GOING BACK IN
"The Week"
[British weekly news summary magazine]
There's only one thing harder than coming out, says Jackie Clune, and that's going back in.
The British comedian was a lesbian for 12 years, during which time she built up a huge gay following. But three years ago, after a painful break-up, she started having doubts about her sexuality. "I decided that for me, being a lesbian wasn't all it was cracked up to be," she says in The Guardian. "I longed for my own head space, the blissful state of basic incomprehension between men and women which means you don't have to waste years talking about your bloody feelings.
There was something so exhausting about being a lesbian, maybe I just wasn't cut out for the hard work". But going straight wasn't easy - not least because of the reaction of the gay community. "I've been called a scab, a sellout, a mainstream wannabe," she says. "I was recently named 'Most Disappointing Lesbian of the Year' in a lesbian magazine".
She's had lesbians booing and walking out of her shows, and even her friends have sometimes seemed a little frosty. "I remember Graham Norton sighing when I told him: 'You lesbians are useless, aren't you? You just can't stick at it'." These days she's happily settled with a "sensitive, kind and loving man" - but every now and then, she does wonder:
"What was I doing all those years if this is who I truly am now".