“I would tell myself, ‘In here, you’re someone in here, you have a chance of making it beyond the situation at home.’” “I had no choice but to be OK and put on a smile,” he said. Before walking into his high school each morning, he would put on a happy face. His father disowned him, while his mom continued to struggle with acceptance and reconciliation.įor much of that school year, he cried himself to sleep at night. Vazquez had come out as gay to his Puerto Rican parents as a high school freshman. Those 24 miles of track provided his map out of Queens, his ticket to a life more comfortable than the one he had inherited. At 8 a.m., he would hop off the train at Bedford Avenue and walk two blocks to the Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Design. Onah Vazquez has the map of New York’s A train etched into his brain after riding it for two hours every day for 10 years.Īs if by muscle memory, he would hop on at the train’s terminus in Far Rockaway, Queens, roll past JFK International Airport and curve back around to slice through a much wealthier Brooklyn neighborhood.
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