Today’s Out October Project story is from Gonzalo Garcia, a New York City actor turned personal trainer, and he is a personal friend. His story gives the idea of “you’re not the only one” new meaning. (You can join Gonzalo’s Facebook fan page, and follow him via Twitter.)
It was 1998 and I was a freshman in college but still living with my parents. They couldn’t justify paying for college dorms in New York when I lived in New Jersey. So I had to commute every day, making a social life nearly impossible. My mother, an over protective, overbearing Latin woman who just loved to snoop though her only son’s things. One night before dinner she confronted me in my bedroom showing me something I had written for a creative writing class confessing my homosexuality. Did I secretly want her to find it? Who knows. Maybe. And she did, buried in stacks of papers and files. She sat down with tears welling up and snot running down her nose. She confessed to always having a “feeling” that I was gay. The conversation went by so quickly but it ended with her saying, “Let’s not tell your father. It would upset him and he has a weak heart.”
Cut to thirty minutes later at the dinner table when my father, while rolling his eyes, asks my mother why she’s crying.
She blurts out, “I’m crying because your son is a homosexual!” Cue screech of the record player, cue spotlight on me, cue deer caught in headlights look.
I think we all come out in three stages. First stage is to ourselves. Second stage is to our friends because we get to CHOOSE our friends and usually know right off the bat if they’ll accept us. Finally, the third stage is to our family. That’s pretty much how it happened with me.
I knew very early on I was different. Flashback to 1986 and I’m sitting in our New York City apartment in Washington Heights on a plastic covered sofa. Yes, not only was my mother overbearing and overprotective, she was an obsessive compulsive clean freak. I remember sitting there with my older sisters as they watch music videos on MTV. You know, when they actually played music videos on MTV and not reality tv shows like Jersey Shore capturing the stupidity of drunk steroided out twenty-somethings with nothing better to do than get laid and pick fights? But I digress.
I remember sitting there watching music videos and suddenly he appeared. Chiseled jaw, perfectly quaffed hair, short shorts and some other dude singing with him. Yes, it was him…George Michael. I sat there after the video finished and I couldn’t get him out of my head. I wanted to meet him. I wanted him to whisk me away and take care of me. I wanted to be in his presence. It wasn’t anything sexual so stop whatever it is you’re thinking. Jeez I was only six years old then!
I came to realize I was gay pretty early on. Growing up in the theatre really helped me feel comfortable with it. However, feeling comfortable enough to tell my family was another story. I came to terms with it around junior high school when my friends forced me to ask out Nicole Schwartzberg, a very busty girl from Queens. She developed very, very early. We went to a school dance together and I didn’t want to dance with her. A few days later we were in the stairwell and she tried to make out with me. It was a typical “close her eyes and lean in” kind of a thing. I backed away asking her what she was doing. She looked hurt. Then slowly a look of puzzlement. Then finally a look of realization. Yup, I’m gay I thought to myself days later.
Not long after this happened I started stage two of the coming out process, coming out to my friends. Let’s just say most were not shocked. It was easy for me in junior high. I went to one of the top performing arts schools in NYC. Not many of us were out at the time, I think I was one of the first. But if there was some resistance from students who didn’t “agree” with homosexuality, we fought back. Hey, we’re born and bred New Yorkers!
Stage three started when I came out to my sister when I was about fifteen years old. I knew she would understand. There was something about my sister which told me she would understand. As it turns out, she came out of the closet herself a few years later. One would think she paved the way for me and made it easier to come out to my parents. Think again. It actually made it harder because for years I had to sit around listening to my parents obsess, scream, cry and yell about my sister being a lesbian. They turned all of their anger towards me making it almost impossible to come out.
I lived my life in fear and walked on egg shells for years hoping they would never find out. I couldn’t put them through it. I saw it tear our family apart and I could not stand doing it again. So I bottled up my feelings and like so many others debated suicide myself. But with the support of a very close friend, Sarah, I opted for life.
I graduated high school and went to college and that’s when my mother found my writings. My mother cried for years and my father blamed himself thinking he should have spent more time with me. Life sucked for a good eight to ten years between me and my parents until they realized my sister and I can have good, stable healthy homosexual relationships. My sister and her partner, Bonnie, have become close with my parents and they’ve welcomed Bonnie into the family as if she was one of their own. I’m confident that the day I bring home a man whom I call my partner they will treat him the same way.
My coming out took time. A long time. I was full of fear, anger and self-hatred at times and at other times I was full of love. I often ask myself if I would change it if I could. I mean, would I choose to be straight if there were a pill to take? My answer is no.
Remember, there are always options.
The Trevor Project: a 24-hour hotline for gay and questioning youth: 866-4-U-TREVOR (488-7386)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)
The New Civil Rights Movement
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