Bullies

"Greg as girl" age 4

I was horribly bullied from 1st grade until I learned to fight back, probably around 9th grade. Really bullied, not just mildly teased or Lady GaGa bullied - sorry, privileged white girls DO NOT know bullying. People terrorized me for being gay before I even knew I actually was gay!!  I even went to an alternative school from 1st - 4th grade, one where we called the teachers by their 1st names.  Even at a place that was called "Open School" I was harassed.  The first time I remember being called a fag was at that school by some kids that were much older.  I didn't even really know what fag meant I just knew I felt different than most of the other boys.  I hated sports, I loved playing dress up and making art and my only friends were girls.
     For a while I was friends with other boys on my street.  My house was on a corner and had the best yard for playing.  We had three huge, amazing trees that were perfect for climbing and I had a rope swing in a tree in the back yard that provided hours of fun.  Something changed with those boys though.  Somewhere around 5th grade they started to notice that I was not the same as them.  That's when they all turned on me and joined in on the harassment.  They would scream vulgarities at me and call me names like "gay-bait", "fairy", "faggot"' & "gaylord" and taunt me me to no end.  The same kids that I played with everyday inside and outside my house now turned into my worst tormentors.  Some days they would even climb onto the roof of my house and stomp around leaving me feeling like a prisoner in my own home.  The irony here is that I had played "doctor" with all of those boys and when the notion that they enjoyed it sank in they all felt riddled with guilt and shame and decided to lash out.  I lived with that same guilt and shame for my whole childhood.
     I have always marched to the beat of my own drum and I always had a crazy, if not awkward at times, sense of fashion.  I had even decided I was preppy at one point and I thought "finally, I will fit in and not be teased."  I was so wrong.  Probably because I was REALLY preppy wearing pink and baby blue tops with bright green, Izod, golf pants and loafers.  It was all too much for the other kids, especially the preppies.
     By the time I got to high school I was full on goth and I hid behind my giant crimped hair.  I always wore all black, over-sized clothes and had a permanent scowl on my face.  I still got teased but I screamed back at people now and I always threw sharp daggers with my eyes.  My whole attitude was "look at me - FUCK YOU - don't look at me!"  I think people finally caught on that I was NOT changing who I was or how I dressed no matter how much they condemned me!  By the time I was in 12th grade everyone (for the most part) had finally accepted me and, in fact, on our "Senior Day" I won 4 awards from my classmates including "Best Hair."
    Now, I'm so happy that I was always different and did my own thing no matter how much I cried from all the taunting.   I'm certain that I'm a much more interesting person than those that harassed me and stayed in Schenectady, NY.   I'm not saying that I wish bullying on anyone, in fact, I wish the world could be way more opened minded than it is.  I am saying that I developed a tough skin from all the horrid teasing and, luckily, somewhere inside I was strong enough to move past it and always be myself.  In the long run being true to yourself is always the best option.  Now, people love me for who I am and how I dress and I'm lucky enough to have a job where I meet cool people from all over the world everyday.  Everyone, deep down, wants to be appreciated and accepted and I have learned that when you are open minded toward people 98% of the time they will respond with the same courtesy.  Believe me, there are still TONS of assholes out there but their assholism is even more glaring to the world when you respond to it in a calm and kind manner.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I've never navigated transitions in my life very well.  Gracefully gliding from one phase of life to another has never been my strong suit.  It's been that way for as long as I can remember.  At the end of high school I was very apathetic and indifferent about applying for college.  My friends were all fabulous freaks and misfits but most of them were really smart and had specific intentions and plans.  I did not.  Maybe it was all the LSD and cocaine I was doing in my last two years of school - certainly that wasn't helping any.  I remember laying on the couch one afternoon and my mom said "what're you going to do, stay in Schenectady and work at a minimum wage job?"  She convinced me to fill out an application for state schools and she suggested that SUNY Purchase would probably be the best choice since it was mostly an art school.  She was right, of course.  I got accepted and had a great time, mostly, and learned a lot.
     Unfortunately, one of the things that I learned was how to shoot heroin.  A girl I was friends with had an older boyfriend that came to Purchase from NYC to stay with her and he brought all the necessary accoutrements for that task.  I thought he was so cool.  In retrospect, he was an absolute loser - in his 20's and coming to college to stay in the dorms and help his teenage girlfriend get high.  He's probably dead now.  Being addicted to heroin definitely did not make the impending graduation from school an event that I was looking forward to.  I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life and after 4 years of college weren't you supposed to be certain of that?
     After graduation I moved to Province Town, Mass. for the summer like a lot of my friends did.  P-Town is a crazy and amazing place.  Originally founded by sailors and pirates it has the oldest known and still operational bar in the US.  It's also predominantly gay - fabulous!  I tried my best to stay off drugs that summer, opting for A LOT of day drinking instead.  Eventually, I succumbed to the urges and before I knew  it I was making the 12 hour roundtrip trek to NYC to cope dope.  I lingered in P-Town until Oct, way after the summer season ended because, again, I just didn't know what else to do.  Finally, I moved to NYC which is where I figured I belonged.
     Cut to many decades later and, yet again, I am in a state of massive changes and transitions.  I thought I was getting married this year and I felt like there was a trajectory that was taking place in my life.  I was wrong.  Now, I'm feeling very confused and pretty lost.  I know that all the sadness and feelings of failure will subside, they always do.  A friend said to me yesterday that confusion was a great thing since it means that a higher power is working in your life and taking care of what you can not.  I've been sober for over 12 years now and I don't think I've  ever heard that pearl of wisdom.  I'm gonna run with that one even though I'm not 100% certain that I believe it.  Fake it til you make it.
     I still don't really know what I wanna do when I grow up.  There are a lot of things that I am great at and there are things that I love doing but, at the moment, I'm not sure what path to take.  Perhaps,  I'll never figure it out.  Can't you still be an interesting and intelligent person even if you don't have a specific career?   Isn't who you are as a person way more important than what you do?  I'm pretty sure that I'm a good person and, hopefully, something really fantastic is heading my way really soon.

