Ichmael

Chapter 1: Where It All Began

For a long time, I didn't want to think about this part of my life. I even reached a point of denial to the fact I was an escort, but eventually I learned to embrace it. Had I not been an escort would I be the man I am today? To be honest, I don't know. I'd like to think I would, but you know what they say: "Your past moulds your future".

I've become very popular in the gay community. People come up to me and tell me I've inspired them or they've come out of the closet because of me and it is very flattering to know I've had such an impact on people's lives, but there is one commonality that I'd like to address:

Why is being queer still an issue?

It's the twenty-first century people! What happened to "All men are created equal"? More like "All men are created equal if you are a white man who likes to stick his dick in vaginas". What's the point of writing out a foundation for a nation if it means absolutely nothing? And I know that same-sex marriage has been legalized in all fifty states, but that was something that should have been given from the very beginning. What I'm talking about is why there are still people getting discriminated against, why "being in the closet" is still a thing, why there are people still getting beaten and murdered for who they are, why our society has deemed queerness as a "bad" thing so much that people are so uncomfortable with who they are that they kill themselves. Granted, we have come a long way from when I was growing up, but that doesn't mean we don't have an even farther way to go. It's going to take more than a few sentences on a piece of paper to change the mindset and overall atmosphere of our society before we can really accept this as a victory. I will get off of my soapbox for now, but this very issue will pop back up later on in my story.

Often I do events where I tell about my life and the hard work it took me to get where I am today and every once in a while I get the question:

Do you ever wish you were born straight?

If you were to ask me twenty years ago, I would say yes! Make me straight so my parents would see me as their son again, make me straight so my siblings would call me on the phone again, make me straight so people will look past my sexuality and see me as a person. Now, if someone asks me this, my answer is no. I am who I am and I'm proud of it. I have grown so much throughout my life and it took me a while to get to where I am today, so if you are queer and you're still answering this question like I was twenty years ago, I say don't worry because you will soon learn that you are an amazing person who doesn't need to change for anybody. If I was straight, I'd love myself the same. In today's society we tend to strive to be people who we are not rather than figuring out who we actually are and embracing each other. This is who I am. This was a fact of the matter that my family just couldn't understand.

We grew up as devout Jehovah's Witnesses – yeah those people who knock on your door on a nice Sunday morning, waking you up at the ass-crack of dawn – that was us.

My mother would wake us up early to go bang on people's doors and show them to "The Light". Most of the time people would slam the door in our faces or just not answer the door at all. Every once in a while there'd be a nice person who would at least listen to us patiently then tell us to have a nice day. Even with the slamming of doors and some hateful words, my mother always woke up and would do the same thing every Sunday. My mother was a sweet lady, always helped when she could – nobody could say a mean word about her nor would a foul word even think of gracing her lips. This was the very reason I thought she of all people would've had my back when my father spewed his hate towards me when he found out, but instead she told me she could send me to a camp where they'd "fix me".

Fix me? Fix me? I wasn't a broken toy that was put together wrong. I am a human being. I had never felt so betrayed in my life. My own mother couldn't love me for who I was.