Tag Archives: new york city

Lamar, Audio Engineer, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Lamar, in his own words: “Being gay doesn’t mean much of anything to me, other than the fact that I date men. I think the most important thing about being gay is to be aware of what people may think of you. When I introduce myself to people for the first time, I give them everything without announcing my sexuality, because I believe it’s irrelevant at that point. This is why I’m often assumed straight – because I don’t lay out that one label setting up a list of presumptions about me. I am no different from the straight guy next to me, and I find it incredibly rewarding when I realize I’ve shut down someone’s assumptions about gay people based off stereotypes. Nobody is one-dimensional, and that’s another reason why this project is so awesome. It’s showing the world that gay men come in infinite forms.

I face a challenge dealing with my sexuality quite often, whether it’s at work or socially. The biggest challenges I’ve had all come from the pressure of my family’s harshly negative beliefs about homosexuality. I think my family’s beliefs created 10 times more pressure on me than society’s pressure overall. Homosexuality in the black community is strongly unacceptable, it seems to me like they view it more as a cultural deviance than religious. I was told that homosexuality is “wrong”, “a sickness’, and a “mental disorder”. My family made it very clear – through jokes and serious talk – that anyone who identified as or “behaved” gay was to be unaccepted, disowned. With that knowledge, and having never met a gay person, my biggest fear was to indeed be gay. I honestly thought it was the worst thing anyone could be. Overcoming this challenge took going away to college, breaking away from my family for a while, and learning the truth about human sexuality.

Granted, I haven’t been a New Yorker for very long, but I have a pretty good understanding of the gay community here. One thing is for sure, the gay community here today is not what it was in the 80s or 90s. New York City is known to be a gay capital, so being gay in a city like this is, without a doubt, easier than being gay elsewhere. As the growing acceptance of New York City as a gay territory continues, more gay communities are forming to create not only one gay community, but many. New York City in particular houses gay sub-cultures drawn on commonalities of things other than sexuality like “gaymers”, “people of color”, “hipsters”, “Chelsea gays”, etc. This, in one way, makes being gay in New York seem way easier as there are more forms of expression existent. On the other hand, the sense of “community” here has been broken to very small alliances – and with smartphone apps and social media – there isn’t much need to go out and build queer communities, as more inclusive communities have been set.

I actually don’t have a coming-out story. I had kept my sexuality to myself for a long time until finally publicly dating guys. I’m lucky enough to have friends who required no explanation at all and continued to accept me after learning about my sexuality. They probably always knew, or had an idea, because I tried to hide it. Oftentimes, the things that people try to hide are the most obvious to see.

If I could give myself advice before coming out, I would say, simply “everything will be okay” and that “being hated for who you truly are is far better than being loved for who you’re pretending to be”.

Graham, Comedian, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Graham, in his own words: “I consider my “coming out” somewhat unremarkable, which is pretty remarkable in and of itself.

So many other coming out stories are characterized with real risk and real stakes, and here I was surrounded by people — friends and family alike — who I knew would love me no matter what. No career risks (because I worked in advertising). No social risks, because I’d mostly had straight friends and knew I’d always be able to connect with that community with ease.

So I figured out for myself that I was gay at the relatively late age of 22 not because I was mega repressed, but because I finally felt good enough about my appearance to date ANYONE. I told my friends a year later. In fact, I told my closest guy friend at the time — a straight guy — when he was in a towel, which I thought was maybe bad timing. But all he did was walk over and make me pinkie-swear I wasn’t kidding, and then we had beers.

My best friend laughed an easy, relaxed laugh to put me at ease, and told me it was OK.
My mom said she was glad I didn’t have to be drunk to tell her.
My brother asked why I didn’t introduce my boyfriend first as “just a good friend.”
My dad found out that my boyfriend-at-the-time dabbled in acoustic guitar and joked, “Good for you. Then he’s got good hands.”

No rejection. No tears. My only enemy was my own comfort level and persistent anxiety. Again, boring — almost spoiled — by comparison to some ostracized, struggling contemporaries, but again, a good sign. If a guy with friends and family from Ohio can come out drama-free, maybe we’re moving in the right direction.

I’ve gotten shit for being a self-loathing gay, because I am vocal in my belief that no gay man should let their sexual identity be their primary personality trait. Some people let their sexuality decide their neighborhood, their nightlife, their behaviors, their sense of humor. They, simply, follow what they see on TV and take the path of least resistance. They shun the straight world actively, and it’s too big a world to hide from. I say this not to be inflammatory, because I am willing to compromise pieces of that argument in different circumstances, but I bring it up as precursor to this: I will always be more of a nerd than I am a gay.

My nerdy tattoos represent my family, but also give cues to Alias, James Bond and the X-Men. One idea that I love analyzing is a popular critical theory on why franchises like the X-Men and Star Trek appeal to gay kids or socially awkward kids. The X-Men is a group from all over the world, all with something about them the world doesn’t understand. Mutants who discover their powers at puberty. Some of them, like Jean Grey. can look normal but know they’re different in wonderful yet terrifying ways. Some others like Nightcrawler can’t hide it (because he’s blue and has a tail and yellow eyes) and think they’re mistakes of God. But in the X-Men, they all fit in. Everyone has a place. Everyone’s curse becomes a gift and they fight for something bigger than themselves; they don’t fight to belong, but they do fight to co-exist.

