This special episode weaves together the experiences of five queer artists who've navigated the exhausting terrain between authentic self and performed safety. From Matt Fishel's childhood joy being "bullied out" of him to Blake Mundell's voluntary enrollment in conversion therapy, these stories map the psychological geography of concealment.

Each artist reveals how constant self-monitoring becomes second nature - whether it's Ty McKinnie learning not to talk with his hands or Vincent di Geronimo facing daily violence in small-town Connecticut. Yet these aren't simply survival stories. They're testimonies to the peculiar alchemy that transforms hidden pain into visible art, showing how queer resilience isn't about overcoming but about finding unexpected pathways through.

Timestamped Takeaways

• [00:01:33] Childhood transformation: Matt Fishel recalls when joy turned to vigilance at age 11
• [00:02:56] Geographic isolation: Vincent di Geronimo's move from NYC to Connecticut brings immediate violence
• [00:05:37] Performative masculinity: Blake Mundell maintains image through sports and "manly" activities
• [00:06:44] Accidental outing: Aruan's preference for Wham! over Madness exposes him in classroom
• [00:10:57] Physical withdrawal: Matt Fishel becomes recluse after serious beating in Nottingham
• [00:11:57] Conversion therapy: Blake voluntarily enrolls seeking to eliminate "sinful desires"
• [00:13:42] Suicide attempt: Blake's confidential letter to pastor gets weaponised by church
• [00:19:06] Classroom cruelty: Vincent faces normalised homophobia in maths class
• [00:20:15] Body language policing: Ty McKinnie's father forbids talking with hands
• [00:21:43] Unexpected liberation: Blake finds freedom through telling friend's story
• [00:24:23] Musical salvation: Aruan discovers community through Prince and Bowie
• [00:26:37] Industry rejection: Matt Fishel told by labels to "cut the gay content"

Guest Bio

This special episode features five remarkable artists from the podcast's first season in 2021: UK-based Matt Fishel and Aruan, alongside US artists Vincent di Geronimo, Blake Mundell (performing as Courier), and Ty McKinnie. Each brings their unique perspective on navigating queer identity through music.

Resource List

• Matt Fishel's music: mattfishel.com
• Ty McKinnie's work: tymckinnie.com
• Courier (Blake Mundell): therealcourier.com
• Vincent di Geronimo: vincentdigeronimo.com

Remastered and extended series 1 episodes:

• Matt Fishel
• Ty McKinnie
• Aruan
• Blake Mundell / Courier
• SADBOY
• Brendan Maclean
• Wuhryn Dumas
• JSky
• Paul Andrews
• Vincent diGeronimo

Links

• Read deep dives into our queer lives at the blog HERE.
• Check out the official podcast playlist on Spotify.
• Follow the podcast on: Instagram • Tik Tok • Facebook
• See producer and presenter Dan Hall's other work HERE (subtitled version HERE).
• Find composer Paul Leonidou HERE.
• Listen to other episodes HERE.

Dan Hall

Dan Hall

Notes and to mark the occasion, are full special episodes which examine the common themes covered by these pioneering first few guests. This episode examines the psychological and physical toll of concealing queer identity. We'll hear from five remarkable artists Matt Fishel and Aruan, from the UK and from the US. Vincent de Geronimo, Blake Mundell and Ty McKinnie. Please recommend the show to just one other person.

Dan Hall

This week, and let's grow our community.

Dan Hall

Many of us LGBTQ plus people recognise that moment when childhood joy transforms into adolescent vigilance. Matt Fishel remembers when that shift began.

Matt Fishel

I was a really, like, optimistic and happy and kind of positive and excitable like young kid, like up until about the age of like 11 or 12. And I was always singing and dancing and performing and I just thought that's what everyone did. I mean, I was obsessed with Madonna. She was my world back then, and I I'm glad about this, but I question in retrospect it's appropriate.

