Oral History Program Andi Tremonte Interviewed by Jim Miles 28 October 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Andi Tremonte Interviewed by Jim Miles 28 October 2022 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Queering the Archives oral history project is a series of oral histories from the LGBTQ+ communities of Weber, Davis and Morgan Counties of Northern Utah. Each interview is a life interview, documenting the interviewee’s unique experiences growing up queer. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Tremonte, Andi, an oral history by Jim Miles, 28 October 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA), Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Andi Tremonte, conducted via Zoom on October 28, 2022 by Jim Miles. Andi discusses growing up in a Mormon household as a queer person and how their gender identity has evolved over the course of their early life. Also present is Grant Ulrigg. JM: It is the 28th of October at approximately 3 p.m. We are in various locations, as we are conducting this interview over Zoom. I am going to be the interviewer today. My name is Jim Miles. My personal pronouns are he/him and I identify as queer, using it as an umbrella term. Grant is here with us behind the camera. If you'll go ahead and sound off? GU: Hi, I'm Grant. I use the pronouns he/him and I identify as a queer man. JM: And we are interviewing today... AT: My name is Andi Tremonte. I use they/them/theirs pronouns and I identify as a queer person. My gender identity is somewhere between genderqueer and nonbinary. JM: Awesome, thank you very much. That is everyone who's in this meeting with us. We have already established with Andi that if there is anything that they would rather not talk about at any point in time, we will move on with zero questions asked. We thank you for your willingness to share your story. Are you ready to begin? AT: Yeah. Let's go for it. JM: Okay, awesome. Since this is a life history, let's just start at the very beginning and ask, where were you born? AT: I was born in Ogden, Utah, at the old McKay-Dee Hospital, the one before the one that we know now. JM: Okay. Have you stayed in Ogden for most of your life? Did you leave at any point? AT: That is kind of an interesting question. I have lived in Davis County, primarily Layton, most of my life, and I don't know why I was born in Ogden as opposed to 1 the Davis Hospital, but maybe the Davis Hospital wasn't built in ‘84 or whatever. But yeah, as a child, probably around the age of four, we moved to Southern California in Temecula for about four years, and then moved right back to Utah—specifically back to Davis County, Utah. So I've probably spent the majority of my life in Davis County, but much of my adult life in Weber County or Ogden City. JM: Okay, so fairly local with a small stint in Temecula, California. AT: Yeah, it's Southern California, so it's like 30 minutes from the border. Really close to San Diego. JM: Okay. You said you were four when you moved out there, but quickly came back. How long was that? AT: Probably about four years. We just lived that fantasy. JM: You spent four years there and said, “No, we're done. Let's go back.” AT: “Let's go back to Utah,” yah. Haven't left since. JM: The family dynamic when you were growing up—can we kind of establish what your family looks like? Siblings, parents? AT: This is kind of tricky and complicated because what I knew at the time is different than what I found out. That dynamic is really quite interesting, that hidden piece. I don't know if the word lying is what I want to use, but misdirecting, maybe, the children, kind of, telling us what narrative they wanted us to understand as opposed to reality. But I have one sibling, a sister. She is, I think, 18 months younger than me, and we grew up together, so we have been close throughout our lives. Really quite close, almost in the way that twins are close. We're definitely not twins. It turns out that we're half-siblings, but that obviously hasn't changed. That genetic component did not matter, but we did find out that in our late teen years. We were just really, really close. We kind of had to be with the home dynamic. It was only our mom. Her father was kind of around, but when we were 2 younger, it was kind of assumed that he was also my father. But it wasn't very clear. It was just like, “Oh, Dad's coming over, right?” But I looked very different from him. I didn't look anything like him. He looked a lot like my sister. It took me until I think I was 16 or 17 to hard prove that he was not my father, and so that made a lot of sense because when we were younger, he treated me very different than the way he treated her. I just thought, “Oh, I guess I'm just like a piece of shit.” When you're a kid, that really sends a message, especially when you're a queer kid who can't talk about that because you grew up in a Mormon family. It just adds on to that, right? “Oh, me being different does mean that people don't love me, right?” I will hit a little bit on that Mormon aspect in a minute because that is a very important piece, especially with the language that I use, ‘Mormon’ as opposed to ‘LDS’. My mom was very secretive. She wasn't home a lot, and essentially, I was the older sibling, so I became the caretaker for my sibling and also the caretaker for my mom. She was diabetic, and in many instances, she would either forget to eat or wouldn't eat. So sometimes you would wake up in the middle of the night—she'd made this sound. It was almost like yelling and almost like asking for help, but not being able to verbalize that. So, we would wake up to that and know that we had to quickly get to Mom, check her blood sugar, feed her if her jaw was locked. That was my childhood. It was not having a parent, an adult, a caring person around—like, she cared, but she was busy. She had an illness that was poorly managed, and we were forced to essentially, take care of ourselves. Right now, this is really interesting, too, because when you're an adult thinking back on your childhood, do I blame my mom? Was she abusive? All these things that's really hard to talk about and admit, right, because does that mean that she's a bad person? Does that mean that she was a terrible parent? Or does it mean that she did the best she could and she was abusive in many ways? That role 3 that we had to play as children was not appropriate for us. We were essentially her caretakers, but also taking care of ourselves. It was interesting that we had to feed ourselves, take care of ourselves, kind of manage the household. My sister just went wild. I very much, like, obeyed