coming out - Rob Browatzke

Rags to Riches to Gay

Rob Browatzke March 15, 2026 Things That Made Me Gay 0 Comments

It was Annie, if there were five Annies (six in the premiere). It was Glee, in the 60s. It was Rags to Riches, and it ran on NBC for two glorious seasons in the late 80s. Every Sunday night, you’d find me and my brother and sister glued to the TV watching – and recording it on VHS to watch the episodes over and over again. A Beverly Hills millionaire named Nick Foley adopts a handful of orphan girls to rehabilitate his image, and they sing… about everything… all the time.

But Rob, you might be asking, its all girls. How did this make you gay? Was it simply because of the presence of the iconic Tisha Campbell of Little Shop of Horrors fame? You’d think so, but no. For me, it was the beautiful blonde Diane, played perfectly by Bridget Michele. Every gay boy finds a diva to fall in love with and for me, it was her. She was, simply, stunning, and absolutely heart-wrenching for ten-year-old me as I watched her quest for love and get her heart broken.

That resonated. At the time, my heart was being broken nearly daily. I was only ten, eleven, twelve, but I had already mastered the dramatics of the adolescent gay. Ironically, or perhaps just not-so-coincidentally, the girl in charge of breaking my heart consistently at the time was also a sparkling blonde (shout out to Cori!).

Diane Foley collected many a man in the short run of the show, including the handsome lifeguard Sean played by Ken Olandt, and the Duke, played by Sasha Mitchell shown below, long before his time on Step by Step or the spousal abuse that followed.

I’m a sucker for a handsome face, as much now as I apparently was in the fall of 1987, but even still, I’m not sure it was Diane’s teenager in love that pushed me towards the closet door. Sure, my fascination with her bevy of beautiful beaus definitely should have been an inkling that I was not like other boys. But I think the part of Rags to Riches that really made me a big old gay was the musical numbers. These weren’t Broadway ballads like tomorrow. These were huge pop hits of the 50s and 60s, often with lyrics changed to suit the plot. They were catchy and costumed and choreographed.

Angst? Check. Drama? Check. Hot men? Double check. Add on show-stopping performances, and this show was a recipe for delight for a small prairies gay boy like me.

Do you remember this show? What media made you gay? Do you understand why Diane’s fashion was giving 80s realness in a show set in 1963? Chime in, in the comments.

Iron in his Thighs, indeed

Rob Browatzke March 8, 2026 Musings 1 Comment

No one is groomed into being gay… but there’s definitely some media moments that can nudge a gay kid out of the closet. This new series deep dives into a few of those for me.

The Mighty Hercules was an animated kids show from the early 60s that ran for 128 episodes. Each episode was only a few minutes, and I think they got tacked on to the end of other kids’ shows in the 80s as an extra mini-adventure. I can almost see myself sitting there cross-legged, dangerously close to a TV with rabbit ears, bowl of Fruit Loops in my lap, entranced by the mythological adaptation before me.

Well, by that and by Herc’s physique. This has to have been my earliest encounter with “the gay gaze”. Years later, in Florence, I stood there looking at Michaelangelo’s David the same way younger me sat there gazing up at this man, descending from Olympus, the wind blowing up his tunic to reveal not only those massive thighs, but just a hint more side butt than was probably appropriate.

It could have been the stories that kept me watching, because I loved Greek myths even before I borrowed D’aulaires Greek Myths from my school library and kept it for weeks, until the librarian actively hunted me down to get me to return it. No, I suspect there was another reason that had me gazing up at my screen like Newton gazing up at his demigod friend.

Hercules? More like Hunkules.

There was a strength and a masculinity there that resonated inside me. It was something missing from the 90s Disney version. It was the first time I probably began to grapple with the issue common to so many gay boys: is this something I yearn to be, or just someone I yearn to be with? And even now, many many moons later, that’s a question I sometimes grapple with. I know who I am now, and am mostly comfortable in my own skin, but a muscular thigh and a well-formed pectoral? I’m glad (I’m glad) to have (to have) a friend like that

Did you watch this show? Did your heart flutter like Hercules’ tunic? Chime in, in the comments.

