In this good Advocate interview by Ari Karpel, Wanda Sykes is mostly serious, like when she talks about her seven-year marriage to a man:
“I actually made the choice to be straight as a kid,” she says. “Early on I knew [being gay] wasn’t gonna fly. No way. And from the teachers and church and all it was, This is wrong! What’s wrong with me? And you pray and ask God to take it away, and you bury it and bury it, and you shut that part of yourself off. Then you try to live the life that you’re supposed to live.”
But she also gets in a few good jokes, the best about the media coverage devoted to her coming out at a marriage equality rally in Las Vegas last year after the passage of Proposition 8 in California: “I was like, Damn, whatever happened to ‘What happens in Vegas…?'”
In Las Vegas, the comedian Wanda Sykes surprised a crowd of more than 1,000 rallying outside a gay community center by announcing that she is gay and had wed her wife in California on Oct. 25. Ms. Sykes, who divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, had never publicly discussed her sexual orientation but said the passage of Proposition 8 had propelled her to be open about it.
You can read more of Wanda’s Las Vegas statements here. She’s one of my favorite comedians and I applaud her for finally coming out. It can only help her stand-up routine; now she can let loose in her bit about gay marriage in a way she couldn’t before.
Famous women can never cop to having lesbian experiences without someone questioning if it’s a bid for publicity, can they? I’ve never understood the derision and disbelief that often follows these revelations; I don’t think an actress has ever landed a development deal after telling a magazine reporter she fucked a girl in college. Not to mention it seems rather quaint when people act like lesbian experimentation is so incredibly exotic that women must be lying when they admit to having tried it. It’s not like they’re saying they were spies in WWII or something.
Sometimes a story will seem a bit suspect, like Megan Fox’s brilliantly calculated Russian stripper romance, but my general philosophy on lesbian ‘sperimentation (which I’d know a thing or two about, being a seasoned professional) is this: it’s common. Very common. And that’s just among “civilian” women. Throw ridiculously gorgeous women like models and actresses into the mix and it practically becomes an inevitability. You might think I’m joking, but really, how often do you think Greta Garbo used to get turned down?
My point, if I ever had one, was that it’s silly to doubt every attractive actress who says she’s had a Mulholland Drive moment. When I read that Thandie Newton (who I’m in lust with, as some of you might remember) recently told The Advocate that she had a lesbian experience as a teenager, I figured I wouldn’t have to visit many websites before finding someone who wondered if she was lying. The comment I found, over at Defamer, turned out to be funny rather than dismissive: “Was this other girl a Russian stripper? Hmmm. I’m waiting until I hear what Thandie’s mom has to say.” (Megan Fox’s mother, when asked about her daughter’s foray into lesbianism, said she had no idea if the story was true.)
Still, there has to be someone at some website who will declare him or herself unconvinced. Normally I wouldn’t care, seeing as this is a trivial matter, but Newton’s comments to The Advocate reminded me of an interview she did with The Scotsman back in 2007, when she talked about embarking on a relationship with her significantly older Flirting director John Duigan at the age of sixteen. The Scotsman interview caught my attention because Newton was so honest with journalist Craig McLean, telling him of her time with Duigan:
“I was involved in a relationship which really relied on my insecurity, so that I wouldn’t ever think, ‘What the fuck am I doing with an old bloke?’ And that insecurity was fueled all the time. ‘It must be because you’re black.’ Seriously. ‘Don’t worry about it because I’m here to…’ Bollocks! ‘It’s because I’m 18 and you’re 41. Everyone’s looking at us because this sucks. And I’m thinking they’re looking at us because I’m black.’ Isn’t that fucking awful?”
What she told The Advocate, in response to the question “Have you ever experimented with a woman?” was this:
“Yes, I had my rite of passage. I was 16, and I wasn’t really in control of the situation, if you know what I mean. It was much more about a male fantasy of seeing two women together. But I loved the girl a lot; she was one of my closest friends. I think falling in love is actually more about falling in love with an individual. We’re all potentially bisexual; it all depends on your circle, your upbringing, and all kinds of things. Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. I could’ve easily fallen in love with a woman over a man. My husband Ol’s kind of a man-woman. Look, I once loved Tim Curry, so there you go.”
It’s presumptuous to make the connection, I know, and it’s entirely possible I’m barking up the wrong tree. But I thought it was worth pointing out that maybe, just maybe, actors tell the truth sometimes. Also, you know, Thandie Newton is hot and I’d hate to pass up an opportunity to post a photo of her. She’s much nicer to look at than Bullwinkle.