every rule: I never did drugs, I never drank. I never did anything. I just stayed in the house; I never left. So that dynamic was really interesting because the only real time that we had with her was taking care of her. That sucked. I have never met my father, the person who gave me half my genetic material. I did find out what his name was later in life. When I was like 16 or 17, my sister found a letter. As I said, my mom was super secretive, so we just didn't know because she hid everything. We had no idea. We didn't have a phone. For most, if not all of my teenage years, we lived in a trailer in Layton. There was always one utility that we didn't have, and we never had a phone, growing up. I was pretty late to getting a cell phone. I think it was in my mid-twenties. We grew up in poverty. We had food stamps back when they were actually stamps. I don't know if that kind of answers your question about that, but the dynamic was incredibly stressful. It did not cultivate learning, emotional connection, emotional stability, emotional intelligence. From a very young age, I've had to be in survival mode, and that's just how it has been. Combine that with being queer and then coming out as trans later, like, “Gosh, when do I get a break?” I guess I'll talk a little bit about the Mormon piece now. The reason why I use the term ‘Mormon’—I do understand that the vernacular and the words that are used to describe folks who come from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have changed. First off, I grew up in Davis County in the ‘90s and the 2000s. During that time is when the church had spent so many millions of dollars to take back the term ‘Mormon’. I don't know if you've ever seen those videos, like, "Hi, my 4 name is [insert celebrity name], I'm Mormon." We were Mormon, so being culturally Mormon is different than being culturally LDS. Just like Utah County Mormons versus Salt Lake County versus the rest of the state versus Logan versus Davis County. They're all different subcultures within a greater culture, and so we were Davis County Mormons, and no one in leadership today gets to take that away from me. That's what we grew up, and that's a very specific culture and community. I'm culturally Mormon, I guess, if you want to define that. But that also meant that it was a little bit more laid-back, a little bit more chill, in the way that everyone was just happy. Sometimes people disobeyed some of the rules, like Word of Wisdom and all that stuff. But it wasn't like, “Oh, heck, you're out!” It wasn't super strict like it is now. I always knew that being truthful about my identity was an absolute no-go, right? We saw what people were saying on TV. We saw what other church board members were saying, even what my mom and my family were saying. When Ellen came out, the discussions and the things that were said just on that in our household were just, I knew that there was absolutely no way that I will ever tell anybody. Being queer—being trans—can be very, very lonely. Especially within that culture it's like, “Okay, so there's this really huge part of me that I can't share with anyone, but it is so important to my very being, and that hurts so bad.” It's because I don't want to end up alone. I don't want to be sad, and I want to be able to connect with people who love and care about me—not because I fit some certain standard. On top of everything that I went through as a child, it was like, “Okay, yeah, this is a little bit rough.” The first time I went to Pride in my mid-teens, I had a panic attack. That was the first time I've ever had a panic attack, because I saw two men holding hands and I freaked out. I freaked out because what I am was right there in the middle of 5 the street in public, and I was so nervous about that. I flipped out, and that is when I started Zoloft and Xanax. I think they gave me Xanax, but that's not something that I generally took throughout my life, which is interesting because my sister latched onto that pretty hard. That dynamic was really interesting. And then in the teenage years, one of my family members came over to the trailer, and it was in the middle of winter, and Utah winters are very cold. They realized that we didn't have heat, and this was quite normal for us, right? To not have heat, to not have power; we never had a phone. That's why people had to come over. And so when they saw that we didn't have heat in the middle of winter and that we were trying to use space heaters, and we're wearing winter jackets in our house, that's when basically shit hit the fan. My sister lived with one of our childhood friends of the family. She had custody of her, and so child support and stuff would be given to her, and then one of our aunts had custody of me. So I lived with a couple of my cousins and then my aunt and uncle, and my uncle was the school cop for my high school. I think that's how I avoided bullying—because I got driven to school by the school cop and he was my uncle. As much as my opinions on law enforcement and the criminal justice system have changed over the years, I think that protected me. I didn't get bullied—not for being gay at least; I did get bullied for being fat. But, yeah, does that answer your question? JM: That answers lots of questions. I will remind you this is your life story, so anything you feel like sharing is more than appreciated. AT: Awesome. JM: It informs the larger picture of you. You may have gone above and beyond that single question, but don't worry, you ticked off plenty of other ones that were further down the list. 6 AT: It's so hard because with the family dynamics—there are so many things that are involved in family dynamics that alter and change it. I have a degree in psychology and in criminal justice, so it’s hard—how can you talk about one thing without also connecting it to everything else? But there you go. JM: Right. I do want to make sure that I'm understanding fully, so if I'm correct, you lived with your sister, who was your half-sister? AT: Yes. JM: How would you like us to refer to her going on? Just your sister? AT: Yeah, sister. I only have one sister. My father, I think he has like four kids. I've never met them. I don't even know their names, so she's literally my only sibling. JM: Okay. So you grew up with your sister and your mom? AT: Yep. JM: I'm still trying to figure out who your sister's father was. Was she living with you and you assumed… AT: Okay, that's a good question. I'll break that down a little bit. I'm 99% sure he lived with us in an apartment in California. When we moved back to Utah is when him and my mom split. My sister and I always lived