LORENZO
Hello, my name is Lorenzo and this is my story. I’m a gay man living in Rotterdam at the moment, I’m originally from the cost of the Adriatic Sea, Italy,Trieste. I’ve been growing up in a very nice and open family where I’ve been taught from the beginning that there was no question that was not a good question. I remember asking for hours and hours the most stupid questions about why should I do this or why should I do that. And it was always all right. I’ve been very outgoing in the very firsts years of my life, and then, I still don’t know the reason somehow, at the beginning of my school, I started to become very shy, very scared of many things. But whatever, life went on and I was still a very happy kid. I loved to dance all the time, I would dance with the blankets around myself spinning in the living room, I would jump doing big grand jetés in the corridor of my house. And so eventually my parent were “Do you like to dance? Then would you like to take dance classes?” And I was like “Yes!”. So we went to this ballet school to talk to the teacher who of course was really really happy to see a boy wanting to dance. Then I saw some girls there sitting in the room and they started laughing, and some of them were also in my school, I was more or less 7 y.o back then, and they were laughing and laughing, and I don’t think they meant it bad, but I got so scared I ran away! I remember running this stairs down of this big building and running out. I didn’t want to have anything to do with dance. And that went on until I was fifteen, when in between I tried all sports possible, and then finally I got the courage to decide to inscribe myself again to dance classes. But it took tree times to walk towards the dance studio, I was alone back then, I didn’t need my mother with me anymore, and the tree times I walked to the door and then I walked away, and then again I walked to the door and then I walked away, and then finally with a shaking voice I asked to inscribe to the course, and so I did. And then I started to learn about my body, to learn about myself. I slowly started uncovering things that I was afraid to show, afraid to express. I was starting to have confidence in myself, which was put down during my early teenage years with a lot of verbal bullying from my classmates, from the teachers, I had to be strong, I had to ignore all this comments I’ve been told. And I think it’s something I’m still struggling with today and something that thanks to dance I could start to let go but it’s a long process. Then around that years when I started dancing I also started to discover my sexuality, and I realised that there was a word that was homosexual, Gay, that described what I was.
Because I was gay, I knew that already from when I was 6 I guess, when I asked my classmates to play massage, my male friends. So I knew I liked boys, to look at boys to be tender with boys, I just didn’t know that there was a word to describe it. But then I found out there was, and I also found out that there I a lot of controversy about it. That actually for many people that’s not okay, like dancing was not okay, so this was also not okay. I started reading , wikipedia, I think it was the beginning of wikipedia. I had this big encyclopaedia at home and I looked up what it means to be homosexual. And I also opened the catechism from the church, because I have been a church boy all my life, and I still am! And I looked what it said. And I would sneak in the book shops to look for books and just read them very fast, just a little bit, to see what it was. I remember once I entered in this book store, it was a catholic book store. And I found this book about sexuality, and actually there was a positive view on homosexuality from the writer. And that I think was the first coming out I ever had, was by email to the writer of this book, saying that I was gay and that I was appreciating he not necessarily having a negative look on homosexuality. And I got an answer :to consider that it might be a phase but at the same time to keep growing, keep living everyday. I think that gave me a lot of strength to go on, but at the same time I never had the courage to talk about it with my parents, and I still felt I didn’t belong in my hometown, Trieste. Machoism was everywhere ,you had to be a real man, you had to be strong, you had to do sports. And surely dancing was not a thing, for a real man. And then eventually I was like I want to leave this country I don’t want to live here, I want to be in a place where I can be myself. So the first occasion to leave I took it, and it was to come to study abroad, to my dance education abroad, in the Netherlands. It was so new to be able to actually be openly gay, not just with one or two friends. And it was very new and It was very strange, but I couldn’t wait for it. I remember I was actually so glad that this very bold classmate of the dance academy, that he asked me “Are you gay or straight!?”, and then I said “I’m gay!”. He was actually quite shocked because I looked quite of a shy person and I could’t wait to just say it, to say it knowing that it was okay, because I was not the only one, because in the dance academy most of guys are gay and that’s okay. And I started to be open about who I was everywhere, every moment. And then I went on with my life, I learned to dance in the club. I never went to a club before, I had to learn to dance in the club, I was like a stick! And I learned to let go, to have fun, and I learned new ways of expressing myself, I learned to have sex, which I never had before. And I started to get attached to some people, I had a small distance relationship, which ended up with a lot of pain. And stranger enough that gave me a push to come out with my family. I was supposed to go to an audition and I changed my plan, I cancelled the audition, and just took a flight to Italy. I said “Look I went through something very difficult right now. You probably imagine that there was some romance involved. Well it was not with a girl , it was with a boy.” And they were very shocked, they didn’t expected it. They thought about it maybe, but never really. My father was kind of okay with it, didn’t said much, my mom was destroyed…
