by Rick Landman

NOTE: This story was originally published on the author’s, Rick Landman’s, website, InfoTrue.com. The story is well beyond the 1500 word limit but it’s an intimate look into the beginning stages of an LGBT movement so we wanted to share it anyway. Get comfy and enjoy.

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1969 was a pivotal year in most baby boomers’ lives and the same was true for me. I was graduating from high school, Nixon was president, people were rioting all over the place, my friends went to Woodstock, and I was at home thinking about going to Buffalo. Besides, to me, Woodstock was this tiny village down route 28 from where I went to summer camp. Who knew? I imagined that it would be a small folk festival with Peter Paul and Mary, and never would have known that it was going to be the event of the summer. Besides, I wasn’t ready for a free love experience. I was still a virgin for god’s sake.

But that June was very special to me. No, not because of Judy Garland’s death, and not because of the Stonewall Riots, but because I turned seventeen on the 15th and was going away to college in September. My luck, I was a virgin in the class of ’69. I knew this must have been a sexual omen. School ended before my birthday, so technically I was 16 when they graduated me, but I was 17 when I left home. It was more of a passage into adulthood than my Bar Mitzvah at 13. I actually was going to be on my own for the first time in my life. I didn’t think about it much, but I left to go to “sleep-away school” and ended up stepping out into a new world of my own. Besides from being a virgin and only 17, I was also 5’2″ tall and didn’t really look and act like the other kids going away to college. I was a nice Jewish boy who finished high school and had no choice but to go on to college to become either a doctor or a lawyer.

I was good at school stuff, and was accepted at a few places, but for financial and guilt reasons I knew that I wanted to go to a college that was free. My older brother stayed at home and went to Queens College for free, so I figured that I better not cost my folk’s too much money. My parent’s did help out with room and board and that was all that I wanted to burden them with. So the problem was which school to go to?

I wanted something far away enough that my mother wouldn’t be able to come up at the spur of the moment. An eight hour drive seemed long enough to accomplish this. But I didn’t even know where Buffalo really was. All I knew was that it was still in New York State and my Regents Scholarship Award would pay for all the tuition. It was also being touted as the world’s largest construction project and that it would be a huge university where I could find anything that I wanted. I knew that it was near Niagara Falls, because we visited it for sweat shirts on my senior trip in summer camp when we stopped by the Falls. I knew it was also near the Canadian border, which during the Viet Nam era, seemed to be a big plus. A lot of kids in my grade were considering fleeing across the border, and being a son of two Holocaust Survivors, the comment, “Where would you flee to if you had to leave?” was a familiar one to me.

So that July I flew up to Buffalo for a summer orientation program to see if I would be happy there. It was my first plane flight and was my first time ever traveling alone. I put on my new jeans, button down blue shirt, penny loafers and headed into the world of student standby flights. I think American Airlines charged $11.50 each way.

When I landed I asked the taxi driver to bring me to the house at the corner of Main and Merrimac across from the U.B. campus. A neighbor named Judy was going to U.B. at the time, and I was going to stay over for the weekend. She was actually the one whose description of the place sold me on going to Buffalo. She made it sound radical, fun, exciting and totally different than the quiet block that we grew up on in Floral Park, New York. It seemed that that year, all the baby boomers from New York City were going to school in Buffalo. But the cab driver didn’t know where Merrimac was so he dropped me off in the middle of the Main Street Campus in front of what was then called Norton Hall, which was the Student Union. There I stood in my new clothes and a little suitcase wondering what to do. A tall, handsome senior was lying on the lawn in front of the building reading a book. I asked him if he knew where Merrimac Street was and he corrected me that in Buffalo you didn’t have to say Street after the name and that he lived one house up from Judy on the corner of Main and Merrimac. She actually lived one house down on the block. We talked a while and then he escorted me over to Merrimac. I thought he was gorgeous, politically aware, brilliant and friendly, and he thought I was funny, different and a bundle of energy. It ended up that his girlfriend Sandy was one of the freshmen orientation leaders, so I was able to see Greg througout the entire weekend. I went to the program, but the only event that I remember is getting a little crazy from a glass of wine and dancing in the water fountain behind Norton Union. But my fate was settled. I would be attending U.B. for the next four years, and I had a new friend named Greg who knew everybody and was my new close friend.

