Jesse Tyler Ferguson is a confident and successful gay man, but he says he wasn’t always that way and admitted that his coming out process was a bit awkward and even embarrassing.

Ferguson said that when he realized he was gay as a teenager he started to steal gay porn and had built up a small collection that he hid from his parents.

When he was caught shoplifting a gay porn magazine, his father found out and Ferguson decided it was time to come out to him.

“Well, I was caught stealing gay porn when I was 14,” Jesse said on the Girl On Guy podcast. “So I always considered that my coming-out.

“It was so humiliating. I had been stealing porn for a while. I had quite a little collection. And I would bring it into the house, and then I’d get nervous, so I’d hide it under the mattress, or I’d hide it behind a shed in the backyard. And then it would get rained on, and I’d have to go get the barbecue tongs to [get it out].”

Say what?! Jesse Tyler Ferguson's coming out story as a teen involved stolen gay porn: http://t.co/rHJFUFad39

— Us Weekly (@usweekly) September 30, 2014

Ferguson said he was caught by a store employee and she decided to call his father after she saw the material he was stealing.

“I had to go back and the woman asked me if I had anything in my backpack,” he said. “She was giving me the benefit of the doubt … she took me to the back room. They brought my dad in, and they showed him the nature of the material I was stealing, and it was really, really humiliating. So I always consider that my coming-out process.”

Ferguson is glad that he came out when he did and he is very happy to have met his husband. Ferguson married his partner Justin Mikita in New York last year.