My Glastonbury boyfriend

Words: June Bellebono

“I don’t feel this comfortable normally” he tells me, my head resting on his lap, joint comedown slowly easing as we cuddle on a rare bit of shaded grass.

“What do you mean?” I reply, already deducing what-he-means, “Like, with showing affection?”

“Yeah. I’m working on it. But I don’t feel comfortable yet.”

I can hear the hesitation in his tone.

“You’ve been really affectionate so far. What’s been different?”

He pauses, and then replies, “this is Glastonbury,” chuckling to himself.

We’d met two days prior, a few hours into me arriving at the Somerset festival. I vividly remember the DJ, Elkka, was playing a house remix of Maneater, and as I sang alongside a voice-distorted Nelly Furtado you wish you never even met her at all as if she wrote those lyrics about me, for me, I spotted him in the crowd. He was 6’3”, unexplainably hooded up on a 30+ degrees day, and had his stare intensely fixed on me. I wasn’t unaccustomed to this; to hold a gender expression that is androgynous, ambiguous, unintelligible, means having constant eyes on you, being a source of curiosity for most, repulsion for some, and attraction for a few, as in this case. His staring was so relentless it was maybe borderline creepy but, sadly, this was a time when I accepted desire, by straight (passing) men, in all its forms, so I was gassed way more than fearful. 

"The liminal aspect of festivals, a-whole-new-world only hours away from your own, holds infinite potential"

Eventually, he struck up the courage for a chat, and I ended up being *one-of-those-girls*, abandoning my friends in favour of a boy, spending the rest of the night with him, jumping from one stage to another, a cocktail of substances brewing in our system, sloppily making out on dance floors whilst struggling to hold a rhythm, going back to his violently tiny tent. 

For the next couple of days, he would be my Glasto boyfriend – together we watched Lil Nas X and Elton John, danced to queer DJs with all my friends until the sunrise, and galavanted across the grounds holding hands. It was the ultimate festival fairytale. 

The liminal aspect of festivals, a-whole-new-world only hours away from your own, holds infinite potential. For (British) men, who often navigate the world in perpetual internal repression, performing a rigid masculinity whereby expression of emotion is constantly self-invigilated, festivals represent an opportunity to, for once, let go and let loose, delving into one’s desires, whether that’s sharing an intimate conversation with your mate or dancing like no one’s watching, wearing feminine clothes or intimately getting to know a queer person. 

"What I witnessed was not just an attraction towards queer desire, but also towards queer community" 

For my Glasto boyfriend, a man in finance living in Surrey Quays, Glastonbury represented and represents (he’d been maybe 5 or 6 times) an opportunity for reinvention, for exploring queerness in a more fearless way, not worrying about being labelled gay (the worst thing a straight passing man on the queer spectrum could ever be thought), not panicking about his life being ruined were anyone to find out he’d slept with someone that wasn’t a cis woman. 

But, really, what I witnessed was not just an attraction towards queer desire, but also towards queer community.