There is a quiet moment before each performance when it feels as if time stands still. The dancers are dressed, the orchestra is tuned, the audience is settled in their seats. It's the moment that holds the anticipation of all that's about to come. One last time I check my shoes and costume, take a deep breath, and watch the curtain begin its ascent; even though this moment happens for me 5 days a week, 6 times a day...it is always the same. There is a theater full of people and an empty stage, the magic comes when you set foot onto it. I can track my interest in performing back to a single event in the fourth grade. Until then, I was going to be a world-class veterinarian, but then fame struck-Miss Vestpoint, my music teacher, chose me to be one of the soloists in our Christmas concert. I remember being a terrified 9 year old singing "White Christmas" for everyone in attendance at that night's PTA Meeting, then hearing people applauding for me...just for me!

I liked this. I never really fit in with everyone else. My father came from a planet where boys go hunting, fishing, and play baseball they didn't dance and sing. In other words, he was an average American adult male. As stereotypical as it sounds, I was never interested in the least in the things "boys are supposed to do." For me to hear those words from my father's mouth about me was about the most crushing thing I possibly could have heard. I had never really felt normal around these other kids and hearing those words out of my father's mouth basically confirmed that to me in my mind.

Almost the first thing that I noticed when I started doing theatre was that most of the people were alot like me; they weren't from the same mold as all of the kickball playing boys that I was so different than. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but as I started to grow up a little I very quickly realized what it was......we were gay. And even more than the fact that I was surrounded by other gay people, the people who weren't were perfectly fine with that. No one put us down, no one batted an eye at it. I finally felt "normal." This was exactly the support group I needed to be surrounded with.

One day during a break at rehearsal when I was 14, a few of my friends, our director, and I were all sitting in the floor chatting like we did every other day and one of my friends asked me, "Do your parents know?" WIthout thinking I said, "Oh my god, no." I had always just assumed that when I was an adult and out of my parents' house, then I would tell them, but just this one question had prompted some thoughts in my head. If all of my friends knew, and my director knew, and they all were fine and still respected me, why shouldn't my parents? I just wanted to feel the same acceptance from my parents as I did from everyone in the theatre.

After thinking about it for a few days, I announced to my friends out of the blue, "I'm telling them tonight." Every jaw in the circle dropped in perfet unison, "really? are you sure? how are they going to react?" I wasn't sure of anything other than I had to tell them. The next day, I walked into rehearsal and no one said a word, a couple of my friends just walked up putting their arms around my waist and said "well?" I just said, "It could have been better, but it could have been worse. I still have parents who love me...don't understand me at all, but still love me"

The circle of friends that I have made through the performing arts has been like no other group of friends I could have possibly ever found. I depended on them to teach me, to defend me, to support me. They have only strengthened my love for the theatre and if not for them, I couldn't possible have been as fortunate as I have been both personally and professionally. I was given the strength to tell my family that I was gay and to also to help my family understand me more, and consequentially they became very supportive of me in the arts. With the confidence I had gained from being in the theatre when I was younger, I've gone from a horrible little fourth grader butchering "White Christmas" to now being a professional stage performer and dancer for Universal Studios Florida, and there are still that same circle of friends and "family" there in the theatre with me.