Giving Boston's youth a place to call their own
Just a few of the many young faces who visit the Boston GLASS (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services) Community Center each day looking for adult support and peer contacts.

By Laura Kiritsy

There's a colorful poster on the wall of the Boston GLASS Community Center that asks, "What's Your Best GLASS memory?" Taped up haphazardly around it are a jumble of responses written on white index cards that read "Youth of Color Nights" and "New York Pride road trip" - a reference to the center's bus trip to Manhattan last June. Written on another card is the simple phrase "My first day here."

Most likely, it wasn't the author's last visit to GLASS (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services). Located in a third-floor suite at 93 Mass. Ave in Boston's Back Bay, the drop-in center regularly sees an average of 30 GLBT young people streaming through its doors on a daily basis looking for the safe, supportive atmosphere that is sometimes lacking in their families, schools or the larger communities in which they live.

It was the search for acceptance that brought Teasha Purdy to GLASS. "Not only with other people, but with myself," says the Roxbury native, who is in her 20s. Purdy, a transgendered woman, learned through friends that GLASS was not only a community center, but also like a family. "And that's something I was looking for at that time," she says. And like any family, things don't always go smoothly. "We fight like a family, but we make up like a family," she says. "Everybody cares about each other like a family."

Having grown up in a devoutly religious household that believed homosexuality was wrong, Purdy said she suffered bouts of depression, attempted suicide and ran away because she felt she had no one to talk to. The one relative in whom she did confide - a bisexual aunt - passed away when an 18 year-old Purdy was preparing to come out to her family. Though ultimately her family has grown to accept and support her, it was GLASS, she says, that "taught me how to be confident with myself and to...feel what I believe and to believe in myself. And to always try to look at the other side of things, you know, regardless to what people tell you - the negative - always try to look at the positive. Always know that how you feel is important... And if you don't feel good you're prone to do things that are not good to yourself because your self-esteem is low, which opens you up to all these different type of diseases." Purdy is also a member of GLASS' Shades of Color, a peer education program that does outreach on AIDS/HIV issues, STDs, pregnancy and safer sex, homophobia, transphobia, racism, decision-making, coming out and self-love.

The close-knit, family-oriented vibe permeates the center's culture - regular visitors - and everyone seems to be a regular visitor - commonly refer to others as their mother, father, child, or sister. "It starts off as, like a 'house,'" explains Jennifer Melenciano, a 20 year-old Jamaica Plain resident who also works with Shades of Color. "Basically a family outside of your own. Sometimes for the reason that your family isn't always there and isn't always supportive. You create this family out of the home and there's usually a house mother and a house father which are supposed to take care of you and guide you through whatever you go through. And then you have your sisters and your cousins - it's like a regular family only you make it upon, like, your friends," she says.

Though there was plenty of pizza and some fierce, but good-natured vogue battles on the dance floor during GLASS' seventh birthday party Jan. 17, the center is much more than a social club. Funded by the Department of Health and Justice Resource Institute (JRI) Health, a large human services organization focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, Boston GLASS, "came out of a stated need for safe space where education and prevention could happen with queer youth," says KJ Ward, the center's director. The center offers crisis counseling, HIV testing, case management and advocacy for youth with medical, legal and educational issues, in addition to assistance with what Ward calls one of the biggest problems facing GLBT youth - homelessness.

"Housing is definitely a big issue," says Ward. "We have kids all the time if not just kicked out of their homes after coming out, or after being found out... home is definitely hostile and not a safe place to be. So, you know, a couple nights on the street, a few nights couch surfing, is a better alternative to being home." GLASS has partnered with shelter programs such as Bridge Over Troubled Waters and refers youth who feel they cannot safely return home. It also works with New Pathways, a respite program, in Brookline. "For somebody who's 17 or 18, sometimes a month or two months is just what they need to get on their feet, save a little money, shake off the emotional trauma of being thrown out of their house."

GLASS has also teamed up with the Red Cross to receive regular deliveries of juice, fresh fruit, yogurt and other snacks for young people who might not be too sure of where their next meal is coming from.

Though there are other programs serving gay youth, for instance, BAGLY (the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Youth) has been around for over 20 years, Ward says that GLASS, in addition to its focus on social services, is the only program for gay youth that operates five days a week - the doors are open every Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

But there's something else that makes the program unique, according to JRI Health vice president Lee Swislow, who attended the center's birthday party. "It was when I met the staff that I started realizing what an incredible program that it was," she says. "And so many of us in the community don't know it exists, don't know about the work that is being done here and how important the work is and what a difference it makes in the lives of people who come here."

· Laura Kiritsy is a staff writer at Bay Windows. Her e-mail address is lkiritsy@baywindows.com.

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