together until she moved in with the family friend, and then a little bit later, I moved in with my aunt. JM: And that was during high school? AT: During high school, probably in my junior, senior year is when they got custody of me. So they got all the child support checks, and they were my legal guardian for that year-and-a-half or whatever, until I moved back in with my mom. JM: Perfect. So you grew up with your sister and your mother until about age eight, you said, when you moved back to Utah? AT: Yes. JM: And then so then you go into a single parent household with your mother, until— 7 AT: And my sister, yes. JM: Sorry, and your sister until high school, at which point your sister moves in with the family friend a little sooner than you move in with the aunt and uncle? AT: Yes. I'm really kind of unsure of the age that she moved in with that family friend. I'm trying to think of that family friend's name. I can see her face, but for some reason can't remember. She moved probably a year before I moved in with my aunt and uncle. It was just basically me alone in the house. At one point—it might have been before or after my sister moved out, and she was not 18, she was definitely in her mid-teens—my mom moved in with her boyfriend, so me and my sister kind of just chilled at the house. I was definitely not 18. It was kind of proxy parenting, where she would come over and bring food and make sure we had food in the [trailer]. But I just lived alone in that trailer, while my sister lived with the family friend, and then after, I lived with my aunt. I graduated high school when I was 17 because we started school in California, so you started a year earlier. Hopefully that helps with the age difference. JM: Yes, that does also help. AT: I am under 18 for all of this. JM: Okay. I think I understand. Grant, do you understand where we're at? GU: Yeah, I understand. AT: Ask as many questions as you need to because there's a lot, I guess. JM: Thank you for clarifying that, because that helps with the next question we tend to like to ask. Obviously, you had a unique family dynamic, but you did mention you were raised religious in the Mormon Church, so we can assume a couple of things about what you were taught about gender roles. But living in such a unique situation, especially in a single parent household, can also affect gender roles that 8 are viewed. So, what do you feel like you were taught about gender roles growing up and what you latched on to? AT: That's a really good question. My mom did everything. She fixed the car, she cleaned everything. She was very, very, high-stress, high anxiety, so she was the type of person that just cleaned everything. Everything was so meticulously organized. When she would go into people's houses—and it was probably to alleviate anxiety—she would just start organizing stuff, so she just did everything. So much so that even as kids, as far back as I can remember, we weren't even allowed to do our hair. Within like high school and stuff, middle school, my mom still did my hair. She braided our hair every night after we took baths, and then we'd wake up in the morning and she would do our hair or whatever. So we had very little control over a lot of the things that we did, but we learned that we need to do everything, right? We need to take care of the yard. We need to take care of the house. We need to cook, clean, everything. It was really interesting. I think a lot of the gender roles that I learned like that were a little bit different than that were, like, at school and through your friends. [Inaudible] traditional… and it makes sense with how my gender identity has evolved over the years. But in my teenage years, my form of rebellion was I cut my hair short. I used to have hair down to my butt. It was just so long. But I cut my hair short, and so I kept it short. I felt a lot more comfortable in that way. When people would, quote unquote, ‘misgender me’ and call me he and sir, it was like… I guess the term now, as I understand it, would be gender euphoria, right? But back then I was just like, "I just feel so good about this. I wish this would happen all the time." I just latched on to those traditional male gender roles, and that combined with my role as caretaker in my household and created this very unique combination of roles that I played in people's lives. So yeah, most of the gender 9 roles, other than literally, “You have to do everything to be valid,” I guess, are those male/masculine gender roles that I learned through my social interactions with folks. JM: That makes total sense. Did you ever feel—because growing up specifically in the Mormon Church is a uniquely specific thing for Utah, which we focus on a little bit later on down here, if you do have experience with the church—did you ever feel like those kind of ran up against each other… AT: Yes. JM: …observed, going up to a highly gendered organization where they have strong gender roles? Do you feel like those ran into each other? AT: That's actually really interesting because my mom never wore dresses, never wore skirts, but when she went to church, she was almost like a completely different person. She got called to be a primary teacher, so she taught primary, and I can't remember what age group her class was, but it was really interesting because you have you go to your ward; you go to your church and it's almost completely different than what happens on the outside. When I talk a little bit about my identity clashing with basically everything, a huge part of it is that we always went to church every Sunday and it just felt so weird, right? For some reason, I was never invited to Young Women. I just didn't transition to that. I was of age, but it just didn't happen. I went to a girls’ camp one year, but at one point, it just stopped, like I didn't progress. I was already breaking free of the church. I knew that it wasn't my jam. I understand that religion serves a purpose, but it was horseshit, and so it was just like, “I can't grasp on to this.” I think disassociation was a really big coping mechanism for me, so when I was in those spaces, I was not there. I had a bag of Cheerios that your parents bring, and I was just somewhere else. I had a huge imagination, super creative. I basically just created worlds for myself that I lived in. I guess, especially when you 10 ask that question, I never really thought about that, but that makes sense, right? I was in this place that was unsafe. It didn't feel right, and so I left. Not physically, but I did leave. So, I don't know why, but for some reason I just wasn't invited, and I just didn't upgrade to Young