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Hi. I'm Randy. And this is how art changed me.
I was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
My family had always been musical.
So to really entertain myself as a single child,
I started playing the piano.
Anything that might make me sad,
I would go to the piano, and it would make me happy.
And I met my -- actually, my future wife
at a music camp at Florida State when we were both 17.
So we became immediately good friends.
And then we started dating,
and we just kind of fell in love.
And so, I was married, living in Atlanta,
and I was an accountant.
And we both had loved New York, Karen and myself.
So we decided we want to move to New York.
So we did. We transferred, and we moved to New York.
And that was in 1976. I was 25.
But the more I walked around New York,
the more I realized, "Wow, there's something about me.
There's just something about me
that I'm just not comfortable with."
And I thought it was growing up in the South,
being kind of repressed in all of the ways
that the South can really repress you.
You know, it's a very hypermasculine,
male-dominated society.
But it was -- it was a -- it was a very strange thing,
because I had realized I lived such an isolated existence.
But we came here, and I was running around
just to get a ticket to something,
and "Chorus Line" had gotten a lot of publicity.
So I stood in line to get a return ticket to "Chorus Line."
So I was lucky enough. I remember the Shubert Theatre.
I remember sitting in the first balcony on the left
watching the show.
And then there was one moment when there was one character --
his name was Paul -- and he came out onstage, really,
and he ended up breaking his leg and he couldn't perform anymore.
And here was this man confessing to be a gay man
and losing his identity, which was dance.
And I had this visceral reaction to it.
It's really hard to describe,
but I just started bawling, really, really crying.
And I didn't -- You know,
I thought it was sympathy for the character.
But it was after that I realized,
no, it was sympathy for myself
'cause I realized this was something about myself
that I had never really acknowledged.
I had looked at men, and, I mean --
but I thought everybody did, you know,
and it was no big deal.
And it was certainly something that I would --
I could have admitted to myself,
because, again, growing up in the South,
which was such a hypermasculine community,
I had no role models of what being gay --
I don't even think it was "gay" back then.
It was like being queer.
There was nobody to look at like,
"This is the way that I am, so, therefore, I must be also."
Suddenly my whole world had just --
or my eyes had been opened,
that there were other people that had similar feelings
that I had.
And I don't know when it came to me,
but it really came to me at one point that I can't --
I can't live a lie.
When I look back at it now,
it's crazy how this visceral moment in "A Chorus Line"
just changed my life forever.
I don't want to say I came screaming out of the closet,
because there was just no way if I was still an accountant.
But -- But by -- by first moving to New York,
by seeing the show that made me confront myself,
the next thing I really needed to confront
was I'm not really an accountant.
This is not who I am.
That's not who I really want to be.
So I gave up my professional career.
I became a CPA.
And I gave it all up, and I went to work in retail.
And then I met, really, the love of my life.
And we've been together 40 years now.
I'm very grateful for the events
that have led up to -- up to now, really,
and I am a very happy, open gay man.
We found out who we are.
We found out who other people are.
We found out who we want to be, who we strive for
by opening ourselves up to the arts.
You know, whether it's going to the theater,
going to the ballet, going to the opera,
going to a museum,
it's very effective, it's very moving,
and that's the beauty of the arts.
You know, it affects us in many different ways
that we don't always realize until, sometimes, years later.
But those tiny little seeds are planted,
and if you just let them grow, it'll change your life.
It did mine, for sure.
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