The women in my family — I always admired them. You know, my grandmother, who was sick with cancer, but yet took my cousin Christopher in; raised him since he was a baby. She only had one lung and emphysema. She could not walk this room without stopping to take a breath, but she’d make sure she’d get to where she was going, or she’d make sure to get to church on Sunday. Or my Aunt Cecilia, who had cancer; my mother who worked two jobs and kept us all going, who wouldn’t buy herself anything so we would have clothes so we wouldn’t get picked on. My mother bought us the same thing other kids were wearing, but she never bought herself anything. And I realized it young. And I think that was the difference. I realized it young, so I appreciated it. I think teens go through their lives and they’re, you know, just happy to be doing what they’re doing. Where I appreciated, you know, my mother’s support, and when she got divorced, how hard she worked to make sure that her children had the things that we had. We didn’t live in the best neighborhoods, like we did when she was married, but you know we lived very poorly but very good. I told my mother one day, “You were successful in that, because I never remember feeling poor as a kid.” And I think that that strength came with some of my experiences coming out young, being in junior high school, and having people say things to me. But when I did realize that I was different and that that differentness was “gay.” I, because of the family I came from and from my mother’s support, I said, “Well, you know what? I’m gay. This is the way it is.” So I just told my ma first, and then I didn’t hide it after that. If somebody asked me, I told them. Even in junior high.
CT: That was very strong.
You know that was pretty tough, because — junior high, you know. We both have been there. I don’t care who you were, there was always somebody who didn’t like you. So imagine being the gay kid in a junior high school.
MB: In 1978.
Yeah, in Pittsfield. You know, it’s a very bigoted town. So I think that kind of gave me inner strength. And of course I got some from myself, you know, you always have to pull down into your own to get it.
CT: Do you consider yourself a religious person?
I believe in karma. You know, I believe what you put out will come back. You know, I always believe that if you think negative — like, if you see someone coming, and you go, “Ugh, here he comes,” your experience is going to be negative. You know, it’s the simplest little things that can make your mind think a different way. It could be the approach of someone coming up to you. I always try to think of something positive, or something better. And I believed if I stuck with the truth, was good to people — and I was treated really undignified by inmates and officers, but I decided that the one thing that I was going to have and maintain was what I was brought up with. I wasn’t going to let prison change me in that way.
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