Jason Mraz Waited to Come Out Because He Didn’t Want to Be the ‘Punchline of a Joke’

Picture it: the year was 2008 and the song was “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. It was my turn to date the hottest hunk in middle school, Jake, who sent me the music video over AIM one night after the 7th-grade dance. For the rest of our whirlwind romance (two months of AIMing and sitting next to each other in class) it was our song, and I thought of him whenever it came on the radio, which was at least five times per day.

Flash forward about ten years, and it turns out the maestro of my pubescent romance was gay all along, which makes sense because everything I loved at that ripe and tender age turned out to be super gay. My first onscreen crush, for example, was The Magical Mr. Mistofolees from CATS (we had the original stage production recorded on VHS for some reason, and I watched it constantly). I have my queer forepeople to thank for basically every bit of culture I’ve ever loved.

Mraz, now 47, recently went on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast to talk about coming out and why he didn’t realize he was gay until he “got older.”

“I didn’t have too many sexual experiences in high school. I was kind of afraid of high school. I was bullied and just ready to get out of town,” he shared. “That’s why New York City was great and, even eventually, California was great. I also didn’t have a whole lot of self-confidence, skinny, scrawny, 18-year-old kid in New York. I don’t even know what to flirt with, who to flirt with, how to flirt.”

It was later, in California, that he found “a community of people.”

“I’d never fully been seen before, and I liked how I was being seen and heard. But, at the same time, I still took with me the conservative street that I grew up on, and that was very hard to ignore or to break out of. I was very shy and scared of what my family would say, or what my hometown would think, or just whatever.”

When he finally came out to his parents, they were “very supportive,” but he waited as long as he did because “In the ’90s, being gay was like [the] punchline of a joke, and I didn’t want to be the punchline of a joke. I kept my nose down and figured out ways I could instead get out and see the world one day. I’ve been enjoying that.”

Now, he’s ready finally to find true love after two divorces.

“Even though I’ve been a late bloomer to where I am now, honestly, I feel like my life is just starting. I can’t say that I have found love. I have been in amazing relationships and I’ve always learned and grown…but I love where I am. I feel so much love for myself finally that can only enhance the next relationship, or a relationship, when I find one.”