This is a complicated question. I came out at such a young age and being gay was already at the forefront of my own identity development that I feel it might be more fully integrated than if I had come out later in life. In other words, I mostly take that identity for granted.

I think being gay/queer (two very distinct identities and both with which I readily identify) has allowed me a distinct vantage point to observe and consider how identities might impact experience.
My mother is Jewish and I grew up in a predominately Mormon suburb. Early on, I was used to living on the periphery. By senior year, my sexuality was not a secret. But many of my peers seemed less concerned with my sexuality and more preoccupied with the fact that I was not Mormon. I don’t think my sexuality was something they could even conceptualize, but not being Mormon? That was almost unheard of.

Critical thinking is a buzzword (buzzphrase?) in academia. How do we teach it? How do we learn it? What facilitates critical thinking? I think in addition to being Jewish, being gay and queer has afforded me the opportunity to identify counter-narratives. I spent my entire life knowing I was not the norm and having to question why the norm was the norm.

This was another experience I took for granted. I know I have internalized a lot of heteronormative, homonormative, misogynist, racist, et cetera, dominant discourse, but I don’t excuse misogyny and racism the way a lot of people in queer communities seem to just by virtue of not being part of a heterosexual hegemony. It seems a little hypocritical and contradictory. Like, you know the consequences of a non-normative identity. Why would you enforce that kind of normativity with people who hold other non-normative identities? I’m not saying I’m perfect by any means – just an observation.

Simply, being gay probably refers to some primary sexual attraction while being queer is a more political (and ideally inclusive) identity. I imagine that’s a common answer. It might be redundant to say sexuality is more complicated than that. If you account for history and behavior, attraction, and personal identification, being gay and/or queer can’t begin to capture all of it. So I anchor all of that in identity – separate from history, behavior, attraction, et cetera.

(With regards to challenges and successes) right now I’m preoccupied with money. I’ve chosen an expensive path with a modest payoff. And I never learned the best money management skills. Spend it faster than you make it. Buy now, pay later. While self-imposed, this has been a huge challenge lately.
But I’ve had far more successes.

I’m the fifth of six children and the first to earn a four-year degree. I’m the only one with a master’s degree and might remain the only one. And I’ll certainly be the only with a PhD. I did that myself, with very little guidance and minimal financial support. And now I teach undergraduate students! That feels significant.

The year I finished undergrad, I published two poems in a small independent journal. That was a dream come true for me. The journal never gained much traction and has been inactive for sometime, but I am tremendously proud of that work.

I’ve been a singer since I was 15. I stopped singing for many years, but started again two years ago. Finding my confidence and discovering my voice all over again is a success for me. I got to rewrite my story around singing and reclaim that space.

My survival feels like a success. There’s no reason I should be where I am now – I wasn’t set up for it. And I remember thinking I’d never make it past 18. Each year after that, I felt like I was blindly fumbling for some semblance of this “adulthood” about which I had heard so much. And even if I’m faking it, I think I’ve made it look pretty good by now. 

I came out a couple of weeks after I turned 15. I went to the Warped Tour with my best friend David (and some other people). David and I have known each other since the summer we turned 8 (we’re a month apart in age) and he’s still my best friend. David’s parents were out of town and he was planning a party – my older sister’s friends were going to supply the alcohol.

That day, David kept saying he had something he wanted to tell me, but he needed to wait until he was drunk. I don’t remember what I thought, but I’m sure I was paranoid he was angry, had a girlfriend, had tried some drug, or maybe he had a new best friend – all the thoughts of an anxious 15-year-old.

That night, when we were both good and liquored, we went into his dining room, away from the party, closed the door, and sat down on the floor, cross-legged, facing each other. After some awkward plying, David finally said, “I’m gay.” I was surprised. I was so wrapped up in my own struggle to come out, I didn’t even consider David’s sexuality. David and I just talked about this the other night. He said my response was, “I think I might be gay too.” He was the very first person I told.

After that party, my sister and I got into a fight and she told my parents about the booze. Even though she supplied it, I got in trouble. The whole situation was depressing – I was grounded. And gay?

I remember I was painting my bedroom at the time and sleeping in a spare room with my mattress on the floor. My mom came down one afternoon, days or maybe even weeks after the party, sat down on my mattress next to me, and asked what was wrong. She asked if I was having “girl troubles” and I scoffed and said, “No!” Then she asked if I was having “boy troubles” – I didn’t have a lot of male peers and in my younger years was often targeted for being effeminate and nonathletic. My mother maintains that’s what she meant, but I responded, “Are you asking if I’m gay?” My mother said, “No.” and I shot back, “’Cause I am.” My mother then said, “No, I don’t believe that.” and I clarified, “No, mom. I’m telling you I’m gay.”

