Metrosource October/November 2017

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 METROSOURCE

METROSOURCE

HITTING HELSINKI

A DESIGNER CAPITAL

FINAL EPISODES

POWER SPLURGE LIVE LARGER

A BEHIND THE SCENES FAREWELL

TORCH SONG

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

FIRING UP THE REVIVAL

INDULGENCE

JOHNNY SKANDROS HOOKS YOU UP

LEGENDARY NIGHTS BEGIN AT SUNSET

Living a little is for people that haven’t learned to live a lot.

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DEPARTMENTS INDULGENCE ISSUE

THIS PAGE: HARRY STYLES PHOTO COURTESU OF WILL HEATH/NBC.° NGO OKAFOR PHOTO COURTESY FITMATCH

October/November 2017 | VOLUME 28, NO. 5

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12 CULTURE 8 METROSCOPE Get ready for big comebacks from Amy Sedaris, Clive Owen, Ellen Page and Will & Grace. All that and more ... in scope!

18 TECH Is this the smartest speaker?

20 SCREEN Emma plays Billie Jean, and Britain gets its Brokeback.

26 BOOKS A chic chateau, cute coffee and jaunty jewels.

28 MUSIC Tori seeks answers, while Lana goes long.

58 ARTSCOPE Rediscover an illustator with a keen eye for male beauty.

BODY 13 METRO HIV Ben Schatz of The Kinsey Sicks explains his journey from activism to drag.

54 HEALTH If you’re considering a bit of botox or a little lipo, we’ll get you primed.

VIEWS 51 DIARY Wade and Gary take a vacation from technology — and consciousness.

52 POV Kevin’s attempts to adjust his weight lead to a variety of obsessive behaviors.

64 LAST CALL

Moisés Kaufman lights up Torch Song.

CONTENTS

October/November 2017 | VOLUME 28, NO. 5

30 THE MAN WHO CRIED WOOF

OUR INTIMATE INTERVIEW WITH THE

co-founder of Scruff explores his evolution from an introverted kid to the confident face of a brand that’s helped redefine how we connect.

36 POWER SPLURGE WANT TO LIVE LARGE?, DON’T

miss our guide to the $5k at-home sauna, $10k cocktail, $25k gym membership, and a $200k ticket to live the high life — in space.

42 FINAL EPISODES DAVID CRANE AND JEFFREY KLARIK are an adorable gay couple who’ve

created some of our favorite television and seen Matt LeBlanc propositioned innumerable times.

60 SLINKY HELSINKI for divine design, supreme cuisine, sizzling saunas and a glimpse of the proud homeland that gave us a certain sexy illustrator named Tom.

ON THE COVER PHOTO BY MICHAEL BLASE • GROOMING BY JENNY ATWOOD SMITH AND DWIGHT BARNES • CLOTHING BY NASTY PIG

PHOTO BY BRITTANY AMBRIDGE

HEAD TO THE CAPITAL OF FINLAND FOR

TOUCHING STORIES

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jiyon Son ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kevin Phinney SENIOR DESIGNER Jayson Mena SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Chris Rivera COPY EDITOR Kevin Phinney PROOFREADER Barbara Mele CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Matt Gross, Madison Gulbin,

Erin Jordan, Jeffrey James Keyes, Christopher Lisotta, Terence O’Brien, Kevin Phinney, Jonathan Roche, Eric Rosen, Wade Rouse, Jeff Simmons, Megan Venzin ADMINISTRATION Luswin Cote INTERN Madison Gulbin

Davler Media Group www.davlermedia.com CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER David Miller GENERAL MANAGER Thomas K. Hanlon DIRECTOR | OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT Ray Winn DIRECTOR | ORDER MANAGEMENT Heather Gambaro MANAGER | ADMINISTRATION Erin Jordan MANAGERS | OPERATIONS Leonard Porter, MANAGEMENT Christopher Regalado MANAGER | PUBLISHING & MARKETING Barbara Byrd CONTROLLER David Friedman DIRECTOR | CREDIT & COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT Elizabeth Teagarden MANAGERS | CREDIT & Rosa Meinhoffer, COLLECTIONS Diedra Smith

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

METROSOURCE

PUBLISHER Rob Davis ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Evelyn Vayner EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Paul Hagen

received my first massage. Reviewing a new spa, I was sent for a massage and facial. Though I had no other professional massage to compare it with, I had casually exchanged them with friends over the years and thought surely I could evaluate whether something felt good.

As it approached, I got nervous. I worried about when and how much to disrobe. I imagined my masseur might find some aspect of my revealed body unacceptable and storm out — citing an offending mole as a reason he could not complete the procedure. On the other end of the spectrum, I also worried that I might enjoy it a little too, uh, evidently.

When I arrived at the spa, I was a wreck — anxious perspiration only adding to my fear of being judged. But the interior had a clean scent and calm feel. When I was escorted back to the treatment room, my masseur had a zenlike ease about him, and although English was not his first language, he ably offered directions about preparing. It seemed that I had only just begun to relax under his deft hands when he announced it was time for my facial. He noticed my look of surprise.“Next time,” he advised,“you ask for longer massage.”

I have been the lucky recipient of a variety of massages since then. I vividly recall my most attractive masseur; Slavic and sinewy, he seemed like he had leapt off the cover of a romance novel, and he had skills — kneading deep and finding muscles I’d not even realized were there. However, my satisfaction was somewhat undercut by the fact that he subsequently slathered me in some truly awful-smelling substance, then wrapped me in something that felt like tinfoil, and left me to sit for some time like an abandoned baked potato.

My most exotic massage was at a Hammam in Vienna. It started out with a ritual washing during which burly men roughly scrubbed me down in a tiled room — a sort of full-body exfoliation. Next I was escorted to a space hung with colorful fabric, where women massaged exotic-smelling oil into my skin. I could see the logic behind it — the bracing manhandling followed by gentler womanhandling. But I was underwhelmed by the massage portion. I’d seen furniture polished with more vigor, and because of our language barrier, I wasn’t able to express my desire to be handled less like delicate crystal.

It would be the first of several times I ended up with female massage artists who did not do much more than skim the surface, even when I was able to politely request more pressure. I hated the idea of stereotyping, but over time I learned to simply request male massage artists — as they seemed to be the only ones willing to dig deep. So it was with some disappointment that, at a spa in Vermont when I had specifically requested an appointment with a man, I was assigned a woman. Rather than risk disturbing the calm quiet of the spa by making a fuss, I simply sighed and followed her into the treatment room with the expectation of being petted like a poodle. As in times past, I encouraged her to not treat me with any degree of delicacy, and we began chatting convivially about our shared background in amateur theater. I thought to myself,“Well at least I’ll get a nice conversation out of this.”

On the contrary, this woman ended up pummelling me like no other. She’d ask me to inhale and then press her entire body weight into my back as I exhaled — even getting on top of the table to drive down harder. The noises that came out of me were foreign and guttural, more bark than moan. At some point I became aware that I was drooling. It was, without a doubt, the best massage I have ever received.

Indulgence is often about getting exactly what we want. But that day, I was reminded that sometimes exactly what one wants is waiting in a package that doesn’t look like one expected. So, while I have had both fairly wimpy and impressively aggressive massages since from both men and women, I have learned to make my request for a firm massage clear from the start and hope that (whatever the gender) I end up in good, strong hands.

■

EDITOR’S LETTER

IT WAS ON AN ASSIGNMENT NEARLY 15 YEARS AGO THAT I

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WHAT IS GENVOYA®?

GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in people 12 years and older who weigh at least 77 pounds. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment and have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements. These include having an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL) for 6 months or more on their current HIV-1 treatment.

GENVOYA combines 4 medicines into 1 pill taken once a day with food. GENVOYA is a complete HIV-1 treatment and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking GENVOYA. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

What is the most important information I should know about GENVOYA?

GENVOYA may cause serious side effects: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV and stop taking GENVOYA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking GENVOYA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

Who should not take GENVOYA?

Do not take GENVOYA if you take: • Certain prescription medicines for other conditions.

It is important to ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with GENVOYA. Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider.

• The herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

What are the other possible side effects of GENVOYA?

Serious side effects of GENVOYA may also include: • Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking GENVOYA.

• Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking GENVOYA. • Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

The most common side effect of GENVOYA is nausea.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking GENVOYA?

• All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection.

• All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Other medicines may affect how GENVOYA works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

Ask your healthcare provider if it is safe to take GENVOYA with all of your other medicines.

• If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take GENVOYA. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if GENVOYA can harm your unborn baby.

Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking GENVOYA. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about GENVOYA, including important warnings, on the following page.

Ask your healthcare provider if GENVOYA is right for you.

GENVOYA.com

GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

SHOW YOUR

POWER

Take care of what matters most—you. GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day complete HIV-1 treatment for people who are either new to treatment or people whose healthcare provider determines they can replace their current HIV-1 medicines with GENVOYA.

IMPORTANT FACTS WHAT IS GENVOYA®?

GENVOYA is a 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine

( used ) in people 12 years and older who jen-VOY-uh to treat HIV-1

weigh at least 77 pounds. It can either be used in people who are starting HIV-1 treatment and have never taken MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT GENVOYA HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 and side whose healthcare provider GENVOYA maymedicines cause serious effects, including: determines they meet certain requirements.

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GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. ABOUT GENVOYA To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses, you must keep taking GENVOYA. Ask your • GENVOYA is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in healthcare provider if you have questions about how 12 years of age and older HIV-1 who weigh at leastAlways 77 pounds topeople reduce the risk of passing to others. and have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. GENVOYA can practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance also be used to replace current HIV-1 medicines for some ofpeople sexual contact with body fluids. reuse who have an undetectable viralNever load (less thanor 50share needles or other items that have body fluids on them. copies/mL of virus in their blood), and have been on the same HIV-1 medicines for at least 6 months and have never failed IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION HIV-1 treatment, and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements.

What is the most important information I should

•know GENVOYA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. Ask your healthcare about GENVOYA?

provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

GENVOYA may cause serious side effects: Do NOT take GENVOYA if you:B (HBV) infection. GENVOYA • Worsening of hepatitis ® • Take a medicine thattocontains: alfuzosin ), HIV-1 is not approved treat HBV. If you(Uroxatral have both ® ® ® carbamazepine , Epitol , Equetroyour , Tegretol , and HBV and (Carbatrol stop taking GENVOYA, HBV ®may ® ® Tegretol-XR , Teril ), cisapride (Propulsid , Propulsid suddenly ®get worse.

Do not stop taking GENVOYA Quicksolv ), dihydroergotamine (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal without ®first talking to your healthcare provider,®),as they ® ® ergotamine (Cafergot , Migergot , Ergostat®, Medihaler will need to monitor your health.

Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), lovastatin (Advicor®,

® ® Altoprev , Mevacor ), lurasidone (Latuda®), methylergonovine Who should not take GENVOYA?

(Ergotrate®, Methergine®), midazolam (when taken by mouth),

Do not take GENVOYA if you take: phenobarbital (Luminal®), phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®), •pimozide Certain(Orap prescription for other conditions. ® ® ® ), rifampinmedicines (Rifadin®, Rifamate , Rifater , It is important to askwhen yourused healthcare provider or ® Rimactane ), sildenafil for lung problems pharmacist about medicines that should be taken ® ® ® (Revatio ), simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin , Zocornot ), or with GENVOYA. triazolam (Halcion®).Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider.

• Take the herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• The herbal supplement St. John’s wort.

• Take any other HIV-1 medicines at the same time.

• Any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection.

What are the other possible side effects GET MORE INFORMATION of GENVOYA?

side effects of GENVOYA may also include: •Serious This is only a brief summary of important information about

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Yourorimmune Talk to your healthcare provider pharmacist may get stronger and begin to fight infections. tosystem learn more.

Telltoyour healthcare or provider if you have any new • Go GENVOYA.com call 1-800-GILEAD-5 symptoms after you start taking GENVOYA. •

If you need help paying for your medicine, visit GENVOYA. com for program information.

This is only a brief summary of important information about GENVOYA® and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider • Kidney problems, including kidneyabout failure.your Your condition and your treatment. healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to

check your kidneys. If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking GENVOYA. SIDE acid EFFECTS OF GENVOYA •POSSIBLE Too much lactic in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can GENVOYA can cause serious side effects, including: lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if •you Those the “Most Important Information Aboutmore tired getinthese symptoms: weakness or being GENVOYA” section.muscle pain, being short of breath or than usual, unusual breathing, stomach with nausea and vomiting, •fast Changes in your immunepain system. or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy orkidney lightheaded, •cold New or worse kidney problems, including failure. or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

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HOW TO TAKE GENVOYA

• GENVOYA is a complete one pill, once a day HIV-1 medicine.

Ask your healthcare provider if GENVOYA is right for you.

• Take GENVOYA with food.

GENVOYA.com

GENVOYA, the GENVOYA Logo, LOVE WHAT’S INSIDE, SHOW YOUR POWER, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: April 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. GENC0141 04/17

For most of us, indulgence can be as simple as taking a day off from work to spend with your partner, friends or family — or even some quality time with yourself. This summer I’ve been enjoying casually walking around the city taking pictures with my iPhone. And whether or not you’ll be snapping pictures, just taking some time to get out and enjoy nature can also be a simple indulgence.

Even when I’m doing something more traditionally luxurious — like traveling abroad — I find some of the best experiences come far from the trendy nightclubs or over-the-top hotels. I would almost always rather be able to interact with real people and cultures. Though I consider myself a foodie, I don’t necessarily seek out an area’s best-reviewed restaurant, since I can find fine dining at home. When I’m traveling, give me a hole in the wall with local spirit that’s serving up the energy of wherever we are in the world.

So ultimately — while we hope you enjoy this issue in which we certainly attempt to dazzle you with some truly extravagant ways to indulge — I hope you will also continue to seek out and appreciate life’s simpler indulgences. There may be many kinds of exciting things to do in the world, but I think the old saying still holds true: “The best things in life are free."

■

METROSOURCE

PART OF THE FUN of our annual “Indulgence Issue” is the kind of extreme indulgence you’ll find in our “Power Splurge” feature. However, the major extravagances we’ve featured in that piece — $10,000 cocktails, $25,000 gym memberships, $135,000 trips around the world, or $250,000 tickets to space — are in reality for a very select few. While we can all enjoy reading about such things, they’re certainly not anything that will end up on most of our personal to-do lists.

Our culture seems endlessly fascinated with watching other people live the high life. Sometimes they’re real people like the Kardashians or the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Sometimes they’re fictional characters — like the tycoons on Dynasty (which is being rebooted this fall) or the Hollywood wheelers and dealers of Episodes (whose creators we talk to in this issue). But I think it’s important to also acknowledge that many of life’s most enjoyable moments don’t come with a huge price tag.