Women. I would just stay in my mom's primary class with her. Even though I didn't have the language or the words for it, I knew that this didn't mesh with me or how I viewed the world. JM: Awesome. That's a very unique and interesting perspective. Thank you. I guess the next part we can jump into is, 'cause they're not necessarily in tandem, but there is some overlap. What were you taught about sexuality, growing up? AT: That was a good question. I'm sure you've had interactions. Maybe you are LDS yourself or have been, either of you. But a lot of the teachings and the way that people interact is very passive-aggressive and indirect; it’s like these rewards and punishments. I don't remember specifically being taught about, "Hey, you know, don't [be gay]." It was folks saying, “Good kids don't do that,” or “We wouldn't do that, would we?” Or seeing people get punished, seeing the way that the news depicted things, how things were talked about in the home, things like that. It's really interesting that I don't remember very many specifics, and I think it might be that disassociation, that disconnect while I was at church or in those settings. But I did know that being gay was bad. I didn't know what a trans person was. I knew in my heart of hearts that having sex before marriage was bad and that we don't do that. I also knew that queer people couldn't get married, and so it was kind of like, “Well, then can queer people have sex, because they can't get married?” It was kind of confusing in many ways, if that makes sense? JM: Yeah, it does. Absolutely. Just to make sure I'm remembering correctly, you do identify as both genderqueer and queer in terms of sexuality, right? 11 AT: Yeah. Queer in the sense that I'm generally not attracted sexually or romantically to cisgender men. Then my gender journey is… God, just like everything else in my dang life, it’s a little bit complicated. I came out as trans, transmasculine, trans male in like 2016. One of my friends told me, “Hey, you go through this crisis every six months. I think you should look into gender identity.” It was pretty clear. So I came out and had a therapist. I still have the same therapist. We were going over transition stuff, using he/him pronouns. Then Trump happened, and ever since then, I just went right back in the closet. So now that journey is at a standstill for me. That's mostly due to safety, just feeling like I have people in my life that I can talk about that and feel safe and secure, I guess. So it's kind of a complicated piece, if that also makes sense? JM: Yeah, absolutely it does. GU: I do have a follow-up for that. JM: Go for it. GU: So you talked about, growing up, how being gay is wrong, but do they have sex, because you had to get married before having sex. Once marriage equality happened in 2015, do you think that possibly helped you come out as trans in 2016? AT: Ooh, I did not think about that! That's really interesting. I just came to terms with the fact that I was probably just never going to get married and never find a partner, and that fear has kind of followed me throughout adulthood. But honestly, I don't know. That's a really good question because my friend, she was like, “Hey, honey, you got to deal with this,” and that kind of forced me to look, like, “Oh, I never thought about that.” Man, that's a good question. I am unsure. GU: That's an honest answer, so that's all I can ask of you. AT: Dude, yeah. That's so interesting. Never thought about that. 12 JM: There you go. You've got something to unpack tonight when you go to bed. I have so many questions written down, and Grant sparked two more. Come on Grant, stay chronological [laughing]. We got to do childhood before we even get to adulthood. AT: I know, I'm sorry. There's so much. I guess I've never done this, too, so I think the way that I'm presenting the information might be a little confusing. So, ask as many questions. I'm learning too. JM: You're not giving anything irrelevant yet, so feel free to go through it. I'm just going to clarify the timeline just so people who are reading can understand what happens. I guess a good place to start is, how old are you as of now? So I can line up kind of historical events as we start getting into some of them. AT: I'm 37. My birthday is November 6th, so I'll be 38 in like a week. JM: Okay, 37. Help me with my math, about when were you graduating high school? AT: I graduated in 2002. I was 17. JM: Okay, there we go. I knew we were going to have those 9/11 and Columbine questions coming up soon. AT: Oh, okay. JM: We do have those as supplementary [questions] just to inform. Those can have an effect on people's upbringing, of course. Now that I have that clarified, I'm gonna jump back a little bit further to childhood, maybe not even childhood. When was kind of the first time that you might have recognized that, “I may not be straight or cis?” AT: I was really young, so I remember it was when we lived in the apartment in Layton, so I was probably eight to 12. Those early years, I remember just lying in bed and just wishing that I would wake up male or as a boy. I just didn't understand that process of, “Why am I like this? Why doesn't this work out right?” 13 I had really close female best friends. When you look back, it's like, “Okay, honey, all right.” But the times that I very clearly remember is after we moved back from California, and we lived in that apartment in Layton in those bunk beds. So, we were young, so probably around eight, eight or nine. JM: Awesome. That's a long ways from that first period of starting to question to—you said 2016 is when you start to explore, establishing your more current gender identity. AT: Yeah. JM: So that's kind of a long ways, and we'd love to talk about that more as it comes up. I think this is a good place to jump into, what was your first exposure to queerness, whether it be on TV? Was it Ellen? That was a lot of people's first exposure, or—? AT: I know that my mom had a family friend. I don't know if [she] was necessarily my mom's friend or just a friend of our family, but her name was Gay and I was very much drawn to her. Because her name was Gay, right? She's just a nice, normal gal, like, whatever. I don’t know if there was anything necessarily like attraction or anything. I don't remember knowing any queer people or trans people growing up. I know Ellen was a really big thing. My uncle lived with us in an apartment for several years, and so when my mom would do laundry, she would have us put away the laundry. I know that I found, like, some of his dirty magazines, but I don't remember if they specifically had, like, gals