Today is May 1st. In 20 days, I will turn 40. In celebration of that milestone, I thought it would be nice to take a walk down memory lane and reflect on some key moments—dare I say, eras—in my life.
I don’t have perfect records of my life—just fragments, photos, and whatever I can still remember. But the funny thing is, the older I get, the clearer some of my earliest memories feel. So I’m starting there.
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My parents, Bob and Normita, had me 40 years ago (lol)—May 20th, 1986. Growing up, my mom says now, in retrospect, that she knew I was going to be gay. She often shares stories of me as a child wearing her high heels and running around the house. I don’t recall that, but why would she lie?
What I can say is that even at a young age, I knew I was different than a lot of the boys around me. My sexuality wasn’t even a thought at age 4 or 5 (at least not for me), but I did notice that I didn’t gravitate toward the same things a lot of my peers did—sports, crushes on our female classmates, typical “boys’ toys” like cars and dinosaurs.
I wouldn’t say I fully leaned into “girl toys,” but I definitely loved things that were cute. Things like Sanrio—and to a lesser extent, Care Bears—really drew me in.
While other kids gravitated toward toys, I appreciated things like stationery, stickers, and erasers. I loved collecting that stuff. I was also really particular—most of these items were never meant to be used, only collected and displayed.
My parents were supportive of that. I have two favorite memories.
The first is taking trips to Eastridge Mall with them. I remember going with each of them at different times. The Sanrio store felt so special to me. It was huge. At the time, it was the first one in the United States. I can still remember the smell of the store. I can still remember how that gum tasted. They’d let me pick out little knickknacks, and I’d leave the happiest kid.
My second memory is more specific. My dad noticed how much I liked things organized and neat, so he bought me a tackle box—the kind meant for fishing hooks—so I could store and organize all my erasers.
He also had a serious sweet tooth. To this day, he still loves ice cream and chocolate. Some of my favorite memories with him were our trips to Baskin-Robbins. I would always order a kid’s scoop of chocolate chip ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. Even now, whenever I walk into a Baskin-Robbins, I think of those moments—and more often than not, I leave with that same order. Just… a regular size now. I’m grown, after all.
Looking back, I didn’t have the language for it then, but I knew I was different. Not wrong—just not like a lot of the boys around me. And what stands out to me now isn’t just what I liked, but that my parents let me like it. They didn’t correct me or try to change me. They just let me be.
In those early years, I felt supported and safe to be the kid I wanted to be—and I don’t think I realized until much later how rare and important that was.