No, You Can't: Why Good Enough Exists
For a lot of gay men — particularly those who grew up in decades when "boy" and "dancer" weren't allowed to sit in the same sentence — that "no" never fully goes away. It gets carried quietly, sometimes for a lifetime, long after the barrier itself has gone.
Good Enough is about gathering those stories: the delayed starts, the hidden identities, the moments people found their own way through anyway. Not to dwell on the barrier itself, but to show what came after it. The version of yourself you built once you stopped waiting for permission.
My own story is one of many we're collecting.
I didn't start dancing until my early thirties. I trained professionally at 38. Growing up gay in the north east of England in the '70s and '80s, a boy who wanted to dance was already assumed to be effeminate, already assumed to be gay — and there was no support waiting on the other side of that assumption, not from family, not from school, not from peers. So the door stayed shut for the best part of thirty years.
"There was no support from family, or school, or peers. So it was having to get over that hurdle, and that hurdle took me until I was 30."
What finally got me through wasn't permission. It was deciding to stop waiting for it.
If it resonates — if you've got your own "no" you pushed through — we'd love to hear it.
Good Enough: Multisensory Queer Storytelling is an R&D project by NOCTURN,
supported by Immersive Arts funding. Film by Louise Mather.