Yes, I’m A Scene Gay, and You Are Too: Confessions From Inside Sydney’s Gay Scene

Yes, I’m A Scene Gay, and You Are Too: Confessions From Inside Sydney’s Gay Scene
Image: Photo: Brenton Parry

‘Yes, I’m A Scene Gay, and You Are Too: Confessions From Inside Sydney’s Gay Scene’ is a personal essay written by Jacques Nieuwoudt.


The theme for the upcoming Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is ‘FREE TO BE’. But as I lie in bed, Stonewall’s distant speakers thumping my headboard, I realise I don’t feel free. 

Chained to my ankle is a wailing voice. “Think of all the fun happening at Universal right now,” it quivers, yanking at my heel, “and Arq? Your future husband could be there.” 

As it lurches me out from under the covers, a second voice arrests me. “Not a chance. What do you stand to gain from another night out? A dysregulated sleep schedule and $25 out-of-pocket? All to kiss a few more circuit gays, exchange instas, and never speak again?” 

These thoughts play tug of war with me as I twist and turn in the darkness. When my phone screen blinks on, I reach for it like it’s a lifesaver in a rip. A promising Tinder match? A “you up?” text? A drunk apology from the last manchild I handed my heart? 

No. It’s an automated reminder from Afterpay that I’ll be dying alone. 

I check Grindr for the nineteenth time and scroll through the graveyard of decapitated torsos. A six-pack asks me to step on their face. “What face?” I mumble as I toss my phone aside. 

All I really want is to be cuddling an emotionally available boy who hates clubbing as much as I do. But he’s about as real as my chances of sleeping tonight. What is real is the anxiety alligator doing a death roll with my stomach. So I take him to Sydney Sauna to destroy someone else’s insides.  

The walk home is calm. Not because Oxford Street has gone quiet, but because my mind has. And it will be, for another twelve hours, until I need to decide what tank I want to be seen in at Bero.  

But how did I get here? Last I checked, I was a lanky creative writing undergrad. Introspective. Nerdy. Fiercely independent. My favourite Saturday nights were the ones wrapped in thick blankets. Full of cotton-muffled laughter, ice-cream, and philosophical chats with found-family. 

That boy is still inside me. The boy obsessed with Avatar: The Last Airbender, barefoot bushwalks in the rain, and sketching fantasy creatures to the tune of indie folk. But you don’t see him when you look at me, do you? 

No. The reflection that blurs across the taxi beside me is someone else. Thick biceps. Glinting gold chain. Shoulders that bulge out of a skimpy black tank top. 

As I eye this lumbering, sexed-up scene gay, I try to remember how I ended up inside him. My arrival at the gaybourhood comes to mind. 

It was a shitty six bedder in Surry Hills. The room’s yellowed moulding was peeling like a bad sunburn, black fungus was eating up half the ceiling, and worse yet, one wall had a fresh coating of paint. What needed covering more than the war zone they’d left behind? 

But it was also the house of my dreams. 

It was opposite the cafe where I’d had my first date with a boy. On the walk to the inspection, I’d passed four rainbow flags, a pair of elderly men holding hands, and a handsome twunk rocking mesh shorts and a confidence I could only dream of. 

Compared to the white-picket suburban desert where I grew up, this was Gay Wonderland. So I took the room. 

That February, the Dykes on Bikes welcomed me home, thundering down Oxford Street with fists in the air. Pyres of rainbow fire and confetti filled the sky. Two dads held their son’s hand as they marched down Taylor Square. The little boy grinned, waving at the audience. The crowd roared. I wiped my cheeks dry. 

Here, I would finally be free to be me. 

Free to be (a scene gay)

The first of Gay Wonderland’s many rides I picked was a twenty-eight year-old Pakistani man named Henry. He had a bright smile, a gold hoop earring, and an articulate manner of speaking. 

To my surprise, he didn’t recoil when my shirt came off. Instead, he tolerated my twinky exterior and together we completed the sacred act once forbidden to me. The holy unification of two flesh, two souls. “A great start to the week” is what Henry called it, throwing me a towel.  

I walked home grinning ear to ear. Here, sex can be whatever you make it. It was the first time I felt truly excited to be gay. 

But soon I realised there were other, less accessible rides. “Straight acting looking for same”, “no fats”, “no fems”, “no asians”, “masc4masc”, “fit only”, “muscular guys to the front”, “prefer lean”, “be gym fit”. 

Other rides didn’t advertise their admission criteria at all.  

There were lavish dinners, brunches, house parties, club nights, yacht parties, festivals, beach trips, raves, cruises, circuit events. Every day, these glamorous rides spun across the circles at the top of my Instagram feed like little Ferris Wheels. That is, if Ferris Wheels were full of needlessly hot shirtless men, and could run you over. 

I realised amusement parks are a lot less fun when you don’t have any tickets. 

And maybe if I was whole, I could’ve simply enjoyed the tickets I started with. Indulged in Gay Wonderland like it was a decadent dessert. A sweet, delicious, but occasional treat. One best savoured after a hearty meal, when I didn’t feel so empty. 