Lost Boys Episode Three: Mike

Rob Browatzke December 22, 2023 Lost Boys 0 Comments

Last Seen: Winter 1998

Strictly speaking, we were never supposed to meet.

You see, I was volunteering with Lethbridge’s Gay and Lesbian Peer Support Line (it was 1997, this was pre-acronym). The PSL had a policy: no one-on-one meets. The purpose was two-fold – the safety of volunteers and the protection of vulnerable callers. But you see, there weren’t other volunteers. It was just me, for months and months at a time, and this guy, he needed to meet a real life gay person, badly.

One of those Mormons, you know.

Lethbridge in the late 90s was nestled snugly between fundamentalist Christians and Canada’s main Mormon population, and neither of them had anything good to say about the gays. Having grown up with the former, I certainly empathized with the latter. I’d been out 2-4 years at the time, depending how you looked at it, but I was certainly a lot farther along my coming-out journey than this guy, and knew I could help.

I was also in a horrible mental state and was absolutely desperate for some kind of connection. Which is less noble a motivation, true, but at this stage, honesty trumps nobility.

I was not expecting what I found, when we met for coffee – a smart, funny social work student who was absolutely dreamboat handsome. I would like to say that nobility trumped horniess, and that I stood by my morals and didn’t sleep with him. Oh, I didn’t, but that was likely more his choice than mine. “Doable if dateable” was how I described him – he was too good to be just another notch in a whittled-down bedpost. So, friends we became.

We met up a few times, even had him over to my place – where we looked through photo albums of gay parties (“See Mike, this is the fun you could be having,” I said, trying to convince him to hit up a homo hop or gay coffee night). He pointed out one friend of mine he thought was cute, and so -and nobility definitely trumped here! – I played matchmaker.

And it seemed to work. It worked enough that they both repeatedly thanked me, and I’m sure I wasn’t bitter at all, sitting there single as a pringle while the hot new gay immediately found a happiness I’d been so desperately searching for for years.

Except then he told his parents, who did what so many Christofascist parents do – wanted him to see a therapist to get “fixed”. And he agreed. And broke up with his happiness and his potential new life to focus on the cure.

And then he was dating a girl. But as his friend who had helped him through so much, he kept in touch. And then he wasn’t dating a girl, and was hanging out with another local gay, who got him drunk and took advantage of him, and so now he was gay again, but didn’t want to be. (Ironically, the same predatory gay later called me out for meeting Mike one-on-one in violation of the rules. Kettle, you’re black).

Keep in mind. This is all over about five months. It was August when we first met, and by January of the following year, he called me to tell me he was straight. “I like girls. I want to have sex with girls. I want to marry a girl, and have a family with her. Before, I was confused and experimenting.” I had no idea what to say, other than I didn’t agree, didn’t understand, didn’t think that was something he could just change. “But I’m your friend and I’ll stand by you.”

I don’t think we ever spoke again.

Part of me dreads he became a statistic of conversion therapy, so fucked in the head by it that he drove himself back deep into the closet – or ended his own life. But there’s another part of me that pictures him living his best gay life somewhere. I’ll probably never know, but Mike, if you ever read this, say hi.

Lost Boy Lost Girl
Lost Boys Episode Two: Ashley
Lost Boys Episode One: Paul

Lost Boys Episode One: Paul

Rob Browatzke December 9, 2022 Lost Boys 0 Comments

Last Seen: Summer 2004

I think he messaged me first, reaching out across the cyberverse of gay.com for what? A friend? A fuck? He was eighteen and freshly out and just needed what we all needed at that stage: some kind of gay connection. He was still living at home, with just a few months left until graduation, and our chats moved off gay.com onto MSN Messenger, and moved from friendly into flirty and dirty, as they tend to do.

We agreed to meet up at Buddys, a local gay club. It was just some random March Thursday, which in the Buddysverse meant Wet Underwear night, a contest that bordered on a rite of passage for so many young gay boys just coming out; it was a great way to get applause, affirmation, and cash. He was even cuter in person.

Dangerously cute.

