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February 4 - February 7, 2021
“I’m so sorry to bug you guys,” she said. “It’s just—I’m the mother of two gay children and what you’re doing for this country and for them… I am just so proud of you and so happy you’re getting out there.” Her children had caught up with her—they were a little embarrassed, but excited to meet us, too. “Hi, we’re the gay children,” the daughter joked as an introduction.
In 2019, almost overnight, I went from being a middle-school teacher from Traverse City, Michigan, to becoming a person strangers looked to for guidance, reassurance, and the perfect reaction GIF on Twitter.
I probably wasn’t as ready as I could have been, but that didn’t matter—I learned the hard way that a presidential campaign is a matter of building the plane as it’s taking off.
Because the fact is, my story isn’t rare. In fact, it’s pretty common. I grew up in a conservative small town, with loving parents who worked so hard to support me but didn’t know many gay people before I came out to them, terrified, at age eighteen. I lived my entire adolescence in shame, feeling like I’d never fit in in my high school or my community, and even after I came out, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this essential fact about me meant I’d never find love or have a family.
this story of mine isn’t apolitical. Politics is in all our living rooms. It’s around our kitchen tables and in our mailboxes. Whether I was hearing the stories of young queer people who’d been kicked out of their homes and didn’t know what to do next,
I think Peter and I are part of a group of young politicians and activists who have a unique opportunity to reimagine the world that’s emerging. I don’t want to waste the chance I’ve been given to do my part just because I came by it swiping through a dating app while I was wasting time at work. (Yup, that’s how I met Pete Buttigieg.)
shooting clay pigeons or targets; I became a really good marksman, even though I never lost my unease around guns. Just seeing the guns on the picnic table made me nervous, and although my dad has gifted me a few guns for birthdays over the years, they remain in his safe back home in Michigan.
I still have my 4-H trophy—featuring a cow—displayed prominently in my office today, right next to my master’s degree.
“the heartland,” also known as “flyover country.” People from Massachusetts, California, New York? Not “real Americans.” According to the stereotype, a real American is not a professor, banker, or artist living in New York City or Seattle. Real America is Dixie Chicks and wide open spaces, proud men and hospitable women, farms, trucks, guns, patriotism, building, rebuilding, independence, hot dogs. Real Americans do not live within a day’s drive of the ocean. (Lakes are, however, totally acceptable.)
Nevertheless, there was little I could do about the fact that my elementary school was in Grawn. Because all the towns in the area are small, you’d often talk to kids from other schools, so whenever I’d be out—for a football game or at youth group—other kids would call us the trailer trash school. It made me so mad, and maybe this was part of my sense that I never belonged. I was constantly trying to fit in with conflicting groups. Deep down, was I actually cultured and fancy? Or could I become as tough and rugged as the other “hicks”?
enjoyed fishing, four-wheeling, and 4-H-ing, I never felt like it was enough; being good at those kinds of things felt like I was rising to expectations, not developing my own. Now I know that suppressing a major part of your identity will make it feel like nothing is enough, but at the time I just felt uncomfortable in my own body, and my body was in Traverse.
I don’t remember thinking a lot about politics growing up, but in Northern Michigan, not thinking about politics means you likely absorb a great deal of Being a Republican energy and probably become one yourself, at a young age, though you probably don’t understand what that truly means. My family is Catholic and pretty conservative, in the sense that they center a lot of their morality and values on religion and tradition. My parents weren’t especially forthcoming about their politics, and it wasn’t immediately clear to me the way politics could have real effects on our day-to-day lives.
I witnessed a great deal of posturing and projecting from some of the people I grew up around, and I was rarely presented a different way of thinking, especially when it came to same-sex relationships. Instead, I believed that something about me was twisted, or wrong.
I remember putting the W sticker on my car because that seemed to be the easiest way to signal “I’m just like you. Please leave me alone.”
