#tbt to spring of 1997, at AU homecoming w @atljono, my first boyfriend & still one of my closest & dearest friends.pic.twitter.com/omb92Shmbo
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OK, so. I found this slide. I'm gonna have to get this turned into a proper photo, but, wow, does this tell a story.pic.twitter.com/FBuPEpXCzS
Note the date, 7/24/95. This is Jim Ryan on the left & little, 17 y/o me on the right at Teen Institute in Ohio. I was a month from college.
It was 20 years ago last month, and I was at Teen Institute (TI) for the third time. I was like, on the state planning committee this year.
TI was, on its face, about alcohol & drug abuse prevention and youth leadership. It was a version of SADD, but more broadly focused.
For me, though, TI was so much more important than that. It was the '90s, and I was a gay kid growing up in the Youngstown, Ohio suburbs.
TI was the 1st place I met gay people. Jim was one of them, along w Mickey Hart. They were young adults who were out. It changed everything.
I met them the 1st time I went and was probably mostly just scared. The 2nd time I went, on youth staff, I was able to actually meet them.
That summer, I also met an out gay HS student, Mike. It was incredible to me, in the summer of '94. He wasn't even a rising senior like me!
We exchanged addresses and phone numbers, and began writing letters to one another. Yes, hand-written letters. In one letter, I came out.
I told Mike something that I never thought I would tell anyone. Eventually, I told Jim & Mickey as well, tho, honestly, I don't know when.
By time the spring '95 came around, I knew I was going to American U in DC in the fall. So, after graduating from HS, I started coming out.
I told my close friends. Counting Mike & Jim & Mickey, no more than 12 people. I was still scared shitless about what this would ~mean~.
I remember writing in a series of unsent-at-first letters to my best friend about how this would likely mean that politics was out for me.
And, I only came out to those friends because I knew I was leaving at the end of the summer. There was no rejection, tho. It all was great.
Most of them either thought I was gay or weren't surprised by it, and I had good friends from speech & debate and drama club who were ...
... well, the types of people who tended to be OK with such things. And then I went to TI for the third time, and was awkward about myself.
I was in the coming-out process, and it can be awful at points! But, even in its awkwardness, it was so empowering to have Jim there w me.
I don't remember what this slide was about, but I presume we were just speaking at an evening TI gathering in the auditorium at Kenyon.
It was, though, the beginning of my learning who I was as a gay man. After TI, I had a great summer — even some flirtation and ~more~.
And I was able to realize that it was going to be OK. ... This week, 20 years ago, I moved from Ohio to DC. I was a freshman at American.
I wouldn't meet him at first, he was on the other side of the campus, but @ATLJono was also starting at AU. And, eventually, we would meet.
I was still heartbroken over a boy from home at first, writing to Jim about how ~lost~ I was and such — but Jim helped me through it.
And, even though I wasn't out upon arrival at AU, I ~cautiously~ started coming out to people within a month of arriving. It was glorious.
Over Thanksgiving, I came home to Ohio & came out to my mom. She was as wonderful as a mom could be. ... The next week, I went back to DC.
Over those weeks, @ATLJono and I had been flirting with each other in the course of our of volunteer work for World AIDS Day.
Then, on Dec. 1, 1995, he kissed me. And I kissed him. And we started dating.
I screwed many things up over the course of our relationship, did many things just out-and-out wrong, learned many things, and grew up some.
(I still screw things up today, as I have done most days since '95. But, that's life, and y'all know I love living honestly about that.)
But, throughout the past 20 years, I have been so incredibly blessed to have met, fallen in love with, & then become friends with @ATLJono.
I am similarly grateful to have had TI in my life — & to have had Jim & Mickey (both of whom I still am in touch with) & Mike there.
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