See, I was not in a position to be starting anything with anyone. I was trapped living with my recent ex, an ex who was very convinced that we would end up getting back together because, well, that’s what we always did. I was trying to start a business and had zero income so moving out or otherwise asserting independence wasn’t an option.

I don’t know if I was thinking about all of that, yet, though. Not that first night. I just wanted to give Paul what I never got: a good first night out at a gay club, a mentored introduction to gay life. He didn’t seem too blown away by it all, but part of that seemed to be just that he was overwhelmed, and happy having met me in person. That other gay person we first meet in real life can have an almost magical feeling to them, and I guess for him, that night, that was me.

He had a 1AM curfew, so he didn’t even get to watch the wonders of Wet Underwear, but like a gentleman, I walked him to his car. He opened the door as we said good night and I seized the moment and kissed him. He turned away, and I thought I’d misread everything, or that the real life me had been a disappointment. But he slammed his car door shut, spun around, and kissed me back hard.

It was his first kiss, and I don’t know how it was for him, but it was amazing for me. There was nothing else in the world except that kiss, standing there in the street outside the bar. But his curfew was coming up, and the kiss had to end.

Over the next couple weeks, he came in to visit, a lot. But between his curfew and my always-present ex, there wasn’t opportunity for much more than kissing. There was lots of that though. Whenever we had a minute alone, our lips locked. Having such short periods made the making out all the more frenzied. He wanted more, and I did too, but the timing. It was hard to find time for first times when you’re on a couch next to your ex.

Hard indeed.

Then my life intervened. This was 2004 remember, so Internet wasn’t yet such a major necessity that it took precedence over other bills, and when it got cut off, we had no way to stay in touch. It wasn’t like things were at the point I could call him at home and explain to his parents who I was. The connection, so new, was simply severed, inexplicably to him.

By the time I could explain, the damage was done, it seemed. The frantic passion of those weeks was gone, and it never came back.

That fall, he started college, and I started a new job that consumed my life. At some point, he moved to Toronto, as had been his plan all along, to pursue a career in fashion.

A decade and more after our moment, I saw him on Grindr. He was obviously visiting his parents for Christmas, and the cute boy had become a very handsome man. My message reaching out and saying hi was never acknowledged.

I don’t even remember his last name so searching socials is near impossible. Every holiday, I check hook-up apps to see if he’s again home. But there’s been nothing.

Just the memory of a first kiss that makes me smile.

Back to School: A Coming Out Project

Rob Browatzke May 7, 2022 Musings 0 Comments

I recently signed up for a Gay Male Memoir Course through UCLA, because 3.5 jobs isn’t enough right? The first assignment was just a piece about an early on moment in our coming out stories. For those of you who know me, it’s no surprise I landed on that high school straight ex:

If anyone had still been paying attention to the game, chances are it never would have happened, but most of the room was Truth-or-Dare’d out. The only ones really still playing were the three of us: me, my best friend Jenn, and Him. The first him, anyway. There’d be other hims later, many other hims, but then, it was just Him. Jeff. . The rest of the room, the other dozen or so people I’d invited out to celebrate my seventeenth, were caught up in their own conversations. They couldn’t hear Jenn urging Jeff to ask me who I liked, and they definitely couldn’t hear my answer.
Jenn knew what that answer would be, of course. I’d come out to her the previous fall. She was one of three people who I’d told by that point. Her reaction had been the best: complete acceptance and total lack of surprise. That had compelled me to tell the other two, whose reactions had been, for Pam, awkward laughter, and for Verity, betrayal and anger. Three people knowing “my greatest secret” was more than I’d ever intended, so I was fine leaving it at that, especially given the declining positivity in results.But that night, I took a plunge there’d be no coming back from.
“Who do you like?” he asked, just simple and straight-forward.
“You,” was my reply, equally simple but far less straight. Jenn was on my right, legs folded underneath her on the couch, bouncing up and down with excitement. Jeff was in the chair next to her, everyone else behind us doing their own thing.
“I’m just not gay.”
Was it immediately at that moment he said those four words for the first time, or did the news take a minute or two to sink in? Looking back, it’s impossible to remember, and given everything that came after, the timing didn’t matter. The words were said, right away, or minutes later, or possibly even the next day. They were said, and they ended all the hope that had carried me, giddily, into the confession.
He’d seemed it though. And that wasn’t just me projecting. Jenn thought so too. The plan had never been just outing myself for the sake of being out. Oh no, it had been outing myself because that was how I’d get to the next part, the good part, the fall in love forever part. Because when you’re seventeen and freshly out and you haven’t had your heart broken yet, you still believe in forever. Or at least I did.
But with those four words, he ended the hope that that forever would be with him.
“I’m just not gay.”
He said it lots over that summer, as the friendship deepened.
And he had called to say it once again that fall.
It was her birthday this time. Jeff and I were drunk and Jenn was just laughing at us. The vodka soon filled me up, and I ran upstairs. I came back down to the basement from the bathroom – ‘Angel’ by Aerosmith playing on the stereo – walked by them kissing, and, wait – what? I turned around, but she was gone. Nothing about the night until then had indicated it would change everything so profoundly, but as she cried and I cried and she accidentally outed me to my mother, who panickily outed me to the rest of my family, and all the while, all he could say was, “I’m just not gay.”
My heart was shattered. She was my best friend, and he was… my Jeff. And in the midst of that, there was my mother, now privy to something I’d never intended to tell her, and she was in a crazy denial. “You can’t be,” she said, through my locked door, while I was crying and Jeff was passed out on the couch across from me. “You’re just not gay.”
I was barely aware of the momentous shift in my reality. I was out to everyone! How did it even happen? No, all I could see was them, kissing. Her, the best friend. Him, the boy I liked. I was gay, and he was fine with that, but he wasn’t, and I had to accept that. Allegedly.

They dated. We fought. They broke up. We fought. They got back together. We fought. We laughed and cried and got drunk and passed out next to each other, and it was all such a mess. A painful, beautiful mess. It was New Year’s Day that I woke up next to him, taking a moment to breathe in his scent. Just the barest whisper of my lips against his ear was enough to wake him up. “I’m just not gay.”
She was just barely there, on the periphery of our descent into whatever it was that came next – months of mind-games and self-harm, and solace in each other. But there she was, while they dated, and after they were done. “He’s just not gay,” she’d say, and oh, it would sting, that she could know that, first-hand. He’d tell me he wasn’t gay as I reached out to brush away the brown bangs that fell across his forehead. He’d tell me he wasn’t gay and I’d cut myself, thinking that pain was easier to handle than this, this finally being out and STILL not being loved back. He’d tell me he wasn’t gay as our fights about her turned into actual physical confrontations, and he’d tell me he wasn’t gay as those physical confrontations turned into some twisted frottage. And by the time May rolled around, a year after that Truth or Dare, he’d tell me he wasn’t gay even with my mouth on his dick.
“You’re sure you’re not gay?”
“Yup.”
“Bi maybe?”
“No.”
“Curious and interested in experimenting?”
“No.”
“Gay and just not telling me?”
“I’m just not gay.”
I grinned. “Oh well. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
He’d never touch me, of course. That would make him, you know, not not-gay. But he was seventeen, and a mouth was a mouth. And of course, I knew he was thinking of her because he told me; he made sure I always knew that she was in his mind when my mouth was on his dick. I didn’t care. It wasn’t the fairy tale, but it was something. The connection was fucked, but it was a connection.
Except…
It wasn’t real, and I knew it wasn’t real, and oh, how I needed it to be real! My arms bore the proof of how painful the un-reality of it all was, dozens of slice marks made by a paring knife that now lived next to my bed. It was the mid-90s after all, and the soundtrack to our summer was angst and rage. Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana and Green Day sang my pain. The world was dark, it seemed, and everyone hurt, so what were we doing? What was I doing to myself? It was just our normal.

