Billy Eichner

All of my success can be traced back to the fact that my parents, Jay and Debbie Eichner, their default mode was always to just love the hell out of their kid.

And if anyone takes anything away from the book, I hope it's that.

A father's love.

And in 1985, 1988, 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York, by the way, which as a child, I wasn't as cognizant of as my parents probably were.

But my mother's boss in high school was a gay man.

My parents were adults.

They knew about all of that.

Even then, my father loved his gay son and all of my very gay interests.

And I begged them to see Madonna in concert, and they took me.

And I begged them almost to the point of tears to get tickets to see Barbra Streisand, and they took me.

And they weren't rich, but they used what they had.

I wasn't only child, so I benefited from that.

And they would take me into the city, and we went to see plays about gay men.

And I would sit in between them.

And they would not act like this was weird at all.

We didn't necessarily sit around and have a conversation after.

It's like, okay, Billy, those were gay people.

Do you know what that is?

No.

They just treated me like an adult.