Matt Fishel

But I used to watch, repeatedly from the age of nine, probably once or twice a week, non-stop, truth or dare or end up with Madonna, as we call it here. What a movie. And as you well know, all of the the gay scenes, the pride march in the middle, but then. And Gabriel kissing at the end, I always knew and had no understanding of that was what I loved about the film.

Matt Fishel

And so that was always there. But then I naively then went through living my life, you know, up until the age of 12, probably being really camp and quite obviously. Hey, good good good good good good good. God. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Kick kick kick kick kick kick kick. And wanting to do all the kissing with my younger friends and stuff, but instinctively just knowing that I kind of couldn't and never really grasping why.

Dan Hall

For Vincent de Geronimo, a shift from New York to a small Connecticut town brought this into immediate relief.

Vincent di Geronimo

I was born in New York City. I lived in New York City until I was about ten, and then my family moved us to a very small town in Connecticut. Oh, God. Yeah. And my whole family is from New York City, so I still, to this day, can't make sense of why they chose to do that. And I was always very theatrical.

Matt Fishel

Even as a kid. I would watch, like, Janet Jackson music videos and Paula Abdul music videos and just copy the choreography. And, and so my parents put me in dance class.

Dan Hall

And so were you in at this point, are you out of New York or are you still in New York at this?

Vincent di Geronimo

I was out of New York from from the age of 10 to 18. I was in this small town in Connecticut.

Dan Hall

So what was it like going? So I'm a Londoner, so I grown up in a big city. So what was it like for you? Just New York, being in your DNA and being your norm and suddenly having that stripped away

Vincent di Geronimo

death.

Dan Hall

Really?

Matt Fishel

Death? Absolutely. I, I felt so uncomfortable and so out of place. And so like I couldn't express myself at all for fear of what everyone around me would do and say. And even when I tried to shut it down, it was still said anyway.

Dan Hall

The consequences of being different quickly became clear.

Vincent di Geronimo

There was not a day that went by that I was not called fairy Queen faggot. I would, you know, the typical slammed into lockers and all that stuff, food thrown at me. People saying that they would want to hit me with their trucks or their cars in the in the school parking lot. There was one year we the the school, the musical was Bye Bye Birdie that year.

Vincent di Geronimo

And every year, the drama department as it were, would put on like just a few scenes or songs from the show for the whole school to try to drum up interest. And one scene that I was singing something and like, just at like that perfect moment of like, silence, someone was just like, you're a fucking fag.

Dan Hall

Blake Mundell, who performs as Courier, describes how hiding became a constant performance.

Blake Mundell

Because my gender presentation has usually kind of matched up with people's expectations for me. And because I've always loved sports and I've always loved, you know, doing a lot of things that quote unquote, like manly men, like doing, I had this image of, I guess I had this image to maintain that I didn't want to be interrupted by, coming out or telling somebody that I was, gay or queer.

Blake Mundell

And so, I yeah, I didn't tell anyone about that until I was 22. And even then I used very veiled language. You know, I would I would say, I have same sex attractions or, I would try to skirt around, any mention of, like, of identity language, like I am gay or I am queer.

Blake Mundell

I would say I experience same sex attraction or I have these desires, that I want to get rid of.

Dan Hall

Aaron's moment came in the school classroom where I think many of us became aware of our difference.

Aruan

I'm reminded of a time at school, and I kind of, like, sort of, like, got into myself a little bit and sort of not really sort of engaging too much of the world. And I just sort of this boy in class walking around and he's doing some sort of survey, like, do you prefer madness? Or when I, I mean, where the teacher was during all this, I don't know.

Aruan

But so and he came over to my desk and I just sort of waved, you know, dismissively to someone and the whole room, the whole classroom just fell silent. I was like, oh, shit. And I looked up and I it occurred to me that every girl said, when and every boy said, madness. And that's not gosh, oh, that's kind of my first coming out of sorts.

