It was not easy for Chris Ryan to discover he was gay in the small Otsego County town of Waters. The Gaylord Public Schools student said bullying led to self-doubt and suicidal thoughts.

"I could never write "˜I’m gay’ even on my suicide notes because I didn’t want to admit that," Ryan said.

Today, the 20-year-old studies marketing and public relations at Michigan State University and, on the side, he’s got a busy schedule of standup comedy gigs at gay bars and comedy clubs.

This winter, Ryan made a short documentary with some classmates about his transformation called "Gay From Gaylord." The film can be seen on YouTube and it will be shown as part of the Traverse City Film Festival on July 30 at 6pm at the Inside Out Gallery.

The Express sat down with Ryan to chat about the struggles of being different in a small town and his nascent standup comedy career.

Express: What was your childhood like?

Ryan: My childhood was pretty average, I suppose. I was involved with all of the sports, involved with the local church organizations – basically just an all-American boy in northern Michigan. And when I started to go through puberty and all of that, I started to realize my sexuality. That’s when things all started to change. I started to become a little more sheltered, a little less involved. Due to protecting myself and a lot of self-hatred issues, I really withdrew. I was still heavily involved in high school despite all the issues, but it definitely took a toll on me mentally.

Express: When and how did you come out?

Ryan: I came out at the end of my senior year in high school. I had got my first boyfriend and I was taking him to prom, so I kind of knew, well, that’s going to cause a stir. So, I came out to my friends and family and explained the situation as maturely as possible. I said, "˜You guys might have had some suspicions. I just wanted to confirm that, yes, I am gay, and I am bringing my boyfriend to prom. I hope you can respect that part of my life.’ I didn’t make a big deal about it. I went about it very adultlike and all of that. And the response was very positive; yes, it caused a little bit of a stir here in town, but overall, it was a very positive response from my friends and family. I am very thankful.

Express: Compare life in Gaylord versus life in East Lansing.

Ryan: Well, Gaylord is more of a small town mentality, so it’s a little bit more conservative here; there’s not a lot of open diversity. There’s not a lot of gay people here. We’re reaching acceptance, but we’re not quite there yet. Whereas in East Lansing, there’s a lot of diversity, especially it being a college town. So whenever I go to school, I feel a little bit more expressive, a little bit more open about who I am, and then when I come back home, I kind of revert back into a little bit more closed off and a little bit more to myself.

Express: Have you had negative experiences in northern Michigan because you are gay?

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I used to get bullied a lot in high school. I was bullied mentally and physically. I’d get beat up and called all sorts of names throughout high school and middle school, which is never fun and definitely played a key role in my childhood, but I think the most detrimental part of that was that it really hurt my selfconfidence, so that as soon as I started to become bullied, I started to really withdraw within myself and really develop a sense of self-hatred and a lack of self-worth, which I would say was more detrimental during my suicidal years, like 13 to 16 years old. It’s an ongoing issue: depression, lack of self-confidence. But, I’ve definitely made steps since coming out, through the therapeutic process of creating a movie. It’s been a process, but I am definitely on the greener side.

Express: Are those struggles why you wanted to become a comedian?

Ryan: Certainly. I always say that comedy comes from pain and I think all of the experiences that I went through in my childhood and teenage years really play a role in how I have developed my sense of humor and how I go about creating my comedy. So, I really think that if those experiences didn’t happen to me, I wouldn’t be the comic that I am today.

Express: What was that like, deciding you were going to be a standup and then setting foot on stage, telling jokes in front of an audience?

Ryan: I was always pretty shy, pretty reserved in high school, but then I knew that I wanted to get involved in the comedy scene. I wanted to try standup comedy for a while because I grew up making silly videos on YouTube; I kind of got my comedy start on there. So when I went to college and it was OK for me to be a little bit more open about who I was, I tried out for a standup comedy competition and I ended up winning, which was a really great start to my standup comedy career. It was called Last Spartan Standing; it was me against 25 other students.

Express: Where else have you performed?

Ryan: My first paid gig was at the local gay club. I did some hosting there. I was hosting drag performances; I didn’t do the drag myself. I did the comedy and introduced the queens and all of that. Usually just the queens hosted the show, but they wanted to get some fresh talent, a fresh face, so they asked me to join. Since then I have definitely branched out. I have performed in lots of clubs – lots of bars, gay bars or straight bars. I’ve performed at festivals, private events and parties. Wherever they have a check, I have the talent.

Express: Tell me about performing in Gaylord.

Ryan: I performed in Gaylord once. I performed at the Gaylord bowling alley. They do a comedy night every couple of months and I performed there in February, and it went pretty well. I mean, I was very nervous because my routine is very much for a liberal crowd, being that I most often perform for gay bars. Coming back to Gaylord, I was a little bit nervous, like, "˜We’ll see how this goes.’ It’s all in the film: me coming back to Gaylord and performing, that’s all in "˜Gay From Gaylord.’ It was pretty well received. I was definitely surprised. A few naysayers, but everyone has an opinion.

Express: How did the documentary film project come about?

Ryan: This year I was in a documentary class at Michigan State and we were all pitching our ideas, and one of the students pitched a documentary kind of structured around my career.

I had mentioned that I had a lot of connections in the gay cultural scene due to the fact that I did standup comedy. Some students were like, "˜Oh, it would be very cool to do a documentary about your journey from small-farm-town boy into prospering gay standup comedian.’ So a group of about seven students total went about making a 26-minute documentary called "˜Gay From Gaylord,’ which depicts my journey into self-acceptance and a standup comedy career. It’s been really therapeutic, really meta, and it’s been a lot of fun because I think it expresses myself and the message I want to get across, which is that we need to start the dialogue in our local communities that gay is OK and that love is love and that self acceptance is key.

Express: Were you the first person to come out at Gaylord High School?

Ryan: I don’t know if I was the first person to come out, but I was the first person to bring a boy to prom. He went to another school. People in the town knew of him, but he wasn’t in our class. So, I was kind of the person who was out and proud, per se, because I was very involved with the sports scene still, I was very involved with drama, I was the National Honors Society president, I was one of the top ranked in our class. I was very much kind of the face of the gays in my high school. I was very open about it.

Express: What’s it been like now that you are out so publicly in Gaylord?

Ryan: Now that I’m back home for the summer, I’m working full time, and since I’ve come home – and my movie launched one month after coming home – it was picked up by the local paper, it was picked up by the local radio and, kind of to my surprise, the response has been very, very positive. I’ve gotten a hundred messages on Facebook saying, "˜It really touched me,’ "˜I’m so proud that you can be who you are’ from friends and family, from people who I never even spoke to in high school who are now reaching out to me. So it’s been really overwhelming to see all the support. Sure, there are some naysayers, some locals that I know that have reached out to express their disapproval of me, but I get one of those for every 50 compliments. I’ve been really happy to come back and it’s pretty cool now. Wherever I go in town someone knows who I am and someone says congratulations.

Express: You probably wouldn’t have been able to do this 20 years ago.

Ryan: Oh no. Yeah, I think the times are definitely changing. I think it’s a generational-type thing, whereas in the past generation, it was starting to reach acceptance and, in my generation, it’s almost there. In a couple of generations, this will just be a silly topic. It will just be any old person talking.