A Road Trip to Love

“As a child of God, I am greater than anything that can happen to me.” ~ A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Since living in Los Angeles for 10 years and working in West Hollywood, LA’s gay neighborhood, I’ve known far too many people who have overdosed from drugs or alcohol or who have died by suicide. Just last night I was told that a young man I once worked with at a bar, who from the outside appeared to have it all, killed himself this week. He was handsome, charming, in good shape, and c

Dear Arizona Daily Star, My name is Chris Tompkins and I am a teacher in Los Angeles. I was born and raised in Tucson and my mom is a longtime reader of the Star. In addition to being a teacher, I am a writer and an LGBTQ advocate. One of my forms of advocacy is bringing awareness to language and the messages we use that can continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes of the LGBTQ community. My mom just sent me the Feb. 5 article written by Howard Fischer titled, “New school

“Healing yourself is connected with healing others.” Yoko Ono During college, it was easy for me to hide who I was. I used to jokingly tell people I could’ve won an Oscar for the role I played as a straight man. I joined a fraternity and trained myself to act like the guys I knew. I had girlfriends and a life-size poster of Heidi Klum in a bikini hanging on my bedroom wall. I even went so far as to strategically place Playboy magazines in my room to make sure guests saw I loo

Last week I was speaking at a high school and a young girl asked me whether or not I loved myself. I was there to share with them my experience of coming out and I told them loving myself wasn’t something I knew how to do when I was younger. She then asked me, “how do you love yourself?” I told her, “it begins with letting go of who you think you should be and embracing who you are.” I let them know if there was one thing they take away from what I share, it’s to love themsel

I’m in a new relationship. It’s not that new, but it’s unlike any other I’ve had. Up until now I haven’t talked much about it to anyone. We’ve been pretty low key about everything the past few years. Up until this weekend I didn’t realize it was as serious as it was until I shared with a friend some of the challenges we’ve been having lately. I remember when we first met, it was like I had been introduced to a familiar stranger. We hit it off right away and became best friend