I’ve done a lot of growing as a gay man in my 30s. I’ve lit flamboyant tendencies I snuffed out in my 20s, and I’ve finally stopped hating flamers. Internalized homophobia is real and I shout “amen” to RuPaul for finally, finally, pushing me to fly my pride flag. This stage of my gay-volution has been about inundation and education as I take in queer stories and queer history, things I overlooked in my 20s (oh the look on my then-boyfriend’s face when my 22-year-old self didn’t know about Stonewall). Podcasts like WNYC’s Nancy and Earwolf’s Homophilia have become essential weekly listening for me, gaying up my morning commute. But being a late-ish bloomer that was totally unaware of his gayness until the age of 21 has made me feel like I missed out on key queer moments, a sort of formative years FOMO. A recent Nancy episode really hit this home: I did not grow up with Will & Grace.

With W&G’s recent (and fantastic) return making it a relevant topic again, many of my friends were shocked to learn that I’ve never seen the show. I’m a proud gay man and a vocal proponent of multi-cam sitcoms. How have I not seen Will & Grace? I’m the target demo in every way, but I’m only watching it today because it’s available to stream on Hulu. I totally missed Will & Grace during its original run (1998-2006) and I’ve often wondered if this Joe Biden-endorsed show would have helped me at least turn on my closet light seven years earlier.

Will & Grace was not not welcome in my household growing up. I knew it was frowned upon because I saw the flashing neon context clues posted on the walls of our living room. After all, Ellen DeGeneres, the lead of a show middle-school-me loved, came out and I got a lot of side-eye from my parents; I remember a heated discussion about whether or not Ellen was really gay going down in a McDonald’s booth. We never watched Ellen together, but Must See TV was must-watch TV for me and my parents–after they were assured that the lesbians on Friends weren’t series regulars. We’d watch the whole lineup, even Veronica’s Closet and The Single Guy, all the way through to ER. But that had changed by the time Will & Grace took over Seinfeld’s Thursday night slot. Instead, we’d all go our separate ways for the 90 minutes in-between Friends and ER. Even that routine was threatened when Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) came out in the fall of 2000 and I had to convince my mother to keep watching ER with me. Because of Ellen, Carol, Susan, and Kerry, I knew that Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes) weren’t welcome in our home without my parents even acknowledging their show’s existence. Instead of watching it, the sound of Will & Grace acted as background noise while I was upstairs creating embarrassingly detailed X-Men artwork in Microsoft Paint.

While I was delicately clicking a mouse trying to execute the arc of Wolverine’s claws, other gay teens were getting validation from Will & Grace. They were learning that there is life after coming out, that they can be happy and thrive as gay adults. They were seeing themselves reflected back at them, while I was seeing myself in the reflection of a Dell desktop monitor. Because my knowledge of W&G was basically limited to the promos that aired during Friends, I did not view Will & Grace favorably when I finally came out of the closet in 2005. I actually viewed Will & Grace as part of the reason why I stayed in the closet for so long, a closet so big I cluelessly thought it was a normal bedroom.

“I had no idea that I’m gay because pop culture only gave me Wills and Jacks, and I’m not a Will or a Jack,” is a phrase I’ve said over and over again over the last 12 years, and it’s still–even after a lot of my gay growth–true. I’m not a Will or a Jack, and growing up I seriously only thought gay men could be the Will or Jack that I saw in 30 second spots every Thursday. That did keep me in the closet until I met a bisexual guy in college that I actually found attractive, that was neither a Will or a Jack. (Sidenote: I now get that I’m probably halfway in-between a Will and a Jack, but I’m really a Charles or a Tony).

Having now watched Will & Grace and having lived my coming out story, including the chapters where I came out to my family, I’ve come to a realization: watching Will & Grace in high school would have done more harm than good. I just wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready to celebrate my inner Jack until just a few years ago, so I definitely wouldn’t have been ready to let him loose while I was still “hopelessly pining” for girls (while also making Tony Slattery collages in MS Paint–I have always been my specific kind of gay, even when I was oblivious).

The truth is Jack scared me, the way he scares every other gay man with homophobic tendencies. Watching the show now at the age of 33, I see that Jack’s unwavering confidence pushes him from gay caricature to a gay character. My internalized homophobia, born in a booth in McDonald’s in 1996, made me dismissive of Jack when I was a hopelessly closeted teen and when I was a trepidatious gay 20-something. Seeing Jack on TV every week in high school would have just pushed me deeper into denial about who I am, as 14-year-old me was nowhere near ready to deal with what was going on in my head and my heart. And I can’t fathom the conversations I would have had with my parents had they discovered me enjoying this show instead of wasting time on the desktop.

What I needed was time. I needed to meet other gay men, see other gay characters, and find my own gay heroes. I needed to learn that there was space for me in the gay community–and then I needed to get it through my noggin that gay men like Jack exist and that there’s a bit of Jack in all of us to celebrate. I needed to become independent from my parents and do the hard work of learning to love myself, all of myself. Now I watch Will & Grace (I just finished episode 29, “Homo for the Holidays”) because I’m ready to watch Will & Grace (also it’s my job to watch Will & Grace). I get that it’s as problematic on a number of issues as all ’90s sitcoms were, but I’m also marveling at stories that speak to the gay experience I have lived in the years since the show ended. I love that a sitcom episode from 1999 dealt with Will’s own homophobia (“Will Works Out”), mirroring my relationship with this show. I love Jack’s coming out episode, which features four words that hit me in my soul: “Aren’t you tired yet?” I relate to that, I relate to Jack, a character I was once terrified of.

I don’t need to feel FOMO about my gay story. As I’ve learned, no two gays are totally alike because no two gay stories are alike. My story had its neon signs and Must See Tension, but that’s made me me. It’s all right that Will & Grace wasn’t a formative part of my gay awakening; my circumstances meant that it couldn’t be. I took a different path, one that led to this important show when I was finally ready for it. And now I get the pleasure of experiencing classic Must See TV that’s all-new to me–and this time, I have control of the remote.

Where to stream Will & Grace