David Magazine v7_i36 | Art in Atlanta

Anthony Bowens

DAVID

SEPT 06, 2023

V7-36

DAVID Magazine

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Gay in the Ring

By Chris Azzopardi

Photos: AEW, Joshua Shelton

Queer people everywhere are experiencing heightened discrimination, but if there’s hope to be found, it might just be in, of all places, the wrestling ring. That’s where Anthony Bowens recently experienced a tremendously heartening show of allyship during Pride Month, when the openly gay Black pro wrestler was showered with support from thousands of wrestling fans. During an All Elite Wrestling (AEW) Rampage event in June, Bowens responded to QTV on-air personality Harley Cameron, who suggested that Bowens couldn’t resist her if he tried, by telling her she must have been “kicked in the head too many times by a kangaroo” as a kid. It took her a minute to figure out what he was alluding to — that he’s gay, ladies, and coupled with his boyfriend of seven years, Michael Pavano. Then, a full crowd showed their solidarity with Bowens when they chanted “He’s gay!”

Bowens, who came out as bisexual in January 2017 and then later as gay, made history in 2022 when he and Max Caster, a tag team in AEW (a rival of WWE) known as The Acclaimed, won the company’s world tag team championship for the first time. The win made Bowens, 32, the first openly gay wrestler to win an AEW championship. His raw, tearful emotions were captured after their victorious moment on video, when Bowens offered hope to those struggling with who they are: “I never thought I’d be able to have a moment like this. I never thought I’d be able to live my dream

because there was a time when I was very confused and I didn’t know how to accept myself,” he said at the time. “And now I cry because I’m a champion.”

During our recent interview, Bowens spoke about being surprised by the recent pro-gay chant, his vastly different experience in the locker room these days and being the example he wished he had as a kid.

When I watch the “He’s gay!” chant, it gives me hope for the queer community and for this next presidential election — maybe there are fewer homophobic people than I think.

It looks grim, but at the same time, it’s not. A lot of people have humanity, they’re human beings. They appreciate, respect and love other people. But that segment was something very unexpected because I had never approached it in that way

before. My type of activism is, I show up and I am trying to be as visible and successful as possible and to try to lead by example. I’ve always been that way. When I played baseball, I was never the team captain, but I was a team leader. I showed up, I played hard, I contributed, I supported everybody. They supported me. And then I go home. I figure that’s just who I am as a person, and that’s how I do it every single week on TV. I try to represent as best as I can.

But I also don’t want to shoehorn anything. I want it to be something fun and something special. And when they presented that to me in this particular scenario, I was like, “Absolutely.” This seems like the perfect time to do it. It was Pride Month. I didn’t know how people were going to react. I thought it would just be like a

“cool.” But to have an entire arena chanting at you, “He’s gay,” in a positive way, it was so much fun. It was unexpected. But I think the aftermath of it was the best part because it touched so many different people. I was expecting it to be, excuse my language, a shitshow of just negativity considering what’s been going on in the world. So much positivity, so many messages from other athletes, from just other people in general that looked at that as a moment of hope for them. Something that I really didn’t have when I was in the closet and trying to figure out my sexuality and trying to figure out if I had a space within professional wrestling if I came out. So I am honored that I could do something like that for other people. And hopefully it’s something that will connect with them and they can understand that there are doors and avenues available to them to live your dreams, whatever that may be.

What are some of the reactions that you received after the chant?

A lot of gratitude and a lot of thank yous. Because no one’s ever said it in a wrestling ring. No one just ever said it. And I found that, now that I think about it, kind of strange. I don’t know if it’s out of fear of what the reaction would be or if they just didn’t want to cross that bridge, but it’s like, “This is who I am.” Everybody can be themselves in any other way possible every single week, so why can’t I, and why can’t everybody else?

