I was always different.

I used to stick my He-Man figure in my underwear because I liked the way his muscles felt against my skin. I had a Rainbow Brite sleeping bag and used to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays just to watch the show. I liked the boy characters the most. I didn't wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning for anything else—I've always been a night owl. Famously, I used to tell my mother when I was a kid: if God didn't want me to be up at night, why did he let us invent lights? Lol

For one of my very young birthdays, my mother's best friend took me to Walmart and said I could get anything I wanted out of the store. I came home with something called a Popple—a stuffed animal that sort of inverted itself into a pouch in its back and turned into a ball. I had Care Bears, the stuffed animals, and Care Bear sheets that were hand-me-downs from the neighbor's daughter, but I loved them.

I also did some boy stuff. I loved playing in the woods and getting dirty. I was constantly running my own little experiments and creating my own ecosystems in Mason jars just to see what would grow and thrive. In hindsight this was probably more of the scientist in me than anything else. I did love riding my bike and going to the park. It was fun to be a kid in the 80s.

Needless to say, there were some pretty obvious clues.

This was a small town in the Bible Belt. We're talking less than 10,000 people. The largest town in the county. There is no interstate. And this place has just continued to get smaller.

When I was being raised, it was just a constant flood of "the normal thing is a boy and a girl." It wasn't really spelled out to me that way, but that's all there was. There was one person in town that people said was "funny." He didn't drive. He pushed a little cart to the grocery store. He carried an umbrella over his head even when it wasn't raining. Anywhere else he would have been protecting himself from the sun. And it turns out, if you go to a real city there are plenty of people who don't drive. And they have actual sidewalks. And crosswalks. Imagine. Lol

But here he was the person you did not want to be. He was the person that everybody talked about. They said he had a certain color porch light that indicated he was "funny." No one really used the F word in this town. People pretend to be nice in the Bible Belt. The N word was much more common.

When I was seven years old I was watching 20/20 with my mother. It was an episode about the AIDS crisis. My mother told me: "Scott, if you're gay, please never tell me." She didn't want that kind of life for me. I understood. Well, at least I understand now. It hurt like fuck at the time.

I already knew I was different. I couldn't put my finger on it. I wasn't exposed to gay people at all. But I had plenty of crushes on boys. My health teacher in seventh grade put it like this: "All boys go through a phase where they admire men. Particularly their fathers. But some boys just don't grow out of it." I don't think this is quite accurate. But it's as good of an explanation as any. It at least gave me a word to identify it with.

I was very active in the church growing up. When my youth minister found out I was gay, he told me I was going to hell. I still occasionally go to my home church. But needless to say I've never been in any other church—not unless it was for vacation Bible school. Lol

I've never had a real attraction to a female. I'm sorry, it just has never happened. Apparently I used to date girls because I liked their leather coat, or I loved the color of their hair—which I would eventually dye my own trying to achieve their colors. Lol

I came out when I was 17. I could no longer hide who I really was. I wasn't raised like that. When I did, it was devastating and made me run from this place as hard as I could. Not literally—that's a metaphor. I signed my first lease the day I turned 18, 30 miles away, and just kept going.

When my best friend found out I was gay, he and everybody else stopped talking to me. He explained this to me years later: "We all thought you were gay, Scott. We just didn't know what to say." How to handle situations like this wasn't exactly taught in school. I didn't receive a ton of hate. No one ever really called me a faggot except my brother. And it was with complete love in his voice. It was a funny situation. He has always been one of my biggest supporters and it's probably why that word has absolutely no effect on me. I often describe it as an accurate description. Lol

I do not know of anyone who was out in high school before me. It was hard. And it was 1997. It should not have been that hard. But that's what it's like in a small town in the Bible Belt.

For the record, I gave up driving when I was 25. I was bad at it. I'm not a multitasker. So I get it now—that guy with the umbrella and the cart. He was just living his life in a place where that made him the person everyone talked about.

When I moved to Miami, one of the first guys I met in South Beach asked me where I was from. I said there's no way you've ever heard of it. And I told him. Turns out he was from the exact same county in an even smaller town. Less than 500 people. I would say it was a village. If you've ever heard of Susan Smith, you know where I'm talking about.

I guess there are faggots everywhere. Like they used to say: they're everywhere, they're everywhere!

I am now blind and I had three strokes about 10 years ago. It is such a long story it could really be a book. And it may be one day. But just know this: I'm in this situation because I carried that pain, being ashamed of myself, and just straight-out hating being gay. I just did not want to be different. I could not be any less normal. Lol

If you are reading this on Facebook, likes and comments don't seem to do much. If you enjoyed my story or if it struck a chord with you and you want to share it, please do. It helps me immensely.

Hopefully you now understand why I go by the name Bryan now. Lol it should also give you some idea of what a dead name is.

Again, please share.