Beginnings of an Essay for Pomona College

I’ve always found myself in the margins, the place poet Mark Doty likes to call the “the edges no wants, no one’s watching.” When I was younger, it was a product of my shy, intellectual disposition; I was kid you’d find wrapped up in a 400 hundred-page book at ten years old. Through time these margins evolved a great deal, becoming a product of my burgeoning sexuality, as I realized I didn’t fit in within everyone else because of my desires. By the age of 16, I started coming out as gay to family and friends. From how I view individual actions and opinions differently, to the organizations and causes I have been most active in, my sexuality has been the lens through which I view the world. While such a lens has complicated my movement forward, as the spectres of a queer past linger with sunken eyes, it has also given me the desire to stand up, with pain and sadness floating coursing through my blood, and transform the inequities—whether based in race, gender, sexuality or class—that mark our society today.