We spoke to Nick (he/him) in Buffalo on February 27, 2026. Nick served in the US Navy as a Petty Officer First Class E-6. He served from 1986 to 2006, and he existed the military with an other than honorable discharge. Nick enlisted on advice of his grandmother who knew he enjoyed working in the kitchen and counseled him to go into the military and start learning how to cook.”

While Nick knew he was gay when he enlisted, he wasn’t out. He told us that he “expected to be in the military as a straight person.” However, soon after enlisting, he had his first queer experiences with other men, including the base chaplain. He explored his queerness with individual partners, but he remembered that “it was so hush-hush back then. Everybody was quiet about being gay, so I never knew who was gay and who wasn’t.” Nick explained that he masked by acting as a “tougher man” and eventually got married to a woman who had been his high school sweetheart. 

More than 10 years later, while still enlisted, Nick came out after realizing that he was not happy in the marriage. “I had to do something at that point,” he said, “I didn’t want to cheat, and I didn’t want to hide.” Nick divorced from his wife and began dating men. But because the later part of Nick’s service overlapped with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy, his openness made him a target. Just as his retirement was approved, 19 and a half years into his service, the Navy drug tested Nick when he ended up in the hospital after being roofied at a gay bar. “The military made an example out me,” he explained. He got a lawyer to defend him, but he was ultimately other than honorably discharged with no benefits. 

Today, Nick lives as an out gay man in Buffalo. After leaving the military, he struggled to navigate homophobia in society as well as the complexities of the queer community. He tells that that he’s happy but that he yearns for a monogamous relationship with another man. Serving impacted his sense of identity, and he reflected that it “helped me to figure out myself and what I really wanted.”