Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture, Andy Cohen [the best books to read txt] 📗

stirred up plenty of shit between them. Jackie Greenberg and Jeanne Messing were pre-Housewives boot camp for me. They were my training wheels, “Li’l Housewives” if you will—lots of entertainment and flash and turmoil packed into training bras and junior high botherations, and I was happiest hanging out with—and in the middle of—them. I was constantly putting my foot in it, telling one something that the other said about her, getting involved where I shouldn’t in plans and invitations and parties, and then, when I tried to keep secrets, I’d be punished for favoring one over the other.

At the prom with the Li’l Housewives, Jeanne and Jackie

In the junior high school social landscape, I was Switzerland, pleasantly popular, and had a self-preservative skill of deflecting attention away from myself by getting involved in other people’s conflicts instead. No one, upon no one, knew that I had my own intense drama roiling just under the surface of my skin. At least that’s what I assumed.

One Sunday in eighth grade, I went over to Jackie’s to play Atari with her. Her mom gave me a ride to Glaser’s Pharmacy and I was standing on the corner waiting to cross the street as she and Jackie sat in the car at a red light. I was leaning on the lamppost in an apparently unmasculine way.

Jackie looked at me and turned to her mother and said something. They laughed. Sensing that I knew exactly what they were chuckling about, I walked over to the car and asked what was funny. Jackie didn’t want to answer at first but then hesitantly responded, “I think that when you grow up, you are going to be a homosexual.”

The light turned, they drove off, and I just stood there in traffic. I realized that my friend had only said something I already knew was true. I also realized that from that minute on, nothing would ever be the same for me. Because now, ready or not, I actually was what I was afraid I was. I was overcome with anger that I had to deal with this truth. That my life was now destined to be clandestine and covert. I didn’t blame Jackie. Being gay was a secret I had kept from everyone, including myself, like a lock without a key. Jackie had merely shown up with a set of verbal bolt-cutters. It’s ironic, of course: All that trouble my motor-mouth caused me, all the annoyance it caused others, and the biggest disturbance of all was caused by what I wasn’t saying. In those days, and at that age, it was not freeing to know that I was gay. It was tragic. Even at that age, I had an inkling of the tough road that might lie ahead for someone like me. At that point in our culture, there were black heroes, women heroes, Latino heroes, but there were no homosexual heroes. Even Paul Lynde was in the closet. (Of course, we hadn’t seen anything yet; AIDS was still around the corner.) I walked home, sobbing my heart out the whole way.

After that, I barely allowed myself to think of “it” during the day. Late at night, though, I would lie awake thinking about my future, the inevitability of my sexuality, and the improbability that anyone would accept me once they knew. I really believed my life would be over once I came out and that this happy kingdom in which I lived would fall to pieces. Or that I would.

CHAINS OF LOVE

By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d established myself to Jeanne, Jackie, and everybody else as—for lack of a better phrase—one of the girls. Boy-girl non-romantic best-friendships were unusual for that time, at least in my circles; nonetheless I was always surrounded by women, a circumstance that prepared me well for my life today. I had guy friends, too, and was popular—president of the student body and voted (big shocker) Most Talkative and (irritatingly, but not exactly shockingly) Biggest Gossip in my senior class. (I was pissed I didn’t get Best Dressed, but that’s another story.) Looking at me, you’d have thought I had it all together. But, without getting too Afterschool Special about it, underneath the gregarious exterior was a whole other story.

Late in high school, Jackie’s parents went on vacation and asked me to stay with her, to look after her and their house. My mom was mystified. A boy staying alone with a girl? What kind of parents would allow such a thing? “Why would you trust your DAUGHTER with my SON?” she asked Jackie’s mother, Jan. After a pause that was way more pregnant than I would ever get Jackie, even alone together for a week, Jan said to my mom, “Andy’s … safe.”

She was right: I was “safe,” in that way. Of course, I didn’t feel very safe. I felt like if anyone found out my secret, I was done for. But for now, no one knew I was gay, and I played right along with the normal high school shenanigans, such as deciding to take magic mushrooms with some friends and go see Eddie Murphy live in concert.

Like everybody, I had loved Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, his live routine differed from his television shtick; namely in that it mostly consisted of ridiculing gay people. Every other word out of his mouth was “faggot.” And with each and every gay joke, the crowd went wild. They loved it. My friends loved it. I was surrounded by thousands of people in hysterics, and they were all laughing at “faggots.” And ipso facto, laughing at me. Unfortunately, the drugs I was on didn’t act as any sort of emotional buffer, but instead like a magnifying glass intensifying the huge beam of hate and mocking cackles trained on me. I ran out of the arena and into the bathroom, where I spent most of the concert in a stall, rocking back and forth wishing