So now that we’ve crossed that bridge, hopefully there’s a lot more doors open for a lot more LGBTQ athletes in professional wrestling. We’re in a lot better place than where we were when I first started, because there’s a ton of open LGBTQ wrestlers out there. Some on television, a lot of thriving [ones] on the independents. So hopefully we continue to grow and get more in, because there are a lot more in other sports and entertainment.

Some wrestlers, like Nyla Rose, the first openly trans woman to sign with a major pro wrestling company, have been met with some vitriol. Wrestler Rick Steiner, for instance, went on a transphobic rant and was banned from WrestleCon. It seems you’re having a different, more positive experience, but as somebody who’s part of the community you must also be aware that not everyone’s having that same experience. Absolutely. I always say that I am lucky

in the sense that I could navigate a lot of parts of life without worry, because sometimes people don’t know, and other people don’t have that privilege. If I give a piece of advice to somebody who may not be living in an area where being LGBTQ+ is welcome, that advice could potentially harm them. And I don’t want to put anybody in that kind of position. So it gets to be very hard.

I can’t speak to Nyla, I don’t know what her experience is, but I do know that there are always horrible people out there. And I’m not clear from hate either, because two years ago in Long Island somebody was yelling out, calling me the F-word. I didn’t hear it in the ring, but it came out over the broadcast and it caused a bit of a hoopla. But he got reprimanded, and I believe he was escorted out. A lot of people now are policing that when they hear stuff like that. There’s plenty of independent shows where somebody’s yelled out something homophobic, and fans are just like, “Get out. You’re not welcome here.”

Did you ever expect your “Scissor me, daddy ass” catchphrase would become the phenomenon that it has?

No. It’s something that I said on a whim live on television. I just thought of it five minutes before I said it, and the next thing you know it just exploded. And I cannot believe the amount of scissors that people create themselves. They spend all night creating custom scissors to bring to the arenas, and we got the foam finger. It’s crazy.

What’s your earliest memory of how you felt watching wrestling?

It was about the pageantry and the aura that it had around it. It’s a different kind of energy and a different kind of vibe than any other form of entertainment. You have a live audience and you’ve got physicality, you have athleticism, you got millions of people watching you at home. You’ve got different characters, you’ve got storytelling. I loved everything about it. And did I know I was going to be a wrestler one day? No. Did I think it was possible? Also no, because I didn’t know how. I just knew that I loved it, and it’s just a very unique form of entertainment. When I started questioning my sexuality, there wasn’t much to relate to in terms of what I was watching.

Did anyone help you feel that you could be a wrestler?

Really no one. Darren Young came out I believe in 2013, and I had just started wrestling then. Other than Darren, there wasn’t anybody really, because

a lot of times, anything that was remotely LGBTQ was used as comedic fodder. So there wasn’t really much, which is all the reason why ... that’s what kept me in the closet a lot longer. It drove me even more to be successful because I would like to be that example. And I’m fortunate enough to do that every single week now. The community needs somebody to look toward in this particular space.

Knowing your struggle, what did it mean to you when you became the first gay champion in AEW history?

It’s mind-blowing. It was one of the best nights of my life, to be honest with you. The one thing that stood out after I won was, throughout all the confetti and all the people cheering, I was able to look up and somehow saw my dad cheering me on. It was a great night, and it meant a lot to me, and it meant a lot to a lot of people.

And I still have a ton more goals that I’d like to achieve because there’s never been a gay world champion, and hopefully one day. Max and I are doing a lot of cool things together as The Acclaimed; maybe we’ll be a tag team forever, maybe there might be a time where we split off. I have no idea. But if that does ever happen, that’s what I’m gunning for.

What does it mean to you to know that a younger LGBTQ+ generation is looking to you as an open door? How do you process that?

It means a lot because I may not have went through what other people have gone through, but what I went through was shitty. A lot of mental anguish, a lot of feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. A lot of stress. A lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. I just wish I could go back and tell younger Bowens that everything will be OK. All I could do was cry. I didn’t know what my future would be like. I’d pulled into my garage and I just sat in the car for 30 minutes and just wept. I felt like it was hopeless.

