- Tech
-
-
Tech
The gadgets, platforms, and software that make your digital life possible. if it bleeps, clicks or blinks, you’ll find it here.
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- Facebook pushes back against moderators complaining about ‘Big Brother’ environment Today 12:46 PM
- Twitter hid post from an account linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Today 10:17 AM
- Bug lets Twitter save your DMs—even after you delete them Friday 7:21 PM
- New website will endlessly generate fake faces thanks to AI Friday 3:41 PM
- FCC looks to tackle robocalls and spoofed texts Friday 2:57 PM
-
-
-
- Internet Culture
-
-
Internet Culture
There’s a community for everyone online.
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- Man fakes getting stood up at Outback Steakhouse Friday 3:03 PM
- Trump Jr’s meme about his dad’s border wall doesn’t get how Congress works Friday 11:44 AM
- Dudes swallow AirPods in YouTube challenge video no one asked for Thursday 8:22 PM
- People are roasting this woman’s tips for avoiding a ‘manrepeller’ apartment Thursday 3:59 PM
- Valentine’s Day challenge dares you to message your crush Wednesday 2:29 PM
-
-
-
- Streaming
-
-
Streaming
You’ve cut the cord—now what?
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- How to stream Leo Santa Cruz vs. Rafael Rivera for free Today 8:00 AM
- ‘Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy’ finds the balance between tragedy and comedy Today 7:30 AM
- How to stream Michael ‘Venom’ Page vs. Paul Daley for free Today 7:00 AM
- How to watch the NBA Dunk Contest 2019 online for free Today 6:50 AM
- The best new TV shows to stream this weekend Today 6:00 AM
-
-
-
- IRL
-
-
IRL
Where your off- and online identities collide.
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- Writers want this book canceled for misgendering its protagonist Friday 12:15 PM
- FBI reportedly looking into Ryan Adams’ communications with underage girl Friday 11:25 AM
- Chrissy Teigen throws shade at Logan Paul-Kaitlin Bennett pairing Friday 10:48 AM
- Women sue border patrol for detaining them for speaking Spanish Friday 10:20 AM
- Trans YouTube streamer shot in leg by security guard (updated) Friday 9:25 AM
-
-
-
- Social
-
-
Social
If it happens online, it’s here.
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- Trump meme removed after copyright complaint 8 Months Ago
- Facebook pushes back against moderators complaining about ‘Big Brother’ environment Today 12:46 PM
- Twitter hid post from an account linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Today 10:17 AM
- How to stream Leo Santa Cruz vs. Rafael Rivera for free Today 8:00 AM
- ‘Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy’ finds the balance between tragedy and comedy Today 7:30 AM
-
-
-
- Bazaar
-
-
Bazaar
The Bazaar specializes in the stuff you don’t actually need…but you really, really want.
-
Categories
-
-
Latest
- Play all your NES games in high def with the Hyperkin RetroN HD Tuesday 8:39 AM
- The Introvert Activity Book is perfect for those who find solace in alone time Monday 11:30 AM
- Essential tips and tools to make your sex life deeper Monday 9:29 AM
- How to watch your favorite classic ’90s anime online Thursday 11:53 AM
- 17 Galentine’s Day gifts to give your favorite ladies Wednesday 10:33 AM
-
-
-
- More
- Search
See all Editor's Picks →
See all Popular →
Represented by Complex Media, Inc. for advertising sales.
Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Ethics
Latest
- Trump meme removed after copyright complaint 8 Months Ago
- Facebook pushes back against moderators complaining about ‘Big Brother’ environment Today 12:46 PM
- Twitter hid post from an account linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Today 10:17 AM
- How to stream Leo Santa Cruz vs. Rafael Rivera for free Today 8:00 AM
- ‘Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy’ finds the balance between tragedy and comedy Today 7:30 AM
- How to stream Michael ‘Venom’ Page vs. Paul Daley for free Today 7:00 AM
- How to watch the NBA Dunk Contest 2019 online for free Today 6:50 AM
- The best new TV shows to stream this weekend Today 6:00 AM
- Bug lets Twitter save your DMs—even after you delete them Friday 7:21 PM
- Guy mansplains song to Japanese Breakfast, the female artist who wrote the song Friday 6:38 PM
- Ann Coulter’s Twitter bio links to a vulgar parody account Friday 5:22 PM
- Popular YouTube music channel gets income yanked for ‘repetitious’ content Friday 4:14 PM
- New website will endlessly generate fake faces thanks to AI Friday 3:41 PM
- Man fakes getting stood up at Outback Steakhouse Friday 3:03 PM
- FCC looks to tackle robocalls and spoofed texts Friday 2:57 PM
Overcoming the silence of growing up Black, gay, and with an immigrant father

Red Confidential/Shutterstock (Licensed)
I didn’t choose my father, my sexuality, or my skin color—but I did choose to stop being silent.
The night that I found out my stepfather was arrested seemed like any other back then. I was 13, living on the east side of Cleveland. He was away on yet another business trip, the nature of which was never truly explained to me. While talking to him on the phone that week, I’d followed my mother’s rules and called him my uncle.
For the previous year, I had adjusted to the strange habits my brother and I were encouraged to adopt regarding my stepfather’s whereabouts. There was the month when we spent every weekend shooing away rats with brooms and wiping caked-on dust off the appliances of my stepfather’s new apartment in a ghetto on the west side of Cleveland that had more damaged businesses, abandoned homes, and random men yelling outside than our own neighborhood; the kind of place I’d imagine my mother would usually tell us to never hang out. The only explanation I was given was that he simply “needed an extra place to stay.” Even at school, I was told to rarely mention him.
