Be Proud

Look. As of late I've been writing about current things happening to me as an individual, but there is something bigger going on right now with the Equality Vote looming over our heads at the NYC Senate, and with the beginning of NYC Pride officially starting tonight, I find myself wanting to discuss "coming out."

Now for all my bleeder folk out there, don't turn away just yet. This isn't only about being a Homo, it's actually more about being a Hemo. I had a harder time coming out as a Hemophiliac than I did as a Homosexual. I'm sure your face is doing some weird scrunched up "huh?" thing right now, so read on my friends, and see what I mean...

Throughout past blog posts I have discussed growing up with Hemophilia. Wearing a helmet, covered in pads, and although most people were accepting, some were not. It's hard not to tease the kid who looks like he just stepped out of some weird science fiction movie where helmets are used to access parts of the brain so I can communicate telepathically! (or most people just thought I had a mental disability, but I'm trying to keep it light).

So going to Penn State was like a breath of fresh air! I didn't have a cell phone, there was no The Facebook, and I had never jumped into the myspace or livejournal craze, so there was nothing linking me to my old life. I mean, come on, my nickname in high school was Bleeder. I decided I wasn't going to tell anyone that I had hemophilia. It's my business and nobody else's. Of course, I told my dance professor, but other than that... No one.



Freshman Year of College!
With the fabulous Carol Angeli Dillard

At some point I let Melissa know, and a couple other of my classmates, but I wanted to keep it hush-hush. Not the smartest thing in the world going out at PSU with no Medic Alert, nobody knowing, just plain old me, but it was a liberating experience, to be in the closet about my disability.

And then Theatre 100 happened. So I can save my face professionally, I am not mentioning any names here, but I am going to tell this story. Theatre 100 was a general arts credit that ALL theatre majors at PSU are required to take, but is open to anyone at the university. So needless to say, that was one of the 200+ people lecture classes. The premise was that we learned the background of the time period a play was written in, read the play, grad students performed scenes, and then we took a test. One of those plays was Angels in America.

For those of you not familiar with Angels in America, aka the hemos, it is a story about the AIDS epidemic in the 80's, mostly following the homosexual life style, but makes references to hemophilia and drug use.

So it's the section of the class where we are learning about the time period and we start off discussing the GMHC and drug use, and then my professor begins to discuss Ryan White.

For those of you not familiar with Ryan White, aka the homos, Ryan White was a hemophiliac who received Factor VIII infusions and received AIDS from this. He was diagnosed in 1984, and when schools forbade him to come back, they started a campaign, and Ryan White became the new face of AIDS...

Well in class, the professor started talking about how horrible and crippling Hemophilia is. How Ryan White, as an active child, was the anomaly. How most Hemophiliacs sit at home and do nothing because their disease has crippled them so...

Now my blood is starting to boil, and I look around at the few people I have actually told, and they are just staring at me with this look of "seriously?" so I had a choice. To come out or not. To go back to being Bleeder, or Helmet Head, or any other fine choice of words, or I could just let everyone think these lies about a disease that I have lived with my entire life... It really wasn't a choice, I only had one true option... I raised my hand...

My professor stopped in mid-sentence and tried to chastise me by saying, "I'm sorry, is there something you have the say that is so important that you will interrupt me while I'm giving a lecture?" and then she sips ever-so-nastily on her Diet Coke...

I stood up. "Yes," I replied. "I do." And began to talk about what it was like growing up in the 80's with Hemophilia. I know I was right at the cusp of when all this happened, but my brother was in the thick of it. And NEITHER of us were inactive couch potatoes. My brother played Little League and was a cheerleader in HS. I was a dancer and ran X-C. This was not some illness that caused us to be invalids. As hemophiliacs, we live. We are active, and we do the same things other kids do, just with a little extra cushioning...

I looked around and saw everyone in this 200 seat lecture hall staring at me, my fellow MT's grinning from ear to ear. My professor, after a moment to collect her thoughts, went through her overhead transparencies and with nothing more than a "thank you for that," she moved on to discussing Rock Hudson.

I know that the argument of the LGBT community getting married is extremely politically charged and steeped in religious battles that don't really need to be there, but what I ask for is for everyone to just come out. Be proud of who you are!



NYC Pride March - 2009

Whether you have HIV, or diabetes. Whether you're gay or you had that one experience at Boy Scout Camp (come on... You know you did). Or even if you have been dying your hair blonde because you don't want the world to know you're a ginger (which I wouldn't understand cause gingers are hot), just come out of the closet! Be you! And be proud. Pride Week isn't just for gay people anymore... It's for all of us.


Till we meet again...

Location:E 73rd St,,United States