PUBLISHER’S LETTER

SIMPLER INDULGENCES

METROPOLL JACK COURTESY ABC - BOB D’AMICO ; J ILANA COURTESY COMEDY CENTRAL ;; CASEY COURTESY ART STREIBER - THE CW USSIE COURTESY MICHAEL LAVINE - FOX

WHICH RETURNING LGBT CHARACTER HAVE YOU MOST MISSED DURING THE SUMMER HIATUS? Share your most-missed character by tweeting #MetroWelcomeBack to us @MetrosourceMag and visit Metrosource.com for more great coverage of your favorite TV shows as the season continues.

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CONNOR (Jack Falahee) of How to Get Away with Murder

ILANA (Ilana Glazer) of Broad City

KEVIN (Casey Cott) of Riverdale

JAMAL (Jussie Smollett) of Empire

METROSOURCE.COM

ARIZONA (Jessica Capshaw) of Grey’s Anatomy

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

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NEW YOU

MATCH APP STUDIES SHOW WORKING OUT WITH A PARTNER CAN LEAD

THIS PAGE: IMAGE COURTESY FITMATCH ° OPPOSITE PAGE: WILL & GRACE PHOTO COURTESY NBC • FLATLINERS PHOTO COURTESY MICHAEL GIBSON

to a 200% longer workout. Don’t have one? FitMatch is an app that connects users to all things fitness — sort of like Tinder for gym buddies — so you can seek out a boxing partner, a running buddy, or a cycling pal. While you’re there, find nearby gyms and see real-time class schedules with user reviews. The app allows you to customize your profile with experience level, preferred times, favorite exercises and more. FitMatch is the creation of two time Golden Glove Boxing Champion Ngo Okafor (pictured). His passion for fitness has lead to success both as a trainer (he’s been named“New York’s hottest”) and an app entrepreneur.

Download FitMatch in the App Store now, and learn more by following @FIT_MATCH on Twitter.

CULTURE

METROSCOPE

1}

SCOPE METRO

CURATED BY MADISON GULBIN, PAUL HAGEN, ERIN JORDAN AND JEFFREY JAMES KEYES

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NOW & THEN

WILL TO POWER WHILE TRYING ONLY TO BE FUNNY, WILL & GRACE

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moved the needle for the way America looked at gay life and culture. Now, a decade after signing off, the sitcom returns to NBC with 16 new episodes beginning September 28. Though there has been some debate about plans to ignore key plot elements from the series finalé, the response to their return was so positive that — even before it aired — the series was renewed for another revival season. Stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally will reprise their roles and TV legend James Burrows (who helmed every episode of the original series) will return to direct. The revival was precipitated when the gang reunited during the 2016 presidential election to create the wildly popular “Vote Honey” election spot, a mini-episode that featured the cast discussing the 2016 election — positioning Karen as a Trump fanatic. nbc.com

SCREEN IT

HEART STOPPING ELLEN PAGE — WHO ROSE TO FAME IN THE 2007 HIT INDIE FILM JUNO, THEN WENT ON TO HOST THE LGBT-THEMED TV

series Gaycation — is back on the big screen this fall in the highly anticipated Flatliners. In the film, five medical students, obsessed with what lies beyond of life, embark on a series of daring experiments: stopping their hearts to trigger near-death glimpses of the afterlife. It’s a sequel to the 1990 cult classic of the same name, which first starred Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt and Hope Davis. In the original, the students’ experiments lead to dark consequences, which began to jeopardize their lives. The sequel — directed by Niels Arden Oplev (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) — features an exciting cast, including Page, Diego Luna, James Norton, Nina Dobrev, Kiersey Clemons and Sutherland (reprising his role from the first film). The experiments begin again in theaters September 29. sonypictures.com/movies/flatliners METROSOURCE.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

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DRINK UP

ARE YOU WINE TASTING PROPERLY? WE ASKED EXPERTS FOR TIPS. RICHARD OLSEN-HARBICH

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ART BEAT

FASHION FORWARD

of Bedell Cellars (bedellcellars.com) gave us a first step: “I like to ‘condition’ my glasses before tasting: swirl a little wine around in the glass and dump it out. Clean glasses that have been sitting on a shelf may not be totally odor free.”Katie Owen of Winc (winc.com) offered nose notes, “Don’t be afraid to really stick your nose in the glass. It’s the right way to do it, and the best way to really take in the bouquet.” And Eva Bertran of Gloria Ferrer Caves and Vineyards (gloriaferrer.com) gave us a cut off.“ If tasting big Cabernet Sauvignons, after three or four, your palate may be done. But if you are tasting sparkling wines or delicate whites, you may be able to taste as many as five to ten.”For many more tips from these experts, visit metrosource.com.

FASHION MAY BE SUBJECTIVE, BUT WE’RE PRETTY SURE MOMA’S TANTALIZING NEW EXHIBIT ITEMS: IS FASHION MODERN? (WHICH OPENS OCTOBER 1)

will be turning heads. It consists of 111 pieces that dissect the evolution of fashion: when certain styles rose while others plummeted and still others seemed to return from the dead. What is most interesting about this exhibit is its examination of fashion’s interplay with forces such as politics, the economy and social change. Among the hundred-plus items: such tokens as “Bikini”, “Chanel No. 5” and “Little Black Dress” — with several broken down into subcategories, which bring the actual tally of items on display up to 350. Thus the exhibition will take up the museum’s entire sixth floor — along the way addressing central themes such as silhouette, weight and gender. It even looks to the future — asking engineers, designers and others to offer perspectives on what comes next. moma.org

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STAGE ADVICE

BUTTERFLY EFFECT LOVE, ESPIONAGE AND BETRAYAL TAKE CENTER STAGE THIS OCTOBER AS BROADWAY

welcomes the revival of M. Butterfly. The play was inspired by the story of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Chinese opera star Shi Pei Pu, who posed as a woman to seduce Bouriscot into spying for the Chinese. The pair’s 20-year relationship inspired playwright David Henry Hwang, and they play’s 1988 debut garnered Tony Awards for actor B.D. Wong and director John Dexter, and made Hwang the first Asian American to win Best Play. The revival will be directed by Julie Taymor, and will feature Clive Owen (picutred) as the diplomat. Hwang has also promised tantalizing new material based on information that has come to light since the play’s initial staging. mbutterflybroadway.com

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THIS PAGE: PENCIL SKIRT INTERPRETED FOR ITEMS: IS FASHION MODERN? BY BOBBY DOHERTY. ©2017 BOBBY DOHERTY. IMAGE COURTESY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK. • CLIVE OWEN, CREDIT GERHARD KASSNER

CULTURE

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TASTE TEST

THIS PAGE: AMY SEDARIS PHOTO COURTESY KC BAILEY-TRUTV • IMAGE COURTESY SAVANNAH FOOF AND WINE FESTIVAL • DYNASTY IMAGE COURTESY OF THE CW NETWORK

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NEXT UP

WELCOME HOME IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR DIY ON! ACTRESS, COMEDIAN AND

former Metrosource cover girl Amy Sedaris returns to television October 24 on At Home with Amy Sedaris.

Along with a cast of guest characters played by the likes of Stephen Colbert, Jane Krakowski and Paul Giamatti, Sedaris brings a potpourri of home economics in 10-episodes of crafting-cum-comedy on truTV. Each installment follows a theme (gift giving, wood, lovemaking, fish) and teaches indispensable life skills that run the gamut from making raisin necklaces to entertaining businessmen. Sedaris’ combination of laughter and lessons is sure to entertain, and will remind viewers of most important lesson of all: “To be the perfect host, accentuate the positives and medicate the negatives.” trutv.com

IN THE FOOD

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PACK UP

GEORGIA MAYBE THE PEACH STATE, BUT YOU CAN EXPECT FAR MORE THAN FRUIT

at the Savannah Food and Wine Festival. The beautiful historic Georgia State Railroad Museum becomes the center of a plethora of food and wine activities showcasing local restaurants and vendors. The price and size of events vary; examples include “Whiskey at the Whitman,” which offers freshly prepared food paired with the perfect whiskey selections, and “Secret Savannah Speakeasy” which sees guests break out their best flapper attire for a throwback to the parties of Prohibition. Since a visit to Savannah wouldn’t be complete without a cruise down the river, the festival offers one featuring a three-course meal with wine pairings. And the River Street Stroll offers a variety of libations while viewing the historic city. Finally, the week ends with a bang via the Jazz and Bubbles Brunch. savannahfoodandwinefest.com

BLAKE TO THE FUTURE WE’VE RETURNED TO MELROSE PLACE AND REVISITED BEVERLY HILLS, 90120 BUT

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TV SET

the latest big TV reboot hearkens back even further in primetime history.

Dynasty originally ran from 1981 through 1989 and featured stars such as Linda Evans and Joan Collins enacting the trials and tribulations of two feuding families (the Carringtons and the Colbys) — both filthy rich with oil money in Denver, Colorado — and featuring Steven Carrington (portrayed by Al Corley) making history as one of the earliest gay main characters on American television. The 2017 reboot will also follow two fabulously wealthy American families feuding over fortune and family.

However, whereas in the original, family patriarch Blake Carrington was homophobic and highly resistant to his son’s sexuality, in the reboot Blake (Grant Show) is supportive of his son’s orientation and eager to welcome another gay man into the family. The new Dynasty will kick off at 9:00PM on October 11 on The CW. cwtv.com METROSOURCE.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

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CIRCUIT SHAKERS

HIT THE DANCE FLOOR IN ANAHEIM, MON-

treal, New Orleans and Miami: GAY DAYS ANAHEIM OCTOBER 6–8 DRAG RACE SUPERSTAR ALYSSA EDWARDS

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LISTEN UP

RADIO DAYS

across the spectrum for an all-star show that will be recorded September 22–23 in Las Vegas, then broadcast on the CW on October 4th and 5th. The first day’s acts include: The Weeknd, Pink, Thirty Seconds to Mars (actor Jared Leto’s band), David Guetta, Coldplay, Chris Stapleton and Harry Styles (pictured). The second day’s lineup includes: Miley Cyrus, Big Sean, Lorde, Niall Horan, Kesha, Thomas Rhett, Kings of Leon and DJ Khaled. Everyone is sure to be talking about Kesha, whose recent album — a triumphant return to the music industry after a tough legal battle with her former producer — has produced such hits as “Praying.” Styles is also sure to cause a stir, having catapulted to superstardom with his debut solo album after splitting from One Direction. iheart.com

CULTURE

METROSCOPE

THE IHEARTRADIO MUSIC FESTIVAL IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST IN THE BUSINESS, AND UNITES TALENTS

and DJ Ray Rhodes kick off our weekend at Disney in the Rumba Room.

Then on Saturday, Miss Coco Peru takes the stage at 7pm inside Disney’s Grand Californian, while Chad Michaels, Morgan McMichaels and Delta Work living it up in the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney. gaydaysanaheim.com BLACK & BLUE FESTIVAL OCTOBER 5–9 AS IT CELEBRATES 27 YEARS OF BLACK &

Blue events, the legendary Black & Blue party descends on a new venue with a hot lineup of international DJs for the world’s largest gay benefit dance festival, which brings tens of thousands of tourists to Montreal each fall. bbcm.org HALLOWEEN NEW ORLEANS OCTOBER 20–22

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INK SPOTTED

CHIP OFF THE OLD BOOK CHIP KIDD IS A GAY ARTIST KNOWN FOR HIS COMIC AND RETRO INSPIRED ART. CHIP KIDD BOOK

Two (Rizzoli, $60) is the second volume of a continuing look back at his successful career; it picks up right where book one left off — in 2007 — and follows ten more years of his eye-catching book covers, movie posters, even his own graphic novel. Offering a glimpse into the method behind his magic, the book takes readers on a creative journey that includes sketches and behind-the-scenes-photos, allowing readers to see how Kidd crafts eye-catching work like the cover of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. Dubbed “the Meryl Streep of book design” by the Huffington Post, Kidd has also created art for the works of John Updike, Augusten Burroughs, Mary Roach, Elie Wiesel, Cormac McCarthy, David Sedaris, and Oliver Sacks. chipkidd.com

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party than Halloween New Orleans.

The event provides funding for Project Lazarus, a home in New Orleans for men and women with AIDS; last year’s “Pirate’s Revenge” event raised nearly $4.5M. This year’s weekend starts with a Patron Brunch at Cafe Amelie on Friday.

Saturdy’s“Main Event”party kicks off at 10pm at the House of Blues. And Sunday’s Tea Dance on the Pier will take place at Crescent Park this year with Australia’s DJ Kitty Litter ruling the dance floor. halloweenneworleans.com WHITE PARTY MIAMI NOVEMBER 23–27 YOU’D BEST COME TO WHITE PARTY —

one of the biggest events of the circuit calendar — dressed to impress (at least until it’s time to undress). This year’s events include White Journey, White Dreams, White Splash, White Starz, Muscle Beach Party and Noche Blanca. whiteparty.org

THISPAGE: HARRY STYLES PHOTO COURTESTY WILL HEATH -/NBC. • CHIP KIDD JACKET IMAGE COURTESY RIZZOLI

THERE MAY BE NO BETTER OCTOBER

BODY

METROHIV

FROM ACTIVISM TO ACTING

Long before cofounding the hilarious dragapella group The Kinsey Sicks, Ben Schatz was crusading for the rights of people with HIV and AIDS. BY JEFF SIMMONS

THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY THE KINSEY SICKS

FRESH OUT OF HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, BEN SCHATZ (PICTURED

above, second from left, as “Rachel”) first built a name for himself three decades ago as a lawyer with the public interest firm National Gay Rights Advocates (NGRA) — starting the AIDS Civil Rights Project to challenge HIV-related discrimination.

“I was a frying pan thrown into an a horrible, awful, critically important fire,” Schatz told Metrosource recently. “The job wasn’t horrible. Having to do it was horrible.” Even today, reflecting on that period, he admits to blocking out certain memories about those battles related to discrimination against those with HIV and AIDS. “It feels very analogous to me to Holocaust survivors who didn’t talk with their children about what happened. There is a generation of gay men who have that trauma. The reason we

survived is because we fought and we fought and we fought,” he said.

That fortitude, which was once was reserved for the legal battles, is now being showcased on the stage. With his legal career behind him, Schatz is well-known as a founding member of The Kinsey Sicks, which bills itself as “America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet.” For nearly 25 years, the troupe has entertained audiences across the globe, released filmed concerts and studio albums, and produced two feature films featuring Schatz as his alter ego, Rachel.

While in college, Schatz recalled, “I assigned everybody drag names. ... I was nicknamed Rachel — the radical, immigrant woman — because I started the first gay and lesbian awareness day at Harvard.” Rachel took (continued on page 17) METROSOURCE.COM

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METROHIV (continued from page 13) on a life of her own when The Kinsey Sicks were founded and at this point, he said,“is a presence in my life.”

But Schatz’s life has been filled with a combination of both activism and acting — some of it intertwined. After his stint with the NGRA, he created the Medical Expertise Retention Program at the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, and then became its executive director in 1992.