When I got home I immediately wrote to Greg and couldn’t wait to get back in September. I remember that when my family was sitting on my bed watching the men land on the moon later that month, I was at my desk writing Greg a letter. 1969 was full of everything.

I knew that liked boys in a special way, but hadn’t really told everyone except my summer camp counselor when I was 12 and a few select people. At the time, the word gay was something new. The books all called men homosexuals if they liked other guys, and school kids still used the word
faggot. Compared to those terms I was glad when the word gay became popular. But even though Greg had a girlfriend, he was extremely liberal and progressive. He lived with Gene, a 40-year-old gay black man with alcohol problems who worked at a bar, and Gary, another student who was very “sensitive”. So in September, when my parents drove me up to stay in some garden apartment development called Allenhurst which was used as emergency housing for the baby boomers who flooded U.B., I knew that my time would be spent elsewhere.

Allenhurst was actually a new experiment in college living. You could only get to live there by winning a lottery. It was sort of off-campus, co-educational with five same sex people living in a two-bedroom two duplex with a garage beneath. But there could be five women living in an apartment right next door. This was also the first year that some of the other dorms actually became co-educational with men being on one floor and women being on the other. I remember the stories of how the women had urinals in their bathrooms and placed ivy growing in them.

My housemates were also four freshmen. I lucked out and only had one other boy as my roommate, named Paul, and three other guys shared the other bedroom. There was a bunk bed and a regular bed. Nowadays, I wonder how we all shared one bathroom in the morning. But I guess we did. I had five upper class wrestlers living next door. We didn’t have much in common, except for the fact that I could have had a crush on them if they weren’t such idiots. I became the mascot of the entire courtyard. I painted our apartment, and did the cooking and cleaning and was the town yenta. Everybody sort of knew me. It was my way of getting over the loneliness of living alone I guess. I was known as being political and crazy, but it wasn’t until after I left that Thanksgiving that the rumor must have gone around that I was also queer. My poor roommate must have had a lot of explaining to do.

The college ran a bus run up the street to campus, but I used my bicycle, rain or shine, dry or snow, to get to classes, and then after school I would visit Greg. After one month of school, we started having demonstrations against the Viet Nam war and administration policy. I remember protesting against THEMIS, which was some underwater military project, and know that we protested against ROTC, the changed location of the campus from the democratically controlled downtown to the republican swamp called Amherst. We were demonstrating against everything. By the time we reached Halloween, I think the school was closed more than open. Then came the national anti-war demonstrations and I think classes actually stopped. We spent our time having snow ball fights with the campus police and then the City police. That sort of ended after the Kent State massacre, and after the Buffalo City Police started using shotguns to shoot at us. When I left in 1975, you could still see the buckshot holes in front doors of the Student Union.

It was 1970 and I had my first drink, my first smoke, and my first riot before the year was out. I also remember that one of the wrestlers next door broke a chair over my back for allegedly bringing friends into the house who smoked marijuana. So over the 1969 Thanksgiving Break I moved out of Allenhurst and into Greg’s attic at the corner of Main and Merrimac on top of a store for $25 a month. By the second semester I was in love and ready to do anything for the revolution that was coming, the new way of life and the man I loved so dearly.