It was a merry-go-round I couldn’t get off, because, maybe, the next time around, I would grab that golden ring, the one where he would finally accept what he obviously wasn’t ready to accept, and he would kiss me, and the price I had paid for it would all be worth it. It was easy to ride that fantasy, even though I had to know, deep down, that it really wasn’t ever going to happen. His four little words had told me that right from the beginning.
And then I had to move. High school had ended, the summer was winding down, and my university career was happening 300 miles from his. How inconsiderate of real life to just up and intervene in my obsession like that! I knew what would happen of course. With me away, he’d soon forget all about everything we’d gone through. He’d be fine. He’d land on his feet. I was the one with everything invested in the relationship.
For the first time in a long time, I was exactly right.
He was fine, and he did land on his feet. More accurately, he landed on another blond girl.
It’s easier for straights, I guess. I’d land on my feet too, but it would take months. Months in which I re-entered the closet. After all, it was a new city, far away, and I didn’t have to be the crazy psychotic gay anymore.
Except…
It wasn’t real. I was gay. There was no denying it. By the time the two-year anniversary of that fateful Truth-or-Dare rolled around, I was visibly and vocally out (and being cheated on by my first boyfriend, which just goes to prove, gay or just-not-gay, all men are dogs). But before that happened, there was a weekend back home. With him, and the new her.

We were at the Thunderdome, this massive straight nightclub, and they’d been kissy-facing all night, which really drove home the way he would never kiss me. Still, I put on a good face, because he was, in the end, my friend, and as much as it hurt, I wanted him to be happy. As the sound system blared AC/DC ‘Thunderstruck’ (really, straights? Really??), and the smoke from the fog machine rolled across the floor, she left to go to the washroom, and he leaned across the table.
“I’m just not gay,” he said.
“Fuck! I know! Why are you—?”
He cut me off by leaning across the table, with just the barest whisper of his lips against mine, there in that straightest of worlds.
“Why—?”
He cut me off again. “Thank you for being okay with it,” he said. “With me and her. And thank you,” he continued, “for being okay.”
That he would finally kiss me, however briefly, somewhere so public, so straight, it meant something. Whatever he was to me, this mash-up of best friend and straight-ex-boyfriend, he was important to me. And then I thought about his last words. Thanking me for being okay?
I wasn’t, not really. The damage would take a long time to heal – not just the physical scars it left, but what it did to my brain. But right there, right then, surrounded by the drunken straights in air thick with smoke, it was just me and him, one gay, one just-not-gay. We had seen each other through the worst, and yes, it was going to be okay.

Throwback Thursday: The First Boy

Rob Browatzke November 18, 2021 Musings 0 Comments

This one doesn’t show up in Facebook memories. How could it? Twenty-seven years ago, the Windows 3.1 computer sitting on my desk was basically a way to play pinball, and good for nothing else. I should have just played pinball that night, by myself, and instead of inviting them over for vodka slimes and cards.

She was my best friend, the first one I’d come out to, over a year before.
He was the guy I loved, or wanted to love, or whatever it is that passes through a seventeen-year-old brain. I’d come out to him, the spring before, and had even told him I liked him. “I’m just not gay,” he said, long before that became his near-daily mantra.

But I couldn’t have known that that night would change the world.

His nose had disappeared, you see, in his drunkenness, and she was helping him find it. And even though I’d told her I was over him, I was feeling feelings like only a drunken teenager can. I went upstairs to, Idk, go to the bathroom or something. It was meaningless, innocuous, and it was the last thing I did before everything stopped.

Aerosmith was playing as I came back down the stairs, Angel specifically. The first notes of that song ripped at me for years to come, taking me back to that moment when I came around the water heater to see them kissing. “Very funny,” I said, or something like that. I don’t remember the first words, but I remember the next words I said, after they broke apart, after I could see the guilt and shame and fear on their faces. “You mean that was real?”

She nodded, she that best friend on her birthday, and she fled upstairs. I talked to him, trying to process how this even came to be. In the months that followed, it was all about him and her and me, but in the end, that wasn’t even the most important part about that night. Because, you see, while I was talking to him, and he was saying, oh, probably something along the lines of “I’m just not gay,” she was upstairs changing everything. Maybe that’s why it never really sunk in what had happened. I’d missed it all. Downstairs in the basement, with him the guy we both would learn to love, I was too busy having my own cry to worry about her panicked emotional breakdown, one that resulted in outing me to my mom, who proceeded to out me to the rest of the family.

