Out in the Sunshine

from Sept. 8 2006

Ahh, Miami. The tropical vapor. The sunlight so bright that it casts a yellow incubator glow over the 33139. My home. It's also the setting for this year's National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association conference and this is my first time attending.

I'm here helping man the NYTIMES/Globe booth and telling people what a great paper I write for and the possible opportunities there for inquiring journalists and ambitious college students - if they can handle the deep winter freeze. I feel like the gay Cuban ambassador for the paper as I sit in the booth and pass out pens and chocolate globes to anyone with a sweet tooth.

I also wanted to come to this event because I wanted to see what NLGJA was all about. Part of me was confused why there was a NLGJA group. I find that most newsrooms have plenty of gay journalists/editors. I'm a member of the Hispanic journalists association because we're underrepresented in most mainstream newsrooms. (Same goes with black, Asian American and Native American journalists.)

So I felt like I needed to explore NLGJA in person. In the past three days, I've met some incredibly talented gay journalists and editors with a common interest: our love of being storytellers and communicators. It has felt like one big reunion, seeing old friends from Miami and other newspapers and TV outlets from across the country. It's also been a chance to meet new faces, engage in a dialogue, be friends, and share in our newsroom and gay experiences. It felt like one big extended family. It's Friendster in person. Unity. Connections.

I sat in a workshop listening to print and broadcast colleagues talk about the convergence of our mediums and the benefit of being able to cross from print to the Web or from radio to TV since they all seem to be overlapping in one way or another.

One of the most interesting panels I sat in focused on gay TV anchors and their experiences with being out off-camera which also touched on the lack of openly gay women broadcast journalists.
There was Craig Stevens, the co-news anchor for Miami's Channel 7 featured in the photo to the left. He talked about how fortunate he is to work at a station that embraces and encourages him being open in the community even though some of his on-air colleagues aren't as out as he is.

There was CNN's anchor Thomas Roberts telling an audience how he's proud of his partner and how he has gradually come out at work over the years. (Being a panel speaker at a gay journalists conference, he said, was the biggest step he took to really being out in public.)

"When you hold something back, that's all everyone wants to know,'' he told the audience.

There were the CBS reporters from LOGO. My friend Itay Hod -- pictured below -- kept making silly faces at me that would make me crack-up in mid-sentence during interviews. Itay spoke at a diversity meet-and-greet event Friday night for minority journalists.
(me with Itay)


So all in all, it's been a gay old time. I'm glad I've been a part of NLGJA (say that three times) this year. I can't wait for next year. At least I know I'll have some new friends to hang out with and share stories, like an annual reunion. San Diego, here I come.

September 08, 2006

Coming Out in the Sunshine

(My friend, Ethan Gray of shadesofgray, suggested I share my own coming out story after we exchanged some emails about his own coming out story this week. It's a topic that has been coming up lately besides the Thomas Roberts news machine. A close friend of mine is dating a Dominican guy who just came out of the closet and is struggling with his family about it. And last night at dinner with my friend Priya and two new friends, they asked me how I came out. So here's my story.)

"Mami, papi, I'm not sure if I like guys or girls,'' I blurted to my parents, in the hallway of our house outside their bedroom. I was 16 and I always felt close to my parents and that I could tell them anything and so, I did.

My mom covered her eyes and began to weep. My dad looked away, disappointment in his light brown eyes that silently yelled "Ay no..mi hijo no es gay!" I cried, a ball constricting in my throat. I felt like I let my parents down for the first time. I told them I was confused because there was a guy in my journalism class that I had a really bad crush on and I didn't know how to deal with this but I had liked girls too at one point.

After a few deep breaths, my mom came over and hugged me tightly and kissed me on my neck. My dad didn't know how to react.

My parents are old-school Cubans. My mother was the lady of the house, the homemaker who tried to solve everything while my dad was at work. My dad was the hardworking macho type, who observed more than talked but did his best for us by working 16 hour days. In the traditional Hispanic world, if a man is gay, he is often perceived as less of a man, un maricone, un pato. I could sense that my dad felt guilty, like he had failed me somehow by not being around as much. I could intuit that my mom felt just as guilty for always dragging me to Dadeland and Aventura mall with her, my sister and my aunt and female cousins in tow. I felt the most guilt, for shattering the image they had of their good son and the hopes they had for me (marriage, kids.)

I remember the tension was thick in the air and my mom said she and my dad would find a way to help me deal with this. So they found me a psychologist. That was their solution.

After days of extreme awkwardness in the Diaz household where I would pass my dad in the hallway or in the kitchen and he wouldn't utter a word to me, my parents sent me to a therapist in Hialeah, a nice woman who would sit back and just listen to me talk. She really didn't ask a lot of questions and I didn't feel any different after leaving her office. After a few weeks, my parents noticed I still wasn't the happy big-smiling Johnny I was before. For my school pictures that fall, I faked a smile and my dad saw right through it.

"That's not you! You're not happy!" he said in Spanish which only added another layer of pressure. They wanted to see the old Johnny and I couldn't seem to bring him back, no matter how many good grades I got in Trig or Honors English.