I was in heaven. I was surrounded by interesting people, including this sort of woman’s collective next door on top of a cleaners. Five U.B. students, Marsha, Barbara, Cindy, Dana, and Margie lived there, and we shared almost everything and spent most nights together. My closest friend next door was Marsha who was the one I would share all of my closest secrets. You have to remember, this was an era of change and free thinking. We all spent hours debating esoteric or political issues way into the wee hours of the morning. Besides, being young and inquisitive, the early 1970′s were geared to reinforcing all the beliefs of the late 1960′s. The women’s movement was becoming stronger and the gay movement was starting in New York City. In 1969, the Gay Liberation Front and a group called the Gay Activist Alliance were forming in New York City. Buffalo already had a Mattachine Society (of which I considered older, more apolitical homosexuals) and had this new group of women who called themselves the Radicalesbians. Marsha, Barbara and Cindy all had feminist friends who would stop by and leave books or have discussions on breaking down sex roles and loving whomever you wanted. This was also the period of “Free Love”, the birth control pill and no AIDS. The worst thing that people got was the crabs, and you would hear occasionally that someone got the clap. But I was still a virgin in love with a man with a girlfriend.

But when I was hanging around the women next door too much, someone told methat no men were allowed and why didn’t I go and start my own group. But there wasn’t any men’s group. There was Women’s Liberation, there were lesbian groups, but no place for feminist men or gay men to go. So I figured I could change that.

I was always starting groups and getting involved in one thing or another, and besides, I knew most of the people in the Student Association due to my other activities. I had helped to start food co-ops, intermural instead of intercollegiate sports, political clubs, etc., so why not start a gay men’s group? I filled out a form, and attended a meeting and asked for $800 to start the Gay Men’s Liberation Front. I got the name from reading something about New York City’s GLF. I think Buffalo was one of the first, if not the first place outside of New York City to have a GLF.

The S.A. meeting was uneventful. When I stood up to explain my proposal for funding a Gay group, the first reaction from my friends was laughter. They thought I was not serious and was putting on a comic routine for them. I had to really shift gears to get them to realize that this was important to me and that I would fight to get it. With giggles on their face, they approved the club and I remember walking across the long lawn down to a bank in a small shopping center across from the dorms with the $800 check, saying to myself, that there is some truth to the expression that I laughed all the way to the bank.

I deposited the $800 and then wondered what I would do with it. I remember speaking with the few gay students that I knew by then, and we decided that we would put on a dance and see if anyone came. I remember flying down to the Oscar Wilde Bookstore on Christopher Street to buy anything gay to bring back for a library at school. I think most of the literature had pictures. We booked the large room at Norton Union and made flyers which I posted on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot in the gay bar downtown, which I think was called the Hibachi Room and hired a group named Rufus to play music for us. I put my name down as the president and Mike Hamilton was the vice president and I think that Benny Wohlman was another officer. To my surprise, over 50 people came to that first dance, and from then on people signed up and joined our group. Before long, a woman wanted to join, so we voted to drop the “Men’s” from our name and become a Gay Liberation Front similar to the movement spreading across the country. I wrote articles for the student newspaper the Spectrum, and spoke in Sociology classes, handed out flyers on Gay Liberation and started Men’s Consciousness Raising Groups, but to tell you the truth, I was still a virgin at the time. And that was how the group got started. We tried to be as political as we knew, and it seemed that everyone else was also trying out the sexual part of the liberation experience, but not me. I was still a bit uneasy and no one ever really approached me in that way. Within a year, we had three Men’s Consciousness Raising groups in progress and were planning to participate in the March 14, 1971 March on Albany for Lesbian and Gay Rights. I know we sent some buses and a carpool to attend the event. I think I went on the bus. It was around that time that I figured I had to explain all of this to my parents. They knew of my politics, dope smoking and feminist views, but the actual sex stuff never came up.

It was on February 26, 1971, at one of our Consciousness Raising sessions that I mentioned to a newly forming group that I was a virgin. You see, I would attend the first meeting of the group, and in similar fashion to the group therapy session that I was attending from U.B.’s clinical program, would ask the group to go around answering some simple questions like when was the first time that you had a gay experience and how it was. When it came to my time, I told the group that I was an 18-year-old virgin and had to go to another meeting. I mean I was only starting the groups, I couldn’t be expected to spill my guts with everyone at the group. So after telling them of my sexual status one of the guys named Sam Goldsmith escorted me into a side room to discuss it more fully. I had my first sexual experience right there in the room next to all that consciousness being raised.

