'I'm proud of how far I've come. I'm proud of how far I will go': LGBTQ+ New Yorkers on Pride

storytelling

To mark Pride Month, WNYC is sharing the voices of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. Our Community Partnerships Desk recently set up shop at the Brooklyn Community Pride Center in Crown Heights to talk with folks about what it means to be LGBTQ+ in today's world and what pride means to them. Brooklyn resident Billy Smith shares his story.

The transcript of Billy Smith's story has been lightly edited for clarity.

Billy Smith:

I live in Brooklyn. I'm 26, I am a cis man, and I use he/him pronouns. The intersectionality between being queer and Black is there's not a lot of spaces for me, and then the spaces for me that are for me, they don't always want me there, or they don't always like me there. You can go to a Black space, and they don't want queer people. You can go to a queer space, and they don't want Black people. You can go to a Black queer space, and they don't want you. So, I make my own space.

I started out by deciding that I was done being a people pleaser. I stopped saying yes to certain things. I started saying no to certain things. I started making my dichotomy. I changed my name from William to Billy, and I said, and guess what? That's me now. That is who I am. That's my space. Billy gets to say what he wants and, help who he wants, and say no when he wants. I've decided that I'm chasing the joys in my life, and it's not focusing on the bad stuff. Life's hard enough.

My sibling is my role model. My mother is my role model. Persevering through this world is hard and watching them do it helps me to do it, too. If we're going a little bit higher than that, I would say that I've always been obsessed with James Baldwin. He set the pace for quite a lot of us.

I see myself as a role model for young people because I exist, and existence is enough, right? As soon as I made my space, there was other people who came to it because they felt seen. You can look up, and you can say, look, there is a Black queer man who is alive, which that is all you need to do. You can see that, hey, it might be hard right now, but in a couple of years, he's still alive. I will be, too.

I'm proud of how far I've come. I'm proud of how far I will go. And that's all I need to know.