My uncles, who are farmers in Minooka, Illinois - I grew up with them and their pickup trucks and mustaches, and to me that was masculinity: big hairy sweaty guys who could pick up a bus.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up in a very masculine environment. So I was around a lot of men, my brothers and their friends. There was just a lot of guys around.
My brothers were big car guys.
My dad was a real man's man, and so were my brothers, in a small town where hockey is king. It's a masculine culture. It made me really attentive to what it meant to be a guy.
My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.
The people in the Upper Midwest were the same kind of people I grew up around in Idaho.
I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.
I was a young boy. A stock car guy used to live across the street from us. He'd work on his car, and both of my older brothers became gearheads.
I grew up on a dirt road with brothers.
In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become.
I came from a big family - two brothers and two sisters. So, there were always a ton of boys around and a ton of girls around. So, I grew up comfortable with both sexes.
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