Marriage

I knew that I was gay since the age of seven.  I also understood from early on that it was not acceptable or embraced by our society. For this reason, I never entertained the idea of marriage. Inextricably, I knew that I had a hard road ahead of me and the notion of gay marriage was not even a subject of conversation in suburbia in the 1970's. I also thought that love probably was not a thing that would ever exist for me. I used to pray that I could be a girl not because I felt like one or even really wanted to be one, but because I knew that it would be way easier to find a man to love if I was female.
     Then I met Matt. It was so different with him than it had ever been before. It was easy and nice and there was no insecurity or drama. Up until that point I thought all the stress and drama of previous relationships was love. Then I realized that all those feelings were there because love was lacking.  After being with Matt for about 1.5 years I started completely rethinking my opinions on marriage. I thought that he was someone that I could and wanted to spend my whole life with. It was a subtle shift inside and I started to understand why people were wont to walk down the isle.
     I didn't really think that I would feel much different after we got engaged but I truly did. There was deeper level of commitment and I felt like we were unbreakable. I felt so proud and happy to have that ring on my finger - the ceremony of it all made more sense to me now. Unfortunately, that did not last long and I was wrong about the unbreakable part. We split up after less than four months of being engaged. I wish we hadn't gone through the whole affair of the engagement but I think we both thought it would make things right.  I was serious about the commitment, but the reality was that for the past year I hadn't been happy.  I thought that I was compromising like people do when they are together, but I realized that the things I was compromising were not up for negotiation.  After 4.5 years it's super sad to have something end and to lose the constant companionship but it's worse to stay together and make each other miserable.
     Neither one of us could ever decide what we wanted  to do for our wedding.  All the coolest weddings I've been to are ones that really represent that couple.  We could never figure out what that would be.  Maybe,  it's because it wasn't meant to be and deep down we both knew that.  Now, again, I really, truly do not know how I feel about this subject.  I mean, I love getting dressed up and I love a fun party, but maybe it's just not for me.  I never wanted kids, that's a big reason for marriage.  I'd be a great dad, but it's not something I've ever wanted.  In fact, I've always believed that one of the spiritual reason for homosexuality is to not increase the population.
     Right now, I don't even believe that true love exists.  Get back to me over the summer and my opinion may have changed but who knows?!  People love to say "the man of your dreams is out there" when you're going through a break up, but that's mighty presumptuous. A lot of people in the world never experience that. Being complete on your own is the key to everything, finding joy and happiness every day has nothing to do with being in a relationship.  I guess now its time to work on my relationship with myself.

