In first grade I had a crush on one of my classmates and just said to his mom, “Oh—I think your son is really cute.” I don’t think she was expecting that. I was fully naive of what I may have been presenting or revealing to someone. This would have been the early, mid ’90s. In terms of my sexuality and my identity, I was always fully myself—I was never very hindered in that aspect.
I went to an amazing high school in Texas, where there were upperclassmen that were out and proud and accepted. Whether in Texas or not, growing up is always a rough time, but in spite of everything, I had no choice but to just be myself. I wasn’t trying to be a warrior. I was talking to a former classmate, and he recounted a time when someone had said something to me and I just turned around and—excuse the profanity—I said “fuck you.” In that moment, he realized that when someone was bullying you, “fuck you” was a perfectly appropriate response. There’s so much pressure to not respond that way—to conform. I just don’t know if I ever felt that pressure.
The closest I can come to a coming out story is the first time I said it out loud, to my best friend in high school. I lived in a glass closet—everyone knew, and everyone was just waiting for me to be comfortable enough to walk out of that glass closet. Then I walked out—and nothing changed. Everything was the same, whether at school or at home. I may have told my sister. Kids don’t have to tell their parents that they’re straight—I don t need to tell my parents that I m gay. I’m sure they had their own processes with it—I know they did—but it definitely didn’t require me to have a family meeting and say, “I need to tell you something.” They would just look at me like I’m crazy, like: “Why did you waste our time?”