It Gets Better (24 page)

After graduation I decided that I'd like to do some volunteer work. I'd done enough shitty things in my life; I wanted to give something back. So at nineteen, I began volunteering at a gay and bisexual men's HIV/STD prevention agency in the Castro in San Francisco. I'd stand outside of bars and clubs handing out condoms and lube. I'd dispense information about STDs, HIV, and the risks of intravenous drug use. Basically, I had a lot of conversations with guys about being safe, and I conducted a lot of sex surveys that would allow the project I was working for to catalog information and communicate with the Department of Health, all with a focus on keeping gay men in San Francisco healthy. Some of my straight friends would ask, “Why are you helping out the gays?” which, I realize, is a reprehensible question in the first place, but I'd respond that in the area I live, there are gay men who have HIV, and they're who I want to help.

I met some wonderful people doing that work. I joke around that sometimes I wish I was gay because most of the gay guys I know are fabulous! What I've found in dealing with the gay community in the Bay Area—and I'm speaking broadly and generally—is as a group they are the warmest, most empathetic people I've ever come in contact with. I love all my gay friends. I've met so many committed people dedicated to bettering the health, the welfare, and the lives of the gay community and the larger community, in general.

If you're in high school and you're gay, bisexual, or transgender, and you're being tormented, find some way to get through school and then get to San Francisco, get to the Bay Area, get to Miami or Chicago or New York City. Not only will you find a burgeoning community of people like you, people who will support you, people who will love you, people who will talk to you about everything you need to talk about, but you'll find people like me who used to be dicks. But I got out of high school and I became nicer, more mature, and more enlightened as I got older. I became a friend to the people I used to mess with. You'll meet people who accept you, want you around, love you, and will be there to place bets on the Academy Awards with you, because, God knows, none of my straight friends do that.

I wish Billy Lucas could have read this. I hope this helps someone, even if it's just one kid out there who reads this and realizes that some of those kids who bullied or taunted you in high school will grow up and get a clue. Whether they do or not, know that it gets better for you. It gets better for your community. Be strong and know that whatever torment you're experiencing, you're not going to find it when you come to the Bay Area. You're not going to find it when you go to New York. Please let that sustain you, and please reach out to someone. The Internet's a great tool if you're feeling down. You'll get through it. It will get better. It will never be perfect, but it will get better.

OAKLAND, CA

 

 

 

P
eople said horrible things to me every day, they even made death threats. Kids would throw garbage at me, open my locker and slice open all my pictures, tear apart my books and throw them all over the locker room, pour soda over all my stuff, throw my clothes all over the gym locker room. This kind of stuff happened every day in junior high and high school. And let me tell you it got a little wearing.

You would have expected better from my town of forty thousand people, located near San Francisco. But no, it turns out there is ignorance and prejudice everywhere. I'm forty now, and a voice director. Today I am out to everybody, but I guess I've never really been in. I had a girlfriend in high school, which was pretty shocking for 1985; obviously my schoolmates thought so. People, kids and adults alike, were not big fans of the idea then. It got so bad I was even threatened with rape. There were times in junior high school when I thought that it was never going to change. When I thought it would be better to just not be here.

I was raised Catholic and told that being gay was just wrong, that it was against nature—this, from my mother who now happily tells her coworkers and her friends how proud she is of her bisexual daughter. She even cries when the Gay Pride parade goes by her office, she's so proud.

People will change and people will rise up to meet you. People that I knew in high school—some of the same people who said the very worst things to me then—have contacted me on Facebook and said, “You're so brave.”

And “If I didn't know you, I wouldn't have known anyone who was gay.”

“You're the first person I knew who was gay and it changed my worldview.”

They say that now, these same people who threatened to kill me when I was a teenager. Yet if I had made the choice at the time to end the pain that I was going through, well, one, I wouldn't have had the satisfaction of having them write to me all these years later on Facebook, and two, and more importantly, they wouldn't have had the opportunity, regardless of how scared they were then, to know someone who was different.

I think that being “other”—being bisexual, being gay, being transgendered, questioning your gender, whatever—is so incredibly valuable. It gives you a unique perspective on how to overcome the horrible things that people do to one another in the name of fear, in the name of what they think is religious righteousness. To go through all that and to survive it—without any malice toward those people, with love and forgiveness in your heart, and with acceptance of yourself—is the way to help heal the world. I really believe that you will contribute to that future. I promise you that it gets better. My life is amazing! I travel all over the world; I work with incredible actors. I have a fantastic, fantastic life. So I promise you that it is worth it to stay. Please, please get through this and don't believe what people say to you about it being your fault, or that you're weird, or whatever. Screw those people. You know in your heart that you are good. And I know in my heart that you are good.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

 

 

 

T
here are so many people—gay, lesbian, and transgender—who grow up in religious, conservative environments like I did. Who frankly don't make it out alive.

