Now, Alf, a local jock from KTCL/93.3 FM, is sharing his story.
Although Alf is now openly gay, he wasn't out in high school. Still, he says, high school "wasn't so harsh for me as it was for most people. I was very clueless about my sexuality. I was questioning, in that I didn't date anybody in high school. I was sitting around waiting to be interested in girls, and it never happened."
But he did get teased. "It was a generic kind of teasing," he says. "I was geeky, I was awkward, I didn't date. There was some 'fag' talk, probably based partially on that."
Things changed in college, which is where Alf realized he was gay and came out to his friends and family. They were supportive, he says. So were his colleagues at KTCL when he started working there in 1996. He now hosts the Sunday-night show Locals Only.
Alf tried to show the tolerance he received in his "It Gets Better" video. "That's kind of what I was trying to get across: I'm gay, and none of these people care," he says. "I was trying to get across that there are many places that don't give a rat's ass that you're gay."
Check out Alf's video below. Unlike most "It Gets Better" videos, it doesn't consist of Alf talking to his webcam. Instead, it starts in the hallway of his (unnamed) high school, continues at the KTCL offices, cuts to a music studio and ends on stage at the Larimer Lounge at a show of the Centennial, Patrick and Nathan Meese's new band.
"I wanted to end on stage at a concert," Alf says. Why? "This is a place where most people aren't gay," he says, "and I'm on stage saying I'm gay and I'm not scared."
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