But I wasn’t full, or whole. What gay man with one foot out of the closet is? 

I was hungry. I’d had a taste of the most intoxicating narcotic for a self-hating gay boy: I’d felt desired. And I wanted more. I wanted to see the view from the top of the Ferris Wheel. 

That said, I never decided to become a scene gay. I never sat down and plotted out my perfect body. I never wanted being hot to become my favourite hobby, much less a weight-bearing pillar of my identity. 

I just kept lifting. Saying yes to invitations. Posting the occasional gym selfie. But with each unassuming step, my pecs and prospects grew. 

Boys who’d never looked at me started eyeing me off in changerooms. Flirty drag queens started plucking me out of club queues; “Heellllll no bitch. Clark Kent doesn’t pay!”. The bearded adonis who’d left me on read started asking to see my nudes. 

Before long, Instagram had become a horny game of “gotta catch ‘em all”. Every scene gay that followed me was another ticket. My profile, once full of cherished friends and low-res national park sunsets, was now a curated collection of gym selfies and “candid” speedo shots. It was no longer about the things I loved, but the things that would make the Hot Gays™ love me. 

A beginners guide to spotting a scene gay, ft. The Velvet Rage

In his book The Velvet Rage, psychologist Alan Downs calls this skill “splitting”: the ability to craft a beautiful facade, a version of oneself designed to win the validation of others. 

Downs suggests gay men first learn this skill to survive our heteronormative upbringing. From the moment we realise we are different, we begin internalising a destructive core belief: “the real me is unloveable”. 

From that point forward, we begin honing our art. The art of constructing a version of ourselves palatable to the straights. A version that is loveable. This art becomes our best tool, our only tool, for extracting love from a world that hates us. 

But there’s a catch. Splitting is no art at all. It’s a trauma response, albeit a very sexy one. At best, it requires us to abandon our true selves. At worst, to vilify and repress them.  

When I arrived at the scene, I was already a master of BDSM; I’d had my authentic self in a chokehold for ten years. I was brilliant at disciplining and silencing him. So much so that, as I ogled all those gorgeous bodies, I forgot to let go of his throat. 

The boy who loves ice-cream, philosophy, and bushwalks in the rain never got to breathe. Never got to explore his sexuality and interests unabashed. Instead, when I came out of the closet, I threw him right back in. I jailed him inside a sexed-up scene gay. Let him watch his hunky cage lap up the praise he never got. 

I wonder, how many of us go from being straight to being gay, not once being ourselves? 

When I get home, I wash off the lubey stench of Sydney Sauna. A bead of water trickles down my now beefy pec. The man in the mirror is a masterpiece. A body systematically designed to seduce men. A swollen meat puppet that had turned every head in the steam room. 

Photo: Brenton Parry

He is confident, muscular, and entirely uninteresting. A carbon copy of every hot guy at my gym. I eye him with a mixture of awe and disdain. 

This is the view from the top of the Ferris Wheel. 

Only now, the wheel looks more like a cog. A cog in a machine that manufactures scene gays. 

I won’t pretend I haven’t had my fun here. I’ve hunted men through oceans of strobe-lit muscle. I’ve pinned grinning boys to bar walls. Felt their chests unfurl and mouths open after finally being “caught”. There’ve been lips so soft that every neon colour of the world blurred away like wet paint. 

 But that’s the thing about Ferris Wheels. You’re only at the top for a few measly seconds. Most of the ride is spent anticipating that high, or lost to the comedown afterward. 

And is the view ever really worth it? Or is it the anticipation we’re really addicted to? 

Once the clock strikes twelve, the chase is over, and the well of limerence (or the bag of ketamine) runs dry, are we happy returning to our ordinary lives? Or is our Monday to Friday slog just a means to another weekend? 

Plot twist: there are no scene gays

Well, I asked – the DNA cover boys, the circuit gays, the gym junkies – where they found happiness. Turns out underwear models really like poetry. 

No one brought up Oxford Street. No one seemed to care about being hot, seen, or liked. “I only go clubbing when there’s an event on,” my ripped friend yelled over his Loop earplugs, eyeing the bump timer on his Apple Watch. 

Not one person self-identified as a scene gay. 

But if Gay Wonderland is the loudest, proudest, and hottest place to be, how is it possible it has no patrons? And if none of us are scene gays, what are we all doing here, nipples out and posting about it? 

Or is it all just one big stage play? A mirage every splitter unwittingly collaborates on? But then what keeps me coming back? 

Maybe once I thought we came here for sanctuary. That it was on this hallowed ground that, in ancient times, The Founders vanquished homophobia and hate. That they carefully conjured a gay paradise to meet all the wants, needs, and hurts of our community. 

But having lived in this utopia for four years, I’m starting to think its founding was far less judicious. 

What if, back when pride was still a protest, our fight for liberation became… trendy? What if corporations slapped on rainbow flags? What if they monetised our radical body positivity? Sold it back to us in the form of designer speedos and hundred dollar underwear parties? 

