A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. In the mid-1980s, an artist built a smaller version of the iconic Hollywood sign for the newly incorporated city of West Hollywood. Paulo Murillo was a boy back then. He came to StoryCorps with his husband, Kevin Chase, to remember how that sign showed him the way to where he belonged.
PAULO MURILLO: My father was a gardener, so I would go with my dad as a kid mowing lawns. My father had the same route for decades - up and down Santa Monica Boulevard. And there was a sign, a West Hollywood sign. I would see that sign, and I would see gay men, you know, attractive men holding hands. So I would always look for that sign. One day, we were driving, and I saw the sign, and I perked up. And I was looking around, and a guy looked at me, and he blew a kiss at me.
KEVIN CHASE: While you're with your dad?
MURILLO: Yes.
CHASE: How'd that go down?
MURILLO: I never saw that sign again. He never drove past Santa Monica Boulevard again. By then, I was already playing with Barbie dolls and, you know, a different, weird kid or whatever. And I would have fantasies of running away to the city, where gay people lived and were not afraid to be out on the street holding hands. I came out of the closet fresh out of high school. And my mom, when she found out I was gay, she's like, pack your stuff. You have to go. You can't be in this house. I'm not going to have you humiliate this family. I didn't talk to my parents for a year.
CHASE: You left home at - what? - 18, 19.
MURILLO: Yeah. But I just wasn't ready to be on my own. And I was like, I need to find that sign that I used to see when I was a kid. It was a symbol of gayness. It was a symbol of safeness.
CHASE: Yeah. It was a touchstone.
MURILLO: Yeah. So coming out in 1991, a lot of people had died of AIDS.
CHASE: Right.
MURILLO: Just a lot of fear and a lot of stigma. But that sign was a symbol of hope for me and the gay community. We were not going to let this disease keep us in the closet.
CHASE: Yeah.
MURILLO: But then there was also the fear that my dad would drive by and see me strutting my stuff down Santa Monica Boulevard. So I was always looking out for that brown truck with lawn mowers in the back. And when I was out there sleeping on couches, my mom was not talking to me, and my dad, you know, who was notoriously homophobic, he's like, you need to talk to him. You don't know what he's doing. He's going to die out there.
(Crying) And, like, I mean, it's weird, right? The support just came out of nowhere. Because of what he said, I got invited for Christmas that year. And I didn't know. I mean, my aunt told me, it was your father who spoke up and defended you. So, you know, I was just not made to be a gardener. I'm sorry (laughter). He just did not understand me, but he understood enough that I was who I was and I was not going to change. I just wanted to live. And I'm still alive, thank God.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL PATRICK AND JAMES CARNEY'S "GENTLE ON MY MIND")
MARTÍNEZ: Paulo Murillo and Kevin Chase in West Hollywood, California. Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL PATRICK AND JAMES CARNEY'S "GENTLE ON MY MIND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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