The medical organization, which first changed its name to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) and then Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality, endeavors to ensure equity in healthcare for LGBT individuals and professionals. During Schatz’s tenure, he was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS while building up membership and organizing the first national conference on HIV prevention in the LGBT communities. “That was back in the days when the way to get money was to talk about straight people getting infected,” Schatz said.“What I am most proud of with GLMA was bringing to the mainstream the notion that homophobia kills people and is hazardous to your health.”

During his seven years spent leading the organization, Schatz also was devoting time to The Kinsey Sicks before eventually leaving his pro-

fession to perform full-time — a passion he shared with other members of the group. “One of the reasons I left was my job was to go on television and play the role of the respectable likeable homosexual, but I’m not a respectable homosexual,” Schatz said laughing.“I wanted to have gumption and not be punished for it. I’m much more comfortable pushing the envelope for as long as I’m alive.”

Schatz continued to push the envelope onstage this year with a new “edgy, political, scandalous”show called Things You Shouldn’t Say, written in response to last November’s presidential election (and is slated to play this November in Puerto Vallarta).

“We originally intended to do a show talking about 23 years of The Kinsey Sicks and what makes us tick. But then Donald Trump won, and we totally had to revise the show,” Schatz said.“We formed very much as a response to the AIDS crisis and the pain and the anger that came as a result of that, and using humor as both a tool and a way to vent; so we talk about that in the show in a very direct and powerful way.” But you still never know what will happen at a Kinsey Sicks performance. Asked what audiences can expect, Schatz responded simply: “No refunds.” ■ Learn more about the Ben Schatz and the Kinsey Sicks at kinseysicks.com.

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To understand what make’s Apple’s entry into the smart speaker market so smart, it’s important to understand what makes other speakers so dumb. BY TERENCE O’BRIEN APPLE’S NEW HOMEPOD SPEAKER LISTENS SO YOU CAN HEAR BETTER.

It may seem like another entry into an already crowded wireless speaker market, but it has the potential to be another category redefining revolution like the iPod or iPhone. Though Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, may lag behind Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Ok Google in terms of features, to compare HomePod to other smart assistant devices is to miss the point. What makes it worth the splurge isn’t the smart, it’s the speaker. Packed under its mesh grill is cutting-edge technology that allows the HomePod to fully immerse you in music. To appreciate how smart this speaker is, it’s important to discuss why other speakers are so, well, dumb.

Getting great sound can be more difficult than it seems. Once sound leaves a speaker, a lot of things can happen between there and your ears. Carpeting and furniture absorb it; bare walls reflect and amplify it. Ambient noise from a fan or friends can also interfere. Part of the problem is that most speakers are one-directional with sound emanating from the front like a beam. Thus they must be placed against a wall or in a corner, and then you need to be in a“sweet spot”where the sound from speakers converge to provide the best experience. Adding more speakers can make that sweet spot bigger but also adds to the complexity of the setup.

High-end audio systems have attempted to address this issue.

Companies like Marantz and Denon include a special microphone with their high-end gear that you place around your room during setup. It sends out test tones through each speaker, measures the sound and adjust levels to get the best result in the biggest area.

But his can be a time consuming and complex process, and it has to be done each time the environment changes.

What makes Apple’s HomePod superior? First off, it is an OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

METROSOURCE.COM

omni-directional speaker. It has seven tweeters that emit sound in 360 degrees. Since it’s cylindrical, it doesn’t have a front. Place it anywhere and move it around: the speaker is always “facing” you.

What sets HomePod apart from other omnidirectional speakers is that the HomePod has spatial awareness. Its has six microphones that, in addition to listening for voice commands for Siri, monitor the sound coming out of it. Like a bat using sonar, the HomePod uses its microphones and speakers to create a virtual map of the room — so the HomePod can tell whether it’s in a corner or in the center of the room and adjust accordingly. It can sense how the sound is being absorbed or reflected and compensate. If you have more than one HomePod, they’ll even pair themselves and work together. It also analyzes what’s being played and automatically adjusts to give you the best sound for hip-hop or jazz or your favorite podcasts. To accomplish all this requires some serious power under the grill: the HomePod relies on the same chip as the iPhone 6 to accomplish all its tricks.

HomePod is not for everybody. At $349, it’s not for bargain hunters. Nor is it for true audiophiles who find tweaking their setup a hobby rather than a hassle and spend thousands of dollars per speaker. It’s also, potentially, not for Android users as HomePod uses Airplay 2 to communicate with iPhones and iPads.

Airplay is based on Wifi, not bluetooth, and Apple has been tight lipped on whether it will support Android or bluetooth tech. But if you want to sit back, cue up your favorite iTunes playlist and enjoy some music, it beats out the hundreds of other wireless speakers on the market in terms of convenience and quality. Oh, and it will happily answer your questions about weather and traffic, to boot.

Available in December, you can check it out now at apple.com ■

THIS PAGE AND FOLLOWING PAGE: ALL IMAGES PROVIDED BY THE RESPECTIVE COMPANIES

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OH MY POD

HIDDEN FIGURES

GOD’S OWN COUNTRY IT WOULD BE BOTH ACCURATE AND YET ALSO A DISSERVICE TO refer to this film (as I have sometimes heard it called)

as “Brokeback Mountain set in North England.” While this tale of a lonely young farmer falling in lust (and ultimately love) with a Romanian farmhand bares many powerful similarities to Ang Lee’s masterwork, God’s Own Country is also quite different and a cinematic accomplishment on its own terms. Most notably, this is a more hopeful film, with timely and positive messages about immigration, the humane treatment of animals, and creating opportunities for individuals from different backgrounds — and in so doing, help the whole world to heal.

Relative newcomer Josh O’Connor plays Johnny Saxby, a spirited man slowly being crushed by both the weight of his small family farm (which has become totally reliant on him after his father’s crippling stroke) and the rural circles in which he moves. He gets by through binge drinking

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and finding the occasional anonymous sexual encounter when he goes to town to sell a cow — until his parents (father Ian Hart of Finding Neverland,and mother Gemma Jones of Bridget Jones’s Diary) hire temporary labor: a handsome displaced Romanian named Gheorghe.

Actor Francis Lee directs his first feature film with a rigorously naturalistic style which allows the stark yet beautiful setting (an often breathtaking, albeit gray, North England) to speak for itself, while the emotional and sexual tension becomes strikingly real and palpable. It’s often quite visceral: rough sex in the mud, complete with spit for lubrication. What initially seems like a bleak and brutal world one could only hope to escape becomes by the end of the film a place of creation, life and possibility befitting the title. THE WORD: This is sure to be hailed as one of the very best gay films of the year.

COMING TO: Theaters

THIS PAGE: GOD’S OWN COUNTRY PHOTO COURTESY OF SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS

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SCREEN

Todd Haynes finds the music in the stories of two deaf children, Steve Carrell and Emma Stone go head-to-head revealing the characters behind a legendary sporting event, and a gay farmer discovers love in a British Brokeback. BY JONATHAN ROCHE

NOBODY’S WATCHING

THIS PAGE: NOBODY’S WATCHING PHOTO COURTESY OF FIGA FILMS • BATTLE OF THE SEXES PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PRODUCTIONS

A WELL-KNOWN QUOTE TELLS US TO “DANCE LIKE NO ONE

is watching,” but nobody watching is a real problem for Nico — an out-of-work actor who wishes anybody was watching. He also had to leave his married lover (and misses him watching). He’s started shoplifting in stores covered with security cameras, and even there no one seems to be paying attention. A soap opera star in his home of Argentina, Nico left for New York only to end up working as a waiter and a nanny. Despite his charm and talent, the handsome and homosexual Nico finds himself a fish out of water — marginalized by his accent, his outsider status, and even his blond hair. Julia Solomonoff directs a quiet, well edited portrait of a man at a crossroads in life, to whom anyone who has ever found himself or herself incomplete and searching can relate. THE WORD: Guillermo Pfening (Nico) took home the best actor prize at the 2017 Tribeca film festival for his performance in this unpretentious and unusual film about discovering where you belong. COMING TO: Theaters

BATTLE OF THE SEXES THE DIRECTOR OF LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE TACKLES ONE OF THE MOST

watched televised sports events of all time: 1973’s famed Battle of the Sexes, in which world Billie Jean King competed against serial hustler Bobby Riggs at grass court tennis. The match (really just a profitable publicity stunt brewed up by Riggs, who was 20 years King’s senior) captured people’s collective curiosity and sparked a global conversation about gender equality. But while Riggs (Steve Carell) angled for profit and publicity, King (Emma Stone) was in the midst of a very real struggle for equal pay within professional tennis. She had split from the main tennis organization and started her own all-female tour, which

here features Sarah Silverman as a manager, Alan Cumming as a sassy sportswear designer and a hairdresseer (Andrea Riseborough, Birdman) whose private relationship with King is something that King must come to terms with even as she attempts to hide it from her husband. Above all, King knows she must beat Riggs and turn his circus into an enduring victory for women everywhere. Carell makes a convincing Bobby Riggs and is an utterly charming antagonist, while Stone also disappears into her role as the sincere, and dedicated champion. THE WORD: This well composed film is important, terrifically fun, and sure to please. COMING TO: Theaters

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GOOD TIME epically gritty film about junkies on the streets of New York (Heaven Knows What) with a return to the dark city streets in Good Time, the frantic odyssey of a street-smart lowlife, Constantine (Robert Pattinson), trying to get his mentally challenged brother (Ben Safdie) out of jail after a botched bank robbery. From the moment it goes bad, Constantine proves himself a remarkably dedicated sibling, juggling an ever-changing set of situations as he walks a tightrope between securing his brother’s freedom and losing his own.

As directors, the Safdies seem to have mastered the art of creating and maintaining tension with an efficient yet realistically chaotic story and taut, needling score. Pattison’s

role is likely to be career redefining, and it is pleasing to see an actor of his growing talents continue to chose interesting roles in smaller films by independent directors rather than recline on the already-made bed of his heartthrob status.

Though British, Pattinson sounds utterly believable as a fast-talking New Yorker who never got a break in life and who refuses to give up his one shot. The film also features Jennifer Jason Leigh in a plum role as a spoiled rich girl and Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) as an unfortunate security guard, both of whom get caught up in Constantine’s mad dash toward freedom. THE WORD: A beautifully-orchestrated bit of chaos that will not fail to grab you by the throat.

COMING TO: Home Video

WONDERSTRUCK DIRECTOR TODD HAYNES (CAROL), A FATHER OF AMERICAN GAY CINE-

ma, works his particular brand of cinematic magic again in Wonderstruck. It’s the story of a boy in the 1970s who — after losing his mother in one tragic accident and his hearing in another — embarks on a quest to New York to find a father that no one would ever tell him about. This boy’s trek is paralleled by (and interwoven with) the journey of a young girl in the 1920s who is deaf and also searching for her place within a seemingly indifferent world. Appropriate to her era, the girl’s scenes are in black and white and devoid of sound (save for an evocative score by Carter Burwell). As the stories of both children unwind and intertwine, a theme emerges — about exploring one’s history and how the things we collect that make up who we are is like exploring a personal museum. It’s worth noting how, as Haynes explores the museums inside his characters, he also works in the wonders of some of New York’s most recognizable museums to great effect.

The cast is excellent: youngsters Millicent Simmonds and Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon) are joined by veterans like frequent Haynes collaborator Julianne Moore. THE WORD: A great example of a true mystery; the kind where as you peel back the layers you find — instead of answers — wonder. COMING TO: Theaters

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THIS PAGE: GOOD TIME PHOTO COURTESY OF A24 • WONDERSTRUCK PHOTO COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS

CULTURE

SCREEN

FILMMAKING BROTHERS JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE FOLLOW THEIR

CHAVELA

THIS PAGE: CHAVELA PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSIC BOX FILMS • LOVING VINCENT PHOTO COURTESY OF GOOD DEED ENTERTAINMENT

YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD OF CHAVELA VARGAS, BUT IF YOU SEE

this film you’re unlikely to ever forget her. Born in 1919, Chavela left Costa Rica as a teenager bound for Mexico City, where (by the 1950s) she was a darling of its thriving bohemian club scene.

Chavela sang the very popular ranchera style of music, but she did it differently, laying bare the exquisite desperation at its core.

In a bit of a queer twist, she also did it in men’s clothing, and refused to change its romantic pronouns to refer to men instead of women. Chavela’s talent, passion for living and undeniable individuality are what make her unforgettable, but her incredible life story adds icing to the cake. In the film, we hear stories about her drinking hard and loving deeply, told with reverence by those who treasure the experiences with this singular woman — who was once the lover of Frida Kahlo, who seduced scores of other women (including the wives of prominent politicians and Eva Gardner at Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding) Sadly, she fell out of the public eye for many years due to severe alcoholism but then resurfaced in the early 1990s to reach the height of her fame at 71 and then continued to sing until her death in 2012 at age 93. Pedro Almodovar became the great champion of her comeback — using her music in several films kissing the stage on which she was about to perform when introducing her. THE WORD: Some people must be seen and heard to be believed. COMING TO: Theaters

LOVING VINCENT THIS VISUALLY UNIQUE FILM EMPLOYS THE DREAMLIKE “RO-

toscope” technique in which animation is traced over live motion picture footage, as seen in some of Richard Linklater’s films (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly). However, in this instance, all the animation — appropriate to a film about Van Gogh — is all hand-painted in oils. A team of more than a hundred artists worked on the picture, and although its styles occasionally shift, the film never loses the consistent overall look of Van Gogh’s work.

The plot revolves around details of Van Gogh’s life and death by following one man’s quest to deliver a lost letter to Vincent’s beloved brother Theo. The deliverer (Douglas Booth, Noah) is the son of Vincent’s postman (Chris O’Dowd, Bridesmaids), and though he would rather be drinking and fighting in bars, he dutifully accepts his father’s request to deliver this one last letter from the prolific painter. Both men, like all the characters in the film, including Vincent’s doctor (Jerome Flynn, Game of Thrones), the doctor’s daughter (Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn), and a humble boatman (Aidan Turner, The Hobbit), recall real people from the real Van Gogh’s life whom the artist painted in his final highly productive years as one of history’s most troubled yet important artists. The technical

and artistic accomplishment of this motion picture — with its astounding 65,000 oil-painted frames — serves to illustrate a strong, personal and fateful story that embraces both the facts and the mysteries of a man who would eventually be proclaimed the father of modern art. THE WORD: A remarkably tender, humanizing look at a towering legendary figure. COMING TO: Theaters

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“Sleep is the best meditation.” -Dalai Lama

BY JEFFREY JAMES KEYES

BODY

HEALTH

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS CAN LEAD TO MORE THAN FRUSTRATION — LEAVING

you feeling dull, depressed and forgetful — not to mention at risk for health problems including high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes. Plus it ages your skin — increasing the likelihood of fine lines and the dreaded under eye bags. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend adults 18 to 60 years old sleep at least seven hours each night in order to promote a healthier lifestyle and optimal well being.

