“My shame was so thick it suffocated anything good that I had in my life.” Coming of age in the early ’90s in a small city in southeastern Wisconsin meant growing up in a time and a place when no one said “gay” (or “lesbian” or “bisexual” or “transgender” or “non-binary” or any other part of the LGBTQ+ community), and the only time you heard “queer” was if you were being called one by one of the kids who took turns making your life a nightmare like doing it was their dream job. Like it was