(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 3/30/2012)
I’m going to Los Angeles this weekend to meet my man’s parents for the first time. I’m really excited to get to know the people who created this extraordinary creature I love so much, and it feels super special to have been invited to accompany him on the journey. So romantical!
At any rate, I figured that because I’m spun out all giddy-like on matters of the heart at the moment, it would be the perfect time for the second round of my ongoing interview series about love and relationships, “Queer Celebrities Need Love, Too.” For this edition I reached out to Imperial Teen‘s Will Schwartz, original Hole drummer Patty Schemel, TV personality Philip Tetro (from MTV Canada’s 1 Girl 5 Gays), transgender comedian Ian Harvie, New York Times bestselling author (and Madonna‘s brother) Christopher G. Ciccone, actor PJ DeBoy, radio talkshow host (and former Playgirl president) Daniel Nardicio, and Sexpop god Mario Diaz. They all weighed in on the same five questions:
1. If you had to sum up the entire history of your love life in one word, what would it be?
2. What’s your favorite on-screen romance of all time? What was it about their love that you liked?
3. Name something that’s a deal breaker for you in relationships.
4. What does a perfect day look like to you? Is it spent alone or with someone else?
5. If you could pick a theme song for that day, what would it be?
Here’s what they had to say about stuff (and things). Read the rest of this entry »
(Originally Published on The Huffington Post – 1/2/2012)
The first 12 years of my career were spent writing songs about loss and longing, so in some way I suppose I owe the fact that you are even reading this on The Huffington Post to my own unhappiness. Historically, I have felt most at home in heartbreak, both in art and in life. It’s largely what I knew growing up, so everything else felt foreign and wrong as an adult. For years, people being kind to me felt painful. I was terrified of anyone actually knowing me. It’s pretty fucked-up — and I still struggle with this. It’s a jagged part of my makeup that I will most likely be working on for the rest of my days.
I first learned about how sad the world can be when I was 7 years old, courtesy of a much older family “friend” who just couldn’t keep his hands off me. I won’t get into the specifics around the abuse suffered, but it was ongoing and horrible and went undetected for many years. The scars from this experience in my formative days have done just that: they formed me. They changed who I was and how I looked at the world, and they altered my sense of self at its core. All of this was complicated by the fact that I also happened to be a gay man born into a fundamentalist Christian home. It was a perfect storm for me to go completely apeshit, which I did.
I began experimenting with drugs and music around the same time, both before my 11th birthday. By 14 I was a full-blown, cigarette-smoking, drug-addicted alcoholic with headphones and a notebook who fancied himself a singer-songwriter. Those same old scars now rooted me on as I built an impenetrable wall of sadness and sound around myself. They gave me words and melodies to purge the feelings that could not be killed chemically, and I began seriously writing and recording music when I was 17. Those first songs would become my debut record, GLEE, which was released in 2000. At the time of its initial release, nobody knew what I was trying to do. I recall a lot of head scratching and people being really uncomfortable with the lyrical content, mostly, so I decided to take a break and focused solely on partying my brains out for the next five years.
In 2006, prompted by more unfortunate heartbreak of the drugged-out variety, I Read the rest of this entry »
