But I'll try...
In best 12-step form: Hi, I'm Steve Basile and I'm gay.
(All together now: "HI, STEVE!)
I'm also 42. I tend to use the term gay to include all queer people, LesBiGayTrans and all. If gay is not inclusive enough for you, sorry--it's just easier to type. Sometimes I use "queer" but I'm not entirely comfortable with it.
I'm from Albany, NY, have lived in CT, MA, RI, NYC and Long Island, and now call Austin, TX home since 1993. Been gay as far back as I can remember, at least age 8 or so when I realized my friend Joey was cute and my friend Leslie wasn't. Confirmed during early puberty when my hormones realized "it's not just a phase." Came out to myself in college, where I also came out for the first time to a friend in1978, and then to a series of friends and my brother over the next 14 years. (Yes, he said YEARS)
Took me till 1992 to come out to mom & dad, three sisters and three brothers-in-law, who after the initial shock value of the announcement wore off, have become the most marvelous, sustaining, and empowering forces in my life. When asked "Is Steve married yet?" by friends back in Albany, Dad answers, "Not yet--he just hasn't met the right guy." Mom and Dad are wonderful friends and I love them dearly.
My coming out story was published in "Out In All Directions: An Almanac of Gay & Lesbian America" edited by Lynn Witt and Eric Marcus, published by Warner Books in September, 1995, and in paperback this year, as "A Treasury of Gay & Lesbian America". My Dad (aged 75, who is on the list at papajoe726@aol.com) had a short piece on his and Mom‚s reaction to my coming out published in "OUT OF THE CLOSET INTO OUR HEARTS: Celebrating Our Gay / Lesbian Family Members", edited by Laura Siegel and Nancy Lamkin Olson. I am so very proud of them.
Working for The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt changed my life. See it, and understand. In 1996, my mom and dad and I celebrated my fourth anniversary of coming out at the Washington DC display of The Quilt, the very place I gathered the courage to come out four years earlier. Wow! Not a dry eye in sight. Visit my web page (recently updated, at: http://www.geocities.com/avatartexasnet/comingout.html) for details.
I've been a volunteer since moving to Austin, working for AIDS service agencies and food banks and such, but only discovered PFLAG in 1996. I thought it was just for parents!
PFLAG/Austin is a great group--and I cannot recommend them more highly. The chapter has grown to the point where most meetings, even all summer long have 35 participants or so. I wrote our first web page (since handed off to another, more capable digital queer), and serve on the Board, the speakers' bureau and advocacy committee.
I am about as out as someone can be, and have enjoyed remarkably diverse and accepting places of employment here in Austin. I spent 7 years at a startup called Tivoli Systems, which went public successfully in 1995, was aquired by IBM in 1996 and is still a large employer in Austin today. While part of IBM I was named Vice-President of Americas Marketing, and so became an out gay VP on IBM's gay & lesbian executive task force. IBM is a much cooler company than you might think.
From June 2000 through June 2001 I worked as director of marketing for a small startup called Works. While it was exciting and often fun, it was very stressful in these tight economic times, and I left there in June. I really needed to spend some time with my family, especially Dad, who had heart bypass surgery and several difficult complications this summer. Life is about priorities, and mine are with my family right now. I am working on making my little company "Avatar Speaking Dynamics" into a small business for myself, providing diversity presentations, motivational speeches and speaker training to small and large companies. Time will tell.
I enjoy changing perceptions about gay people. I like to write, and post long missives now and again to scratch that itch.
Regards from Austin,
Steve
-- owner-pflag-talk@youth-guard.org
Austin, TX
|"We should all be...connected| to each other."
| --Steve Schalchlin/The Last Session
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Private email encouraged on homosexuality, coming out or PFLAG
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List-Owner: pflag-talk, & pflag-announce@youth-guard.org
Personal: http://www.geocities.com/avatartexasnet
PFLAG/Austin: http://www.pflag-austin.org/