We consulted Dr. Carmela Alcántara, Associate Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work. Alcántara is a clinical psychologist with expertise in sleep disparities and public health.

She is Director of the Sleep, Mind, and Health Research Program at Columbia University and is passionate about educating the public on the importance of sleep for health. As an expert in her field, she offered six simple tips to promote healthy sleep: 1 Create an environment that encourages sleep by making sure the

place you sleep is dark, quiet, comfortable and cool.

2 Wake up at the same time each day, regardless of your sleep

quality the night before.

3 If you’re unable to sleep, get up and out of bed. Try going into

another room until you feel tired again before returning to sleep.

Repeat this process if necessary.

4 Use the bed for sleeping only. It shouldn’t be used for watch-

ing television, reading, eating, or other activities. (However, intimate activity is acceptable.)

5 Try not to worry while in bed. If you find yourself planning, feel-

exercises, while the other half completed a simple sleep education class in which they went over strategies to improve their sleep habits. Those who went through meditation exercises experienced less insomnia, fatigue and depression. Apps such as Headspace, Smiling Minds, Calm, Insight Timer, and Sattva can help you get into the habit. Even Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Deepak Chopra for the “Oprah & Deepak’s 21-Day Meditation Experience” mobile app. You can also seek it out in a group setting, like NYC’s colorful INSCAPE studio (pictured) where they offer a balance of modern wellness and mindful luxury in classes like Deep Sound, Deep Breath and Deep Rest. Learn more at inscape.life.

You can also try adjusting your evening routine. Alternatives include Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time Tea or a warm bath with Kiehl’s calming Lavender Foaming-Relaxing Bath with Sea Salts and Aloe. This, paired with their Midnight Recovery Eye Treatment and Midnight Recovery Concentrate can help alleviate those dark circles you’ve been building up.

Luxury purveyor Philip Stein has also stepped into the sleep market with The Sleep Bracelet — designed to help you fall asleep faster and wake up feeling more refreshed. It uses natural frequency technology to increase the body’s production of melatonin, which synchronizes the sleep/wake cycle. Don the Sleep bracelet 15–30 minutes before bedtime, and they are available in a variety of colors for $395–$425 at philipstein.com. ■

ing anxious or having racing thoughts, get up and out of bed until you can get your brain to calm down.

6 Establish a buffer zone. Set aside some quiet time before bed to

spend doing enjoyable activities that will help you to feel calm and relaxed rather than trying to go right from work to rest.

Meditation may also help to combat sleepless nights. A recent clinical trial reported in JAMA’s Internal Medicine studied 49 adults who had difficulties sleeping. Half of the group went through a mindfulness awareness program in which they learned meditation

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Philip Stein Sleep Bracelet Straps and Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate

BRACELETS BY PHILIP STEIN, MIDNIGHT RECOVERY CONCENTRATE BY KIEHL’S. MEDITATION ROOM BY CHRISTIAN HARDER/INSCAPE

SLEEPING BEAUTIFULLY

WE GIVE YOU A BETTER NIGHT

You put more carpe in the diem

©J&JCI 2017

Use only as directed.

TYLENOL® PM relieves pain while helping you fall fast asleep and stay asleep.

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

CULTURE

BOOKS

Escape to a lavish and lovingly preserved French château, explore the sparkles in Christie’s vault and join us for a cup of joe. BY MADISON GULBIN

FRENCH CHATEAU LIVING

By Barbara de Nicolaÿ; Flammarion; $75 it survived the French Revolution. It was captured by allies of Joan of Arc and has been overseen since by the same family for more than 250 years — with Barbara de Nicolaÿ and her husband happily taking on the task of preserving the detail of the château as their ancestors did before them. French Château Living: The Château du Lude gives readers a glimpse into this spectacular home that’s almost like traveling back in time to the 18th century. Stone walls, crawling ivy, tall windows — it’s enough to seduce any history buff or lover of timeless architecture. As an added bonus, if you’re charmed, you can plan a visit to the château, which might make a lovely destination for a wedding or vacation, though it’s worth noting that the book takes readers into many rooms not generally made available to the public: check out the kitchen; stop in at the stables; dig the decor in the private bedrooms. The book also details the lifestyles of the château’s residents — from the distant past up into the present.

The sumptuous photography is by the enormously talented Eric Sander, whose work has been featured in Time, Newsweek and Life.

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THIS PAGE: PHOTOS BY ERIC SANDER

PART OF WHAT MAKES THE CHÂTEAU DU LUDE SO RARE IS THE FACT THAT

CHRISTIE’S: THE JEWELLERY ARCHIVES REVEALED

By Vincent Meylan; ACC Publishing; $95 CHRISTIE’S IS A JEWELRY LOVER’S DREAM — a repository where

some of the world’s most valuable pieces have been protected and presented for auction. The includes pieces from those that graced the neck of Elizabeth Taylor to the head of Marie Antoinette.

Christie’s story dates back to 1773 when the then-Princess of Wales passed and some of her most precious posessions needed to be sold. Since then, the house has dominated jewelry sales on behalf of the British Monarchy. It also branched out to serve the royalty of other countries — including the crowned heads of Serbia, India, Egypt, Spain, Russia, Bavaria and France. They’ve also proffered the posessions of Hollywood royalty dating back to Merle Oberon and Gloria Swanson. In Christie’s: The Jewellery Archives Revealed, precious stone expert Vincent Meylan opens Christie’s doors as never before — his time curating their archives providing a unique personal perspective.

Each drop-dead gorgeous piece is accompanied by background on its original owner and other available documentation. The book is divided into seductively grand categories, such as Murdered Queens, Empresses in Exile, and Guillotine Diamonds. François Curiel, the Chairman of Christie’s, offers an enlightening foreward.

PHOTOS THIS PAGE COURTESY THEIR RESPECTIVE PUBLISHER

COFFEE STYLE

By Horst A. Friedrichs; Prestel; $35 COFFEE: IT IS THE FUEL THAT DRIVES SO MANY OF

us, the focus of shops and blogs, emblazoned on clothing and accessories. Heck, we even named our e-newsletter after it (sign up for MetroEspresso free at metrosource.com/subscribe). And now — in what may be the ultimate in irony — it is the focus of a coffee table book. To become coffee as most of us recognize it, the humble bean takes quite the beating. Photographer Horst A. Friedrichs was fascinated by that journey — from mud to mug — and here his photos lovingly capture the intricate process behind brewing up our favorite stimulant. Nora Manthey lends her words to Horst’s photographs, which escort readers from the pulverizing of beans to liquid being pumped through extraordinary machines in coffee shops all over the world. The book even takes on the increasingly popular art of creating designs in cappuccino foam. Along the way, you’ll peer at french presses, immerse yourself in ice drips, enjoy espresso and more. Horst catalogues these and far more esoteric types of preparation paraphernalia — peppering in photos of flames and grinds, beans and barristas — and it’s good to the last drop.

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QUESTIONS AND

A N S W ER S

CULTURE

MUSIC

Lana Del Ray ex periments with offbeat optimis anxiety, and Tori m, Grizzly Bear Amos ponders th explores moder e art of self-accep n-day tance. BY MATT GROSS

TORI AMOS

Native Invader (Decca Records) THIS,

TORI

AMOS’

15TH

STUDIO

album, the veteran presents more questions than answers. She explains herself thusly: “The songs on Native Invader are being pushed by the Muses to find different ways of facing unforeseen challenges and in some cases dangerous conflicts.”

The record seems to try to seek resilience and healing as the artist confronts both nature and complex interpersonal relationships. Amos’ confessional songwriting has been pushing boundaries her entire career, and the same holds true for her latest effort. Messages of empowerment, tenderness and self-acceptance are central to tracks like “Reindeer King,” “Broken Arrow” and “Up the Creek.”

Amos is also arguably one of the more thrilling live performers around; catch her on a North America tour this fall, starting October 24 in St. Paul. For all dates, visit toriamos.com.

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PHOTOS COURTESY THE ARTISTS’ RESPECTIVE LABELS.

ON

GRIZZLY BEAR

Painted Ruins (RCA Records)

THE LONGSTANDING INDIE DARLINGS BREAK

new ground on a sensational, dynamic major label debut effort. Emerging from Brooklyn in the early aughts, the quartet (fronted by openly gay vocalist Ed Droste) has slowly but surely built a cult following over the last fifteen years. Painted Ruins captures them exploring a post-Trump world filled with anxiety, uncertainty and confusion. Grizzly Bear’s multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen explains the album’s concept:“It’s the idea of dressing up something that’s falling apart and making something out of a situation that’s crumbling.” He adds, “in a way that’s how a lot of this music came together. Some of it was a pastiche, and it found its way into a cohesive form.”Highlights include the Radioheadesque “Morning Sound” and the otherworldly single, “Three Rings.” Follow Grizzly Bear on Facebook @grizzlybear.

LANA DEL REY

Lust for Life (Interscope Records) THE SMOKY-VOICED SONGBIRD HAS RETURNED FROM

a two-year hiatus with her most expansive album to date, with 70 sprawling minutes and 16 genrehopping tunes. Collaborators include sultry R&B crooner The Weeknd (pictured with Del Rey) on the gorgeous title track, Fleetwood Mac’s musical muse Stevie Nicks on “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems,” Sean Ono Lennon contributes to the mystical “Tomorrow Never Came” and rising hip-hopper A$AP Rocky on the album’s rousing centerpieces “Summer Bummer” and “Groupie Love.” While earlier pieces in her canon focused heavily on escaping everyday life and the misery of modern romance, Lust for Life brings a muchwelcomed dose of optimism and cheer. Vocally, she’s never sounded better. Highlights here include the timely “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” “White Mustang” and “Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind” (the kind of title only she could get away with). Simultaneously vulnerable and assured, Lust for Life is nothing short of a masterpiece. Join Lana’s seven million Twitter followers @lanadelrey.

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THE MAN WHO CRIED WOOF NOT ALL SUPERHEROES HAVE A SECRET IDENTITY. AND JUST AS

it’s an open secret that Tony Stark is Iron Man in the Marvel universe, everyone understands that Johnny Scruff and Johnny Skandros are one and the same. But while Robert Downey Jr. plays a pair of fictional characters, both Johnnys — Scruff and Skandros — are facets of a very real person with a constellation of dimensions within.

Skandros is known around the world as the founder of Scruff, the gay dating application where men exchange photos, texts and preferences before deciding whether to meet in real time. What sets him and his company apart is that while his competitors provide a service, Scruff offers a community. Subscribers see the app as a kind of cybermancave where they can present themselves as bears, jocks nerds and twinks — or reject those archetypes altogether to reveal nothing more than an interest in men.

In seven years, Skandros and his team have built Scruff into an international empire worth a fortune — at least on paper. Such success comes with perks and pitfalls, says Skandros. The details of his daily life remain just indistinct enough to stoke the myth of Johnny Scruff, the beefy app mogul with a Midas touch for men and money. “A certain amount of those assumptions you just have to brush off,” Skandros shouts over the din of a noisy bar in Chelsea. He’s grateful for his company’s success, but says that Scruff only recently provided the means “to live comfortably for the first time in my life. I’m certainly not rolling in millions, and we’ve invested a lot of money back in the business. People also think my life is hypersexual, and I’ll admit I’ve partied like a rock star. But I’m not hooking up all the time.”

Skandros started life not in the spotlight, but not far from it as the only child of two Las Vegas musicians who met playing for Wayne Newton. In order to make a living, his father went on tours that lasted months at a time. His mother quit show business and went back to school to become an elementary school teacher, often taking her infant son in tow.

“I kept playing until I went into labor,” says his mother Stephanie. “It was hard. Johnny had a lot of difficulty with allergies and needed a significant amount of care while his father was on the road. I decided over a three-year period to spend as much time as I could raising my child. But I also felt blessed. I never pushed him into anything. He would

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come home, and he was always so ... driven. All through elementary school, between soccer, karate, gymnastics and swimming, he was a dedicated student,” she remembers.

“You could see he was a very independent learner and curious about anything and everything.”

He was also essentially fatherless. “Not having had a father in my life,” Skandros says in retrospect, “I’ve always searched for strong male role models. I think that’s why I was drawn to bears and the scruffier crowd. They are almost like the big brothers and father I never had.”

Early on, his mother had an inkling about her son’s identity. “I had suspected Johnny was gay,” she says casually, “and I was very content with that. I knew eventually when he was ready, he would tell me.”

Skandros remembers that moment well: “It’s a difficult process, coming out. But I’m lucky in that I come from a very loving home. I recall coming out to my Mom in the kitchen where she was cooking me her breaded chicken.

And when I told her, ‘Mom, I’m gay,’ there was some crying involved. I think she had to take a moment to process. But she also bought me a car at 16 and used to let me go out to gay clubs and dance until six in the morning. So long as I kept my grades up, that was fine with her. And looking back, maybe that’s how I’ve had my fingers on the pulse of the gay community for so long — because I started so young.”

This week Skandros is in New York to celebrate Scruff’s seventh anniversary and to help christen the company’s new offices, which he now sees only as an occasional visitor.

Two years ago, he left Manhattan behind to live closer to his family in the Vegas suburbs. At the same time, Skandros’ role in the company he created has been pared back to allow him some much-prized downtime when not crisscrossing the world as Johnny Scruff, company ambassador.

“I created Johnny Scruff for several reasons,” he explains.

“First, it was a way to personalize the brand and connect with our members, and I think people are able to relate better to a person than a company. I wanted to be accessible to people.

I also felt it would be liberating to create a new identity especially one aligned with a brand and a community I was proud of,” he says. “Creating an extroverted persona allowed me to challenge myself to take on new roles and be front-facing, and that was something I really wanted to do.”

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BLASE

How a self-confessed introvert reinvented himself — and in the process changed the way men connect with each other around the world. BY KEVIN PHINNEY

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A decade ago, Skandros moved to New York fresh from USC expecting to work in film. He also knew that — despite his inherent shyness — Skandros graduatated from USC intending to make his mark as a gay filmmaker.“I found it very liberating being gay,” he says, “and film is a medium where you could reach the community at large. I worked really hard to get into film school, and I didn’t get in right away.”

Still, Skandros found enough success as a film editor to earn good money and ended up working on several commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. But he wasn’t happy. That’s when Eric Silverberg approached him with an idea.

The pair met through a mutual friend in 2004 and remained in touch while Silverberg completed a business degree at MIT in Boston. On the weekends, he would drop down to New York to hit the clubs with Skandros and his friends.

Though Silverberg initially returned to California after graduating, he says “it was always a lifelong dream to live in New York. So on January 4 of 2010, I moved.

I also told Johnny I had been looking into iOS code and thought that we could make a better app than the ones that were out there, which were all of a piece, and pretty salacious. I wanted to build a brand that people would be excited to be affiliated with so that when couples were answering questions about how they met, they could be proud to say they met on Scruff.”

