It Gets Better (33 page)

I used to be a teacher in Manhattan, and I knew which of my students was gay or bisexual. And though we didn't talk about it, my classroom was a safe space for them. They knew that. So keep in mind that there are teachers who support you. They may not say anything but they have your back, just like I had my students' back. Know that you're not alone. And know that you are so courageous and strong to go through this. Life will change for the better. It does get better. I guarantee it.

BROOKLYN, NY

 

 

 

 

I
t was one of those terrible days, shitty thing on top of shitty thing, a dreary Monday this past fall—cold and nasty like my mood. Over the weekend, I was rejected for an apartment I wanted and a guy I was dating told me, “I'm getting a friend vibe rather than a dating vibe,” and then promptly disappeared. When I got to my desk that morning, two of my projects were completely screwed up. I fixed what I could and prepared for a day of hiding in my cubicle and grumbling into my coffee.

I went out at lunchtime, hoping to shake off my crappy mood. Not feeling much better despite the break, I headed back to my office for more cubicle hiding and coffee grumbling. I was about to get on the subway at Christopher Street when a guy intentionally walked into me, knocking me into a store window. Speeding around him, I started down the subway steps. “Hey!” he yelled after me. Leaning down to pick up a very old pair of glasses, “They're cracked,” he said angrily. Instinct told me that he was messing with me, and I had heard of a con like this before. “Yeah, because you knocked into me on purpose and dropped a pair of cracked glasses. I'm not giving you any money,” I responded. “Fuck you, faggot!” he yelled. “I'm not giving you anything,” I repeated as I hurried down the steps to the platform.

When I got back to my desk, I had a huge grin on my face that I couldn't wipe off. I felt great. I realized that being called a faggot can't hurt me anymore. I said to myself, “Fuck that guy. Why would I care what a con man bigot thinks? He only called me a slur for what I'm proud to be.” That would
not
have been my reaction if the run-in had happened a few years ago. A depressive spiral would have been a much more likely outcome.

I wasn't bullied a lot in school. I was taller than almost everyone my class and I guess it's hard for bullies to look down on someone they have to stare up at. I was still called gay and fag. Like at all American high schools, any guy who's quiet, nonathletic, or awkward is called gay, but I kept my head down and learned to conform. My need to feel “normal” was so intense that I was in the closet even to myself. Fear sent me into complete denial. I couldn't even think about my sexuality long enough to question it.

I
was my bully.
I
was the tormenter trying to ruin my life. I almost succeeded, too. I isolated myself from my friends and family, gained excessive weight, and nearly failed out of college. I felt like something was broken in me; I hated myself completely. The bullies may have left me alone, but I continued to torture myself. At my lowest, I felt like I wasn't even human, just a thing.

Just saying “I'm gay,” out loud once, I felt like every muscle in my body unclenched. The relief of finally accepting what I had been running from was like nothing I'd ever felt. Still, I was terrified. I thought people were going to cut me off completely. I thought they'd be furious at me for lying to them. I thought coming out would ruin every relationship in my life, but the exact opposite happened.

I told my family and all my friends that same week. I think I needed to tell people right away so I couldn't try to take it back. Initially my parents worried that being gay would only add to my depression. They couldn't understand that coming out was going to let me fix it. They joined PFLAG and it really helped them. Today I'm close to them in a way I hadn't been since middle school. A few months ago, my dad, a man I worried would hate me like I had hated myself, became a PFLAG chapter president. My sister has been there for me from day one, becoming one of my best friends. And I'm closer to all of my friends. More than one has told me that they feel like only now do they know the real me.

It's been three years since I came out and my life is completely different. I'm completely different. I moved to New York City. I have a great job and get to work with some of my best friends. And I lost over eighty pounds, which feels minor compared to the weight I've taken off of my soul. I've made great friends: gay, straight, and otherwise. I've been in love and had my heart broken. I've listened to more dance remixes then I would wish upon anyone. I've grown up, caught up, and started my life. All of that is amazing but the best of it is so small. It's the feeling that I can “just be.” That who I am is right. It didn't matter that the reasons why accepting I am gay was so difficult. Once I stopped trying to destroy that part of myself, I started finding the better version of the man I'm supposed to be. And I like that guy.

So a stranger on the street called me a faggot and it made me feel better. The fact that it happened across the street from Stonewall Inn (the place where the modern gay rights movement started) somehow made it funnier. I'm so much happier now; hate like that can't get to me anymore. It really and truly does get better.

KEENE, NH

 

 

 

H
igh school sucked. And being a bisexual kid in high school really, really sucked. Not only was I hitting on girls but I was also competing with them for the same boys. So I was pretty much the most hated girl in my school for both causing their homophobia and at the same time adding to their insecurity. It was the worst of both worlds.

