My first LGBTQ+ Pride Parade was 25 years ago. I'm still healing from the aftermath.

The Summer of 1999 was my first Parade, my first romance, and my first confrontation with homophobia.

Pride Toronto 2012. Supporters hold signs along the route including for PFLAG, a support group for LGBTQ+ youth & their parents. (By Chris Brooker from Toronto, Canada; Uploaded by Skeezix1000, CC BY 2.0)

Everything in me is shutting down.

I’m well acquainted with this autonomic fear response: one I’ve come to hate for my entire adult life. It’s warning me away from sharing this story, even though I’ve told it dozens of times. The resistance feels like walking into a stiff wind, moments away from losing my footing. My mind is trying to blank itself: trying not to recall what happened 25 years ago this June.

It’s been a quarter century since I first fell in love. Homophobia put a stop to that.

It happened in Toronto in 1999, while I was taking part in a summer program. The boy’s name was Chris; he was adorable. A round face, goofy, sweet, naive. I was 19 years old, wonderfully far from home, unleashed in one of the world’s most diverse and progressive cities. He and I met through an LGBTQ+ youth group. His cuteness was irrepressible. We got all wiggly every time we touched. I was helpless.

I took him to the observatory at the top of the CN Tower. I took him to his first jazz concert: Harry Connick, Jr. at what is now the Scotiabank Arena. He loved to hold hands and make googly eyes. He revealed to me what a ravenous snuggler I was (and still very much am). He sang off-key and danced like a willow in a warm breeze. There was always at least a little smile on his face, even if nothing was on his mind. He was easy — always at ease, as a 16-year-old should be.

I was never that youthful. From a very young age I was viscerally aware that being a smart, outspoken Black boy was a politically charged thing. My family, church, school and all the preachers on TV made it unsettlingly clear that I was here for a purpose. Being blessed with intellect and good manners made me community property, ordained for the advancement of our centuries-long struggles for freedom.

My childhood was very loving but also pensive and intense. It raced on a river of expectations, made treacherous when I realized that I wasn’t like other boys. I dared not disappoint by acknowledging my gayness. I was blessed, after all. Imbued. Obligated. I shielded myself with ostentatious excellence, cranking up my brilliance in hopes of obscuring my flaws. Shining too brightly to be truly seen.

Visible is vulnerable. Shiny is safe. Visible is vulnerable. Shiny is safe.

Think about a great, big, hairy spider. Now imagine it on your leg. That feeling you just got — visceral, uncontrollable, Get me out of here! — that’s how lots of LGBTQ+ people process homophobia. When you hear merciless condemnations from people who don’t realize they’re personally condemning you, it burrows into your body. That’s why I could feel myself shutting down when I started writing this. You want to physically fold in on yourself because there’s no escaping the fear.

That summer in Toronto gave me a moment of ignorant playfulness that I desperately needed. I was 19. Chris was almost 17. We were feeling momentarily liberated from the pressures of our respective communities. And so, 25 years ago this month, we walked in my first Pride Parade. Anti-gay protesters held hateful signs, convinced that the rain clouds overhead foretold God’s judgment.

The rain stopped as the parade began. Made sense to me — rainbows were His idea.

Pride Toronto taught me that courage is not the absence of fear. It’s the presence of focus. Some of us walk through life fearless about being different, but I never have. That doesn’t mean my confidence is fake. It just means that I found enough other things to focus on that overrode my terror: namely, that some people truly love me. Waves of love crash over the barricades at every parade. That love lifts spirits, and it saves lives.

(I think you can see me ⬆️ here, around 7:22 - I’m in the lower right, clapping next to the big float. I don’t want to point Chris out, but I think I see him soon after.)

On that pivotal day I feared God had sent those clouds with a lightning bolt just for me, ready to fire if I took one step past the reviewing stand. Instead I felt the cool breeze from passing rain, warmed by an eternal sun, surrounded by the beauty of creation in all its inscrutable diversity. The celebration emboldened Chris and me, uplifted by a community of friends and strangers. Pride affirms that variety is Nature’s way, and celebrating that fact is an act of love.

If only my summer had ended with love. I haven’t been back to Toronto since.

---

Chris had come out to his parents soon before we met. A few weeks before summer ended, our friends and I couldn’t locate him. We hadn’t heard from him, and he wasn’t answering emails or texts. Some of our friends recalled seeing his father come down to the “gayborhood” where we all hung out, pensively searching for him. But what happened? Was he okay? Did his dad do something rash? How would we find out?

Simple. I would find out myself. Summoning the spirit of 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley, I put on a suit and went to Chris’s house for the first time, unannounced, by myself, seeking answers. I was ready to confront his parents if needed, but I had to find my guy.

Shockingly, his father welcomed me in, seeking to understand his son. I sat in his den, listening to him lay everything out, half-expecting a trap door to open under me.

Chris’s parents were Iraqi immigrants who fled the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. That night his father told me that in his culture, people are either strangers, friends or spouses. The boyfriend/girlfriend thing wasn’t a concept he recognized. Because Chris and I never had sex, his father couldn’t conceive of us as anything more than friends.

“In my eyes, you are not a gay,” he told me, relieved that I hadn’t crossed that line.

Thus, my heartbreak did not compute for him. He didn’t destroy our relationship because there was no relationship: only a now-long-distance friendship. He could, however, understand why I was shattered to hear that a few weeks prior Chris had been sent away from Toronto to live with family.

In Jordan.

They sent my first love to the Middle East to straighten him out. And although Jordan is a relatively progressive Muslim nation, being gay could have easily gotten him killed.

A few days after I uncovered the plot, my summer program ended. I headed back to Florida emotionally scrambled, spiritually broken. Chris and I probably would’ve moved on from each other eventually, most likely remaining friends. Still, it would’ve been nice to make that decision ourselves.

Three years later, just before I graduated college, Chris emailed me. What a huge relief to know at last that he was okay — that he was even alive — and that he remembered me. Apparently, Chris was misled to believe that he was just going to visit family for a few weeks. He didn’t realize it was a one-way trip until he was in transit. Eventually he fled his family and made it to Europe (London, I think).

Chris wrote that he blamed me for everything that had happened to him: for the strife in his family, for the divorce of his parents, for the strain on his loving mother after his father left her, for the crisis he found himself in. All of it was on me. I don’t remember if he told me not to reply, or if I even bothered, but I remember knowing that nothing I could say would do any good. Maybe I had only imagined his goofy smile all this time.

Pride affirms that variety is Nature’s way. Celebrating that fact is an act of love.

Part of me fears telling this story. Someone might try to shame me with it someday. An irrational fear, but after all: Visible is vulnerable. Shiny is safe. I spent a long time living that way: building a sterling public persona that dazzled people away from knowing me. I’ve spent decades as a journalist trying to show others the love and acceptance I needed when I was coming out. Millions of listeners and viewers have gotten the benefit of that. The price was high. Has it been worth it?

I deeply value empathy, but a heartlessly homophobic act made it flourish in me. I take pride in validating others because bigotry dehumanized someone I loved and poisoned him against me. Pride gives LGBTQ+ people the courage and visibility we need to just keep living. It brings us closer to the freedom we’ve struggled for. I was a scared kid afraid to exist, but it made me dare to live and hope to thrive.

Some of us are still hoping. Long Live Pride.