I grew up in Tennessee, at a time and in a place where being gay wasn't something you could talk about. I left home as a teenager — the environment I was in wasn't stable, and staying wasn't an option.

I was homeless for a while. I found my way through it, and I found my way to medical school — not because someone made it easy, but because I decided that surviving wasn't going to be the end of my story.

I've lived through a relationship that wasn't safe, and it took me time to rebuild from it. I watched my father's alcoholism shape our family. I've spent a lot of my life on the other side of prejudice — for being gay, for where I came from, for things people assumed about me before they knew anything real.

None of that is a footnote to my medical career. It's the reason Torre Prime exists.

I became a physician to help people build strength — physical, medical, and otherwise. But I built Torre Prime because I kept meeting gay men who were thriving on paper and quietly falling apart everywhere else: cardiovascular risk nobody was tracking, hormones nobody was optimizing, sexual health nobody would talk to them about honestly, and a body and a life they'd stopped expecting good things from.

I know what it costs to build a life from nothing. I also know what it means to have someone finally see you clearly and take you seriously. That's what I want this practice to be — rigorous, evidence-based medicine, delivered by someone who isn't going to flinch, judge, or look away from any part of who you are.

I'm an advocate for gay men's health because I am one. Whatever you're carrying, I've probably carried something like it too.