Hello, my name is Justin. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I, too, grew up gay in Appalachia. There are many other qualities that I possess that make me who I am today other than my sexuality, but I think it’s important to share how my sexuality specifically has affected me, my life, and made me who I am today.
My sexual and emotional attraction towards boys and eventually men has been a part of who I am for as long as I’ve known myself. One of my earliest memories is of lying on the floor in my grandparent’s living room watching the news on their old black-and-white television set. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven at the time. My grandpaw was sitting on the couch behind me reading the newspaper and listening to the news on the set. Tom Brokaw was the anchor. Grandpaw never watched anyone else. Tom Brokaw introduced me to AIDS.
Although at such a young age I couldn’t completely comprehend what was being reported on the television, whenever Tom Brokaw said the words “gay” or “homosexual community,” I knew that I was somehow connected to those words. An epidemic had started, a new disease, and I remember images of swimming pools, toilet seats, and people hugging and holding hands flash across the screen as Tom Brokaw told his viewers that they couldn’t catch the virus in these ways. They were safe. But I distinctly remember him describing how the virus was running rampant in the “homosexual community.” There was that word again. I was a part of that community, so I wasn’t safe from the disease. I didn’t consciously know how or what part of me included me in that community, but I did know that I was connected with those people on the television, a connection through a disease. I was frightened.
My fear wasn’t of the disease or of dying. I feared the exposure of my relationship to those specific words. Words that had been spoken aloud. Right there in front of my grandpaw, Tom Brokaw had said words that identified me as different and that connected me with some new deadly disease. I remember thinking of how my grandpaw was probably staring at me from the couch. My back was turned to him, and he was staring at me. We both heard what was said on the news. I was one of those people, and my grandpaw knew. He knew! But he didn’t. As I slowly turned to look at him, to confront his staring eyes and receive whatever punishment I knew I had coming to me, he turned the next page of his newspaper. He wasn’t staring. He hadn’t made any connection between me and the television. My secret, what little I understood of it at the time, was safe. And, like any kid at such a young age, the memory of that moment, of being different, of being exposed, of being infected and dying of a new disease, receded into the back of my mind.