Hidden Above Manhattan, A Gay Son’s Link to His Dad

Thanks so much to Towleroad for sharing this beautiful and captivating story of a bond many of us only hope for.

Vincent James Arcuri, Jr., who shares a name with his Dad told his brilliant story in words far better than I could possibly come up with and we wanted to share it with you. Vincent’s critically-acclaimed one-man show, www.BecomingButch.com debuted last year in Los Angeles. Read his whole story here at ENR.com. Here’s just a taste of this beautiful story:

We share the same name. And like most fathers, mine dreamed that his young and only son would grow up to follow in his footsteps.

My dad and I enjoyed building toy skyscrapers, but I much preferred playing with my sisters’ Barbie dolls or marching up and down the street with my red, white and blue baton. As the years passed, I grew to be a very different kind of man. While he watched football, I watched soap operas. While he enjoyed a beer with the boys, I liked to gossip with the girls.

As a toddler, I had my very own banana-yellow plastic toy hardhat. At 10 years old, I donned my first professional hardhat to tour a site with Dad. We boarded a rickety service elevator secured to the building’s facade and rode it to the top floor. We walked on to a concrete slab surrounded by steel columns and nothing else. I was petrified and captivated by the spectacular views. That massive shell of concrete and steel would soon become the Irving Trust building in downtown Manhattan, a stunningly simple, white tiered building in the shadows of the Twin Towers.

It’s stories like this that are changing minds around the world. Tell your story. It’s the only way we can do this.