Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture Read Online Free Page A

work there, I was terrible at every task I was given, from driving a forklift to, in my schlemiel, schlemazel moment, working on the assembly line screwing bottle tops. One summer I made deliveries and most notably delivered cheese to a hospital and forgot the cheese. Still, it was fun being around my whole family, all of whom paged each other over the loudspeaker incessantly. My dad was always a relief to the eyes, strolling around the manufacturing plant making gentle conversation with ungentle forklift ladies—Large Marge types—looking to me like a model in a Ralph Lauren ad. No matter what the job, we always went to lunch at Steak ’n Shake with my uncle and Grandpa, who would completely tear the waiters apart. For about twenty-five years straight, Gramp ordered a small salad in a large bowl at Steak ’n Shake. As soon as it came, Evelyn’s father would bark, “YOU CALL THIS A SALAD!?” He was out the door and back at his desk in thirty minutes, ever more respectful of being on the clock than I. The family business was always a tremendous source of pride, but what I did there never felt like a real job because I knew that I couldn’t get fired and that I wasn’t going to spend my life in the food industry.
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    To be clear, I’ve been gay since the day I was born, but even though I knew it somewhere in my head, I didn’t want to face the facts of what that meant. Biltmore Drive wasn’t exactly Christopher Street, and I didn’t know anyone who was gay, unless you count the waiters at a few St. Louis restaurants. My mom always doted on such men—she called them “cheerful.” But I didn’t have any faith that her love of cheerful waiters would translate to her son if I ever admitted that I, too, was … cheerful.
    Things weren’t much better on TV. This was pre– Real World and Will and Grace and Bravo, so basically you had Paul Lynde being a mean queen in the center square and Charles Nelson Reilly kibitzing with Brett Somers on Match Game —hardly role models for a kid. So, like many a young gayling, I gravitated toward strong, outsized female personalities—on-screen and off.
    As I got older, more and more of my close friends were women. I got involved in their friendship falling-outs and 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