As a kid, I dressed like Charles Nelson Reilly, I had posters of David Cassidy on my bedroom wall, and I owned my own food processor by the time I was fifteen! My father, God love him, tried his best to interest me in pursuits more traditionally masculine than shopping and reading Redbook.
My classmates certainly knew I was gay. I was called a fag every day from the sixth grade on. I was a quadruple-whammy teasing target, too. I wasn’t just effeminate—I was a fat, four-eyed, straight-A student whom teachers adored. The worst experience was in art class. I made a giant psychedelic letter F out of cardboard and tempera paint. It was just like the M on the wall on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My teacher held it up in class and one kid shouted, “What’s the F for? Faggot?!” The class howled. I was devastated and, worst of all, I did nothing. I wasn’t yet ready to admit I was gay. I finally came out right before my seventeenth birthday, beginning a relationship with a boy in my geometry class. From our first mall date, I was ready to sign the bridal registry. Oh, what a sexy summer we shared before going off to college. I’m proud to say that we still send each other birthday cards.
Today, my husband and I are nearing the sixteen-year mark of being together. No matter the awful things my mother said when I first came out to her—and there were some doozies!—she left me with some good advice. “Nobody is better than you, and you’re no better than anyone else.” Those are some pretty fabulous words to live by, whether you’re gay or not.