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Jared, Writer, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Jared, in his own words: ” I never knew my biological parents (mother was Dutch & German, father was black) and I was adopted and raised on a rural farm in southern Michigan by an American Indian and Irish family. I had a happy childhood, happier than most. I survived my mother’s two divorces, and being the eldest I was the head of household while mom worked as a single parent. I never begrudged my mother for making me grow up to be a man at the age of 15 as I helped my siblings with homework, learned to cook and took care of the household tasks. I never regretted it either, despite missing out on a social life outside of school. It instilled responsibility and maturity in me, and it taught me that sometimes we have to sacrifice.

Throughout childhood and well into my teenage years Superman was my idol, even after I was too old to be reading comics – I still saved my allowance and bought Action Comics, Justice League and others – they were my escape and fueled my imagination. I wanted to be Superman, and could never understand the fascination with a fictional character until many years later. This was also around the time I started writing; I started my first novella and found a new way to escape the churning feelings and emotions that were starting to come to the surface as I started to notice my male peers.

I had told my mother I might be gay when I was 13. She told me if that was the case, we would unpack my birth certificate, she would burn it, I would pack my clothes and leave, and that she would never want to see me again. The next day at school I asked a girl to go steady with me, but the furthest I went with a girl was a kiss on the cheek of my prom date after dropping her off. Five years later I came out again, and that was the day I became a man. I refused to live a lie, to be someone who I wasn’t, and if my family could not accept me for who I was, then it was their loss. I was living with my grandmother, and though she and my aunt came around, my coming out only caused the relationship between my mother and I to deteriorate. She spoke to me once more, coming back to town for an afternoon when I was 19 to sit me down and have a “talk”. The minute she opened her mouth I knew she was going to tell me I was adopted, and she did, and that was the only thing she told me, leaving me to figure out the rest. She later passed away in 2005, and I wish she had accepted my ignored peace offerings instead of wasting all those years over hate and ignorance.

After high school in small town Michigan I had the good fortune to be “adopted” by “the committee” – a small group of gay men in their late 20s to late 30s for dinner parties, game nights – my first time falling in love, first boyfriend, first gay bar. Again in life, I was lucky to have never been bullied for who I was, and was comfortable with my ethnicity and sexual preference in the village (literally) where I was lived as the token black gay man.

I moved to Florida shortly thereafter to Tampa (which to me at the time was a metropolis compared to Quincy MI). It was there that I grew and evolved – fell in love with the beach, discovered leather and BDSM, developed a love of photography, returned to my writing as well as my love of comic books and had a string of relationships that never lasted more than a few years, but still managed to salvage a friendship with each of them, even to this day. It was at this time I created Jared’s World, a Yahoo group (also on Facebook) that over the years has grown to over 5,000 members. It has served as my online family, a group of primarily gay men from all around the world that offered a place to escape after a hard day’s work or a bad day, a place to vent, to share and to be supported through rough times. One person CAN make a difference and this group proves it.

Darker days would follow as I explored the drug, club and sex culture in Tampa – got my ass in trouble a few times but got up, took responsibility, dusted myself off and moved on, head held up. Went to countless hours of therapy to learn who I was and what made me tick, why my relationships failed, and it all helped, it truly did, to gain a better understanding of myself. I was never ashamed for being gay, was never proud to be gay – I just preferred the company of men. Through a quirk of fate I located my biological siblings (my bio parents had passed away in 2001), which was the last piece of the puzzle – my first question was “What am I?” I found out my father was black (hence my skin tone and not the “American Indian” lie my mother had told me growing up), and that my mother was Dutch and German (so THAT was where my fascination with boots and leather came from). At long last, at the age of 34 I had an identity. A somewhat convoluted one, but I was my own melting pot through my families, and that was when I chose the moniker amanofcolours as my online ID, swiping it from an Icehouse record album called Man of Colours – it was the perfect fit.

2008 was the most spectacular year of my entire life. I took a voluntary buyout from my job, bought a one way ticket and boarded an airplane with two suitcases and a dream to New York City. Finally, after all these years of dreaming of living in the Big Apple, my dream had come true. There have been ups and downs, but it was the best decision I have ever made and have never looked back. I have a small close knit group of friends, and I pretty much do my own thing – exploring NYC and its history like a kid in a candy store, snapping thousands of pictures as I hone and improve my work, returning to my writing, growing my eBay boot business beyond my wildest dreams, going to the theater and experiencing so many things I have never done before, and will never be able to do again. My first NYC Pride parade – the energy, the love, the pride – that was a defining experience that made me realize I was indeed proud to be gay. The gay community in NYC is very diverse, yet it has its splinter groups. I still haven’t found my niche, and don’t think that I will, and that is okay. I am just me, and I am just fine with who I am and the man I have become.

