Author Archives: thegaymenproject

About thegaymenproject

The Gay Men Project is a photo project by New York based photographer Kevin Truong. Truong received his BFA in from photography from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and has been the recipient of numerous awards, and his photo credits include the New York Times.

Ron and Ben, Counselor and a Guest Services Agent, Vancouver B.C.

photo by Kevin Truong

Ron, in his own words: “Being able to be who I am with complete honesty is freedom. Being able to love someone because I simply love that person is the greatest joy I have ever experienced. The journey mostly has been a good one. Since I have been quite attracted to both men and women, I’ve lived an interesting life and been in love with both men and women.

However, nothing ever quite was like meeting Ben. Before Ben I had fallen deeply in love with a woman, and I was married to her for almost 17 years, most of those years were happy. The greatest joy was having two beautiful, talented and creative sons, Nick and Nate who both have good and satisfying lives living and working in New York City. Thus I also have two beautiful grandchildren! Sadly, the marriage ended when my wife’s mental illness could not be accepted by her.

I dated some other wonderful and beautiful women for a few years. Then while working in Washington, DC I happened upon this younger man who wanted to go to dinner. His kindness, caring got to me and we dated for six months. Sadly it ended but we both ended up happy later. He said when he departed, “Ron, you will meet someone soon, he will be good to you and you to him.” Not long after, I was at Northeastern University in Boston in the dining room. There I noticed a beautiful and quite stunning Asian man glancing toward me. After we both glanced, we had lunch together, then he asked for a date. I returned to Boston where he and many members of his family were there. We went together! They all liked me. That was in July of 1997.

Sixteen years later, from Portland, Maine to Orlando FL, to our beautiful heaven in Vancouver, British Columbia , Ben and I have loved each other and respected one another every day. Every time I look at his face, the joy inside my heart almost makes me weep. Never to fade!

Too, My sons, grandchildren, friends all embrace Ben. They love him. Likewise I am so lucky that his family loves me very much and we are so close. They are my family, too. Our home is one of peace and love. We are a team!

Initially because I held many public and high profile jobs (Police Chief, School Administrator and now therapist/counsellor) many folks had much to say to me and sadly some behind my back when I fell in love with another man 16 years earlier. The state of gays in the world has changed a great deal from those days; now gay folks are accepted and few make a big deal about gay people in 2013. I was glad to be in the early days. I tell people, I would have fallen in love with Ben whether he had been a man or a woman. His qualities of giving of himself, his humility, core values, kindness and respect for all that lives are huge points of attraction. Being good looking is nice, but that fades for everyone. We all grow old. I am happy that Ben’s enduring qualities will never fade.

Moving to Vancouver was the best decision we could have made, suggested by his sister, Sungya, who had visited here. Every day has been a joy! Our gay friends we met when we first moved here are still are close friends. Vancouver’s gay population is well accepted. There are still those who hate, but overall, being gay here has not
been a big deal for many years. Gay men and women have straight friends, they live in houses and condos throughout the Metro area. There is a gay village, called Davie. It’s funky.

Where we live, New Westminster, has been turning into a sought after community (known as highly supportive to gays) for gay singles and couples. The community reminds me of communities I lived in as a kid in Maine. To sum, Ben said it best when we arrived here in July, 2005. “I finally feel so secure and happy.” Since then Ben and I both became dual citizens of our own birth country and Canada.

I am happy with who I am. During the Winter of my life, it really feels like Spring. It feels right.

This project and the stories that are told are good , supportive tools to help any gay man who is thinking about coming out. We live very short lives. The hope for all of us is to start living that life in a creative, meaningful way that is filled with comfortable love. Being honest, loving yourself and coming to terms with who you are signals the right time to sing to the world about who you are. Sing in quiet melody, shout a song to the mountains – your choice. But sing. When your soul says you are ready.”

Ben, in his own words: “I think I have always liked men from when I was little. I thought that I was the only one in this world having these kind of feelings. It’s liked having a big secret and I didn’t dare to share it to anyone. First feelings came when I was young and at summer camp in Singapore. I did not know
though what those feelings were.

I later had a boyfriend in Bangkok when I attended the university there. We did everything there, even opening a clothing store at an upscale mall. Sadly, we grew apart. I was sad and decided to move to the United States.

Soon I was off to graduate school in Boston. There I met many interesting men but none like Ron. I adored him from when I met him. So did my family.When I graduated with a Masters degree, I moved to Portland, Maine to be with Ron and his family. We lived in an ocean-side townhouse near a college. It was beautiful. I was so happy. Ron always had a committed plan and he was always kind to me. I worked as a math teacher at the high school where Ron was an administrator.

Soon we moved to Orlando with dreams of moving to beautiful Vancouver. Vancouver never disappointed. It is the most beautiful place with many friendly people. The moment we arrived, we had so many friends! Many of those friends are our friends today.

Ron and I were never much for clubbing or going out. We always enjoy each other company. He is my everything…my partner…my best friend and my soul. I think we complete each other!

Advice? Be true to who you are – only you can decide the road to your own happiness and joy. You control your destiny. You have that gift, that freedom.”

