You find yourself suddenly free from the weight and fatigue of secretes. If you want to, gay men get to play with ever aspect of masculinity. There are no predefined cultural gender roles for us. We can be sensitive, emotional, or sympathetic with out the worry of loosing our male friends or jobs. We can have all sorts of relationships. What’s the worst people can think of us? That we are gay? Well, we are! With no secret, there is no power.

Once I had the time and confidence to question being straight, the flood gates opened up. If such a basic thing was in question, something I had taken completely for granted, then what else in this world was not as it seemed? I had always assumed growing up meant I would meet a girl, have kids, work a job I hated, and die. But that got thrown out the window! From that point on in my life, my already healthy curious nature took control, and I questioned everything, constantly. My opinions, my rules, and my evolving values. Life wasn’t at all predicable, and became some sort of Alice in Wonderland adventure with no clear finish.

Here in Montreal, the gay community is a little bit more my style. Smaller than NYC or London where I lived previously. Gays here seem to get up early, and leave work at 6.

On coming out; I was terrified. I relied on my parents for so much. If they disowned me for some reason, who knows what I would have done. That’s a small lie actually. I had every contingency worked out. Money, places to stay, long and short term. An entire network on support on the ready.

I could have waited till I was settled and on my own before coming out. But, it felt like life couldn’t start till this was out of the way. Who could concentrate on work, or art, or music with the huge pink elephant in the room? Family dinner was intolerable. I could not listen to anyone over the voice of my own thoughts.

At first the biggest challenge was to find gay people I could identify with. Over the years my sense of humor has surely help me stay away from trouble and get accepted where ever I am. In 2008, I ran for office and one of my objectives was to show others that you could be openly gay, have a career and be involved in politics. A bit like this project, a chance to put a face, and say that we exist and want to be around the table when important decisions are made in Parliament.

We are very lucky in Montreal to have a vibrant and diverse gay community. The village is a beacon and a starting point for many. However, gay people in this city are not ghettoized, we are everywhere and that is the beauty of it. I put anyone to the challenge of not liking Montreal, where Europe and North America meets.

That being said, I was drawn to the project because the images I saw were not only aesthetically pleasing, but appealed to my own writing project that is currently ongoing, a project that has been informed by a series of tumultuous events in my own life— including repeated incidences of homophobia, including a severe assault in New York City’s West Village back March 2011 that required reconstructive surgery. Queer Embraces, the name of the project, refers to the way in which my identity and my movement through cities informs how I define what it means to belong—to other men, to those cities, to the ways in which my being visible is an act of personal transformation with political possibilities.

For me, The Gay Men Project matters because of the fact that despite all of the reforms in terms of LGBTQ rights, so many of the men, myself included, face day-to-day struggles simply by being on the streets. I actively choose to wear a lot of thrift store clothes that are designed for women, which has lead to backlash in virtually every city I have traveled. When I write about HIV/AIDS, sexual health, or what it means to hookup with other men in the age of phone and Internet apps, I still face discrimination, even from gay men who are supposed to be part of the same community I belong to. All of this to say that for me, being visible and honest about who you are remains as important today as it was during the Compton’s Cafeteria riot or Stonewall because so many inequalities exist.