Tag Archives: the gay men project

Jacob and Hayden, Musician and Musician/Director, Los Angeles

photo by Kevin Truong

Jacob, in his own words: “Being gay is AMAZING.

It means I can wear cut off shorts and a lady wig to a club and nobody will think anything of it. I haven’t tried it yet, but I appreciate the option.

I actually feel very lucky to be gay, and to be with my husband, Hayden. We have a great physical and spiritual connection that I feel like can only be achieved in a same sex relationship. It’s easier to truly understand each other (I think sometimes different hormones and mixed signals can make it a little more difficult).

It’s great having someone to watch horror movies, Jam out with music, play video games, and be totally crude together and then later cuddle up or bone down.

(With regards to challenges) Coming out in high school, I lost a few friends…but whatever, I’ve made better ones since then. My Mom Also had a hard time grasping the concept that gays were not just a walking virus. She said some hard things to hear and we don’t talk much these days.

Trying not to be “gay fat” is also a challenge.

I have met many excellent gays here in LA. I don’t know if I can tell you much about the scene here though. I spend more time at home than going out in gay town. The gays I do spend my time with are rad ass though. Artsy fartsy crafty gays. I’m lucky to have found a group of friends where we’re always trying to keep each other busy with our different art projects… which was always a dream of mine in high school.

In middle school I wasn’t out to my family… or really any of my friends. However, I never said no to a gay hook up when it presented itself..

I eventually became more comfortable with my sexuality and a little more open about it in high school…I was even sort of dating someone. I guess I was never too careful about covering my tracks either. The internet browser would totally remember all the porn I had looked at, so that was probably cool for my mom when she went to check her email and the browser suggested she check out gaybeef.com instead.

Then one night when I was 15, I came home from work and saw that my mom searched my room and found all my porn and placed it in a fanned out arrangement on my bed. Great. I went straight to bed that night, unable to face the embarrassment. The Next morning we had a fight and I left for school…which I decided to ditch. I moved out that night and was emancipated a few months later.

My mom and I don’t Speak that often. but we both love each other.. it just is what it is.
I’m happy with where I am and what I’ve been able to accomplish on my own. Being gay has given me great strength. and I am very proud of who I am.”

Hayden, in his own words: “Being gay…what does it mean to me? I’ve never really given it much thought. But, I would have to say that it means having the freedom to express myself. That sounds pretty cheesy, and sometimes its easier said than done. But, I’ll try and break it down.

Being a gay guy is awesome. I have a partner that understands when I need to find a save point before I shut-off the Xbox. He gets that some nights its better to stay at home with a 6-pack and watch horror movies all night.

My family, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people. Not only do they appreciate my weirdness…they encourage it.

My friends, they’re all so unique and incredible. We’re like a group of renegade artists. If someone isn’t working on an art project we get itchy.

Being gay to me means being fortunate to be myself and have the support it takes to do so.

I haven’t really faced many challenges for being gay. I came out in High School, which probably would have been tough. But, I think the black make-up and spiked collars took some of the focus off of the fact that I was gay.

Its difficult to describe the gay scene in Los Angeles. There are a ton of queers with a ton of different interests; a person has some options. I stay home a lot…ha ha.

My coming out story is totally boring. It was during 11th grade English class. The girl behind me used to read Metal Edge Magazine everyday. Our teacher was often intoxicated so I would turn around in my desk to read the magazines with her. She would talk about which rock stars she thought were hot. Never being one to shy away controversy, I tested the waters here and professed my love for Daniel Johns of Silverchair. She didn’t bat an eyelash but rather said, “Me too. I had a sex dream about him last night.”

Check out Jacob and Hayden’s music with Professor Possessor

Noam and Daniel, Architects, Boston

photo by Kevin Truong

Noam and Daniel, in their own words: “Tel Aviv is quite a liberal place within a not-always-liberal country. It is a bubble, in many ways parallel to how NYC is viewed within the US.

Gays are an influential part of the society in Tel Aviv: in politics, in media and in culture. Before moving to Cambridge, we both worked full time as journalists in Ha’aretz Newspaper’s culture section, covering arts and architecture on a daily basis. We were one of the only couples there, and perhaps the only gay couple. Personally we can’t say being gay had any negative influence on how we were viewed, it never created any special challenges. We never hid our sexual orientation, quite the contrary.