The worst part of high school for me was my senior prom, and the aftermath. I brought a girl as my date and that turned out to be a bit of a problem. I'd bought my tickets the week before from the prom committee, at the little table they'd set up in the cafeteria to purchase them and sign up. They had put out a note pad where you could write down the name of your date and get your tickets. So I put down the gender-ambiguous version of my date's name and then on prom night showed up with a girl in a tux. Honestly, she was probably the best date I have ever had in my life. She took me out to dinner, and we had a nice little sports car and everything. It was really great and she was really awesome but I don't think I was ready for the backlash. I don't think I was quite prepared for how much I was going to suffer for that night.

I really wish that I could say I learned something from that experience that would help you, but the best thing I learned was to keep my head down. I don't want you to have to do that. Maybe you're stronger than I am and maybe you're braver than I am. Maybe you can take them on the way that I couldn't.

After my senior prom, life was hell. I would come in every day and find the typical sort of bullying stuff written on my locker. Not queer, or lesbo, or that kind of thing, because I insisted I wasn't gay. Not that I thought that being gay was wrong, it's just I didn't like being labeled something I wasn't. Instead, I told them that I was bi. Apparently “bi” means whore or slut in seventeen-year-old-girl lingo.

In the end, the thing I came to realize is that high school isn't good for anybody. It was a miserable place for me and it was a miserable place for most of the people tormenting me. It was full of a lot of pain and a lot of ruined expectations. It was a place where a lot of them realized all the things that they wanted to do but couldn't. And more often than not, they were more influenced by what their parents thought they should think than they were by what they thought they should think.

I really wish that I could tell you that it was easy to turn the other cheek, but it wasn't. I got in my fair share of fights. The best thing I can offer is that it does go away. My life has changed quite a bit since I moved on from high school. I am in a better place—in a world where what you do and who you are and what happened in high school just doesn't matter all that much. High school is this weird microcosm where people care about how expensive your shoes are and who you're dating and if you're gay or straight or bi. I found that once I got out of school most people were more worried about whether I could make deadlines, or type fast enough, or knew how to use Photoshop.

So it does get better. People stop caring so much and that's really the best we can ask for in some ways. They say that the real homosexual agenda amounts to us wanting to be left alone and having a normal life. Nefarious, isn't it? The thing is, once you get out of that place—that heinously, socially incestuous place where everybody knows everybody, and everybody has secrets that they're all telling each other behind their backs—once you get out of there, it just really doesn't matter anymore.

ATLANTA, GA

 

 

 

 

M
y everyday prayer when I was six years old—because I had already been taught the power of God, and taught the power of church, and taught the power of prayer—was “God, take
this
away from me or take me away.” I didn't know then to call it “homosexual” or “gay.” I didn't have those words at six years old. I just knew that I was different, and that I wasn't like other boys. I had all of these feelings and I had already learned that it was not going to be an easy road ahead for me. So I got down on my knees and I prayed, “God, take
this
away or take me away.”

I didn't know then that it was going to get better.

But today, when I think about the best evidence in my life of it getting better, I think about recording my first full-length CD five years ago. I'm a musician. I love music. Music is my passion and I wanted the freedom to be able to record the truth about what I was living.

Now, my first few CDs were about the girls this and hip-hop that, I was putting on a front. But I was in love with Chanté Moore's song, “Chanté's Got a Man,” and I thought, okay, well what if I had the freedom to sing about having a man, too? So I recorded “Dante's Got a Man Too,” and soon after that, in 2005, I recorded my first full-length CD,
Closets on Fire.
I wanted to depict my real life, to tell the truth about who I am, what I have learned, and who I have grown into. I wanted to record the truth about it getting better, all up in song that you could hear over and over and dance to and sing to and fall in love to. That's the best evidence I can offer from my life that it gets better.

In my dedication for
Closets on Fire
, there's a picture of my four-year-old brother, Eric, and my five-year-old self, standing in the fiercest, queerest, gayest pose. And next to that photo, I wrote:

'Cause at age four and five I didn't know that, I didn't know that I was even worthy of that. And I didn't know that there was a pathway to understanding that even in your specialness you are still worthy of unconditional love. The dedication continues:

Today, when people ask me if I'm gay, often times I'll tell them no. “No. I'm gay gay. I'm double gay. I'm gay to the tenth power. I'm all of that
and
gay.” I'll walk in it. I'll walk in the truth and that's okay. I've learned to live a life of freedom and I've found happiness. I'm no longer that six-year-old boy praying to be different, praying to die. It gets better, baby. It gets better.