Turning Points: Home Free

The playwright tells how fleeing his family was the best thing he ever did

I was an adopted kid. I grew up with these two people in Larchmont, N.Y., in a grand house with servants and all the rest. I didn't like them, and they didn't like me. When I was very young, my values began turning opposite to theirs. They were deeply bigoted, reactionary, materialistic. They expected--demanded, really--that I become a businessman or lawyer, and of course they could never talk about my being gay. Yet from early on, I knew that I wanted to be a writer, that I was gay and that my politics were left.

One morning when I was 19--having...

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