Come out come out wherever you are, part 3

So, the year was still 1994 and my parents had found out I was gay in January, we had already signed me up for musical theater camp in the Catskills months earlier (as if THAT shouldn't have been warning enough about my gayness) , I remember my dad giving me a whole speech about being worried that “those theater gays” being a corruptive bunch...little did he know I was the one going around corrupting everyone else.

Anyway right before going to camp, my mom and I flew into NYC to catch some Broadway shows, and explore the city. My mom is such a trouper , she indulged me and walked around the Village with me, and she did the coolest thing: she bought me a pride necklace and my first copy of Out magazine (with Sandra Bernhard on the cover). After a couple of fabulous days enjoying the city, she dropped me off at the bus station and on I got on my bus up to the Catskills to enjoy my three weeks of musical theater heaven. I got off the bus, and got picked up, and when I was driving up to the property, I pulled out my pride necklace out of my bag and put it on. I fell in love with the place instantly, I had arrived at Stagedoor Manor (which is the camp that the movie CAMP is based on and shot in). Most kids were oblivious to what my necklace meant, they just thought it was cute. It took me a couple of days to acclimate, but I quickly got into groove of things, and became comfortable enough to shout it out from the rooftops, “I AM A BIG HOMO”. I had no shame whatsoever, I was finally free and able to be who I was without worrying about any repercussions.

So for the next two summers I would ecstatically await my departure to the gayest place on earth to be who I truly was, and come back home, to machismo-filled Puerto Rico, back to my closeted high school life. I mean, my best friend knew, and my family, but that was about the extent of it. Then my junior year came along, I was 100% sure that musical theater was what I wanted to do with my life, and so I convinced my parents to send me to a performing arts boarding school for my senior year. Midway through my junior year, I had already been accepted into boarding school, and I guess knowing that I would be away next year gave me a set of balls I didn't know I would grow. Well thats not true, I had been growing them little by little. I was the first full time male cheerleader in ALL of Puerto Rico, and when I came in 2nd and 3rd during my fictional writing competitions they were both about gay runaways, but I finally grew a pair and decided to come out in school.

I first came out to my fellow juniors during a class retreat, I sat in the middle of the whole class and said “I know most of you have guessed it already, but I want you all to know officially that I am gay”...silence, silence...and then...RIOTOUS applause! Which was followed by classmate after classmate sharing their admiration in my honesty, and bravery; that choked me up of course. I made them all promise to keep it a secret till I found the right way to come out to the whole school. I had remembered we had learned about acronyms in English class, so I wrote a poem for the school paper called “My dirty little acronym”, and the first letter of every stanza spelled out “ I A M G A Y”, I remember before it went out to print, I sat down with some of the teachers and the school guidance counselor to help them prepare for the onslaught of possible backlash, as I was the first person in my school to come out while they were still in school. Surprisingly enough there wasn't much backlash, I was a little bummed out to be honest, as being a little gay boy, having watched documentary after documentary about Stonewall, and coming out stories, I wanted to have a vivid discussion about sexuality, but it wasn't really that big of a deal. I am very happy that I was able to live my last 6 months or so of high school in homophobic Puerto Rico, as an out and proud young man. I have, as Madonna says at the end of her Human Nature video ,“absolutely no regrets”.

Come out , come out, wherever you are...part 2

So a couple of days ago I ranted about celebrities coming out, and it made me think back to my three major coming out instances in my life, I will share one of them with you right now.

The year was 1994, and I have known I was gay since I can remember. Mid way through 1993 I had started writing back and fourth with this pen pal I met from a pen pal service that I found in the back of Rolling Stone magazine, I was 13 and he was in his early 20s. I lived in Puerto Rico, and he lived in Florida, I forget where. He was always very graphic in describing his sexcapades, which I LOVED...he as a matter of fact gave me my first gay porn, and also my first straight porn (which made me extremely popular with all my classmates) . I digress, so I would always hide his letters under my bed (typical, I know!) anyway, I went out with my friends or my sister, I don't remember which to go see “What's Eating Gilbert Grape” and when I get home, my parents have this serious and concerned look on their faces. They sit me down in their bed and my mom proceeds to pull out one of my letters...I knew what was coming. First of all, they ruined my whole plan of telling them at college, but oh well. My dad began asking “are you...?” , “gay?” I finished...he nodded and I very quickly said, “yes”. Instantly came the waterworks, from my DAD...which was very strange for me to see. I had only seen him cry once before when his mother died. I understand now what he must have been going through, I guess some parents, no matter how cool and open they are, still feel a sense of loss when the life they had for their child wont happen the way they imagined it. Anyway, we had a long conversation about different things. Safe sex, discrimination, were some of the topics brought up. The weirdest question I got from my dad was...”are you like Michael Jackson?” referring to the very fresh (at the time) scandal of Michael and the little boys. “NO!!!” I hollered immediately, “HELL NO!” Quite the opposite, I thought to myself as I had always been attracted to older men, probably no thanks to him...THANKS DADDY ISSUES! Anyway, my mother of course knew, as most mothers know.

I remember a couple of months later, my dad and I were watching TV in his room, and some sort of wedding was showing, and I said “That's the kind of wedding I would like to have...” (It was big, gorgeous and dramatic of course!!) and he said “with a woman?” with this tone of hope for a change of heart from me. “No” I replied, “ with another man...”. I think that was the last time he ever questioned my sexuality. The man has grown immensely over the years, and I love him to death. Now we have a whole new batch of issues, mostly involving my drug use and lack of independence...but now it's my turn to grow, and his patience with my has grown exponentially. I am very lucky to have such great parents.