Symbols like these were just around and accepted. Their presence was rarely discussed. I suppose it’s telling that they weren’t evaluated in school; that’s how the system was designed. I watched as people described the flag as a symbol of “Southern pride,” even though there’s literally no reason for someone from Michigan to have “Southern pride.”
I don’t remember “seeing” any gay people in person growing up. I had an inkling that maybe there were other kids “like me” around, that they existed—the sense that perhaps a friend and I shared a secret, whether it was the feeling of just not fitting in or the deeper truth of growing up queer in an environment that told us not to be, but neither of us ever spoke of it. What I do remember, most vividly, are the words fag and faggot and sissy—descriptors for boys who were different, feminine, soft—being tossed around in the locker room and in the hallways. I dodged them daily.
When someone already feels low and alone, tearing down others feels like a step up. I think about the girl who always made fun of me with her friends from the back of the bus, calling me my brother’s “sister” and “Chas-teen the crack-phene.” It was so pathetic—at least come up with better jokes than that!—but we were all just trying to find our place, swimming in a sea of hormones and loneliness and confusion.
I remember being attracted to men from a young age, but I don’t think I fully understood until about seventh or eighth grade that this might mean I was gay. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it until it was presented to me in a pejorative way.
If a gay person was in the news, it was likely about how they’d been harassed, bullied, beaten up, or murdered. All the horror stories traumatized me, but I was especially affected when I learned about what happened to Matthew Shepard, the college student who was brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998. His story wasn’t exactly familiar, but it approached the edges of reality for me—it seemed like it could happen to someone like me in Northern Michigan. I had nightmares about him. As a result, I never would have suggested that I was gay—or even broached the subject of anyone else being
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I don’t think I ever thought I would fully blend in with either the farm kids or the jocks, but I really didn’t want to stand out, so the Hawaiian shirts were and are very perplexing. Perhaps I thought that they mimicked the beachy brands favored by the well-off kids. I could barely step into a Hollister without feeling like a total fraud.
Like many, my parents had lived in the area all their lives. In the circles I grew up in, leaving was considered suspect, as if you thought you were “too good” for everyone else. Everything you could ever possibly want or need was right in our backyard. You were supposed to be grateful for what you had. My family was an entire world of its own. If I had one eye on a different, “wider” world, what would that say about them?
I wanted so desperately for this thing inside me to be untrue. But it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I was gay, and that I was hurting her, and I felt terrible about it. I was also hurting myself by not being honest about who I was and what I was feeling. I was consumed by my anxieties about being gay, and no matter how loud I screamed or how hard I cried, they wouldn’t go away.
I had run so far away from home to escape my doubts about all that, but what I didn’t understand at the time is that you cannot run away from those things. Your soul, your truth, your identity, your fears—they all follow you.
One of my biggest regrets about those years is that I was so hard on myself in every respect. Even after my parents and I made up, I was so obsessed with how people would react to me that I incorporated the horrible things I suspected they thought of me into my self-image, regardless of whether they actually expressed them. I never stopped to consider what I believed, what I thought, and it prevented me from making good choices for myself in many areas of my life. At the time I didn’t know that what I was feeling were common symptoms of internalized homophobia. Surely I don’t have value, I
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If I’d had people close to me who could have advised me on these kinds of life decisions, they could have helped me make sure I was prepared before I took a leap and went to college. On top of having a sink-or-swim attitude toward us kids once we turned eighteen, my parents didn’t know much about the ins and outs of going to college, despite all the wisdom they gave me in other areas of life. They didn’t go to college themselves, and everything from filling out a FAFSA form to selecting the right school was foreign to them. The idea of just going to school full-time was outside their
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I expected that once I graduated, I’d have a job and pay it all back, because that’s what everyone else seemed to believe, and certainly the student loan providers’ cheerful assurances that they had my back did nothing to suggest otherwise. But that’s not how it works. I had no idea I was rapidly dooming myself to decades—if not a lifetime—of financial insecurity. (Peter would say on the presidential debate stage that he was the least wealthy candidate in the race and mention our household’s six-figure student debt. It was true that, even without the debt, he still would have been the least
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It’s hard to think about your budget when everything in your life feels tenuous and conditional; it’s hard to resist small pleasures, like a burger or a fancy coffee, when you feel like life’s bigger pleasures (love, stability, a sense of possibility) will remain out of reach forever. “If only they’d stop buying $5 lattes” is, of course, a common argument for the reason millennials can’t get ahead in life. And on top of the random expenses and very limited cash flow, I was way too generous.