Since posting this item about Shelby Lynne and her New York Times Magazine profile a couple weekends ago, I’ve been asked by several Googled-out lesbians for help locating the singer’s latest interview with The Advocate.
The article (written by Michele Kort, the Laura Nyro biographer and author of Dinah!: Three Decades of Sex, Golf, and Rock ‘N’ Roll, whose Portia de Rossi interview is one of the best I’ve read in The Advocate) isn’t online yet, so to read the whole thing you’ll have to go out and buy issue 1001 of the magazine, currently on newsstands. Out of the small amount of kindness that remains in my mostly-shriveled heart, I’ve assembled the gay-centric bits for you shameless gossips.
First, you must understand that this is no ordinary Advocate interview. Most Advocate interviews consist of a fawning reporter asking a Z-list celebrity what it’s like to be a gay icon. By the second paragraph of Kort’s three-page Lynne piece (five if you count all the photos), you know you’re in for something different:
Doing press is “kind of a nightmare” for Lynne, and when The Advocate ventured out to take some pictures and talk about her new CD, Just a Little Lovin’—on which she covers songs recorded by the timeless gay icon Dusty Springfield— Shelby self-medicated, shall we say. Throughout the long afternoon and into the evening her emotions ebbed and flowed, from insecurity to confidence, petulance to intimacy. One moment she was hugging me, the next walking off in a huff with my tape recorder. “Don’t worry,” said Lynne’s manager and friend, Elizabeth “Betty” Jordan, “she’ll bring it back.”
Cranky note: The nature of Lynne’s relationship with Jordan (then known as Betty Bottrell) was first questioned by a brave reporter in 2001, and it didn’t go over well with Shelby. Kort is more delicate in her approach to the subject:
In Elizabeth, Shelby found a manager, executive producer, and best friend. “It’s very important. Very personal,” Lynne says of their relationship. “I guess we were just there at the right time for each other. My life at that time was completely uprooted; all I had was that record that I was making. We’ve depended on each other now for eight years, for everything in life. And that’s all there is to that.”
I suggest that however Shelby describes it, the partnership seems primary. She agrees. “Primary is a good word, actually. Things that are that important you keep close as you can. You’re so lucky if you ever get something that important.”
Another Cranky note: So far, so good, right? Shelby hasn’t broken a bottle of Southern Comfort over a pool table and challenged Michele to a rumble yet. Unfortunately, trouble is brewing:
But talking about whom she loves, even in the most generic terms, turns out to be off-limits, despite The Advocate’s understanding going into the interview. In Palm Springs, Lynne got downright combative when I gingerly approached personal territory. “What’s the question?” she asked several times. But when I asked, “Are you in a relationship?” she immediately interrupted with “I don’t talk about my personal life.” It was confusing: Shelby seemed to be demanding that The Question be asked even as she fended it off.
So now, on the phone, I bring it up again. She still stonewalls, but more gently. “I just don’t think I want to ever be a part of a group of people who want to make announcements about their personal life,” she says. “Because, you know, that’s all you have.”
“Do you hate labels?” I ask, because I’m sensing what may underlie her reluctance.
“Tell me, do I? You already know the answer.”
When I call her a few days later for some follow-up questions, I ask one last time, in the gentlest way I can imagine, whether Shelby could subscribe to the sentiment Dusty famously expressed in a 1970 interview: “I know that I’m as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy.”
Shelby’s just not having any. “It’s fine that you keep wanting me to go there, but I just don’t believe I need to,” she says firmly. “I give away so much in the songs, man.”
“But did you not think The Advocate would ask such a question when you agreed to do the interview?” I finally ask.
“But it’s not anybody’s business who I sleep with or who I fuck!” she says, as frustrated as I am. “I don’t give a shit what the magazine is. People are going to come up with whatever they want to come up with on their own; I don’t have to make announcements. Come on!”
Cranky again: Oh, for fuck’s sake. The only thing I hate more than the closet-closet is the walk-in closet, that strange space that allows someone to acknowledge her “primary relationship” with another woman without using the word gay, while also giving her room to turn around and snap that she won’t “make announcements” about her personal life.
Lynne is right that it’s nobody’s business who she fucks (though asking whether someone is gay or straight or bisexual, or merely averse to labels, is hardly the same as asking for their partner’s name, date of birth, and social security number), but she didn’t have similar meltdowns when reporters assumed that person was male. And perhaps she’s making things a bit more complicated than necessary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure her sister was able to acknowledge her relationship with Steve Earle without doing a “Yep, I’m Straight” TIME cover.
(Special thanks to H.M.C. for the magazine hookup.)