Desert Kisses

Desert Fashion

I had an amazing modeling job yesterday in the middle of the desert.  It was for Frontier's Magazine's 2nd annual weddings book which is described on their site as "Your all-encompassing guide to same-sex weddings in Southern California."  Frontiers was founded in 1982 and is a free, bi-monthly magazine all about gay culture in Southern California.  I had the pleasure of being their cover model about 6 years ago.

     For this shoot we all had a call time of 3am (yes, you read that right!) and we were driven by old-school, prom-style limo equipped with indoor neon lights and a bar out to the desert.  We arrived at El Mirage Dry Lake around 4:45am just as the sun was beginning to rise.  If you've never seen the sun rise in the desert I highly recommend it.  The desert already looks and feels like a lunar landscape and as the sun is rising there is a hint of blue on the horizon while the rest of the world is still under the cover of the blackest night.  Eventually, the blue and the black meet in the middle and then the day has begun.  Magical.  Once the sun is high in the sky there's a crazy mirage (hence the name) of water at the edge of the dry lake.  Seeing as it once really was a lake it's as if the ghost of the water is still surrounding and beckoning you.  When you look toward the horizon it sparkles and ripples as if you were still looking at an active lake.  Nature is incredible.

     Last year's Frontiers Weddings was a huge hit and the theme was very traditional.  It was shot on and near the beach and had a sophisticated, classic feel.  This year they wanted to go in the complete opposite direction and have it be edgy and cool.  The amazing photographer Ryan Forbes referenced Mad Max and said he wanted it to be like high fashion set in the future in a post-apocolyptic world.  Perfect.  There were 6 male models, 2 of whom were my age including Super Model Tosh Yanez, and 3 female models including Laura Ellen James  who was a winner on America's Next Top Model.  Crazy as it sounds none of the younger models had a clue what Mad Max was and I tried my best to explain it's cultural relevance - even went as far as singing a few verses from Tina Turner's  "We Don't Need Another Hero."

     It was a really awesome cast and crew and even though it was freezing cold and windy as hell up in that desert we all managed to have a great time.  The clothes were modern and cool and my talented friend Dax Savage supplied all the jewelry and accessories as well as modeling himself.  If it wasn't for the way we were dressed we would've felt as if we were filming a lost episode of Breaking Bad - the hair/makeup/wardrobe was even in a Winnebago!  But that's the desert for you, no matter where you stand you get the feeling that something crazy happened there at some point.

     The magazine will be out in Sept and if you live in Cali it's available all over for free.  If you don't you can go the Frontiers Magazine website and download a PDF file of it and check it out.  They may publish a few teaser pics in the Gay Pride issue of Frontiers as well.  I saw a lot of the photos on the monitor as the shoot was happening and they look amazing.  Everything is so real in the desert that it looks fake.  Every pic has the sky from the opening credits of The Simpsons in it and it all looks so cool in pictures.  There's one shot of me walking and Ryan managed to snap the pic while I was in mid-air - neither foot is on the ground and it appears that I am floating over a dry riverbed.  Somehow there's a twisted Jesus reference in there but I'll let that one go.