A few years back I was sitting in my Jersey City apartment reading a Superman comic book that had recently been released and it hit me. After all these years of looking up to the man who personified “Truth, Justice and the American Way”, I realized why I loved Superman so much. He never knew his real parents, but they sent him away for a chance at a better life, as my biological parents had done for me. Clark Kent and I both grew up in rural areas, had our struggles fitting in, and later we would move to our respective metropolises to work in the newspaper industry. Granted I can’t fly (one day I WILL skydive though), have x ray vision or leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I do have super strength to have made it this far, I have my vulnerabilities, a love and compassion for my fellow man, I have hope for humanity and I can see the good that is in people. It is not my place to judge anyone, because I myself have been judged many a time. If only folks could just accept people for who they are (like I have been accepted throughout my life), the world could be so much better.

Looking back on my life, I have made some mistakes, but I have no regrets, would never want to go back to change anything, because I would not be who I am or where I am today. As Kylie would say, “I wouldn’t change a thing…” Up, up and away……”

The Hon Michael Kirby, Former Justice of the High Court of Australia, Sydney, Australia

photo by Kevin Truong

Michael, in his own words: “I would describe (the LGTBI community in Australia) as still in its infancy. It is emerging, and it is becoming more assertive of rights. But it isn’t all that long ago when in Australia people were expected to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for being LGBTIQ and when I was growing up that was what was expected. We lived in a world of don’t ask don’t tell. But increasingly in recent years through the action of some courageous people, young people are standing up and some old fogies are beginning to do that too. So it is a new idea whose time has come. It is developing and it will continue to develop in Australia, and it will go on doing so until we have complete equality because inequality is based upon irrational attitudes and non-scientific approach.

Marriage equality is one of those symbolic things that is significant and I certainly believe in that being made available, it is not available at the moment in Australia. Marriage in Australia unlike the United States is governed by the Federal Constitution and is a Federal power. The Federal Legislation not only does not provide for marriage equality, it forbids any recognition of marriage equality by any court or any state legislature in Australia. This was something that we copied from the United States, in the so called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act in 2004. And until the Federal Parliament changes the law we won’t have equality in this country. However, though it is an important symbol, people can get by without being married. Many people nowadays, including younger straight people don’t get married, and in my own case with my partner Johann, we’ve been together for 46 years and it’s getting a little late in the day for our confetti and marriage celebrations. Indeed, we’re not absolutely certain that if marriage were available we would get married. In some ways that is mimicking an institution of straight society and we don’t feel the need for it, personally, but we certainly believe it should be there for those citizens who want it. In the mean time, there’s a lot of other things that need to be addressed in Australia, for example the exceptions from anti-discrimination law, in favor of religious groups, which allows schools with public funds to be established in Australia, or maintained in Australia, by religious organizations, Christian and non-Christian to discriminate against LGTIQ students.

I think the next generation should think of what it can give back to straight society. I do think that on a whole, LBTIQ people have a more realistic attitude towards human sexuality and human expression and experience. And instead of simply going along imitating straight relationships, I think it may be that in the future, young gay people will have lessons to teach straight people. The notion, for example, that you should break up a relationship of many years, simply because somebody has had a sexual experience with another person is something that would strike most gay people as irrational. And therefore, on the whole, young gay people have a more realist attitude. The idea of cheating on somebody, is an idea that has its foundation in ownership, and that isn’t a really stable basis on which to build a life experience.

Time Magazine found that long term living together is good for people’s health. And as you grow older, it’s even better for your health, to have somebody who cares whether you live or die. And the notion of destroying that opportunity on the basis of cheating, is a very old fashioned and rather patriarchal attitude towards sexual relationships. So I think instead of asking what straight society will do for us, I think it’s important for LGBTI, people to think of what they can do for straight society. By example, by research, by thinking, by expression. And that is really picking up President Kennedy’s statement in his inaugural address. “Ask not what America can do for me, but what I can do for America.” Well, LGBTI people should ask not what straight people in the world can do for them, but what they can do for straights.

