TCNJ

35 SPRING 2022 question whether there was some- thing wrong with him. His father, a foreman at a news- paper distribution facility, once told a story about a colleague who had shaved his chest; co-workers laugh- ingly used a slur to describe him, which Wong 's father repeated. "When you're a kid, you internalize that kind of stuff," Wong says. "You realize there is something different about you and you analyze, 'Is this good or bad? Something is not good about what I'm feeling and something is not right with who I am.'" Wong found support and affirma- tion in AOL chatrooms and by studying the few gay peers who were out at his high school. "They seemed to live full lives," he says. "They were not only surviving but thriving at school. Why couldn't that be me?" He came out to his sister when he was 16. At the time, she was studying abroad in Australia, but Wong couldn't wait for her return; he suddenly needed to tell someone. One afternoon when the house was quiet, he went to the downstairs den, closed the door, and dialed her number. "It felt like a weight had been lifted," he says. "How do you bottle that moment and describe it? It's almost impossible. So much had been building up, then you finally say the words and let it out." Though his sister was supportive, Wong wasn't ready to tell his parents. But, at the end of his first week at The College of New Jersey — where he was happily out from the start — his father called him. While cleaning Wong 's bedroom, he had found a backpack containing Gay Times, a general interest magazine for the LGBTQ community. "He asked me if I was normal or abnormal," Wong said. "Words really matter to me and when he said that, it was a deep cut." Wong pushed back, telling his father, "I know what you're trying to say, but those are not the words to use. 'Am I gay? Yes, I am gay.'" Both his parents emphasized that they loved him, but it would take each a while to fully accept Wong 's news. In the meantime, he embraced life at TCNJ, exploring his new sense of self in classes like Nelson Rodriguez's Men and Masculinities: Literary Perspectives and meetings at PRISM, TCNJ's oldest LGBTQ alliance. Originally known as the Gay Union of Trenton State, PRISM was founded in 1976 to provide a social space for gay students and to debunk negative 220,000 # of people that crisis counselors at The Trevor Project served in 2021 through text messages, online chats, and hotline calls Izzy Riddick '23

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