George Ashiotis started going blind when he was 5 years old. When he was a teenager, he worked at Lighthouse as an assistant counselor, helping younger visually impaired teens.
After helping his sister dye her hair black, he ended up going to work with black fingernails, leading to his first experience of homophobia.
George recalls:
One day I came in with my nails colored by the dye, and the counselor said to me, “What are you, gay?” And I had never heard the word before, but I knew what it meant. I said, “No, I was just helping my sister dye her hair.” And he said, “Well, you better clean your hand, because it looks like you’re gay.”
But What could have been a negative experience turned out to be a positive one, as George began to realize that there were others like him out there:
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
“I thought, Oh, my god, if there’s a name for it, then there must be other people that are maybe experiencing the same thing that I am experiencing, and I just need to find them. It really opened up a door for me and made me feel a lot more comfortable about myself.”
This is George true LGBTQ story:
“I’m from Driftwood,” a collection of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer stories from all over the world,” appears weekends on LGBTQ Nation. For more true LGBT stories, or to share your own, visit “I’m from Driftwood.”
[driftwood]