On a lighter note of things, I told my sister about a year later on New Years Eve, she dropped me off at home, and I handed her a letter as I shut the car door, and ran in the pouring rain. It merely said “Happy New Year, by the way I'm gay...oh and mom and dad know already!”...she of course knew I was gay since I was a zygote, but she was pissed at me because I told my parents before I told her. She has always been the shinning example of being an open and loving human being, she introduced me to all of her gay friends since I can remember, and she is the main reason why I am so comfortable in my own skin, as far as the gay thing goes.

Anyway, that's enough for one day, I will share my other two stories soon.

It's not so much do what you like, as it is that you like what you do

Those lyrics from Stephen Sondheim's genius song Children and Art, from my favorite musical of his Sunday in the Park with George; have become my motto during this sobriety, and in this stage in my life. If you asked me “what do you like to do, what would you wanna spend the rest of your life doing that would bring you endless pleasure?” my answer would very easily be, musicals. I could sing, dance, and act all day long, that is my passion, but I have wasted a lot of my parents money attempting to conquer that goal, well a half ass attempt to be quite honest. So when I was sitting in my hairdressers chair for my first haircut while I was in rehab, and asked him for a job as a receptionist at his salon, and he returned that with a “you know, you always come in with such amazing, creative ideas for me, why don't you go to school for hair”, I thought to myself, well its not musical theater, but I do love being creative, and I could definitely see myself growing to love this art. So even though I would drop my scissors in an instant to do a musical, I realized that if I do want to follow that dream someday, I have to do it after I am self supporting through my own contributions. So I am going to school to be a hairdresser so that when I have enough stability I can go out on auditions, and try my hand at musicals again. It will be a while before I can do that, but I will be able to do that someday, and that is what I am working towards, my dream is not dead, it's just on hold for now, and it is things like the AALA show that let me express myself in that way that help me in hanging in there, so I am grateful for my growth and look forward to becoming the man that I am supposed to be.

Oh father, if you never wanted to live that way...why am I running away?

I honestly had nothing in my head tonight, and then when I got home from a meeting my housemates were watching Finding Nemo in the living room, and as the last tear ran down my face I knew I should share about why I love this movie so much, and why it holds so much meaning to me.

My father and I have always had a civil relationship, loving to a degree, but not extremely close. I used to think that maybe he hadn't gotten the son he had always hoped for. I was a big sissy growing up, semi effeminate always interested more in arts than in sports. Also he is a HUGE math geek, and does math for fun...and after 8th or 9th grade I just could not get math. So I was always a mama's boy, as many gay men are, and after they found out I was gay I think there was more tension between us, because this fortified , I think, to him that he would never see me get married and have children. But to his credit my father has always been very supportive of whatever I wanted to do with my life, he has supported me for the last 29 years of my life, and for that I am always grateful.

One of the sweet father son moments that has always resonated with me is during my first trip to Disney World in Orlando, when we were on It's a Small World, my dad looked at my mom and me and said “ This must be what heaven is like” (yeah yeah I know it is one of the most annoying songs in the world, and it is very plastic and kitschy, but think about it...he was trying to express that heaven must be beautiful like this in the sense that people of all races are living together peacefully and happily, so save your bitchy comments to yourself...if I can do it, you can too) so whenever I go to Disneyland, I always make sure to get on that ride and think of happier more innocent days like those.

My drug use definitely created a huge rift between us, I mean he raised me well enough to know that drugs are bad, also I think when I told them (well when my sister told them) I was HIV+ it might have led him to think to himself “what did I do wrong!?”, and the truthful answer is nothing, I did these things to myself. I made these stupid decisions and I must live with the consequences. Right before my previous sobriety, I recall sending my parents Finding Nemo on DVD (I send them movies I think they will like once in a while) and I received a message from my father, which in itself was rare, since he only called to yell at me for spending too much money or something. He left me a message saying, they watched the movie, and that he totally identified with it. He felt like he was Marlin and that I was Nemo, he had lost me and had been trying for years to find the me that he knew and loved. That totally broke my heart, and since then I haven't been able to keep a dry eye at the end of that movie. I feel that now, more than ever I am getting closer to becoming a man that he can be proud of and call his son. He inspires me to no end, and I love him very much. I don't think I tell him enough, but I do.

I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain...

Gee wilikers, I feel so confident right now. I just got out of my session with my shrink a little while ago , and I am sitting at Java Detour in WeHo just wasting time before heading to school, but I had an amazing little break through leaving my shrink's office. There is this guy who has a session right after me, but since I usually left early I never saw him, but two weeks ago I had a whole bunch of shit that I had to get off my chest, anyway that's when we ran into each other and we both totally checked each other out, that felt really good. Today I got all purtied up knowing he would be there, anyway usually when it comes to guys I am attracted to I just giggle like a teenage girl, and just run like the dickens away from the situation, but this time I had worked myself up with the help of my therapist to have the balls to say hi, introduce myself and give the guy my number. Usually my head talks me out of it, but I think the fact that I am doing so well in my life (i.e. school, friends, landing a big role in the AALA show) that I actually followed through with it. I smiled at him , said hi, and gave him my card. He in return said “Hi my name is ________” and I returned the intro. It was a total rush for me to have actually gone through with something like that, I am truly growing as a man. I know that this little instance probably doesn't seem like much to anyone, but it does to me and it totally raised my spirits up and my “go get 'em” chutzpah. Also for once I have not started building our marriage in my head, or given him too much power either. If he calls great, if not I'll live. It has really gotten me on an upswing and in fact it woke me up, to the point that when I sat down to waste time at Java Detour before school, I decided to be productive and seriously start working on getting a job. First I tweaked my resume (tee hee I said tweak) into a more general, and not so salon centered resume, so that I may expand my job search to retail and the such. After which I have been hunting for work on different sites, and signing up for job sites like monster.com ; anyway it has been a great week so far, and what little I had to complain about is really out of my mind for now.