Thoughts for Pride 2021

---

---

Spring semester of my sophomore year in college I was struggling. As a music major I was desperate to be great but unable to ever get to “good enough.” I was putting in longer and longer hours practicing and composing. I woke up one morning, a few weeks away from finals and my hands were fascinatingly numb. I struggled to button my shirt. I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition of my car. I called a friend of mine who is a physician’s assistant. She said, “sounds like tendonitis.” I rejected this diagnosis. It simply was incompatible with my plans. She conceded, “Ok, then you have inflammation of the tendon.” Yes, that sounded much more manageable.

I started physical therapy. Things got worse and I found myself sitting on my couch alone in my house. I managed to turn the tv on but changing the channel was too hard. Oprah was on. Her guest was an accomplished college professor at a prestigious university. Very successful. She had also lived the first 40 years of her life as a man. It was 2002. My knowledge of queer culture before this moment was as follows:

• My uncle, who I had only met a handful of times, was gay and a total jerk. Wasn’t clear if those things were correlated or not.
• Melissa Etheridge, Ellen DeGeneres, kd lang
• The super butch Gay Student Advisor at my college that I just kept finding random reasons to talk to
• I think there was a “transvestite” in Rocky Horror Picture show but a.) I had never seen it and b.) that character seemed pretty weird.

I sat on my couch with the tv off for several hours cradling that little nugget of queer gold. I just kept thinking, “Wow, if she can be that courageous and go through so much and still be ok… I wonder NO I DON’T! I DO NOT WONDER ANYTHING.” Just before I fell asleep I thought, “…could it be ok?”

I woke the next morning. I still remember the warm spring sunlight pouring through the window, this marvelous curiosity, and a new understanding of who I might actually be. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Really looked. I hesitated, and then I said it aloud, “I am a…lesbian.” I had cracked the case. Solved it.

Finals were a week away. As you might expect, my brain was bursting with this new information about myself so I was pretty unconcerned with my academic performance.

To back up a moment, my junior year of high school I had a student teacher in orchestra. She seemed close with the student teacher for choir. One day they came into the music store where I was working. Together. And I thought, “There is something significant about this.” I noted that they seemed to be ok. When her time as a student teacher was coming to a close she told me, aloud, her email address. I did not write it down. It was not particularly memorable. I didn’t email her.

But suddenly, a few years later, in the wake of this personal revelation, I pulled forth from the depth of my mind, a lifeline. I emailed her that I needed to talk. We met for coffee. I said, “I’m gay.” She said, “Yep.” And then took me under her wing and helped me navigate my first queer summer. That safety and mentorship meant the world to me.

By the following summer I had cut off all my hair. All my roommates were lesbians. We were listening to the Indigo Girls and playing badminton. These are some of my fondest memories. I purchased my first pair of men’s pants and rejoiced in my defiance of gender norms.

I started performing in drag, as my alter ego, Justin DeCent. He was dapper and confident – and a surprisingly decent dancer.

Though there were some complex moments in my relationship with my parents, in response to my coming out they said, “We will always love you.”

I went to my parents one afternoon. I didn’t have a particular plan, and honestly didn’t think this conversation was about to be such a big deal. “You know, I have been thinking. I would like to change my name to something more gender neutral. My name feels too restricting, I don’t really relate to it.”

My father’s face became very stoic. He said, with eerie calm, “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”
As a child I was often complimented on how bright I was. My intelligence became a central part of my identity. I was petrified of ever being seen as stupid. We never spoke about it again.

My father died unexpectedly in 2013. I was four months pregnant with a child my wife and I had put much on the line to conceive. Though early in my pregnancy for this type of thing, I was at my parent’s house preparing for my father’s funeral the first time I felt my child move. Like a friendly and playful little butterfly. Distinct. Sacred.

When I moved to the west coast in 2004 I didn’t know how to seek out the LGBTQ+ community. So I simply didn’t. My partner and I always had one or two lesbian couples we would occasionally have dinner with but the total immersion in queer community that was the rest of my college experience was no more.
In 2016 I was honored to be asked to help plan a conference for LGBTQ+ youth. The planning committee consisted of the greatest number of queer people in one room that I had been in in years – and there weren’t that many. After 10 years in retirement, Justin DeCent re-emerged to host the evening drag show for the conference.

In this group of planners was a trans man. To be totally honest, prior to that moment, not only had I never met a trans guy, I didn’t even really know they actually existed. And again, I noted, as I had with Oprah’s guest, and my student teacher – he seemed to be ok.

I walked into the conference that year. There were so many youth. There were no youth who were out when I was their age so…this was blowing my mind. Their level of comfort in their queer identities… Sure, there was the general awkwardness of adolescence. But, unlike my experience, they didn’t seem concerned about being seen as “too queer.” They had come out in an entirely different world from my own. They were fierce and beautiful and courageous. And they seemed ok.