Aruan

And, I didn't see that coming. And, you know, I mean, I'm not going to get down to the root of the, the bullying because the bullying did start after that. But but the yeah, it was that it was it was music that accidentally I came out by choosing the joyful tunes of torture and trying.

Dan Hall

And that was Aruan performing his gateway track, go! Go! Under the performance name freaky.

Dan Hall

When hiding becomes a way of life, the psychological toll can become unbearable. It's no wonder that suicide rates are far higher for LGBTQ plus people than for the heterosexual community. Matt Fishel describes how external violence pushed him into complete withdrawal.

Matt Fishel

But then I was I started to become bullied quite a lot, and I almost had that joy kind of bullied out of me. I then became a bit of a recluse, and I kept myself to myself at school, and I didn't really want to talk to anyone. And I shied away from life for a bit. And I got, I had a really bad experience in town where I got really, seriously beaten up in Nottingham, and then I became by a gang that I didn't know, and then I became a total recluse.

Matt Fishel

I didn't leave the house or talk to anyone. And then I discovered alternative rock music and that kind of became my crowd. And then the kind of the quiet boys at school who were into that, who I'd never really been friends with before. From around the age of 14, 15, I kind of gravitated towards those also of the boys that were more open minded and then more cooler.

Matt Fishel

They were into, like Nirvana, who famously said, you know, anyone who's had me phobic can't be our fan.

Dan Hall

Meanwhile, Blake Mandell took hiding to an extreme rather than do so physically as Matt had done. Blake took steps to close away part of his own mind.

Blake Mundell

I actually voluntarily enrolled in a in a kind of an offshoot conversion therapy program. They promise you that you would either experience, either a reduction in your same sex attractions. I use air quotes there around those, or that they would reverse and that you would experience, quote unquote holy or biblical desires for, members of the opposite gender.

Dan Hall

Blake Mundell

And, you know, different programs kind of temper that differently. Some will say, oh, we're just going to teach you how to live a celibate life, and deal with your sinful desires as, as best you can.

Dan Hall

And it just sounds overwhelmingly toxic, treating.

Blake Mundell

Sexuality as something that you kind of carry along with you that's undesirable, that you're trying to detach from. Just only ever seemed to produce really rotten fruit in my life.

Dan Hall

I probably got very outdated, views of what conversion therapy is. Blake, I have a kind of picture of you, like. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange with your eyes prised open, forced to watch gay porn constantly, you know, tied to your wall, electrocuting each other. Electrocute the shame out of, you know?

Blake Mundell

Well, no, it's not, a lot of what they did was they would, like, blame my parents for not raising me. Right. And kind of tried to distance me from my parents. So it I would say that it was still torture in the way that you would, you would think of torture, but it more psychological.

Dan Hall

It is perhaps no surprise that so often this pressure becomes too much.

Blake Mundell

Blake Mundell

And so it.

Dan Hall

Was sorry to interrupt you. You sent a suicide letter, a confidential suicide letter to your pastor, who then saw it fit to pass around.

Blake Mundell

Dan Hall

Is that standard behaviour from them?

Blake Mundell

Yeah, I would say, I would say, I can't say this for sure, but I would, I would imagine. Yeah, that's that's that's pretty typical in, in church settings like mine, typically because, you know, they'll say that they're kind of sharing this information for the greater good of trying to, you know, when my soul band.

Dan Hall

Yeah. But it was obviously not about you, was it? It was about using you as an example to frighten other people into submission.

Blake Mundell

Oh, 100%. Yeah, I was for sure. They're kind of model sexual minority or a good several years. And so yeah, I think that, shedding that, role that I played for them was, I think they didn't know what to do with it. The folks we call them elders in, in the Presbyterian Church kind of formed this meeting and invited me and just kind of ambushed me with this kind of hard love tactic to set me back on track, which was honestly one of the most hurtful things, in the whole ordeal.

Dan Hall

And that's Blake Mandell performing under the name Correa. Singing his gateway track, San Francisco.

