On October 11
millions of openly gay Americans will reflect on the day
they took those brave first steps out of the closet,
providing support and encouragement to others who have
yet to find their voice. In day one of our series on
coming out, Lair star David Moretti (pictured),
Big Brother's Marcellas Reynolds, and New York
LGBT Community Center executive director Richard D. Burns
share their stories.
On October 11
millions of openly gay Americans will reflect on the day
they took those brave first steps out of the closet,
providing support and encouragement to others who have
yet to find their voice. In this series of stories,
some of the gay communities most visible performers,
activists and personalities share their memories of coming
out, and what the experience taught them about
themselves.
***
David Moretti, actor, The Lair
Coming out, for
me, was a very gray, hazy time in my life. I had
been fighting it my whole life, and when I finally acted on
it I hated myself. I had created such a guilt
trip that I had been dealing with for a quarter of
my lifetime that my actions almost pushed me back
in the closet. It took me another year to accept it
and find good friends who assured me I wasn't the
Omen child.
Finally, after
that time of guilt and feeling alone and wrong, I was able
to enjoy my newfound accepted identity. That's when the
coming-out speeches happened.
One in particular
was to my pops. It was Halloween time, and he was
visiting me here in L.A. I created all this anxiety for
myself because it was time to tell the alpha of the
family, the guy who birthed me. And you never
know how that's gonna turn out -- especially in
patriarchal Italian "man eats and makes money, woman feeds
and births" culture. That's obviously an exaggeration,
but you get the point. So I took a deep breath,
told him flat out, and counted the hours (read:
seconds) of silence.
All he said was
"Wow -- hey, can I still get grandkids?"
All I could do
was laugh. He was a progressive liberal alpha Italian
-- who knew! He completely deflated the "situation"
with one sentence. I told him that kids were
definitely a possibility, just not sure how
soon. We later had lunch, and that was that. I was
a very fortunate kid.
***
Marcellas Reynolds, actor/host, Big Brother
/ The Style Network
I never really
came out to my mother. After a failed engagement to a
woman one day, I simply stopped dating women and stopped
talking about my relationships to my family. It just
segued that easily. But not being truthful about
myself and my life caused a rift in our once extremely
close relationship. We began to bicker and fight about the
past. The truth has a nagging way of wanting out.
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