How old were you?

I was in college, probably about 18, 19 years old, maybe 20. I had a great support system around me, my friends and my family, but none of them can truly relate to what I was going through, none of them are LGBTQ. So it was a very, very rough time. But again, I wish I could go back and tell my younger self that. And also I hope that I could help people not feel that way. So hopefully this journey continues to connect and reach people across the world so they can feel a little less hopeless than I felt.

As a closeted gay kid, the locker room in school was one of the scariest places for me. For you, what is it like sharing a locker room with other wrestlers and being open about your sexuality? I’ve had zero issues. I think that was one of the things that impressed me most about All Elite Wrestling before I signed — how inclusive the locker room was. We had [trans and genderfluid wrestler] Sunny Kiss there and Nyla Rose that were already contracted before I arrived. And it impressed me so much how much they walked around judgment-free, and they were just themselves. They weren’t altering their personalities at all to fit in. They were just themselves. And I thought, “Wow, this is cool.” So I’ve never had

an issue with anybody on the roster. I feel very comfortable. I was very comfortable talking about my personal life. I could talk about my boyfriend and about past experiences, and everyone welcomes it. And I don’t feel out of place at all. In the past, maybe when I first started wrestling in the independents 10 years ago, the locker room talk was very different [and it] would make me feel uncomfortable to even bring anything up.

You mentioned your boyfriend, Michael, who joins you on a YouTube channel called “Michael & Anthony,” where you parody a lot of trash TV together. How did that start, and what is it like to work with your boyfriend?

The YouTube channel was actually kind of the catalyst to helping me come out in the first place. We made a little video back in 2016 that went viral and it helped grow the YouTube channel. We would do couples vlogs for a while. We just couldn’t figure out what our niche was contentwise. And then the pandemic hit, and we were watching a show called “Love Is Blind.” Michael’s very good at impressions, and he was making fun of one of the people on the show, and he was like, “Why don’t we make a parody of this and put it on YouTube?” And I was like, “That sounds fun. We have nothing else better to do, we’re stuck indoors.” So we put that up and it got a million views. So we thought, “Huh, well this is maybe something that we should go to.” We’ve kind of backed off it a little bit. We’re in here in Los Angeles, and he’s really starting to get his acting career jump started. So he is really focused on that. And I’ve been traveling ridiculously. We just bought a home together.

Now that you’ve broken major ground with your career, what would you like to see as the next frontier in wrestling when it comes to visibility for queer people?

I think more representation in general in sports, because I think that would be the best thing for moving things forward. Because everyone,

they love sports, they love soccer, they love football. It’s such a massive thing. And if we had a lot more out successful athletes that are just proud of being themselves, and we can normalize this experience as opposed to it being this whole big ordeal of coming out and then, “Well, can they adjust?” Of course they can adjust. We’re great athletes; we just happen to be gay or bi or whatever. It doesn’t matter.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris Azzopardi is the Editorial Director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ+ wire service. He has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @ chrisazzopardi

Exploring the Vibrant LGBTQ+ and Queer Art Scene in Atlanta

By Mikkel Hyldebrandt

Art is a powerful medium for expressing identity, sparking conversations, and challenging societal norms. Nowhere is this more evident than in Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ and queer art scene, where a tapestry of organizations and artists are weaving stories that celebrate diversity, promote inclusivity, and ignite change. From Wussy Magazine to Southern Fried Queer Pride, Living Walls, OurSong Atlanta, Voices of Note, and even the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, Atlanta’s creative landscape is a canvas of innovation and activism.

Southern Fried Queer Pride: Building Communities

At the heart of Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ and queer art scene lies Southern Fried Queer Pride (SFQP). Over the past years, it has become clear the SFQP is more than just an event – it’s a movement that seeks to build and nurture community within the LGBTQ+ population across the South. SFQP brings together artists, activists, and organizers to create spaces that celebrate queerness while addressing systemic issues faced by marginalized communities. Through art, workshops, evnts, and performances, SFQP empowers individuals to amplify their voices and spark change.

