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LOVE, DEATH & VE RSACE ÉDGAR RAMIREZ AND RICKY MARTIN IN AMERICAN CRIME STORY

C ON T E N T S F E B RUA RY 2018

L ove Po r t fo l io 45. LOVE STORIES 2018 Eight queer couples share their personal tales of modern romance.

Fe a t u r e s

Fo r e g r o u n d

62. THE DRAG KIDS A new generation of queens is proving it’s never too soon to be fabulous.

11. POETIC JUSTICE Daniela Vega, star of A Fantastic Woman, has made history—her way.

14. THE GAY AGENDA Everything in pop culture you should be talking about right now

70. THE EMPEROR AND HIS PRINCE Édgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin on homophobia and The Assassination of Gianni Versace

18, 24. TRENDING Mellow yellow sunglasses and daring pink shoes

Fa s h io n

26. GROOMING In these bitter times, oil is your skin’s new best friend.

78. DELTA DISCO Jake Shears resurfaces with a Broadway role, a memoir, and his first solo album.

27. LIQUIDITY The perfect toasts for your Sunday roast 28. NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH Boston’s Fort Point

S y m p o s iu m 35. DESIRE UNDER THE PINES Bret Easton Ellis on why Call Me by Your Name is the year’s most romantic movie

30. FITNESS The secret to killer calves 32. KITCHEN 411 The breakfast sandwich boom

38. LOVING LANGSTON The father of the Harlem Renaissance longed for one of its brightest lights.

33. SEX LIVES One man’s encounter with two silver foxes led to joyful exhibitionism.

39. BACK TO BLACK The new book How to Slay chronicles decades of iconic black style.

S u r ve i l l a nc e

40. ARMOND WHITE’S MOVIES How Mona Lisa outed the modern lesbian archetype 41. POSITIVE VOICES Operation Infektion turned AIDS into an American conspiracy hatched in a medical facility. We’re still counting the cost.

ON THE COVER: Édgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin photographed

by Doug Inglish. Styling by Grant Woolhead.

Ramirez: Shirt by Hermès. Martin: Shirt by Bottega Veneta

85. TIME TO SLEEP You really don’t have anything better to do.

78 Jake Shears photographed by Ivan Bideac.

Styling by Taylor Brechtel.

Jacket, shirt, and pants by Tom Ford.

Tie by Drake’s of London

DEPARTMENTS 6. Editor’s Letter 8. Contributors and Feedback 87. Store Info 88. 1,000 Words Versace’s palatial villas were exemplars of Rome’s former glory.

FEBRUARY 2018. Volume 26, Number 6 Out (ISSN 1062-7928) is published monthly except for double issues in December/January and June/July by Here Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 241579, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

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F E B R UA RY 20 1 8

EDITOR’S LETTER

Sex, Crime, and Punishment IN 1984, I was old enough to know that I was gay, and that sex would kill me. I knew that if I kissed another boy in public I could be arrested. My favorite song that year was “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)” by the Eurythmics, and in ways too complicated for me to articulate then, I knew at some deep and cellular level that I was a sexual outlaw and that my desires would be complicated and compromised for decades to come. Perhaps that’s why, seeing Call Me by Your Name at a special screening last summer, I was swept up in ways I didn’t expect to be: The movie is set in 1983, and is therefore free of the specter of AIDS. It is the least cynical depiction of gay desire I’ve seen, and the most elegiac, for this was how we dreamt of experiencing love in the 1980s—a fantasy of a world liberated from AIDS and homophobia. Of course, we are not free of those twin scourges even today. When we published Bret Easton Ellis’s review (page 35) online in December, the trolls were not slow to leave their thoughtful contributions: “How disgusting: pedophile behavior glorified.”

“Pedo romance! What next.”

“Yup, this movie is very sick.”

“Pedophile pandering movie. It’s all the rage.”

Putting aside the fact that the most common age of consent in U.S. states is 16 (and 14 in Italy, where the movie is set), this hysterical response to a love story illuminates an old calumny that gay men are out to despoil America’s children, a narrative that serves as a smoke screen for the myriad ways in which gay youth are the real victims, terrorized by their parents, schools, and communities, into repressing their sexuality, often with tragic consequences. Intentionally or otherwise, CMBYN inhabits a world in which there is no judgment, no moral panic, no marginalization. It shows us the world as it could be, not how it is. But it is true where it matters most, in illuminating the emotional whirlwind of first love. It’s affecting precisely because it’s so rare to see our love celebrated without caveat.

We all have, or deserve to have, our Elio moment. As it happens, I grew up in a quaint English village that was the equivalent of the Italian idyll in which CMBYN is set—just with less sun, and no Armie Hammer. Like Elio, I was 17 when I first kissed a man—in a churchyard behind the parish hall one night, drunk and giddy and thrilled by the friction of his stubble, the force of his tongue. Nothing had felt as intense and exciting, nor would again. But kissing and hugging was the beginning and end of it. A few days later I flew to Israel to work 6 FEB R UARY 2018 OUT

The calumny that gay men are out to despoil America’s children is a smoke screen for the myriad ways in which gay youth are the real victims. on a kibbutz for seven months, and by the time I returned I was firmly in the closet, policing my passions and confiding in no one. That would not change until I was in my 20s and living in Scotland. By then AIDS had unleashed something of a counterattack: We would not be muted and neutered, or so we told ourselves. I was still living there in 1997, when Gianni Versace was murdered, and recall the photos of Princess Diana and Elton John, eyes shiny with tears, at his funeral (a few months later it would be my job to cover Diana’s funeral for the newspaper I was then working on). Yet it hadn’t occurred to me until reading Les Fabian Brathwaite’s cover story (page 70) that while money and success helped insulate Versace from the prejudices of wider society, it was homophobia that killed him nonetheless. His murderer, Andrew Cunanan, had been on a three-month killing spree before shooting the fashion designer outside his Miami mansion. Cunanan should never have gotten that far, but his victims were gay, so naturally the police failed to respond with the necessary urgency. Such are the consequences of a society that treats gay sexuality as deviant and criminal.

Attitudes may have softened, though less so if you’re transgender, but now is the very time when we need to defend the progress we’ve made. Policing sex has a long, dark history, and it doesn’t take much to reanimate America’s obstinate puritanism. For those of us who came of age in the 1980s, the unbridled passion of CMBYN once seemed inconceivable. Let’s make sure it never does again.

AARON HICKLIN, Editor in Chief PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAI Z FENG

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CONTRIBUTORS

FEEDBACK

DOUG INGLISH

2017, Over and Out

“I got to dance with Ricky Martin,” says Doug Inglish, who casually lived out our ’90s fantasies while shooting Martin and Édgar Ramirez for this issue’s cover. “And Edgar is always brilliant,” he adds. One of Inglish’s favorite gigs ever was a men’s fashion shoot in the Bahamas for a past issue of Out, and he’s recently worked for GQ Style UK and GQ Australia.

At its onset, 2017 seemed like an insurmountable year. America’s queer community, like many others, was without a vocal ally in the Oval Office for the first time in eight years, and bills, executive orders, and tweets seemed like daily retractions, set to limit the hard-won freedoms of the Obama era.

And yet, the year ended with what felt like a stronger LGBTQ community, determined to face whatever challenges came—or may come—from small-minded oppressors. Our OUT100 cover stars, Chelsea Manning, Jonathan Groff, Lena Waithe, and Shayne Oliver represented vastly different, yet fundamentally linked, facets of our indefatigable culture.

“It was, for lack of a better term, a moment,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter, referring to Waithe’s history-making speech during her Emmy win for comedy writing, in which she praised LGBTQIA. Of her Out100 inclusion, the trade mag added, “The publication which celebrates that family is giving Waithe another moment.”

LUKE FONTANA “This was my first time shooting for a publication only using natural light,” Luke Fontana says of his work on this year’s Love Portfolio.

“I set up my lights for the very first shot and something just felt off.” The fruits of Fontana’s instincts have also appeared in Vanity Fair, Elle, and People.

MENELIK PURYEAR “I shot these photos on the exact day that, two years ago, my husband Zachary and I were shot for the same issue,” says Menelik Puryear, noting that he was an Out Love Portfolio subject before he got on the other side of the lens. His work has also been published in Flaunt and MR.

Two Lovers Our February covers feature Édgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin, both starring in Ryan Murphy’s new installment of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

BRET EASTON ELLIS Bret Easton Ellis (“Desire Under the Pines,” page 35) is the author of five previous novels including Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Glamorama, and Lunar Park, and a collection of stories, The Informers. His works have been translated into 27 languages. Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, and The Informers have all been made into films. He divides his time between Los Angeles and New York City.

8 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

Upon the Out100’s launch, Groff was feted for his role on Netflix’s Mindhunter, which saw him flip Hollywood’s tired straight-playinggay trope.

NewNowNext wrote, “Having appeared as such a high-profile—and revealing—gay character on HBO’s Looking, Groff, with his casting in Mindhunter, goes a long way to debunk the stereotype that out actors can’t play straight roles.” It’s shifts like these that have us marching tall into 2018.

WRITE TO OUT Email: OUT-Letters@out.com When writing to Out please include your name, address, height, eye color, a detailed chart of your sexual history, and a daytime telephone number for confirmation. Please note that all letters and email become the property of Out and may be edited for space and clarity. Because of the heavy volume of reader mail, we are unable to acknowledge letters that we do not publish.

J AC K J U L I A R ( FO N TA N A ) . DA N I E L L E L E V I T T ( E L L I S ) . R O G E R E R I C K S O N (G R O F F ) . D O U G I N G L I S H ( R A M I R E Z A N D M A R T I N )

FEBRUARY 2018

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS ®

NOMINEE

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM ©HFPA

FROM THE PRODUCERS OF

JACKIE, SPOTLIGHT AND TONI ERDMANN

WINNER ONE OF THE TOP 5 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW BEST FOREIG OFFICIAL CHILE EN

“A FANTASTIC MOVIE. DANIELA VEGA IS FANTASTIC IN IT.” -A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“THE MOVIE IS A KNOCKOUT. EXTRAORDINARY. ELEVATES SEBASTIÁN LELIO IN THE RISING-STAR RANKS OF INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKERS. DANIELA VEGA IS REMARKABLE.” -David Rooney, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

A FILM BY SEBASTIÁN LELIO

A FANTASTIC WOMAN

S ONY PICTUU RES CLASSICS and PARRTICIPANTT MEDIA pree sent a FABB ULA production in co-producc tion with KOMPLIZEE N FILM M UCHAS GRACIAS SETEMBRO CINEE “AA FANTASTIC WOMAN” DANIELA VEE GA FRANCC ISCO REYESS Music byy MATTHEW W HERBERTT Costume Designer M URIEL PAA RRA Proo duction Dee signer ESSTEFANÍA L ARRAÍNN L ine Producer EDUARDD O CASTROO Editor S OLEDAD S ALFATE D irector of Photogrr aphy BENN JAMÍN E CHAZARRR ETA, ACC C Sound Designer TINA L A SCHKEE E xecutive Prroducers JEFFF SKOLL JOO NATHAN K ING ROCÍOO JADUE MAA RIANE HAA RTARD BEE N VON DOO BENECK Co-Producc ed by JANN INE JACKK OWSKI J ONAS DORNBACHH MAREN ADE FERNANDA DEL NIDO Produced byy JUAN DE DIIOS LARRAÍÍN PABLO L ARRAÍN Screenplay by SEBASTTIÁN LELIOO GONZALLO MAZA Directed by SEBASTIÁÁN LELIOO ©2017 ASESOR RIAS Y PRODUCCIONES FA ABULA LIMITADA; PARTIC CIPANT PANAMERICA, LLC; KOMPLIZEN FILM GMB BH; SETEMBRO CINE E, SLU; AND LELIO Y MA AZA LIMITADA. SANTIA AGO DE CHILE.

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VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.AFANTASTICWOMAN.COM

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Make an impact. Learn more at wttc.org/toomuchtoask

FOREGROUND

Incoming

Poetic Justice DANIELA VEGA, THE BREATHTAKING TRANS STAR OF A FANTASTIC WOMAN, HAS MADE HISTORYâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;HER WAY.

BY R. KURT OSENLUND PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEATHER STEN

12 FEB RUARY 2018 OUT

and authorities who suspect foul play), Vega was ostracized and dismissed by hiring managers when trying to find work. “In many countries, there is no law for gender identity,” she says, “so you cannot change your name or gender on your identification. When employers ask you for your legal background, you must hand them your documents. And that’s when they say no.”

Distraught, Vega fell into a yearlong depression. She was only 20, but she’d given up singing and had confined herself to her bed. It took the encouragement of a close friend in the theater world to revive her; she soon joined the friend in a college workshop, lending her makeup skills to the production and even landing a role in the show. She had a week to learn her lines, and she had to sing opera, a lifelong passion that had been lying dormant. “There was a theater director in that audience who heard me and told me he wanted to work with me,” Vega says. “He wrote a monologue for me, The Butterfly Woman, about my life and about metamorphosis, and we’ve been doing it for seven years. It’s still running in Santiago.”

From there, Vega left the cocoon of her bedroom firmly behind. Filmmaker Mauricio López Fernández spotted her in a Butterfly Woman performance and gave Vega her first film role in La Visita, released in 2014. And then, while serving

“It was either them or me. Either don’t fit the mold, or die in the attempt to.” as a makeup artist at a Chilean fashion show, she got a phone call that would change her life. It was from Lelio, a writer-director best known for his 2013 drama Gloria. “He said, ‘I would like to meet you because I would like to know what it is to be trans,’ ” Vega says. She agreed to be a consultant on a loosely developing project, which, three years later, became a masterful milestone— one of the finest examples of a trans actor playing a trans character on screen.

“He was in Berlin, and I was in Santiago, so we built the relationship over distance—telephone and Skype,” Vega says. Roughly two years after their first call, Lelio told Vega she’d be receiving a “top secret” package in the mail. It was the script for A Fantastic Woman. As Vega read it, she saw increasing parallels between her and Marina, and she called Lelio. “I said, ‘What did you do?’ ” she recalls. “And he said, ‘I wrote a film for you, and I want you to be the leading lady. I’m absolutely sure you can do it.’ So I accepted. And here I am.”

S T Y L I N G BY M I C H A E L C O O K . H A I R A N D M A K E U P : M A R C E LO G U T I E R R E Z . P R E V I O U S PAG E : D R E S S BY A S O S . T H I S PAG E : D R E S S BY A S O S .

DANIELA VEGA SPEAKS like a poet, artfully crafting her sentences in a way that feels organic. It’s no wonder the Chilean actress and opera singer— who gave one of last year’s greatest breakthrough performances in Sebastián Lelio’s foreign-language Oscar entry A Fantastic Woman—repeatedly mentions the work of Stella Díaz Varín, a late and little-known poet from Vega’s home country whom she implores others to read. “Poetry is an expression of what’s inside you,” Vega says, “and what’s most inspired me from Stella’s work is her relationship with time.”

Born and raised in Santiago, Vega has also had an intriguing, tumultuous connection with the ticking clock, pacing herself and trusting her gut while chasing her destiny. The 28-year-old has been singing since she was 8, taking extensive classes paid for by her eternally supportive parents. At 14, after years of confusion, she realized she wasn’t gay, but something else, eventually finding clarity when she came across the word transsexuality. Coming out to her family was fairly easy, but expressing herself at school wasn’t, especially given the gradual nature of her transition. She was bullied for wearing makeup and carrying purses, but for her, the larger purpose eclipsed all of that. “When transitioning, it’s important to do it calmly, with respect for your body,” Vega says, noting that “passing” didn’t interest her, despite the adversity she faced from peers.

“It was either them or me,” she says.

“Either don’t fit the mold, or die in the attempt to.” She completed her gender confirmation by 17. She never cut her hair again.

“I knew I wanted to be a woman,” Vega says. “Afterward, I asked myself what I wanted to do with my life, and I decided to be an artist.” Art is where Vega found additional strength—through song, Varín’s poetry, and films by Almodóvar and John Cassavetes, both of whom are stylistically evoked in A Fantastic Woman. But like her character, Marina, who endures trans discrimination and humiliation in the wake of her boyfriend’s death (from both his family

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T H E G AY A G E N DA 6 T H I N G S YO U S H O U L D B E TA L K I N G A B O U T R I G H T N OW

3. Ezra Furman:

Art-Rock Outlaw Ezra Furman’s stirring new album, Transangelic Exodus, channels the paranoia the queer Chicago-born singer experienced during a U.S. tour that coincided with the 2016 presidential campaign. Here, he talks about rocking dresses and running from the law.

JOHN RUSSELL Luka Kain

Irresistible Spirit of Saturday Church Dreamy dance numbers ignite Damon Cardasis’s surreal movie musical about chosen families.

When Bronx teenager Ulysses (Luka Kain), the main character in Saturday Church, is overcome with emotion, queer writerdirector Damon Cardasis drops him into fantastical musical numbers, allowing him to escape locker-room bullies or revel in first love. Like a shy angel with half-sprouted wings, bisexual newcomer Kain floats through the sequences with both terror and vigor, whether surrounded by dancing jocks or falling rose petals. A major arc of the movie, which was a hit at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, shows Ulysses becoming less dependent on these dreamscapes, and more

2. In Between’s Radical,

Glorious Girl Power

Halfway through director Maysaloun Hamoud’s first feature, In Between, Ziad (Mahmud Shalaby) tells his rowdy rebel girlfriend, Leila (Mouna Hawa), “Dress as people want, but eat what you want.” Leila replies, “What happens if I eat what I want and dress as I want?” The exchange speaks to the heart of this inflammatory and celebratory drama about three very different yet fundamentally similar Palestinian women trying to safeguard their true selves while sharing an apartment in Tel Aviv. Leila parties hard and exerts her power as a criminal lawyer; Salma (Sana Jammelieh), a bartender and aspiring DJ, conceals her lesbianism from her Christian family; and conservative student Noor (Shaden Kanboura) grapples with an abusive, loveless marriage. Hamoud, herself a Palestinian, received death threats upon In Between’s release in her homeland last year, and the film announces her as a firebrand—a fearless storyteller who’s unafraid to explore the complexities of her culture and join the global chorus promoting gender equality. RKO 14 FEB R UARY 2018 OUT

You’ve called this album novelistic. What’s it about?

It’s about me and an angel in a car being pursued by authority figures, running for our lives.

How did your 2016 tour shape it?

