Category Archives: Notes From Across the World

A Note From Michael (BLCKSMTH), in Portland…

“My story is a little bit of a trip lately. Last year I’d been working retail management for 20 years, and suddenly felt an urge to paint, to write, to design, to do something, anything but what I was doing. I hadn’t been trained or gone to school for any of that stuff, mind you…I just needed to create, or die tryin’. So I did it: I left my job. I designed a couple of theatrical sets, opened my Etsy shop of my paintings, and started a blog about the experience, ww.BLCKSMTHdesign.com, where I feature my writing. The last year has been one of the most fulfilling, challenging, strange years of my life, and has helped define who I am as a gay man, and just a human being in general. Somewhere in that year I realized Los Angeles wasn’t a great fit for me, and so I moved to Portland, Oregon.

I like what someone else on this project said about Portland being “post-gay”: it’s really integrated, and sometimes that can be frustrating as a single guy. Going to a bar full of super-friendly dudes with beards can be a little like the “Where’s Waldo” of dating. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I feel like PDX is, at its best, a glimpse into the future of being gay in America: almost no “gay scene”, very few gay bars. A place where the idea of “coming out” seems more and more antiquated and unnecessary. Yeah, it’s a bubble, and yeah, one can get complacent, being so surrounded by like-minded people. When I visit my hometown of Albuquerque after having lived in Portland, I feel like I don’t even recognize it, or realize how conservative it truly was while I lived there. And my 12 years in Los Angeles was great, but it was also a bit of a pressure cooker. I didn’t realize how difficult it was to live there until I was in traffic one day, and thought, “It shouldn’t be this hard to just live, to just exist.” It was like the parable of the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water: LA turned up the heat so slowly right underneath me.

I’m glad I’m in cooler water now in Portland. I’ve experienced life as a gay man in a few different cities now, and I have to say this is the best time I’ve had. There’s something about the sincerity and authenticity of people in this part of the country that’s appealing to me, and this week I bought some vitamin D, small-batch local bourbon, and my first rain jacket in preparation for the upcoming downpours: I’m officially initiated to the PNW.

Portland, I am your adopted son.

photo by Summer Olsson

photo by Summer Olsson

A Note from Terry, in Boston…

“I moved to Boston on January 4, 1994. I didn’t know anyone, didn’t have a job, and didn’t have much money (maybe enough to float me for a month). But, I did have a plan, more or less. I was going to study acupuncture and get a job at AIDS Care Project (ACP) – a public health clinic doing incredible work with Boston’s AIDS community. After losing my partner Stephan to the epidemic the year before, I wanted to help in the fight somehow. When I heard about ACP, it was a done deal – this is where I wanted to work.

I know my decision to leave Philadelphia was a bit impulsive, and bordered on the ridiculous. Aside from being poor, unemployed and alone, I knew nothing about acupuncture, never had a treatment, didn’t know anyone who had. I didn’t do any research on other schools, or explore other options for work. On top of all this, I’m a bad student and a chronic procrastinator who struggled through every science class I took.

None of that mattered. At the time, my focus was on getting out of Philly. I had to. The longer I stayed, the deeper I could feel myself sinking into a black hole of anger and depression. First, there were the continuous aftershocks of living in a town where every place I looked held another memory of my life with Stephan, and every friend’s face smothered me in sympathy. A ten minute walk through town was like crossing an emotional minefield.

To make matters worse, I had my family to deal with. Ten siblings, two parents, who never offered to help out when Stephan was sick. There were no cooked meals in Tupperware dropped off, no phone calls to see how we were, no one visited, nothing. They hid in the suburbs behind faith and fear while I watched, helpless and heartbroken as this once powerful dancer faded into a demented skeleton.

I knew that the only chance I had to heal the fractured love I felt for my family was to get away from them. Boston was the perfect distance.

So there I was, an AIDS widower in a new city, completely alone, jobless, and not 100% sure I could pull off this weird plan I basically hatched overnight. But for all of the fear and uncertainty I felt, I kept coming back to one thought. I had a community. And like every other GLBT transplant who moved to the city looking for acceptance, and support; I trusted Boston’s gay community to welcome of me, guide me, believe in me – and they did.

I graduated acupuncture school in 1998 and immediately started working at AIDS Care Project. Over the next eight years, I provided over ten thousand acupuncture treatments to Boston’s HIV/AIDS community. I was working on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic, with some of the most talented, dedicated clinicians in the field. Together, we developed treatment protocols that were changing people’s lives. It was an incredible experience that remains one of the best decisions I ever made.