I called home that night to wish my parents a Happy 25th Anniversary, and mentioned that when they asked me over Christmas Break about drugs, sex and politics I told them I had done two out of the three, but that now it was three out of the three. My father asked if we knew the girl and I answered, “there were no girls there.” That is how I sort of came out to my folks. They knew that I was active in sexual politics but thought that it was an academic political rebellion phase up to that point. Now they had to really come to grips with it.

My father joked that my mother and I lost our virginity on the same day, just 25 years apart. Then he asked what Sam did. I told him that he was pre-med. He laughed again, and told my mother on the other extension phone that at least I was going with a Jewish doctor. He then went on to use an analogy of what his life was at the time. He told me how as a young 17-year-old Jewish boy in Germany, he would come home from school and asked his mother why everyone hated him. She told him that the whole world was crazy and that there was nothing wrong with being Jewish, but that his life would be harder because of it. But that he should be proud of himself and his religion. My father then told me that the whole world hated homosexuals, and that my life would be harder because of it, but that I was still his Ricky, and that even though they didn’t know any “gay people” they would not make things harder for me. They suggested that I come home to discuss this all, but I told them about going to Albany the next month for a Gay Rights Rally.

It was hard for them to say anything negative, after teaching me all my life that we must fight discrimination with all our might and make sure that the hatred of the Holocaust never occur again. So in a way I was lucky. I received more support than most. But I think that is why I had the guts at 17 to start a gay group.

But on an eventful night that year, after I was no longer a virgin, while Greg and I were in his bed having one of our platonic all-night discussions, I asked him if he was gay. He said that he thought about such things from time to time, but never had any experiences, but that there was nothing wrong with it. Remember Gene, our other housemate was gay, so obviously I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. But then I mentioned that I was not only gay, but I that I loved him. Whoops…now everything changed.

Greg told me that things have gotten out of hand, and that it would be best if I would move out. So I went to Marsha and cried and complained and told her how upset I was. Well, although everyone was understanding and helped me to pack, I sort of had a difficult time of it.

To make a long story short, I moved out and Greg and Marsha fell in love and are married now for about 20 years and have two children. GLF continued to grow during our first year, in numbers of people and importance. We were an important part of the March on Albany, and did help to set the climate for the formation of College F and other pro-diversity programs. I found some flyers which is all that I have left from those days. Too bad none of us knew that we were creating history. But for 27 years no one ever cared much about it. Now I’ve heard that most of my early friends are dead, and I thought it would be important for people to know how things started.

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by Anonymous

Gay. I’ve considered this word throughout my life, trying to find the place for it and the meaning of it, to me.

Growing up in San Francisco, where the Gay Parade was as synonymous to me as a child as the Columbus Day parade. The stigma associated with being gay never transpired in my field of vision. Where I come from, gays are proud and fueled by their authority and freedom to express themselves. They can lie together outside on the grass or the beach and celebrate their life choice. Knowing that choosing who they love will never be compromised; Man, woman and transgender alike.

What I experienced in those early years is that love is universal. Same-sex love is not a demonic deviation of heterosexual love. Love is love. It comes from the young and old, rich and poor, Chinese and black… it comes from our hearts. Who we give it to is our choice.

So I carried this brilliant piece of knowledge with me on my journey through life. I applied it to every interaction I ever had, like when a friend of mine told me she was gay, but in the closet. I dragged her to every gay bar, party and event I could find. I wanted her to know, as I did, that she could love whoever the hell she wanted. I surely had.

Yet, throughout that coming out of the closet for my friend, I began to wonder what my own true intentions really were. What about the impulses I never had the guts to act on? I have always been attracted to and admired women. Yet, as a woman, I have always masked my attraction, as merely a keen observer who appreciates beauty. If I were true to myself, if I were completely honest, I would say that I long for nothing more than to lie with a woman and stroke her hair and kiss her neck.