Ariel, Journalist, Panama City

photo by Kevin Truong

Ariel, in his own words: “I have never felt guilty or shameful about being gay; however, one of the greatest experiences I faced as a result of my sexuality was letting go of the expectations that society and my family planned for me. Society tries to teach us what is right and wrong, and coming out of the closet is a rebellion against those expectations and rules. You have to learn to live not just to be accepted, but to be yourself. The world out there is a big place and there is a space for everyone.

I came out when I was very young at the age of 14. Being still an adolescent, I had to educate the people around me, especially those whom I loved the most, like my father. This was a big challenge because they had little-to-no understanding of what it meant to be gay: for them, the raunchy, dirty sex acts where the first things to come to mind. Moreover, these were always filtered through a religious/moral lens. They were not immediately able to think of the love and companionship that might be involved in my relationships. Coming out at this age was especially difficult because one depends on his/her parents for everything.

Now I’m glad I came out when I was so young because my family has had many years to process, learn, and get over their fears and prejudices. Today, I live very openly with my family and they are very accepting of my life. For example, when my boyfriend comes to visit from the United States, he stays with me in my bedroom at my father’s house. During holidays, he comes to all of the family parties, and my grandmother even buys him a present. Today, when others see this, they often tell me how lucky I am; however, what they don’t realize is that this level of acceptance took more than ten years.
Panama is a very small country with a very small gay community. Gay people want things to change, but they are too scared to do anything about it. Because of pervasive homophobia in society, many feel that there is more value in staying in the closet than taking the risk of coming out. Moreover, there is a lot of discrimination (gender, race, class, etc.) within the gay community itself. Change is happening, but it is slow and incremental.

To come out of the closet, I wrote a letter to my mother (as I was used to doing at the time to say important things), but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. She talked to my father that the same night and then the nightmare started. They thought I was confused and sent me to a psychologist the very next day. Thankfully, he was a good man and didn’t try to change me.

My mother was upset and did not talk to me for several days; however, I did not pay that much attention to either of my parents because I never thought I was doing anything wrong. After a few days, my mother got over it and soon became my best friend—I could even talk to her about boys. However, in a country where machismo runs strong, there was not much that she could do immediately to change my father. Within the space that she had, she did what she could to protect me. I was lucky to have her by my side.
For my father, it was much more difficult: he was so sure this was a choice and that this was something that I could change if I wanted to change. I could have made things easier for myself just by telling him that I was going to try to change even though I had no intention of doing so. But I refused. I told him that if it was so easy to change, that he himself should try to change his heterosexuality to be attracted to men. We stopped talking and we grew apart. Every once in a while, he would repeat his question, but I always had the same answer.

While most of my friends were out having fun at this age, I was at home grounded because I refused to change. Now, I think about it as a joke, but I was basically grounded for six years with very limited freedom or time to go to parties to socialize with friends. The upside is that I had plenty of time to read, think, and understand my sexuality and what it meant to be gay. This only made me more confident in my ability to combat their homophobia with well-articulated arguments.

Coming out is a continuous process: as we go to our jobs, hang out with friends, shop for groceries, spend time at parties, go to large dinners, we are constantly meeting new people and one never stops coming out. If you are not entirely honest or coy, people will often gossip about what you are doing, so I just prefer to be honest to remove all of their fun.”

Johnny, Artist/Philosopher, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Johnny, in his own words: “Looking back I find that I had more difficulty coming to terms with my humanity then my sexuality. My sexuality was relatively meaningless in the larger picture. For me, figuring out my place in the world, in the universe and existence as a whole took precedence over my attraction to another person. Naturally there was attraction, but it was not something I understood completely or tried to understand at an early age. my feelings were my feelings and they hadnt been influenced by anything other then my innermost self and though I was perhaps too young to comprehend that, I did on some spiritual level, as I suspect all living things do. It was intuitive and I didnt give it much thought. I knew I was different then my peers though, different than other boys, mainly from what I was perceiving from the world, from others. In fact it was more external pressure to address my orientation then an internal need or desire.

I’ve always been somewhat of a private person by nature, blame it on my Cancerian roots. I never felt the need to broadcast my sexual feelings, after all are my sexual encounters/fantasies anyone elses concern other then my own? I wasnt hiding, but I never heard ‘straight’ folk letting everyone know their sexual preferences or ever having the need to, but it seemed that being gay was something that others had to know about, was something period, like some kind of warning. I never thought I was a danger to anything. I approached my budding sexuality with caution because there was something powerful and even divine about it. It was like some powerful magic that had to be handled with care and so it was only once I was ready to.

There are times when life has seemed scary and too much to bear, but unto myself, I realized that my experience in the world was rarified . And I’ve always been attracted to the rare and exotic things in life. If nothing else, ‘liking guys’ has made for a richer experience of my life, I can appreciate, openly, a greater number of beautiful things for instance, and that’s just one, of an infinite number of attributes that make me unique. But thats the case with every other living thing in the universe. And in that I realized that we, as in all of us, as in everything… are one in the same.”