My name is Ann Helfrich and I’m from Pleasantville, New Jersey. Swear to God. Pleasantville.
Okay, so, there’s this whole thing about, when did you know you were gay? Right? And I never really, I always had half of me that knew and then half of me that didn’t know. Half of me was totally in denial. The half of me that was like disappointed when my softball coach got married. I was like, what the fuck? Or, when Darlene got a boyfriend on Roseanne – like what are you talking about?! But I didn’t know I was gay, like I was so disappointed that she was, you know, that she had a boyfriend. Didn’t make any sense.
So when I was like a little kid, I was 5 years old, my best friend Dorothy use to kiss Michael J. Fox on the tv, right, so she would get up and like run to the tv – “Oh, Michael J” I can’t believe, we were little, like 5, we were little, but she would run up and kiss him. And, I tried to do that, I tried, I wanted to be able to kiss Michael J. Fox but it wasn’t, it didn’t, it was – it just didn’t work for me.
I would try and I felt it in my body it wasn’t right and the person I had a crush on, that I really wanted to kiss, was totally Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. And uh, I loved her. And I remember, when I was, when no one else was in the room and I was little, I was as tall as the tv. I remember the tv being here, and I was standing up. I would kiss Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. I would wait for her, you know in the credits, when the circles come up, you know? So I would wait, for her circle to come up, I remember waiting, “and the professor and Mary Ann” you know, and I would “kiss” Mary Ann. I loved Mary Ann, she was so sweet.
Actually, my neighbor gave me a cut out of her recently, the grown Mary Ann, arrested for smoking marijuana. (laughter) She’s 60 something. A mug shot, she was still pretty cute. (more laughter) I was like, “ah she’s pretty hot for a 60 year old.” So that’s my story. She was great.
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