Coming Out Chats: NoahFinnce and Meet Me @ The Altar in conversation
7 October 2021, 09:47
Téa & Ada from Meet Me @ The Altar join NoahFinnce to talk about their coming out journeys exclusively for PopBuzz's new podcast Coming Out Chats
Welcome to Coming Out Chats! The podcast where our guests open up to each other about their coming out journeys.
This week on our very first episode, NoahFinnce meets Téa Campbell and Ada Juarez from Meet Me @ The Altar.
For those that might not know (sorry but where have you been?) NoahFinnce is the alias of Noah Adams, a musician and social media star based in the UK. Having amassed a staggering 700,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, Noah has documented much of his transition as a trans man in his videos and recently dropped his first EP, Stuff From My Brain on Hopeless Records.
Meet Me @ The Altar are a three-piece pop-punk band from Georgia, Florida and New Jersey. Ada and Téa met where a lot of Gen Z'ers meet these days, on YouTube, and formed the band in 2015. Comprised of three women of colour, Meet Me @ The Altar have been praised as a breath of fresh air in a genre more often associated with straight, white men. Now signed to the iconic Fueled By Ramen label, they released their latest EP, Model Citizen, last month.
In this episode, Noah, Téa and Ada share how they first came out to their friends and family, what it was like navigating their school years, how the internet helped them find the vocabulary to express how they feel about their identity, and the responsibility they feel as role models to their younger LGBTQ+ fans.
Get ready for secret Instagram accounts, lesbian dreams about Jennifer Lawrence, playdough penises and much much more.
Listen and subscribe to Coming Out Chats below and find an extract from the podcast after the jump.
Téa: So when did you realise that you weren't cis?
Noah: That question is just like, oh my god, my entire life story. There was always little inklings of being like, what the fuck is going on? I didn't really know what being trans was until I was 15. And when I heard what it was, I was like, 'Oh, shit. Yeah, obviously.' Every time somebody asks me this question, I talk about this: when I was five, I literally used to make dicks out of playdough and put them in my pants and be like, ‘Oh, that's much better’. I'd literally sit on the toilet backwards because I thought that's how boys peed. I'd straddle the toilet and just [do] shit like that. Even as a five year old, I didn't know [what] being trans was but there were always moments where that would come out. In my brain, I've always been a guy and it was the rest of the world that was confused, to me. But I couldn't really express that or find the words for it until I was like 15 and found the internet which, apparently, makes everyone gay. It's the internet.
Téa: I feel like everyone as a kid, especially in those formative years before six years old, you know who you are. And then the world teaches you different and then you kind of forget for a while. Then you're like, wait a minute - I already knew who I was!
Noah: This is something that I've realised recently - and I don't know if this is just a trans-specific thing or if it's an LGBT thing in general - but do you feel like when you finally came out and began to accept yourself and were living the life that you felt like you should be living, did it feel reminiscent of when you were a child? Really carefree and just didn't give a shit? Because that's what it feels like to me. I'll do stuff now and my mum will be like, ‘Oh, you used to do that when you were a kid’. And I was like, 'Yeah! Because that was who I was!' It's just the rest of the fucking world that pushed all this on me.
Ada: I feel like a big part of it is, once you're out and very comfortable within yourself, you don't care what other people think as much. And that's the best part. Because that's exactly how I was when I was a kid. I didn't care.
Téa: I remember being in preschool and I was playing with this girl. I don't remember her name. I think was like Madison or something. I remember having a crush on her when I was like four years old. I didn't even know what a crush was at the time but we used to play house and we had this jar of rice that we could play with. And I would just dump the rice on the plate and be like, ‘I made you dinner, honey’ and we would just play. I feel like - not even just in the LGBTQ world - I've experienced a lot of those things where I've gone back and I'm like, this is how I was when I was like a little kid and I kind of forgot. But now I found my way back to that place. I've been feeling very nostalgic lately because I miss being a kid. It was so fun. You didn't have responsibilities. You could just do whatever you want. I feel like being a musician gives us a little bit of that freedom to be a kid a bit more. How did you realise that you were gay?
Ada: I realised I was gay as soon as I was born. I felt like I was just born gay. I always had crushes on girls, always looked at girls, I always was nervous to talk to girls. But guys? They were they were the bros. Dudes? They were my friends. And it was normal. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna hang out with them and I'm gonna look at the girls from afar. That was just how it normally was in my brain in elementary school. And then the internet came along, when I was like, nine, and I went on YouTube, searched up girls kissing, and just went through a whole list.
Téa: Me too! What the hell!
Ada: When I was like, 9 or 10 years old, and I'm like, this makes sense to me. And then that's how I found out what the word gay was. For some reason, I knew that nobody would like me being gay. I don't know how I knew that because nobody was talking about that.
Noah: It's probably because you hadn't seen it.
Ada: Maybe. That probably was it. I immediately was like, I didn't tell anybody. And then I pushed it away. And then I didn't actually come out until I was in sixth grade. And so, at that point, I was in third grade.
Noah: That's still early. Oh my god. That's really early.
Ada: I think it's because of the internet because I found the videos of girls kissing. And I saw the word gay. Looked up what the word gay meant. I was like, Okay, so I'm a girl who just likes another girl. Allegedly, this is normal. So I should feel normal. But why do I not feel normal? And that's just what it was.
Noah: That's mad that that's the first way you heard the word gay. That must be so different to a lot of people.
Téa: That just brought up a memory that I totally forgot I had. I remember I was in first grade and this kid named Jonathan on the bus called me a lesbian. And I was like, I'm not a lesbian. And then I was like, what’s a lesbian? I didn’t know what that was but I was like, I'm not that. But now, looking back, he was right. Thank you, Jonathan.
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