Older Millennial guys let me hear your war cries… We were the first generation of gay men who got to live more freely because of our forefathers’ efforts, we took fashion risks, we grew up with safer sex messages that rocked our world and we saw Charlie Hunnam get rimmed.
1) UFO clothing was everything and you had to have Buffalo shoes.
God knows what we were thinking.
2) We played our love lifes out to Geri Halliwell’s first and best album.
Bag It Up was the theme tune to our life.
3) We remember those AIDS ads from the TV and condom usage was always a must.
That was so scary, condoms basically jumped onto our dicks.
4) Charlie Hunnam was literally everything.
Queer as folk was everything. And **that** rimming scene taught you everything you needed to know and a little bit more.
5) You remember watching watching Tony Hills and Simon Raymonds kiss for the first time on EastEnders and it was electric
Thank god there was no Twitter back then. Social media would have completely melted as these two love birds locked lips.
6) Coming Out at school was probably still a huge No No.
It can still be tough to come out at school, but it was a complete no no back in the 80s and 90s.
7) You couldn’t talk about being gay with your teachers at school. It was against the law.
Yep. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher and the Tories in the 80’s we were “protected” from talking about sexuality in schools.
8) You remember thinking as a child that Todd from Neighbours was everything.
Todd was hot. There was no way of denying it.
9) When you came out the idea of marriage was so extreme you thought you’d end up alone and always be a social pariah that never married.
Thank you 2004 and civil partnerships.
10) Celebrities only came out in newspaper exposés or interviews.
Celebrities were either forced out or made some £££ out of coming out for national rags. Careers were often ruined and teen girls everywhere cried themselves to sleep.
11) Gaydar was really the only way to hook up online.
This was the golden age of ASL
12) You totally had one of these
In either grey or pink. So so millennial.
13) You wore t-shirts that changed colour when you went clubbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rHFMxx5vf0
It was so important for people to see you sweat.
14. If you were in London the Astoria was the only place to be if you were a twink.
![CREDIT: Secretlondon at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [CC BY-SA 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://www.thegayuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/LondonAstoria.jpg "20 Things You Get Only If You're A Early Millennial Gay Man 9")
Shiz didn’t get more real. Millennials played out their entire social lives in the mid-level bar.
15. It was the golden era of boybands.
And we all wanted to look like them.
16. Pushpops taught us a lot.
Pushpops taught us that you have to get something up before you can suck it.
17. Will And Grace changed the game.
We all wanted Karen as a friend.
18) Basic bitches had this phone
19) Posh gays had this one.
Millennial guys could do everything by text. It was basically the only way to get anything done. If you had money you had a Razr otherwise it was Nokia 3210 all the way.
20) We are a crossover generation learning to become more comfortable with a more accepting world.