Which is not to say things are easy for them. In the time that I spend with these youth when volunteering to support GLOBE, I am amazed at their resilience. At the one of the Links & Alliances Conferences I asked the youth to submit comments on what it means to them to be young and LGBTQIA. There were beautiful and inspiring words and phrases that highlight how far we have come such as, community, connection, family and not alone.

But there were also tragic offerings of fighting to exist, hurtful, chaotic, and tiring.
And so, Pride continues to provide a necessary occasion to take heart in our progress, stock in the work remaining and to reaffirm our commitment.

The following year the conference fell between back-to-back work trips for me. My mother was in town to help my wife take care of our boys during all my travel.

Throughout my time performing in drag, the prep time had been rushed. Quickly binding my chest, contouring my face – carefully but quickly gluing pieces of my own hair to my face.
This was the first time I had all the time in the world. I recognized the person in the mirror on a deep level. And not just as Justin, my alter ego.

I did not know what it meant.

My mother had not seen me in drag prior to that day and I remember being nervous.

Our youngest – previously a butterfly – also had not seen me in drag. In preparation for that moment, I told him I was going to a party and dressing up like a “dancing guy.” He said to me, “You look great! I like your mustache!!” I thought, “Wow. He loves me even with a mustache. How lovely.”

He was sad when the mustache was gone in the morning. “It looked so good!”

I headed to New Orleans for my next work trip. The French Quarter is filled with dimly lit establishments. One evening the wait staff came to give me and my colleague’s our debit cards back after we had paid for our meals. He called out each name, the person signaled it was theirs, he would hand it over. Mine was last. He stretched my name from 3 to 8 syllables, and something clearly changed. He had just obtained information that shifted his understanding of me. This happened several times during this trip. What was going on here? I realized that my very masculine form of dressing, combined with the dim lighting was resulting in people reading me as male. And it felt awesome. I felt seen and free. Until they realized their “mistake.” After which I felt invalidated, upset, and exposed.

I sent my wife a text. “I have to change my name.” This was not entirely surprising information. I had certainly talked about it before. And what did it really matter? It is just a name. Maybe I wouldn’t tell my mother. It would just upset her.

And that would be it, I would just change my name. Yep. That was going to resolve all of this angst that had been ever present in my life.

I reluctantly asked my therapist, “What if I change my name and it isn’t enough?”

But she replied, “Then it isn’t enough, and you have more to learn about yourself. How exciting!” I wasn’t sure if she was clear on what the word “exciting” meant. But maybe I was the one who didn’t know.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t enough. And…it was in fact exciting. And terrifying and traumatic. Worth it.

The simple act of acknowledging that I had never stopped wanting to change my name showed me that there is more to me than what people expect from me. That I have my own wants and needs. That my identity is my own.

Someone once told me that “sexual orientation is about who you imagine coming home to at the end of the day.” This is overly simplistic and rather heteronormative in retrospect, but at the time I found it comforting. Because I always imagined spending my life with a woman. It didn’t occur to me that it was even remotely meaningful that I also always pictured myself as a man.

I had always known. But it took 34 years to cultivate the courage to ask myself the question.

In many ways that is when my story began, or at least, when it became mine and not the simple consequence of expectations. But none of this would have been possible if I had never met that one trans guy, or witness the beauty and courage of a group of LGBTQIA+ youth, or if that student teacher hadn’t given me her email address, if Jennifer Finney Boylan hadn’t agreed to do the Oprah Winfrey show. Then of course that driver’s ed instructor, and you know, there was that gym teacher. And these folks – who dared to be themselves were provided that opportunity on the backs of trans women of color, such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who shown a light on what resistance looks like.

Gay men, like Harvey Milk, who encouraged us to come out or Bayard Rustin who fought for the rights of everyone.

Lesbian women, like Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin who fought for our relationships.

Bisexual women and men, like Josephine Baker, Frida Kahlo and David Bowie who dared be who they were meant to be.

Asexual women, like Yasmin Benoit, who are showing us what asexuality looks like.

Coming out isn’t right for everyone. We live in a world where we must balance the serious risks against the uncertain benefits. No matter where you are on your journey, know that, you are the only person who is capable of becoming who you are. You are the only one who can find your truth. And every moment of courage we find – whether it is the overtly public act of standing in front of a crowd and saying, “I am a trans man.” Or the private introspection it takes to question the limitations of this world as explained to us by others… Every act of courage has a ripple effect and moves us closer to living in a world where people are free to be who they are and the world is enriched by the diversity that reality propagates.