On tour you’re traveling in a pod, seeing almost nobody else. It gives you this “us against everything” feeling, which also feeds into my paranoia that others are out for my blood.

How do the songs reflect that?

I hope you feel like you and I are running together, and it causes you to empathize with refugees and other vulnerable people.

The song “Compulsive Liar” links being closeted with deception.

I learned at a young age to lie about being queer. A big part of my starting to present myself as feminine is if you’re wearing a dress, you can’t transform into a “straight-acting” male at the first sign of someone’s disapproval.

You can’t just shape-shift.

C O U R T E S Y O F S A M U E L G O L DW Y N F I L M S ( S AT U R DAY C H U R C H ). C O U R T E S Y O F F I L M M OV E M E N T ( I N B E T W E E N ). C O U R T E S Y O F J A S O N S I M M O N S ( F U R M A N )

1. The

accepting of his gender identity. He finds his chosen family in the drama’s titular queer youth program. “I hope the film opens the minds of people who might normally have them closed,” says Cardasis. “And I really hope people who’ve been underrepresented feel that it tells part of their story.”

Cardasis, who was once involved with a similar LGBTQ support center in New York, helped ensure this representation by casting trans actors—and genuine standouts—like MJ Rodriguez, Alexia Garcia, and Indya Moore, many of whom play part-time escorts who foster Ulysses’s self-discovery. “I want to demonstrate that trans people can take up just as much space as anyone else,” says Moore, “and unapologetically so.” Indeed, an unapologetic celebration of the self is what ushers Church to its joyful finale, which unfurls like the evolved cousin of Glee, all scuffed heels, flashy mascara, and soaring high notes. R. KURT OSENLUND

F O R E G R O U N D T H E G AY AG E N DA

4.

Virginia Gardner, Modern Marvel IT’S FITTING THAT Karolina Dean, the first lesbian superhero to appear in Marvel’s television universe, has skin that glows with a rainbow-esque light, which she can shoot at enemies like lasers. The character, from the new Hulu series Runaways, first discovers her Technicolor powers at a frat party after unlocking a medical alert bracelet affixed to her by her cult-leader parents.

Actress Virginia Gardner approached the role with some firsthand knowledge of cultlike devotion, having left an all-girls Catholic school in her hometown at the age of 15.

“Some of my friends there were depressed, and I think Karolina has a similar experience of disillusionment,” says the 22-year-old Sacramento, Calif., native. “Although in her case the church is literally killing teenagers.”

Gardner knows that portraying Karolina is a big responsibility, and she hopes to surpass the expectations of not only comic-book purists, but also queer teens who don’t see themselves reflected in the current slate of superhero shows. “I’ve always wanted to do projects that represent people who need representation,” says Gardner, whose last big project, the 2016 frat boy–hazing drama Goat, also happened to contain some homoerotic tension.

Future episodes of Runaways will feature Karolina flying and firing off those beams of light with increasing ease. And if the series’ producers stay faithful to the comics, she might also find herself falling for the gendernonbinary hero Xavin. “If Xavin is ever part of the show, we want to find a gendernonconforming person to perform that role,” she says. “Having a superhero you can relate to is invaluable.” STEVEN BLUM PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRACEY MORRIS

OUT FEB R UARY 2018 15

F O R E G R O U N D T H E G AY AG E N DA

6. Shopping’s

Josh Feldman (left) in a scene from This Close

5. The Groundbreaking New Series This Close Josh Feldman had never seen a show with a deaf lead. So the deaf, gay writer and actor made one himself.

In This Close, a new Sundance Now dramedy about a queer deaf twentysomething writer named Michael (Josh Feldman) and his deaf best friend Kate (Shoshannah Stern), some of the most powerful moments happen in complete silence. Here, Feldman, who cocreated the series with Stern, discusses how the pair pulled it all off. STEVEN BLUM

What are some cliché plot lines you’ve seen for deaf people?

They always get the cochlear implant.

They also fall in love, but it won’t work out because the other person has to sign!

Usually, the only reason they’re brought into the story is because they’re deaf.

I mean, we’re probably the first show written and created by deaf people. And it’s 2017!

How did This Close come about?

Everyone told us we couldn’t have deaf characters in our show. We got so tired of hearing “no” that we thought, Why don’t we just do it ourselves? We put an episode on Kickstarter and raised $10,000 in less than a week. We were shocked.

Michael is fresh off a breakup. Why’d you choose to portray him at such a turbulent point in his life?

We wanted people to relate to these characters. In my 20s, my greatest personal growth happened after breakups. And that included bad decisions.

People constantly tokenize Kate at work, telling her she’s so brave just for doing her job. Has that happened to you?

No, I’m more like Michael. He never pretends he can hear, so he’s never forced to address those kinds of issues. He never needs to be told, “Hey, you’re deaf.

Own it.”

16 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

You also experiment with sound, letting us feel what it’s like when Kate’s hearing aid isn’t working well.

People assume that if you’re deaf you hear nothing, but I’m constantly feeling vibrations. I hear cars and sirens.

Shoshannah’s perception is based on the sound coming through her hearing aid, but mine is based on the sound I feel on my body. We were lucky to have two sound designers who created the audio around our own perceptions.

Some of the show’s funniest moments involve interpreters. That forced intimacy with a stranger seems to create all sorts of comedic scenarios.

Using an interpreter is a necessary evil [looks at his interpreter and smiles].

When I talk to the doctor I use one, so the interpreter knows everything going on in my life. Some are nosy or just incompetent. Ideally, they’re just supposed to be a vessel for your thoughts.

The British postpunk band Shopping have always used their spry, laconic tunes to tackle big issues (identity politics, consumerism), but when they started writing their third album, The Official Body, they found themselves in the midst of two game-changing events: Brexit and Trump’s election.

The queer trio—singer-guitarist Rachel Aggs, singer-bassist Billy Easter, and singer-drummer Andrew Milk—were suddenly met with a daunting sense of obligation. “There was this incredible opportunity to say something, but it was also pressurizing, and it was coming through in the songs,” says Aggs. “Some were a bit depressing.”

Their solution: Scrap the heavy stuff, enlist new-wave icon Edwyn Collins (of Orange Juice fame) as a producer, and release the most shimmy-inducing music they’ve ever made. “If you stop laughing and doing the thing you love, you’ve let them win,” says Aggs.

“It feels defiant to carry on creating something danceable and uplifting, because that’s what people need.” By people, she means anyone who’s ever felt oppressed by the bureaucratic, patriarchal, mostly white body of the record’s title. “Imagine if all the stuff made by queer people and people of color was no longer here,” says Aggs.

“The world would be rubbish.”

JASON LAMPHIER From left: Milk, Aggs, and Easter

C O U R T E S Y O F G U N T H E R C A M P I N E / S U N DA N C E N OW ( T H I S C LO S E ). C O U R T E S Y O F FATC AT R E C O R D S ( S H O P P I N G )

Defiant Optimism

IDENTITY. HOOK-UPS. PEP. L.A. STREAM THE SERIES FOR FREE

fallingforangels Boyle Heights - Koreatown - Leimert Park - Bel Air - Silver Lake - Malibu A RIVETING ANTHOLOGY SERIES ABOUT L.A.’S DYNAMIC NEIGHBORHOODS WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY A DIVERSE GROUP OF LGBTQ CREATIVES. CHAPTER II “KOREATOWN” STARRING TY CHEN AND DALE SONG

FALLINGFORANGELS.COM

Foreground TRENDING

18 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC WHITE

S T Y L I N G BY M I C H A E L C O O K . G R O O M E R : L A R A M I E G L E N . M O D E L : J O E L M I G N OT T AT O N E M O D E L M A N AG E M E N T

Mellow Yellow In the middle of winter, when our meticulously crafted outfits are hidden under big, heavy jackets, it’s hard to make a fashion statement. One solution: slipping on some brightly tinted sunglasses.

And if you’re going to go bright, why not opt for the brightest shades of all? Not only is yellow the season’s hottest color for lenses, it’s also functional—and friendlier. Ditching darker-hued specs means that you can see better, and that others can see you. Whether it’s a classic pair from Tomas Maier or Carrera or some funkier frames from Retrosuperfuture or Polaroid, you’ll have plenty of styles to choose from—all of which will get you thinking of the warmer, sunnier, carefree days ahead.

OPPOSITE PAGE: GLASSES BY CARRERA, $269; TANK TOP BY ACNE STUDIOS, $80. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: GLASSES BY RETROSUPERFUTURE, $265; TANK TOP BY ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE, $890. GLASSES BY CUTLER & GROSS AVAILABLE AT MR. PORTER, $445; TANK TOP BY CALVIN KLEIN UNDERWEAR, $39.50 FOR A PACK OF THREE. GLASSES BY TOMAS MAIER, $240; TANK TOP BY HERMÈS, $720. GLASSES BY POLAROID, $65; TANK TOP BY MICHAEL KORS, $98

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 19

Foreground TRENDING

The Pink Shoe: Anything But Bashful We’ve extolled the pristine simplicity of white sneakers, revived that old veteran the penny loafer, and even told you that you can pair sporty kicks with a suit. But these days, when it comes to taking risks below the knee, it’s all about pink. Adding a little splash of blush or bashful to your darker winter wardrobe is a foolproof way to stand out, make coworkers smile, and announce your unshakable confidence—because, as we’ve made clear time and time again, only the most badass of men wear pink. Prefer to take baby steps into this new footwear terrain? Try a pair of delicate dusty rose shoes from Bottega Veneta or Original Penguin. Want to really go for it? Scoop up some new trainers from Tommy Hilfiger. In delicious bright bubblegum, they’re guaranteed to make any look pop.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SHOES BY ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE, $495; SOCKS BY PRADA, $210. SHOES BY BOTTEGA VENETA, $750; SOCKS BY FALKE, $38. SHOES BY ORIGINAL PENGUIN, $130; SOCKS BY PANTHERELLA, $28.50. OPPOSITE PAGE: SNEAKERS BY TOMMY HILFIGER, $170; SOCKS BY HAPPY FEET, $22

24 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC WHITE

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 25

S T Y L I N G BY M I C H A E L C O O K . G R O O M E R : L A R A M I E G L E N . M O D E L : J O E L M I G N OT T AT O N E M O D E L M A N AG E M E N T

Foreground GROOMING

CZECH & SPEAKE FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH BATH OIL If frankincense and myrrh were good enough for baby Jesus, they must be good enough for your bathwater. Shake in a few splashes of this oil and let it revive your skin, giving it a healthy, post-vacay luster. (3.4 oz., $119)

TOM FORD NEROLI PORTOFINO BODY OIL Mr. Ford, who knows a thing or two about luxury, has crafted a rich, sumptuous potion that seeks to capture the “cool breezes, sparkling clear water, and lush foliage of the Italian Riviera.” Consider it the Call Me by Your Name of body oils. (8.5 oz., $74, TomFord.com)

LE LABO SANTAL 33 BODY OIL Enriched with jojoba and vitamin E, Le Labo’s paraben-free oil is effective at turning Sahara-like skin into a dew-covered garden at dawn. Plus, it has a hint of the fragrance world’s most sensual aroma: Santal 33.

(4 oz., $68, LeLaboFragrances.com)

Nature’s verdant splendor isn’t the only thing that takes a beating during the harsh months of winter. Our skin, too, gets pushed to the extremes. And in these bitter times, lotion alone may not replenish a moisture-starved body. You might need to enlist the concentrated power of an unexpected friend: oil. While greasy skin is never the end goal, slathering on a bit of the slicker stuff can deliver a wallop of much-needed nourishment to dry legs, elbows, and shoulders (not to mention, it won’t clump in your body hair the way a thick cream can). Grooming brands are now harnessing oil’s natural healing properties, plus adding in subtle fragrances and vitamin-infused supplements, to create a new wave of must-have skin-savers.

Here, six of our favorites. MAX BERLINGER 26 FEB RUA RY 2018 OUT

WELEDA EVENING PRIMROSE AGE REVITALIZING BODY OIL Made with “mature skin” in mind, this allnatural concoction is perfect for those who wish to retain a youthful glow when the winter winds threaten to strip it from your face and body. (3.4 oz., $26, Weleda.com)

CLOVE & CREEK BODY OIL Infused with Vitamin E, grape seeds, and patchouli oils, this unctuous brew aims to capture nature’s restorative powers and impart them to your skin. Good news, bears and otters: You can use it on your beard, too.

(2 oz., $28, CloveAndCreek.com)

P H O T O G R A P H B Y TAY L O R M I L L E R

M O D E L : G R E G K E L L E Y. C O U R T E S Y O F B R A N D S (O I L S )

Oil Check

RODIN OLIO LUSSO JASMINE & NEROLI BODY OIL Eleven oils, culled from Egypt to India, come together to create this luxe salve. Floral jasmine and tangy neroli add a special yin-andyang for the nose, while almond oil helps heal blemishes. (4 oz., $130, RodinOlioLusso.com)

Foreground LIQUIDITY

Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon

DRINK THESE NOW

The Perfect Toasts for Your Sunday Roast

D E AT H TO S TO C K ( D I N N E R ) . C O U R T E S Y O F S A R A S A N G E R ( B O N T E R R A C A B E R N E T )

Winter calls for a hearty family dinner—with a hearty wine to match.

IT’S HARDLY surprising that in an era when the news cycle feels increasingly toxic, the Danish concept of hygge, broadly associated with well-being, should become popular on this side of the Atlantic.

Many of us are looking to simple pleasures to restore a sense of equilibrium, and nothing is as hygge as a nourishing Sunday dinner.

Whether it’s a simple roast chicken, stuffed with lemons and smothered in butter, or a rich lamb stew, few comforts in life compare to a cozy supper with family or friends, especially one washed down with several good bottles of wine.

Although traditionally associated with Britain—the French pejorative for the English has long been Les Rosbifs—the Sunday roast is a perfect antidote for anyone looking to fight the winter blues. But any roast meat needs an equally robust wine to withstand all those fatty juices and intense flavors.

“You need something heavy, because any wine that’s too thin falls apart next to the meal,” says Sebastien Simon, a sommelier at Chelsea Wine Vault in New York. “My number one choices are usually wines from the southern Rhône region—they tend to go well

with game, beef, lamb, and chicken.”

Much, of course, depends on the execution of the meal. If you’re serving meat with a winey or fruity sauce such as a cranberry reduction, you’ll want to opt for a full-bodied red. In those cases Simon recommends an American Zinfandel or a Cabernet from Sonoma’s Alexander Valley.

If you’re just doing a simple gravy, a Syrah like E.Guigal’s Saint-Joseph from France’s northern Rhône Valley should hold up well.

For chicken, Simon suggests a light- to medium-body red like a Barolo to sharpen the flavor, or a Barbaresco from Piedmont.

You could also choose a buttery white wine, such as Grgich Hills 2014 Chardonnay, or a bottle of Domaine Drouhin Oregon Chardonnay Arthur 2015 (via the French winemaker Joseph Drouhin), a perfect complement to roast chicken or even a creamy fish pie.

One final note: Dial down the alcohol content. Wines with less than 14% will have the higher acidity levels you want to cut through the fat. But don’t worry—you can always compensate with an after-dinner glass of Port. —SAMI PRITCHARD

Four Infallible Sunday Dinner Wines Tom Gore Cabernet Sauvignon This Alexander Valley Cab has nice ripe cherry notes that pair well with roast beef cooked in a sweeter sauce. $12 Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon A superbly priced Cab with rich flavors and a spicy finish that holds its own with a joint of roast beef. $16 E.Guigal’s Saint-Joseph 2014 Made from 100% Syrah grapes, Saint Joseph offers a ton of structure and spicy blackberry notes. $30 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Chardonnay Arthur 2015 A lovely vibrant white from Oregon’s Willamette Valley that demonstrates a good balance of acidity and oak notes. $35

O U T F E B R UA RY 2018 27

FO R EG R O U N D N E I G H B O R H O O D WATC H

Beantown’s Fort Point dockland isn’t just an upcoming neighborhood— it’s a small city unto itself.

“FORT POINT” is scrawled across old parchment maps of colonial Boston, but the spit of land poking east from the city’s central core has been renamed the Seaport—a sprawling canvas that’s become one of its coolest neighborhoods. Culture is key, with the Fort Point Arts Community (FortPointArts.org) leading the charge to expand Boston’s creative spaces, but it’s the surplus of noteworthy restaurants that has earned the morphing area its highest praises.

Some are even referring to the Seaport as the Innovation District for its recent influx of tech companies, start-ups, and Lyft-sponsored NuTonomy cabs selfdriving their way through the gridiron.

—BRANDON PRESSER 28 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

WHAT TO DO INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ BOSTON Founded as the sister museum to New York’s MoMA, the ICA has played a crucial part in developing the Seaport as a creative destination since it moved into its current home—a super-sleek architectural flourish—more than 10 years ago. Its impressive collection of moving images and large-scale sculptures feels immersive and avantgarde, deftly capturing the future of art and its experiential inclinations.

ICABoston.org HARPOON Occupying a massive warehouse complex so close to the sea you can actually smell the daily catch, this industrial-style brewery has recently grown into the city’s fabric as brandnew developments are erected all around. Tours happen on the hour, and they’re everything you’d want: light on the science and heavy on the samples, with a dedicated 15 minutes in a taproom where you can try every flavor available, from smooth stouts to double IPAs. The best part, however, is the homemade pretzels, boiled in beer and

served with an array of dipping sauces in the main hall. HarpoonBrewery.com SPORTELLO James Beard Award-winner Barbara Lynch shifted the gravity of essential Italian eats away from the North End when she opened Sportello more than a decade ago. Since then, dozens of other restaurants have moved into the neighboring warehouses, but her counter-service-style diner spinning upmarket dishes continues to hold its own as the darling of Seaport suppering. The octopus carpaccio is delicious, and you defnitely don’t want to miss the homemade pasta. Everyone goes for the bolognese, but the black garlic pappardelle (with braised veal and juicy black trumpets) is killer.

SportelloBoston.com

C O U R T E S Y O F E N VOY (O U T LO O K ). C O U R T E S Y O F M I Y E AG E R ( R OW 3 4)

Boston’s Seaport

ROW 34 An industrial outpost from the same team behind the locally acclaimed oyster bar Island Creek, this Seaport standout packs to the exposed rafters with its after-work crowd. Focus on the exquisite raw bar (the namesake Island Creeks won’t let you down) and crudos (go for the salmon with chili oil and kohlrabi), which pair perfectly with any of the beers on the epically long list of curated draughts and bottles. Expect to hear “No Diggity” or “No Scrubs” thumping overhead when you tuck into your after-oysters snack: a warm lobster roll, overstuffed and seasoned with butter, sugar, and salt. Row34.com

PRO TIP

Tatiana Pairot Rosana, Executive Chef, Outlook at the Envoy

C O U R T E S Y O F E N VOY. C O U R T E S Y O F C A I T L I N C U N N I N G H A M ( I C A ) . C O U R T E S Y O F H A R P O O N .