together. But I do remember finding those magazines and very much like, “Hey, I'll definitely do laundry. You want me to put laundry away? I got it, Mom. Don't worry.” I know we kind of joke about it now but I think that that played [a role] because I was just like, “What?” I've never seen anything like that, even though it was—I'm pretty sure it was—hetero stuff, but it was like, “Wow, okay, this is… Whoa, what's going on here?” 14 And then Ellen—I think after Ellen came out and after that show was banned in the house, I think that's when I started to look more into it. When did Ellen come out? What year? Let's look that up. GU: I wanna say '97 or '98. AT: Oh, so yeah, it ended in '98, so I think you're right. It was like all these other things were dim light bulbs that were kind of blinking in the dark. But then that was like a floodlight or whatever, that just, like, exposed the bare floor. So, I know after that, me and friends would walk to Barnes and Noble to, like, buy books and magazines and stuff. It took me a minute to actually buy one, but like The Advocate, right? The Advocate was like, I would always read it. It took me years and years before I actually bought one. That's wild. I think it might have been Ellen that was really like, “Okay, now I have a jumping-off point that I can kind of start looking into.” Damn that's wild. Millennials, man: we're older than we think. JM: So that would've been right around middle school for you, I believe? AT: Yeah. JM: So, you start questioning around eight, and then middle school's where it kind of solidifies. Was that for your sexuality? AT: Oh, for sure. That's when I learned the word lesbian, and then kind of understanding that more. It was like, “Yep, I'm for sure lesbian. There's no doubt about it. There's no way around it.” The sexual orientation was kind of solidified, and gender identity was much later. JM: Okay. AT: We grew up in a household that was… I mean, some of the favorite words that flew around the house were slurs, you know, including racial slurs. So hearing that from adults in the jokes that they would make, it just made that process much harder, I think. 15 JM: Understandably. So, did that solidify for you… Because ‘coming out’ is kind of an ambiguous term, and there's so many different facets to it. Did you feel like you kind of came out to yourself then, fully? Or was that process later, even though you can look back and say it solidified here, but you hadn't fully come out until later? AT: That is a really good question. I think I knew I was as queer as lesbian, but the difference between knowing and like—I don't know how to explain it. As a teenager, I know that, “This is me.” But also, how do you conceptualize that within your realm of understanding and your experience and your brain development? I remember one time I was playing outside. I was probably around 12 and I had these thoughts of like the Spice Girls and being a lesbian. But I don't know if I fully understood what that necessarily meant. Like, I knew that I was gay, but I didn't. Does that kind of make sense? I don't know how to describe it. JM: I think you're dancing around a concept that a lot of queer people can relate to, that kind of loss for words. You can look back and be like, “Oh, of course I was.” AT: Yeah! JM: I see things determined a bit. AT: But then, I don't know if I could conceptualize that and understand that in my current life. But yeah, that was when I, essentially, I guess, would come out to myself. JM: Once you kind of came out yourself, did you ever get comfortable enough or feel the need to come out to your peers? AT: So anyone I like, I hint a lot, like, very much so. Sometimes you have friends where you kind of do a little experiment stuff and you smooch with your friends. There were a lot of different friends. We kind of just did some of that stuff, but it was just kind of age-appropriate, figuring out what is happening with our bodies, their bodies, and stuff like that. But absolutely did not come out. I never came out to my mom. I never came out to anyone. 16 Before I moved in with the aunt and uncle that got custody of me, I moved in with another aunt—my mom's eldest sister, who is now deceased. So, I'm living with her for probably two weeks, but it just didn't work out, and so I moved in with my uncle. But I did write her a note because she had a young daughter that I was close with. We were the cousins who have always been really close and really good friends. I felt guilty, right? I felt like, “I have to tell her because if I don't tell her and she finds out, she's going to think I'm a creep and that I'm going to be weird with my cousin,” which, obviously, I was not going to. But that fear, especially in the 90s, it's hard to not internalize that and think that you're somehow a terrible person, even though you've done literally nothing terrible. So I wrote her a note and said, “Hey, thanks for letting me live with you. Thank you for letting me exist and have food,” right? Gosh, me apologizing just for existing. “But, you know, I'm gay, and I understand that if you don't want me around my cousin, if that's weird or whatever.” I was just like, “She's going to kick me out. Where am I going to go? I'm fucking like 16 or 17; what am I going to do?” She read it like immediately, and then she walked up, and I'm like, freaking out. And then she hugged me and said, “Honey, we've known since you were eight.” That's like the only coming-out that I ever had, because everyone just knew. I know that when I did start earning money and buying Advocate magazines and asking my mom to drive me to Barnes and Noble, that she was a little weird about it at first and really wouldn't stand next to me and was kind of huffy and whatever. But she turned around relatively quickly, especially the older we got, she knew that, “Hey, you've got to support me because no one else is going to,” you know. JM: Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, there obviously is an aspect of feeling like you need to keep closeted, especially in the nineties, and we'll talk about like 17 ‘Don't Say Gay’ and stuff like that in a minute, but it sounds almost more like—was there also an aspect of not feeling the need to because everyone knew? AT: No, I would say I definitely avoided it 100%. Avoidance is my jam! So yeah, avoidance for sure. Later in life, I absolutely didn't need to feel the need to come out. It was just, “Hey, hello.” But back then, it was 100% avoidance. Having those tough conversations and risking rejection was not something I was willing to do. JM: Okay, so those just happen to be two examples of people who