Phil Cochetti is the Head Bear in Charge of Happy Bear, a weekly bear happy hour at Tabu.

 

I came out by admitting that I might be “bi” to a close circle of friends in November 1997, eighth grade. Within a day or two, walking down the halls I was being asked about it by seemingly everyone, someone had told. I came to grips with it, and started openly calling myself gay. Over winter break, I had gone out for a walk and met up with another gay person in town. When I returned home after a few hours, the police were there with my crying parents. They had read my journal and knew I was gay. It tooks years to recover my relationship with my father. 

Our school bus was seen as the “ghetto” bus as we all lived on the “wrong” side of the R5 line, and worse yet were renters. On more than a few occasions as folks disembarked the bus, fights would break out between the bullied and their antagonizers.  We would watch as the bus drove on.  The king of the bus was Luis, a braggard Latino student who used to overact a city accent, thuggish attitude, and talked about his connections. One spring afternoon Luis stopped where I was seated with a my Black friend Tiffany on the school bus. He asked me, “Are you gay?” “– Yes.” “Well — I’m goin’ bring a gun to school tomorrow and pop you dead.”  

Shaken, I sat on there. Tiffany was scared by it as well and confirmed that she had heard what I heard.  My mother noticed that I wasn’t talking much when I came home from school.  She pried until I told her what had happened.  She called the police and then the school.  Unbeknownst to me, the police visited Luis’s home and confirmed that his parents did not own a gun. The next day, I was called over the PA system from my classroom, and the kids made a 90s sitcom “ooooohh” knowing I was in trouble. I went to the guidance office and had to meet the Asst Principal and a guidance counselor. After recounting what happened, I heard Tiffany brought into the next room to confirm my story. The Asst Principal didn’t believe me. Luis was suspended for a single day, and back the day after with a new scorn in his eye. 

I met my first boyfriend on a school band trip to perform at the Miss America Parade in Fall 1998, we hit it off on the ride back to school. He was a senior, I was a freshman. The weekend of our Homecoming dance, we had decided to attend together. The dance was a Saturday… Oct 10th, 1998.  My mother had heard of a gay man being tied to a fence and left for dead earlier in the week; she called the local police to make sure Eric and I would be safe at the dance. Matthew Shepard died the following Monday, the same day Eric was confronted with photos of us dancing together at Homecoming. He barely ever spoke to me again.

That spring, while in Broadway Musical Theatre class with a closeted gay teacher. There was a junior in the class, taking the class just to get his diploma as I recall, think Christian Slater in Heathers with his trenchcoat and chip on his shoulder attitude. We heard the news of the Columbine school shooting. He and I were singled out by our peers as the next potential school shooters, him for his trenchcoat and me as the troubled, bullied gay kid. 

Thinking back on it, I still cry thinking about the summer afternoon in 2000 when a middle aged woman stopped by the pharmacy where I worked. She had seen me at a local Presbyterian church in Wayne that was trying to start a group for gay youth. She introduced herself as Carrie Jacobs, and told me that she was having a BBQ for gay youth downtown that evening. I begged my mother to let me go. It was my first experience at the Attic Youth Center, and it changed my life. 

However with Carrie and my champion, and greater ally than I can imagine, my mom looking out for me, I was able to become a strong voice on campus.  My mom brought me to another high school when the school board had refused our request for me to attend the high school’s “Tolerance Taskforce”.  The other school had a gay straight alliance and my mother worked to have me attend theirs. 

High school was a daily struggle, and we fought to change the school as well. Friends and an activist librarian from my church pushed to have the Gay/Straight Alliance founded. The GSA fought for our district teachers to have the school board add sexual orientation and gender identity protections for faculty and staff. That night of that decision, a conversative and republican school board member offered me a ride home. In my driveway, she confided in me that she her son was gay and only came out to her after leaving for college. She thanked us for our diligent work making the high school and district safer. 

My junior year, an old crush from the wrestling team confided in me that she was trans. Not safe at home, she took an extended leave to live with another family member. The next year, my friend Rachel and I were asked by the principal to sit on a committee to change the dress code. We would meet with school board members and local parents and provide the student perspective. We negotiated and when necesary fought to make sure that the dress code was gender neutral knowing secretly that there was at least one trans student.  When the student returned from leave, she had begun her transition, was wearing a dress, and dumbfounded our peers. 

Coming out is not a cherished memory for me. It was not one of pride and acceptance. It was not a foregone conclusion that I would “make it” or that things would “get better”. Only through a mother ahead of her time, a very supportive guidance department, and my time at the Attic did I survive. I support the Attic wholeheartedly; it having changed and saved my life. And for years I did speaking engagements around the Philadelphia region to help advocate for LGBT youth in our area. I am proud of what has become of our cause and hope that we can all work together to continue our progress, even in the face of systematic chiseling away at our civil rights.