Next she asked if David, my best friend, was also gay. I told her he was then she continued with a barrage of invasive questions about whether or not we were in love or had had sex. For years, my parents blamed my sexuality on his and his liberal parents’ influence and wouldn’t trust us to have sleepovers. In their minds, two gay teenage boys equaled uninhibited and constant gay sex. Over the next few weeks, I slowly came out to a couple of my siblings and a handful of close friends.

I begged my mother to keep my disclosure between us, terrified of what my father’s reaction would be. A few weeks after the first party, I was at another party. I was standing in the kitchen with a few friends, having recently come out to all of them. At one point, I called my parents and left a message on their answering machine letting them know I was with David (the enforcement of their arbitrary rules was inconsistent and their attempts at controlling me were futile – they knew that I’d do what I wanted or needed to do). After I left the message, I hung up the phone and proceeded to talk for several minutes about being gay. Turns out, the phone was broken, did not hang up, and recorded my entire speech on my parents answering machine.

David and I sound somewhat similar – our tone, our inflection. My father had heard the message and I thought I fooled him into believing it was David speaking. But as it turns out, my mother had already outed me. She said she could not keep secrets from her husband.

What followed was a dark few years during which I ran away, was kicked out, and spent at least half (probably most) of high school living with friends’ parents, and a stint or two in a youth shelter. At 17, my parents kicked me out one last time, signing over guardianship to a friends’ parents. My mother took it upon herself to tell my entire immediate and extended family I was gay and that was why I couldn’t live with them anymore. Unfortunately for them, nobody seemed to care. Nobody was surprised.

My parents have come a long way. I moved back in at the end of my senior year and lived with them through the beginning of my freshman year in college. My mother wants to set me up with her hairstylist and, in addition to contentious political debates, my father and I have had long conversations about love and heartbreak.

I grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, amongst a sea of blondes. Very all-American. I’m not read as white in Utah. It’s arguably more homogeneous than Portland. Being gay in Salt Lake, even being part of a sort of subculture, I was still on the periphery. I remember one of my last nights out, at a gay club, a guy walked up to me and said, “You’re cute. You’d be a lot cuter if you went to the gym.” I shot back, “Why? So I can look like every other faggot in this room?”

When I moved to Portland ten years ago, I thought, “Finally! Gay people like me.” Everyone seemed so dynamic and ruled by passions that had little to do with notions of prescribed identities linked primarily to sexuality. Maybe they had just been less repressed than all the gays I grew up with, perhaps unencumbered by ex-Mormon baggage.

A few years ago, an acquaintance who had lived in New York City, L.A., and San Francisco said Portland was the gayest city he had ever lived in. Whenever tourists would stop my friends and me on the street asking where the gay bars were, we would respond, “Portland is a gay bar.”

Like so many “scenes,” Portland’s is white-washed and caters mostly to gay men. But that’s not really the gay scene – that’s just a handful of gay bars that dominate the scene. The actual scene feels more integrated. When I travel to other cities, I realize I get to take my safety for granted in Portland. Maybe that’s naïve or I live in a bubble within a bubble, but there doesn’t have to be a scene here, if that makes sense. It’s not quite post-gay – I think that’s too dismissive of the history and the struggle and the work left to do. But it does feel like a privilege to be gay in Portland, with or without a scene. Or perhaps I’m finally comfortable where I live.

I am grateful for my life and as much as I try to overcome it, I do have regrets. I’ve worked hard, but in some ways, I have coasted. I would tell my younger self to put in more effort instead of being debilitated by potential failure. I spend so much time thinking – I would tell my younger self to be more action-oriented, that I will survive a bad decision, but it’s hard to either recover or thrive when I make no decision.

Maybe it’s that little voice from my childhood telling me I’m not enough, but I wish I would have really applied myself, gone to a better school, finished college earlier, started my career earlier, enjoyed more success.

I would also be very kind to my younger self to combat all the insecurities that held me back – I would tell my younger self how smart and handsome he is and encourage my younger self to put himself out there, in all areas of his life. Mostly, whatever it is, I would remind my younger self, “This won’t kill you. You will not die because of this.

I would encourage my younger self to trust people more easily and point out all my younger self’s walls. I would ask my younger self if all that time partying actually got him any closer to his long-term goals and point out other ways to live than in a bar.