EVERYMAN’S STORY
gram at Sullivan, he was still in anguish, unable to lead a life that was pleasurable or fulfilling. He knew something had to change. “One night I got to a point where I was like, ‘I can’t live like this,’” he recalls. “I was thinking, ‘Either I’m going to accept this, or I’m going to kill myself.’ That night, I was bawling my eyes out, and I called my friend and told her I was gay. And from that moment on, I knew I wasn’t going to live a lie anymore.” Although he had taken a serious step toward inner peace, Petrino knew it would be an arduous and emotional process. “There’s phases of coming out,” he explains. “First you have to be okay with yourself; then, you have to be okay telling other people.” Consequently, his first steps toward living his freshly asserted identity were taken on his own and at his own pace. He had his first gay sexual experience. “It was pretty amazing,” Petrino remembers. “I had to hold that in for so long, and then I finally got to experience it at 21. I remember the next day at school I was all smiley and happy.” At last liberated, at least for himself, Petrino relished his new opportunity to explore. While he was in Arkansas for one of his father’s football games, he met a guy who would become his first boyfriend. It was a long-distance relationship for a while as Petrino was finishing at Sullivan University and his boyfriend lived in Arkansas. They would see each other whenever Petrino came to town for his father’s football games, and he remembers bringing his boyfriend around the house often as his “best friend.” Obviously, he was more than Petrino’s best friend. He, too, was mostly in the closet and helped Petrino through his coming out process. “I just felt when I was with him that I had someone else who loved me for who I was,” Petrino recounts. “Because no one else really knew who I was. It was a great feeling because it made me think ‘I don’t really care what anyone else thinks about this.’” Imbued with renewed confidence and armed with a man who loved him, Petrino took the scariest step in coming out: He told his family. His little sister, his true best friend, was the first to know. “I could hardly get it out because I was bawling the entire time,” he remembers of telling her. “And she was just telling me how much she loved me. With her I never thought it would be a problem. It was more about being okay with myself telling her. I knew she wouldn’t care.” He then told his older sister and finally his mother. His mother had grown up with a gay older brother so was hardly
From top: Bobby Petrino Jr. with Lana at the Grand Canyon in 2015; Bobby Blair, Todd Mercier, Bobby Petrino Jr. and Hunter Hale on Valentine’s Day 2015; Bobby Petrino Jr. with his mother, Becky Petrino, in 2015 at the opening of the Petrino Family Foundation Trauma Room at Kosair Children’s Hospital.