I have always been an avid record collector. In kindergarten, my teacher told my father that I liked to play with the girls and their dolls. My dad did not like that at all. So he taught me the “boy stuff,” like throwing a football. In junior high, the other boys did not want me on their teams, and I was called a sissy by most of them. My eighth-grade teacher even said to me, “Robert, are you a faggot?” The boys in my class called me “Rob-Butt” and I was bullied and ridiculed by the older, larger boys. So I kept to myself. Things got a little better in high school. By then, most of the bullies had failed their classes, but I graduated at seventeen. I came out to my parents when I was nineteen, and since then I have been out and proud, even while serving in the Marine Corps Reserve program. Life improves once we are open and honest about being gay.