C O U R T E S Y O F B R I A N S A M U E L S ( S P O R T E L LO)

OAK + ROWAN A welcome breather from all the “small plates” and “farm to table” jargon, Oak + Rowan puts the finest ingredients forward on its shortlist of dishes. A brass-topped bar cart rolls from table to table as a nomadic barkeep swirls together drinks, and while the mains feel decidedly midmarket, the desserts from executive pastry chef Brian Mercury are worthy of a Michelin nod.

Try the Taza chocolate tart—an ovoid mini-pie with a shortbread crust, notes of Earl Grey and salted caramel, and a gooey core of overflowing chocolate.

OakAndRowan.com DRINK Tucked under Sportello is another one of Barbara Lynch’s award-winning venues: a self-described “cocktail party every night” that makes good on its promise with lines curling out the door and ecstatic chatter inside. Only amateurs ask for a menu; locals know to drop their orders off with the bartender.

Something like “start with amaro and build an old-fashioned profile” should do the trick. He’ll even light yours on fire if you ask nicely. DrinkFortPoint.com WHERE TO STAY ENVOY One of the first new structures added to the Seaport’s checkerboard of bricklayered buildings, the Envoy, part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, is a glass Rubik’s Cube facing the city’s financial district. Sporting everything an urban traveler could want under

one roof, it offers spacious, pared-back rooms; a gym with Peloton bikes; an extensive contemporary art collection; a virtual pool table in the lobby; and a ground-floor restaurant, Outlook.

Executive chef Tatiana Pairot Rosana’s interpretations of homespun American staples include a duck confit Scotch egg, the loaded baked potato flatbread, and steak with romesco and burnt cauliflower. Afterward, sneak upstairs to the rooftop bar Lookout, where during the colder months you can seek refuge in one of the climate-controlled neon geodesic igloos with views over Beantown. TheEnvoyHotel.com

Opposite page: Outlook, in the Envoy hotel (top); Row 34. This page, clockwise from top: a suite at the Envoy hotel; ICA; Harpoon; a dish from Sportello

“My wife Alexis is both my harshest critic and number one fan,” says Rosana. “She’s the reason I’m constantly pushing to be a better chef every single day.”

Rosana was born in Miami to a Cuban family, and her heritage influences her take on American comfort food. But over the past few years, Alexis’s Korean background and Hawaiian upbringing have begun to find their place in Rosana’s cuisine as well—try Outlook’s beef tartare, with its generous amount of togarashi and sesame. So where do they like to eat?

Says Rosana, “When friends come to town we always take them to Menton (MentonBoston .com)—Barbara Lynch can do no wrong. And after I finish my shift I love meeting up at Pastoral (PastoralFortPoint .com), a food industry favorite for late nights.”

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 29

Foreground FITNESS 101

3

Bring the calf-building power of strutting in Louboutins into the gym.

THEY SAY THERE’S NO better workout for your calves than a night out in highheeled pumps. Think about it: You’re constantly Barbie-toeing—which is the concentric part of a calf raise—and it seems like every high-powered ’80s businesswoman we’ve ever seen has curvy, well-developed, muscular lower legs. Realistically, though, whether you’re a man or a woman, how often can you wear six-inch stilettos? Four, maybe five days a week?

As an alternative, personal trainer Iggy Gonçalves—or “Iggy Gotcalves” to his friends—has five killer routines to turn those baby bovines into full-blown bulls. Just make sure to stretch your stems before pointing and arching.

1. Standing Calf Raise

Repeat this sequence, nonstop, twice, for a total of 60 reps. If you need an extra challenge, add dumbbells or a barbell.

3 x 10 toes pointed forward 3 x 10 toes pointed outward so your feet form a V shape 3 x 10 toes pointed inward

30 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

2. Tibialis Anterior Machine

4. Seated Calf Raise

This machine kinda looks like a Segway just for your toes, and it is best used with very low weight. If your gym doesn’t have one, Gonçalves has a backup plan: “Sit on one end of a bench with your heels coming off the other end, then place a dumbbell between your feet and push your feet into a dorsiflexion.” That means you’ll want your toes arching up, closer to your shin. Repeat this for three sets, 15 to 25 reps each.

“Feel that stretch on the front part of the leg when you bring the weight down,” Gonçalves says, “and with that same stretch try to bring it back up slowly.”

Similar to the previous exercise, your heels should be dangling off the machine’s foot piece so that when the weight is released you’re able to get a full stretch on your Achilles tendon.

According to Gonçalves, some seated calf-raise machines are engineered differently, so make sure to follow the instructions on how to lock and unlock the machine properly before use. Do three sets of 20 or 30 reps with moderate weight, gradually increasing it after each set as you feel more confident. “Movements should be slow and controlled,” Gonçalves says, stressing, “do not bounce the weight up and down.”

3. Calf Press on Leg Press

Act like you’re doing a traditional leg press, with your feet shoulder-width apart, but let your heels hang off the edge of the panel, so that only your soles are planted.

With your knees locked in place so your legs are straight, push the weight up using only your feet. Do three sets of 20 reps with moderate weight.

Gonçalves suggests using light weight if you’re just starting out, and warns, “If you find yourself unable to get full range of motion out of your ankle, then the weight is too heavy for you and you are not getting the most out of this exercise.”

5. Calf Raise Farmer's Walk

This is undoubtedly the best exercise of the bunch—Gonçalves describes it as “walking in imaginary high heels.”

Hold two dumbbells of your desired weight, and walk 80 feet on your tippy toes for three sets of 40 reps, gradually increasing your weight.

Much like walking in actual heels, you don’t want to rush this exercise, or you could end up with a rolled ankle. It’d be the gym equivalent of hobbling home at 3 A.M., clutching your Jimmy Choos in your hands like a broken and defeated drag queen. Never again.

—LES FABIAN BRATHWAITE

DA N I E L A N I K A ( L E G S P H OTO) . M O R E I N FO R M AT I O N AT I G G Y F I T.C O M

Nice Stems

The weight of my diagnosis only made me stronger.

Let’s Grow Old Together See what life with HIV looks like from diagnosis through grandkids with a little help from Walgreens. Explore Jack’s HIV journey at Walgreens.com/LetsGrowOldTogether. ©2017 Walgreen Co. All rights reserved.

480320-358

0517

Foreground KITCHEN 411 White Gold Butchers

Eggslut

The Breakfast Sandwich Boom How chefs are updating the beloved deli classic IS ANYTHING better than biting, bleary-eyed and hungover, into a bacon, egg, and cheese on a Saturday morning? Actually, yes. Restaurants across the country have started putting new focus on the breakfast sandwich, transforming an already-perfect classic into something sublime.

It all started with the epic lines at L.A.’s Eggslut (Eggslut.com), whose oozy, insanely delicious creations have convinced a waistline-obsessed city that there can be much more to look forward to in the morning than oatmeal and green juice.

The crowds are drawn to chef-owner Alvin Cailan’s subtle yet inspired approach, which includes mixing in a few extra flavors to ignite taste buds. Witness The Fairfax, a vegetarianfriendly marriage of soft-scrambled eggs and cheddar spiked with a bit of heat (sriracha mayo) and laced with umami (caramelized onions).

The chefs who’ve followed suit aren’t exactly reinventing the meal—they’re just riffing off the winning formula of egg plus cheese plus meat.

“It’s actually really important for us to honor and emulate the classic bodega breakfast sandwich,” says Michelle Petrulio, culinary director for New York’s White Gold Butchers (WhiteGoldButchers. com). “Breakfast is all about comfort, simplicity, and portability. When you’re executing something with, say, four ingredients, there isn’t anything to Rum Raisin ice cream hide behind.”

32 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

The key lies mostly in sourcing and quality— Petrulio and her peers are sticking to the basics while elevating their standards. The poppyseed kaiser sandwich at White Gold Butchers, for example, looks familiar, but its sausage is made in house and its decadent egg is cooked in beef fat. Add a few slabs of peppery, house-cured lamb pastrami and you’ve got a hangover buster that deserves its own superhero movie. Similarly, Danny Meyer’s New York café Daily Provisions (DailyProvisionsNYC.com) offers a classicsounding bacon, egg, and cheese called the BEC, but its Portuguese-style roll is made from scratch on site, and its thick-cut pig belly is enough to make you forget your corner joint’s blackened bacon strips. “It’s all about our bacon,” says chef Carmen Quagliata. “The Berkshire variety provides a kick of salt, smoky sweetness, and clove spice flavors, accentuating the BEC’s crave-ability.”

And if you’re ever starting your day off in San Francisco, don’t pass on the breakfast sandwich at Tartine Manufactory (TartineManufactory.com), where coexecutive chefs Bill Niles and Christa Chase combine fatty chunks of porchetta and an unexpected drizzle of herbaceous salsa verde with a fried egg on a cushiony bun. It’s well worth getting out of bed for—just know that when you finish it, you’ll probably need a nap.

—JEFFREY URQUHART

Three easy tips for a better breakfast in bed 1. Happy chickens do lay tastier eggs. Look for cage-free options or shop at your local farmers market.

2. Ditch the ketchup for a sauce you’re more likely to find at dinner. Pesto and spicy mustard are both winners.

3. Don’t be cheesy with your cheese.

Replace that processed American with pepper Jack, smoked gouda, or manchego.

C O U R T E S Y O F L I Z C L AY M A N ( DA I LY P R OV I S I O N S ). C O U R T E S Y O F W H I T E G O L D B U TC H E R S . C O U R T E S Y O F E G G S LU T

Daily Provisions

THE PERFECT EGG SANDWICH: HOME EDITION

We know who we are.

What is TRUVADA for PrEP?

Who should not take TRUVADA for PrEP?

TRUVADA for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a prescription medicine that is used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1. To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to prevent getting HIV. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. If you are HIV-1 positive, you need to take other medicines with TRUVADA to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

Also take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP? Before taking TRUVADA for PrEP: You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-negative.

Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting or at any time while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin.

While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.

You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP: Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months.

If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away.

To further help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1: Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners.

Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you.

Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners.

Do not miss any doses of TRUVADA. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

TRUVADA can cause serious side effects: Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV and stop taking TRUVADA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

What are the other possible side effects of TRUVADA for PrEP? Serious side effects of TRUVADA may also include: Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with TRUVADA. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking TRUVADA. Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

Bone problems, including bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP are stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking TRUVADA for PrEP? All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis.

If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if TRUVADA can harm your unborn baby. If you become pregnant while taking TRUVADA for PrEP, talk to your healthcare provider to decide if you should keep taking TRUVADA. If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-thecounter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. TRUVADA may interact with other medicines. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine.

If you take certain other medicines with TRUVADA, your healthcare provider may need to check you more often or change your dose.

These medicines include certain medicines to treat hepatitis C (HCV) infection.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about TRUVADA for PrEP including important warnings on the following page.

I’m passionate, not impulsive.

I know who I am. And I make choices that fit my life.

TRUVADA for PrEP™ is a once-daily prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices.

TRUVADA for PrEP is only for adults who are at high risk of getting HIV through sex.

You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TR

Ask your doctor about your risk of getting and if TRUVADA for PrEP may be right for Learn more at truvada.com

IMPORTANT FACTS This is only a brief summary of important information about taking TRUVADA for PrEPTM (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. This does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.

(tru-VAH-dah) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP Before starting TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must be HIV-1 negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative.

• Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include flu-like symptoms, tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. Tell your healthcare provider if you have had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting TRUVADA for PrEP. While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.

• You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you think you were exposed to HIV-1 or have a flu-like illness while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. • If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

• See the “How To Further Reduce Your Risk” section for more information.

TRUVADA may cause serious side effects, including: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA for PrEP is a prescription medicine used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1.

• To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

Do NOT take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: • Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status.

• Take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

HOW TO TAKE TRUVADA FOR PrEP • Take 1 tablet once a day, every day, not just when you think you have been exposed to HIV-1.

• Do not miss any doses. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• Use TRUVADA for PrEP together with condoms and safer sex practices.

• Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About TRUVADA for PrEP” section.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

• Bone problems.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP include stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight.

These are not all the possible side effects of TRUVADA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP.

BEFORE TAKING TRUVADA FOR PrEP Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis.

• Have any other medical conditions.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can pass to the baby in breast milk.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with TRUVADA for PrEP.

HOW TO FURTHER REDUCE YOUR RISK • Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners.

• Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you.

• Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners.

• Do not share needles or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them.

GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about TRUVADA for PrEP. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more, including how to prevent HIV infection.

• Go to start.truvada.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit start.truvada.com for program information.

TRUVADA FOR PREP, the TRUVADA FOR PREP Logo, the TRUVADA Blue Pill Design, TRUVADA, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Version date: April 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. TVDC0183 08/17

FOREGROUND SEX LIVES

Dad Goals How two silver foxes and an underwear party turned a quiet weekend in into a rare moment of joyful exhibitionism.

I DID NOT PLAN to be in Palm Springs for the White Party. Every spring my best friend Kat and I have spent a long weekend in the desert at her mother’s vacation home. I didn’t even realize until we arrived to hordes of brawny men in teeny-tiny shorts sashaying down Palm Canyon Drive that the city seemed gayer than usual, which was saying something. Then it dawned on me.

“This might be an opportunity,” I said to Kat. I was newly single, a month out of a long-term relationship, and my heartache was like a constant, ambient noise only I could hear. I wasn’t even in rebound mode yet—I was still licking my wounds. But if ever there was a time and place to cut loose, I thought, it would be on the occasion of thousands of handsome gay dudes descending on this kitschy sun-scrubbed desert oasis.

Never mind that I was the furthest thing from a circuit-party type—I didn’t have the abs for it, I wasn’t that sexually adventurous, and I was seven years sober, a hard-won second act after a string of wild teenage years. My idea of an indulgent good time extended as far as Häagen-Dazs and Netflix. But surely, for just a weekend, I could find a guy who would forgive all of that.

Instead I found two.

They were at a bar on Arenas Road the night we arrived in the desert, me sipping a soda water and eyeing the crowd, Kat as my wingman. I noticed Steven first (rangy, John Slattery– adjacent, handsome), and then Phillip, who was more of an Andy Cohen type (voluble, quippy). They were silver foxes.

They were dad goals. We made eyes at each other until I finally made my move.

They were married and visiting from Chicago, salt-of-the-earth Midwestern boys who had grown into strapping

men. Now they were celebrating Phillip’s 45th birthday. They were warm in that familiar, avuncular way older men could sometimes be with me, but not overly solicitous—just curious.

Steven’s demeanor was sturdy, while Phillip had a flintier edge.

They invited me to an underwear party the following night.

“What do I wear?” I asked. Phillip looked at me like I was an alien.

“Underwear,” he said.

I debated whether to go or not, but my curiosity got the best of me. The next night, wearing a mesh tank top and briefs under my clothes, I drove to the hotel where the party was, pounding a Red Bull along the way. I checked my clothes at the door. Inside was a mass of bodies and pummeling EDM music. I felt like an impersonator, like it was written all over my face that I didn’t belong. I circled, averting my eyes from the guys who cruised me, until I found Steven and Phillip across the dance floor.

“You came!” Phillip said, pulling me into a sweaty hug.

I bopped awkwardly along to the music until I found the beat, and suddenly it felt like the song was inside me, shifting my hips, and I was dancing like everyone else. Sandwiched between the two of them, feeling their weight, I was temporarily freed from my self-consciousness. I was sexual, even if I never felt that way, as sober and serious-minded as I was. The only

thing keeping me inhibited was me. And so, I gave in to the lusty thrill of it all, kissing both of them, luxuriating in the experience of being desired. Until finally, at 3 A.M., I followed them back to their hotel room.

After it was over, they dozed off. Lying between them in that familiar daze, I could see the sun coming up over the mountains. I hadn’t been up for a sunrise in years, and seeing it reminded me of dry-mouthed tweaker nights that bled into twitchy amber mornings, back when I was young enough to get away with it. Now I could only get halfway there. Everyone else would be waking up the following afternoon with hangovers, serotoninbereft, paying the price for the previous evening’s euphoria. Not me. But for the night, it didn’t matter that I was sober, or that I didn’t like my body, or that my heart was broken. For a night, in the most unexpected place, I felt like I belonged.

I stood up and pulled my pants back on. After being so exposed, my clothes felt like a costume—a suit of armor.

I registered a flicker of postcoital melancholy. The unpleasant sting of reality coming back to me.

Actually, something really was stinging me. I felt something sharp in my pocket, digging into my thigh.

I reached down to see what it was.

Retrieving it, I laughed quietly to myself.

I’d forgotten that the day before, after meeting Phillip and Steven, I’d found an embossed pin that read “#1 Dad” in a gift shop. I had bought two, on the off chance things went well with them.

So, I left one on each of their nightstands and slipped gratefully into the dawn. —SAM LANSKY OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 33

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2018 10:30 P.M. TO 2:30 A.M. THE MCKITTRICK HOTEL 530 W 27 ST, NY, NY 10001 MASQ, the premier event hosted by The Center’s Young Leaders, will draw inspiration from New York’s legendary ballroom scene to create an unforgettable evening where gender has no boundaries and everyone is an icon!

SYMPOSIUM D I S PATC H E S FR O M T H E FR O N T L I N E S O F C O N T EM P O R A RY C U LT U R E Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name

Desire Under the Pines

C O U R T E S Y O F S O N Y C L A S S I C S (C A L L M E BY YO U R N A M E )

BRET EASTON ELLIS ON WHY LUCA GUADAGNINO’S CALL ME BY YOUR NAME IS THE SWOONIEST, MOST ROMANTIC MOVIE OF THE YEAR.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is the first novel by André Aciman, about a brief affair between an American-Italian Jewish 17-year-old living with his parents in Italy at their vacation home, and a 24-year-old American graduate student who comes to live with the boy’s family in the summer of 1987. Looking back at past events from two decades, the novel is narrated by the teenage boy, so we are completely in his consciousness and aware of everything he’s thinking about and feeling—sometimes too much so. The novel, published in 2007, is fairly straightforward and earnest, and sometimes reads like an oddly translated-from-another-language young adult romance—the sex is rarely described and most explicit details are

muted. You might find yourself thinking that Aciman—who is married to a woman and has gone on the record to say that he has never had a homosexual relationship—is simply writing a book about desire and identity. Yet there’s a peculiar distance at work here—the novel is skittish about actually detailing gay sex. If Aciman had experienced sex with a man I think he would have approached these scenes differently and maybe rethought post-sex dialogue like “I don’t think I’ll be able to ride my bike today.”

