If I Were Gay… I’d Kill You Before I Killed Myself…

If I Were Gay… I’d Kill You Before I Killed Myself…

Message to all bullies: I don’t like you; I don’t fear you and I damn sure don’t respect you…

Ever since I was a young child, I’ve never appreciated a person that used their size or power over others as an intimidation tactic.

Most likely due to the fact that I have this unnatural curse that ensures I feel a perfect stranger’s pain, even with just a mere glance. So seeing people suffer is never something I care to be exposed to in person, and if confronted with one human being abusing another, I have no choice but to address it on the spot.

The professional therapists of the world define this as internalizing – which basically means taking ownership over others pain and making it your own…

I call it being a pit-bull stuck in a Chihuahua’s body... And though I’m usually the smallest guy at the battle, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to back up my bark with the right size bite whenever necessary.

I simply don’t care to see people being forced into fear, and when it comes to bullies… I have no tolerance for you.

Over the last week life has seemingly come full circle for me. As I reentered corporate America, accepting a position as a project manager for a billion dollar company on 51st & Lexington.

The last time I was working amongst the capitalist giants of America, I was 20-years old, working on the 30th Floor of tower two in the World Trade Center… until I ended my own career shortly after the first bombing in 1993, and my Cousin Tony’s murder in the Bronx…

Too much madness… not enough stomach for it… the plush landscapes of Virginia Beach was calling and I happily answered the call…

But now here I am back on the iron horse, 17-years later, the protocol son returns, and I’m sitting on the D Train at Midnight, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase… trying to abide by the same rules I wrote about in a chapter called Subway Survival 1010, in my memoir, “Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx…”

There’s only one problem… At my age, I don’t care to be told what to do… not even when I’m the one doing the telling.

So instead of sitting stuck in fear in the dark tunnels of New York’s underground… I carry a weapon in my briefcase just on the off-shoot chance that someone mistakes me for a metro-sexual, or a gay man, or a man whose shoes are too shiny or tie is too pink… a man who is dressed way to pretty to be able to defend himself…

In other words I’m the modern day Bernard Goetz (minus the racist antics) sitting on the train waiting for someone to attempt to victimize me…

During the early part of the week, on my commute, I found myself reading updates via the NY Daily News about the suicide of Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, who decided his best option was to take one last dive off the George Washington Bridge, rather than deal with the humiliation of being “outed” as a gay man on Facebook or You Tube.

And by week’s end, the story of nine sadistic heartless teens from the Bronx calling themselves the Latin King Goonies were being rounded up for savagely sodomizing three gay men in a torturous gang assault in an abandoned house at 1910 Osborne Avenue…

Reading stories like this left my heart beating faster than the train on the tracks racing uptown, it left me with emotions of anger and disgust, and left my Facebook status reading, “I’m seriously considering becoming gay for a short time… just so that I can lie in wait for someone to try that hate crime bullshit on me…”

I’ve actually had a few propositions since posting this update - should I decide I don’t love you women anymore… and the propositions didn’t offend me or send me flying off the deep end… They made me smile in flattery, no different then if a woman I wasn’t interested in would hit on me… I’d simply say thank you, I’m happily involved…

For those of you who read my blogs on a weekly basis, you’d understand that I haven’t written over the last several weeks because nothing has moved my heart to put pen to paper… I write from my soul and no news is good news for me… It means an empty blog come next Monday morning…

But with continued reports of other young gay men committing suicide over the past few months, I realized it was time to man up and speak out against the intolerance even those in my own circle have shown to the gay community at times…

Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase and Billy Lucas, were all living, breathing, beautiful human beings who were born to love those of their own gender, no different than I have it in my heart to be attracted to women… and these poor young men didn’t deserve to be mercilessly tortured until their only option was to end their own existence in this world…

No one deserves this as a final fate!

Asher Brown was a 13-year old boy from Texas who shot himself in the head rather than be picked on for being different…

Seth Walsh was another 13-year old from California who chose to hang himself rather than endure the relentless bullying he’d been subject to… Justin Aaberg was a 15-year old Minnesota boy who also hung himself…

Raymond Chase, yet another young man at only 19-years old from New York who also hung himself…

And Billy Lucas, another young teen from Greensburg, Indiana who’d actually been told to kill himself by his bullies, when he finally decided it was in his best interest to simply comply rather than continue the never-ending taunting…

This must be all very good news to Republican, New York Governor hopeful, Carl Paladino who was quoted as saying, “I don’t want [children] brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option – it isn’t…”

So in his words, these young teenagers, who were just starting to feel what drew them to love, were somehow brainwashed by endless episodes of Sex in the City, and decided to turn gay because it was cool and hip and wouldn’t lead to the types of torture that would drive them all to suicide…

He went on to say there is, “Nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual…”

Message to Carl Paladino: Should you win the race to be Governor of New York, I will move out of state within 24-hours. I will not be represented by someone as intolerant as you…

Message to my friends: If you say no-homo around me, consider yourself an ex-friend… I will no longer tolerate any form of anti-gay slurs in my presence.

I may not be able to change the world… or the views of those who are not immediately accessible to me… But I can change myself and the behaviors of those around me who choose to continue these negative connotations that lead to bias against groups of people who may choose to live a little differently than us…

I’m declaring it Gay Week, Gay Month and Gay Year… in memory of all the young lives being lost, and those that continue to be tortured every moment of everyday… Please know you are not alone in this fight… Please don’t give up… Please don’t end your life… There are better days ahead…

My next T-shirt will read, “I’M GAY (front)… DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT (back)!

I suggest you all get one… and wear it with pride…





Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.