‘My parents tried their best, and I threw it back in their faces’ – the Pride I’ll never forget

‘Queer culture in Devon was a little less dynamic’ … San Francisco Pride, 2009. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Getty Images

I came out very early as a teenager and immediately wanted it all. I wanted to work for a fashion magazine and trot urgently across city streets with takeaway coffees. I wanted to dance to London Bridge by Fergie on London Bridge. I wanted to have sex with men. I had big dreams. But I still had my GCSEs to do, and we lived in a tiny village in Devon. I was fuming.

So, when I turned 16, my parents very sweetly took me to San Francisco Pride. They were exceptional. Before I was born, they lived for a time in Provincetown, Massachusetts (sort of an American Brighton). There, my mum, , from a mining town in Yorkshire, and my dad, from an underprivileged suburb of Boston, became ingrained in the town’s queer scene and its colourful cast of characters.