One bright day in May, standing near the front door of The Phluid Project, a new, gender-neutral clothing store in downtown Manhattan, founder Rob Smith greets customers with a warmth on par with the weather. Tall and fit with bright eyes, sculpted salt-and-pepper hair, and a flawless grin, Smith repeatedly extends his glittery-nail-polish-clad hand, asking prospective buyers their names, how they heard of the place, and what they might be shopping for. The showroom floor behind him is dotted with pink, mustachioed blowup bunnies, gold backpacks, camouflage pants, and rainbow-lettered tees offering "FREE HUGS."

Smith, 52, sees The Phluid Project as part retailer, part community space. He exudes immense pride in the business he built himself, after taking out a loan against his retirement savings and pouring $40,000 into the space's renovation. A 30-year veteran of the commercial retail industry, Smith dreamt up The Phluid Project while on an excursion of self-discovery in South America. As a gay man who struggled with his identity throughout most of his life, he fancies the store as his chance to give back to the non-binary and LGBTQ communities, to cultivate a place for people — anyone — to simply be themselves.

"I had this person come in last week," Smith begins one story, carefully observing broad pronouns. Initially, this customer seemed reticent to interact with Smith, shyly asking about the clothing selections. But over the course of about an hour, they settled in, freely modeling clothes. "They didn't end up buying anything, but I didn't care," Smith says. "It was such a rewarding experience to watch them try on things."

"When you're gender nonconforming, shopping in retail stores feels like a risk most of the time," says Jacob Tobia, a gender nonconforming LGBTQ activist, producer and writer. It was Tobia who, after meeting Smith through mutual acquaintances, was the first to tell him about the challenges nonbinary clothing shoppers face. "The doubts can be endless: Will I be respected? Will I be misgendered? Will I be stared at? Will I be safe?"

At The Phluid Project, Tobia adds, "We can shop in full knowledge that this space is for us, that we'll be safe, and that we'll be treated with respect."

Smith was raised in the upscale Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. He says he was an introverted, supersensitive perfectionist and teacher's pet who dressed to the nines for school and didn't have any friends.

"I think kids realized around fifth grade what 'gay' was," Smith says. "They were on to me."

He felt alienated, was picked on, and got into fistfights. At home, when Smith was around 13, he'd steal away to his bedroom with the latest Sears catalog to survey the men's underwear section.

Seizing the chance at a fresh start in high school where fewer people knew him, he began going by "Rob" instead of "Robert," and tried out for football — a sport his father played as a young man.

"I decided to manifest this new person," Smith says. "He was going to be popular."

Smith was an abysmal football player at first, but by the time he graduated he was a star on the varsity squad. He joined the crew team, too, and lettered in track and field.

His first sexual experience with a boy occurred when he was about 15, but he continuously dated women, "passing as straight."

"Kids' main mission is to survive," Smith muses. "You start to conform to the subtle or overt messaging you're getting."

At Michigan State, he studied marketing and became president of the fraternity system, once earning Greek Man of the Year honors. He did keg stands and planned epic parties. Maybe the most extreme place Smith's super-bro persona took him was into the bedroom of one of his female professors, a place he says he only went because he "didn't want to study that hard."

Underneath the facade, however, he remained tortured, his depression manifesting itself during a freshman art class in which he drew a picture of someone blowing their brains out with a gun.

"My art teacher pulled me aside, and she asked me, 'Are you thinking about this?'" Smith says. "I said I wasn't, but I had. I thought at that time killing myself would be the better option [than] coming out to my family as gay."

After college, Smith moved to Miami, taking a job as an assistant store manager at Burdines department store — a Florida-based chain under the Macy's Inc. umbrella. Within a few months, he was promoted to assistant product buyer. "I somehow fell into this thing that I knew how to do," he says. "It was easy for me."

Living in the relatively gay-friendly confines of Miami, Smith came out to people in his immediate social circle there first, and eventually to his family, who, as it turned out, were completely supportive.

As his career in fashion continued, he shuffled around the country, overseeing Macy's markets everywhere from Hawaii to San Francisco to New York City, where he's lived for the past 15 years. (Thirteen years ago he started dating Rod Grozier, who develops real estate for nonprofits like the YMCA. The pair married in 2008, and they live together near the High Line in West Chelsea.)

In the mid-2000s, Smith says Macy's had him on the C-level executive track and assigned him a speaking coach to refine his handling of public speeches and media. The coach also showed Smith photos of other Macy's bigwigs, spotlighting their uniform hairstyles and accouterments — think full-body tailoring à la Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

"She said, 'Well, look at you,'" Smith recalls. "'You're wearing a skinny suit, pointy shoes, a hot pink shirt.'" C-levelers at Macy's didn't dress like that.

"I figured I'd maxed out there," Smith says.

He worked for Victoria's Secret for a year and a half in the merchandising department, taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and later worked for a childrenswear company. But he found something closer to a calling in his volunteer work with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an outreach and advocacy group for LGBTQ youth. He served as a fund-raiser, event planner and eventually chair of the board of directors.

"I was able to go back and help young people be themselves," he says of his time with the group. "They're honest and courageous in a way that I wasn't."

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