This was distracting when I first picked up his touching, readable novel, which I put down at a certain point and didn’t pick back up again until I saw the new movie version of it 10 years later.

The movie adaptation—with no voice-over, no flashback structure—is more mysterious and elegantly episodic.

It’s looser, almost languorous, but also bracingly simple: This is not a movie concerned with plot or motivation or reveals or whammies—it’s pure cinema concerned solely with mood and atmosphere. Aciman may be straight, but James Ivory, the screenwriter who adapted the book, and Luca Guadagnino, the director, are gay, and the movie is joltingly sensuous and sexy in ways the novel isn’t, because it’s attuned to the (gay) male gaze and renders the male bodies on display with a casual erotic fervor. The movie has moved the action to 1983 (I’m assuming so we don’t have to be distracted by AIDS, though it’s also never alluded to in the novel, which is set four years later), and the location has also been changed from a dramatic cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera to a more modest villa “somewhere OUT FEB RUARY 2018 35

SYMPOSIUM

each other, drawing closer, and it encourages and helps activate their desires. Neither man conforms to the way the medium has presented gay men in the past, though of course they’re both beautiful because Call Me by Your Name is at its heart an unapologetic widescreen romance and a wistful coming-of-age story, and nothing else.

Because the constraints of society don’t exist within the film’s world, it frees the movie from a certain kind of ideology, and Call Me by Your Name can easily be heralded as a post-gay movie because it’s not about the closet or AIDS or bullying or politics or being a victim. There’s no one to hide from, no punishment, EVERY SUMMER archaeology professor no suffering (except, of course, the Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) invites timeless kind)—its only ideology is about a graduate student to live with him art and aesthetics, and this makes it and his wife (Annella Casar) and his a big progressive leap forward in gay teenage son Elio (Timothée Chalamet) cinema’s depiction of desire. We are a to help with academic paperwork. This long way from the mournful Brokeback summer it’s Oliver (Armie Hammer), a Mountain, which was shrouded in guilt big handsome blond blue-eyed American and shame and death. No other movie who joins this upscale, Jewish, scholarly, before Call Me by Your Name has dealt quasi-European family where everyone with gay love on as large a scale and in smokes cigarettes and a 17-year-old such a calm, neutral, and sophisticated can mention casually over breakfast manner. It could have come off as that he almost had sex with a girl the terribly enlightened—the academia, previous night. We’re not sure what’s up the foreign locale, the references to with Elio—he’s a voracious reader and a Hellenistic sculpture—but the director musical prodigy, speaks a few languages, and the cast sell something else. The and seems straight. He has no clichéd chicness evaporates into feeling, and mannerisms (except a kind of forced the gorgeousness of swagger) and what the moviemaking seems like a girlfriend. erases any solemnity But Oliver awakens as do a few key something in him that at “Call Me by Your Name period touches: first Elio resents before can easily be heralded Wayfarer sunglasses, falling into an erotic as a post-gay movie, Elio’s Walkman, obsession—and yet we his Talking have no reason to suspect because it’s not about Heads T-shirt, that Oliver is gay, either, the closet or AIDS or a Mapplethorpe except for one quick print, and the 1982 shoulder rub that Elio bullying or politics or Psychedelic Furs brushes off, mortified; being a victim. There’s hit “Love My Way,” and Oliver might also played loud at a just be screwing another no one to hide from, no makeshift disco girl in town. The idyllic punishment, no suffering and never sounding sun-dappled setting of better. the movie becomes as (except, of course, the The movie has a much of a character as timeless kind).” ticking clock: Oliver the two men circling 36 FEB RUARY 2018 OUT

is only going to be around for six weeks, and the tension of the movie is—as it is in every scenario like this—when are they going to have sex? The movie teases this out in a way that becomes genuinely suspenseful, and Guadagnino adds to this suspense by letting the movie breathe with close attention paid to behavioral details: glances, gestures, small slights and evasions (real and imagined), everything building. He has slowed his style down, even though the movie is quick-witted and funny, and this lack of insistence has resulted in the most fluid, expressive thing he’s ever done.

The sensuality might be intoxicating at times, but this isn’t an explicit film—there are flashes of male (and female) nudity, but Call Me by Your Name is practically PG-rated compared to something like Stranger by the Lake or Blue Is the Warmest Color. At one point the camera even discreetly pans to a window when Oliver and Elio first have sex. But Guadagnino is certainly invested in the bodies of the actors, and he doesn’t erase sex from the equation like Moonlight did. Also, the director’s bad-boy side has been blissfully cemented after the now infamous scene where Elio masturbates with a peach.

ELIO IS WITHDRAWN and hesitant, intelligent but not fully formed, with the studied indifference that is the essence of

C O U R T E S Y O F S O N Y C L A S S I C S (C A L L M E BY YO U R N A M E )

in Northern Italy” (a title card tells us) and Guadagnino, who specialized in a kind of upscale travelogue porn in his last two films I Am Love and A Bigger Splash, takes advantage of both the new milieu and its lack of specificity.

With his cinematographer (Sayombhu Mukdeeprom) he gives the movie a dreamy, timeless quality, and since Guadagnino isn’t as encumbered with an overly busy plot as he was with A Bigger Splash, he can concentrate more on the magical fairy-tale setting and the two young lovers at its center. In doing so he has come up with the swooniest movie of the year. It casts a complete and total spell.

SYMPOSIUM Chalamet and Armie Hammer

male adolescence. Chalamet actually looks 17, and sometimes he’s strikingly beautiful (an idealized twink) while other times he looks gangly and awkward (often in the same scene). Guadagnino doesn’t hesitate to shoot him as a sex object—we are forced to experience him as such. Chalamet gives an extraordinary minimalist star turn, a quiet performance of massive feeling, much like what Casey Affleck achieved in Manchester by the Sea. It’s peerless—maybe the greatest portrayal of male adolescence on film.

The director is exquisitely tuned-in to his leading man, deftly capturing every nuance and delicate shift in feeling, and Chalamet pushes underplaying into a realism so intense it becomes almost operatic. He is so free, his character so lived-in, that he can try anything as an actor; no matter how left-field and unexpected his choices are, it always feels right. Watching a young actor working on pure instinct with a director giving him the freedom to do so is one of the greatest pleasures of watching movies.

For those of us who have been rooting for prom king Armie Hammer ever since he played the Winklevi in The Social Network—and were dismayed that he got swallowed up in movies like The Lone Ranger and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or undirected by one-take auteur Clint Eastwood in J. Edgar—it’s thrilling to finally see him as what he has always

Chalamet

been: a love object. With beguiling humor Hammer effortlessly humanizes the remote fantasy stud from the novel (though a few admirers of the film have complained that the casting of Hammer is too on the nose, pointing out that James Ivory originally wanted Shia LaBeouf as Oliver). Hammer brings a pure and lighthearted low-key ambiguity to the role; his final look at Elio from a passing train is haunting because he makes us realize that this summer isn’t going to affect him the way it does Elio—it might be a fling for Oliver, but it’s heartbreak for the teenager. Hammer gives a fearless and forcefully physical performance— the movie seems in awe of him—and there are few scenes more awkwardly glorious than when Hammer ecstatically, goofily dances to “Love My Way” in that makeshift disco.

In terms of plot, nothing much happens on the surface of Call Me by Your Name, but of course something monumental is happening because what we are witnessing is the erasure of innocence—this affair will kill that.

On a second viewing the gay vibe from Elio’s father is clearer, and in a very moving scene near the end he gives a speech to Elio, devastated over the loss of Oliver and flooded with the pangs of first love’s disappointments. The monologue is culled from a passage in the book in which the father tells his

son that he knew what was happening between him and Oliver, and that he has nothing to be ashamed of, and to cherish the pain he’s feeling. This scene could have been insufferable in its noble “progressive” virtue-signaling: If only we all had fathers this wonderful and warmhearted and accommodating, who can console their sons with lines like “When you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot,” and “Remember, I’m here.”

And yet Stuhlberg sells it with a hushed virtuosity that makes every word land and vibrate (even though at times he overdoes the saintly Jewish daddy thing). Stuhlberg turns this into the real climax of the movie—it becomes a primal scene—and in the packed theater where I saw the movie you could hear the gay men (at least half the audience) barely holding back muffled sobs. Call Me by Your Name is the movie generations of gay men have been waiting for: the fullest, least condescending expression of gay desire brought to mainstream film. It ends with a nearly wordless four-minute shot of a tear-stained Chalamet staring into a fireplace, a myriad of emotions subtly morphing over his face while the credits roll. We’re reminded that there cannot be love without pain, that the two are intertwined and intractable, and that the boy might be destroyed but a man will emerge and survive.

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 37

SYMPOSIUM

Loving Langston THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN RHODES SCHOLAR, ALAIN LOCKE IS CREDITED AS THE “FATHER OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE,” BUT WHILE HE MENTORED SOME OF ITS GREATEST MINDS, HE LONGED FOR ONE OF ITS BRIGHTEST LIGHTS, LANGSTON HUGHES.

– LES FABIAN BRATHWAITE

On Hughes’s last day in Paris, the two of them took a “trance-like walk up the Champs Elysees.” At the Arc de Triomphe, they turned east, walked down the avenue Foch, with its sumptuous lawns and townhouses, and entered the Bois de Boulogne, Paris’s largest and most beautiful park. On a hot, August afternoon, the heavily wooded Boulogne, with its two lakes and marvelous waterfall, had a magical effect on Locke. After a brief evening stop back at Hughes’s rooms, Locke, rather than his protégé, had fallen in love.

The next day, August 9, Hughes left on a trip to Italy…Hughes agreed to meet 38 FEB RUARY 2018 OUT

Locke later in Venice, but Locke could not wait until then to continue his courtship.

He opened up his heart to Hughes in a letter written the day after he departed.

“Today the atmosphere is like atomized gold, and last night you know how it was—two days the equal of which atmospherically I have never seen in a great city, days when every breath has the soothe of a kiss and every step the thrill of an embrace. I needed one such day and one such night to tell you how much I love you, in which to see soul-deep and be satisfied. God grant us one such day and night before America with her inhibitions closes down on us. And then perhaps through prosaic hours and days we can keep the gleam of the transcendental thing I believe our friendship was meant to be.”

Apparently, at the end of that night, Hughes granted Locke some undisclosed intimacy—a hug, a kiss, or something more—and afterward, Locke was eager for a lot more. Arnold Rampersad suggests Locke’s letter stunned Hughes.

While he had developed an intimate friendship with Locke, he had not fallen in love with him. One can readily

understand how Hughes felt: Locke was crowding him, pushing him into a sexual relationship that he did not want. Moreover, the request for further intimacy carried a threat.

Locke might withdraw his offer to subsidize Hughes in his quest for a college education. He responded with innocence, ignoring for the moment the reality that he wanted Locke’s financial help without having to put out sexually.

Locke did not want a prostitute—he wanted a companion who lived with and inspired him. His financial “carrot” emerged out of his insecurity that as an aging gay man he could not attract a young man of quality like Hughes without some leverage. What he longed for, of course, was for Hughes to love him.

But he’d gotten what he needed from Hughes. Locke was able finally to pen the first draft of his essay, “The New Negro.”

Locke’s summer romance had achieved its desired effect of inspiration for a new statement about what it meant to be a Negro in 1920s America. For the first time, Locke was able to sketch in writing a compelling image of a New Negro that was not fundamentally elitist. Locke may not have gotten love from Hughes. But he got something he needed even more: intimacy with a thinker with affection and affinity for the black working class.

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke

by Jeffrey C. Stewart is published by Oxford.

C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M O O R L A N D - S P I N G A R N R E S E A R C H C E N T E R , H OWA R D U N I V E R S I T Y

PHILOSOPHER, scholar, journalist, and educator, Alain Locke is considered the Father of the Harlem Renaissance for his support of, and writings on, the cultural movement that empowered generations of black people. A Harvard graduate, Locke was named the first AfricanAmerican Rhodes Scholar, but he still experienced racism and discrimination at Oxford—a particularly heavy blow considering, like many black artists and intellectuals, Locke sought in Europe freedom from America’s ceaseless oppression.

Compounding his difficulties as a black man, Locke was a homosexual, and the following edited excerpt from The New Negro, Jeffrey C. Stewart’s definitive new biography on the scholar, details his unrequited attempts at wooing legendary Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.

Alain Locke

SYMPOSIUM

Back to Black A NEW BOOK CHARTS HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN ATTITUDES AND AESTHETICS HAVE BASICALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING.

COURTESY RIZZOLI

By R. Kurt Osenlund

HIP-HOP’S CONTINUED prevalence in today’s music landscape is just one facet of what Constance C. R. White explores in How to Slay, a thorough and groundbreaking document of how

Clockwise from top left: Diana Ross, Josephine Baker, and Sidney Poitier

black style has pervaded every corner of popular culture. Rich with iconic photos, the book illustrates the influence of everyone from Josephine Baker and Sidney Poitier to Beyoncé and Kanye West, while celebrating intrinsically black style elements like hair, skin, diva origins, and the inspiration of Africa itself. A former editor in chief of Essence and executive fashion editor at Elle (a first for a black journalist at a major fashion magazine), White presents an authoritative catalogue, and

an answer as to why black culture is inevitably appropriated in America: It’s cemented itself in the ways an entire nation makes art.

How to Slay: Inspiration From the Queens and Kings of Black Style (Rizzoli, $55) is available this month.

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 39

SYMPOSIUM ARMOND WHITE’S MOVIES

Breaking the Enigma Code THE 1986 FILM noir Mona Lisa was high-class clientele. They represent a a major step forward in the big screen desperate yet optimistic projection of recognizing queer humanity. It’s a what outsiders find difficult to achieve in crime story and a love story set in the “normal” social circumstances. George underbelly of London: an illicit world and Simone transgress the separation of prostitution, drugs, strip clubs, and between races, genders, and class; porn shops—the disreputable places they’re an odd couple but an ideal couple, frequented by the city’s outcasts, because they see themselves in each including its sexual outlaws. other. However, Simone offers a bold new But the magnetic attraction between ex-con George (Bob Hoskins) and hooker mainstream archetype: a lesbian heroine pining for a lost love and her chivalrous Simone (Cathy Tyson) encompasses sex, knight. longing, alienation, and pain—all the Hoskins’s short tough guy uses feelings common to gay people trying to violence to veil insecurities just as understand themselves and their place Simone’s hauteur is a guise for the abuse in society. she’s endured from men. They update the Writer-director Neil Jordan tours the usual class-conscious British drama by same demimonde that the Pet Shop exposing the effects of the Thatcher-era Boys sang about in their sophisticated social changes on working-class and queer ’80s anthems “West End Girls” and immigrant life—but without preaching.

“King’s Cross.” Instead of showing two Simone’s and George’s camaraderie people as victims of tragic fate, crushed anticipates the intimacy that made in the system of exploitation by vicious macho men cry in Queer Eye for the pimps and harassment by authorities, Straight Guy. Simone gives George the Jordan gives George and Simone the affection he’s missed all his life; by innate goodness of mythological risking safety to find the figures. George sees his unlikely woman Simone loves, interracial relationship with Simone in fairy-tale terms: “The This relationship he returns the favor. This relationship illuminates Frog Prince,” which he recalls illuminates how how gay and straight from his own childhood.

A trace of innocence runs gay and straight love are just flip sides of the passion that humans through the pair’s unsavory share. encounters after George is hired love are just Mona Lisa also by a crime boss (Michael Caine) flip sides of the honors the gay tradition to chauffeur the call girl and passion that through Jordan’s playful gather blackmail information title metaphor. The from her rounds servicing humans share.

40 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

Cathy Tyson and Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa

night world he explores is scored to an evocative pop music soundtrack—not the Pets, The Smiths, or Erasure, but music from the past, specifically Nat King Cole’s 1950 recording “Mona Lisa.” This song, as used in the film, transcends camp. It elevates the nightclub singer’s proverbial musings on impossible romance so that any viewer already familiar with the song as a heterosexual standard is persuaded to find richer meaning in it. Simone is more than a “mystic” object as, like the song’s lyrics go, “men have named” her—she possesses more than “Mona Lisa strangeness,” a homophobic notion of a sexually distant enigma that confines queer women.

Obviously, the film’s title also refers to Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of a Renaissance noblewoman. Often called the world’s most famous painting, it is also rumored to be an impish selfportrait of Da Vinci, which makes it a cross-gender art-history tease.

Jordan, being a modernist filmmaker, supports this trick as part of his own artistry. Through George’s heartbroken acceptance of Simone’s love for Cathy (Kate Hardie), Jordan proves himself one of today’s most queer-friendly filmmakers. From the adaptation of Interview With the Vampire to his masterpieces The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto, Jordan’s movies are the epitome of queer-consciousness.

He breaks through to universal understanding.

EVERETT COLLECTION

HOW MONA LISA OUTED THE MODERN LESBIAN ARCHETYPE

+

SYMPOSIUM

POSITIVE VOICES

ACT UP at a National Institutes of Health demo on May 21, 1990

How the Soviet Union Hijacked a Virus OPERATION INFEKTION TURNED AIDS INTO AN AMERICAN CONSPIRACY HATCHED IN A MEDICAL FACILITY. WE’RE STILL COUNTING THE COST.

By Aaron Hicklin

LIKE SO MANY of his other novels, Johannes Mario Simmel’s 1987 thriller, With the Clowns Came Tears, about the dangers of genetic engineering, was a massive best-seller in Europe, spawning a three-part German TV series. A diehard pacifist and Jew who had grown up in London during World War ll, Simmel wrote books that often drew on his background as a reporter, giving his plots a veracity that his fans lapped up.

But one particular detail in With the Clowns Came Tears, in which Simmel suggests that AIDS was generated in Fort Detrick, Md., was a boon to the Soviet Union propaganda war with the U.S. It all started with a little-known Indian newspaper, The Patriot, partly funded by the Soviets, which in 1983 published an anonymous letter claiming that AIDS had been hatched as part of a military project at Fort Detrick. The letter went on to suggest that similar experiments might soon be carried out in India’s neighbor and rival, Pakistan.