just were like, “Oh, we already knew.” You felt like they figured it out and generally did not want to come out. AT: And I felt guilty. I felt like I had to come out to my aunt because I was living in her house, and I'm assuming that this is due to how I was brought up, like, “You're unnatural; it's wrong,” and all these things, and, “You're a creep.” Even though I was born in the eighties, I didn't experience much of the AIDS epidemic. I was a child, but that still affected me, hearing about it, understanding it. Even like the views on, you know, gay men being child molesters. Even though I wasn't a gay man and not into kids, that still affected me because that was the conversation, that was the narrative that was playing constantly around me. I felt guilty. It's like, “I have to tell you, because either you're going to kick me out now, and then I can prepare for it and figure out what I'm going to do next, instead of it being a surprise later.” JM: Yeah. It's a very interesting perspective, and not totally unrelatable, but a very interesting one. You have already hit on where I'd like to take it next, so let's talk about the kind of climate you were raised in, just generally. You already mentioned you did hear about the AIDS epidemic, and it was on TV, and, of course, that you hear news stories. Did you, and we'll kind of loop in ‘Don't Say Gay,’ because that was in ‘94 as well. Do you have any standout moments of developmental periods, remembering specific incidents that shaped you? Anything that you think of. 18 AT: I mean, it's a lot of the unspoken stuff, just kind of being raised and understanding that who I am wasn't okay. I mean, “Don't ask, don't tell,” even though I obviously wasn't in the military because I was a kid. Hearing about that, and then I know that, it obviously wasn't okay to say at school, but I can't think of explicit things, other than me essentially being fearful of the world because I was something that was terrible within that world. I might think of something else, but other than what I've already kind of shared, I think those are the big things that I can remember. JM: Yeah. Don't feel like that's an unreasonable answer at all; that happened with you, so that's what we want to know. Everyone has those varying—some families are very political, so they knew, or came from military families. That's a very strong influence. And others, not so much. Did you have any partners during that high school era? AT: No. I had a best friend, and I can't remember how I met him, but I think he, like, walked up to me one day in high school, ‘cause I ate lunch alone. I would just kind of hang out outside next to these trees, but he [inaudible] them out. He would buy those bar donuts that had chocolate frosting or whatever on it, every day, because he lived with his grandma and his grandma would give him 50 cents. I was like, “God, I wish I had 50 cents to get a donut. My free lunch doesn't include donuts.” He would come out there, and one day, he made a comment to me or something, and then, I don't know, we became friends. But what we would like to do is we would get on the bus and go to Salt Lake. I spent most of my time with him, and we would go to Salt Lake on a bus, just put in our 75 cents or whatever it was. He would come with me to the Pride Center. He wasn't gay. He wasn't bi. He was so fucking supportive that he would be like, "Hey, let's go to the Pride Center." That was back when it was Marmalade or whatever, so it was like that cool cafe, and they had the youth programming in that back building that was like a theater. 19 They had the stage that was matte black. We would go there on whatever night was like gay kid night or whatever, and so I would meet people, and I kind of hung out with some folks, and one person, I think we were going to hang out, but then she couldn't, because we were in our mid-teens or whatever. One gal, I think, I hung out with her a couple of times, maybe we smooched. Her mom hated me because she knew what was up. But, I mean, I saw her maybe three times. I never dated. I don't know if I dated anyone until I was like, 19 or 20, when I really kind of started. Not that that's like too much later, but, yeah. JM: No, perfect. I guess I did jump the gun a little bit on that one. I probably should have asked, did you have… I guess we'll start even broader than queer friends. Did you have any close relationships at that time that you feel played a role in the process of you realizing your sexuality? AT: Only B, only my best friend, only him. He was just so chill, and he was just super supportive. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't meet him. Especially during those years, I was just so isolated and lonely. If he just didn't walk up and just say whatever weird shit he said—We were very, very close. His house was a safe place. My house, when I couldn't go there for whatever reason, like my sister was partying and her friends were doing drugs and whatever, or we didn't have food or something, I could always go to B’s house. His grandma was like, “Yep, you're here for dinner. What do you want? Are you hungry?” When they left for vacation, I would house-sit. I loved to do that because I had access to food. It was so cool. I could go into there and they would always stock up. It's so wild; I'm sure they knew that I was experiencing food insecurity. It was just cool. If I ever needed anything—I think they bought me a coat one year. I remember that it was so cool that when I would go over there, I could eat; I could have food. It was cool. 20 It was him, 100% him. He was pretty much the only person. Him and his grandparents were the people that supported me through, I guess, that time. Dang, that's wild. JM: Yeah, found families are always one of those big themes throughout the queer community, so it's always good to hear that. During this time, you did mention that your sister was still present for some of this period that you're friends with B. Were you guys… you mentioned very close. Are you still close throughout high school or did you, kind of, the sibling thing where you fade away during those years? AT: I mean, when my sister lived with a family friend, we didn't get to see each other as much. I don't know, it felt weird because she was kind of like the person in the home that we were so close. Like, if I got a cookie, I would break the cookie in half and make sure that she had half the cookie. If my mom was—how do I want to word this? When she was beating her, I would step in and I would take blows and I would be like this, what's the word? Like a tank. I mean, comparing it to video games, right? I