With Silverberg developing code and Skandros focused on marketing strategies, they began beta testing, first with an app they called “Husband Material”, then with “West Fourth”, a name they hoped would invoke images of the early ‘70s gay liberation movement. Neither iteration went anywhere.

“We knew the idea would work,” Skandros says emphatically. “I had faith in Eric — who had come out of MIT and worked for Google. But Eric was still learning, and remember that the code itself was still fairly new back then. He basically taught himself how to make it work. But at the same time, we’d already done a lot of testing and had very little to show for it. We were on the verge of shutting it down.”

Just as they were about to pull the plug. Skandros dropped into a local spot called Bar-Tini. “On certain nights,” he recalls, “they would have crowds with

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PHOTOS THIS SPREAD COURTESY SCRUFF

Skandros with Scruff co-founder Eric Silverberg

beards and guys who were not so fashion-forward or hipster, but just really friendly people, and I felt like I’d found my group. This one night, the guy I was talking to rubbed my face and said, ‘I like your scruff,’ and a light just went off in my head.”

He hastily arranged to meet his partner over sushi. “’It’s not over,” he told Silverberg. “No one joined before, but I have the fix. We’re going to call it Scruff and reach out to bears. It’s a community that’s already in place. This is the future here. Then I went home, shaved my head, grew my beard and changed my name to Johnny Scruff.”

In order to nurture their venture, both moved back in with their parents. Skandros delicately outlined the idea to his Mom. “He put it in very gentle reserved terms,” Stephanie says with a laugh. “There’s some part of him that believes I’m naive, and he began by saying: ‘In the gay community there’s a group that refer to themselves as bears, Mom. They don’t shave their faces and chest hair and so on.’“ This was news to Stephanie.“Bears? I didn’t know that term.‘Is it a small group?’ I asked. He said, ‘Mom, the bear community is huge and I have an idea for an app that would work for these guys and bring them all together in one place that we would provide.’ And I said, ‘Great.’”

Subscribers were soon joining at a rate of 10,000 a week for the next six months. “That’s a testament to a working code and a name that clicked with the community,” says Skandros. Still, apps appear and vanish again with no guarantee that any will last, and dating apps are among the most daunting.

Silverberg explains that running a chat app in real time with globally grounded content puts enormous stress on any system and can be a staffing nightmare too, because “it’s hard to find people who code who share an interest in both of those things.”

Once they finally saw more money coming in than going out, the pair returned to Manhattan. With other apps bedeviled by “bots” — those fake profiles used to lure members away to other sites — Scruff made user support its priority. “We have a global team who gets back to you right away in person,”says Silverberg.

“That shows a kind of institutional commitment that’s helped to differentiate us from everyone. Good luck trying to figure out how to contact any of the major sites people know by name. Our contact info is front and center on the home page.”

But stress also took a toll. Servers would crash, and Skandros would throw up. He also began having issues with a faltering libido, and even hormone therapy didn’t seem to help.“I was constantly stressed out and I wasn’t eating right,” he admits, adding , “I was also indulging in all of the fun New York City has to offer. We’re all human beings at the end of the day,

“I’m a 200-percent-or-nothing kind of guy; I’ve been that way since I was a kid.

But it’s gotten me into trouble. I’m the guy who doesn’t want the party to stop.

I ended up in the hospital.”

Johnny Scruff in full effect as Skandros works the crowd

you know? It’s nothing I’ve spoken about before.

“The truth,” he says leaning in, “is that for years, my goal — my heart and soul has been Scruff. I didn’t care about John Skandros.

I’d spend all day working in the office and be out at night constantly promoting. I probably neglected the person I was born, but I’ve created a person I’m proud of in a lot of ways. I got known for going up and hugging and kissing members and buying round upon round of shots for crowds at bars. One night, I spent like $4,000 on shots for the entire crowd at Gym Bar in Chelsea, and Eric thought I was crazy, because this was in the early days. But my goal was to walk into a bar and not have anyone say, ‘What’s Scruff?”

As their reputation grew, Scruff also became a bigger target. Apps came under fire for undermining gay culture by discouraging people from going out and meeting in ways other than online one-on-one.

Skandros sees it as a sign of of society in flux. “Apps have certainly changed the way we meet,” he’ll agree. “We’re able to connect quicker. In terms of gay nightlife, gay bars is how we met before and then technology changed that. But that started changing with AOL when the Internet happened, right?”

He maintains that gay people still find opportunities to gather.

“I see events thriving more than ever,” he says. “That’s why we host them and we pack the place wherever we go. It’s why we were very proactive about creating an events section on Scruff, and we sponsored more than 400 of them last year because of that feedback that apps are killing gay nightlife. We’re connecting people faster than ever before, and on a global scale. You’re just not restricted to the bar down the street anymore.”

What about concerns that the apps have effectively become dark alleys in cyberspace where predators roam at will? Skandros strokes his stubble and scans the ceiling in silence. “It’s genuinely painful to hear stories of people having bad experiences,” he says finally. “I can tell you that any reports of bullying are handled immediately. They’re

investigated by a Scruff support staff member within 24 hours. We take harassment very seriously, and that too has helped create a space where people come and feel welcome.”

Beyond that, Skandros believes that putting your image and desires up for public review always involves risk .“You’ve got to have thick skin when you’re out there, especially in matters of the heart.

“When bad things happen, I have to remind myself,” he says, “that I helped create something that has done a lot of good.”To that end, Scruff provides millions of dollars in free space to promote nonprofits who work with the LGBTQ community. The app also helps protect people in practical ways. The company introduced an advanced pop-up advisory for travelers visiting foreign countries where same-sex encounters risk prison time, or worse.

For the first two years, Skandros was so immersed in building the business he had no idea he’d unwittingly signed away part of himself.

“That’s when I realized that the name Johnny Scruff didn’t belong to me,” says Skandros.“And If we ever sold the company or I was told I couldn’t use my name anymore it would be tough, because I’m used to walking into a bar and hearing people call me me Johnny Scruff.

That’s my name now. But I also had to put my business hat on and remind myself that I’m living my life and identity as a person and a brand that I’m proud of, and that’s my job.”

Skandros and Silverberg huddled over the matter. “Eric and I spoke, and in no way do I blame him,” says Skandros. But that, in a nutshell, explains his public dual identity. “I’ve fluctuated between Johnny Scruff and Johnny Skandros in the media — just in case Johnny Scruff ever has to go away.”

In 2013, Skandros moved uptown in a big way. “It was my first big boy apartment,”he laughs.“The business started doing really well and that’s about the time we first started turning a profit and finally taking some money for ourselves. But at the end of the fifth year, my Grandma was getting ill, and I was just burned out and I needed a METROSOURCE.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

33

Young Johnny with the Original Polar Bear

break. I wasn’t growing in the office anymore and I’d be at my desk just twiddling my thumbs and thinking,‘Gosh, I want to be out with the community now. I want to be with my Mom; I really want to be with my Grandma.”

Skandros soon learned Stephanie’s mother was dying. “It was the darkest time in my life,” he winces. “In the beginning, I liked wearing a lot of hats and for a long time I had to. But as we made more money, we were able to hire people. Eventually, you have to let go and delegate to other people who you trust, which is difficult to do when it’s partly your company and identity at play.”

Was it tough leaving the office? Leaving New York? “You bet it was,” Skandros admits. “I was so used to the routine and these people are family to me. Eric and I had been friends before Scruff, and then we built the business together. But when I decided to step back, he was all for it. He said, ‘If this is what you need to do, do it.’”

Stephanie recalls her son telling her that he was afraid that staying in New York would make him sick. “He said, ‘I need a break,’” she remembers.

“And so I told him to come home.”

Skandros returned to Nevada, but vestiges of his New York lifestyle tagged along behind. “I consider myself a very sex-positive individual,” he’s quick to add.“I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences and I’m not ashamed of exploring my desires. But it’s easy to take things to excess. This is prevalent in our community, and my heart goes out to people who are struggling. I’m a 200-percent-ornothing kind of guy; I’ve been that way since I was a kid. But it’s gotten me into trouble. I’m the guy who doesn’t want the party to stop. But I ended up in the hospital with pancreatitis and the doc said, ’You need to slow down.’”

So he did. He changed his diet and got a trainer. He was also able to devote some quality time to his ailing grandmother. “He saw the last few months of my mother’s life and was wonderful

“It’s about trying on new identities. Don’t be afraid to experiment with yourself until you’re happy with the result.”

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support for her,” Stephanie says. This time, the fix Skandros found was something internal. Stephanie beams, “It’s amazing how far he’s come the last year and a half since she died.”

Part of Skandros’ newfound peace of mind comes from puting some breathing room between himself and his alter-ego. Like Iron Man, Johnny Scruff is a larger-than-life sexy suit of armor; it may protect his vulnerabilities but also hides some of his identity.

“John Skandros is shy, studious and introverted,” he muses. “I was a bullied kid and a film nerd. I’ll never forget looking in the mirror and saying to myself, ‘I’m going to become this guy.

“I’ve always faced body issues and it’s been a challenge to find comfort in being in my own skin,” Skandros concludes. “Initially one of my attractions to the bear community, and later the Scruff community, is that they really do come in all shapes and sizes. I see guys who are comfortable with their weight and I admire that, and it helped me become more comfortable myself. I had long hair and glasses and was a bit overweight. So it’s about trying on new identities and new clothes — a lot of people go through this. I changed myself for the better. I love my beard and I think it’s healthy to change things until they’re working for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment with yourself until you’re happy with the result. My belly, seven years ago? I’d have been self-conscious about it. Now, I’m proud of it and I’m happy with it. It sounds cheesy, but that’s what the people from Scruff gave me: Confidence.”

But what Skandros learned from being Johnny Scruff might surprise a few people:“I do have a traditional side,”he says, running his fingers through his hair with a wry smile. “I’m also very openminded and I’ve seen and experienced a lot. And I don’t judge anyone unless you’re hurting someone. Because of Scruff, I really was able to find my sexuality and have a variety of experiences, but at heart I suppose I’m really more traditional. I mean, I’ve seen triads work. I’ve seen them not work. I’ve seen open relationships work; I’ve seen them burn to the ground. But when I do find that right guy, I know that — at least in the beginning — it would be monogamous. For the moment I’m open to possibilities, because who knows what’s going to happen five years down the line?” ■

PHOTOS COUTESY JOHNNY SKANDROS.

Skandros with Mom now (above) and growing up (at right)

Something is brewing...

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POWER

SPLURGE Party like a millionaire, sweat like a celebrity, look like an A-Lister, hit the spa like a socialite and see the world like a baller.

“ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH OVERDOING,” MICK JAGGER

once remarked. We couldn’t agree more, particularly when it comes to indulging. Why have a simple glass of champagne when you can sip one with Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac and apricot puree in a bejeweled glass? Why tool around town in a generic rental when you can cruise in style behind the tinted windows of a Rolls Royce Phantom?

Well, just for kicks (and maybe because we’re gluttons for punishment), we painstakingly researched how the one percenters of the world (billionaires, actors, athletes, socialites) spend their coin. Check out our findings below, and, as the kids say, “treat yo’ self” — if you can afford it. Otherwise, there’s no shame in daydreaming along with us.

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PAGES 36-41: ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE COMPANIES DEPICTED

Oh right… the cost.

Dinner in the Sky

PARTY LIKE A MILLIONAIRE If you’ve ever been shocked by the price of the $20 cocktails at high-end restaurants, they now seem like a bargain. At XS nightclub in Las Vegas — on the grounds of the luxe Wynn Encore hotel — you can order THE ONO for a cool $10,000. What does ten large taste like? The club’s signature cocktail is a mixture of Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac, Charles Heidseick 1981 Champagne Charlie, fresh-squeezed orange juice and apricot puree. Oh, and it’s served in a jewel-encrusted glass, naturally. Once the liquid is long gone, you’ll get souvenirs to remember your libation — and we don’t just mean the receipt or a hangover. Gentlemen receive a 18-karat gold Mont Blanc cuff links, while ladies are feted with an 18-karat white gold necklace with a Tahitian black pearl. If that’s not quite indulgent enough, for $100,000 you can order a whole bottle of the rare Remy Martin XIII (less than 1,000 bottles were produced). Nothing tastes like excess! xslasvegas.com Ever find yourself at a lavish dinner party with friends and think, “This would be so much better if we were all outdoors eating at a table suspended by a large crane with nothing beneath our feet”? DINNER IN THE SKY (pictured) can help scratch that itch. At picturesque locations across the world, the Belgian company lofts 22 diners at a time 150 feet into the air while “sky chefs” and bartenders — who work in an area cut out from the center of the table — serve a customized 3-or 4-course menu. Prices vary, but start around $400 per person. Those Instagram selfies you’ll take at the table, however, will be #priceless. Just don’t drop your fork while posing. dinnerinthesky.com Paco Roncero, a Michelin-starred chef and selfdescribed “dreamer” has developed a truly unique “theatrical” dining experience in Ibiza, Spain. The idea: Dinner should not just be about food alone, but appeal to all five senses. To that end, Roncero teamed with designers, engineers, choreographers and illusionists to create the world’s first “gastronomic show” on the Mediterranean island. At a table in a windowless oblong room, 12 diners at a time enjoy a three-hour meal that includes music, a light show projected on the walls and table and even self-mixing cocktails.

Meanwhile, more than two dozen staffers cater to each party. Sound kooky? Indeed, even the promoters of the experience, dubbed SUBLIMOTION, admit that “you may only understand [it] when visiting it in person.”

Go to the website to get a quote on pricing, which can run upwards of $1,000 per person — and that will not include the cost of airfare to Ibiza or accommodations. sublimotionibiza.com

SWEAT LIKE A CELEB

Houstonian

Clearlight Infrared Sauna

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Gym ID cards are so last century. At Equinox’s exclusive E CLUB in New York City’s Columbus Circle, members enter via a Minority Report-style retinal scan.

(Yes, really.) Once inside, you’ll realize that locker rooms are also passé. Each person is treated to a private changing cabana complete with a glass-enclosed shower, high-end Molton Brown bath products and freshly laundered gym clothes. Have a special desire, such as a specific protein smoothie? Request it, and a staffer will fetch it any time you wish.

Another bonus: because of the extremely high price tag (around $25,000 a year for a membership), the E club isn’t crowded like more traditional treadmill farms. This makes it easier for the E staffers to track and monitor your workouts — which they do for every member. equinox.com THE HOUSTONIAN CLUB, an exclusive gym in Houston, Texas, boasts a country clubesque entry process. Prospective members (George H. W. Bush once belonged) must apply, be approved and then fork over a $25,000 initiation fee. (After that, the cost is around $350 per month.) But membership has its privileges, including access to nine tennis courts, six pools, a rock-climbing wall and more than 35 personal trainers.

