No More Gay for Pay

Today is my last day at my job with the Homosexual Agenda.

It feels really weird.

The best part is never having to ride the A train to work again. The stress of the commute has been the largest drain on my energy and was perhaps the biggest factor in my decision to leave the City. For someone like myself, who quickly feels overwhelmed in constricted, crowded environments, my daily ride to Wall Street is a one-hour and ten-minute exercise in extreme self-discipline. I am happy to never have to do this again.

I'm also, admittedly, ready to move on from this particular position. It has been great; I've learned tons, both in terms of acquiring and refining professional skills but also in discovering an enormous amount about how our legal system works, civil rights law, and the core arguments why full equality for gay, lesbian and bisexual people matters and how it will be won. I have probably the most congenial co-workers one could ever hope to have, and the work environment is one where I am completely free to be myself. It's a place where my impersonations of Kermit the Frog doing a scene from Raging Bull and Mommie Dearest if it had been cast with Carol Channing are not only tolerated, but requested.

I'm going to miss my view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Still, I am ready for a new challenge in a new setting, even if that phrase does sound lifted out of one of the three-hundred terribly banal cover letters I received with the applications to replace me.

I also want to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to my parents. Without their constant support -- financial and otherwise -- this entire New York adventure never would have been possible. They have been incredibly, unspeakably generous. Two years ago, when this job was first offered to me, I was on the brink of declining it because I didn't see how I could afford even my very modest life on a non-profit administrative assistant's salary. But they knew how much I wanted this job, and they volunteered to continue to help me make ends meet, just as they did all through college and the time I spent getting my singing career off the ground. So, a big round of applause for them.