“Everyone is kind of different, an outsider, looking for a place to fit in”
I was born 3 months early, weighed under 2 pounds. I died twice. Most of my internal organs weren’t functioning, my brain was bleeding. It was a struggle. I was hospitalized for 3 months after I was born. I was in an incubator. Even eating was a struggle because I had no capacity to clear my throat or to clear my lungs if I swallowed something wrong or something got stuck in my throat . My mom would feed me and then hold me over the sink. She had this kind of suction pump device that she would plug into the wall and it had a hose. She would stick it down my throat and suction everything out of my throat after I would eat. Then she would flip me over and pound on my back to make sure she got all the stuff out of my throat. She tells me she would have friends over that would see her doing this and they were just shocked. Like, “you’re going to kill your child”. She would say,” no no no I have to do this or he might die.”
I was always this weak, little, small-bony child. But I think I kind of caught up when I was probably 7 or 8. So I was kind of a misfit from the beginning. And it never stopped. I grew up in a small town in the Central Valley of California where being artistic was not the thing to be. You were to be a jock or just be quiet, right.
And being one of the only gay kids in this town didn’t help matters. I always like to draw, always like to write. I always like to sing. And I have been able to do all of them to some degree or another. So, remember kids even if you come out dead and wrong you can make it right.
This has given me a weird perseverance. Just for the fact that I lived through that. I’ll always be full of anxiety, self-doubt but again you just have to get on with it and put those things away. Yeah, they will crawl out of the back of your head, every now and then and kind of knock on the back of your eyes and want to look out but you have to not give them a venue, a point of view or perspective. Kind of smack yourself on the head and roll them back into your head again and put them back where they belong. And when they crawl back in there and they want to look out don’t let them.
When I was a kid I had, I was ET crazy, the movie ET. I had ET everything in my room. I had a leather stuffed ET toy that I had until it fucking fell apart. Then I had one that was a more traditional stuffed. I remember being hospitalized when I was a kid, having eye surgery. I remember taking the stuffed ET because it was softer to the hospital with me and holding onto it when I was put under for surgery. And when I woke up it was still in my arms somehow. That toy went through eye surgery with me and eventually lost one of its eyes. I loved it to death and one of its eyes fell off. It was a measure of comfort when nothing else is there for you. You could sit in the dark and talk to this thing and cry to this thing, have it out, whatever. It’s always there and never talks back. It doesn’t object to anything you think or say. You’re OK. It doesn’t tell you you’re not OK. I think my mother still has it. I think it’s in a box.