Dillon Bacchetta had two reasons to feel nervous about trying out for his college’s soccer team. He had never played the sport before.

And, after growing up gay and experiencing bullying, joining a group of mostly straight men felt like a risk.

He made the team anyway. His first college match ended in a 33–0 defeat.

That scoreline was painful. The relationships that followed became something he treasured.

In a first-person essay published by Outsports on October 7, Bacchetta looks back on how soccer helped him find confidence and friendship as an openly gay man.

He had spent years competing as a cheerleader. When he arrived at Atlantic Cape Community College in New Jersey and found there was no cheerleading team, he chose a sport he had always wanted to try.

He practiced on his own before tryouts. Being a beginner meant entering the team without the experience he had built in cheerleading, while carrying fears shaped by the way other boys had treated him growing up.

His new teammates gave him a different experience.

They helped him learn soccer. Friendship grew around ordinary conversations, jokes and advice about relationships. They could talk about girls; he could talk about boys. His sexuality did not become an obstacle to getting close.

For someone accustomed to watching how he spoke and behaved around other men, that ease mattered. He could relax into being a teammate and a friend.

By the end of the season, Bacchetta had become a starter and earned recognition for his improvement. Atlantic Cape’s own account of its 2025 athletics awards also lists him as the men’s soccer team’s Most Improved Athlete.

The personal change reached beyond the field. Learning to trust other men gave him something years of bullying had made difficult to imagine.

His story leaves room for a quieter kind of sporting success: people helping each other, sharing everyday parts of their lives and discovering that they belong together.

A crushing defeat was part of Dillon’s introduction to soccer. So was finding friends who wanted him on their team.

📷 Instagram: @dillbacc

Watch more LGBTQ+ stories on B-Gay on YouTube.

Keri Pickett knew her uncle Roy Blakey was a photographer. But a box tied with rope revealed a part of his career she had not known: HE, his 1972 book of male nudes.

It was another doorway into the life of a deeply private man whose photographs had reached gay audiences far beyond his family. Now Pickett’s documentary Uncle Roy brings that life, and their relationship, to the screen.

Born in Oklahoma in 1930, Blakey dreamed of performing on ice. He traveled internationally with Holiday on Ice before becoming a photographer in New York. Performers, famous faces and men became subjects of his camera, while his collection of theatrical skating memorabilia grew across decades.

His photographs of men were an important part of that creative life. The images gave male beauty and desire a place in art and publishing, reaching readers who could find recognition in the work.

Pickett followed her uncle to New York to pursue photography herself. Their connection grew into an adult friendship and, eventually, a shared photography studio in Minneapolis. As she learned more about his work, she also came to understand the scale of the history he had preserved.

There were two substantial legacies to protect: his photography and his skating collection. The latter contained around 44,000 items, including programs, photographs, posters and costumes. That number describes the skating collection, rather than a count of his photographs of men.

When Blakey developed dementia, Pickett became his caregiver. The documentary follows the increasingly urgent task of preserving his work alongside the intimate responsibility of caring for someone she loved.

Blakey died in 2024, aged 94. His story continues through the film, which is currently traveling the festival circuit.

A new OUTTAKE VOICES interview with Pickett was published October 6. Uncle Roy screens at Pittsburgh’s Reel Q LGBTQ+ Film Festival on October 9 at 6:30 p.m., in Carnegie Mellon University’s McConomy Auditorium.

The photographs offer a record of beauty, performance and gay life. The relationship behind the film offers something equally moving: a niece taking care of the uncle who inspired her, and making sure other people would have the chance to know him.

Learn more at the official Uncle Roy website and see the Reel Q screening schedule.

📷 Courtesy of Keri Pickett / Uncle Roy; archival photography by Roy Blakey.

Watch more LGBTQ+ stories on B-Gay on YouTube.