Dan Hall

Like Aruan, Vincent, de Geronimo found the school classroom, a place where queerness placed him in an unwilling spotlight.

Vincent di Geronimo

I remember one time in a math class, people got, you know, paired up randomly to work on a project. And this one kid was like, I'm not working with that fag. And it was it was just kind of like, oh, all right, class, settle down. Yeah. And I was like, that was it.

Dan Hall

It's the normalisation. That is awful. So you watch 80s movies that are G-rated and there's always that. There's one scene where someone goes, I'm not a fag.

Matt Fishel

Dan Hall

Anything and and oddly enough it's, it's not so much the use of the terminology or the use of the abuse. That is what is offensive. It is the fact that it is normalised and acceptable.

Vincent di Geronimo

Yeah.

Dan Hall

And can appear in a G-rated movie. And then people wonder why slips into playgrounds and we're just kind.

Vincent di Geronimo

Of gloss over it. Yeah, we're just going to gloss right by it.

Dan Hall

So what do we do? We look to make ourselves feel safer, though not always using the most healthy of means. Ty McKinney describes how self monitoring became second nature.

Ty McKinnie

I had this weird, sort of inclination that. If I did something that was, you know, queer like or too flamboyant or effeminate, then I would get reprimanded like hard fight guys don't do that. Like do like my dad was a very much, you cannot talk with your hands because you seem like effeminate or you seemed unhinged.

Ty McKinnie

And then I talk with my hands. So that was a big thing for us. And even not just with me, but when we were around people who were possibly queer or, you know, just, you know, not the stereotypical, perception of, but mean to be a man or masculinity. There would be just comments. It was a, awareness of, like, if I do this, this will happen or I will get talked about or I will get reprimanded or something like that.

Ty McKinnie

So that led me to this, shelter myself and in case myself, and just put on the layers and layers of clothing and to hide the true gay boy that was inside.

Dan Hall

But these stories don't end in darkness. Each of these talented musicians found ways to reclaim their authentic selves, although the paths referring different for each. For Blake Mundell, his liberation came from a surprising source.

Blake Mundell

You know, I started working on a new project, under courier called Human Becoming. And, so it was like all of my other courier work, these were songs that were written about other people's lives, other people's experiences. Gosh. One of those stories involved a dear friend of mine who I went through conversion therapy with in my early 20s, and he had dropped out and went on and affirmed himself much earlier than I did.

Blake Mundell

But, so, so part of the tipping point for me was actually getting into his story, reading a letter that he had written me when he left conversion therapy, telling me that it was not tenable for him anymore and that it was damaging to his spirit. I sort of thought, you know, if I'm going to do this, dear friends, experience justice.

Blake Mundell

I have to be able to feel all the things that he was feeling. I have to actually try to get into this letter that he wrote me. And, once I started feeling those things, I was like, shit. Like I feel all of this pain as well. I, I actually received an email that was kind of like making a threat.

Blake Mundell

That person was threatening. Threatening to out me, to everyone and to my, my bosses at the time. I work for the NFL. And so outing me in that context, was very scary for me. I can't kind of, like, come out here. I'll lose my job. I was just like, you know what this is? This is not at all the timing that I wanted to do this in, but, I'm kind of ready to kind of like, share with the world to kind of take the power away from someone who is going to do it for me.

Dan Hall

And was the reaction of the NFL as bad as you thought it might be?

Blake Mundell

No. I was very scared of that. The first season, after coming out and, I've encountered questions, but I've not encountered hostility.

Dan Hall

Written to Geronimo. Found love and partnership that made the years of hiding worthwhile, and the resilience he developed has allowed him to find companionship that is not governed by heteronormative ideals, but rather something that works for him.

Vincent di Geronimo

Incredibly fortunate to have found one partner. I managed to find two, and we're all on the same page about what our relationship is. So I'm incredibly fortunate.

