In WJCT’s StoryCorpsOutLoud series, we’re hearing from Jacksonville residents who are part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Each week, WJCT’s Lindsey Kilbride shares a conversation recorded by the StoryCorps oral history project. All the participants are linked by the local LGBTQ youth support group, JASMYN.
Bruce Musser and Tina Wirth are friends. Both are gay, in their 40s and serve as board members for JASMYN. But the similarities end with how they came to terms with their sexuality.
Bruce: So I moved to Jacksonville so that I could get okay with being gay, because I decided to get okay with that before coming out to others. So I had to have my time of preparation and I had to retreat, I had to move away to get prepared. So I was 21, I had lived in Jacksonville a few months and I was working at The Landing and living independent for the first time as an adult. People were asking me if I was gay, and I was telling them I was gay, and I was practicing coming out. I had a mad crush on this guy, and he liked me too. And it was my first time I ever felt free to like a guy. Anyway, I was just so gosh-darn excited about that I left work one night and there was a pay phone in front of The Landing in a box across from the Independent Life Tower, and I walked into that payphone and called my mom.
I said, ‘there’s something I want you to know about me,’
and she said, ‘what’s that?’
and I said, ‘you may not like what you’re about to hear’
and she goes, ‘I love you, what is it you want me to know?’
and I said, ‘I’m, I’m gay.. and I want you to know’
and she said ‘why do you want me to know?’
and I said ‘because I think, if I don’t tell you about this part of me, then you won’t be part of my life. Because I think my life will happen regardless, and I want you to be included in my life.’
She said ‘you’ve chosen a hard row to hoe’
and I said, ‘that may be.’
So I wasn’t able to do it in person and the best I could do was to reach out by telephone. But yours is so different from mine, because I know you had a different journey on your way to your coming out.
Tina: I think my ship just left the dock a little later than yours. It was funny; I had no idea even that I was terribly different. I was just so busy fitting into a mold, I didn’t have any friends or family, extended family, that were gay and so I thought that I was kind of doing the things that I was supposed to do, and I started to feel a little confined and a little, maybe not like the other kids. I had a week on my own and binge watched “The L Word” ..
B: Thank God for cable television.
T: And I imagined, you know, The Ugly Duckling story, you know when the duckling finally meets the geese and goes, ‘oh I’m not a duck, it turns out I’m a goose!’ And I sat there and I binge watched the entire “L Word,” all of the seasons and I went, ‘Okay, those are my people.’
