Tag Archives: coming out

Chris, Student/Future Attorney, Little Rock, Arkansas

photo by Kevin Truong

Chris, in his own words:“Being gay doesn’t mean a great deal to me. It doesn’t define me nor does it have any present, significant impact in my life. Simply put, being gay only predicts who I am more prone to connect with on an intimate level and who I prefer to spend my life with, nothing more.

The single greatest challenge I have had was maintaining a healthy, optimistic outlook on life while preserving a positive self-esteem and the confidence to succeed in the endeavors I am most passionate.

I think I spent a great deal of my childhood attempting to fit the mold of a typical southern Arkansan and was never taught or encouraged by any of my superiors to maintain a sense of personal identity and to also be proud of it. After I graduated high school, I saw that much of the time spent trying to adhere to others’ expectations prevented me from being who I was meant to be and that years of denial had countless negative effects.

With that being said, one of the greatest successes I had in life was tuning out the negative self-talk that persisted despite countless attempts accepting myself. This didn’t happen until recent years and the fight to balance self-constructive-criticism and positive self-talk is a challenge I still face today.

Other successes in my life are what I consider to be quite generic: I put myself through college with merit-based scholarships and earned two bachelor’s degrees while graduating with honors, have achieved my childhood dream of traveling, studying, and living abroad, earned my master’s degree and law degree, maintained long and healthy relationships with those that are invaluable to me, discovered exactly what it is I want to do with my life and how I want to grow and develop as I mature and grow older, etc. etc. It’s easy to recognize challenges, harder to acknowledge successes.

My coming out story is long and complicated. I “came out” at 16 when close friends were unable to keep a secret and one of the adults in my life who raised me read my journal. Initially, the process was far from ideal. I had grown up as a religious and spiritual individual. I also grew up Southern Baptist.

At 16, I was convinced that my faith and my God would “heal” my “problem” and had no trouble agreeing to reparative therapy. Twice a week, I drove 2 hours to a small city in northern Louisiana to attend an individual therapy session as well as group therapy. The group sessions reminded me of what AA meetings must be like. “Ex-gays” they called themselves despite the inherent characteristics and mannerisms that suggested otherwise. I spent nearly two years praying and attempting to refocus my attraction from men to women. Though I was willing to oblige my therapist when he suggested electroshock therapy, the adults in my life who were raising me at the time did not support my decision. Looking back, I think my willingness to do anything it took to be “normal,” even though it had been suggested by others around me, quite simply became too much for their continued support. My dad suggested I discontinue therapy immediately.
Though it took another four or five years for my family to fully accept me, the small community where I lived in southern Arkansas did so rapidly and with ease. I maintained all of the same friendships, was still elected to student council, on homecoming court, elected editor of yearbook staff senior year, and not once called a derogatory slur or treated differently. Other gay youth in the town were not nearly as lucky and the fact that I received such support still baffles me to this day.

Nearly eleven years later, my friends still support me and my family welcomes me at any time. Lately, I’ve been taking my boyfriend around my father – the most reluctant to accept my sexuality. Though time has eased him into the fact that I date guys, I have also finally found a guy that connects with my dad. I have to hold back smiles as I watch them interact with one another. “I’ve finally made it,” I think to myself.

(Advice I’d give my younger self) Focus on your wants and desires and no one else’s. Focus on what you want to do and not on what others expect you to do. Focus on who you want to be, not who others want you to be.”

Jeffrey, Special Ed Teacher/Swim Coach, Huntington Beach, California

photo by Kevin Truong

Jeffrey, in his own words: “My version of being gay means nothing more than the sheer fact that, at the end of the day, i’ll probably end up with a dude (sorry ladies!).

Over the years, it’s been a challenge to find solid friendship (in the gay community, at least) and cultivate healthy romance (also in the gay community, obviously), but I’m proud to say that my greatest challenges have ultimately resulted in some of my greatest successes as a grown up.

For the majority of my adulthood, I attributed being gay solely to dating, and avoided navigating the waters of friendships with other people who were gay. In all honesty, I’m not sure that I even realized that I needed gay friends, and struggled to make platonic friendships with other gay men outside the circle of people that I casually dated. All I know is that as I entered my mid-twenties, I looked around at my life and found myself awkwardly surrounded by a small handful of gay friends that I had either dated or had romantic history with at some point. To make matters worse, my dating history lined up as more of a rogues gallery that one of my friends summed up perfectly in stating that I “tended to seriously involve myself with sociopaths”.

It was at this point in my life that I made a concerted effort to seek out friendship before partnership, free of romantic strings and entanglement. Looking back, I still can’t pinpoint whether it was overall insecurity or my inner-middle aged single woman (that feared I would never find someone) that drove me to be so romantically consumed, but it was only when I let go of the search for “the one” that I was able to generate true friendships and (waduya know!) find someone to love.