I know inside, from the bottom of my heart, that I could love a woman more deeply and passionately than I could a man. My friend is successfully dating now. She is scheduled to have sex this weekend with a girl she met on the internet. Although I am in a relationship, engaged to be married, I don`t know what part of me wouldn’t give it all up for one moment like the one she will have.

I am afraid to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else.

Gay has been redefined for me, over and over again. I know we are free to love who we choose. But I also know that when we choose it we are not free. I will pretend to have crushes on girls to incite illicit reactions in males but I will never tell them that I would choose her over them a thousand times over.

I will never call myself gay.

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by Jim Hlavac

One night in the mid-1970s my parents came home from the theater in Manhattan and told us all about their night on the town. We were living on Long Island, Baldwin to be exact. I was 16 or 17 years old, still in high school. They said they had been out to Greenwich Village, and found a strange bar. It was called the Ninth Circle, and it was filled with homosexuals, they said. Oh, it was just fine, they had fun; my family was always gay friendly. It was on 10th Street, they helpfully provided. I had never been to a gay bar, but the idea sounded good to me. Filed under: “information to use.” After high school I got a job at the local supermarket, and made good money, so one night I took the train into Manhattan, found the bar, walked in, and a magical world opened.

Ah, the Ninth Circle. What a bar. I don’t think my parents ever knew they introduced me to my first gay bar. They were aware, I’d guess, that I was gay, even if it wasn’t exactly discussed. But well, they were recounting a fun time in the City, and I was just following their recommendation.

The bar was busy that first night in 1976; a year of liberty indeed. It was always busy. I became a regular on Tuesdays and Saturdays, because I still lived in Long Island. In 1978 I moved into the city and became a bit more of a regular. A denizen or habitue, even, but no, not an alcoholic. They joked I was a Christian Sobriety crusader. It was a bar that an American would be comfortable in. It had dark wood paneling, and stuffed animals like a raccoon and deer heads, and big picture posters of Janis Joplin and John Lennon, signed by them. The building and wooden bar are still there, and the patio and the basement. You can go see the location today, walk inside, even eat at the restaurant it has become. The bar itself closed in 1990. There should be a plaque: “Here was the greatest gay bar on earth.”

The people who came through, they were wonders. John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bette Midler, Andy Warhol, and many others. And Rock Hudson. Not regulars, no, that was for guys like me. But they came in once or twice a year, just zipped through, often with entourages, then they zipped out. But they electrified the place, for sure. These were important folks, after all. But not Rock. No, he came in quietly. I know this to be true, for I have my story about him.

One night, in the winter of ’78 or ’79 – I couldn’t tell you the day or month, it was long ago, but I remember the striking cold – I walked into the bar at about 2 AM. Bars are open until 4am in NYC, so it was still “early.” It was mid-week, because I was working close by, on Bleecker Street, at the Pioneer Supermarket – a mere 6 blocks away. I went downstairs to the basement bar. There was the bartender talking to an old man sitting in the corner. I went to the other end of the bar, away from the two of them. The bartender brought me the usual. There were just the three of us. The bartender invited me over to join them. I say old because, well, I was 20, and he was, egad, 50 or 60 or something; can you imagine? Yes, old to me, at the time. I joined them. The chit chat started. The pleasantries. Who can remember? The words I quote are the gist of things, close, but not the actual; still, the images are clear as a bell.

After a while the man looked at me and said, “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

“No, I don’t. You’re some guy named Rock.”

For that’s the way I was introduced to him. “Jim, meet Rock.”

So, he looked at the bartender and asked him, “He has no idea who I am, does he?” It seemed a surprise to this man named Rock. I didn’t think a thing of it, for I knew people named “Brute” and “Shadow” and “Cloud” already. Who was I to question what some guy wanted to call himself?

