Alicia Abbott

Like I, you know, it's so funny because people who are afraid of, you know, gay marriage or gay headed households are worried somehow that

The children will be perverted by what they're exposed to.

But if anything, everything that I was exposed to just made me more puritanical.

Like I just sort of had on some level like a desire for normalcy.

I was like, OK, I've seen that transgressive, you know, weird thing.

It's just a little too weird for me.

I'm not interested in that.

What did you see?

Oh, well, I mean, I think back and I think of some of the, you know, I guess some of the exciting things that I got to see going with my father to Europe for the first time.

I went to a poetry festival in Amsterdam and I got to, you know, see Nina Hagen perform on stage.

She was a punk rocker at the time.

That was extremely exciting to me at 12 years old.

Or I met the poet Richard Broad again and spent an inordinate amount of time with him to the point where he was sort of telling me stories about how to watch out for herpes.

And, you know, that's not exactly appropriate.

And I think at the time I was like 12 years old.

But it was interesting.

And I and I stuck around.

What was your childhood understanding of what it meant to be gay?

Well, it meant to be attracted to someone of the same sex.

I mean, when I was – I think it's funny because my father would write about – I think he was really amused by my perception as a child.