Unmasking of Our Interiors

Book excerpt: A memoir of survival, rebellion, and tenacity, this narrative follows the author’s incredible life journey, from survivor and outcast to mentor, ground-breaker, and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Born a preemie and raised in disfunction and poverty on Toronto’s Skid Row, he was deemed a “sissy-boy” and “faggot” at a young age, as well as someone who “thinks he’s better than us” for the cardinal sin of dreaming of a better life. Never letting those negative voices define who he was or what he could become, he found his voice and stood firm, knowing that education, curiosity, and a passion for finding his own way in life, through trial and error, were his compass to happiness and success. Becoming the first person in his family to ever go to university—eventually earning a Master’s Degree in Interior Design—his outlook grew and evolved, allowing him to finally find and embrace the person his family had always rejected ... the person he was always meant to be. Though touching upon many difficult subjects, from childhood abuse and abandonment to the Aids Epidemic and its devastation impact on the gay community in the 1980s and early ’90s, this story manages to be highly entertaining throughout, overflowing with insight, wisdom, humour ... and no small amount of sass.