What if #Pride4Profit capitalism coincided with the invention of the most powerful manipulator of consciousness in human history: social media? What if attention scientists realised there is no algorithm more powerful than our built-in body dysmorphia. That gay men will scroll til the last steroid-sculpted body? 

What if we benched, binged, jogged, and jabbed until our muscles matched? What if the site where our elders were once beaten and incarcerated became an unending party for our hunkiest? One that generated millions in rainbow revenue for the NSW Government

In this (purely hypothetical) world, pride, once our paramount weapon, becomes a luxury lifestyle. And we pay the price for it. After all, what market is more lucrative than horny boys roleplaying attractive men, each with high fashion dreams, an expendable income, and an unmet need for validation? 

In this world, tell me: is the scene a city built for us, or a city built to prey on us? I cannot say which it is for you. 

Photo: Brenton Parry

Only that, today, Grindr has successfully commodified our hottest torsos, with a market cap to the tune of four billion dollars. Today, the AIDS epidemic and the 78ers have largely faded from relevance (as does anything with wrinkles in our community). Today, a new generation has inherited Oxford Street, one for whom pride has never been a protest. 

The war every scene gay grew up fighting

When we arrive at Gay Wonderland, we are quick to join the party to celebrate our freedom. But, swimming in a soup of sweaty studs on MDMA, it can be easy to forget we are soldiers. Soldiers returning from a war every gay boy is conscripted to fight in. A war called heteronormativity. 

Sure, not all of us grew up choking every high, soft, or curly lilt that might give our faggotry away. We didn’t all endure bullying, religious trauma, or unaccepting families (though, statistically, most of us did). But we did all grow up in a violently gendered world.  

This world taught us that manhood means stoicism, strength, and leaving emotional vulnerability to the girls. It taught us that the meaning of life is family, and family happens when a man puts his dick in a woman. In this world, there were no gay characters on TV. In this world, every musical, romcom, and song ever written was about love, and not about us. 

In my experience, Downs has one thing right. There’s a deep, unavoidable shame that comes with growing up gay in that world. There are wounds no bicep pump, lustrous career, or outward glow-up can erase. 

And still, we try. 

We dance with our fellow veterans, despite the trench foot still eating up our toes. 

We sell our new arrivals the same pipe dream we were once sold. Just look at me! Of course this unending party is where you’ll finally be “free to be”. We don’t tell them what we really mean is “free to be hot”. And we don’t dare admit that being hot and being authentic are goals diametrically opposed. Or that we chose wrong. 

And it’s fun, and easy, diving head first into oceans of strobe-lit muscle. Oceans where, conveniently, we can’t hear ourselves think, much less ask each other where we’re hurting. 

Pride is important. Liberation from heteronormativity and hate is worth celebrating. I cannot stress enough how vital slutty gay sex was to my own self-acceptance. But I’ve come to realise there is no freedom to be found in Gay Wonderland. Not if we don’t first remedy the hate crimes we’re committing against ourselves. 

‘Gay Wonderland remains a place to fill asses, not hearts’ 

Until I return with a liberated inner child and an immutable self-worth, one untethered to my sex appeal, Gay Wonderland will remain a place to fill asses, not hearts. 

But the power to change it is ours. It’s time we channel our immense and beautifully queer creativity into more than sexy Horrorween outfits.

What we need now is introspection, tears (preferably with a low alcohol content), and the will to reclaim our authentic selves. 

We need spaces where we can connect with gay peers and elders. Spaces we enter as unvarnished human beings, not as sexual objects.

We also need the Australian Government to quit painting rainbow crossings and licking their gay tourist dollars instead of complying with their reparative obligation to fund free trauma and affirmative psychotherapy for all members of the LGBTQ+ community.

If it wasn’t already clear, this article is not intersectional, or inclusive. 

If anything of my experience resonates with you, it’s likely because you’re a wealthy, cisgender gay man with the able-bodied privilege to build a conventionally attractive body. Those in our community who lack these privileges, who live rurally, or for whom their race, age, and/or HIV status is subject to prejudice, Gay Wonderland imposes enormous barriers. 

Unfortunately, it’s those of us with easy entry who are afforded the most power to change things. To reshape the scene from the inside. To reunite pride with her much needed sister: healing. 

So, today, I ask every closeted scene gay a question: 

When you came out, did you bring your inner child with you?  

Or one day, when you’re too old to play twink, too atrophied to play jock, and too wrinkled to play daddy, will you look back inside your closet and find a skeleton there? The remains of a little boy you never let live?


You can learn more about Jacques Nieuwoudt here.

One response to “Yes, I’m A Scene Gay, and You Are Too: Confessions From Inside Sydney’s Gay Scene”

  1. Every Gay man ( and woman ) has a story, unique to them and unfortunately not many are happy. To all in our LGBT+ community, I wish you health, happiness, respect and love. However, we must learn to accept ourselves for who and what we are; as well as love & respect ourselves first. Easier said than done in a lot of cases. Be happy.