And it was made possible because I had a community.

I can remember, six months after I moved to Boston, standing on the roof of an apartment on Tremont Street during Gay Pride with my new friends, in my new city, watching thousands of men and women celebrating; and I got it.…we create the unity in our community.

To find more of Terry Connell’s writing, check out his blog and first book “Slaves to the Rhythm” at www.terryconnell.net.”

photo provided by Terry

photo provided by Terry

A Note From Alex, in Mexico…

“For the past four years I’ve learned that there are (at least for me) two kinds of ‘education’, the one your parents give to you when you are growing up, and the one the life shows you, your own experiences, good and bad ones; both which have allowed me to really define myself as a person, as a friend, as a human being, and as a gay man.

Being a gay man in Mexico is hard; we have big stigma and racism about homosexuality. Of course there’s people who just don’t care about people being gay, people who accept the gay community and people who believes this is all wrong and we are doomed to hell. Being such a catholic country, were man has to be a ‘macho’ to be a ‘real’ man; we have more people of the former kind. With time you learn to ignore this kind.

Growing up in a little town was not easy, most of my classmates from elementary and middle school referred to me as faggot or queer. Those comments hurt, and made me realize there was something different about myself, and I really wanted to change that. Then for high school I moved to another city for a better education, which meant a new school, a new city, and new people… But it was all the same, or even worst. I made really good friends, but the boys were meaner and the girls overprotective. It was here where I felt for the first time for a guy, a really handsome one, even stunning. I knew this wasn’t normal for the social standards I had been raised, and I began to understand I wasn’t the same as the others.

So, for college I moved out as far away as possible to one of the major cities in Mexico: Monterrey. Far from everyone I had met, thinking I could start all over again. Here I understood that it wasn’t about changing everything around you, but changing your disposition to evolve mentally and emotionally. I began to accept myself, made some new friends and realized I liked man really hard. Exactly a year later, in 2008, I came out to myself and it was the biggest relief. But then I faced another issue, coming out to everyone else, friends and family. I was scared about their reactions and how they were going to take it and I even made up a story about me meeting some guy, I don’t really know why, I guess I thought it was going to be easier to accept the fact that I was gay if I was dating someone (dumb logic, I know), and I told this story to a friend who was very comprehensive and nice, and with time she became my best friend, always supportive and there for me.

After I told my friend, coming out to other friends was easier, but my family was a big issue. My parents are a little open-minded but I wasn’t sure about their son being gay. So I started with a cousin, I was really close to her and luckily everything went well. Next my sister, she just told me ‘whatever, do anything you want’, so I knew it was fine. The most difficult one was my mom, since it was never the right time I just spit it out one day ‘‘Mom, I’m homosexual’’, it wasn’t easy I freaked out before telling her and cried for so long. She told me that nothing was going to change because she was my mother and she will always love me, but she needed some time to understand. About my dad, mom told me it was a delicate issue and that she will tell him. My sister told me that dad already knew, but we haven’t talked about it, it’s like taboo at home. I know he needs to hear it from me. It’s sad because I can’t go home and be myself, talk openly about my life. Every time I mention a male friend, my mom looks at me all freaked out thinking I’m dating this guy and that I’m going to say something ‘gay’. But I have confidence all of this are going to be better.

Right now I’m in grad school, moved out again to a small city named Irapuato, where I’m learning so many things that I want in my life and future, and also a lot of good things about being gay.

About the LGBT community in Mexico, I’ll say I’m not so in touch with it. From the little contact that I’ve had I’ll say I don’t like it, maybe it’s because the concept I got is that being gay meant wild and loud parties, which I’m not really into. I prefer to go out with friends for a drink or coffee, a good talk or book.

At the beginning of my transition of acceptance I believed that being gay was going to define me, but after all this years I understood that it’s only a part of who I am, there are many things that distinguish my personality and being gay is just one of them. After a retrospective analysis of my own, I now realize that I was always gay, I remember being little and asking my mom why I couldn’t wear the hairpins my sister did and learning all the dialogues of The Wizard of Oz.

I would like to finish, this big open letter, with a quote (because I’m a quote lover). “You are free, so choose; in other words, invent. No general code of ethics can tell you what you ought to do; there are no signs in this world.” (Jean-Paul Sartre).”

photo provided by Alex

photo provided by Alex