Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 379 – August 8, 2018

Nope.
It’s like, the higher you
see people going, the
more that they will
try to pull you down.
That’s how Joliet
was. For me, each
and every show that I
went on I represented
Joliet, because half of
my high school class
is deceased, and for
the girls, if they’re not
deceased, they have
about seven kids.
For the other guys
that aren’t deceased,
they have criminal
records. I didn’t want
to be a part of that.
I dealt with being
called faggot, being
called sissy, my whole
entire life. It started
with family members,
then it trickled on
down. This is just me.
I always wanted to be
like my mother. My
mother is my life. She
walks in excellence.
If my father cheated
on her, she was going
to stick with it, so her children had
both a father and a mother in her
house. I came from the projects,
and my grandfather died from
cirrhosis of the liver. He was the
town drunk. But my mother broke
the curse. So seeing my mother,
I could deal with people talking
about me. I could engulf myself in
my music. Then just proving a point
to everyone who talked about me
while I was younger—everything
that was said about me when I was
younger just pushed me harder to
want to be more successful. The
more you speak negatively about
me, the more you are going to see
me do something positive.
I love that attitude. What’s it like
growing up gay in a small town?
I had to have it! For me, I had to
basically find a way to make myself
somebody. I didn’t have a lot of
friends, and my mom immediately
put me into “The Soul Children
of Chicago,” a famous children’s
choir. I started traveling with them.
I made friends amongst them. I
didn’t have them in my hometown.
Then, getting kicked out of school
because you were gay, because
you were openly gay—that’s what
happened to me in high school.