I’d woken up that Friday morning, out to five people. I woke up the Saturday after out to everyone. There are so many things I’d love to be able to tell that kid, so terrified and so broken. There’s no way he’d ever believe me that one day, a quarter century later, Angel would come on and he wouldn’t even recognize the song. There’s no way he’d ever believe me that he’d survive them dating, that he’d survive high school. There’s no way he’d ever believe me that there would be other boys and other kisses. And there’s definitely no way he’d ever believe me that yes, that night changed the world, but for the better.

Wanna Dance?

Rob Browatzke February 9, 2021 Musings 0 Comments

I’m at that stage of lockdown where I’m meandering down side streets of nostalgia. Remember school slow dances? The boys are all on one side, the girls on another, until someone makes that first move, and suddenly everywhere is pairing off as chaperones make sure the couples are a balloon-width apart. These dances are rites of passage, but for queer people, they can be an exquisite kind of torture. Until, that is, that magic moment, when you’re out and suddenly that slow dance can be with – wait for it – another boy!

Take a walk with me, to visit the Ghosts of Slow Dances past.

Location: Fort Saskatchewan, sometime in 1986
I don’t even know how I warranted an invitation to the party really. I don’t remember us being

friends, and I don’t remember it being such a big party that the whole fourth grade was invited. But there I was, in the basement of Jen’s house, and kids were dancing, and I was one of them. Her name was Kalyn, certainly one of the prettiest girls in class. Thirty-five years later, she is still, and always, my Lady in Red.

Location: Fort Saskatchewan, Oct. 31, 1990
I’m head over heels for a red-headed girl named Tara. When we’re on lunch break, I steal lilacs from nearby trees to bring to her. At the Halloween dance, I’m gonna make my move: upgrade the lilacs to a rose, coupled with a teddy bear, and a song request guaranteed to sweep her off her feet.
It doesn’t go well. I’m left on the dance floor waiting, teddy bear still in hand.
A year and a half later though, after she’s moved away and come back for a visit, I get that dance, to that same song. Thirty years after that, the only thing I’m waiting for is COVID to end so we can grab a coffee and catch up.

Location: Lethbridge, February 17, 1996
There were probably other slow dances. Surely there’d been something at grad, my grad or hers. But even though I may have danced with Jenn, I’m pretty sure I never spun around the dance floor at Chase with Jeff.
See, I’m out now, well, out and then back in and then back out, and even though I dumped a girl named Kimberley just before Valentine’s, it’s AFTER Valentine’s now and I’m at the Croatian Hall on the outskirts of Lethbridge. Here, the gays and lesbians gather for their monthly “Homo-Hops”.

It’s my first time in a big group of other queer people. I know no one. But even though I’m sitting there alone, nursing my drinks, I am happy to watch.
The last song of the night is announced, and a boy comes up to me and asks me to dance. I must’ve been terrified. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the dance – details got lost in the alcohol and the sweet juiceberry kisses that followed.
But if I close my eyes, I can breathe in and smell him still, the first man to hold me in his arms as we danced.

Location: Buddys, February 14, 2003
There was a boyfriend or two, a husband, a mistress, and they all had slow dance moments, I’m sure. But zoom ahead with me, to a place downtown where the queers all came around, a hole in the wall where you could usually find me and Aaron in a cage, screaming along to Kylie and Shania. And one Friday night, eighteen Valentine’s ago, Arrowchaser ended the night with some Lonestar.

Location: Buddys, early 2006
This was my party and it was glorious. Except for when it wasn’t. Oh sure, there were nights you could find me ending the night on the dance floor with the boyfriend, perhaps to some James Blunt, but the boyfriend ended, and the glory faded, and all that really remained was the friendships.
Including my best friend. After the bar closed, we would stay there for hours, playing games and laughing – and getting high as fuck of course. But before the bar closed, we could always rely on Arrowchaser for one slow song to end the night on.

Location: EVO, sometime in late 2021
I don’t know his name yet, and I don’t know the song, but it’s time for those dance floors to reopen, just so they can close with a song that lets people end the night floating. Not like SMG and Sean Patrick Flanery in Simply Irresistible, mind you, but close. There’s magic in that moment and I’m ready for some magic.

Tag: coming out