Here was a man who had organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King had famously declared, I have a dream. In one of my first classes, I learned the name Bayard Rustin for the first time. In college, I started noticing hints that parts of our history–gay history, or queer history, or deviant history–had been erased. In 2010, I had my first kiss, and slowly but surely, I came out to people back home in Texas. And since it was the beginning of a new stage in my life––new city, a new social world––I figured: well, this is probably the time to come out to everyone, huh?Īnd so, I was out. Two weeks later, I started my first day at Harvard. I came out two my best friend, and I said the words “I’m gay” out loud for the first time. And maybe that was why I didn’t like playing football or doing manly things.īut by the time I was 18, I started realizing who I was. So when people called me gay or girly, I just said oh no no, it’s just because I was raised by a single mother. And my mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics, so she dropped me off to school every day in a pink car. I didn’t know anyone who was openly gay, at least my age. I grew up in a town called Round Rock, Texas. I’m Eric Cervini, and this is The Deviant’s World. We have to understand our history to understand ourselves. To understand a different stripe on that rainbow.Īnd to do that, to really know who we are as a family of deviants, we have to look backwards. So as we find ourselves in the comfortable bubbles we’ve created-on instagram, on Grindr, in our gay neighborhoods-maybe we have a duty to leave them. But for many of us, things haven’t changed at all. Our Vice President thinks we’re going to hell. Trans Americans can’t serve in the military. We have an openly gay man winning in the Democratic presidential primaries.