My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was inadvertently raised in the 'gay community.' I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings.
People who were gay were pitied and ridiculed by my parents - they had no modern sense of people being allowed to be who they were.
I came out to my parents as gay, and then I realized, you know, four or five years later, that I wasn't really happy, no relationships were working, and there was something missing in my life, and you know, I was doing drag, performing and stuff, and I realized through that arc that I was much happier doing that.
My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.
A lot of my friends were gay, so I was spat on on the bus daily, and I ended up in hospital a couple of times from being beaten up so badly.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
My dad was a very violent, frightening and dangerous guy. Next to him, I was this vague kind of kid who walked around, as I still do, gathering impressions.
My dad was a New York City cop. His father was a New York City fireman. And my mother's dad was a city taxi driver.
Remember that I was out of the closet at the age of sixteen. My parents knew I was gay; I'd had to tell them.
I didn't know any gay people in my childhood.