I’m Benjamin and I’m from Phoenix, Arizona. I grew up with my mom who’s Filipino and also religious. A lot of Filipino families are very traditional and I remember growing up with a lot of Catholic iconography and religion was always a very big part of my upbringing. So growing up and having to kind of deal with these coming out milestones with my mom was always very anxiety-ridden. I basically had to come out to her three times. One as being gay, one as owning a porn company, and then the third time being in a polyamorous relationship with two other guys. When I came out as gay, I was 17 years old and we used to have these explosive fights where we would just scream at each other and yell at each other and then we just won’t talk for a whole week. And so one time we were having a fight and I had been seeing various therapists prior to that and I knew that she kept telling the therapist for them to tell me to come out to her as gay but I just wasn’t buying it. So one time we were having this huge fight, yelling at each other from across the apartment and at one point she just screams at me, “Are you gay?!” And then I’m like, “Yeah, I’m gay!” And then all of a sudden the conversation just takes a complete 360 and she starts telling me that she’s completely fine with it and then goes into stories about her experimenting with lesbian relationships in college, which going from one moment where we’re screaming at each other to the next moment where I’m getting way too much information about my mom’s experimenting with sexuality, was very unexpected. Fast forward to 22, and I was working in the adult industry. I own my own company, which is Cocky Boys, and I had been traveling a lot and doing a lot of events with my boyfriends. And the whole time my mother had been asking me subtle questions about what I do, why I was traveling, and I would always give her really vague answers. And eventually I was on the phone with her and I just told her I work in the adult entertainment business and I own a porn company. And so when I told her, she asked me the same questions that any concerned mother would. She wanted to know if I was safe and if it was a supportive environment and wanted to make sure I was happy. And I feel like she would have asked the same questions if I worked at Starbucks or any place else. My mom knew that I was working in the porn industry with my two partners or friends, Jason and Adrien, and she had known them and seen them and we had all gone out to lunch and dinner and stuff so she actually liked them a lot. She’d always ask me how they’re doing whenever I see her. But she didn’t know we were in a relationship until last year actually when we were out at lunch together with her gay hairstylist friend. They were talking about me like she talks about me a lot to him and she kind of let slip that I’m the son with the two boyfriends, in a really subtle way. And she didn’t follow it up with any other questions or really say anything else about it and he just kind of went, “Oh, okay.” And for me it was kind of her just subtle acknowledgement that she knew about my relationship and she was totally fine with it. I feel like telling her that I’m in a poly relationship was the last one and every single time I told her she completely surprised me with her reactions to it in which she really didn’t react at all. In almost every situation she was just kind of waiting for me to tell her so that she could tell me it’s okay. And she’s just happy that I’m happy. Honesty is the best thing in life. Sometimes the consequences of it aren’t comfortable but it’s so much better than having to live a lie because you become a slave to that lie and it’s a form of self-aggression having to hide such deep parts of yourself.