NakedSword is showing ‘PRIDE: Pornstar Coming Out Stories’ this weekend for free, with 24 studs sharing their personal stories. Which stories speak the most to you? What’s your story?
This revealing documentary starts with Skyy Knox talking about how, as a kid, his mom figured it out. She then did whatever she could to help him embrace who he was—including buying him toys that he wanted to play with, like Barbie dolls. And right away, less than a minute in, I had my first flashback—but it was a much different experience.
As a kid, I had a “girlfriend” in the neighborhood—when we played at her house, I wanted to play with her Barbie collection (including that giant head where you did the hair!). But at some point, I knew it was something I needed to keep secret. And at some point, my family found out (clearly, my friend’s mom said something)—and I was told by a member of my family that I couldn’t play with her anymore. It’s something I look back on now and realize how much of an impact that had on me—far more than I realized at the time. It was awful, and pushed me further into a shell that kept me quiet for a lot longer than I wanted to be.
August Alexander talks about a Thanksgiving dinner where his grandparents were “ripping into whatever homosexual character was on TV.” And that brought me back to a big Thanksgiving dinner in my early 20s with extended family (uncles, aunts, cousins) where I was so frightened of being asked something (“Do you have a girlfriend?”)—or expected to join in a conversation that involved calling someone a “fag” (a word I constantly heard my brother use over the years).
I wasn’t out then, but I had reached a point where I knew I couldn’t lie anymore, nor could I smile and nod during stories or “jokes” with gay slurs. I was just tired of it all—and became so scared that I wouldn’t be able to fake it anymore if something came up at that dinner. I felt sick to my stomach, but the last thing I wanted to do was come out during this huge holiday dinner (thankfully, that didn’t happen, and I didn’t have to go through something like August did).
A little later, Beaux Banks says, “Everyone knew I was gay. I just didn’t know it. I was sucking dick and still did not know I was gay.” This made me laugh, and I’m sure speaks to many of us. During my college years, I would rent gay porn from the local video shops…yet still couldn’t say the words “I’m gay” out loud, or even in my head! I hadn’t admitted it to myself, even as I was watching guys suck and fuck practically every night.
Zario Travezz talks about starting to come out to the people he was most comfortable with (“I had to do a lot of coming out throughout my life”), which is exactly what I did. I started with close friends, then tackled family members one-by-one (just like Riley Mitchel shares, I came out to my youngest sibling first). I was extremely lucky that everything went well.
And the feeling I had was just like Zario describes, that sort of emotional eye roll that I should have done it a lot sooner: “Why couldn’t I have just been myself all this time instead of perpetrating to be somebody that I wasn’t?” Zario wasn’t as lucky with everyone he came out to as I was, and his is one of the toughest stories to hear.
What parts of these 24 stories speak to you? What’s your coming-out story?
People knew, my sons knew after one of their friends tell them he had seen me at Pride. i waited 17 years before I actually told them and they met him. I was out at work after my second summer trip to Provincetown. I did not really “Come out” till after Mother past. My partner had been a major LGBTQ activist here for over 40 years and the local news always wanted a comment. The word would go out and all of those not wanting to not be seen on the nightly news or the front page of the paper became invisible.