"I arrived in New York on December 25, 2018. I am from the Dominican Republic, a beautiful country, a paradise, with happy people, familiar, crazy, noisy creator of the musical genres merengue and bachata, where Christmas is an October party to January, where he drinks and goes out to party for everything and has fought for freedom on many occasions, I love my country, not my rulers. Despite the wonders, I heard the insult (back then) "gay" when I was 5 years old. Without knowing what it meant, because a child does not know what he likes until he discovers it. Because of my love of theater from an early age and the ignorance and lack of education in my country, I received a lot of harassment, a lot of discrimination and hate while growing up because "he who does theater is gay." The famous controversy of being gay, is it made or born? I would say that both, but from my own experience, I feel that I never had the opportunity to choose what I would like, because when you are small or at any age, when someone repeats to you that you are something so many times, consciously or unconsciously, your body will absorb it . A child receives and is what it is because of the experiences he has in his childhood, what he learns, what he sees and hears and I received a lot of lack of protection and harassment for something that the stalkers themselves created in me.A few days ago, I saw in the news that a young homosexual defended himself violently against his stalker at school, I used to defend myself like that too (with the impotence of not being defended by anyone, feeling a strange parasite for not liking women), On top of this, I was expelled from the schools where I was about to defend myself and the stalker, no sanction ... to the young man of the news people applaud him here in the United States. What a beauty. I grew up doing professional theater in the Dominican Republic. Due to lack of resources, responsibility and organization; and wanting to reach new horizons in my career as an artist, grow up, I came to New York. I arrived in New York on December 25, 2018, an important day of celebration and joy, I arrived under the cold, sadness and nostalgia of leaving my mother under tears at the Dominican airport.Happy to follow my dreams as an actor, I found loneliness, the need for basic resources, insecurity, a new language, culturally ethnic skin racism, which is new to me, because in the Dominican Republic we are all a culture without Import skin color.Growing up in an environment of drinking, harassment, theater, disorder, joy, walks, lots of green, colors, lovers, friends, family, religion, I came to something bigger, to the big city I dreamed of finding. And in eleven months that I have here, I have lived the acceptance of my sexuality, with freedom and feeling the love that there are more people like me, artists too, I felt, freedom to see myself and be as I want to be and not feel that they see me as strange for be it I left the closet on my birthday and it didn't come out too, but it is proof of something I would never have dared to do, I did it, because I could fly here.To conclude, the main insult to a homosexual in the Dominican Republic is contemptuously: pájaro (bird)I defended myself and said yes, I am a bird, look how high I will fly, fly and fly, no matter my migration status I will fly, I will find the way, I will fly.I will fly." W, LoveFernando Bruno (SYLVAN)