Dan Hall

And for Aruan he found company and solace through two of our greatest musicians.

Aruan

I mean, even though it's called no, No One Like Prince, but that I made it even more special for me because like I do, I like found my people, you know, and it just felt really empowering and, and and, you know, and it it reminds me of the Bowie lyric, oh, no, love, you're not alone. And and that really, really resonates with you to know that there's other people like you out there and, and you might be in some, you know, backwater town and some crappy school or some crappy experience since going on.

Aruan

And then you've got that. And oh, and of course, by this point, I mean, I haven't even discovered David Bowie yet. So, you know, we've got all of that mind up to come. So hang on, what.

Dan Hall

How did you discover Bowie and what was that moment like?

Aruan

Well, it was years later. I almost felt embarrassed to say it. So when was that stance? That was 82. Maybe 82, 83. And I don't know if you remember the look. The look was, was was, you know, very sharp suits and, and it's about the most.

Dan Hall

Quite loose fitting suits when they kind of linen knee type things and.

Aruan

Yeah. Yeah, not quite zoot suits but you know, but it was, it was, it was just, it just looks so handsome. And it was the most, I don't want to use the word normal because describing Bowie as normal is, is obviously a sin. But it is, it's it's the most mainstream, most, most that he's ever looked.

Aruan

And so I didn't really if, you know, I love the record, I loved Let's Dance and I liked, the album, and my brother had the vinyl we sprayed all the time, but I didn't really know all this history that was behind it. Many, many years later, before, I realised that I was this massive back catalogue and just how queer it is.

Aruan

And it was like this. This is why, you know, on tell me about this song.

Dan Hall

It's both wonderful and also infuriating, isn't it? When you discover something from the past and you sort of feel like saying to the world around you to none of you see me, to none of you think to.

Aruan

Say, tell me about this. Yeah. Or worse still, if you heard about this fella called David Bowie's meeting, but I.

Dan Hall

And Matt Fishel has his own defines, the brilliant pop music that he writes and releases.

Matt Fishel

I got a few. I landed a few really good meetings with some, but basically most of the major labels in the UK at the time, and one by one they all started saying the same things. To me it was it was always men, it was always middle aged men in in large, large, large rooms with one huge chair that they were on, on me on a small chair and they would all listen, you know, and they'd like, be nodding away and looking kind of like, like you could see them looking kind of off into the distance, thinking what they could do with these songs.

Matt Fishel

And then every single one of them basically said to me, great melodies. You got a good voice. You're obviously a very good at telling stories with your words, but you got to cut the gig on them. Nobody's going to buy it. Nobody wants to hear it, and it needs to go.

Matt Fishel

I was like I would buy this. Why are you telling me no one will buy my music? And so I was faced with the choice really early on. Do I do as I was told I had recommended to me. And remove all descriptions about gay relationships. And remove all the pronouns to males and make all my songs generic.

Matt Fishel

So I was like, why would I change and double down my experiences, or use clever metaphors and subtle, subtle imagery to help people? So people have to read between the lines when I was like, I am proud, and I want to express that, and I realise I'm going to have to just do this myself.

Dan Hall

The weight of hiding never fully disappears, but it can be shared and eventually it can be put down.

Dan Hall

Thanks for listening to this special episode of In the Key of Q, you've heard Matt Fishel Vincent di Geronimo, Blake Mandell, Ty McKinnie, and Aruan, our thanks go to them for sharing their stories with such honesty and courage. And remember that episodes are available now. Remastered and extended links are in the shownotes. You can find more episodes of In the Key of Q and our regular blog at inthekeyofq.com

Dan Hall

Remember to extend our community by subscribing and recommending the show to at least one other person this week our theme tune is by Paul Leonidou at Unstoppablemonsters.com, and special thanks to Moray Laing for his continued support. This has been a special edition of In the Key of Q. I'm Dan Hall and I'll see you next Quesday!