Though we are pretty new in Boston / Cambridge, we can already say that it is very very different in terms of gay community when compared to Tel Aviv. First of all, Tel Aviv is smaller and everyone knows everyone. Then, of course, Israel is a Mediterranean country: it’s hot, temperamental, edgy, alive all year round and it’s extremely sexual. These things are different in Boston, which is way more introverted and quiet, more educated and calm, more homogeneous in its gay population. It seems sometimes that maybe because gay marriage and being gay has been OK here for a pretty long time, the character of the gay community here has become very institutional.

As for a coming out story. Both of us went to arts high schools and studied classical music (Daniel-piano, Noam- tuba). For our parents, our coming out was not such a big surprise in hindsight. There were phases of therapy in both cases, but today our parents are super accepting. And both parent-pairs are friends with each other too, which is great. They are our family and we think that they see we love each other, they see how we develop and flourish together, and they trust us that we’re OK and that they don’t need to be worried for us.”

A Note from Salvatore, in Buffalo…

“As a young 1st generation Italian-American in the ’80s growing up in the small community just north of the Adirondacks in New York I felt isolated not only because we didn’t have many other Italians in our community, but also as I grew older my loneliness and isolation became my suppression of myself as a gay man. I didn’t want to be gay and more importantly my fear was other people would find out. So I did what many people did, denied myself of who I was, kept quiet, remained a shy person, held in my emotions, and most importantly dated girls – or at least attempted to, but I wasn’t really good at it. Looking back I didn’t do these things intentionally knowing I was gay, I did them and acted this way because it’s all I knew how to be. I had a fear someone would know something about me that I didn’t know about myself. I’m not a feminine person and knowing I’m gay surprises many people, but the friends that really knew me as a teenager and as an adult; that really got to know me for me and knew my heart, soul, and mind – they knew I was gay before I knew. And when the time came for me to tell them I didn’t even have to say the words, they just said “I know! It’s ok, and I love you for trusting me and finally realizing who you are.”

My coming out was a difficult time as I’m sure it is for many gay youth. I was 18 years old and like many teens of the 90s, I started to explore the internet and went to chat rooms. In such a small community there was no gay youth center or gay groups in schools so I turned to the internet to explore this part of my life and my curiosity. I began chatting online with another gay Italian, the same age as myself. I felt relief finally not only in the fact that I had another Italian person to speak to, but most importantly another gay Italian – in those days I didn’t think gay existed, let alone gay Italians. He was going through what I was going through. We became great online friends for months and eventually met as he was only within an hours time in Montreal, Canada. Entrusting one another, and having started a friendship, over a few years we finally were able to admit to ourselves that we are gay, but just to each other. No one else could know. This was when my struggle with my family began as my mother eventually overheard us on the phone. She questioned everything I did until I finally had admitted it. Just saying the words “I’m gay” was like I had hit a brick wall. A brick wall of relief that I had taken down. I felt like the sun was shining upon me, birds were chirping, angels were singing, trumpets were playing – it was far from that – but I felt relief, like I had just been born. My heart pumped with joy and I felt a heavy burden was gone and I was no longer alone – even though I still at this time did not realize the extend of what there was out there for an LGBT community I knew who I was for the first time – and that in and of itself did not make me feel alone.

Eventually, after months of counseling with psychologists and priests, family arguments and disagreements, I decided to move across state to Buffalo, NY for college. My family and I began to get along better at a distance but my ‘dark secret’ was a burden to them, never spoken about to extended family, and when I visited home I couldn’t discuss my ‘gay lifestyle choice’, as my mother would call it. Soon, I began dating a guy, Steve, that I had met at a restaurant that we worked together in. We dated for four years before we moved in together. Even though my family knew about Steve, they never disrespected him in any way, they just did not discuss him. To them he was my roommate. The breaking point was when I told my mother Steve and I were going to be getting married. In the discussion I told her I had a new family, an accepting family that welcomed me, and that I wasn’t a humiliation to, and if Steve couldn’t be welcomed in her home I wasn’t welcomed either. It was then that my mother said to me that I was never a humiliation, she only feared what society would have done to me and how the world would have treated me. She’s never been more proud of me standing up for what I believe in and that I’ve become a stronger man that she’s never been more proud of. I guess our interpretation of how we view things, and how we believe others view things, will never change unless we speak up. Since then, Steve has been welcomed into my family’s homes and we celebrate holidays and events with each others families. We’ve been together 13 years now and since my struggle of coming out Steve has become my best friend, my companion, my heart and soul, the man I plan to grow old with and hopefully raise a family with someday.”