The bartender said, “Nope, and not only doesn’t he know who you are, but doesn’t care.” He smiled. He knew me. “That’s why I invited him to join us.”

And then, the conversation drifted to who he really was, this enigma – and why I should care. It was a game, hints were given, I was supposed to guess. It passed the time, it was fun, we were jolly. And then I got it – Pillow Talk! That’s what did me in – that scene in the elevator, leading to the bar, Rock and his maid, that short actress, craggy character stuff, I don’t know her name.

“I don’t really drink,” she says to Rock in the elevator. She’s all grandmotherly, looking up at him innocently. A scene or two later they’re in the bar, sitting at a table, and she says deadpan, with a clipped cadence, to the waitress: “I’ll have a double zombie, heavy on the booze.”

That’s the scene that finally clicked his identity for me. So, I was talking to Rock Hudson, eh? “You’re that guy in Pillow Talk, you’re a famous actor! Pleased to meet you. I’m Jim Hlavac, I work in a supermarket over on Bleecker Street.” We became bar buddies. Shortly afterward, not more than 10 minutes, he left. I figured, well, so I met the man, and that’s that. A once in a lifetime thing. I didn’t even get his autograph; I never did.

Then, over the next two or two and a half years I met Rock, always late at night, midweek. 9 or 10 times, no more than that, maybe 1 or 2 less. I didn’t keep track, and well, we were drinking late at night, after all. It wasn’t arranged. He didn’t call me. I wasn’t in his circle. I didn’t have his number. It was happenstance, that’s all. I still was a schnook, now in printing instead of supermarkets, on 19th Street instead of Bleecker. The Ninth Circle was my neighborhood bar; technically, he was in my space. We’d chat for a half hour, maybe an hour. I was not the only one who ever spoke to him. But he did stick to himself, and sat in the same corner He always left before me, that I can recall. And left alone. He never tried to speak to anyone, they came to him. But, I can recall him perking up on seeing me and motioning me over. Yep, bar buddies.

All the other nights other people would come in, for it was a busy bar. But that first night no one did; maybe that too helped us click. At that second time, there was a guy who knew me, and he called me over to him, and said something like, “Are you talking to Rock Hudson?” And he was all excited, and the exuberance was too giddy, and I looked at Rock, and had a ping for the man’s desire to be left alone, and turned to my friend and said, “No, that’s Charlie from Brooklyn, he just looks like Rock Hudson. It bugs him.” So I went back to Rock, and told him what happened, and what I had said. And he looked at me, and arched an eyebrow, and scrunched the face, dramatically even, and said, “Charlie from Brooklyn?”

I said to him, “Do you want the autograph hounds, or do you want the anonymity?” And I arched an eyebrow right on back at him.

And that became our joke there. For when in those few times I chatted with Rock, someone who would know me would come up to ask me for help to get a greeting or autograph. Sometimes they even would come up to me, ignore Rock by freezing, and asking me, “Is that Rock Hudson?” Like the man was a statue or an idiot. I’d counter with, “It’s not Rock Hudson, he just looks like him, it’s Charlie, from Brooklyn, Sheepshead Bay, do you want to meet him?” And I’d say, “Charlie, this is Kevin” … or whoever it was speaking to me.

And Rock would extend his hand to the guy and say, “Hi, I’m Charlie.” The guy would get a bit miffed, or just harrumph and walk away. We’d giggle and get back to our chat.

Yep, Rock Hudson, he was just my bar buddy for those few nights. And yes, he was quite the actor.

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by Peter Domani

“Hey you, you in the leather jacket, what are you a faggot?”

I was on my way to work in the North Bronx, when I heard a teenager yelling this at me from across the street. He was with other teenagers, and they were laughing and egging him on. I was about 19 years old myself and in college. I was headed to my work-study position at a high school, where I counseled juniors, seniors, and their families on how to pay for college. These may have been some of the students I would do work with.

