Rosie Perez may not identify as homosexual, but she once questioned her sexuality and only considers herself quasi-straight in the present day.
At TrevorLIVE New York, an evening supporting the LGBTQ youth foundation The Trevor Project, Perez spoke about her own “questioning.”
“Every human being, whether they want to admit it or not, went through a period of questioning. I know I did,” Perez admitted at the event.
When she met a girl named Michelle back in junior high, “all I wanted to do was hump her,” The View host revealed, shocking the audience.
“And I suppressed the urge and suppressed the urge and suppressed the urge until Michelle one day started humping on me,” she added.
Thousands of American teens experience these feelings, she says, and that makes groups such as The Trevor Project all the more important.
A leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth, it serves this very purpose.
“I’m not the only one that went through this questioning. I’m not the only one that suppressed those feelings. Who hid their story,” Perez said.
“I know I’m not lesbian, gay or whatever, I’m a quasi-straight person, I still went through that period. And I thought I was all alone.”
Now married to artist Eric Haze, Perez says when things ended with Michelle, so did their friendship – and she wishes she had these resources.
“I remember that hurt. And that hurt kept me silent and that silence brought shame. I didn’t have a community. I didn’t have The Trevor Project.”
“If I had other people, specifically adults, to call up and they said, ‘Oh, I humped the Michelle-type person too, you’re normal, don’t worry.”
“You’re either gonna go here, there or in the middle, don’t worry about it, it’ll pass. You’re just figuring it out,’ even that simple statement.”
“It would have made all the difference in the world,” the 50-year-old says. “There’s no such thing as normal. The norm is being different.”