So they dropped this therapist and found me another one, who was highly recommended. Dr. Alvarez, an animated and insightful man who was also a college professor. Immediately, I felt comfortable and I also felt a Cuban connection with him. From the beginning, he said I don't have to define myself right away, just to enjoy being a teenager and high school because it only happens once. He described life as a play with different characters who come and go in our lives and with different acts that represent phases in our life. He assured me I would get through this and move onto the next act and that I would be a stronger person for it. He said "Don't be ashamed of who you are."

Each Thursday afternoon, I would sign out of Beach High and drive to West Hialeah for my session with him. (I don't know why my parents sent me to Hialeah. It's a hell of a commute from Miami Beach.) And each week, I felt my confidence rise and I felt comfortable with whom I was. I knew I was gay but I just wanted to enjoy my junior year and I didn't want to dwell on it too much.

At this point, I had saved enough to buy my own car, a sky-blue 1984 Honda Accord hatchback, I began interning at The Miami Herald in Beach Neighbors and worked part-time at The Gap as a stock boy. I became more active with school service groups and volunteered at marathons and arts festivals. I was my old self again. I felt good. I felt like me. A few months and several hundred miles later on my car, the doc thought I was where I should be. He called my parents to tell them he wanted to discontinue the sessions. Before I saw him for the last time, he told me what he had told them when he sat them down in his office.

"Does Johnny get bad grades?" he asked them.

"Ah, no, he gets Bs and As and he's in all honors,'' my mom and dad replied.

"Does Johnny do drugs?"

"Ah, no. He knows better. Besides, he had asthma when he was un nene,'' my mom answered.

"Does Johnny have bad friends, bad influences?"

"Ah no. He's had the same friends since kindergarten. Cristina, Kelly, Melissa, and some other girls.''

"Does Johnny goof off after school, is he in a gang?" the doc asked.

"Ah no, he just started working at The Miami Herald and The Gap. He just bought his first car,'' my dad answered.

"So...WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR SON? You should be thankful that he's such a good kid!" the doc said.

"We want to know that he's not gay, that he will be okay,'' my dad told him.

"But he will be okay. Let him be his own person. He will define himself in his own way and in his own time. If you pressure him, he has the capability of moving away after high school. Let him be. Johnny knows what he is and so do you. He's happy again. Let him be."

And so, that was it. My parents never brought it up again. They only asked me about my car, my Herald articles, my grades, the weather, and my friends, whom they knew. They backed off and let me be me and I have always loved them for that.

The only other time it came up after that was when I was 23 and I was seriously dating my first boyfriend, Dan. After taping the Real World Miami, Dan and I were commuting back and forth between Miami and New Brunswick so we could see each other. My parents were supportive of Dan and me and they got to know him through his broken Spanish and their broken English.

I remember one Thursday afternoon when I told Papi I was going to visit Dan again for another weekend in New Jersey, he gave me one of his, I'm-worried-about-you looks. He said in Spanish, "Yonito, I know what you are and I accept you. You are my son and I love you but you don't know New Jersey or New York that well and I want you to be very careful up there, ok."

I smiled at him and sat down at the edge of his bed. I held his hand and said "I know Papi. I know. Thank you.''

September 15, 2006 in Cuban Being

Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful...today! A review

Quick, where did the phrase "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" come from? If you're a child of the '80s (like other Goonies), you'd know that it's a song by The Waitresses.

But for another generation, that title has a new meaning - the name of a memoir by Kenneth Walsh, the popular New York-based gay blogger and copy editor. I befriended Kenneth at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Conference in 2007 in San Diego where we were booth buddies manning the New York Times Co. table. I remember during one of our conversations at a taco place, this tall stylish goateed guy kept lacing his stories with 80s references, something I easily related to being a pop culture junkie and a fan of NBC's "Facts of Life"  and the ultimate girl car, the Volkswagen Cabrio. 

Kenneth takes the good, he takes the bad and he takes them both and puts them to good use in his book. (sorry, '80s reference there). He chronicles his journey as "a nice boy from Michizona" (the suburbs of Detroit and then Phoenix) where he followed tennis stars Chris Evert and  Billie Jean King's every serve to his ultimate bright-lights destination - Manhattan where he dreamed of one day, hanging in the same circles as Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry. Kenneth was desperately seeking New York. (Sorry, another '80s reference there.)

Along the way with a few pet cats in between, Walsh recounts his coming-of-age (and gay) stories with a chatty tell-it-like-it-is manner, as if he's on the other end of a rotary phone or smartphone detailing the events like an old friend. His writing is smart and witty but it's also deeply personal. I expected some commentary on celebrity sightings and gossip items about New York which have become cornerstones of his blog along with photos of shirtless hot men, but I was surprised by the breadth of themes in the book. Kenneth delved into issues that are universal but that may truly resonate with gay men who grew up watching the hairy-chested "Magnum PI" and "Six Million Dollar Man" and listened to Madonna remix cassettes.

In the chapter, "new balls, please,'' Kenneth describes that suffocating feeling of being "different'' in his youth when he believed he'd be voted as "Most Likely To Be  Fag." Kenneth felt different in another way - he had an enlarged vein on one of his testicles which embarrassed him. He also vividly details the time he was bullied by his tennis teammates who cranked call his house at night, telling his mom if they could come over and have sex because they suspected he was gay.

In "Hi, Anxiety,'' Kenneth introduces readers