By Subhaga Crystal Bacon
I say I came out formally at that time because I had long since come out to myself one summer afternoon in elementary school while riding my bike. I can still see the scene as if it were yesterday: The purple bike with its chopper handlebars and white banana seat.
By David Cameron Strachan
In junior high school, I saw that I wasn’t developing like other boys. I was teased for my small genitals and breast growth. Our family doctor assured my mother that I’d eventually be “normal” but my biology textbook gave me doubts: it said “giants are usually sterile.”
By David Monticalvo
For the first time in my life, I was happy to be gay, and could enjoy being me. I didn’t know it at the time, but this moment was a spiritual realization – the first step in allowing me fuller self-acceptance.
By Charlie J. Stephens
There are fishing people and service workers and librarians and tradespeople. Few people have managed to use the they/them pronouns that I prefer.
By Chef Rossi
Being a bisexual rocker chick suited my image, but still, there were all those pesky penises to contend with. At first, I thought, “Maybe I just don’t like nice Jewish boys.”
By Thomasin Lockwood
I frequently thought of women, but could barely admit it to myself, let alone go out and explore it. A drunk make out with a female colleague was as far as I went.
By Gregory Walters
I grew up at a time when there weren’t any visible or out homosexuals. Liberace had stated under oath he wasn’t gay. Elton John was married to a woman, Paul Lynde was a harmless, snarky coot on Hollywood Squares, and Charles Nelson Reilly, a regular on Match Game, just seemed kooky.
By Ronald Valdiserri
It began with the illness and death of my brother’s partner Tommy, the loss of our dear college friend (the character Lenny in the novel), and my brother Edwin’s HIV diagnosis. Like so many gay men, I felt compelled to take action.
By Laury Egan
I don’t consider myself an LGTBQ+ writer; I am simply a writer who sometimes creates stories that include LGTBQ+ characters, though they are treated as an integral part of the social fabric and don’t exist in a world unto themselves.
By Sabrina Godlewski
In 2016, I was in the military, about to visit my therapist for depression and gender dysphoria. I cried before I went in, staring up at the looming hospital tower and wondering if things would ever change. Unbeknownst to me, that very day, they would.
