Munich: Friendship at the gay get-together – Munich

The men who thought they were pink seahorses a few years ago meet once a month. Sitting around the table in a bar in the Glockenbachviertel are five gays who were only ready to come out after their 30th birthday – that is, to publicly acknowledge their homosexuality. Markus Bartsch, whom the others like to see as the organizer of their meetings, places a carved pink wooden seahorse between the drinks.

It is a maritime symbol of the memory of the time when they visited a ten-week self-help group eight years ago, which was supposed to give them, as not yet outed gays, a nudge into a fulfilled life. “I feel like I’m in a pool full of Olympic swimmers and I only have the seahorse myself,” said one member at the time, referring to the first swimmer license for children. Since then, some of the novices at the time have become close friends who support each other in everyday life to this day. Two of the original troupe recently got married.

The reasons why men decide to come out later in life are shaped by biographical differences and structural similarities. “We still live in a strictly homophobic society,” says Christopher Knoll, psychologist at Sub, the center for gay men, among other things, that initiated and directed the self-help group. “The desire to deny and suppress is extremely great.”

Again and again in the stories of the men there is talk of a pressure, of the metaphorical, building up “house of cards” and a time of hiding in one’s own inner world. One after the other, as you would expect from an earlier self-help group, the former seahorses begin to tell their stories – routinely and carefully, because they have been telling each other for years.

Open detailed view

In 2012, when he turned forty, Markus Peick could no longer. “I’ve been in the wrong life for so long,” he describes his thoughts, “something has to happen now.” Shortly thereafter, the husband and father of two children, who was then married to a woman, came out as gay. “I’ve always known it,” says Peick. At 23, he came out for the first time and began dating men. At the university he got to know his future wife.

“Part of the explanation for this is surely the expectation from the outside.” The two married in 1999 and immediately had their first child – a girl with a severe disability. “I didn’t have the heart to go,” he says. When a boy was born a little later, the relationship for Markus Peick was finally “cemented”. There followed exhausting years of being a father, “at first there was no thought of me”.

“Suddenly you sit there alone and notice how you are slowly heading towards an abyss”

Today Peick lives the life that he himself and circumstances have denied him for so long. “It wasn’t easy, but it was crowned with success,” he says in his wistful, joking tone. At the Pink Seahorse he met Martin Peick and fell in love. After eight years of relationship, the two have recently been married and share “very equal shares” between Markus’ children and his ex-wife. “If I could choose again, then I would take Markus again with children,” says his husband Martin Peick, who also took his time with his outing.

Growing up in a small town in Lower Bavaria, he simply “didn’t allow” his sexual orientation as an adolescent. When I was studying law “I didn’t dare”. Nevertheless, he was by no means lonely during this time, had a large circle of friends, and drove away with his mates during the semester break. His situation only became a problem for him in his mid-30s, when his friends got married one after the other and now spent the summer with their own families.

“Suddenly you sit there alone and notice how you’re slowly heading towards an abyss,” says Peick. Finally, the mountain lover found himself joining the Gay Outdoor Club (GOC), an LGBTI * -friendly delegation of the German Alpine Club. With the people of the GOC, he dared for the first time to publicly stand for his sexual orientation and even to visit a gay bar in the Glockenbachviertel. He also got to know Timo Walter. A little later the two found each other with the pink seahorses.

Some of them preferred to avoid Müllerstrasse

Timo Walter was attracted and repelled by the idea he had of gay life before he came out. “I had a very strange picture of it – that everything is shrill,” he says. As a young man he had to muster all his courage to cycle through the Glockenbachviertel out of curiosity. On one of his forays, he says, he discovers a pile of the scene magazine “Leo”. Walter wrestles with himself for a long time, finally grabs a copy and quickly steps on the pedals. “I wonder why I made life so difficult for myself,” he thinks years after coming out at 32, “when I’ve only had positive experiences afterwards.”

Andreas Albrecht also remembers his fear of the area around Gärtnerplatz very well. “I avoided Müllerstrasse,” he says. “I thought, if I walk through that, I’m stigmatized.” In his youth, Albrecht was with a woman for seven years. At the age of ten he already knew that he wasn’t into women. At some point he ended the relationship, but couldn’t give his girlfriend any real explanation. “I said: I don’t love you anymore.” When Albrecht, then just over 30 and lovingly called “the chick” by the others, joins the Seepferdchen, he is actually the only one who still has his first coming-out ahead of him and who will have more than a year to go will need.

At the beginning, the seahorses are united by the fact that they are new as adult men in a world that could have been their home much earlier. They soon learn that coming out is not a single, closed event. “It is a term that shows that the person is going through a process of awareness in order to accept their homosexuality,” says Christopher Knoll. In a heteronormative society, every encounter in everyday life can be an occasion for a coming out.

Markus Bartsch was the first of the group to decide, but he needed a few attempts: on his fortieth birthday he was about to come out to the party guests, but did not dare because his parents did not yet know. On another occasion, shortly before that, his brother announced that he would soon have children. It was only the third time that he succeeded in his outing. For a long time, Bartsch’s image of homosexuality also did not match the reality of his life today. “You have to run through the street with the feather boa around your neck, then you’re gay,” he thought for many years. At 30, he slept with a man, and in the ten years that followed, he had two relationships with women. “At first I thought I was asexual. Now I know that being gay comes in all colors, sizes and colors. The rainbow is colorful.”

Some hide – in their own inner prison

Bartsch calculated the “middle of life” for his outing. “On the one hand, I missed certain things,” he thinks, “on the other hand, I spared myself mistakes in my youth.” Andreas Albrecht regrets that he stole “a certain amount of time” from his ex-girlfriend. To this day, the men are still convinced that it is never too late. Markus Peick, for example, knows a man who only came out as a pensioner.

Christopher Knoll tells the story of an unhappily married 76-year-old who called him in the sub to come out to him. “The fact that we grow up in an anti-gay society is a risk for the young gay man,” says Knoll. In this hostile environment, some homosexuals hide for years until the pressure from society and their own thoughts become an inner prison.

After eight years of friendship, the men who felt like seahorses learned that the categories of marine animals and professional swimmers really don’t matter. Andreas Albrecht can still remember the first feeling after his outing: “Then I was free.”