was bigger. I was physically stronger than both my mom and my sister combined, and so I just protected her so much. When she left, I think that was hard, because then I was left alone. So, latching on to B was great. He was definitely the rock. Then my sister and him dated for like two weeks, and I was so mad. You know how it is, right? It's like, “Oh, hell no. Get out of here. No, he's coming over here to play Spyro the Dragon with me, not to smooch on you.” Hopefully that answered your question. We remained close throughout adulthood until my mom died. But when my mom died, that, I think, is what broke us, and we stopped talking for three years. We were the type of siblings that were on the phone every single day. We were always so connected. But when someone is mourning the loss of a shared loved 21 one, they can't rely on each other. That's what we tried to do, and it fucked it up. We didn't talk for three years, but we've just recently gotten reconnected or whatever. JM: I think you've given me some context clues as to the next question, but when did your mom end up passing? AT: It's seven or eight years ago, and I feel terrible for not remembering, but I mean, it is what it is, right? Sometimes that time, especially with COVID, it becomes that blur. But yeah, seven or eight years ago. JM: Okay. So this is post-high school, still? AT: Yeah. I was like 29 or 30. JM: Okay. We'll get to that later when I'm talking about it all. AT: God, yeah. JM: Unfortunately, I do like to crawl kind of chronologically, and if that bothers you— AT: I love it, I respect it. JM: —go on with whatever you need to. But yeah. AT: I've never talked about this stuff, because, you know, when are you like, “Okay, do you want to come over for dinner and talk about my childhood trauma? I made roast,” or whatever, right? It's just interesting. A little bit of the bouncing does help me remember the different pieces. This is so interesting to me. JM: Well, I'm glad that you're enjoying this experience. The best we can hope for. We don't want you drudging through it and hating it. AT: Yeah, that'd be… Man, I am a Scorpio, so I guess I do like to hear myself talk [laughs]. JM: It makes for great interviews. AT: [Laughing] Oh, gosh. JM: I'm trying to think. Grant, is there anything else you feel like we really need to hit— middle school, high school age? 22 GU: I don't think so, I think Andi's pretty much hit it a couple of times with each question, so. JM: Yeah, you do a good job at painting over all the questions we need to get. But I do like to just jump back every once in a while, and clarify things. AT: Love it, love it. JM: Let’s go to… Unless there's anything else you'd like to say, kind of pre-high school age. Of course, we can always come back. Don't feel the need, this isn’t “I can't go back to childhood.” AT: Ah, we're stuck! No, I'm sure maybe we'll remember something or tie something in later, but I think that's pretty much it. JM: Okay, then let's kind of jump to graduation. So, you're 17 when you graduate? AT: Yes. JM: Are you still living with your aunt and uncle? AT: I believe that I moved back in with my mom. I was with my aunt and uncle for like a year, year-and-a-half maybe, and then I ‘defected,’ because your mom is always your mom, so that's hard to be like, “Okay, thank you for giving me food and having a warm bed to sleep in, a place to clean my clothes or whatever,” but, yeah, I missed my mom, and I also felt bad that I had left. Again, this theme of guilt is going to be very present within my life course. But I believe I had moved back in with my mom, but I did not get my high school diploma until a year after I had actually graduated because I had used—the citizenship thing is so dumb, but I mean, what can you do? You're living in a chaotic home. You're going to show up to school late sometimes, and it sucks that that poverty and that unstable house, I was punished for it. But I got it. I officially graduated high school. 23 JM: Yes, sounds like a very unique experience. I guess we did jump over Columbine and 9/11—both happened in your high school years. If there's anything you'd like to talk about with those, if that shaped your high school experience at all, feel free to. But that definitely sounds like kind of a chaotic high school experience and then, of course, you have a unique perspective as having food insecurity and insecurity in your home situation and stuff like that. So, it sounds like a very chaotic high school experience. AT: Yeah. JM: If you'd like to talk about any more of that, we can jump to that. Otherwise, I will offer an alternative. The question is, did you start to find stability post-high school at all? AT: That's a good question. Columbine, I don't remember anything about that. 9/11, I do remember, because I was in one of the halls and someone said something about it. Then in the next class, we watched the news coverage of it, but that was it. There wasn't much more. A couple of months ago is when I started finding out more about it. That may have been due to all the chaos and everything that was happening, that I just couldn't take on another layer. Stability has been an issue throughout my life. I have essentially been in survival mode for 99% of my life. I think stability really started to happen after I got my master's degree. That's my criminal justice degree, master’s degree from Weber State. Couldn't stay away from Weber State. That was in December. I worked in state coalitions and these really professional jobs for the last eight years, and stability hasn't really been something until literally after my master’s degree. I mean, I got the job that I hold now like a year ago, and that really started that financial stability, ‘cause now I was making significantly more than I did at my previous job. At the beginning of this year—2022, we're still in that year—[I] started to cut off 24 relationships that were not serving me, that were not healthy or whatever. Kind of taking control then, and that's wild, right? It's wild to think about literally, what, ten months ago was when I was like, “Okay, we're just going to start being stable and kind of figuring it out.” But yeah, after my master's degree. JM: Okay, well. We'll put a pin in that. AT: Yep! JM: Very informative: as we jump through the next portions of your life, understanding that this instability—it sounds specifically financially—is going to be a large part of your story. AT: Yeah. Financial instability, food security, and homelessness. JM: Right. Okay, then let's just jump into, what did you do post-graduation? What was the next thing you moved into? As life gets less structured