I’ve had certain favorite comic book characters at different times, but I identify with the (often wildly hated) X-Men leader Cyclops because he was representative of the need for control — self control and of the world around him. Plus, how fucking cool is his visor? Anyway, I recently had an old friend (and notably someone who never reads comics) said he gets why I picked Cyclops as my favorite X-Man while another gay friend of ours liked the mutant separatist Magneto. He said that Magneto surrounded himself with mutants and didn’t want to integrate with the larger world; so this other friend, as evidence of this analogy, surrounded himself with gay men and the gay world to feel like part of something better than everything else. Meanwhile, I picked Cyclops because I made the conscious effort to connect with the parts of the world less likely to accept me — hence all my straight friends and my love of things that get considered straight because they’re not markedly gay.

I’m not saying it’s an exact analogy. I’m not saying I’ve made any difference at all in bridging the gay and straight world because I’m not political and I don’t even vote. But I’m not saying there’s nothing to it either. And if there’s anything at all true about his analogy, I’d be totally cool with that.”

Jon, Writer, New York City

photo by Kevin Truong

Jon, in his own words: “My personal definition has changed as the years pile on.

First, I thought (being gay) simply meant I was different. Then I thought it meant I had the privilege to turn my life into whatever I wanted it to be.

On a personal level, being gay thrust me into a space of asking questions that are usually reserved for a later stage in life: Why am I the way I am? What’s my place in the world? Why does the world see me a certain way? Can I have what everyone wants?

It’s forced me to forgive rejection and epithets. It’s forced me to be more compassionate. Knowing what it feels like to be perceived as different because I don’t do what some want me to, gives you some perspective.

Though others who aren’t gay, lesbian, or transgender have been forced to do the same thing.

So, I guess, I’m not so sure what it really means.

A challenge? Getting lost in the “cause” of being gay. There was a long period of time when I believed my experience was an automatic certainty of how others should live out theirs. I’ve made many mistakes in my life. That is definitely one of them. I pushed wonderful men away because I was too busy being proud of being a homosexual that I forgot to SEE them.

A success? Having my mother know who I am. She knows me. I’m lucky to have had that intention fulfilled. My coming out to her (done subtlety by bringing a man home) could have gone one of two ways, but that woman is effervescent with an incredible life trajectory, resilient, but unconditionally loving. Her acceptance isn’t my success, though – that’s hers. Mine was simply showing her who I was.

New York City is like a blood diamond. You toil to get ahold of it, to stay living in it, to be a part of it, but shit…it’s beautiful. Still, in the midst of all that gay men in NYC are masters at building communities and families.

Dance troupes. Adopted families. Friendsgiving. Charities. LGBT homeless shelters. I mean, there are endless examples of how gay men come to NYC (or grow up in NYC) and move on to build families like it’s their job. It’s insane.

Most gay men in NYC are better at building families than my real family is at building families.

Truth be told, the “coming out story” never ends. If you’re gay you’re going to be coming out for the rest of your life.

The only difference between my first coming out and the last time I came out was how many fucks I gave about it. At this point, when I tell my Dominican barber that I don’t want to meet his daughter because I like to have “novios no novias” (Spanish for “boyfriends not girlfriends”) it doesn’t faze me like it did when I said, “I’m gay,” for the first time.

Those two words would come out when I was 17 years old. At the time the feeling of isolation coupled with the sensation of a giant hole in the center of my chest was debilitating. When people describe the physical feeling of a broken heart – that’s what I was feeling. I wish that no one ever has to feel that.

In true gay-boy fashion I decided to tell my best friend first. It reached a point where I couldn’t fathom existing without at least telling one person what I was feeling. My initial “coming out” was a necessity. Looking back, I’m certain it was a life and death choice.

Earlier that summer I was listening to one of those crazy Lauryn Hill interludes on her ‘Unplugged 2.0’ album and feeling something click, “[The] real you is more interesting than the fake somebody else.” Listening to someone self-examine on a microphone was astonishing to me. I’d spent so much energy repressing everything I was feeling that I found her recorded vulnerability more than admirable. For the first time ever, I’m realizing that it inspired me.

I graduated from telling one person to a couple. It was gradual. It was on my own terms. Little by little the weight of holding a secret lifted.

Even as I read all these coming out stories and the range of ages of the people who are telling them, I now know that you can be 17 years old or 26 years old, coming out is the same at any age. It’s convoluted and at times you contradict yourself by holding on to things while still wanting to tell the world a kept secret. It’s like Jay Z said, “To have contradictions – especially when you’re fighting for your life – is human.”

(If I could give advice to myself before coming out) I would tell that kid not to fret because fearlessness doesn’t exist. I’d let him know that he can be brave and scared at the same time. That it’s how shit gets done. That it’s how most good changes are made in the world. That in all likelihood all the things he’s going to want to do and NEED to do will scare him.

I’d also tell him that he’s pretty fucking great.”