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AE: Do you feel that being part of the experience in Denver did something specific for you as a person?
D: I think it really did. I don’t feel like the person that I am right now was the same person I was a year ago. … Some of the things I loved about the experience is that it really brought me — and I know it’s so cliché, and it’s what [the show] does, they pick seven strangers to live in a house — but I really had grown up in a real Southern, conservative, all-white college and an all-white high school, and everyone was carbon copies of each other, and everyone was super Christian.

Colie [one of the female roommates] was my first real cool Jewish friend, and I loved that. And Stephen and Tyrie were my first black friends. And Jen was such a wild party child, and Alex was very intellectual, and Brooke was just like everyone I’ve been around with before. But I really like the fact that it made me learn from different people and open up. And I really learned a lot from everyone.

And then the job was just amazing. I think it’s been released already that we worked for Outward Bound as wilderness instructors. I love outdoors; I love camping. We were just camping for weeks on end — it was beautiful. We would climb mountains. You really just feel like you can live on your own, and all the things that we have in this world — like houses and cars — aren’t essential when you can survive on your own in a tent and make your own food. And that’s not from the show; it was from the job, but I really got a lot out of that experience.

AE: Has it been tougher on your family than you expected [now that the show has started airing]?
D: Well, when I tried out for the show, my parents and I weren’t speaking to each other. And they didn’t even know I was in L.A. for an interview or that I was in Atlanta for an interview. When I got accepted [it] was actually the first time I spoke to my mom in a long time. I sent her an email and I was like, “I think you should know I’m going on The Real World this summer.” And that kind of broke the silence.

When I got cast, she kind of asked that we get back in contact with each other. I think she maybe wanted to have an influence on me before I left. She even gave me a visit (at the Denver Real World house), which was very surprising. It was nice. We shared the experience. I think it let some of her fears go away about the whole process. Now that it’s starting to air, the casting special was very damaging, I think, for our relationship. The first episode they haven’t watched, but I think it’s just continuing to sort of revert back to the way it was. It’s kind of sad, because things were starting to get good, and now they are starting to degenerate.

AE: Do you have the hope that maybe somehow the show will be a window into creating some understanding with your family?
D: I hoped it would. I felt like if my parents watched me on TV, maybe they would — like, they don’t know. We don’t speak, ever. My family doesn’t ever actually know what I’m wanting to do with my life. They don’t even want to know anything about it. And when I come into town, everything’s about church and God, and “How’s God helping you these days?” And I’m just like, “Don’t you want to get to know me as a person, religion aside? Just get to know me.” And I was hoping that the show would give my parents a chance to figure out who their son is and love things about me that they never knew. But they’re refusing to watch it, and I don’t know that they’ll ever get that chance.

AE: Why did you do the show? There must have been something that you hoped to gain from it.
D: I wanted people out there — in my community in particular — who had the mentality that being gay was a sickness or a choice or something that was weird — I wanted them to watch me and hear my story and see my struggle and hear my testimony that I didn’t choose this, and that this isn’t something that I just thought would be fun to try on one day, the life of a gay man. All the struggles, and the way it’s ruining my family. … I wanted to come out and just make it solidified.

I had my parents pushing and pushing me back into the closet. Even a few days ago, they were throwing pamphlets about looking into some ministry called ex-change ministry that turns people straight again, and I wanted for myself to be like listen, this is me, I’m claiming it, please stop trying to change me. I mean, I hoped one day that my parents would have my boyfriend over for Christmas or something. I thought that this might be the end of the fight, but it might never be, I don’t know.

AE: Because in the past there have been so few openly gay people in the media, I think it’s been especially true that gay cast mates of The Real World have an opportunity to be role models in the community. Many do speaking tours and media, helping to give the gay community visibility. How do you see yourself fitting into that?
D: I get messages from kids that are like, “I identify completely with your story”; like, “I come from a Christian family”; “my dad’s a pastor”; or “I go to a Christian college and I’m the only person I know that’s gay and a Christian, but it’s neat seeing you out there on TV to know that there’s at least one more out there.”

And I wish to God that all these people could find each other and realize that there’s not one more out there, there’s thousands out there. I’m just the face of bunches of people [who] are just [having] the same experience: parents who are unhappy with their kids for coming out, throwing Bible verses down their throat about how God says it’s a sin. And then these kids get freaked out and don’t know what to do with these feelings. I don’t want people to suppress [their feelings] and then marry some woman and ruin a family, you know. I feel like some people with deep religious issues do that. So yeah, I definitely want to be a role model.

Watch The Real World: Denver online or Wednesday nights on MTV at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Read our Season 18 Recaps here.

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