TRANSCRIPT:
As a father of Sergio, I know him. I know what he’s capable of. I know what he has done and how he has manipulated, how he has been saying lies in order to cover himself.
So, you know, there’s this phone, we heard the ringing [of] the phone. My wife and I, I got home and then I answered the phone and there’s Sergio on the phone saying, “Dad, I’m in jail. And I need you to help me.” And then I said, “Okay. So, what happened?!” “Well, I was caught stealing some things in a store,” stealing clothing or something like that. And I say, “Well, okay. So what do you want me to do?” you know. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” And he start crying and stuff like that. And I tell—I told him, “Okay, so you start doing what you can do. I am here in Florida. I am very far from you but see what’s the next thing to do over there.”
He was getting into trouble by his own decisions, you know. He was getting into trouble stealing things—something that it was against all my own convictions and my family’s convictions. So, that was really a hard blow on my face. In that moment, I didn’t want to do anything else. I just wanted him to confront and handle and handle it by himself.
Then, after a year, he came to me and meet with me and my wife and says, “I have to say that I wanted to tell you that I am gay.” And then I told him, “Yes, I knew. I know you were gay but because we are your parents, we know you. And—but it’s okay. It’s fine with me. I have no problem with that. I would never have a problem because you are gay. You are my son, first of all. You are my son and we love you very much.” And I gave him a hug and a kiss and I said, “Okay, so let’s move on, you know. We are not going to be in this here. This is your decision, you wanted to do this, okay.”
And we were perfectly willing—I told him and my wife also told him, “You know, you are welcome here anytime, any moment, because we are your parents.” And from [then] on, the communication was less, less and less.
Yeah, L.A. is a big city but you always keep yourself together, you know. We always keep yourself with your family. But then he started like this not being present anymore, not calling anymore—not only to me and Sandra [Sergio’s mother], also to his sisters and to the rest of the family. And then up to the point that he just disconnect, and he just went doing something else. Up to the point that we didn’t know what exactly he was doing.
I do love him and—but that doesn’t make me cry with him because I do love him. Love for me is respect; love for me is admiration to one each other. And that’s what I wanted from him, and that’s what I gave him.
