -“ ever, McMahon says. I never saw myself heading in this direction, but things fall into your lap -“ or more like grab you in a nightclub when you least expect it.

I am constantly amazed at the way this story resonates with people. We had an amazing response to the newspaper article, then to the TV doco and now to the book. And I think it is so much more in that than just being gay. Anyone who has ever been through anything difficult can relate to this story. Adam is very real and brave and says it from the heart.

Read an extract of When Adam was a Boy, now available in bookshops through Random House.