The Patriot letter lit the fuse for a dangerous campaign of misinformation with disastrous consequences, including widespread suspicion of the science behind AIDS in much of Africa, where the virus would take its greatest toll. Known as Operation Infektion, it was the first salvo in a campaign to sow division at the height of the Cold War, and was only officially retracted by Russian prime minister Yevgeni Primakov in 1992.

As with today’s misinformation campaigns that helped bring Trump into the White House

and secure a Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the idea was simple: Undermine scientists and the media by planting fake news stories. According to a fascinating paper by Thomas Boghardt, a senior historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, a September 1985 memo from the East German secret police to Bulgarian intelligence spelled out the goal as being “to generate, for us, a beneficial view by other countries that this disease is the result of out-of-control secret experiments by U.S. intelligence agencies and the Pentagon involving new types of biological weapons.”

A month after that East German memo, an article titled “Panic in the West or What Is Hiding Behind the Sensation Surrounding AIDS” was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, a KGB mouthpiece. From that point on, the conspiracy began to take hold in the West, promulgated by the black and gay press—both marginalized communities with good reason to be suspicious of government—as well as by CBS News and anti-Semitic nutjob Lyndon LaRouche.

Kanye West has rapped about it in his music. Twice.

“When AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, Soviet bloc disinformation specialists quickly recognized the opportunity the mysterious epidemic offered,” writes Boghardt. “Once the AIDS conspiracy theory was lodged in the global subconscience, it became a pandemic in its own right. Like any good story, it traveled mostly by

word of mouth, especially within the most affected sub-groups.”

At a 1986 conference of nonaligned nations held in Zimbabwe, some 20 KGB officers helped distribute a 47-page pamphlet by Professor Jakob Segal, an East German biophysicist, in which Segal suggested that the U.S. had experimented on homosexual prisoners who had then infected the wider population.

Segal’s claims would end up in the conference’s final report, as well as in the press of 25 African countries. British papers including The Daily Telegraph, a Conservative opinion leader, repeated Segal’s theories uncritically.

And it was Segal’s work that inspired Simmel as he was working on With the Clowns Came Tears, in which the Fort Detrick conspiracy is mentioned. Markus Wolf, the head of East Germany’s foreign intelligence unit kept 10 copies of the book on his desk as a reflection of the campaign’s success.

The end of the Cold War, and more important, the spread of AIDS to Russia, would eventually shift the focus.

After George Schultz, the then–U.S. Secretary of State, complained to Mikhail Gorbachev in October 1987 about the disinformation campaign, the Soviet Academy of Sciences began to back away from the theory, abandoning it entirely in 1988.

But the damage was done. As the death toll rose in the 1990s, AIDS conspiracies would continue to undermine public health efforts by sowing doubt in effected communities.

The consequences of that are too horrible to contemplate.

OUT FEB R UARY 2018 41

WHAT IS GENVOYAÂŽ?

GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years and older who weigh at least 77 pounds. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment and have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements. These include having an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL) for 6 months or more on their current HIV-1 treatment.

GENVOYA combines 4 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day with food. GENVOYA is a complete HIV-1 treatment and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking GENVOYA. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance QH UGZWCN EQPVCEV YKVJ DQF[ Ć&#x192; WKFU 0GXGT TGWUG QT UJCTG PGGFNGU QT QVJGT KVGOU VJCV JCXG DQF[ Ć&#x192; WKFU QP VJGO

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA? GENVOYA may cause serious side effects: â&#x20AC;˘ Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking GENVOYA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking GENVOYA YKVJQWV Ć&#x201A; TUV VCNMKPI VQ [QWT JGCNVJECTG RTQXKFGT CU VJG[ will need to monitor your health.

Who should not take GENVOYA? Do not take GENVOYA if you take: â&#x20AC;˘ Certain prescription medicines for other conditions.

It is important to ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with GENVOYA. Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider. â&#x20AC;˘ The herbal supplement St. Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wort. â&#x20AC;˘ Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

What are the other possible side effects of GENVOYA? Serious side effects of GENVOYA may also include: â&#x20AC;˘ Changes in your immune system. Your immune U[UVGO OC[ IGV UVTQPIGT CPF DGIKP VQ Ć&#x201A; IJV KPHGEVKQPU Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking GENVOYA.

â&#x20AC;˘ Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking GENVOYA. â&#x20AC;˘ Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. â&#x20AC;˘ Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark â&#x20AC;&#x153;tea-coloredâ&#x20AC;? urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking GENVOYA? â&#x20AC;˘ All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection. â&#x20AC;˘ All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Other medicines may affect how GENVOYA works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe to take GENVOYA with all of your other medicines. â&#x20AC;˘ If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take GENVOYA. â&#x20AC;˘ If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if GENVOYA can harm your unborn baby.

Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking GENVOYA. â&#x20AC;˘ If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about GENVOYA, including important warnings, on the following page.

Ask your healthcare provider if GENVOYA is right for you.

GENVOYA.com

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

SHOW YOUR Take care of what matters mostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you. GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day complete HIV-1 treatment for people who are either new to treatment or people whose healthcare provider determines they can replace their current HIV-1 medicines with GENVOYA.

IMPORTANT FACTS This is only a brief summary of important information about GENVOYA® and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and your treatment.

( jen-VOY-uh) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT GENVOYA

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF GENVOYA

GENVOYA may cause serious side effects, including:

GENVOYA can cause serious side effects, including:

•

Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking GENVOYA. Do not stop taking GENVOYA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

•

• • •

ABOUT GENVOYA •

•

GENVOYA is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 77 pounds and have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. GENVOYA can also be used to replace current HIV-1 medicines for some people who have an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL of virus in their blood), and have been on the same HIV-1 medicines for at least 6 months and have never failed HIV-1 treatment, and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

Do NOT take GENVOYA if you: • Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin (Uroxatral®), carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Carnexiv®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®, Tegretol-XR®, Teril®), cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®), dihydroergotamine (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), lovastatin (Altoprev®, Mevacor®), lurasidone (Latuda®), methylergonovine (Methergine®), midazolam (when taken by mouth), phenobarbital (Luminal®), phenytoin (Dilantin®, Dilantin-125®, Phenytek®), pimozide (Orap®), rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®), sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), simvastatin (Vytorin®, Zocor®), or triazolam (Halcion®).

•

Take the herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

•

Take any other HIV-1 medicines at the same time.

GET MORE INFORMATION •

• •

This is only a brief summary of important information about GENVOYA. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.

Go to GENVOYA.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 If you need help paying for your medicine, visit GENVOYA.com for program information.

Those in the “Most Important Information About GENVOYA” section.

Changes in your immune system.

New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea.

These are not all the possible side effects of GENVOYA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking GENVOYA. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with GENVOYA. •

BEFORE TAKING GENVOYA Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.

• Have any other medical condition.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-thecounter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with GENVOYA.

HOW TO TAKE GENVOYA • •

GENVOYA is a complete one pill, once a day HIV-1 medicine.

Take GENVOYA with food.

GENVOYA, the GENVOYA Logo, LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE, SHOW YOUR POWER, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: September 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GENC0176 11/17

LOVE STORIES 2018

Eight queer couples share their personal tales of modern romance.

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 45

MAX MUTCHNIK + ERIK HYMAN When it comes to finding love and happiness, where there’s a Will, there’s a way.

Photography by Luke Fontana. As told to Aaron Hicklin

MAX MUTCHNIK, Co Creator, Will & Grace I remember standing on the stage watching the last episode of Will & Grace being filmed, and looking at Eric McCormack and Bobby Cannavale and this kid we’d hired as their child, and thinking to myself, Oh, my God, something has changed—I was always ahead of where Will was in his life. I was so the guy with the fantastic career who just could not get it right in love, and I used to wonder at night if that was what my life was going to be like. I think the big lesson for me is that you can have it all, but that you just can’t have it all at the same time—because Will & Grace filled up my life from 30 to 40 so completely, and Erik has been in my life from the end of my 30s until now.

I met him in the lobby of a drag show, and—where and when does this ever happen in the world, but we have witnesses on both sides—I said to the people I was with, “I met the guy that I want to marry.” And Erik said to his friends, “I met the guy that I’m going to marry.” A big cue came when we were setting up our first date, and I suggested the Polo Lounge, the Ivy, and the Tower Bar, and he wrote back, “That vibe is not going to work for me—I don’t want that to be what our dinner is,” which I just thought was so incredibly thoughtful and grounded. It was at that point that I just said, “Why don’t you take control?”—which is something I never do. I was just so fond of him so, so fast.

But I am a Scorpio through and through, so the minute I knew we had chemistry I just started thinking, Where is this going to go, what’s happening, how does he feel? And because I was so comfortable, I just stopped in the middle of the dinner and said, “How are we doing?” And he looked at me after a beat and said, “We like each other a lot.”

The day after, he sent flowers to my office, and I called him meaning to say, “I love the flowers,” and instead I said, “I love you,” and then I said, “I’m so sorry, that slipped out. I didn’t mean to say that so fast.” And he said to me, “It’s OK because I love you, too.”

I had always said to myself, Part of the reason your writing works is because you’re honest, and I knew that if I didn’t have an honest relationship I was going to fail at it. I didn’t have an example of it when I was growing up because my father died when I was very young and my mother was single my entire life, and so I had a fear of, Oh my god, this might elude me—I might go through my life and not end up having one of these things.

46 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

When I met Erik I took the greatest exhale of my life because I knew that I was going to escape having the ultimate fear of a gay man who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s: that you’re going to die alone, chasing some hooker around a pool with a snifter of Courvoisier in your hand.

ERIK HYMAN, Lawyer Coincidentally, the week I met Max a friend of mine was trying to tell me I should call him—“He’s available, he’s cute, he’s nice.”

She’s a straight woman, and a lot of times straight women may know two gay guys and they think those two gay guys should go out, so I didn’t put much stock in it. And then we physically bumped into each other at the drag show. I said hi, and then I had to pick up some bottles I’d knocked over, because I’m a little bit of a klutz, and as I was picking them up he walked away and didn’t finish our hello. I was, like, OK, there’s that. I went back to my friends, and Max found me again and said, “You’re Erik Hyman. We have this friend in common who wants us to meet,” and I said, “Yes, let’s have dinner.” I just

G R O O M E R ; DA N I E L L E WA LC H

MAX MUTCHNIK (THIRD FROM LEFT) AND ERIK HYMAN WITH THEIR DAUGHTERS, ROSE (FAR LEFT) AND EVANN

figured, Dinner will tell us.

I guess some people walk down the aisle and think, I wonder if I’m making the right decision, but very early on I figured, If I can make this guy want to be with me I’m going to have a fantastic life, so the only thing I have to do is be the type of guy he wants to be with, which I felt was pretty close to who I was anyway, so it wasn’t hard. For whatever reason, he’s more of a bully who gets what he wants, and gets mad when he doesn’t, so I had to teach him that I was not going to get accustomed to him raising his voice, and he’s had to learn about what works for me in the relationship. A lot of times I say to him, “There’s no reason why you can’t just be nice right now.” Of course, I think I’m perfect, and that’s half of our problem—he has to face my superiority complex all the time.

We started the process of having kids very fast, within a year. Other than coming out as gay, realizing that I did want to have children was the single biggest revelation of my life.

For a gay guy of my generation it just didn’t feel like children were going to be a thing I could have—it just wasn’t something

presented to me as an option. As a reflex, when asked the question, “Do you want to have children?” I said no, and I thought I meant it.

Max is an amazing parent. These two little girls have two dads, and one of their dads, Max, is very interested in a lot of the things you might stereotypically think a mom would be interested in: the way their hair looks, how they dress, and being polite. It’s very sweet watching him parent them because they have that beautiful unique attachment to him that you have with a mom.

We combined the naming ceremony for the kids with the wedding. It took a lot of time—there’s a lot of Jewish ritual to it. And the truth is that Max and I walked down the aisle, and people were looking at us, and it felt corny. We looked at each other afterwards and said, “Did we really need to do that?”

The best part about it was that we didn’t invite a lot of people so not that many people know how bad it was. I love being married to him, but the wedding was silly. If we did it again, I’d just get the license from City Hall and take a trip to Kauai.

O U T F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 47

RHEA BUTCHER (LEFT) AND CAMERON ESPOSITO

48 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

RHEA BUTCHER + CAMERON ESPOSITO Totally taken with each other, these two wives are mining their marriage for comedy gold.

H A I R A N D M A K E U P : R AC H A E L VA N G U S I N G S K I N M E D I C A A N D M A K E U P FO R E V E R

Photography by Luke Fontana. As told to Hilton Dresden

know it. Kindness doesn’t always mean “Oh, I’m a pushover, RHEA BUTCHER, Actor-Comedian and I have flowers in my hair.” Sometimes it actually means a I had moved to Chicago and was taking improv classes at lot of fire. It’s something I hadn’t really seen firsthand from a Second City—just for fun. I’d always enjoyed comedy, but human being before. She didn’t let anyone tell her—and they I didn’t know how to do it. So I started to get into the local did, over and over again—that her experience wasn’t important. comedy scene, and very soon after I heard about Cameron, She never let that be true. That’s a really hard because she was the most popular stand-up at the time. She thing to do. hosted an open mic down the street from my house. It was at a really great neighborhood bar, and I’d go with some friends and sit in the audience. One time she came up to me and said, CAMERON ESPOSITO, Actor-Comedian “So when are you going to go up?” And that was the first time The first thing I remember is her face. Whatever vibe Rhea somebody had told me, “Hey, you should do this.” gives off, it drew my attention. I could tell she really wanted to The first time I remember saying “I love you” was in Peoria, try stand-up. Then I was the first person ever to intro Rhea, and Illinois. It was one of those times when you’re like: “I feel her set was really great. She got personal right away. I had not amazing. I love you.” You’re in Peoria, and you’re feeling seen that before from a first-time comic. amazing. And that’s a big thing, because it’s Peoria. It’s not like There were very few women doing stand-up in Chicago it’s Paris. when I started, and very few queer folks, and none of those We’ve had a couple of proposals: There’s the one where queer folks were women. I had a lot of connection and respect Cameron asked me to move to Los Angeles with her, after we’d for my peers, but there was no one who fully understood what been dating for, like, two months. And I did. Then there’s the I was trying to do and what my experience was. I don’t know one when I took Cameron for a hike, in basketball shorts, in what my path would have been without Rhea. I definitely could Griffith Park, and I had my great-grandmother’s broken ring, have done this alone, because I’d already done it alone, but it and I accidentally sat in gum. Later, we got married at The would have sucked.

Hideout, which is a music venue, primarily, but it’s actually the It feels kind of punk rock that we can get married. I know first place where we performed in Chicago. some people think it’s traditional and reject it for that reason. I Our TV show Take My Wife was based a lot on our real life. feel the opposite way—it’s wild to put my relationship into But we’ve also just put out our first split comedy album, Back to that area. Our wedding was a rager. We had dancing and Back. I think it’s the first queer married served hot dogs. Rhea’s vows were really funny, which comedy album. It’s us doing stand-up “Kindness doesn’t was annoying because I had to go second. But we really together for 30 minutes, and then we structured the whole thing our way. There wasn’t a part of always mean ‘Oh, it we didn’t think of. each do a set. We also get to tour the country together. It’s pretty great in Rhea is really pure. She says what she means, and I’m a pushover, that way, to feel like you have a true knows herself, and is also always trying to know herself and I have flowers better. That kind of person is very rare. What I like about partner in life. in my hair.’

One reason I fell in love with Rhea as a stand-up is the same thing I like about Rhea her is her kindness. She has this as a human, and as a spouse. No joke she tells onstage is Sometimes it understanding way of being a leader, just for the sake of joking around. She’s always trying to actually means a of reaching out and giving space to explain who she is. It’s from a real place. She’s really put lot of fire.” people that need it, even if they don’t her life together for herself. She’s a self-made man.

OUT FEB R UA RY 2018 49

SEAN & TERRY TORRINGTON The media power couple are ushering in a new wave of queer storytelling.

Photography by Menelik Puryear. As told to Les Fabian Brathwaite

SEAN TORRINGTON, Co-creator, Slay.TV We met on a beautiful summer night in 2010, when I was invited to a house party in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I was on the prowl looking for someone to call my lover. I told all my friends that I was gonna find my boyfriend that night.

Suddenly, Terry storms the party with these pretty white teeth.

As I was lurking in the darkness, watching him drink beer after beer, I decided it was time to make my move. He couldn’t resist my charm, so I got his number, and the rest is history.

For our first date, we went to Cafeteria in Chelsea. He told me he had never been before, so I knew he would think I was fancy or whatever. After that date I knew we would be legendary lovers. We had so much in common.

We’re still trying to figure out how to balance our professional and personal lives. We separate business from personal by not bringing or talking about work in the bedroom. That is our sanctuary. I also meditate before looking at my phone in the morning. I used to wake up and the first thing I would do was check my emails. Now I ground myself before engaging in anything work-related.

With the series Love @ First Night and Slay.TV, our mission is to accelerate acceptance of the LGBTQ community by not only normalizing same-sex relationships, but humanizing our experiences in all our relationships. I think people tend to forget that we’re more than who we’re intimate with. We have family issues, we have personal issues, and we have relationship issues just like everyone else.

TERRY TORRINGTON, Co-creator, Slay.TV We met at a random house party—I don’t even know whose house—and I was in the kitchen getting drinks when I saw Sean walk in. His smile caught my eyes. A few drinks later I’m on the dance floor and I get a tap on my shoulder from my friend Mush, who introduces us. We exchanged numbers, and 50 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

the next day we went on a date. We’ve been pretty inseparable since then.

Our first kiss happened on our second date when we went to see Shrek the Third. Now, I’m not the type to do things in theaters—that was never my thing—but it was super romantic TKTKTKTKT and I remember his lips felt like the softest place on earth.

They still do.

I think we’re at a place where creating our dreams and helping each other succeed is how we express love to each other. Love @ First Night is very, very loosely based on our relationship, but with it we’re trying to change the conversation around black queer love, especially when it

SEAN (LEFT) AND TERRY TORRINGTON

comes to the media. Like, we’re pretty fucking normal—our issues are not that unique, and we’re deserving of love. Love @ First Night is just one of many stories within our community that should be told. This is for my 19-year-old self, who needed to see it.

