Born This Way Read Free Page B

talent with wigs eventually led to Broadway and television work.



frank, age 7
    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.



joe, age 7
    I was an effeminate boy who liked to play house and lip-sync to Cher songs. I would put my sister’s black tights over my head, throw back the legs like long hair, and sing “Half-Breed” into a hairbrush! My parents were not okay with this.
    I felt terrible, knowing that I wasn’t like other boys. Although I kept my sexuality quiet, other boys (and the girls) could see that I was different, and I was bullied. I was constantly called hateful names. I was spit on, pushed around, and punched. Unlike many gay boys, I told my parents about the bullying. They came to the school and told the teachers and principals, but nothing changed. I became isolated and depressed at age fourteen, and my mother took me to therapy, which saved my life. The therapist was open to hearing about my real thoughts, fantasies, and identity. He taught me how to fight back against those bullies with my words, and it worked. He also inspired me to become a therapist as an adult. There is help out there.

billy, age 7
    I was a creative momma’s boy, and I sucked my thumb until I was thirteen. When I played house with my cousins and my sister, I was always a “girl” with a towel on my head, pretending I had long hair. I remember always feeling like an oddball, misfit, or less than good enough. In sixth grade, we were assigned to draw a picture of our teacher sitting at her desk. My teacher didn’t like mine and she made fun of it in front of the entire class, and I was devastated. My mom picked me up from school and I began to cry. When I told her the story, she did a screeching U-turn in the street and bolted us back to the school principal’s office. They called the teacher in, and my mother read her like a cheap novel! My mother has always had my back, and she still does now at age eighty.

andy, age 5
    Basically, I felt like a girl —or an overly sensitive boy with a very vivid imagination. We would put on shows in the garden, and I did drag brilliantly in my sister’s long party dress. I think I was quite scared of the other boys my age, and by age ten, I was called a sissy and a poofter before I even knew what it all meant. The milkman once said to me, “Andy, why do you walk like a girl?” This really screwed me up