I was raised in a Mormon home where I learned things about homosexuality that weren't true. In church and at home I was taught that being homosexual was a made-up thing; it wasn't something that was natural. It was something that could only bring sadness. When I was in high school being gay was not something I thought about. I thought I would get older and get married to a woman, just like all other good Mormon boys. It wasn't until later that I realized that this would be impossible. The thought that I wouldn't fit into the religious mold I was raised in was devastating to me; I knew it would also be devastating to my family. Regardless, I began to realize that I needed to come out, that I needed to be open about who I was. It took me a while but, eventually, I discovered the things I had learned were not correct. Instead, I learned to accept who I was—a gay man—and to trust that I was a good person. Because that's what I felt like; I felt like a good person. I decided then I wasn't going to let anybody—anymore—tell me who I was.

It took me a long time; I was twenty-four years old before I decided I was okay, that I could be happy as a gay man, as an openly gay man. Nearly a year later, I came out and suddenly felt free of the intense feelings of self-hatred that I had carried for so long. Some people rejected the new, more honest me; my family felt betrayed and confused. But being honest with myself enabled me to find people who accepted me for who I was, regardless of religion or sexual orientation.

Ever since I made that decision and ever since I decided to think for myself and to trust myself more than trusting others, it's just gotten better. Every day it gets better. That doesn't mean life's not hard sometimes. Sometimes it's a terrible bitch. But I'm still happy. I listen to myself and I trust myself and I know I'm a good person.

A few months ago, I went to a community festival, and outside the gates of the festival was a street preacher. He was preaching about gays, and he shouted out, “I'm gay. But that doesn't mean that I'm a homosexual. It means that I'm happy. I'm not a homosexual.”

I was walking by with all of my friends, right at that moment, and I shouted back, “I'm homosexual!” I actually kind of surprised myself by saying it. There was a line of people waiting to get into the festival and, as soon as I said that, everybody cheered. It was such a great moment for me because I realized that I wasn't afraid to be who I was in front of anybody. And I knew that wherever I was, I would find people who were on my side. It gets better with time. As I became true to myself, my relationships with others became more authentic. That's a wonderful feeling.

SANTA ROSA, CA

“No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”

 

 

Jay:
When I was a seventeen-year-old kid going to high school in Northern California, I was engaged to my best friend at the time, a woman, and we had a kid on the way. I was a very unhappy young man then. I knew that I was living a lie. I knew that the person I was pretending to be in high school was not the real me.

I could not deal with the fact that I was gay. Raised in a devout Catholic family, I knew that the people I cared most about in my life—my girlfriend, my best friend, my family—would not accept me as a gay man. So I did what I thought was right at the time, and I tried to commit suicide. Luckily, I failed. And before I tell you how my story ends, I want to introduce you to my husband.

 

Bryan:
Like Jay, and a lot of people I know, I grew up in a pretty conservative family where religion was a part of our daily lives. I, too, really fought who I was for a very long time. The hardest coming-out experience for me was first coming out to myself. Even after I acknowledged I was gay, I had to contend with a lot of the fears about what I thought—what I had been taught—being gay meant. I assumed that it meant I was going to be alone, that I was going to be an alcoholic, that I was going to be a pervert who preyed on kids and got AIDS. These were the things I worried about because these were the things that most of the people in my life told me. I had to come out against the backdrop of my family saying, “Oh, if any of my kids were gay, I'd kill them.” There's a lot of stuff you have to come to terms with when you decide to come out, and you have to be really strong and really courageous to do that. But now I'm sitting on the other side of that battle and I can honestly say that my life is a million times better.

 

Jay:
Bryan and I are happily married and the parents of two wonderful children. I'm a police officer living in California, and I can tell you that life is a whole lot better than it was in high school. And I am very fortunate that I survived two attempts at suicide to get to this place. I understand that sometimes life is scary and it's hard to really see a future but, if you just give yourself the opportunity, it gets better. Life gets a lot better.

 

Bryan:
You can make it through everything. Not only what your friends throw at you but sometimes even what your family throws at you.

 

Jay:
So hold on and focus on working on yourself. Don't worry about what other people think about you. Once you get through those tough times, I guarantee you, the payoff is worth it. Someday you're going to meet the man, or woman, of your dreams and you're going to create a life for yourself with family and love and security that you can't even believe is possible today.

NEW YORK, NY

 

 

 

 

I
'm the senior rabbi at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, and I am a lesbian.

There are those who say that God hates gays. There are those who say that
HaShem
has given us all challenges, and your challenge is to overcome your feelings: Either be celibate the rest of your life or be with opposite-sex partners. There are those who say we are either criminal or sick or sinful. None of these are true.