Smaller, but still luxurious, perks include complimentary fruit and snacks and plush bathrobes in the posh, carpeted locker room. The facility also offers cuttingedge group classes such as Gyrokinesis and barre, in addition to more traditional workouts such as hot yoga, Pilates, and spin class. houstonian.com/TheClub.aspx Don’t have much time but still want a sweat session? Try the Gwyneth Paltrowapproved CLEARLIGHT INFRARED SAUNA. (Technically, it’s Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop that gave it the seal of approval.) For $5399–$5899, you can get your own spagrade structure at home, which purports to get you fit while you simply sit and sweat: One study found that adults can torch up to 600 calories in one 30 minute session.

Hey, if it’s good enough for Gwyneth… infraredsauna.com/clearlight

Lamborghini Aventador LG Styler

LOOK LIKE AN A-LISTER After jetting to Los Angeles or Miami (private or business class, naturally) for a weekend away, it would be a little lame to rent a budget hatchback, right? While traditional car agencies have limited selections when it comes to luxury vehicles, GOTHAM DREAM CARS fills the void. The company — which has locations in NewYork, LA and Miami — offers an array of exotic wheels including Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Porsches, and Rolls Royces. Tooling around in an Aston Martin may cost $1,250 per day, but that’s a small price to pay for looking as cool as James Bond, right? gothamdreamcars.com When you look like a million bucks, you had better smell like it, too — or (at the very least) you want to smell like $5,500. That’s the price tag on CLIVE CHRISTIAN NO. 1 FOR MEN PURE PERFUME, which offers a deliciously irresistible blend of lime, bergamot and Sicilian mandarin. The bottle itself is obviously luxurious, too: made from Baccarat crystal, it features 18-karat gold detailing and a brilliant cut diamond. bloomingdales.com True VIPs generally don’t have time to drop off those Tom Ford and Zegna suits at the dry cleaners for a quick touch-up. Enter THE LG STYLER, an innovative at-home clothing care system. The sleek, compact wardrobe (which retails for $1,999) rids clothes of odors and wrinkles with its patented steam-clean technology. It has bells and whistles that cater to even the fussiest fellows — e.g. a special compartment on the door returns the crisp crease to suit pants, no iron needed. lg.com

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El Dorado

Four Seasons Maldives

Mandarin Oriental

HIT THE SPA LIKE A SOCIALITE In these stressful times, sleep is a precious commodity. The OM SUPTI NIGHT SPA RITUAL at the Four Seasons in the Maldives prepares busy bodies for a night of soothing shut-eye. At 10 pm, couples report to a private, candlelit jungle clearing and choose between either a facial or massage. After the two-and-a-half hour treatment (that costs $750 for two people), guests can then plunge in the al fresco bath or doze off in a swinging bed under the stars. One caveat: Appointments may be cancelled due to inclement weather. Oh, Mother Nature — how dare you get in the way of our spa time? fourseasons.com/maldiveslg What’s more indulgent than stretching out and having one masseur caress the kinks out of your overworked back and feet? Letting two masseurs have their way with you. During the Mandarin Oriental hotels’ signature ORIENTAL HARMONY

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TREATMENT, you’ll enjoy a consultation with an attendant to discuss the problem areas you want to focus on during the massage. Then, you’ll dip your feet into relaxing bath before a pair of attendants soothe your body for a blissful 110 minutes. Prices vary by location — starting at $820 in New York and $530 in Las Vegas. mandarinoriental.com And now it’s time for the gold standard of massages: At the El Dorado Hotel & Spa in Santa Fe, New Mexico, check out the signature SPUN GOLD MASSAGE ($180 for 80 minutes). The treatment begins with a dry skin brushing, followed next by hot stones placed in key areas on your back. An attendant then takes warm chamomile oil — containing flecks of real gold — and massages it into your skin. Over the top?

Definitely. But working gold into the skin also reportedly has several benefits, including reduced sun damage and increased elasticity. eldoradohotel.com

SEE THE WORLD LIKE A BALLER Ever since we saw Titanic back in 1997, we’ve been obsessed with sailing the seas in style.

And there’s no more luxuriant vessel than THE QUEEN MARY 2, which offers a 134-day world cruise with 55 ports of call, including Cape Town, Dubai, Hong Kong, Naples, Auckland, Singapore, and Bali. Prices for a standard room start at around $31,000 per person. But if you’re going to traverse the globe a la Rose DeWitt Bukater, you may as well pull out all the stops. For $83,200 per person, you can book the Queens Grill Suite, which includes personal butler service, a stocked complimentary bar, 24-hour room service and a private balcony to see any iceberg collisions up close. (Just kidding.) cunard.com Don’t have 134 days, but do have a few extra bucks to spare? Check out Abercrombie & Kent’s AROUND THE WORLD BY PRIVATE JET: CULTURES IN TRANSFORMATION. There are only 50 spots available for the 26-day trek in 2018 at a cost of $135,000 per person. On this exclusive tour — in conjunction with the New York Times — you’ll travel with renowned Times writers, including columnist Nicholas Kristof, who’ll offer analysis and anecdotes about the places you visit. A Boeing 757 with first class accommodations for all (fully reclining seats, etc.) will whisk you to such exotic locations as Easter Island, Chile (where you’ll explore the famous monoliths) and Myanmar (where you’ll help light oil lamps at a Buddhist pagoda). At each spot (visit their website for the full itinerary), you’ll stay at only the finest hotels, such as J.W. Marriott and the Park Hyatt. abercrombiekent.com Those with a flair for adventure (and deep enough pockets), can now book passage on Richard Branson’s SPACESHIPTWO, which takes patrons on a suborbital flight. (Translation for those without a science degree: the vessel reaches 62 miles, but doesn’t quite launch into orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.)

Each of the six seats aboard the vessel — which is expected to start taking passengers in late 2017 — costs a cool $250,000. But isn’t a trip that’s literally out-of-this-world priceless?

■

Cultures in Transformation Queen Mary 2 by Cunard

FINAL EPISODES

As their acclaimed series nears its grand finale, David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik discuss their decades creating TV and building a life together. BY PAUL HAGEN

TV world all too well; they’ve been part of its whirl since the heyday of Must-See TV, when Crane wrote for Friends and Klarik for Mad About You. “In a weird way, it was the golden age of television,” Klarik recalls. “There were fewer options, and so whatever you did — like Mad About You or Friends — got millions and millions of viewers every week, which is very difficult to achieve nowadays because there are so many choices.”

“Jeffrey and I did shows that — the numbers we were canceled with would’ve made us a giant hit today,” Crane says with a laugh. “Now there are a handful of those shows that get that kind of instant buzz — Game of Thrones, for example — but back then, the morning after, [what we were working on] was what people talked about.”

Together, they mined these experiences to create the hilarious, behind-the-scenes comedy Episodes. With its side-splitting final season currently premiering Sundays on Showtime, the couple took time out to talk with Metrosource about their decades of couplehood and the art of skewering television on TV.

A COUPLE OF WRITERS Before there were Ross & Rachel or Paul & Jaimie, there was David and Jeffrey. “There was no Tinder then,” remembers

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IT’S SHOWTIME In 2011 — after Crane had finished work on the Friends spin-off Joey and the couple had seen their show The Class (a comedy that featured Jason Ritter, Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Tyler Ferguson) run for a single season on CBS — the pair saw their co-creation Episodes premiere to critical acclaim.

It follows the lives of a husband-and-wife pair of British TV writers — Sean and Beverly — who come to Hollywood to adapt their successful television show for American audiences, but end up saddled with Matt LeBlanc (playing an hilariously over-the-top version of himself) as their lead.

“From the very first time we pitched him the idea, [LeBlanc] said, “I don’t mind being the object of the joke if

THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF

DAVID CRANE AND JEFFREY KLARIK KNOW THE EXCESSES OF THE

Klarik. “I said to these friends, ‘Don’t you know anybody for me?’ and they said, ‘What about David Crane? He’s a writer, too!’”

The friends invited Crane over for dinner, not mentioning to him that it was a setup. “I showed up at their house for dinner and I thought it was going to be the three of us. I saw it was set for four, and I was like, ‘That’s interesting.’”

“I was dessert,” explains Klarik with a laugh. “Pretty much we’ve been together ever since.” Decades later, the pair still seem to be very much in love. “I never knew that another person could be as kind and generous and giving in my life,” explains Klarik. “Sometimes I think to myself: my grandmother must’ve sent him from heaven.”

“Plus, he’s my size; so we can share clothes,” Klarik adds.“You can’t underestimate the importance of that.”

“The first night,” Crane recalls, “Jeffrey said, ‘I like your shoes! Can I try them on?’”

“A little Cinderella action,” explains Klarik.

When they fit, “I think that cinched it,” says Crane. On a more serious note, he adds, “You could be with someone for almost thirty years and think you’ve got them. You understand pretty much everything there is to know.

[But] it’s just been wonderful because truly, both working together and living together, every day he’ll say something that absolutely makes me laugh and surprises me, and I don’t think you can ask for more than that in a partner.”

“And talk about my hair,” prompts Klarik.

“And he’s got great hair,” adds Crane. “And I have virtually none; so I resent it and admire it at the same time.”

Sean, Beverly and Matt suffer the slings and arrows of Hollywood.

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Matt and Merc are the best of frenemies.

Beverly supplies munchies for Carol.

THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF

Sean and Beverly vs. the Writer’s Room.

the joke is funny,” explains Klarik. “And he couldn’t have been more agreeable to everything — to the point where sometimes he’d like say, ‘What about if I did this or that?’

And we’d look at each other and go, ‘No! You can’t say that!’”

“You think about some other actor in that part, and you would’ve really not liked the character,” Crane observes of LeBlanc, who has won a Golden Globe for the role.“But because Matt is so talented and so charming and he manages to put it across in a way that’s so winning, [the audience is] like Sean and Beverly: you get incredibly angry at him, and you judge him, and then you can’t help but love him again.”

And although the actual Matt LeBlanc would likely not engage in half the hijinks his Episodes character has, Crane and Klarik note that it’s based on behavior they’ve personally observed in the way women approach him.

“You look at somebody like Matt LeBlanc and you think, ‘What must that be like: to be able to just walk out your door and have your pick?’ But it’s true! When we travel with him, and when we were shooting in London, cars pulled up alongside our car, the windows rolled down, and they propositioned him from the car!” says Klarik.

“We’ve had experiences where we’ve been in a restaurant and a woman has come up to him and said, ‘It’s my birthday and my husband said I can have you as my present.’”

In addition to sex, evolving social mores mean that Crane and Klarik can write more frankly about drugs as well. “On the show, god knows, Carol enjoys [weed] almost to the point where one might say it’s a problem,” says Crane. “But we don’t even think about it now anymore as being controversial or taboo; it’s just how that character behaves.”

Klarik points to a scene in the current season in which Carol, a former programming executive, gets high with her former boss and lover Merc. “I guess you saw when he came over to have dinner with her, and they just ate and smoked and it was all so delicious? It just made me happy to see the two of them so close and enjoying dope and food!”

Still, censorship does occasionally rear its confusing head. “It’s interesting, in terms of this day and age, what we have to do for — I guess — Showtime for airplanes,” explains Crane. “We shoot alternates to the swear words, and one of the things we have to do—in the marijuana scenes: it’s okay if they’re smoking, but you’re just not allowed to see the joint touch Carol’s lips. She’s reaching

“I don’t think there’s a stigma at all. I mean who is Blac Chyna? Seriously?

You know what I mean? I don’t know why people become famous anymore!”

up, and then we have to cut to somebody else, and when we cut back … she can exhale; she just can’t put it to her lips.”

Clearly Episodes explores Hollywood’s indignities as much as its excesses. Much of Season Five revolves around Sean and Beverly trapped in a writer’s room that seems like a circle of hell.

“I’ve been in rooms with showrunners who have no lives, do not want to leave and keep you like well-paid hostages,” recalls Klarik.

“You think: ‘Oh my God, it’s almost two in the morning, and all we’re doing is watching old videos of Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. Shouldn’t we be f***ing writing the script?” Crane and Klarik have even had friends who were instructed to bring cots to work. “They actually were sleeping in their offices because the guy who ran the show was a night owl; during the day they would sleep in their offices, and they would start to work at midnight. So [the writing room on Episodes] is not an exaggeration,” says Crane.

He points out that his partner takes a certain pleasure in bringing this sort of behavior to light: “I’ve often said that Jeffrey writes for revenge,” he says.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX AND BEYOND The final season of Episodes also takes on the idea of torture more literally, as it depicts Matt becoming the host of a reality show called The Box, in which contestants are locked in boxes and forced to suffer a variety of unpleasant circumstances, including such unique trials as Gilbert Gottfried reading the Bible aloud.

“I came up with the idea,”explains Klarik.“We were just looking for a silly kind of game show and I came up with the idea and I said to David, ‘I think this could actually be a show,’ and he went, ‘No — people could die in those boxes!’ And I said, ‘I’m telling you this could be a show!’ And I swear to you, last week we were in London meeting with people who want to turn The Box into a real show!’”

The week we were shooting all The Box stuff, we had to really think it out because — in that opening from the first episode where they do,“Previously on The Box…” you’re seeing two weeks’ worth,” remember Klarik. “Suddenly we went from making fun of it to: ‘All right, we need more punishments! We need more disadvantages!”

“How about five Hitlers in the box with them?!” Crane remembers — and he promises that at some point in the season, we’ll get to see just that.

The Box ultimately leads Matt’s character to a commit an indiscretion with one of the contestants — an encounter that he doesn’t realize is being caught on camera and broadcast to the internet. At first, it seems like a career-ending faux pas, but ultimately it sends the ratings soaring. Crane and Klarik say that in a world where scandals seem to regularly mint new celebrities, it’s not that big a stretch. “I don’t think there’s a stigma at all,” says Crane. “I mean who is Blac Chyna? Seriously? You know what I mean? I don’t know why people become famous anymore!”

David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik

A NEW YEAR’S EVE SURPRISE Crane and Klarik say they rarely seek out opportunities to indulge.“We don’t splurge much; most of our life is wrapped around the work,”says Crane.“We haven’t had a vacation in probably ten years. I think every day is our indulgence. Doing something that you love to do is like the ultimate indulgence.”

Though they aren’t yet ready to reveal their next project, Crane says, “we have an idea that we’re pursuing. We haven’t pitched and placed it yet, but when we do we should definitely talk.”

“It is something that I think you’d find very interesting,” Klarik teases.

“It definitely speaks to being gay, and I don’t want to pre-sell it, but it’s fun,” says Crane.

Whatever comes next, the pair look forward to tackling it together — now as a married couple. “Right after Trump was elected — we’d been together 29 years — I said to David, ‘I think now’s the time to do it. I don’t trust this man, and I want to make sure that we are safe,’ and so we got married on New Year’s Eve,” says Klarik.

“Very quietly. We didn’t tell any of our friends. As Jeffrey has said: it was like we eloped at home,” adds Crane.

“It was the most romantic, amazing night,” says Klarik.