Wussy Magazine: Unveiling Narratives

Wussy Magazine is more than an online publication dedicated to showcasing the multifaceted experiences of Southern queerness. Founded in 2012 by Jon Dean, Wussy offers a platform for artists, writers, and creators to share their stories, whether through visual art, essays, photography, and more. Through a

variety of performative events, ranging from drag shows to movie nights at Plaza Theatre, Wussy captures the essence of LGBTQ+ life in the South, celebrating its unique culture and challenges.

Living Walls: Murals with a Message

Art has the power to transform not just spaces, but also perspectives. Living Walls is an initiative that recognizes this power, aiming to make art accessible to everyone by turning blank walls into vibrant murals with impactful messages. Inclusivity is a cornerstone of Living Walls’ mission, and the

organization frequently collaborates with LGBTQ+ artists to highlight queer

narratives and experiences. By turning the city itself into a canvas, Living Walls brings visibility to LGBTQ+ stories while beautifying public spaces. You have probably already seen a Living Walls mural while going through Atlanta, in the last years most notably (or noticeably) perhaps along the Atlanta Beltline.

Art on the BeltLine: Where Creativity Transforms Communities

Speaking of Living Walls, Art on the BeltLine emerges as a testament to the fusion of art, urban development, and community engagement. The

committed to fostering inclusivity and artistic excellence. By giving voice to diverse stories and experiences, OurSong creates a vibrant tapestry of narratives that celebrate the LGBTQ+ community’s richness. Through their performances and collaborations, they amplify LGBTQ+ voices, inspiring audiences to embrace acceptance, understanding, and the transformative power of music. Their mission resonates deeply, affirming that every note carries the potential to bridge gaps and build bridges to a more inclusive world.

Voices of Note: Weaving a Choral Tapestry of Inclusion

initiative, as detailed in its mission, transforms Atlanta’s unused railway corridors into vibrant canvases that reflect diverse perspectives. By championing local artists and inviting public interaction, Art on the BeltLine redefines how art integrates with city life. With its commitment to accessibility and inclusivity, it breathes life into public spaces and reshapes the city’s narrative through the vivid strokes of creativity.

OurSong Atlanta: Harmonizing Diversity and Inclusion

OurSong is a pioneering chorus that transcends music to become a beacon of unity. As the city’s first LGBTQ+ mixed chorus, OurSong is more than just harmonious melodies; it’s a movement

Voices of Note, the collective force behind the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus and Atlanta Women’s Chorus, orchestrates much more than melodies. As revealed in their dynamic history, these choirs intertwine LGBTQ+ identities with artistry, breaking barriers with each harmonious note. From powerful performances to community engagement, Voices of Note radiates a resounding message of acceptance and unity. By amplifying LGBTQ+ voices, they enrich Atlanta’s artistic landscape and illuminate the path toward a harmonious future.

Mayor’s

Office of Cultural Affairs: Fostering Artistic Inclusivity

In the bustling heart of Atlanta’s cultural scene stands the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, an entity that plays a vital role in supporting LGBTQ+ and queer art. By facilitating events, exhibitions, and public art installations, the office fosters an environment where LGBTQ+ artists can thrive. Their commitment to diversity and inclusion helps ensure that LGBTQ+ narratives are not only heard but celebrated throughout the city.

Deep South Presents Sunday Service

This edition of Sunday Service will be headlined by phlegm, a New Orleans born and based multidisciplinary artist and DJ. Warmup sets by Deep South resident DJs Brian Rojas, Alexis Curshé, Wild Cherry, and Vicki Powell. No cover.

WHEN: Sunday, September 10, 7 – 11:55 pm

WHERE: Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium

Do you want your event featured on this page? Email info@davidatlanta.com for more info on how to get your event or party highlighted here.

