"I'm From Driftwood" Wants to Hear Your Gay Stories!

Twenty-nine-year old Nathan Manske is a busy man. Besides being an in-demand copywriter (his work includes the Chemistry.com commercials which took on eHarmony’s discriminatory attitude toward gays and lesbians), he’s also creator and editor of ImFromDriftwood.com, a site collecting personal stories from gay people all over the world.

Manske created I'm From Driftwood for a whole host of reasons ranging from his desire to show that while being gay is only one facet of who we are, it’s also an aspect that impacts almost every part of our lives. Manske also wanted to make sure that every GLBT kid living in small town, rural or suburban America knows that they aren’t alone in the world.

AfterElton.com recently spoke with Nathan about his site, the impact it’s had and his future plans.

AfterElton: So Nathan, what can you tell us about your story?
Nathan Manske: I grew up in Driftwood, Texas. My family moved out there from Austin in 1984, when I was 3, to 40 acres of land my grandparents owned. We moved into a temporary mobile home while my dad and his friends built our real house. I have three older brothers, and we all slept in one room with two bunk beds while my parents slept in the other room. We lived in the mobile home for about a year until our always-a-work-in-progress home was finished enough to live in.

Throughout the years we had all sorts of different animals as pets – pigs, goats, horses, cows, geese, chickens, dogs, cats, etc. It was quite an amazing childhood, and I didn't realize how unique it was until I started getting older and realized not everyone had a burn barrel to burn your trash since there was no garbage collection. Also, kind of funny, when we first moved out there we didn't have any plumbing for about a month because our well wasn't dug yet. So we just peed on the trees and had a "bathroom shovel" to dig a hole to do our business.

To shower, my mom would pour a bucket of water over us while we scrubbed with soap. I was so young I barely remember it and it didn't bother me, but I have no idea how my parents did that when they were in their 20's.

I know a lot of that seems like TMI, but the way I grew up heavily influenced how I came up with I'm From Driftwood.

Illustration by Nick Manske