`I remember clearly one freezing winter's night as a child being taken up several miles of fields by my father and his brothers. He was bringing his mare to be impregnated by a thoroughbred stallion. Of course it was illegal, but my father knew that if it was known that he had done this, then the foals would be worth a lot of money. I was soaking wet when we finally reached the horse and I remember really clearly one of my uncles shining a spotlight on the mare . . .

"It was my first experience of sex; standing in a field with all these men, watching two horses mating in a spotlight. It was surreal, particularly as no one ever talks about sex among the Travellers. So how anyone knows how to do it on their wedding night, I don't know."

Michael Connors is sitting outside a cafe in Brixton, not far from his London home. With a pierced eyebrow and tidily dressed in a checked shirt and denim jacket, Connors, who was born in Carlow, is discussing the progress of his autobiography. At 30 he seems rather young to have undertaken such an catharsis, but it seems he has much to exorcise.

"I felt that the Irish community abandoned me because of my Travelling identity. The book is an attempt to make people aware that I was abandoned by my own," he explains. Though well-adjusted now, for many years Connors railed against the Ireland which rejected him as a young Traveller; something that he needed to leave Ireland to resolve. "I wanted a clean slate and the only way I could achieve that was by not mixing with the Irish because if I did they would find me out at some point, either by my accent, the way I spoke or my name," he says. "I wanted to avoid that disappointment again. I needed to achieve complete anonymity."

He also resented the Travellers because they ostracised his mother, Joehanna, for deserting her husband for a better life. Connors, then 12 years old and living on a housing estate, was the subject of contempt from both Irish society and his own people. He has never really forgiven them. "My mother had just had enough," he says, "she just wanted more out her life than she was doing."

That treatment of his mother lies at the heart of Connors's critique of the religious hypocrisy that exists among that social group. "The Travelling community travel together so they can foster that way of life," he says. "They are more religious because they have to be; they have to be stronger to tolerate so much."

By his mid-teens, Connors realised he was gay. The fact that he had been on petting terms with many of his male peers did not lead him to this revelation immediately. "We all did it," he says. "After we reached a certain age the boys would no longer share a bed with their sisters and were all put out of their caravans to sleep together in a tent; so there was a lot of touch-feely stuff going on." But the template of an early marriage and a horde of children fitted strongly, and Connors found himself engaged to a girlfriend he had been courting for three years. However, at 16, the sight of a scantly-clad Patrick Duffy emerging from the waves in The Man from Atlantis dispelled the heterosexual delusion and the teenage Traveller felt increasingly isolated. He found himself uncomfortably gay in a macho community set within a conservative society, neither of which accommodated such sexual difference.

He had good reason to fear his father finding out. After a few drinks his father, Thomas, had often sized Connors up, when as a child he sat reading. He would point an accusing finger at him and declare: "there is something different about you". Then he would snatch the library book from the boy, tumble out of their caravan and throw it over the nearest hedge.

Yet, looking back, Connors reflects that his experience is not unique; and that within the macho culture there must still be a lot of gay Travellers living a lie. "Yes, I know a few Travellers who are gay," he says. "I had continuous affairs with men up until they were married, then they would stop. `I don't want to do that anymore,' they would say, `it's a dirty thing'. Then months later they would come back and try to initiate something with you; they were married and their wife was pregnant. That used to confuse me."

After leaving school at 16, Connors was to see his father again. One evening while working at a hotel in Carlow, the manager instructed him not to serve a group of Travellers who had come in for a drink. When he told them they would have to leave he realised that one of them was his father.

Connors continued to suffer prejudice as a Traveller and became increasingly isolated from his own community and confused by his sexuality. With no one to talk to, he was desperate. "One night when I was 17, I tried to end my own life. I took a lot of pills and even wrote a note, only to wake the next day with a raging sore throat."

This was a seminal moment. "That morning when I woke up I realised: OK, this is not meant to happen, you're not meant to be dead, but you are meant to get out of this town; and within four or five days I had organised to leave."

After a university education, many friendships and sexual and drug-related adventures in London and Brighton, Connors found himself drawn back to where he had begun. "When I saw the advert for a job working with Traveller youth in London it just grabbed me and I thought: 'I should do this'. I realised I could influence some sort of change and make young people aware that if they stayed on at school they could achieve something. There was also the aspect of going back and being respected."

Connors is surprisingly well-balanced for someone who has lived with so much prejudice and disappointment. His book promises to be a revelation of the journey made by a young Traveller who wanted more than a life on the road and the prejudice of an intolerant society. "People over here think that the Irish are great and friendly, but I was abandoned by my mother country. The book is an attempt to slap her in the face - and also to ask her to take me back."