One Too Many Buttons-Ups in the Closet

Being born at Poudre Valley Hospital and growing up in Fort Collins, I will always feel love and connection to Northern Colorado. But as a child and teenager, I did struggle to find the support I needed to embrace my identity.

My family rarely talked about the LGBTQ+ community at all, and my teachers did little more than make footnotes on queer history. Gay was something brushed under the table or whispered about in words not worth putting into print.

I do not think my family and community lacked the love to nourish all the parts of me–but rather the resources, information, and capacity.

My parents were still in high school when they had me, and I watched them both struggle to make their way in a world that creates infinite barriers. My parents’ relationship did not last, and they both faced financial hardships. It took many years for my parents to find financial stability, and often life was a state of meeting basic necessities rather than meeting the emotional quota.

In middle school, I learned who Mathew Shepard was and the tragic events that led to him passing away in the same hospital where I was born. After reading his story, I remember feeling the weight attached to being queer.

I knew that being gay wasn’t something people could change. I knew that I really hated dresses. I knew didn’t like boys, and I really adored Winona Ryder … but I also really did not want to be gay. Being gay was always something that was talked about in terms of  “otherness.”

There were obvious signs I was queer. The word “Tomboy” was thrown around a lot, and strangers often thought I was a little boy. But puberty could not wash away my obvious attraction to women and the clear gender-queer fits in the closet I did not want to let go.

I felt I was something that just did not fit into the puzzle—a piece that should fit, looks like it would fit, but simply does not. I was so close to fitting, but the factory miscut the cardboard.

By high school, I couldn’t hide from myself anymore. I told my family I was a lesbian, and I wish things would have been easier. But I also acknowledge that people are fallible.

My father took it especially hard. He blamed himself, our family, and anything from toys to clothing to justify my unavoidable identity. He even put the blame on my softball coach, who was an openly out lesbian.

Periodically, people from our team came out throughout and beyond high school. He was sure it was the coach’s influence, that her “lesbianism” somehow infected us. Despite many, many conversations, he never seemed to see the nuance there.

To put things into perspective, his father’s family is from rural cornfield Colorado. Many of the folks (including all of our family) in the town are very traditional and religious, and most attend a small church on the only paved street in town.

I attended services at this church throughout my childhood. When I was a teenager, my father and I both attended a sermon where the preacher compared sexual assault to homosexuality and addiction. His main talking points involved using these three examples to show how all temptation is linked and all sin is equal.

This type of rhetoric is in big supply in that little town, but that sermon was the tipping point that even my father struggled to stomach.

In fairness to my dad, there was some deep-seated trauma that came from those corn fields. He struggled to see my identity as anything other than something that needed to be changed.

I wish I could say he found that acceptance. He died when I was 19, and suddenly there was no longer time to sort through these differences. He was gone. He would never support the aspects of my identity that ran deeper than he could accept.

My father and I were very close. We may not have seen eye-to-eye on many things, but I loved him dearly. After his death, I was left trying to navigate adulthood and the shame I felt in my queerness without a support system.

It took years to find self-love, but much of this inward acceptance bloomed when I found a queer community around me. During the pandemic, I met my very close friend Apollo through our college’s online writing group.

Apollo was the president of the writing club and was out and proud in a way I had never experienced before. I had found queerness in the midst of my grief and the pandemic, along with a friend I now would consider a platonic life partner.

When they got top surgery, we threw a party and made a glittered pink, blue, and white poster enshrined with “Titty Titty Bye Bye” to celebrate the occasion with the theatrical flair they bring into every aspect of their life. They were, and continue to be, one of my closest friends and have taught me so much about myself and accepting my queerness.

The local gay bar in Fort Collins also made a featured appearance in the debut of my baby-gay era of acceptance (and messiness). I was set to meet a cast of characters that opened my perspective on the vastness of queerness and the variety of people who are queer.

At R Bar, I saw my first live drag shows, learned how to take a shot, and met a crew of people I still consider family. Tequila was an added bonus, but the true value of that space was the people I met and the conversations that changed the way I view the world.

Under the ambient glow of rainbow LEDs and disco balls, I found people who were like me—people who inspired me to aim for greater heights and accept the person I am.

Leanna Valadez, the owner of R Bar, creates a haven in a town that lacks the larger LGBTQ+ community Denver boasts. She welcomed me into the space, made me feel included in the community, and invited me to the first Pride I had ever attended. I am so thankful for the community she has fostered and deeply admire her courage to be who she is and create a space for others to do so as well.

Now, writing this for OFM, my queerness has extended into all aspects of my life. The community around me has instilled a sense of pride that I truly believe should be celebrated, shared, and embraced. OFM has given me the space to truly find my voice and openly embrace the identity that has been with me since I was a small child.

The little kid that I sometimes still struggle facing knew me in ways that I am still trying to relearn today. In facing that shame, I have found comfort and security in accepting and loving who I am with a little help from my friends.