I don’t regret going to college at all. I only regret that it costs so much, and that it’s presented as a necessity. But I also know that my life at the time wasn’t suited to academics. Looking back, I shouldn’t have gone to college until I was ready financially and emotionally. I just wasn’t ready to study.
every afternoon we’d be subject to a steady stream of privileged teenagers messing around with their iPhones as they paid for their vanilla bean Frappuccinos with Starbucks cards. A thought I had not infrequently was I’m (basically) a college graduate working forty hours a week serving milkshakes to teens who have more money in their bank accounts than I do.
Working at Starbucks may seem kind of prissy, but like all service positions, it’s a rough job: anything that requires you to talk to a constant churn of people who want something from you is draining as it is. And something about Starbucks makes customers feel especially entitled to inhumanity.
When I didn’t get the job, it was the first time I felt the full weight of all the debt I’d taken on. I was starting to get scared I would never get out from under it. I knew it was very unlikely that I’d advance to a position to be comfortable making my minimum payments, much less ever actually get rid of the debt all together. Not getting the job made me feel like I’d made a huge mistake, and I couldn’t stop fixating on what to do next: Did I need to go back to even more school to get a nursing degree? Before, I’d been able to compartmentalize, focusing on working hard and telling myself
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I had no conception of the typical annoyances and despair dating included. I had never talked to anyone about the ins and outs of their up-and-down love lives, because I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag that I was gay. I just thought my life was going to be loveless and hard. I had no idea my life was going to be loveless and hard because men are terrible.
it was completely daunting at the time. I couldn’t stop worrying about who I should be for them rather than asking myself, “Who am I?”
During the hearings surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, watching Christine Blasey Ford’s remarkably open and vulnerable testimony, I felt something turn; I felt ready to open up about my experiences, too. I’d never allowed myself to talk about it out loud before. Over time it became clearer and clearer that this was a foundational experience for me, in the worst way possible. I’ve never forgotten that evening, and what he did caused me to be skeptical and fearful of love and affection for years. It took a lot of work, and years of patience and healing, to make
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Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in the gay community that doesn’t get discussed often, and many gay kids don’t have the option to call their parents for support when something like this—or much worse—happens to them. I was grateful to learn that the fear that my parents wouldn’t be supportive was, of course, unfounded. Dad was really mad that I was in that position; he made sure I knew how to get home. It was simple advice, but it was what I needed to snap out of it and catch the late bus from downtown to my apartment.
I was always very forthright about what I wanted—partnership—and while the guys would never reject me outright because of it, it would soon become clear that they wanted the opposite: something easy and breezy, from which they could opt out at any time, and that started to get old.
I wasn’t good at much except being loud and silly and dramatic (turns out those are great ingredients for an amazing teacher), but I knew getting into acting wasn’t a smart choice to pursue any further.
I know that thinking my romantic prospects were doomed because of a failed relationship at age twenty-four seems melodramatic. Nevertheless, I felt melodramatic. In the Midwest, people tend to settle down earlier than on the coasts, where it’s much more common for people to marry in their thirties, or not marry at all. (The ban on same-sex marriage would not be overturned in Michigan and in the rest of the country until 2015, so it’s not like I could have gotten married anyway, but barring that, I wanted a long-term, marriage-like relationship.) Most of the couples I knew were straight, and
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He’d also just come out, and the idea of eventually moving to Indiana for this guy—which, since he was the mayor of South Bend, was the only way it would work; he couldn’t pick up and move to Chicago—seemed way out of bounds. I mean, OK, I’m from Michigan, not exactly a hotbed of progressive politics and culture, but Indiana is something else. And even if I did like him, I assumed he’d want to play the field.
