Long story short: Donal Og Cusack is one of Ireland's most famous sportsmen, he's the goalkeeper for the Cork hurling team.
I've known for the last year or so, through mutual friends, that he was gay, but because of the excruciatingly macho and usually unforgiving nature of his sporting world I wasn't sure if he'd ever feel confident enough to come out. But he just has, in his autobiography.
I'm sure even non-sports fans realise how big a deal this - to my knowledge only one high profile English soccer player, for example, ever came out, and that was when his career was as good as over. He was Justin Fashanu -
- his brother John, also a footballer, 'disowned' him, he was so horrified by the 'revelation'. Justin's life ended tragically, I hope John is haunted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_FashanuAny way, for me, Cusack's honesty and courage is mind-blowing and inspirational because his sport is largely supported by rural and conservative people - I don't want to go in for stereotypes, but you know what I mean?
His story, though, is heartbreaking, it just screams loneliness, but I hope things will be better for him from now on.
"I went out with nice women and good women, but sure, I still knew. I wanted something else. I get more out of men. I just do. Always have. I know I am different but just in this way. Whatever you may feel about me or who I am, I've always been at peace with it."
He also reveals how coming out to his family was one of the hardest things he has ever done....knowing that his father in particular would take the news very hard. "Now my father is a man who would fight for his family but he's 63 years of age. He's a crane driver. Building sites can be cruel, hard places, he didn't need this," he said. When he did come out and tell them "the other, secret story of this son they had reared in this house", his father started asking questions, he recalled.
"There was confusion in every line of his face. He said he was a man of the world, and that he had lived and worked in London for 10 years but he thought, well, if he had a son like this, he would dress differently and behave differently," he said. "They all have square jaws," he said at one point. 'But you don't. You're into hurling,'" he quoted his father as saying. "Then he said: 'Right, you know the way we need to deal with this? You need to get fixed.'"
Later, once the shock had subsided, Donal revealed how his father warned him he faced a hard road ahead. "He shook his head slowly and said : 'Like f*** it, Donal Og, the abuse you're going to get about this. I thought it was hard defending your short puck-outs (a short puck-out is the riskiest thing a goalkeeper can do in hurling), but f*** it, this one'."
.....Donal also revealed that he sometimes envied his heterosexual friends who had wives and children. "If I wasn't the way I am, I'd be married with a couple of kids to come home to by now."
But he said he also loathed living a lie and vowed to tell the truth about himself after he was recognised in a Cork gay bar but denied he was the hurling star. "And that's the worst feeling," he said. "People say it would be easier, wouldn't it, to just fit in with everyone else? But you can't live in denial, you can't be somebody else," he said. "I woke up the next day and made a vow to myself: that will never again f***ing happen. Never, ever again. Whatever came my way, I would always be me."
He said his first "fleeting" encounters with other men were at the age of 19 when he was working on building sites and he eventually progressed to the full-on gay scene. He candidly admits to indulging in one-night stands with strangers he met at gay nightclubs. "Because I went into those places on my own, I lived a load of that s**t. Loads of it and nobody back in the other world I lived in would have known. I'm a healthy living person, well into my sport, but I could tell stories that would embarrass myself."
One of those stories includes a rendezvous he had while on a team trip to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and he wound up eluding his teammates to pursue a gay encounter. "Next morning I woke up with a fella. Hungover. Demented. Lost. It's all right waking up and not knowing where you are in Cork, but in Ho Chi Minh City? Who is beside me? Where am I? S**t."Update: POLITICIANS, GAA stars and hurling fans have urged Donal Og Cusack not to hang up his hurley amid concerns about the reaction to his decision to come out as a gay man. The Cork goalkeeper was overwhelmed yesterday with messages of support from teammates, Rebels fans and GAA supporters in his native club, Cloyne.
Senior Cork GAA stars including Ben O'Connor, Brian Corcoran, Sean Og O'hAilpin, Tom Kenny, Timmy McCarthy and Cathal Naughton stressed they respected Cusack's decision to go public -- and admired both his honesty and courage.....Locals in Donal Og's native village of Cloyne also rallied to show their support yesterday.
Tom Canavan, a neighbour and friend of the Cusack family, said Donal Og's courage and honesty should be an inspiration to all Irish people. "There are 100,000 people playing GAA in this country and he is hardly the only one who is gay. I hope his comments will be a help to other gay sportspeople," he declared. Others admitted the revelations in his biography left them startled. "When my son told me yesterday, I was hit for six. But the main thing is he was able to come out," Cloyne woman Kitty Ryan said.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-football/fans-rally-to-support-cusack-amid-fears-gaa-star-will-quit-1918368.htmlTrust me, he'll have to confront many a scumbag in Ireland, but I have a feeling Donal Og Cusack and his honesty and courage will have a wonderfully positive impact.
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