The most challenging thing in our relationship is communication. I’m often misunderstood, which can be frustrating. The most rewarding thing is growing and creating a life with someone I love, someone I cherish. It’s about those little wins we get to celebrate with each other, visualizing our future together, and working towards it.

“We’re trying to change the conversation around black queer love, especially when it comes to the media.”

O U T F E B R UA R Y 201 8 51

UNCLE MEG + CLARA RAE For this trans rapper and his model girlfriend, a wild ride turned into a serious commitment.

Photography by Menelik Puryear. As told to Chris Thomas

UNCLE MEG, Rapper CLARA RAE, Model We met on a sidewalk in Williamsburg. I was talking to I was walking by and thought he was cute, and I knew his somebody we both knew, and Clara Rae came up, started friend. I was like, “Oh, what do you do?” And he said, “I’m a flirting with me, and asked for my Instagram. I was clueless at rapper.” I started laughing, and that’s kind of it. When we first the time and wasn’t looking for anybody—I was in a phase with met, my life was sort of chaotic, so I forgot about it for two my ex where we had broken up, but were still having sex. But I weeks and he thought I was ignoring him. So he sent me this asked my friend if she thought Clara was flirting with me, and really ugly baby picture, like a really ugly school-portrait-style she said yeah, so I messaged her on Instagram. pic, and it said, “Yo girl text me.”

Our first date was at this tea place, and we both were super In my mind, I wasn’t looking to be with someone. I just nervous. It was around the time of her birthday, but I didn’t wanted to have fun. But I couldn’t look him in the eyes when we want to get her a present because I wanted to play it cool. I were riding the Ferris wheel because I felt like if I looked him in have three cats, and I looked on the ground and saw a whisker the eyes, he would see that I liked him. And then I would have and knew she liked dead things, so when she came up for the to kiss him, and I was nervous because then it would be real. date, I pricked her with the cat whisker. She liked that.

So, I ignored him throughout the Ferris wheel ride, and then he For our second date, I drove her to Coney Island and she forced me to kiss him. It was really cute. was venting to me about her apartment situation, and I was When we met, I didn’t even really think about it—like, I totally thinking, She’s so intense, but I really like it. We rode on all knew he was meant to be a boy. But I didn’t say anything, you the rides, and I was trying to kiss her and make a move on her know? It’s kind of a pattern for me. I think three of my exes have the whole time, but she kept turning away from me. She was now transitioned. When I took him home from his surgery, I was playing real hard to get, but I brought her back to my place bawling my eyes out because I had never felt empathy towards after the date, so it worked out. I proposed to her on the Ferris someone like that before. It’s been a very intimate experience. I wheel at Coney Island two years later. think our relationship is really deep because we both have been The first time I told her I loved her, we were actually at a going through a lot of changes physically and emotionally. We strip club and we got a lap dance from the same girl. That’s how kind of have to learn how we want to be in a relationship where I told her I loved her. he’s a man and I’m a girl.

At first, I was really nervous [to come out as trans], but she was the person I felt safest coming out to. We just practiced male pronouns and my name at home “The first time I told before I came out. She created a safe space for her I loved her, we were me to do that. There was really only one time, actually at a strip club because we were a lesbian couple, where I had this glimpse of fear: What if she doesn’t want and we got a lap dance to be with a man? She was like, “I’m scared from the same girl.

I’m going to wake up to some huge, grizzly That’s how I told her I man and I’m not going to be attracted to you anymore.” I think it’s confusing for her, because loved her.” she hasn’t been with a male since she was like 16. But I think my transition actually made our relationship way better. Even sex wise.

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UNCLE MEG (LEFT) AND CLARA RAE

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AARON WALTON + ANDREW LOGAN When the two men bumped into each other on Fire Island, it was kismet.

Photography by Luke Fontana. As told to Aaron Hicklin

when you’re at the beach, we started talking, and that’s how AARON WALTON, Co-Founder, Walton Isaacson we met. We ended up going for dinner that night. The food In the 1980s I was working in the marketing department was terrible, but we found we had so many things in common for Pepsi on their sponsorships, and had just finished David that it felt as if we’d known each other for a very long time.

Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour, and was getting ready to hit the He was working for Pepsi and had just finished touring road with Michael Jackson [for the Bad Tour]. I said to my with David Bowie, and I was an actor who had done some friend Nancy, “I just need a break,” and she said, “Well, why commercials and TV work, and was segueing into music. don’t we go to the beach house?” The house was in Kismet Aaron was pretty persistent. We’d had this random on Fire Island, and we’re lying on the beach one morning conversation where I’d said that I’d always wanted to go up in when Andrew jogs by and chooses a spot near us to leave his a helicopter. Fast-forward a month, he was in Australia, it was Walkman while he goes for a swim. I’m just wondering who’s crazy enough to leave their Walkman on the sand when a wave my birthday, the doorbell rings, and there’s this huge string of balloons with a note that said, “If I was there I’d take you comes up and splashes it, so I run over to retrieve it. Now, I on a helicopter ride.” It was just one of those moments when always maintain Andrew left the Walkman there as bait—he I thought, Wow, I need to look at this again. I’d been ready says he didn’t—but either way he returns and I looked at him to say, “Let’s just be friends,” but the fact that someone was and thought, Wow, this guy is really cute. We started talking, paying attention to something so inconsequential made me and have never really stopped. For the entire week we just appreciate that he was a different kind of person. hung out together, and I was like, This is the guy I’m going to He’s always 12 steps ahead of everybody, but he’s also spend the rest of my life with. I just knew it. We met in a place considerate and loyal and loving—his priorities are right. It called Kismet. If this wasn’t meant to be, then nothing in my sounds like a terrible cliché, but he believes in me when I life was supposed to happen. don’t believe in myself, and I think I do that for him as well, Love for me is accepting myself and accepting someone and you need that. for who they are, warts and all. It is an understanding of how My parents are Catholic and very religious, and my mother much stronger we are as a unit. It doesn’t mean we don’t took my coming out it a little harder at first, but we’ve been do our own things, but with Andrew I find we’re able to be together longer than all of our nieces and nephews have completely free, completely vulnerable, and completely been alive, and of course they think appreciated for who we are without any other nothing of it, so I think as my parents expectations beyond just being present. It’s just “When you’re in a car watched our relationship with them, this great feeling of being able to be who you it took some of the scariness from it. are. It’s being able to go home and just crash, and you’ve got the We had a big commitment ceremony do nothing other than breathe. When you’re windows open and it’s on the anniversary of our 18th year in a car and you’ve got the windows open and that loud rush of the together. It wasn’t legal to be married it’s that loud rush of the wind and everything is in California, but it was a big wedding hitting you and hitting you, and then you close wind and everything is with all our friends and family—it was the window and you get that moment of silence hitting you and hitting probably the best wedding I’ve ever and quiet that descends—that’s what love feels you, and then you close been to. Aaron’s mom is a minister like. You can just sink into it. You can sink into and she performed the service. I your soul and who you are, and be appreciated the window and you think that also changed my parents’ for that. get that moment of thinking because when they see you silence and quiet that in your natural habitat, with your ANDREW LOGAN, Director friends, and no one thinks anything I was staying in Kismet on Fire Island descends—that’s what of it, it makes it easier to accept and celebrating my father’s 50th birthday, and Aaron love feels like.” appreciate. was there with some friends, and as you do 54 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

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AARON WALTON (RIGHT) AND ANDREW LOGAN

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“She doesn’t hold it against me that I never pick up my socks, and I don’t hold it against her that she has no idea how to do her taxes.”

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CHANI NICHOLAS + SONYA PASSI For this astrologer and her wife, a lasting romance was always in the cards.

Photography by Luke Fontana. As told to Dennis Hinzmann

CHANI NICHOLAS, Astrologer We met in L.A. when she was on vacation. She lived in New York, and after we met we had a FaceTime get-to-know-you period of like six weeks. I flew out, and we had a weekend in New York, and it was just one of those things where you laugh so hard you don’t even know what’s going on. We just had this incredible weekend of total joy. It was an amazing time.

There’s never a moment when I don’t want to hang out with her or tell her everything that happened to me. We have this constant and very deep rapport. We’re always hashing things out or protesting things. We’re both very interested in healing, and why things are happening, and our reactions, and what we’re learning about ourselves and the people we love.

My life is completely different since I met her. Nothing is the same—everything has exploded in a positive way. So much abundance has come into my life through our relationship.

Being loved and loving somebody has created an incredible resource for me to be able to go out into the world.

CHANI NICHOLAS (RIGHT) AND SONYA PASSI

SONYA PASSI, Founder of FreeForm, a nonprofit for survivors of domestic violence For me, it was very much love at first sight. I was in L.A. on vacation and fell madly in love with her but had no idea if she was gay. I really wanted to ask her out but was too chicken.

Before she left she gave me her business card—I didn’t know her last name until then. As soon as I got back to my room, I started Facebook stalking her to try to figure out if she was gay.

The first weekend we ever spent together in New York I laughed so much. We had three nights together, and when she left for the airport my whole face was numb because my cheekbones were sore from laughing so much. It’s beautiful to have a partner that I love and who not only fills me emotionally, but also intellectually. She dreams really big with me, and loves to create beauty in the world the same way I do.

We do a lot of work on ourselves, and we’re lesbians, so we’re always protesting everything. In a lot of ways we’re both really practical—I know my skills, and she knows her skills.

She doesn’t hold it against me that I never pick up my socks, and I don’t hold it against her that she has no idea how to do her taxes. We have a very fluid set of responsibilities within our relationship. We’re both able to pour all our energy into growing the partnership. We’re building it together.

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CHRIS HABANA + RICHARD R. HENRY What’s a relationship without drama?

Perhaps the best kind of all.

Photography by Menelik Puryear. As told to Hilton Dresden

CHRIS HABANA, Jewelry Designer I met Richie on Growlr, which is like Grindr but for bigger men and the men who love them. Richie is a bigger man, and I’m a man who loves bigger men. Everything with us has been so easy. With all of the guys before him, there was always a sense of drama—the guys I was picking ranged from being a little bitchy to big assholes. I don’t know if this is an age thing, but when some people start dating, they are often prone to picking people that are mean to them or they look for some sort of friction, because they think that aggression equals fire, which means passion. Prior to meeting Richie, I’d be like, Oh, this is just what happens. I’d never been with someone who was so nice. He definitely thinks about me. And everything was very reciprocal to the point where I wanted to do good by him. Usually when meeting nice people, guys get turned off because it’s too easy or the person’s too available. Richie was all that. He was very easy and very available.

RICHARD R. HENRY, Actor In movies and plays, saying “I love you” is such a big, monumental moment. But I can barely remember the first time I said it because it came very naturally to us. It wasn’t like, Oh, God, I’m going to say it today. It was very easy to say, and he reciprocated very quickly. As you get older, things get a little clearer, and what you wanted when you were younger changes. We joked about getting married because he really wanted to get on my health insurance. It was kind of a nobrainer. We did the City Hall thing in the morning, which is a very interesting process because it’s like going to the DMV, but women are wearing bridal gowns. Stupidly, we thought we could say vows to each other at the ceremony. They have a little room that looks like a nondenominational chapel with a guy standing behind the podium, and I said, “We’d love to say a few things to each other,” and he replied, “Oh, we don’t have time for that.”

CHRIS HABANA (LEFT) AND RICHARD R. HENRY

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BLAKE LEE + BEN LEWIS How a chance meeting in the men’s room turned into an eight-year love affair.

Photography by Luke Fontana. As told to Jason Lamphier

BLAKE LEE, Actor We met in 2010. Aubrey Plaza is one of my best friends, and I went to the premiere of her movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I’m in the bathroom of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, peeing at a urinal, minding my own business, and I look in the mirror and see this insanely handsome guy looking at me. I thought, Who is this? He’s like a 1950s movie star. I’m shy, and there were about 20 sinks, but I thought, I’m going to wash my hands next to him. So I walk up and say hi, and he goes, “Is your name Blake?

I think we have mutual friends. I’m in the movie too.” I came back to my seat and said to my friend Jill, “I just met the man I’m going to marry—at the urinal.” But we laughed it off.

Ben’s from Toronto and was only in L.A. for a week, but we exchanged numbers at the movie’s after-party and ended up hanging out the rest of the week. After he flew back, we were talking on the phone, and I said, “This is crazy, but I think maybe we can make this work.” We did long distance for nearly three years before he moved here.

Before I proposed to Ben, I asked for his parents’ permission.

We were all in Whistler on vacation, and I sandwiched myself between them on a ski lift. The metal bar came down, and I was sweating thinking, If you say this, you have to do it. You need to know this is what you really want. Then I just blurted out, “I bought a ring and I’m going to propose to Ben.” They were quiet for what seemed like an hour, and then his mom, in this highpitched scream, was like, “Oh, my God!” She was so excited.

They had to keep it a secret until I proposed six months later.

We’re both brown-haired white guys. We’ve been up for the same parts. He gets more jealous than I do, so when we first started dating we made a rule that we can’t be each other’s competition. If either of us gets a part, it’s going to benefit both of us. When my first series got picked up, he burst into tears. He said, “I’ve never cried out of happiness for someone else.”

I was more nervous to come out publicly than Ben was. I though it might hurt the show I was on, but when I was doing press for it I actually hurt Ben’s feelings. I was reluctant, and he thought it was ridiculous. Of course, when I listened to him, it all worked out. Nobody cared. Coming out made me a happier person, and my career was so much better after that.

BEN LEWIS, Actor and Writer When I got to L.A. for the movie premiere, I called my friend Bert to say, “I’d like to hang out this week because I don’t really know anybody here.” He said, “You should look out for my 60 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

BLAKE LEE (LEFT) AND BEN LEWIS WITH THEIR DOG TODD

friend Blake because he’s going to be at the movie tonight.” I actually saw Blake when I got out of the car at the premiere.

I knew who he was because my writing partner and friend Lauren had been out in L.A. for pilot season that year, and she’d told me she’d met Aubrey Plaza’s gay boyfriend from Parks and Recreation. That’s when the Facebook stalking had started. I already knew exactly who Bert was talking about.

I was in the men’s room, and he saw me staring at him. It probably seemed creepy, but in my head it made sense. We found out we had friends in common and hung out at the after-party, and the next day I had a meeting and was going to lunch by myself, but I thought, Maybe this guy can meet me.

We met at The Belmont. There’s a big patio, and he brought his dog, Todd, who’s now our dog. I think he was a security blanket for Blake, but it was a little off-putting because I didn’t grow

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“When my first series got picked up, he burst into tears. He said, ‘I’ve never cried out of happiness for someone else.’ ”

up with pets. I thought, This is never going to work. The dog is darting around under the table and being disruptive. Now I sorta love that about Todd.

I didn’t think we’d spend the whole week together, let alone the next eight years. I started coming to L.A. every six to eight weeks, and we’d talk on the phone every day. In all my other relationships I’d get suffocated quickly. I think distance helped because I had space. Also, Blake makes people feel very comfortable. After a couple of weeks of talking, I’d gotten to know him better than anyone I’d ever been with. We met at the end of July, and when he came to Toronto in September I had an instinct that he could meet my family right away.

I remember he went to the bathroom at dinner and Mom whispered, “I love him.”

I never felt like we were hiding our relationship until he was

in Mixology a few years ago. Suddenly he had this platform, and I think he was scared. Had I been the one to book a show first, I probably would have had a similar struggle. When you’re starting out, it’s hard enough to get jobs without having to worry about bias or discrimination. I understood why it was difficult for him, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hurtful. It tested us.

As you get older and further along in your career, you figure out what your bottom line is in terms of what you need to be happy. The culture will never shift unless people are willing to make sacrifices for what they believe in. It’s been nice to compare Blake’s experience on Wisdom of the Crowd with the last time around—to see our growth as a couple and his as an individual and an artist with a platform. I’m very grateful we made it through that difficult period, and that we’re on the other side of it now.

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Photography by M. Sharkey

The A NEW GENERATION OF YOUNG QUEENS IS PROVING IT’S NEVER TOO SOON TO BE FABULOUS.

rag

Kids

hen I was a little kid, I had no idea what drag was—but I knew I loved throwing my grandmother’s old velvet blanket around my shoulders and strutting up and down the hallway to music. This was how far removed I was from any notion of gay culture: I sashayed away to a tape of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” on A Prairie Home Companion.

All kids love playing dress-up of some kind, but kids today have greater and easier access to queer culture than any generation before them—as the profiles of baby drag queens in these pages demonstrate. Thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, there’s no question that drag is having a mainstream moment. Their recent VH1 finale had nearly a million viewers, making it their most watched episode ever. From your local library’s reading hour to DragCon to YouTube, there has been a subsequent boom in all-ages spaces where drag is welcome. But as the art form moves out of bars and into living rooms, what does that mean for kids playing dress-up? Or for parents of children entering into what is, at heart, a bar scene built around adult gay men and trans women? And finally, what does it mean for drag itself—which at its best is often subversive, raunchy, and cutting—to suddenly have to cater to families?

“My childhood was filled with wigs and gowns and secretly trying on my mother's tap heels because they were the only heels in the entire house,” said Sasha Velour, the winner of RPDR season 9, recounting his early days of drag. His point—one repeated by every queen, fan, and parent I spoke to—is that there have always been, and always will be, boys who like to dress up as girls, and girls who like to dress up as boys. They 62 FEB RUA RY 2018 OUT

may be gay, or they may be trans, or they may simply be fabulous. But they are not the product of a TV show, or a sudden new trend. These kids are just more visible, for an array of reasons: greater public acceptance of gender variance, increased access to the means of artistic production (aka Instagram and iPhones), and our cultural obsession with putting precocious children on display—isn’t Toddlers & Tiaras just a drag pageant for cis girls and their (drag) mothers?

But you don’t have to be a queen to appreciate drag. Alicia Marie is a 9-year-old girl from a small city in Wisconsin, who’s been a RPDR fan since she was 4. Says her mother, Amanda, “She's always been interested in visual and performance-based arts.” And the outsize nature of drag isn’t that different from other things children enjoy, like fairy-tales and Disney movies. Amanda stresses that like all television, the family watches RPDR together, and makes choices to skip segments or discuss them afterwards with Alicia Marie if they feel it’s necessary. To Amanda, worries about the appropriateness of drag for children often seem freighted with homophobic and transphobic assumptions—as though our overly sexual culture is only a problem when the sexuality being expressed is something other than straight and cis. But she does have some issues with Alicia Marie watching RPDR. “I don't want my 9-year-old emulating the pettiness and the bickering,” she says. “But that’s just part of reality TV.” She worried more about what it meant to bring Alicia Marie to an all-ages drag benefit at a local college—but not in the way you might expect. “It was important to me to convey that we weren't expecting the show be altered

DESMOND NAPOLES

for our sake,” she says. As guests on the drag scene, she didn't want to change the nature of the event, disrupt the community, or “demand to be catered to.” Drag is art, and like any form of art, it has its own rules and standards. By talking to the organizers beforehand, they were able to decide what was appropriate for Alicia Marie to see, and since then, “she has really been embraced by the local performers. They’ve even brought her up on stage!”