Spice Girls Drag Brunch

Presented by Wussy Events

Girl Power! If you wanna be my lover, you gotta come to the Spice Girls drag brunch presented by Wussy. Hear the best hits from the fabulous five pop divas who brought fashion, fun and girl power to the 90’s! Performances by Drew Friday, Dotte Com, Ivy, Katrina Prowess, and Stella Pearl Fontaine.

WHEN: Sunday, September 10, doors at 1 pm, showtime 2 pm.

WHERE: ATL Comedy Theater Underground

Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood

Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood

Photos by: Russ Bowen-Youngblood

NEW ONLINE CALENDAR of EVENTS

BARS & CLUBS MIDTOWN

BLAKE’S ON THE PARK blakesontheparkatlanta.com

227 10th St NE

BULLDOGS

893 Peachtree St NE

FRIENDS NEIGHBORHOOD BAR friendsonponce-atl. com

736 Ponce De Leon Ave NE

MY SISTER’S ROOM mysistersroom.com

66 12th St NE

X MIDTOWN xmidtown.com

990 Piedmont Ave NE

THE T modeltatlanta.com

465 Boulevard SE

CHESHIRE

HERETIC hereticatlanta.com

2069 Cheshire Bridge Road

BJ ROOSTERS bjroosters.com

2043 Cheshire Bridge Road NE

A snapshot of Gay Atlanta’s favorite destinations. View their ads in DAVID & visit their websites for weekly event listings.

SNAPS

WESTSIDE

MARQUETTE

868 Joseph E. Boone Blvd NW

840ATL

840 Joseph E. Boone Blvd NW

ANSLEY

ATLANTA EAGLE 1492 Piedmont Ave NE

FELIX’S 1510 Piedmont Ave NE

THE HIDEAWAY 1544 Piedmont Ave NE

MIXX mixxatlanta.com 1492 Piedmont Ave NE

OSCAR’S oscarsatlanta.com 1510 Piedmont Ave NE

WOOFS woofsatlanta.com

494 Plasters Ave NE

EAST ATLANTA, GRANT PARK & EDGEWOOD

MARY’S marysatlanta.com

1287 Glenwood Ave SE

SISTER LOUISA’S CHURCH

sisterlouisaschurch.com

466 Edgewood Ave SE

DINING

MIDTOWN

CASA ALMENARA

991 Piedmont Ave NE casa-almenara.com

HENRY’S henrysatl.com

132 10th St NE

LA HACIENDA lahaciendamidtown. com

900 Monroe Dr NE

TUK TUK THAI FOOD LOFT TUKTUKATL.COM

1745 Peachtree Rd NW

DEKALB

LIPS ATLANTA atldragshow.com

3011 Buford Hwy NE

RETAIL MIDTOWN

BARKING LEATHER AFTER DARK barkingleather.com

1510 Piedmont Ave NE

CHESHIRE SOUTHERN NIGHTS VIDEO

2205 Cheshire Bridge Rd NE

ANSLEY

BOY NEXT DOOR MENSWEAR boynextdoormenswear.com

1000 Piedmont Ave NE, Ste A

GCB & PLEASURES brushstrokesatlanta.com

1510-D Piedmont Ave. NE

FITNESS

MIDTOWN

URBAN BODY FITNESS urbanbody tness.com

500 Amsterdam Ave N

CHESHIRE

GRAVITEE FITNESS graviteeatl.com

2201 Faulkner Rd NE

SPAS/BATHS ADULT

FLEX SPA exspas.com

76 4th St NW

EMAIL iNFO@DAViDATLANTA.COM FOR FREE BUSINESS LISTINGS THERE IS ROOM FOR YOU!

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Gays will need two hours to get ready and show up in shorts and a tank top. Never try to keep up with the friend who only drinks tequila. It will end bad. For you.

Youʼre not really friends if you donʼt judge each otherʼs nudes.

Market Days is the Costco of gay Pride.

At my next job, I’m gonna lie about having kids, so I can just leave the office anytime I want like everyone else with children.

Tops are so dumb, I want one.

People love to act like smoked gouda can�t heal the world.