and you have to make some of it, what did you do? AT: I worked. I got a job at Blockbuster, and so my mom was out of the house with that relationship; she was sometimes kind of back-and-forth, but she was still kind of bringing food and stuff over because I didn't have a job until I was like 19. Mom wasn't there, you know; I was back at Mom's house, back to just living alone. I finally got a job, and I don't remember applying for the job. I wonder if one of my aunts applied for it. But my aunt—my mom's eldest sister, the one I lived with for months for two weeks—I remember her driving me to the job interview and stuff, and she said—because I absolutely didn't have any money for pants or nice clothes for the interview or anything like that—and she's like, “Hey, I'll buy you some pants and you can pay me back.” It's like, “How am I going to pay you back?” I don't think I ended up paying her back. I think she died. She got diagnosed with breast cancer, and pretty shortly after that… But, I mean, does that matter? I don't feel any guilt about it. 25 So, I worked at Blockbuster, and I moved up from part-time CSR, customer service representative, to, I think a ‘shift supervisor’ is what they called it, and then to an ASM [assistant store manager]. Then they went through this weird period where they were not hiring store managers, and so I was an ASM that ran the Hill Field store. It's like, “Okay, you just don't want to pay me,” you know? But yeah, that's what I pretty much did. I did find Yahoo Chats. God, those were the days. A little Yahoo. What's up? I would meet people from online—and now, in the work that I do, absolutely not, right? Like, God, I almost became a statistic. But it was so difficult to find queer people, women, that I just was like, “Okay, maybe I'll just try to be with men.” It was a disaster. I didn't date them. I was just like, “Hey, sure, let's try this. Let's hook up or whatever.” It was just like, “Fuck, yeah, this is not great. I am not living for this right now.” So that didn't last very long. It was just kind of like, “Okay, let's test the waters. Yep, we're just definitely going to avoid that forever.” There were some friends that I had at Blockbuster; we worked together or whatever, and they would invite me over to parties, and they would invite me over to the bar like we used to go to. Was it called the Paper Moon? That lesbian bar back in the day. They would buy me drinks. I would sit in a corner playing Gameboy. When I got Castlevania, I was like, “Oh, my God, I just have to play this in the middle of the bar.” I was not social at all. I had not gotten therapy at that point. But one of their friends, I guess, saw me at the party, and she was with someone at the time. She asked me to dance, and I'm like, “Oh, no, I'm good. Please don't. Please leave me alone.” But we started dating. I hadn't really dated before, so I had no idea what healthy meant. I had no idea how fast you're supposed to go, what milestones. It was chaos. And so pretty quickly, I guess the term would be, like, U-Hauled, right? 26 That relationship was not good. It was very, very bad. She was really, really controlling; you know, it's so weird talking about this. I don't think I've ever talked about this. There was physical abuse; she would slap me if I said anything that she didn't like. Again, I was already quiet and afraid of the world, and now I just… I didn't talk to my sister very often. I didn't go to my sister's wedding because my partner, we wanted to go on vacation or wanted to do something. I couldn't tell my sister, “If I don't go, then there's going to be consequences,” you know? So, I didn't go to my sister's wedding. Then we bought a house like eight months into our relationship. She had a son from a previous relationship. I mean, we bought a couple Hondas. Then she started sleeping with this 18-year-old guy, the cashier at her work, and so we broke up. I didn't have the money to fight her over all of our shared assets, and of course, marriage wasn't a thing then, so I essentially just signed over the house and I lost everything. So, I got fucked over super hard there, but for all the other shit that I was so afraid of and whatever, it just intensified. Dating, there was absolutely no way I was going to become attached to someone again. There's absolutely no way that I would allow someone to know me or be vulnerable with anyone again. That's pretty much been my dating life since then. I think the longest relationship I've had is like a year and a half, but [it was] very surface level. I absolutely do not share any vulnerabilities, and then after my mom died, there's just no way. There's no way I can be in a relationship with people. Damn, dude, that's like, sad as fuck! God, I was like, “Damn.” So, I just had a really traumatic first actual relationship, and after that, it's just like, “Nope. I'm good just having cats.” Painting miniatures and stuff and just not having close relationships. [Pauses] Shit. Damn! I mean, I do have a best friend now. We've been best friends for like, ten years, so that's good, right? 27 JM: Oh, good. AT: God. Yeah, that sounds bad, dang. See? Maybe this is why I don't, like, talk about my life. It's just like, “Gosh, and then this other bad thing happened, and then, and then I went into the closet to get…” Yeah, ugh. I mean, hopefully this is helpful for the project. Oh, man. JM: I promise you, this is all helpful. Queer people haven't had the chance to have their stories be told, and this is the unique thing that queer people experience. There's the term U-Hauling, that is… AT: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. JM: …associated with the queer community. It's a queer thing that a lot of straight couples don't get because they get to have that normal dating relationship that we've not always been able to have. So, this is very helpful and useful. Again, as much as you're willing to share is fantastic with us. We also understand these are also hard moments and life can be hard, so if you want to start an important time, that's also completely understandable. AT: Yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you. JM: Yes. We are, coming up on—we're not at it yet. I think Grant has to head out at 5:00, so we do need to cap the interview at 5:00. We would love to reschedule. It sounds like we've not even broached the first half of your life story. If this is a good stopping point for you, we can... AT: Yeah, I think that's great. We got a good hour and a half of stuff. GU: I'm going to stop recording. [Due to time and scheduling constraints, the interview ends here without further sessions.] 28