Will Young used to masturbate to gay porn in train toilets as a teenager while overcome with shame
Will Young. (Mike Marsland/WireImage)
Will Young has admitted that he used to masturbate in train toilets as a teenager with queer porn magazines that he bought in newsagents.
Travelling to Berkshire from London, a younger Young would purchase porn from Victoria Station and leaf through it.
He started doing it, he wrote in his autobiography To be a Gay Man, as he was feeling “more and more frustrated” with his identity, the Daily Mirror reported.
Young has spoken candidly about his internal struggle with his sexuality, chiefly, a sense of shame that he said convinced him he was going to die just for being gay.
Will Young says he felt ‘guilt and shame’ for pleasuring himself to gay porn.
The 42-year-old wrote: “That summer, I started pushing the boundaries as far as I could.
“I noticed in the tube station in Victoria there was a newsagent that had gay porn mags.
“It seemed odd that this particular shop had them, as I had never seen them in a newsagent before. It took me a few weeks to build up my courage, but one day I went in and purchased three of these magazines.
“As I went up to the till, the feeling of dread I had was almost overpowering.
“I felt as though something awful was going to happen: the shopkeeper would make some comment or judgement, and people in the shop would point and stare at me.
“Even after buying the magazines, I felt that everyone in the tube station knew what I was up to. It was a mixture of terror and guilt.
“When I got to the train to take me back to the countryside and to home, I went to the loo and looked through the magazines.
“I went quickly through them and then squashed them into the bin before I got off the train so that there was no evidence.”
This was all part of his “routine”, he said, whenever he travelled from the capital. He would buy from this same newsagents and then “have a w**k” and deposit the evidence in the bin before getting off at his stop.
“Slowly, I was finding my own sexuality through these magazines,” he said.
“The interesting thing was that it was done very much in secret and under a veil of guilt and shame, yet it was happening.”
