Aaron Hernandez

Friday night, I watched all three episodes of Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, a Netflix documentary that examines how Aaron Hernandez went from a pro football star to a convicted killer. (I started the evening off watching The Hustle, a comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, but it was so bad that I switched to Netflix after watching about 30 minutes of the Hathaway-Wilson stinker.)

I don't usually watch documentaries or news stories about murderers, but I have some personal connections to the the Hernandez story.

Besides Hernandez being a New England Patriot and me being a Patriots fan, he lived just down the road from me, so his old stomping grounds were my stomping grounds. A friend of mine was his Little League coach and the son of another acquaintance was one of his best friends. The Hernandez family doesn't know me from Eve, but I used to encounter his brother grocery shopping of all places! That's why I watched the program.

I enjoyed seeing nearby places in the film including the grocery store where I used to run into Hernandez's brother, but otherwise, the film presented a very sad story. Besides being beaten by his abusive father, Aaron had to hide deep in the closet because he was a homosexual.

How many of us experienced life in the closet? My parents were far from abusive and never beat me, but I hid in the closet because I thought that coming out to them as trans would disappoint them to say the least.

Older and a little wiser now, I realize that my parents loved me unconditionally and that they would have been ok with my big secret. In fact, I am sure my mother knew about it and tried to meet me half way to talk about it to the day she died.

I so regret not accepting her invitation, but it was only after she passed that I realized what she was trying to do. What a dumbbell I was!

Wearing Chelsea and Walker

Femulating Paolo Ballesteros, Christian Bables and Martin del Rosario in the 2019 Filipino film The Panti Sisters