In fact, for Amanda and her husband, Alicia Marie’s love of drag has been a delight. “She’s on the autism spectrum, and drag was one of her early deep interests,” Amanda says. “Before that it was school buses.

This was a welcome shift.”

Regardless of why a child is interested in drag, supportive parenting is one of the keys to making it a good experience.

“You set it up for a time and place—everything should be appropriate—but I say let it fly,” said Peppermint, the runner-up on RPDR season 9. As a trans woman, she emphasized that drag may be a stepping stone for a child trying to find a way to talk about their gender identity (although most trans people, she hastened to add, are not connected to the drag scene). Peppermint recalled that her grandmother, a seamstress, would sew her costumes when she was little. “I would try to lean them towards the feminine.

Like, ‘could I be the female Hershey's Kiss?’ ” That support put her on the road to being the hugely successful queen she is today.

For many young performers, drag is a chance to express a true part of themselves—whether that’s their gender identity or their love of sequins—that they might otherwise not have a way to show. If there was a list of “Top 10 Drag Queens Ten and Under,” Desmond Is Amazing would be on it. Desmond’s looks aren’t what you’d expect from a child, as they draw from some deep sources of inspiration: club kids, Keith Haring, and the Lower East Side art scene of the 1980s. He has succinct words of wisdom for other youngsters looking to explore drag, whatever that might mean to them: “Don’t let anyone tell you that your drag is wrong, because it is not wrong—it is whatever you want it to be. #MyDragisMyTruth.”

Everyone I spoke to repeated the idea that drag, especially at such a young age, should be about exploration. Don’t worry about being on RPDR; “have fun and find yourself” was the dominant message. “It’s so true to the spirit of drag,” Sasha Velour once effused. “If you don’t necessarily have a context where you are welcome, you make one for yourself— and then you make it as fabulous as possible!” – HUGH RYAN 64 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

Desmond Napoles (Age: 10) New York, N.Y.

Inspired by ballroom legends, club kids, and Marsha P. Johnson, this precocious performer is voguing straight past the haters.

I first started doing drag when I was 2 years old. I took my mom’s towel and made a headdress out of it. Then I wrapped bubble wrap around me and put on high heels and stomped around the house in them. My mom saw me and didn’t mind. When I was 5, I knew I was gay. I started getting crushes on boys, and then when I was 9, I came out to my mom, and she accepted it. Both of my parents were very supportive. I still don’t really tell everyone at school about it—I’d just rather not. If someone stares at me,

I just roll my eyes at them, which means they should mind their own beeswax.

What if I stared at them? They wouldn’t like that.

The makeup started when I was 7. I like drawing puzzle pieces and shapes on my face. Crazy makeup. Outlandish looks. I like to be different than really well-known types of drag, like pageant drag. Some of the Drag Race queens who inspire me are Milk, Jinkx Monsoon, Ongina, and Acid Betty. I like looking like a club kid—I’m more inspired by them.

My outfits are usually related to that, like the pink look I wore to New York Drag Con last year.

I love voguing. I watched the documentary Paris Is Burning when I was 8, and when I saw these people doing these amazing dance moves, I really wanted to learn how. So I taught myself. Eventually I took lessons with Leiomy Maldonado, a legend in the ballroom scene from the House of Mizrahi. During the 2015 Pride Parade,

“I WATCHED THE DOCUMENTARY PARIS IS BURNING WHEN I WAS 8, AND WHEN I SAW THESE PEOPLE DOING THESE AMAZING DANCE MOVES, I REALLY WANTED TO LEARN HOW. SO I TAUGHT MYSELF.” my mom petered out after 10 blocks, but I vogued the whole way. I was wearing a rainbow tutu and a gold beret. In 2016, I rode on the Stonewall float, and at PrideFest that same year, I met Bianca Del Rio, who invited me to go up on stage and do seven death drops. And vogue.

I had a big moment last June, when I vogued at the NYC Legacy Ball, and the House of UltraOmni asked me to be in

their house. My voguing father is now Sydney UltraOmni. I didn’t win a trophy, but I got plucked. The only other people I know of who’ve gotten plucked are Venus Xtravaganza and Michelle Visage (but I don’t know what house Michelle Visage got into).

At this year’s New York Pride, I received the Marsha P. Johnson “Don’t be Outraged, Be Outrageous” Award from Heritage of Pride, and I wore a flower headdress inspired by Marsha. I learned so much about her, and I kept wearing headdresses after that. I prefer them—they’re much more comfortable than wigs!

I really don’t consider myself a drag queen, though. I consider myself a drag kid. I feel like the term “drag queen” is mostly used for adults. I’ve started a drag house called Haus of Amazing, and it’s for drag kids who are 20 and under. We’re going to have trading cards, videos, chat sessions, etc. I believe right now I have 37 members. It’s getting there.

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Thomas South (Age: 11) Narrowsburg, N.Y.

With his sister as accomplice, and some brotherly advice, Cream Soda is learning how to rock a pair of spiky heels.

My drag is outside the box—different, crazy—but I can also do pretty: a nice mermaid, a flower in the hair, a nice scarf from France. I love unicorns. My drag persona is Cream Soda—she’s very quirky. You might expect her to come out in a nice dress and a wig, but she’ll come out bald, in a crazy corset, and wearing 10-inch heels. The person who first inspired me was my sister, Jael. I was in the kitchen eating a bagel and she was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on TV, and I was like, “Oh, what is that?”

And she said, “It’s RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and I said, “Oh, drag is when a man dresses up as a woman?” and she said, “Yeah, do you want to watch it next Friday with me?” I was a little scared to do drag at first, but I faced my fears and got over it and had fun. My mum and dad were cool with it. The first time I tried to put on makeup, it didn’t look so good. I had the wrong color eyebrows— deep black—and my eyes were way too big. Instead of complimenting me, my 66 FEB R UA RY 2018 OUT

THOMAS SOUTH

brother told me the truth. I did look very bad. Drag takes a lot of effort, pain—you can’t just walk into a room with a lot of makeup, and go, “Boom, boom, boom, I’m perfect.”

I first heard about DragCon a few months after I got into drag, and asked my mom if I could go. I didn’t have a lot of stuff at the time, so I only wore a nice red T-shirt, some white shorts, and some spiky heels. There was a big poster when you arrive that says, SASHAY THIS WAY, and a ton of drag queens everywhere. I went to Milk’s booth—she was on Season 6, she’s very outside of

the box, she does the unexpected—and told her she was my favorite drag queen.

The first day back to school after DragCon, I wore a pair of spiky heels and everyone was supportive of it. I had to change them eventually, because I tripped over them. I’m doing a lot better, but I still need more practice walking in them. I’m going to sign up for Drag Race when I’m 17. I think my look will be latex spiky heels, a corset, and these ripped lace undergarments, nice slicked black hair, perfect black makeup.

Above all, I don’t want this to change—I want to stay in love with drag.

“The first day back to school after DragCon, I wore a pair of spiky heels and everyone was supportive of it. I had to change them eventually, because I tripped over them. I’m doing a lot better, but I still need more practice walking in them.”

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ZACH DISHINGER

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Zach Dishinger (Age: 15) Weston, FL.

Once the teenage cosmetics entrepreneur discovered makeup, there was no turning back.

The best thing about a boy wearing makeup is that it promotes a conversation and has the potential to provoke emotion in others. As a society, we’ve lost the art of conversation. That’s what I like to do: make people talk to each other, whether it’s about gender identity or expression. It brings us together as a community.

My inspirations are Lady Gaga and David Bowie. I want to get a lightning-bolt tattoo, and my mother isn’t too happy about it. I also love that Lady Gaga has a message and a large platform: She dabbles in everything, and she’s all about awareness and being yourself. I think just releasing a lipstick is pointless. With my brand, it’s not just a lipstick—we’re here to help people.

People have the idea of gender wrong.

The majority of society confuses gender with someone’s biological sex, and they automatically gravitate toward the typical binary of male and female only.

But gender is expressed in so many different ways, and that’s why I love it. If anyone ever feels different, I don’t want them to give up on who they are and gravitate toward the norm.

I’ve always been like this, since I was 4. I was always putting paint on myself in arts-and-crafts class in preschool. I would go to my grandparents’ house and do my makeup in full drag, putting Elmer’s Glue Stick on my brows and perform for them. I think my whole family just knew. People ask, “You’re a guy wearing makeup, don’t you get

criticized?” I don’t care who you are—you will receive criticism no matter what you do. But my family and my friends are so supportive. I’m fortunate. Not everyone has that, so it’s my job to help others.

School for a number of gay or nonbinary teens is a really tough place.

At one point for me, it was so bad that I actually had to switch schools. I got sent to a more conservative school— but it offered a makeup class. I found my calling. It gave me so much joy to walk down those halls like they were my runway, in that conservative environment. I went to homecoming in full glam and rhinestone shoes. I honestly think we’re moving in a positive direction, and we have the power to keep things moving.

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THE EMPEROR ÉDGAR RAMIREZ AND RICKY MARTIN STAR IN THE LATEST CHAPTER OF RYAN MURPHY’S ACCLAIMED ANTHOLOGY SERIES AMERICAN CRIME STORY, ILLUMINATING THE LIFE AND LOVES OF GIANNI VERSACE, AND THE MAN WHO SO ENVIED HIS LIFE, HE ULTIMATELY CLAIMED IT.

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AND HIS PRINCE

By Les Fabian Brathwaite Photography by Doug Inglish Styling by Grant Woolhead

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M A R K E T E D I TO R : M I C H A E L C O O K . G R O O M E R : BA R B A R A G U I L L AU M E AT FO R WA R D A R T I S T

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by John Varvatos

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he tried his hand at hustling, drug dealing, and petty robbery— anything to avoid a traditional nine-to-five. He charmed his way into a meeting with Versace on the evening of October 21, 1990, in San Francisco. Versace had designed the costumes for Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio and was in town for the premiere. It was a brief encounter—Orth dedicates just three pages to it in Vulgar Favors—but for Cunanan, it was significant. Versace was the only celebrity he claimed to know with whom he had any ties, no matter how tenuous. According to Orth, when the FBI asked Philip Merrill, a friend of Cunanan’s, where the wanted murderer would go and whom he would try to contact, Merrill said: Florida and Versace.

By the time Cunanan gunned down the 50-year-old designer on the steps of his palatial estate, Casa Casuarina at 1116 Ocean Drive in South Beach, Miami, on the morning of July 15, 1997, he had already killed four men, including Jeff Trail, a 28-year-old Navy veteran, and David Madson, a 33-year-old architect, three months earlier in Minneapolis—both men were gay and at least one of them, Madson, was a former lover. But the nation didn’t take any real notice until Cunanan had traversed thousands of miles over several months. By then, Versace was dead.

“The whole city of Miami was in shock and never recovered,” says Martin, who was living in Miami but touring Europe at the time of Versace’s death. “Obviously what was happening in fashion was massive, but there was also what was happening in the film industry, with all these great actors moving to Miami because it was the Riviera of the United States. After Versace’s death, everything stuck because everybody was afraid. It has taken many, many, many years for Miami to return to where it was and maybe it will never be the same.”

On July 7, eight days before Versace’s murder, Cunanan visited the Cash on the Beach pawn shop to sell a gold coin he had stolen from his third victim, Lee Miglin, a 72-year-old married real estate developer he had killed and tortured on May 4 in Chicago, which eventually led to the FBI adding Cunanan to its infamous fugitives list. As required by the pawn shop, the serial killer had signed his name—his real name—and had even given the address where he was staying. Vivian Olivia, the owner of Cash on the Beach, “The word turned over the identifying paperwork to the assassination has a Miami Police the following day, yet no action was taken. Meanwhile, the red pickup truck political and social of William Reese, the 45-year-old caretaker overtone because Cunanan had murdered in Pennsville, N.J., just days after Miglin, sat in a parking garage Versace was targeted. for weeks. The FBI, insistent that Cunanan’s This tragedy could sexual orientation was irrelevant to their investigation, refused to distribute Most have been prevented.

Wanted posters of Cunanan or to work with Basically, homophobia local gay organizations and publications.

“For a number of reasons, the authorities at killed Gianni Versace.”

or months during the filming of American Crime Story, Ricky Martin found himself back in the closet—this time playing Antonio D’Amico, the longtime lover of the late Gianni Versace. In the pilot episode of the FX series, a detective with the Miami Police Department interrogates D’Amico after the designer is murdered. Unsure what D’Amico means when he refers to Versace as his “partner,” he questions the nature of their relationship, invoking the young men D’Amico would procure for him, some of them duly compensated, and asking, “Did he pay you?”

“To love him?” responds D’Amico, still covered in the blood of his boyfriend of 15 years, though he seems more wounded by the detective’s callous assertion—the idea that two men could ever be in a committed relationship is completely foreign to him. Yet the moment illustrates one of the overarching themes of the second installment of American Crime Story, based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book Vulgar Favors, and adapted by British author Tom Rob Smith. Just as The People v. OJ Simpson before it offered an all-too-timely commentary on racism, The Assassination of Gianni Versace promises to tackle issues like homophobia, gun violence, and the dark allure of fame.

“I believe that the story of injustice this series will bring to the table will spark a lot of conversations about things that we, as the LGBTQ community, were dealing with in the ’90s, and that we’re still dealing with,” says Martin, though he shies away from revealing too many details about The Assassination. “At this point in our lives, there shouldn’t be stigmas over the things that we are going to be talking about.”

The show, another jewel in showrunner and creator Ryan Murphy’s television crown, will examine the lives of two gay men and their radically different paths: Gianni Versace (played by Édgar Ramirez)—the Italian designer who injected the world of fashion with a wild dose of ostentation, sensuality, and celebrity glamour—and Andrew Cunanan (Glee's Darren Criss), the 27-year-old Versace fanboy who left a trail of death and devastation in his quest for fame, ultimately finding it, and landing on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, by murdering the man he so idolized.

CUNANAN WAS BORN IN National City, Calif., on August 31, 1969, to a mostly absent, classconscious Filipino-American father and a deeply religious Italian-American mother. He was a brilliant child with a reported IQ of 147.

Growing up in a strict Catholic household, he struggled with his sexuality from a young age, so that later in life he was open to some, but closeted to others. He also had a reputation for being a pathological liar. After dropping out of the University of California, San Diego,

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the time never considered Cunanan to be a public threat because he was only killing homosexuals,” says Ramirez, the Venezuelan actor whose startling resemblance to the late designer helped secure him the title role in ACS. “The word assassination has a political and a social overtone because Versace was targeted.

In a way, this was a tragedy that could have been prevented.

Basically, homophobia killed Gianni Versace.”

GIOVANNI MARIA VERSACE was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy, on December 2, 1946. The region’s Hellenic heritage—it had been part of Magna Graecia (Latin for “Great Greece”), the coastal areas of Southern Italy populated by Greek settlers—had a lasting influence on Versace and his work, most notably in the Medusa head and Greek keys of the label’s logo. His mother ran a dressmaking business, so fashion was a part of young Gianni’s DNA. He briefly went to work for his mother after graduating high school but fled the nest for Milan in 1972, bringing his formidable talents to the Italian ateliers Genny, Complice, and Callaghan. With his older brother Santo and younger sister Donatella, he launched his own company, and in 1978 debuted his first collection.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Versace elevated sexy to an art form. As the adage, at times attributed to Anna Wintour, goes: Armani dressed the wife and Versace dressed the mistress.

His looks were brash, bold, and sometimes delightfully tacky, rendered in luminescent metallics, sadomasochistic rubbers, and industrialized plastics that pushed the boundaries of fashion and “good taste.” More than any other designer, before him or since, Versace permeated then all but defined the zeitgeist: from Elizabeth Hurley’s iconic safety-pin black dress (recently reappropriated by Lady Gaga), to Elizabeth Berkley’s doe-eyed infatuation with “Versayce” in 1995’s Showgirls, to rap group Migos’s 2013 breakthrough hit “Versace.”

Versace’s South Beach mansion was a monument to his grandeur, outfitted in Grecian opulence. Built in 1930 by trust-fund playboy and retired architect Alden Freeman, Casa Casuarina is now a hotel and popular tourist destination. Versace was enamored by the house’s Kneeling Aphrodite statue and bought the property for $2.95 million and the old Art Deco Hotel Revere next door for $3.7 million, which he promptly demolished, angering the Miami Design Preservation League— the neighborhood had been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979. Versace invested an additional $32 million in renovations to realize his palace, decorating every inch with his exacting eye. In the opening minutes of The Assassination, Ramirez, in a resplendent pink robe, greets his army of servants with a measure of benevolence and unquestioned authority. The 74 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 O U T

effect is that of an emperor surveying his mighty kingdom. From there, the series plays up the Greek-like tragedy of Versace’s life and death.

“His life was fated in a way,” says Ramirez. “There is something very classic about this real-life story that was captured by Tom: the characters, the archetypes, their relationships. You have Gianni as an emperor, and then you have his prince, Antonio, and you have his sister, Donatella, who is the empress-to-be. Sometimes there were scenes that really felt like we were doing theater, like Macbeth or Madea.”

Versace used his majestic property to entertain, and occasionally shelter, his circle of VIPs. In awe of the power of celebrity, he cultivated a loyal, glitzy following that included Princess Diana, Elton John, Madonna, Cher, and the supermodels he regularly employed, and in whose rise he was instrumental: Naomi, Cindy, Linda, Claudia. These famous clients and friends

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populated his front rows, appeared in his ad campaigns, and frequented his homes around the world. And his ambition wasn’t limited to the runway—Versace expanded his empire, designing costumes for operas, films, ballets, and concert tours.

“We basically live in the world that he created,” Ramirez says.

