Provincetown! I’m coming to you on “my book tour.” My boyfriend @jprampage will be interviewing me, probably asking why I had to write a book about our open relationship and me becoming an absolute ho from hell. It should be interesting! Flyer by @starquality.studio !
In Inspiration Porn, I wrote a section called “How to C*m (If Gay Guy)” because I think it’s important to bring awareness to the suffering we experience while being gay and horny. Then I had allies @alisoneroman , @heathergay , @donetodeathprojects and @therealjimparsons read it for me because, um, it was funny. See you in c*m prison!!
I spend an entire essay talking shit about Hollywood in Inspiration Porn and @hollywoodreporter excerpted it, natch. Link, as they say in the biz, is in my bio.
Inspiration Porn comes out in almost a month! Here’s the intro to The Slut Diaries, my favorite essay in the book.
“I learn something new each time I sleep with someone. I learn that sex doesn’t have to feel good to be good. I learn that when a guy tells me, “My therapist said I couldn’t hook up with you anymore,” it’s best not to ask why. I learn that some men are addicted to porn and will see you as a hole rather than whole. I learn that, if you build your life correctly, there will be at least eight gay men in your DMs willing to fuck you, and that... is really cool. I learn that just because you fuck a guy it doesn’t mean you have to follow him on Instagram, because if you do you might have to see videos of him deadlifting in random cities for the rest of your natural life. I learn that some sixty-nine-year-olds do, in fact, have abs and, yes, you are putting the “ho” in hospice when you sleep with them. I learn that watching Waiting for Guffman with a date is not an aphrodisiac. I learn that fucking a perfect muscled body is like eating at a Michelin star restaurant: it looks better before it’s inside of you. I learn that a lot of tops are bottoms who haven’t gone to therapy. I learn that just because I want to fuck dads doesn’t mean I want to fuck my dad…right? I learn not to fuck actors because actors are better at playing a person than being a person. I learn to ask myself: do I want to have sex with this person, or do I want to know if I can have sex with this person? I learn that people are in pain. I learn that people are lost. I learn that people don’t know who they are and use sex as a way for others to show them. I learn that people are desperate to connect, even if they don’t know how. Especially if they don’t know how. I learn that there is no such thing as being out of a guy’s league: if you’re naked, you deserve to be there. I learn that most gay men are kind and even if they’re not, the origin of our pain is the same. I learn there is no right or wrong way to have sex but if I were to be prescriptive, I would say: If you’re not finding moments of pure unbridled laughter before, during, and after sex, you are, in fact, doing it wrong.”
I wrote a big chunk of Inspiration Porn in New York. I was posted up at The Bowery, getting railed by creative directors with three first names, living my best stupid gay life. It was a marked departure from when I lived there in my twenties. Even though it was the Obama years and our biggest national conflict was debating the TV show Girls, I was “Lost In My Bedroom” by Sky Ferreira, popping painkillers like they were Flintstones vitamins and siloing myself from intimacy by placing my dick inside a prescription pill bottle. Back then I thought I hated New York but it turns out I just hated myself.
In my book, I talk a lot about the years in New York I didn’t own a duvet cover but could acquire morphine at any moment. The years where a shoulder brush on the subway could feel like a marriage proposal. The years where I was being flown across the country to give talks at colleges, as if I was the personification of success, even though I was getting paid $31,000 a year to write listicles. In one essay, I talk about diving mouth-first into a painkiller addiction. I sent it to some friends who’d bore witness to that time as a fact-check.
“This is really dark,” my friend Brandon said after reading it.
“Well, yeah, but it’s funny too, right?”
“I can see you trying to make it funny but you don’t have to do that. Just let it be sad.”
Let it be sad. A harrowing edict. Even when I think I’m being vulnerable, it can sometimes still be a performance. A wall of lols. So I went back in and I let the essay be what it needed to be. I love New York so much. In LA, everyone is mentally ill in the same boring way (insecure, thinking a Hulu pilot will save them) but in New York everyone is mentally ill in an exciting way. So, on that note, come join me at my book launch at The Strand with @cocomellors . I no longer know where to get morphine, but that’s alright. I can get so much more. Link in bio for tix. flyer by @starquality.studio , photo by @ryanmcginleystudios
Special came out seven years ago today (yesterday*)! I don’t revisit this time often. Why? It’s a seven-layer dip, honey. The experience was so unexpected and such a whirlwind that it feels like it happened to a different person. I never set out to act and suddenly here I was on billboards, doing a proper press tour, and being handed awards by Cock and Hole Monthly. (GLAAD*) I was thrilled but also disoriented. I didn’t think anyone was gonna watch my little gay whore show. I took a job on 90210 right before it came out! (Yes, that’s a picture of Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth bidding me farewell to go on my press tour: a deeply relatable sentence.) Now suddenly I was in the Hollywood machine, being styled, going to events. All to tell the world I was successful. And it worked. I was! The only downside? I was no longer a person. I was an IMDB page. And then there’s the layer of what happened when it all died down. Special and Queer as Folk got cancelled. My movie stalled. I still haven’t had the opportunity to create a second show. All of these disappointments begged questions like: Have I peaked? Was I just a lucky beneficiary of Hollywood’s diversity fad?
When I started writing Inspiration Porn, I knew I would have to dive into the making of Special and its aftermath, while also interrogating my own ambivalence towards ambition and celebrity. Writing it was cathartic and the time I’ve spent away from step-and-repeats at the Cock & Hole Monthly galas was necessary. Because I had to realize that what I do is a living but it’s not a life.
(That being said, pre-order Inspiration Porn wherever books are sold!)
Here’s some snapshots from season one of Special. Punam texted me yesterday “I’m proud of us. We did that!” My initial response was one of embarrassment, of feeling like I failed because it didn’t run for ten seasons. (Being a Type A Virgo is hell.) But then I stopped myself and was like, “Wait, I’m proud of us too. I got to make something weird with a bunch of amazing people and full network support. Nobody can take that away from me.” (Except for maybe Netflix if it ever decides to remove Special from its library for a tax write off, hehe.)
RSVP link in bio for my NYC and LA book events! That’s right….Mama’s going on book tour! (And by “book tour” I mean going to New York and LA because honey this isn’t the 90s.) I hate book launches TBH so I assure you this one is going to be fun. Like a new American restaurant… I do things a little differently around here. Diablo Cody, @realmelissabroder and @themjeans will be reading from my slut whore diaries. And in New York @cocomellors , who is too hot and charismatic to be a writer, but randomly is one anyway, will be doing the Q to my A. Thank you to @starquality.studio for the amazing LA flyer. And @ryanmcginleystudios for the thotography.
This picture of my face did really well on stories. People really liked it. They liked the way I looked. And that made me feel really good. So now I’m taking it to grid in the hopes of getting an even bigger response and making me feel even better. Here goes nothing!!!!
