My year that was

2022 was a year I will likely never forget. From The Price is Right and my trips to Hawaii and Alaska, to growth as a content creator on TikTok. Great things are on the horizon as I turn the corner toward 2023.

The Price is Right

On January 3rd, after almost 2 months of not being able to say a word, I appeared as a contestant on The Price is Right. I can still remember it as if it just happened. After hours of waiting, without phones, my friend Toni and I, along with the rest of the audience were escorted into the famous CBS studio.

They put Toni and me right up front, which was very encouraging. After not being called down with the first set of contestants and temporarily losing hope, I was the next one called to “COME ON DOWN.” I immediately won the next bid (a new computer!) and was suddenly on stage playing Do the Math competing for a trip to Alaska and Hawaii.

What many people don’t know is that as I was driving to CBS studios I was on the phone with my Mom who asked me - if could win anything, what would it be. “A trip to Hawaii, I said.”

And I did!! I also landed on the dollar ($1000!) after a 3 way tie - which is still one of the greatest, exciting moments of my life. Although I didn’t win the showcase, I would go on two of the most meaningful trips of my life with three of the most important people possible.

NYC

NYC holds a very special place in my heart. I moved there shortly after college to pursue my dreams of becoming an actor back in 2001. My two best friends lived there. One was my Juliet from a recent tour of Romeo and Juliet and the other…well…the other was an infatuation. Back then I would have said I was actually in love. And maybe I was.

As years went by, I became a bit lost in this incredible city, and instead of finding healthy coping skills, I turned, very quickly, to drugs. On drugs I didn’t care that I wasn’t fully out of the closet, that my family didn’t approve of me, despite loving me. I didn’t care that my infatuation would string me along like a puppet all the while telling me not to be a doormat. It was a debilitating dichotomy that I glossed over every weekend with party drugs. By 2013, after a very toxic relationship, multiple firings, even a 17 hour stint in jail, the party was over.

Flash forward to February of 2022, 7 years in recovery, working for Breathe Life Healing Centers in Los Angeles, a trauma center that helps people just like me. I can still remember the call when my manager told me they wanted me to start doing Outreach in NYC. I had only been back once with my parents, when I had 18 months clean, to get my belongings out of storage. Despite my love for the city, it was a difficult trip, and upon leaving I wasn’t sure I would ever go back.

Not knowing how I would feel, I stepped off the plane in February 2022 and knew I was home. No…I have no intentions of moving back to NYC, but after 12 years there, it feels as much like home as my birth state of Mississippi.

These work trips have become so many things for me. I’ve been able to help many LGBTQ people find treatment, which has been amazing. I’ve also made multiple trips to the old restaurants I worked (currently Vic’s, formerly Five Points and The Standard Grill), doing my best to make amends, if quietly. I’ve seen Broadway shows again (A Strange Loop, The Music Man, Funny Girl!), met good friends and roommates, even went back to my old neighborhood in Astoria, Queens. These trips will continue in 2023, as will the healing.

TikTok

Oh TikTok, my beloved TikTok. If you know and understand TikTok, this might make sense to you. If not, let me try my best to explain my complicated year as a content creator.

In early 2022 I had about 5000 followers. I had built an online community of sorts of likeminded people who were either in addiction recovery, friends/family of addicts, allies of the LGBTQ community, if not the community itself, and people who liked to hear me sing - which is what really kept me coming back and creating in the first place.

Then came summer of 2022. Without even realizing it, my content had somewhat shifted into storytelling. Slowly and steadily I somehow hit 10k followers while visiting NYC in July. It was a very exciting moment. I joined the Creator Fund and even managed to make a little bit of money! (Did you see my Drone brand deal video?)

Then, one day in a very hot Palm Springs, I met a woman at a restaurant named Norma. Her husband had died, and she was there on their first wedding anniversary since his passing, in the city where they had been married- many years before. We were both dining solo, and I mostly listened as she told me about her husband. Once I got home to Los Angeles, I told the story on TikTok to my followers, and it went viral.

With that post came about 7000 new followers, but that also opened me up to a darker side of the TikTok algorithm - intentional, targeted homophobia.

A few weeks ago, an innocent post I made about saying goodbye to my parents also went viral. And with that came anti gay rhetoric from very obviously anti LGBTQ accounts. It was only a handful of comments, but for someone who has experienced trauma at the hands of hate, it was hard.

I made a post about it, and despite a great deal of support, one person, someone I had connected with outside of TikTok, who I had followed for some time, made a post directed at me. I don’t understand why people take things so personally, I believe the video said. There was more to it, and it all hurt very much.

The experience taught me something very important about TikTok, social media and cyber relationships. As much as someone may say they support you, you really don’t know where people fully stand in their heart.

Perhaps the greatest irony of it all is when the person made an apology post after privately apologizing to me personally, their followers messaged me asking to check on her. To make sure she was ok. Perhaps they didn’t know the post was about me. At that point, I could only laugh.

That was when I knew I needed a break.

I have been off the app for 10 days, and although I have plans to go back on January 2nd, it will be different. Although I will do my best to remain the positive, authentic and vulnerable creator 17k people have come to enjoy, my guard, for better or worse, will be up.

Alaska

In September of 2022, I went to Alaska with my best friend. I hope you enjoy this little VLOG of our experience. And yes, it was cold.

Hawaii

I don’t have a fun video like the one above for my trip to Hawaii, because I really wanted to experience every moment I could, fully present, with my family.

It was a challenge to get my Dad, who has been on oxygen for some time, on a plane to Los Angeles and then to Hawaii, but we did it. In October, Dad, my Mom and I spent the most miraculous 6 days on the island of Kauai.

The first night, I found myself greatly on edge. Almost as if my very being was fighting the spirit of Aloha that was permeating from the the island. I remember sniping at my Mother as we arrived at our wonderful villa, which I hadn’t done in years, and thought - maybe this trip isn’t going to be what I had hoped.

The next morning, I woke up to the most miraculous sunset, and I surrendered. I don’t know how to put it into words, but my days in Hawaii were the best I have possibly ever experienced. The beauty I witnessed in both the landscape and the people provided a shift inside of me that has been searching for the next step to take ever since.

Wrath Mercy

If you’re new here, Wrath Mercy has been my dream project for 24 years. The play, written by my friend Ben Craven had quite an impact on me when I saw it performed at The University of Southern Mississippi back in 1998.

While living in NYC I had thought about producing and acting in a new production of it on stage. I then thought I could adapt it as a star vehicle for myself on film, and finally, somewhere around 2014 I decided I would indeed adapt it into a film, but instead of acting, I would direct.

Wrath Mercy tells the story of Adam, a young man hopelessly addicted to drugs. Adam makes a choice that triggers an encounter with a Woman who has the ability to assist Adam in changing his life for better or worse.

After completing my adaptation of the play, I directed a reading of the film 2 years ago, and now, 25 years after seeing the play on stage, I will direct the film in May of 2023. Produced by my friend Glenn Payne and starring Natanya Ross, this dream will finally become a reality.

In the next few months I will start a fundraising campaign to make the film and go on a search for an LGBTQ actor to play the part I so connected to decades ago.