“You’re…not…?” I stared at him for a moment. “You are?”
He tapped his beer to the table top and started peeling one of the labels. “How about, I don’t care if they know. I never made it a secret, but I also never made a big deal about it. I have lost some roles where the director or some shitbird near the top, took offense to my being gay, but the next opportunity just rolled up after that.
“And I realize that Hollywood is different from the rest of the world—except maybe Broadway. I’m acting when I kiss women, and I’m acting when I kiss men. I’m acting when I’m a bad guy or a good guy. It’s all fake.”
“But they love you,” I managed. “You’re award winning. BAFTAs, Emmys, SAGs, Oscars! I don’t think they could ever turn you away if they tried.”
“Hmm,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. He tapped something into the face of it and scrolled a bit. “Up Down Left Right. Grammy, Grammy, Grammy, platinum, double platinum, MTV Music award, VMAs Grammy, two more double platinum.”
If Nelson Powers had been wearing glasses, he would have peered over them at me, with displeasure and disdain. “Austin. Tell me, who do the little gay boys have to look up to in music? Who are their favorites?”
I lifted an eyebrow, confused. “Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Pink. Go back further and you have Barbara Streisand, Judy Garland, Madonna—”
“Notice something?” Aubrey asked.
“They’re all fabulous?”
“They’re all women. Cishet women,” Nelson said. “Who do little gay boys have to look up to who doesn’t identify as female?”
“Liberace?”
Grant snorted his beer.
I pursed my lips.
“Look, UDLR is already insanely popular with the LGBTQ-plus community,” Taylor said. “We have a metric shit ton of gay fans. Gay and queer kids who would love, and I meanadore, for one of their most favorite groups to have not just allyship, but a member of the community in it.”
Grant leaned forward. “Can you imagine what having someone who looks like you, lives like you, up there would mean? Why the hell do you think Luis and I fought our asses off to be in this group? There are little black kids, little black boys, all over the world who see me up there, looking like them, acting like them, living like them. There’s a reason I don’t drink a lot, never smoked, never did drugs. TheinstantI got through the auditions to the end, to the last twenty, I knew what I was going to be for millions of little black children the world over.”
“Something to aspire to,” Luis said. “All those little Latinx kids sitting in Puerto Rico or Jersey City or Compton? Sawmeup there. Singing my mixed Arawak-Mayan-Puerto Rican ass off. And now singing in Spanish, playing traditional Spanish guitar. They can see me, and they know they can be me.”
“I’m just white, and this is not my space.” Taylor smirked.
“Mine either,” Bryce said.
Hailey leaned forward. “But man, think about it. Think about what you could give those kids.”
“Think about how you’ve lived, where you live,” Nelson said. “Grant and Luis made my point for me. You can be you, you can be out, and you show them how to be a gay man.”
I looked at the faces around the table. “I don’t even know how to be a gay man…”
“Pfft,” Aubrey said. “Rainbows and unicorns.” She paused and looked at me. “Some eyeliner wouldn’t hurt, either.”
Nelson threw his wadded bottled label at her.
She grinned at him and shrugged. “Think about it, little brother. Seriously. Yes, there’s a whole history you have to learn and understand, but I think there’s a very handsome tailor who would happily take you under his wing and teach his baby gay.”
Bryce cleared his throat. “A worth boy is he, Mazel tov, mazel tov…”
Hailey giggled. “Of pious family Mazel tov, mazel tov…”
Nelson joined in the mocking at that point “They named him after my dear uncle Mordechai—”
Everyone sitting at the table chorused, “The tailor Motel Camzoil!”
I nearly fell off my chair laughing. “Oh, fuck you all!”
Austin
