One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.
Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting it destroys the very things that make it sacred.
I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.
Perhaps there is no agony worse than the tedium I experienced waiting for Something to Happen.
When you've grown sick of reading and bug-eyed from watching TV, when your friends are all visited out, no words can adequately praise the link to the outside world provided by your parents and family.
Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.
In retrospect, the most unnerving aspect of being openly gay was that it turned out to be as disappointingly normal as being straight.
Unlike straight men, who have the luxury of being slobs because women usually expect them to be, gay men - whether preppies, fashion victims, or jocks - are thought to be more obsessed with how they look because they dress for themselves and, consequently, for each other.
Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.