I was more open about my sexual orientation as I got older. And then HIV AIDS came along and I became involved in both local activities and national activities concerned with the epidemic. I was invited by a very great international civil servant, Jonathan Mann, who was the head of the original global program on AIDS of the World Health Organization, to get involved in the global commission on AIDS, and so increasingly I was engaged in activities for the world wide response to HIV and AIDS. In Australia we did better in this respect than the United States and most other countries. We did that because we had a federal Minister for Health who later turned out to be bisexual, and we had an opposition spokesman on health who was a professor of public health, and therefore just by a chance confluence of these two men, we did better. I got involved in that, that was a kind of code language for my sexual orientation. And most people who were watching understood that. And that was in the 1980s, 1986 and thereafter, but my exact declaration of my sexual orientation came in the 1990s, and at that stage it seemed a natural and proper thing to do.

(To any young person reading the blog) I would say to do what can safely be done to uphold science, to uphold the principles of kindness to one another. And to be honest. It’s a terrible thing in a young person to require them to be dishonest, especially to their parents and to their siblings, and to their immediate family and neighbors and work colleagues. And basically we all know it originates not in some scientific basis, but in the fact that some people get upset if they hear the truth. The truth is that a small proportion of people have a sexual orientation towards a romantic sexual interrelationship with people of the same gender. Well, get over it. It’s important that young people, especially, should try as far as they safely can to be honest and to change the world. Because until now, LGBTIQ people have basically been conspiring in their own disadvantage and second class status by going along with the pretense. The pretense has to finish. When it finishes, we’ll get back to a scientific reality, that this small proportion exists. And we in the world own a great deal to Dr. Kinsey, Alfred Kinsey, of Indiana University in the United States who did the research on sexual orientation in the 1940s and 50s and his publications began the moves to change things and those moves will keep happening until it has been changed throughout the world. Medieval demons in the minds of some religious people, mainly men, will ultimately have to give way to scientific truth.

I’ve been very lucky in my life to have wonderful parents, wonderful siblings, a marvelous grandmother, and fantastic teachers, excellent education opportunities, considerable professional success, and that is the all of me, my sexual orientation is just a part of me, just as in a successful professional lawyer and judge you wouldn’t start a conversation by asking about their sexual orientation. It would be irrelevant and often regarded as impertinent. However, I hope in the area of LGBT issues I will be remembered as somebody who made it a little easier for younger people growing up to be truthful about their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Vince, English Teacher, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Vince, in his own words: “February 6, 2014 was a special day. I met Kevin Truong at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42 Street in New York City to be photographed. Participating in the Gay Men Project and being photographed in the theatre district of the Big Apple are important to me. I live in Philadelphia, but my life as a gay man began in Times Square thirty-four years ago.

I am sixty-eight now, and on my thirty-fourth birthday I stood in line on 47th Street for two-for-one tickets for a Broadway play. A girl friend met me there. She brought a birthday cake, and people in line sang “Happy Birthday” as she lit the candle. After the show we went to “Uncle Charlie’s,” a gay bar in the Village. She asked if I was gay. Well, six months later in Philadelphia I had my first sexual experience with a man. His name was Jimmy, a great guy and still a friend. When he embraced to kiss me, I remember thinking, “This is what it’s like.”

All of the years before that first sexual experience I was afraid to admit that I was attracted to men. The fear drove me crazy. But admitting that fact to myself was a first step to being a better man. No need to describe the years which followed in any great detail. My life is much like thousands of others who lived through the eighties and beyond. Close friendships were established, boyfriends came and went, and many, many died. But the man who mattered most in my life, my partner and best friend for twenty-three years, made me a “mensch.” In Yiddish, the word simple means to be a real human being. Our life seemed perfect for the first eight years. Of course, that was on the surface. We had the house in Philly, friends, jobs, supportive parents, and each other. But like any other couple, we had hard times, bad moments, frustrations, disappointments; and over our heads hung the fear of AIDS. In 1990 we decided to be tested. I tested negative, and Jon, my partner, was positive. His results came back on the eve of my forty-fifth birthday. He had planned a special birthday for me: a weekend in New York, two Broadway plays, a nice dinner, a romantic evening together. That never happened, but the next sixteen years did. How Jon became positive never mattered. How to live did. The years were tough, but he was the Energizer Bunny. He kept going and going. Jon was my life partner no matter what happened, and many things did. He died in 2006, and like the moment he received the phone call to tell him he was HIV positive, I was there to hold him and love him when he died.

Today, almost eights years later, it’s hard to believe that we could be legally married if he were alive. Unfortunately not in Philadelphia, but that too will happen. Life is good; people are wonderful; and the advice I have for a younger gay man: confront your fears, go after your dream, and be a “mensch.”