Growing up in the not quite working class neighborhood of Soundview in the Bronx, I learned to avoid most outright acts of homophobia. I instinctively knew what not to wear, what streets not to walk down, and what battles not to pick. I lived a mile from the subway, but I would walk that mile and take the 6 train to other places in New York like the East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, and Greenwich Village, where I could be as gay as I wanted to be, openly. Everybody in Soundview knew I was gay, but it was rarely a problem, as long as I “kept it to myself.” I was tired of keeping it to myself.

Instead of ignoring the taunting adolescents, I started walking straight at them. At this moment the universe randomly granted me a sang-froid and nerve I generally didn’t have when confronting homophobic slurs. Being called out your name, as we say in the Bronx, is essentially an invitation to fight. I would generally let these rare but upsetting confrontations slide. This time, wit and might were on my side, and I ignored better judgment. I wanted to say something. And I did.

I locked eyes with the mouthpiece of the group, who had taunted my jacket, my intensity silencing him. With a steady gaze, I smiled and said, “Are you stupid? This jacket is vinyl.”

They were dumbfounded for a moment, but then began to call me all manner of names, and threaten all manner of violence. Nonetheless, my sense of the situation was that they wouldn’t follow through on any threats, and I walked to work with a slow, deliberate swagger.

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by Justin Hart

I remember this day so clearly: My oldest daughter, Isabelle, begged Trevor and I to allow her to have her friends over for dinner and sleep over to celebrate the end of her basketball season. Traditionally, we disallowed visitors from Isabelle’s conservative catholic school for fear that Isabelle and her twin brother would be “outed” and therefore teased or tormented. But if she was ready to come clean to her class mates, who were we to tell her “No”?

The team arrived to our home, sleeping bags in tow. We greeted each parent and introduced ourselves… actually introduced ourselves. We were not brothers, friends, or roommates. We were Isabelle’s Dads. Four of the seven mothers decided not to allow their children to stay in our home. The remaining teammates ran through the house and eventually gathered in the kitchen awaiting the arrival of the evasive pizza delivery man. I have never been so proud of what happened next.

“Isabelle, are both of those guys your dads?” One little girl started in…I rushed from the next room toward the kitchen to diffuse the situation, but Trevor stopped me. He urged me to listen closely, but allow our daughter, who we raised, who we taught, who we loved, to handle the situation in whatever way she thought best.

“That’s disgusting.” One girl commented, “That’s a sin.” said another.

Isabelle responded in a matter-of-fact tone saying, “Some boys kiss boys, and some girls kiss girls…deal with it.”

The conversation was over and no one ever mentioned it as a problem again. Today Isabelle, Garrit, Elsie and Julia are all out and proud children of two gay dads.

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by Bella Gambino

(TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, Child Abuse)

Mommy bought me a new Barbie bed yesterday. She said if I was good I could go out and play. She told me if I was good, I could have the doll house to match.

She left me alone with her new friend. I didn’t like him and didn’t want to pretend. So I went to my room and played with my toys. He came and sat down and asked if I liked boys. I shake my head no and go to my own world where I dreamt of being with a girl. He didn’t like my answer very much. He calls out to me but I pretend not to see because Momma never allowed stupidity. I’m so afraid. He makes a mess. Mommy’s going to be mad.

“You’re not my dad!” I screamed.

He blacked out and was mean. I peed on myself. As he entered me, I was looking at him like a deer caught in headlights. He snatches me up. Mommy’s going to be mad. Those were brand new. Instead of stopping he only pursues. Mommy probably won’t notice or care that there’s blood everywhere.

“Mommy! Mommy!” I scream.

Stop.

Fast forward.

Then rewind.

Two years later I’m in intense therapy playing care-free because Mommy loved a man more than she loved me.

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NOTE: Bella’s story was collected during ‘Sylvia’s Place Week’ in 2009, when I’m From Driftwood dedicated a week to stories from LGBTQ youth at Sylvia’s Place, an emergency night shelter and daytime community space for homeless LGBTQ youth, ages 18-24 years, in New York City.