“Even though personally, we’d always felt married,” adds Crane, “given everything that was going on in the world, it seemed like something we needed to do before someone told us we couldn’t.”

“It was beyond small,” says Klarik.“We had friends of ours coming up to spend New Year’s Eve with us. They’re a married straight couple and at the last minute we said, ‘Do you think you could get ordained online?’”

“It couldn’t have been more sweet and impulsive,”says Crane.“We played dominos, got married, played Celebrity, drank champagne, watched the ball drop and went to bed.”

Catch up with the final season of Episodes at sho.com.

■ METROSOURCE.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

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What is TRUVADA for PrEP?

Who should not take TRUVADA for PrEP?

TRUVADA for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a prescription medicine that is used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1. To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to prevent getting HIV. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: ® Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. If you are HIV-1 positive, you need to take other medicines with TRUVADA to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time. ® Also take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP? Before taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-negative. ® Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting or at any time while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin.

While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1. ® You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP: ® Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. ® If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away. ® To further help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1: ® Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners. ® Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you. ® Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners. ® Do not miss any doses of TRUVADA. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection. ® If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

TRUVADA can cause serious side effects: ® Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV and stop taking TRUVADA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

What are the other possible side effects of TRUVADA for PrEP? Serious side effects of TRUVADA may also include: ® Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with TRUVADA. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking TRUVADA. ® Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. ® Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain. ® Bone problems, including bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP are stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking TRUVADA for PrEP? ® All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis. ® If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if TRUVADA can harm your unborn baby. If you become pregnant while taking TRUVADA for PrEP, talk to your healthcare provider to decide if you should keep taking TRUVADA. ® If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can be passed to the baby in breast milk. ® All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-thecounter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. TRUVADA may interact with other medicines. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. ® If you take certain other medicines with TRUVADA, your healthcare provider may need to check you more often or change your dose.

These medicines include certain medicines to treat hepatitis C (HCV) infection.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Important Facts about TRUVADA for PrEP including important warnings on the following page.

I’m passionate, not impulsive.

I know who I am. And I make choices that fit my life.

TRUVADA for PrEP™ is a once-daily prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices. ® TRUVADA for PrEP is only for adults who are at high risk of getting HIV through sex. ® You must be HIV-negative before you start taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

Ask your doctor about your risk of getting HIV-1 infection and if TRUVADA for PrEP may be right for you.

Learn more at truvada.com

IMPORTANT FACTS

This is only a brief summary of important information about taking TRUVADA for PrEPTM (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. This does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.

(tru-VAH-dah) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP Before starting TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must be HIV-1 negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative.

• Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include flu-like symptoms, tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. Tell your healthcare provider if you have had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting TRUVADA for PrEP. While taking TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.

• You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you think you were exposed to HIV-1 or have a flu-like illness while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. • If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

• See the “How To Further Reduce Your Risk” section for more information.

TRUVADA may cause serious side effects, including: • Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. TRUVADA is not approved to treat HBV. If you have HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA for PrEP is a prescription medicine used together with safer sex practices to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex. This use is only for HIV-negative adults who are at high risk of getting HIV-1.

• To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

Do NOT take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: • Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status.

• Take certain medicines to treat hepatitis B infection.

HOW TO TAKE TRUVADA FOR PrEP • Take 1 tablet once a day, every day, not just when you think you have been exposed to HIV-1.

• Do not miss any doses. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• Use TRUVADA for PrEP together with condoms and safer sex practices.

• Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About TRUVADA for PrEP” section.

• New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure.

• Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.

• Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.

• Bone problems.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP include stomach-area (abdomen) pain, headache, and decreased weight.

These are not all the possible side effects of TRUVADA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP.

BEFORE TAKING TRUVADA FOR PrEP Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis.

• Have any other medical conditions.

• Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.

• Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. If you become HIV-positive, HIV can pass to the baby in breast milk.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.

• Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with TRUVADA for PrEP.

HOW TO FURTHER REDUCE YOUR RISK • Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners.

• Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you.

• Get information and support to help reduce risky sexual behavior, such as having fewer sex partners.

• Do not share needles or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them.

GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about TRUVADA for PrEP. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more, including how to prevent HIV infection.

• Go to start.truvada.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit start.truvada.com for program information.

TRUVADA FOR PREP, the TRUVADA FOR PREP Logo, the TRUVADA Blue Pill Design, TRUVADA, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Version date: April 2017 © 2017 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. TVDC0120 07/17

IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS

BODY

METROHIV

Richard Renaldi captures the decadence of a club scene now that it’s no longer shaken by fear of an untreatable disease.

BY JEFF SIMMONS

Renaldi’s photographs are titled by the time: (above) 6:50 (below) 9:03 (right) 2:44

PHOTOS BY RICHARD RENALDI, COURTESY APERTURE.

IN 1996, AFTER A BREAKUP WITH HIS BOYFRIEND, RICHARD RENALDI

learned he was HIV positive and abruptly retreated from years of late night partying in New York City’s swirling club scene. He discovered he was “extraordinarily lucky” to have seroconverted just as a new class of lifesaving drugs entered the market. He quit his job as a photo researcher and focused more seriously on his own photography.

As he resumed dating, Renadli entered into a relationship (now nearing two decades) with architectural photographer Seth Boyd, who was much less experienced in club culture.

Encouraged by Boyd, Renaldi returned to the club scene seven years ago, snapping images of revelers in the hours after last call and lights up as they made their way home Sunday mornings.

Renaldi documents that transformed club culture in his fourth book, Manhattan Sunday, published by Aperture. Many of his 130 images were on display at the Eastman Museum in METROSOURCE.COM

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Rochester and then the Aperture Bookstore Gallery in New York earlier this year. They will also be exhibited at Transformer Station in Cleveland, Ohio in April 2018, followed by the Robert Morat Gallery in Berlin, Germany the month after.

“Nightclubs are templates onto which we can project our fantasies, basking in the surreal spectacle of a sea of men getting down and getting off, the intoxicating sound of tribal house music mingling with the scent of pheromones,” Renaldi, 49, writes in Manhattan Sunday. “Anonymity, familiarity, and desire intersect on the synthetically charged dance floor, and in the age of advanced HIV prevention and therapy, the club scene is today somewhat less encumbered by a sense of mortal dread.”

Renaldi finds intrigue in the experience of stepping from the swarm of a thrumming nightclub environment out into the relative calm of the streets as the reveling denizens head home. “The inspiration for the book was that contrast, and a depiction of the city at its quietest,”says Renaldi.“New York is usually 24/7 so the quietest time is on Sunday mornings. There’s something sort of magical about being in such a megalopolis, and the backdrop of people leaving the clubs.” This photographic journey of Manhattan Sunday includes moments both intimate and passionate: couples holding hands, portraits of surreally serene clubgoers, tranquil streetscapes,and even workers sweeping up post-party detritus.

Born in Chicago, Renaldi took up photography while in high school. He first entered the club scene in Chicago (though as a minor, when he could only attend juice bars), before diving in head first in New York City — where he graduated from NYU with a BFA in photography — and has lived for more than three decades. He OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

METROSOURCE.COM

says that he was initially seduced not only by the sensory thrill of men, music and lights, but by the opportunity the clubs afforded to transform into a “fabulous, extravagant self.”

Over time, the atmosphere has noticeably changed from when he first was coming out, frequenting places like the Sound Factory, when the scene became desexualized amid the onset of AIDS. Now he says, “I think slowly but surely it’s returning to the looser pre-AIDS era where anything goes.”

“The constant is people’s desire to have that kind of release, the letting-go experience, and the human desire and glamour and attraction to these things that have been with us for a very long time and will continue to be,” says Renaldi, who was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Photography in 2015. He is now pursuing an archival project with a broader range to explore nightclubs from the 1980s up to the present day.

Of Manhattan Sunday, Renaldi says he hopes audiences will “take away a sense of beauty, a sense of something that’s maybe hidden to them that has been revealed. I hope they take away a sense of the gorgeousness of these very diverse people of both genders, sexual preferences, gender identifications, and races and in the context of this incongruous, grand, beautiful city that leaves an impressive mark on them.”

■

PHOTOS BY RICHARD RENALDI, COURTESY APERTURE.

BODY

METROHIV

FROM MANHATTAN SUNDAY: (left) 9:38 (right) 3:59

BREAKING BINGE

end of the couch. I nodded, he hit play, and another episode of Shameless started.

It was after midnight on a Tuesday. We’d been binge watching the show’s seventh season since 8pm. To our credit, we were also multitasking: Gary was replying to emails on his cell, and I was working on my laptop.

Recent weeks had seen us make our way through shows — from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt — with an intensity you’d expect if the events of The Walking Dead (also binge-able) were real and we had a limited time to enjoy Netflix before zombies ate our faces.

The next morning, we overslept and woke up exhausted.

“Do you realize it’s been six days since we’ve had sex?” Gary asked sleepily, as he struggled to make coffee. “I might as well become a nun.”

“You would look terrible in a habit,” I replied.

“No bangs,” he agreed.

“Are we killing ourselves binge watching TV?” I asked.

“We’re overindulging,” he answered, “in TV, social media, work. It’s unhealthy.”

“Maybe it’s time for a change? What if,” I wondered — as Carrie Bradshaw might have back when we binge watched Sex & the City,“our new indulgence could be taking pleasure in life’s simpler, quieter moments?”

I had a plan: “No TV, no phones, and no work after six.”

Gary’s face twitched. “Just think,” I suggested, “with all that extra time, you might get lucky.”

The first night, as six o’clock rolled around, we decided to eat dinner early. We grilled, ate, cleaned the kitchen and headed to our screened-in porch that we had just added on to our cozy cottage — to enjoy its lovely views of the surrounding woods, stone fireplace and – most of all – quiet.“We built

VIEWS

“JUST ONE MORE?”GARY ASKED EXPECTANTLY FROM THE OTHER

this place to spend time together and detox, and we never get to enjoy it like this,” I observed. Gary snuggled up next to me, put his head on my shoulder and exhaled contentedly. I whispered to him,“Ready to get lucky?”

In reply, he snored. He was out cold. I pulled a blanket over us, and soon I was unconscious, too. We woke up some time after midnight, our necks stiff.

The next night, we were actually done with dinner by 6:30pm. Gary asked if it officially qualified as the early bird special. We vowed that we’d stay up long enough to at least get some reading done. Again we fell asleep.

On our third night, we decided games would help us stay awake past seven. We played cards for an hour, but after I won three times in a row, Gary refused to play any more, retreated to the couch and was asleep minutes later.

Night four, a Saturday, I ordered a pizza, got a fire crackling and created a makeshift picnic on the floor of the porch. After we’d eaten and cleared the dishes, I patted the quilt and Gary scooted over next to me. I kissed him, and, let’s just say: he didn’t fall asleep.

“I think our plan worked!” I said to Gary a little while later. “We’re more rested. We’re spending time with each other. We got lucky.”Gary smiled, and for a brief moment we shared the silence. Then I heard a clock chime from inside: six o’clock again.

“I can’t sleep anymore and I don’t want to play cards,”said Gary, exasperated. “Don’t hate me, but can we finish watching Shameless?”

I wanted to say no. I really did. But I realized that — if I were being honest with myself — I really wanted to finish watching it, too. So, I nodded, turned on the TV, broke out our smart phones and settled in to finish Shameless.

And then we started Ozark.

But this time — when it started getting late and I heard Gary ask,“Just one more?” I shook my head: no. I had finally realized that indulgence wasn’t unlimited consumption of media or completely denying ourselves it but rather finding a healthy balance somewhere in the middle.

And I’m sure that we’ll spend more quiet evenings on our beautiful, screened-in porch again — one day.

■

DIARY

After realizing that binge-watching television is leaving them exhausted, Wade and Gary attempt to unplug after 6pm — to mixed results. BY WADE ROUSE

Wade’s latest novel, The Hope Chest, is now available under the pen name Viola Shipman. Learn more at waderouse.com.

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO UNPLUG? HOW LONG DID YOU MAKE IT? TWEET ABOUT IT TO WADE @METROSOURCEMAG. METROSOURCE.COM

OCTOBER/NOVEMEBER 2017

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BATTLING MY BULGE After trying everything — including going through life with grab bag of low-calorie condiments — Kevin finally finds what he’s been hungry for...

BY KEVIN PHINNEY

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POV

THE QUICKEST GLANCE IN MY DIREC-

52

tion will tell you that I love food.

This means that the last time my abs were visible, Sonny and Cher were still a thing.

To clarify: in the course of my ups and downs, I’ve never been so chunky I couldn’t get my body to do the things I wanted it to do — that includes dancing until dawn and holding my own on a tennis court. But all the way back in college, I had a poster in my dorm room with The Peanuts’ Linus gazing down at his tummy, insisting,“I’m not fat. I just have a husky stomach.” For a few years, that became my mantra.

The first time I tried slimming down, I decided I would treat myself to my guiltiest pleasures less often — to allow myself a chocolate croissant once a week, pasta dinners only once a month. I also swore off cake, pie and ice cream (unless they were offered to me at a party). The only one who noticed the minimal results was me.

And then there was the summer I decided I would stop waddling through life by eating once every 48 hours. The up side to this was that — when I wasn’t fasting — I could enjoy pancakes, cheeseburgers and enchiladas. I had lost 20 lbs. by the time someone let me know this was the same eating disorder that took down Karen Carpenter.

My next strategy was to return to eating regularly but experiment with how many calories I could cut from each meal. I would show up to meet friends with a small tote bag in tow, the contents of which would change depending on the meal. For brunch, I’d produce a bottle of sugar-free syrup and a container of I Can’t Believe It’s not Butter.

“Zero calories and zero fat,”I’d announce as I revealed the latter as if I’d just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

“If it doesn’t have fat and it doesn’t have calories, what the Hell is in it?” my ex once asked.“Plastic?”

When baked tortilla chips hit the market, I began sneaking them into Mexican eateries where I’d ask for a basket so that I could surreptitiously enjoy my chips with their salsa.

I also sought substitutions with abandon, investigating

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menus in search of ingredients that would pack the most flavor while inflicting the smallest penalty to my waistline.

When eating Vietnamese my Pho would be faux — made with extra veggies; no noodles. When dining Italian, I asked for a three quarters sauce to pasta ratio. I made a thorough inventory of local Indian places — uncovering every dish made with low-calorie yogurt (yes, please) as opposed to high-calorie cream (how dare you).

As my marriage began to crumble beneath me, I resolved to boost my confidence by getting into the best shape of my life. You could find me on an elliptical machine twice a day for an hour at a time, meeting with a personal trainer every other day and lifting solo twice a week. I partook in steroids.

I lost 30 pounds of fat, and proudly altered my wardrobe for my newly hunked up frame.

I liked what I saw in the mirror for the first time in decades.

Unfortunately, my then-husband did not see it quite the same way. In his eyes, my menu manipulations had gone from cute to insufferable, and my dedication to exercise reeked of vanity.

