Influencer Bran Flakezz Reveals the Celebrity Who Served as His ‘Gay Awakening,’ Opens Up About Current Relationship (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Brandon Edelman, known as Bran Flakezz, celebrates Pride by embracing love and authenticity in his life and content

• Edelman credits a high school acquaintance’s openness about her sexuality for inspiring him to come out as gay

• The influencer recently celebrated his first anniversary with boyfriend Jason Suerte

Influencer Bran Flakezz has always been open and transparent about everything online — including his relationship and sexuality.

The content creator and Philadelphia native, whose real name is Brandon Edelman, just celebrated his first anniversary with his boyfriend, Jason Suerte, who goes by the TikTok username UrInternetBF7. The 29-year-old tells PEOPLE that Suerte “asked me out in a cute way.”

“He gave me a teddy bear, asked me to be his boyfriend on a Friday night, and he asked if we could just take the weekend to have that moment for ourselves, and then I could post about it on Monday,” Edelman shares. “That was very healthy, a nice little boundary that we set on that one.”

As his TikTok bio reads, “gay chaos,” being authentic is important to Edelman, who has built his online brand around honesty.

Edelman tells PEOPLE the first person he came out to “was an acquaintance in high school who had come out as bisexual, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna tell her.’ ”  

He shares that, when he was 14, the woman “came out on Facebook,” which was the first time he saw someone in his circle open up about their sexuality.

“I was like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s really going for it.’ She did a relationship status change,” he recalls, noting that it gave him the confidence and reassurance to do the same.

“I didn’t want it to be a best friend because I needed to learn the ropes. I was like, the people who know me, it’s gonna be a more emotional conversation, whereas someone who’s an acquaintance, it can be more fun and kind of get me more comfortable in my own skin,” Edelman shares. 

Looking back, Edelman tells PEOPLE that his first celebrity crush came much earlier when he saw “Ryan Atwood from The O.C.“

“He was a gay awakening. The actor was Ben McKenzie. I saw him in a wife beater, and his little leather collar necklace or whatever it was, and 7-year-old me was like, ‘Oh.’ “

While Edelman came out as gay over a decade ago, celebrating Pride month is just as important to him now as it was back then. He hopes that by highlighting the LGBTQ+ community on a larger scale, it will inspire people to live authentically — the same way his former classmate inspired him.

Edelman, who attended Philly Pride last weekend, tells PEOPLE that his ideal way to celebrate is to “wake up, walk the parade and then go to the bars and just dance and have fun and just celebrate love.”

“It’s fun to go to the gay club at 3 p.m., and you don’t even know it’s daytime out because you’re inside a dark room, just shaking ass to Lady Gaga, and you have no idea that outside there’s a full, bright, sunshiny day,” Edelman shares. “I’ve been going for the last five years, so it’s just a fun, really euphoric day of love.” 

Ultimately, to Edelman, Pride means “celebrating love, love in all forms and just being non-judgemental in anyone’s love and anyone’s who they choose to spread and share that love.” 

Read the original article on People