Damian Barr recalls how his first Pride – and Scotland’s – changed him and the country, Ella Braidwood on laying to rest her difficult childhood in Carlisle and Yas Necati on finding peace performing her first drag act
Damian Barr: ‘We were marching for the people we had lost, marching with ghosts’virginity the same day Scotland did: Saturday 17 June 1995. The sun shone proudly as we marched loudly through Edinburgh, a city that generally limits shows of emotion to a vigorous twitch of a net curtain. I was 18, weeks from 19, and didn’t know where to look first.
I was studying journalism at Napier University . I considered interviewing the people marching with me, but who would run such a story? Who would read it? I couldn’t have imagined that day, as a closeted teenager. I grew up in a village just outside of Carlisle, and knew I was a lesbian around the age of 14. I felt a huge amount of shame because, where I lived, gay was used as an insult and lesbians were fetishised or discussed as the butt of jokes. My friends were supportive when I came out, but “that’s so gay” was still a phrase I heard a lot throughout school.
There were no barriers along the route, so, when I saw my family, I jumped out of the parade to hug them. A family friend took a photo: I’m smiling with mum by my side, wrapped in a rainbow flag she gave me that morning, both encased by my dad and older brother. I love going home now. That Pride march helped me move on from the past, the people I grew up with rallying behind me. Last year, I got that photo of me with my family framed and hung it on the living room wall. It always makes me happy when I look at it. It’s one of my favourite memories.Photograph: Eda SancakdarI spent the weeks leading up to Pride month ordering tiny water guns off eBay, hoping one of them would fit.
On the night of the show, I was buzzing. It was so cool to be performing to an audience who had also grown up with Tarkan’s music. Tarkan himself is a very confident, cocky, beautiful and effeminate man and I felt like his energy had taken over my body when I was in front of that audience. I started off in a jean jacket with a postman’s hat and fingerless gloves – a nod to an early Tarkan videoPeople were singing along to his music at the top of their voices, and I was giving everything I had.
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The Pride I’ll never forget: ‘There were only thousands of us there. But we felt like millions’Damian Barr recalls how his first Pride – and Scotland’s – changed him and the country, Ella Braidwood on laying to rest her difficult childhood in Carlisle and Yas Necati on finding peace performing her first drag act
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The Pride I’ll never forget: ‘There were only thousands of us there. But we felt like millions’Damian Barr recalls how his first Pride – and Scotland’s – changed him and the country, Ella Braidwood on laying to rest her difficult childhood in Carlisle and Yas Necati on finding peace performing her first drag act
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