“Before Gianni, glamour and sensuality were on two separate planes. Somehow he glamorized sexuality. He had a rock ’n’ roll approach to couture, and he essentially laid the ground for celebrity culture. From then on, for better and for worse, we’ve had this obsession with it. The sociopath who killed him was seduced by fame and by luxury.”

Versace was also one of the few openly gay celebrities of his day, having been with D’Amico, a former model, since 1982.

Though, according to Martin, there was a limit to their openness.

“For many months in this series, I kind of went back into the closet,” the 46-year-old says. “They were not completely out.

The fear of being seen holding hands in the streets is not an issue for me anymore, but I relived all of that, and it kinda set me back and gave me a lot of discomfort. But I was playing a part, and I used it. I used that anger and I used that frustration.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is the gayest thing FX or Ryan Murphy has ever done. And for anyone who’s seen Popular, or Glee, or the last few seasons of Nip/Tuck, or the musical number in American Horror Story: Asylum, that’s saying a lot. But it’s also a profound statement. Murphy, an openly gay showrunner and one of the most powerful and successful visionaries in Hollywood, has produced a series about an openly gay fashion designer (who was killed by a gay serial killer), featuring an openly gay pop star playing his boyfriend. Martin, who came out publicly in 2010, hadn’t even considered this level of out-and-proudness, but he’s acutely aware of how the show’s themes resonate in today’s terrifying political climate.

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RICKY MARTIN HAS BEEN in the public eye for the majority of his life—first in the popular boy band Menudo, which he parlayed into a successful music career in Latin America and a featured role on the long-running soap opera General Hospital. But it was a 1999 Grammy performance of “The Cup of Life,” the official song of the previous year’s World Cup, and the subsequent release of his U.S. breakthrough single, “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” that skyrocketed him to superstardom and ushered in the so-called “Latin explosion.”

With increased exposure, however, came increased scrutiny, and for years rumors regarding his sexual orientation persisted.

Male pop stars have rarely been allowed to be openly gay, and those that were, like Elton John and George Michael, waited until relatively late in their careers to come out. For Martin, consequently, The Assassination of Gianni Versace offered a unique and personal challenge because, to paraphrase executive producer Brad Simpson, it’s about the politics of being out in the ’90s. Today, Martin is much more comfortable in his own skin. Not only is he in love (he’s been in a relationship with Syrian-Swedish painter Jwan Yosef since 2015), but he’s a father of two—and adamant that his family be an inspiration for other nontraditional families.

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“A lot of people tell me, ‘Well, your kids are on the covers of magazines and blah, blah, blah,’ and I'm like, ‘Yes because I want to normalize this,’ ” he says. “I want people to look at me and see a family and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’ It's part of my mission. It’s part of my kids’ mission as well. My kids ask me about having two daddies and I tell them we are a part of a modern family. This is a beautiful sense of freedom.”

By taking on the role of Antonio D’Amico, the singer-actor had to conjure those years of hiding who he was, but in doing so he knew he was paying tribute to the love that Versace and D’Amico shared. Martin’s first day on set and his very first scene were also his most dramatic. “They didn't even let me warm up—I went straight into the murder,” he says. “I went straight into the moment where I find the body on the steps of the villa outside. It was a really long day. I was locked in this room for many hours just to be there in the moment when I looked out the window and saw Édgar’s feet. I went crazy and said, ‘Let’s shoot now!

Please let’s shoot now!’ ” After seeing production shots of Martin cradling a bloody Ramirez, D’Amico derided the tableau as “ridiculous” and a product of the “director’s poetic license.” In an interview with The Guardian last July, he also contradicted Martin’s assertion

“They were together for 15 years. It’s a lifetime. And like Antonio says, there was no end to this love. There is no end to this love.” that he and Versace ever had to conceal their love. Martin then reached out to the 59-year-old D’Amico, whom he says was “incredibly generous” and “really honest.”

“The first thing I said to him was, ‘Antonio, I just want you to know that we all are working on this story with the utmost respect to what Gianni Versace represents to the world, and then we go to love,” says Martin. “ ‘My role here is for people to understand you, and see what the love you guys had was made of.’ They were together for 15 years. It’s a lifetime. And like Antonio says, there was no end to this love. There is no end to this love.”

“There are two love stories,” Ramirez adds. “One with Antonio, Ricky’s character, and the other with Penélope Cruz’s character, Donatella. Gianni was very devoted to both of them. Ricky and I wanted to be respectful of their relationship and open about how supportive they were of each other. According to everyone I talked to, Gianni was very protective of Antonio, and Antonio was very protective of Gianni.”

There is, however, no love lost between D’Amico and Donatella Versace. The two always had a contentious relationship. In his will, Versace provided D’Amico with a $30,000-a-month lifetime allowance and the right to live in any of the late designer’s homes, but because of a feud with the Versace family, D’Amico received a portion of what he was owed.

Family was of the utmost importance to Gianni Versace, but his own didn’t want to be involved in the show’s production.

Ramirez, no stranger to playing biographical characters—he earned an Emmy nomination in 2011 for his portrayal of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in Carlos— approached the series with immense compassion, but out of respect (and for legal reasons) he chose not to approach the designer’s surviving family members.

“Whatever hesitations or reservations they have about the series, I understand,” Ramirez says of the Versace family. “This is a tragedy. It should have never happened. We want to enforce our own empathy. I hope that in the end they will be satisfied.”

WHAT IS A HISTORICAL or cultural moment for the rest of the world is a story of intense personal tragedy for the family and former partner of Gianni Versace, so a production of this scale and caliber—this isn’t, after all, the Gina Gershon Lifetime movie House of Versace—is bound to reopen old wounds and draw renewed scrutiny. And yet: That’s fame. One’s life—and death— are no longer one’s own. But what made The People v. OJ Simpson so successful was how it took a tragedy and articulated its significance to the world we live in: a world with a 24/7 news cycle, a world of continued racial animus, a world of keeping up with the Kardashians.

While LGBTQ people have more rights and freedoms than in any other time in U.S. history, the rapid progress of marginalized communities over the previous years has revealed the cracks in this country—ugly truths barely hidden just below the surface have been exposed. This America abets white supremacists, bolsters an accused pedophile who believes homosexuality should be illegal, and neglects the victims of a mishandled natural disaster because they’re not quite “American” enough.

“We've been taking four airplanes with 150,000 pounds’ worth of basic necessities,” Martin says of the relief effort in Puerto Rico, of which he’s been a part. “It’s been very difficult because four million US citizens are still without power or clean drinking water. My family is there and luckily, I can bring them out to take a break, but there's a very intense passion about where we come from, and they don't want to leave.”

And, of course, it’s impossible to deny that if homophobia killed Gianni Versace, so did a gun. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fl., killing 49 people and wounding 58 others. The overwhelming majority of his victims were queer people of color in what was, until 15 months later, the deadliest mass shooting on American soil. “I want to be very respectful about this because I am not American,” Ramirez begins, cautiously. “But I have a very hard time reconciling how easy it is to gain access to guns here. And I come from one of the most violent countries in the world.”

Though mass shootings remain a uniquely American phenomenon, the conversations around gun control and mental illness have ultimately gone nowhere. For 35 years, the United States has rarely gone a year without a mass shooting. In 1997, the year of Andrew Cunanan’s murderous spree, more than 32,000 people were killed by guns. That number has remained stable, so that on any given day, 93 people are shot to death.

After Versace was killed, speculation ran wild regarding Cunanan’s motive. Some claimed an HIV-positive diagnosis triggered his murderous streak, but an autopsy debunked that theory, itself a form of homophobia. In 1997, homosexuality and AIDS were still inextricably bound so that a gay serial killer was automatically linked to the disease—as if Gregg Araki’s The Living End had come to life. But whereas that 1992 film glamorized its killers, the Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a pitiable figure—a lost soul grasping at a fantasy embodied by his final and most famous victim.

Cunanan, too, was a victim—of homophobia, both internalized and externalized; of his own desires; of his upbringing; of the world in which he lived. Through his detestable actions, he finally got what he wanted: It’s now impossible to discuss the legacy of fashion’s one-time emperor without also remembering the man who cut his life short that July morning.

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By Aaron Hicklin. Photography by Ivan Bideac. Styling by Taylor Brechtel

Delta Disco AFTER A LONG ABSENCE, SCISSOR SISTERS FRONT MAN JAKE SHEARS HITS THE NEW YEAR RUNNING, WITH A BROADWAY ROLE, A FORTHCOMING MEMOIR, AND HIS FIRST SOLO ALBUM. No one loves a falsetto more than Jake Shears. It was always the greatest and most reliable instrument in his group Scissor Sisters’ musical arsenal. Now, after a too-long absence, it’s back, and as fruity and fruitful as ever. It’s been almost six years since Scissor Sisters released their fourth album, Magic Hour, a curate’s egg of genre-hopping that showcased both the band’s versatility and its consistency. Scissor Sisters always had range, but the foursome also had form. Collaborators and producers would come and go, but they were always undeniably Scissor Sisters.

Now, though, lead singer Jake Shears has gone solo, and the results are glorious. His upcoming album’s lead single, “Creep City,” is a sky-high slice of infectious glam rock with shades of Queen, and some flirty, dirty sax thrown in for good measure. A sneak preview of the rest of the as-yet-untitled record, out next summer, does not disappoint. Shears is on fire, delivering the kind of ebullient wall of sound we need in 2018, and sounding defiantly upbeat even when he mines heartache, as with “Everything I’ll Ever Need,” which starts as a ballad (“Not sure just who I am without you anymore”) before shifting gears into a jaunty saloon bar anthem. And the sweaty dance track “Clothes Off” is very definitely a demand, not a suggestion. “The music is the most personal stuff I’ve written, but still remains a total hoot,” says Shears. “The whole thing was recorded with live people playing real instruments. It’s my honky-tonk fantasia.”

Fans will also get the chance to see Shears on Broadway, starting January 8, as he steps into the bedazzled boots of Charlie Prince in the long-running musical Kinky Boots.

“Believe it or not, they’re going to be the first stilettos I’ll ever have worn,” the musician recently told Playbill. “My feet are so big, I’ve never seen a pair that would actually fit me.”

And the singer has also just finished a memoir, Boys Keep Swinging, detailing his rise from working strip clubs as a go-go boy to the Scissor Sisters’ annus mirabilis when the band’s namesake debut became the best-selling album of 2004 in the U.K. “It’s mostly about me growing up, a lot of my teenage life, and then my early days in New York,” he says. “I think it’s pretty funny, and a little painful. There are a lot of fun cameos by New Yorkers, and plenty of juicy stuff.” We can’t wait.

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C O U R T E S Y H A R D C I D E R N Y. M O D E L : J O N AT H A N S K E E S I C K AT B M G M O D E L S . B R I E F S : AT E L I E R T R A D I T I O N N E L .

THE OUT GUIDE TO LIFE’S DEEPEST MYSTERIES

Time to Sleep You really don’t have anything better to do.

“Sleep, those little slices of death—how I loathe them,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, who was no fan of bedtime. But love it or hate it, sleep is essential, and something like 35% of us don’t get nearly enough. Seven hours should be a minimum to stay healthy and wise. One solution: Take a break from your electronics. Make time in the evening to read a book, take a hot bath, or meditate—just turn off your cellphone first. That tweet can wait until the morning.

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Before Night Falls, Prepare

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IF YOU SNOOZE, YOU WON’T LOSE: TEN TOP TIPS TO SLEEP LIKE A LOG The more sleep you get the healthier you are—fewer colds, more energy, less stress. But give up on the Ambien—sedated sleep is not a cure, say scientists.

1. Avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed.

2. Set a time for switching off all electronic stimulants—computers, phones, the TV—and try to read or listen to music instead.

3. Keep a sleep diary, noting the time you go to bed and the hour you rise, and how you feel each morning. If you woke up in the night, write that down, too.

4. In the morning, coffee is not enough, you must also eat breakfast. It’s how you sync up with the day.

5. Avoid alarm clocks. The best alarm clock is internal. And whatever you do, kill the snooze button. It’s jarring and downright wrong to be shocked awake every five minutes.

6. A warm shower or hot bath can aid sleep, but give yourself an hour-and-ahalf before bed to feel the full benefit—

the body needs to be in cool-down mode when you hit the sack.

7. No late-night snacking. Put the cheese away—and avoid milk chocolate, which contains caffeine (though dark chocolate also contains serotonin, a neurotransmitter that can help you relax).

8. Turn down the heating.

The cooler the room the more likely you are to sleep like a baby.

9. A messy bed can be distracting.

Remake your bed each morning, and use good quality sheets and pillows. We’re fans of Brooklinen’s super-soft twill cotton sheets—they breathe well, so you won’t be sleeping hot. Brooklinen.com 10. Cuddle up with someone— just ask their permission first.

C O U R T E S Y H A R D C I D E R N Y ( M A N O N B E D). M O D E L : T R E VO R R E A / F R O N T M A N AG E M E N T

Do you get too little sleep? If so, you’re not alone. The CDC says 35% of adults in the U.S. don’t get the recommended seven hours or more per night.

Maybe you’re out every night at an after-hours club, but more likely you’re trying to squeeze in just one more episode of Stranger Things. Whatever the reason, getting too little sleep is a problem—and not just because it makes you a chore to be around. It leads to lowered immune function, elevated depression and anxiety levels, and memory problems, says Dr. Michael Breus, clinical psychologist and sleep specialist.

It’ll also make you heavy! Tired people exercise less and make poor food choices. Well, then it’s time to hit the hay.

Technology can be both a help and a hindrance in this area, says sleep researcher Dr. Els van der Helm. “One way in which it’s hurting our sleep is through the rise of smartphones that allow us to be connected 24/7 with the world around us,” she says. Turn your phone off an hour before bedtime, and absolutely never check messages in bed. Doing so raises your dopamine and adrenaline levels.

But technology can also come to the rescue. Van der Helm recommends mattresses that adjust their temperature and sleep coaching apps.

Breus likes the SleepScore Max tracking device, which he says is more accurate than the others.

Get the right amount of sleep each night and you can break up with your rude alarm clock and wake up naturally.

Train yourself to sleep on a strict schedule every day (even weekends) and wake just before your alarm.

Getting in the rhythm, Breus says, should take about two weeks.

TROY DREIER

APPLY SOME TECH TO YOUR ZZZZS Need help getting your daily zzz’s? Mom swears by a glass of white wine, but we like the high-tech approach. TROY DREIER Nox Music Calm your agitated brain with soothing lights and sounds.

That’s the promise of Nox Music, a combination reading light, speaker, and alarm clock that tracks your sleep schedule (with the help of a free app) and sends you off to dreamland in a calm state of mind. When it’s time to rise, Nox’s lights and sounds wake you just as gently. The company will soon launch a new version called Nox Aroma that adds aromatherapy to the mix. ($149, SleepAce.com)

EarlySense Live Just how restful are your resting hours? While there are plenty of sleep trackers on the market, many need to be clipped to your PJs or worn like a bracelet, and they need to be charged. EarlySense avoids these hassles with a sensor that tucks under your mattress. It measures your heart and breathing rates, as well as stress level. There’s nothing to wear or forget, and the sensor beams customized sleep tips to your phone via a free app. ($199, EarlySense.com)

Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed While you drift off this bed stays on duty, and its mission is adjusting for your comfort. For the crème de la crème of sleep tech, cuddle up with the 360 Smart Bed. Here the tracker is built inside the bed, and the mattress adjusts as each sleeper changes positions during the night. It warms your feet so you’ll fall asleep faster, raises your head if you (or your partner) snore, and wakes you when you’re in the lightest stage of sleep. (starting at $2,799, SleepNumber .com)

Shleep Dr. Els van der Helm is an engaging sleep researcher who’s taught the science of sleep to business leaders around the globe. With her new Shleep app (available for iOS and Android) she puts a personalized sleep coach in the palm of your hand. Using cartoon sheep, the app learns your habits and instructs you on natural ways to get the rest you need. Included quizzes and challenges make developing healthy habits a stress-free experience. (ShleepBetter.com)

COURTESY OF PRODUCTS

SleepScore Max While the SleepScore Max looks like a speaker sitting on your nightstand, there’s a lot of sensory technology hiding inside. This device tracks your sleep using an echolocationlike system, and monitors breathing, respiration, and room temperature as well. When used with a mobile app, it creates a custom plan that not only reports how long it took you to fall asleep, but gives advice on how to improve your sleeping conditions going forward. ($150, SleepScore.com)

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1,000 WO R D S

Salute La Familia Never a man to do a thing by half me asures, Gianni Versace turne d his p alatial villas into exemplars of Rome’s former glor y.

Pictured, from left: Paul Beck, Donatella Versace, Gianni Versace, and Santo Versace at the family’s Lake Como Villa

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E S TAT E O F E V E LY N H O F E R / G E T T Y I M AG E S

“He was very sober, very quiet, very behind the scenes,” Ricky Martin says of what he learned about Gianni Versace while filming the FX series American Crime Story. “He would go and do whatever he needed to do because it was work, but then he would try and go back to his home because his life was very simple there. Yes, there’s the party and the feast, but it’s always important to go back into silence.”

TRAVEL CONFIDENTLY GIVE WHOLEHEARTEDLY In times of need, even when the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t visible yet, just the knowledge that help is coming can make a difference.

AIG takes that to heart. Right after Hurricane Harvey upended life for so many in the Caribbean and Gulf, AIG pledged $1 million in support to both immediate recovery through local relief efforts and long-term recovery with The Center for Disaster Philanthropy. Then, after Hurricane Irma, AIG Travel went the extra mile and pledged support to the Destination Disaster Recovery Fund, led by the nonprofit Tourism Cares.

“We will always be there for our employees, our customers and the communities they live in,” said Jeff Rutledge, CEO of AIG Travel. “Although recovery has already begun, AIG Travel is committed to continuing to support those affected by the disasters in Houston, Florida and the Caribbean.”

AIG continues to support clients, employees, colleagues, and others in disaster relief processes — giving wholeheartedly, so you can travel with confidence.

To learn more about AIG Travel, visit www.aig.com/travel To support the Destination Disaster Recovery Fund, visit www.tourismcares.org

AIG Travel, Inc., a member of American International Group, Inc., is a worldwide leader in travel insurance and global assistance. Travel Guard® is the marketing name for its portfolio of travel insurance and travel-related services, including medical and security services, marketed to both leisure and business travelers around the globe. Services are provided through a network of wholly owned service centers located in Asia, Europe and the Americas. For additional information, please visit our websites at www.aig.com/travel and www.travelguard.com.

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