Stories of adversity and triumph resonated through Rudder Theater Thursday night as Aggies took part in the Coming Out Monologues. 
The Coming Out Monologues is an event hosted by the GLBT Resource center located on A&M’s campus. The event is an episodic play in which speakers can use poetry, prose or other forms of storytelling to give a more personal voice to their coming-out experiences.
The event started off with background information on the LGTBQ community for  members in the audience. Danny Foster, a graduate assistant and worker for the resource center, said these individuals were brave to share their stories with an audience of fellow Aggies.
 “Theater performance and story telling — those things are my passion,” Foster said. “And that’s why I’m doing this. There’s nothing quite like hearing people stand up and be a voice to their stories and their experiences.” 
Ryan Shulman, economics junior, gave his monologue, titled “My Humanity,” on the topic of asexuality and how asexuality is misrepresented.
“As an asexual person, my life revolves around school, family and personal problems,” Shulman said. “This is more than a sexuality issue. This is a mentality and something that I did not choose. Asexuality can be just as conditioned or natural as homosexuality and heterosexuality.”
Shulman said that in the past, he struggled with being around people who were somewhat skeptical of his sexuality, and he felt that the people around him were walking on eggshells. But since attending A&M, he said he has found a solid community.
“I would never change my past for the entire world,” Shulman said. “Now I have this — now I have Aggieland.” 
In another monologue, Nick Harris explained that on his 18th birthday, which was on March 30, 2011, he decided he was finally going to tell his mother he was gay — something he had found out for himself in 2002 when viewing a screening of “The Scorpion King.”
“I started to worry during puberty,” Harris said. “My gay side started showing up to the party, but my straight side wasn’t — which was kind of weird, because people said he would be there. Maybe he was stuck in traffic or something.”
But it wasn’t until after years of trying to mask his sexuality with cologne and athletic clothing that Harris said he finally told the truth about his sexuality to his mother.
“I’ve never felt so close with my mom before. That day, I realized that ‘straight Nick’ was never coming to the party, because he died in 2002 watching ‘Scorpion King,’” Harris said. “I sometimes wonder what it would be like if he had showed up to the puberty party. On March 30, 1993, I was born. And on March 30, 2011 I stopped pretending, which meant no weird cologne and no terrible clothes. It turns out I was ‘gay Nick’ all along.”