South Bend was quickly starting to feel like home. So less than six months after we had started dating, I moved in with Peter.
With the mayor always away at work, I quickly began to feel like Snow White wrangling woodland creatures in our home. But the difficulties of our relationship have never come from that. The only thing that’s annoying about Peter’s lifestyle is how reasonable and laid back he is about, well, everything. This can have its advantages; for example, when Peter bought the house, he painted the kitchen the most awful shade of yellow—a yellow so neon I had wondered if it was a mistake he hadn’t had time to fix. When he went on a trip during the presidential campaign, I hired a handyman to paint it
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Though there were many kind people to be found at these events, I imagined some were silently pitying the weird substitute teacher who seemed very out of his element.
As time went on, navigating these spaces got easier for me, in part because of the way Peter handled them. He quickly proved he was the same guy everywhere he went; he never pretends to be something he’s not, but he still accommodates different types of people, without making the situation awkward or contentious. And he was never shy about introducing me as his boyfriend—even with Mike Pence.
How could my partner work with someone so awful? Because South Bend was more important. That is, as I would come to learn, leadership: the ability to put aside (huge) misgivings for the good of the people who elected you into office. But I’d still wonder, How does Peter do it? Eventually I learned that there’s a time and place to voice my opinion, and I knew that Mike Pence didn’t care about me or what I have to say at all.
The more public and serious our relationship got, the less intimidated I felt, but constituents and voters still frequently mistake me for a staffer, and sometimes I’m not sure I’m not one myself. It was quite common, early on in South Bend, that someone would slickly hand me a card and say, “I know Pete’s probably really busy, but let’s get our offices to connect on this.” I’d look at their card and smile. “Would you like for me to get this to Pete’s office?” Landing a comeback that lets someone know you’re the husband, not the body man, is a feat in conversational agility.
Ultimately, the advice I’d give for dealing with these situations resembles what I’d tell a student who was being bullied: remember that person’s comments say more about them than they do about you.
Most of Peter’s college friends come from Harvard, Oxford, and other more formal institutions—I’d always been led to believe that this made them better than me and my experiences. Their skills and accomplishments are easy to describe: they’ve traveled the world on scholarships, taught at Ivy League schools, won awards, and been in the news for the right reasons. They’re also about seven years older than I am, so the success disparity makes some sense, but at first, it felt like they all came from Planet Genius.
Looking back, I’m really proud that I somehow managed to figure it out. I may have left school with a mountain of student debt and issues that are best left to a therapist, but I got my bachelor’s degree, something I thought so often about giving up and walking away from. Not only am I alive, but I found something I was good at, went to grad school, and finished at the top of my class. I often tease Peter because I have a master’s and he doesn’t—his Rhodes Scholarship covered a second bachelor’s. Nevertheless, I still have to listen to his introduction five times a day: “Harvard-educated
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Although Peter didn’t come out until he was in his thirties, he was able to come into his own in ways that continue, really, to elude me. Most of the country knows how impressive his résumé is. He’d become an expert on national security when I still probably couldn’t use the phrase national security in a sentence. (Now I can, and on live TV!) I don’t feel jealous of what he has—the only thing I find myself envying, in darker moments, is his assurance that things will always work out, and up. If coming out hadn’t been what it was for me (including the mental health journey it sent me on), then
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I didn’t want to be in debt to someone I loved; it was bad enough being in debt to people I hated. But when I expressed all this to him, he convinced me that accepting his help wouldn’t hurt our relationship. “Seeing the person you love walking a little lighter, knowing they’re cared for and going to be OK, is a far better feeling than having money,” he said.
