Growing up as a gay man in today’s world is drastically different than when I was a kid, even though it really wasn’t that long ago. As the youngest of five kids born in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, there wasn’t much opportunity beyond farming your own soil or taking on a trade. I remember when I was in elementary school, wearing hand me down clothes, on the first day of music class. The room was filled with every instrument possible. You could take your pick and bring one home for the weekend to get acquainted with it, and then hopefully you would join the band or the orchestra, and start a lifetime love of music. For some reason I was drawn to the clarinet (gay I know!) I remember arriving home, excited, clarinet in hand, and my parents sitting down and getting very serious. My siblings, already numb from disappointment of years gone by, watched as I was told by my parents that I could do anything, be anything, and achieve anything as long as they didn’t have to contribute financially, emotionally, or attend any fundraisers or recitals. That, of course would stop most kids from dreaming, but not me. That’s when I started what was to become a lifetime of building my own family.
We are all born into a family that we have no control over but I began to start appreciating qualities of other peoples mother’s, using their fundamentals as building blocks for my life. I quickly became a foster child of sorts to these other mothers. These were strangers telling me that I could do anything, be anything AND would help me do so! I started separating myself emotionally from my family. They were, and remain, proud of my accomplishments, but never pushed me like these other amazing women. Teachers and people I worked with at all of my jobs, also encouraged me. In high school, I worked at a trendy mall men’s apparel store, at a four-star restaurant, and mowed the grass to pay for the lifestyle that I was knitting in my mind. What I wasn’t aware of, was that I was prepping myself for what was to come…
Living my life around culture and learning about art, etiquette and the finer things in life.
Strong women started becoming my obsession, and I became their fun projects. Then I met Bev, my high school art teacher. The epitome of strong and stern, she was the first to tell me I wasn’t good enough to get into Parson’s School of Design in New York City. So I set out to prove her wrong. I have no idea how many times I took the 12-hour train from Greensburg to New York to tour and interview at the “mecca” of art schools. I would stay with my cousin, who was attending NYU. (One of my thirty-two first cousins who was also adding building blocks that should have come from our childhood upbringing.) I guess looking back my childhood came complete with wheels, as do I. Afraid of nothing, striving for everything, and ready for anything that was to come, I entered the big city as a freshman at Parsons in 1996.
And that’s not where the story ends, rather it’s just the beginning of an arsenal of females that have grown in my mind as my “mother.” Most people have moments of conscience where they think “what would my mother say?” I have created a mega-mother in my mind to take the place of that. No disrespect for my parents, they just weren’t equipped to deal with me as a son. I felt I deserved the cookie cutter “Leave it to Beaver” scenario, but instead was cast in “Married with Children.” Know that you don’t necessarily have to recast yourself into a different show entirely, you should always be proud from where you came, but you can be a “special guest star” on a different show!
I hear about kids who feel they aren’t part of their families and I wanted to share how I coped with being different and how you can find your family is other ways. My family is much bigger than my last name… it’s a network of personalities woven over years and miles. And all built with love.