That (all that!) being said, my greatest success is finding and connecting with people who love me and who I love, both platonically and romantically. Platonically, I’ve been lucky to meet a few “lifers” (friends for life) over the past few years who, from near and far and always with laughter and good times, continually inspire and encourage me through the journey of life that we share. Romantically, all I can really say is that there’s nothing more special than seeing the world and sharing a laugh and a smile with the man that I met under the stars by the crashing waves.

The short story of my coming out involves a tumultuous time period after my dad died (my own version of the roaring 20’s!) that consisted of rampant and uninformed trial and error that either shaped my character or scarred me for life (jury’s out, I still haven’t quite figured that one out yet). Although I currently try to live life unapologetically and without regrets, my early days of exploration included a variety of instances and experiences that I would probably take back if I thought about them long enough (which is probably not unlike the journey that most people lead at some point in their lives).

Ironically, I don’t think that I actually ever came out officially to the world (unless a public blog/photo feature on a website that’s very subtly titled “The Gay Men Project” counts). My personal view is that coming out is a personal journey of self-acceptance that led me to gradually get over the notion that I am letting people down by being who I am and loving who I love. It’s been a tough learning curve, but I’ve slowly been able to let go of the guilt and feelings of let-down that go along with leading a life that defies societal norms, traditional convention, and pretty much everything my parents raised me to be. In this sense, I guess I’m still very much in the 7th inning stretch of my coming out process, and in spite of a good number of people knowing that I’m gay, I’m still a work in progress, learning daily what it means to be gay and find satisfaction in life.

(With regards to the gay community in Orange County) There’s a gay community in OC? They don’t call it the Orange Curtain for nuthin!

(Advice I’d give my younger self) On friends, family, and acceptance: realize that acceptance takes time, and sometimes requires one to be generous with grace in the face of those who aren’t quite ready to adjust their understanding of who you are. People won’t always be ready for the truth (and will sometimes, surprisingly, be surprised!), but time heals wounds (sometimes lots of time!), and oftentimes brings about understanding. Don’t give up on lifelong friendships because of a bad knee-jerk reaction.
On love, friendship, and relationships: a younger version of me would probably benefit from being told to worry less about finding “the one” and worry more about building friendships with solid people that will be there through the thick and thin, unconditionally. Love and partnership will come when the time is right, but good friends make the world go ’round.”

Sorel, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Sorel, in his own words: “I’ve gone through so much before I even reached my 25th birthday that once I realized that I was gay I just thought it was just another part of me getting to know myself better. I didn’t go through any internal struggle or mental break down. I never even had to “come out” to anyone, not even my family, I think they just noticed a change in my life, the gender of my partners changed from women to men, and luckily most of them were very nonchalant about it.

I don’t think that my family knew that I was gay before I knew it myself (then again, who knows), it just wasn’t an issue. So being gay to me isn’t any different than being the tallest one in my family or being the only one who moved away from the family cocoon. I just am.

From a very young age, and as far as I can remember, I’ve always been left to my own devices which probably is the reason why I grew up to be pretty much a loner. When I was young living in Cambodia, my parents would always take my sisters with them on trips and left me at home as I was a good student and they didn’t want to interrupt my schooling. During the war there they managed to send all of my siblings and myself to Paris to keep us safe, I was raised by a French family on my own and by the end of the war and after their tragic passing, I was put in a military boarding school by myself.

Once I was old enough to start working, I moved out on my own and eventually came to the U.S, again, on my own. So I guess my biggest challenges has always been to learn to cope with the world around me rather than the struggle with my own sexuality.

My success in life, and I can say this now that I am in my 50s, has been to be able to not only cope with the cards life has dealt me but overcome all of the obstacles and become a well respected member of the retail and fashion industry, an industry that I love and have been a part of for the last 20 some odd years. No matter what happened, I kept on a positive outlook and always try and stay focused on the big picture.

I moved from New York to Phnom Penh, Cambodia almost two years ago and I’m sure that there’s not much I could tell you about the Gay community in NYC that you don’t already know.

The gay community in Phnom Penh on the other hand is very small for a city of 2 million+ people. It is very transient as it is made up of mostly expats who moved to Cambodia for a 6 months contracts (sometimes a bit longer), a few tourists and some young Khmer.

Cambodia being a Buddhist country, most are very accepting and non judgmental. However, most Khmer consider homosexuality to be just a part of you and think/expect their children to eventually get married and have children, mostly boys so that they can carry on the family name. There is no law against homosexuality in Cambodia.

As far as what advice I would give my young self, I’m not quite sure I would tell him to do anything differently. Just live your life doing what feels right, don’t let others tell you how to live your life and well, maybe don’t shop so much…”