At the time, I simply chalked it up to another truth that children simply shouldn’t know. In retrospect, it was the way my family had to cope with having an undocumented man as a father.
In the days following his arrest, our family made sure to cover our tracks. Late one night, my mother instructed us to roam through dressers, closets, and the attic for as many items of his as possible. By the time the night ended, most of his belongings were in a storage unit and I knew exactly why, even though my mother didn’t tell me.
We had to remove his presence from our home, act as if he had never really lived there, in case the police suspected we had aided the man who had raised us.
. . .
Days turned to weeks. Eventually, my stepfather was sentenced to four years at a correctional facility in Youngstown, Ohio. I started high school and my body began to change in new ways. I grew facial hair. My voice deepened. When I looked in the mirror, I no longer hated myself. Maybe it was growing up in a family of secrets that had taught me to keep the deepest secret of my own: I was gay and I had no idea how to come out to my family.
My stepfather’s loss was most apparent during family dinners on Sundays. His spot at the table stared back at us, empty. Despite discovering my passion for writing that year, I hated writing him letters, just like I hated the phone calls. After all the secrets about how our family was held together, it made me sick to spout niceties about the shiny parts of my teenage life.
On one hand, I felt selfish for being angry with him. He’d driven me to bookstores as a child, marveled at my art projects, and calmed my mother when her temper flared. I knew that my phone calls, letters, and visits mattered to him because every detail I provided helped him understand the man I was becoming from behind bars.
At the same time, however, I wondered if he’d ever really want to know the real me. No one had helped me prepare for the imploding of our family’s facade, just as no could prepare me for what would happen when my own illusion, my heterosexuality, could no longer hold. I believed any conversation about coping with loss would only add stress to an already stressful situation and be more shallow than what I desperately needed.
. . .
Prison visits took up entire Sundays. We would wear nice clothes, drive to the private prison, and pass through the metal gates. Inside, we had to strip our pockets, show our identification, walk through metal detectors, and appear content with this treatment. I hated the way the prison guards casually handled their jobs as captors. Despite “the talk” that every Black child is given while growing up, seeing the mass of Black and Brown men in orange jumpsuits was the first time this realization hit home: This country jails us so casually.
On one visit in particular, I was the most agitated I’d ever been. My brother was leaving soon for the military. My mother and I had been having horrible arguments for weeks. Instead of being interested and reassuring about what was actually bothering me, my mother chose this visit to encourage my stepfather to tell me to shape up.
But I was reaching my limit with facades.
“You’re gone,” I said as I looked at my stepfather. “Now my brother’s leaving. All I’m gonna have left is…”
My mother’s expression went slack. Neither of them responded.
. . .
I was 15 years old when a teacher assigned us to write a speech about “how the government had affected our lives personally.” I wrote about how kind my stepfather had been to me and what it felt like to stand in the middle of the emptiness he left behind. Apparently, the strength to speak out such loss did not need to be pulled out of me. It had been there all along.
Living with my father’s absence forced me to wage war against all the other shades of shame I’d acquired—mentally rehearsing having to live on the streets if my parents kicked me out for being gay; the future wedding that my mother would choose not to come to, or that my stepfather legally could not; the letters, the phone calls that I hadn’t responded to quickly enough.
I decided then that it was time to no longer be afraid of being gay, of not being the right kind of Black boy for anyone, of being in a family in which such a loss could happen. When I finished my speech, my classmates gazed back at me, tender. Many of them had lost someone to prison or street violence, so what about airing the truth had made me so afraid?
It was because—and Trump’s America proves it—shame is used to silence people, to hold steady an illusion that benefits some but hurts many others.
. . .
Months after that prison visit, my mother woke me up in my room and asked me the question I’d been dreading: “Are you gay?”
Though I felt relief for finally speaking that truth, there was no solace in the fact that I couldn’t control what my mother chose to do with it. The next months at home were even lonelier as my mother’s only acknowledgement of my sexuality was to ask with a grimace, “Are you still having these feelings?”
I wrote and called my father less frequently. By the time college acceptance letters and high school graduation arrived, my father’s release date was set. I’d always suspected that my mother would reject my sexuality, but deep down, I had hope for my father’s open-mindedness.
I spent the summer before university with my stepfather in Kingston, Jamaica. Kingston, the capital, is where, in the documentary Gully Queens, LGBTQ Jamaicans are forced out of their homes, end up living in the storm drains, and sometimes have to fend off knife attacks in the night.
Nerves had eaten me up the entire trip. It was a hot day when I called him into my room.
“I, I have something to tell you and…” I froze and took a breath. “Would you care if I was gay?”
He fiddled with the ring on his finger for a long time and then closed the bedroom door.
“What did you just say?”
“It doesn’t have to change anything. I just… You’re my father and I wanted to tell you.”
The look on his face was grave. For the next hour, I stumbled through trying to answer his offensive questions. The part that stung the most, though, was when he said, “I love you, but I don’t want that to be part of my life.”
The comment haunted me even as I took a shower later that day, as I packed my bags to leave, and as I broke down in the airplane bathroom. The irony was that I’d never asked for an undocumented father, and yet I had embraced him wholly for as long as I could. I’d yearned for him to return the favor; so much so, I’d made the effort to open up to him.
I left Jamaica, never really able to see him the same. But when he calls, I answer. I don’t want to be part of the silence that plagued our family for so long.