Saloma
I don’t like parties, but I had promised I’d attend this one birthday gathering at a ritzy pub in Istanbul, where I live. The upscale establishment allowed my friend to showcase his sense of eliteness. The closeted birthday boy had invited many women—his attempt to preserve his hetero image. The guests were mostly straight. I only knew one other person, his closest buddy, a short guy, well built with tattoos on his shoulder. He was closeted, or at least bisexual. Everyone seemed attracted to him. He was very seductive.
PODCAST: Interviews by baby-boomer LGBTQ historian Mike Balaban, with a diverse guest list, covering issues and themes from the global LGBTQ community.
At the age of 19, I began to realize that something was wrong with my soul.
June 2011, my partner, Juan, and I left our 13-month-old son, Oliver, home in Roanoke with his nanny, and traveled to New York City for a Pride dinner with President Obama. By that time, the LGBTQ Community had made great progress in its fight for equality on many levels. As the recent board chair of the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), NY state’s LGBTQ political action committee, I’d been intimately involved in its strategies, successes and failures. ESPA had begun years before by asking for a few, what now seem like “easy” (though they were not), attainable “wins” each legislative session.
I began having sex on a regular basis when I was really young. In fact, the first time it happened, I was only eleven.
In the mid-nineties, I was a naive 21 y.o. young man, full of fear about my budding homosexual orientation. Coming out was not an option, given the environment I grew up in. Costa Rica is a Latin American country loaded with machismo and with a heavy religious heritage embedded in its mostly traditional and very conservative families. My family was no exception.
I grew up in a family of “eccentrics.” I’m a direct result of their quirks and quips, attenuated somewhat by the many years I spent un-learning much of what they taught me. 