When our marriage dissolved I moved across the country and left my obsessively healthy habits behind. My workouts became erratic, my eating unpredictable. Soon, my old pals the love handles were back.

But this time — as my life started to stabilize — I realized that I was not going to do whatever it took to transform my body yet again. Yes, I would learn to watch what I eat and work out to the degree it would take to stay healthy, but I would no longer spend hours every day trying to figure out some way to hack my diet or squeeze in a few more minutes of exercise in pursuit of a goal which my metabolism was too stubborn to follow.

Instead, I went out and found a group of people within the gay community — many of whom identify as “bears” — who believe in celebrating the male body as it so often comes: with just a little extra on the side. It may not stop me from occasionally looking in the mirror and being critical of my “husky stomach,”but never underestimate the power of seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who likes you just the way you are.

■

WHAT HAVE YOU SACRIFICED IN PURSUIT OF A BETTER BODY? SHARE YOUR STORY IN “GAY VOICES” ON METROSOURCE.COM.

CRAVING RED MEAT? TREAT YOURSELF WITH THIS BOURBON MARINATED WAGYU STRIP STEAK. WHEN IT COMES TO BEEF, THIS CUT

is a healthier choice because it has little marbling than most other steaks — making it a better balance of protein and fat with more Omega 3 and less Omega 6. This is the kind of ratio which purportedly lowers “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and increases “good” cholesterol (HDL) and leads to lower triglyceride levels in the blood —improving your overall heart health. Add the garlic shallot jam for an added burst of flavor that is nutritous and offers potent medicinal properties — many cultures depend on garlic to combat illnesses as pervasive as the common cold. Serves four.

INGREDIENTS Marinade 3 tbsp bourbon 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp Dijon mustard 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 2 tbsp drained capers 2 sprigs rosemary finely chopped 2 garlic cloves chopped freshly ground black pepper Steak 2 sprigs rosemary 16 ounces boneless NY sirloin strip Shallot Garlic Jam 3 large shallots, peeled and chopped 3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 1/4 cup heavy cream 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper 1/4 cup dry sherry squeeze of 1/2 a lemon

HEALTH

BY GAYLE VAN WELY

BODY

LEAN FORWARD MARINADE

1.Combine marinade ingredients and blend in an immersion blender.

2. Place steak in a shallow dish and rub marinade all over, coating it well.

3. Allow to marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes. (The steak can be marinated for up to 24 hours. Just be sure to cover and refrigerate it while marinating.)

STEAK 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and heat olive oil in a a cast iron skillet over medium high.

2. Grill steak for three minutes per side, then add rosemary and one tbsp butter and finish in oven for four minutes. For medium-rare, cook until a meat thermometer inserted in the center of the steak reads 130˚ F, then remove to a cutting board to rest for 10 to 15 minutes.

4. Slice thinly against the grain and serve.

JAM 1. Heat olive oil in a saucepan and heat onions and garlic on low for five minutes 2. Add sherry, raise heat to medium and add heavy cream. Cook for five minutes.

3. Remove from heat and puree with a blender.

PLATING 1. Smear the the garlic jam down the center of the plate.

2. Horizontally place 4 strips of asparagus in the center of the jam.

3. Diagonally lay two to three slices of steak on the asparagus, garnish with sea beans, (samphire) and purple radish microgreens. Serve gastrique tableside.

FIND THE WORCESTCHIRE GASTRIQUE & ASPARAGUS RECIPE ON METROSOURCE.COM. METROSOURCE.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017

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ADVENTURES IN AESTHETICS If you’ve considered freeze framing those facial laugh lines or trimming a little off the torso, we’ve got the information to get you properly prepped. BY JEFFREY JAMES KEYES

BOTOX FOR BEGINNERS CURIOUS ABOUT BOTOX? LET’S GET INTO IT. LINDA EVANGEL-

BODY

HEALTH

ista was one of the first celebrities to admit to getting botox injections. She told Harper’s Bazaar her mother was upset about it. “I said, ‘Mom everybody does it,’ and she was like, ‘Yeah but they don’t say it.’ So if I was the first one to tell the truth about using it then, why would I lie about it now?” Botox might seem as if it’s something that started a decade or two ago, but it was actually discovered

by German scientist Dr. Justinus Kerner back in the 1820s.

Kerner was studying food poisoning, specifically a bad batch of blood sausages that killed a dozen people, and he injected himself with a sample from the spoiled food — which he called “wurstgift” — inadvertently giving himself the gift of a booster of botulism. Dr. Emile Pierre van Ermengem built on Kerner’s studies in the 1890s. Then during World War II, the United States dug deeper into researching the botulinum toxin. After the war, researchers isolated some of the benefits of the toxin and by the late ‘70s the FDA approved Dr. Alan B. Scott to inject botulinum toxin into humans. Initially used to treat eye spasms, crossed eyes, cerebral palsy and even extreme sweating, botox spread by 1997 like wildfire over the country (even leading to a short-term “botox drought”).

Today, this cosmetic procedure is more common than ever. During a botox procedure (roughly a half hour) a doctor will use a very thin needle to inject botulinum toxin into the muscles or skin. Botox injections range from 50 to 100 or 200 units of clostridium botulinum Type A. This injection essentially gets in the way of the brain communicating to the muscle to contract, blocking the uptake of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine by the face muscle. Headaches after botox injections are common, as is a slight “I can’t move my face” sensation (or tightness).

Some patients experience slight bruising or swelling in the area of the injection, and it can take three days to a week to see results regardless of whether you’re having botox injected for frown lines, crow’s feet or forehead lines. Injections generally last from three to six months, or whenever the body’s natural enzymes break down the botox toxins and the muscle movement returns.

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TIME FOR LIPO? YOU CAN HIT THE ELLIPTICAL EVERY DAY, GET PLENTY OF REST, EAT MORE MIND-

fully than Madonna and still not lose that stubborn belly fat. Want to get rid of it anyway? Liposuction, a cosmetic surgery that removes fat from the body, may seem like a last resort for combating chunky curves, but it’s actually more common than you might think. In fact, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) reports that Americans spent over $15 billion dollars on combined surgical and nonsurgical aesthetic procedures last year — with liposuction topping the charts as the most common surgical procedure (accounting for 414,335 procedures in 2016) followed by breast augmentation, tummy tucks, eyelid surgeries and breast lifts. Ideal lipo candidates should be close to or right about at their healthy weight but in need of body contouring.

Though the first studies of pulling fat from the body were conducted in the 1920s by French surgeon Charles Dujarier, Italian gynecologist Giorgio Fischer invented the initial form of liposuction in 1974. French physicians Yves-Gerard Illouz and Pierre Fournier continued Fischer’s work, and liposuction became extremely popular in the 1980s. But gone are the days of intense bleeding and post-surgical skin rippling, thanks to the liposuction procedure being further advanced in the mid 1980s by Dr. Jeffrey A. Klein. In 1992 Italian Professor Michele Zocchi introduced Ultrasonic Assisted Lipoplasty (UAL) as a method of applying ultrasonic energy to fat cells to rupture and liquify them before suctioning. Tumescent liposuction (the most common technique) involves an injection of a sterile solution to prompt the area to swell up. The surgeon then will make small incisions into the skin and insert a cannula tube under the skin order to suction fat and fluids from the body. Laser-assisted liposuction (LAL) also utilizes laser light to liquify fat Before the liposuction treatment takes place, the surgeon will likely take pictures of and mark specific areas on the body to visually indicate the areas to be treated. During the procedure your skin will be cleaned and then your body will need to be numbed. Certain procedures only require local anesthesia, whereas other procedures require general anesthesia and a stronger sedative. Liposuction procedures can take a few hours and the incisions might need to stay open temporarily to allow

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 METROSOURCE NY

HITTING HELSINKI A DESIGNER CAPITAL

FINAL EPISODES

POWER SPLURGE LIVE LARGER

BEHIND-THESCENES GOODBYE

TORCH SONG FIRING UP THE REVIVAL

JOHNNY SKANDROS HOOKS YOU UP

necessary fluid drainage. After the surgery there will be some discomfort, bruising and swelling. Patients wear a compression garments for two to four weeks, but can return to work anywhere from two days to two weeks depending on the individual. Typically liposuction procedures will remove up to 10 pounds of fat from a specific area. But if you are ready to get rid of that flabby fat, lose those love handles, or get rid of some extra junk in your trunk, schedule an introductory consultation with a plastic surgeon to see if you are a good candidate for the procedure.

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EXAMINING SEROCONVERSION TO PREVENT INFECTION

BODY

METROHIV

In an era when we know so much more about preventing the spread of HIV, researchers strive to figure out why it still keeps spreading. BY JEFF SIMMONS

OVER THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS, TWO PROFESSORS AT HUNTER Col-

lege in New York City will be recruiting 8,000 sexually active, HIV-negative gay and bisexual men online from across the United States (including Puerto Rico). You may notice their pitches and pop-up ads sprinkled across social media platforms and websites.

The goal will be to identify the predictors of HIV seroconversion in a vulnerable population: MSMs — men who have sex with men.

“We want all recruitment efforts to be focused online because that way we know the entire sample has access in common, and that commonality ensures they will be able to participate in the project,” says Dr. Jeffrey T. Parsons, Distinguished Professor and Director at Hunter’s Center for HIV/ AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST).

Funded by a $2.9 million grant from the National Institute on Allergies and Infectious Diseases and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the study is called UNITE, which stands for Understanding New Infections Through Targeted Epidemiology. The

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study will track why certain populations — young MSMs and MSMs of color — continue to show increasing HIV rates.

Parsons, who is leading the research with Dr. Jonathon Rendina, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of Quantitative Methods at CHEST, says surveying participants from a distance rather than face-to-face will help to prevent behavior that influences the results.

The study will target men in both urban and rural areas with a higher HIV-positive population. As they determine which applicants are eligible to participate based on initial survey responses, researchers will forward candidates an HIV testing kit and further surveys designed to examine experiences on a variety of topics, including stress, discrimination, depression and substance abuse.

“One of the most challenging things will be to continue to retain them for the one year follow-up,” Parsons cautions.

At that point, researchers will deliver a second HIV testing kit and evaluate the results.

However if past is prologue, most participants will remain responsive. Their two previous surveys of 1,000 men across the country held 90% retention rates. “We’re hoping to do better than that,” he says, adding that a driving factor in continued engagement is that when you survey gay men about HIV and sexual health issues, they tend to be genuinely interested in what other people are saying and doing.

The data will provide a portrait of predictors that are important to understanding who seroconverts and who doesn’t.

In the past, the researchers acknowledge, study groups were not large enough to pin down what factors have been driving the epidemic.“By doing a project this large, on this scale with this many people, we will have a better opportunity to narrow down some of the predictors that are resulting in men acquiring HIV,” Parsons says.

After the first phase determines the factors most likely associated with seroconversion, researchers will begin a second phase aimed at identifying who is at highest risk, and tracking those individuals for another two years.

“As a member of the community and having done this work for 20 years, this is my passion,” Parsons says in summary.“For me it’s about trying to make a difference, trying to use my skills and abilities as a psychologist to have an impact on the epidemic.”

■ Learn more about UNITE and other research at chestnyc.org.

WHO SHOULD GET TESTED FOR HIV? EVERYONE.

See how often testing is recommended.

Visit HelpStopTheVirus.com © 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. UNBC1858 03/15

LIKE ROCKWELL BUT GAY

(above) Savoy poses with his work. (at right and below) Original Leyendeckers exhibit the artist’s deft appreciation for masculine beauty.

UNTIL TWO YEARS AGO, BILL SAVOY WAS CONTENT TO WORK ON BROAD-

way, quietly painting backdrops for such musicals as Hamilton, Hello, Dolly! and The Lion King.

That’s when the producers of a 2013 heist movie starring John Travolta titled The Forger called. According to Savoy, “they wanted to know, ‘Could you paint a copy of Monet’s ‘Woman With A Parasol’ in various stages of completion?’” Savoy said he could, and went on to create close to two dozen paintings used to depict Travolta’s character scheming to pay a debt by stealing Monet’s original and replacing it.

The movie came and went, but the idea would not let Savoy go — especially when he realized he could forge nearly anything so long as

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he didn’t claim it was an original when he was finished.

Almost instinctively, Savoy turned to an illustrator who’s work has been obscured by the passage of time: J.C. Leyendecker. Roughly a century ago, Leyendecker was one of the most sought-after artists of his time, creating a variety of indelible images for popular magazines and products. And his work remains some of the most homoerotic ever to reach a mainstream American audience.

“They’re just incredibly sexy images,” Savoy says, gesturing at the wall of a bar in the West Village where his Leyendecker copies and a few original pieces share the space.

“Imagine how Grey Gardens the atmosphere must have been at their home in upstate New York, with Frank and Joe painting, and their sister living with them; having a laugh at just how gay some of these paintings were.”

Using Charles Beach (long reputed to be Joe’s lover) as his model, Leyendecker crafted the first superstar of the advertising world in “the Arrow Collar Man,” a dashing, gorgeous figure sporting Arrow’s famously detachable collars. In addition, Leyendecker befriended a young devotee named Norman Rockwell.

While the work of both Leyendecker brothers celebrated the male form, Joe was by far the more commercially successful — perhaps because his images depict men and women of refinement and privilege at the zenith of their wealth and beauty. Leyendecker’s men were sex objects without being blatantly sexual, and his women were as beautifully rendered as the men on their arms. He is also responsible for creating the image of Santa as a jolly fat man in a white fur-trimmed red suit and the cherbic New Year’s baby. He’s even credited with the idea of presenting flowers to mothers on Mother’s Day. “His work has a very subtle wit about it,” says Savoy. “ You can examine these images and see that he’s having fun in so many ways; with our ideas of masculinity and femininity, with what looks elegant and what looks rugged.” But as photography took over more magazine landscape, Leyendecker’s style fell from fashion — not to be popularized again until Norman Rockwell hit his stride in the 1960s (with a style largely inspired by Leyendecker). Because Leyendecker’s originals were sold to keep the New Rochelle household running, no comprehensive collection of his work existed for decades.“Then about 10 years ago, a book came out [J.C. Leyendecker, Harry N. Abrams] ...

You see so much of what Rockwell got from him. So much style and grace. And of course every five pages, there’s some incredible hunk looking from the book back at you. It takes your breath away.”

■

BILL SAVOY PHOTO COURTESY OF SANDY KAUFMAN ° LEYENDECKER ORIGINALS COURTESY NATIONAL MUSUM OF AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION

CULTURE

ARTSCOPE

Bill Savoy spreads the gospel of J.C. Leyendecker, under-appreciated genius and mentor to Norman Rockwell. BY KEVIN PHINNEY

GREEK ODYSSEYS Great reasons to visit Greece right now — from marvelous museums to ravishing ruins to idyllic island paradises. BY MADISON GULBIN GREECE IS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ANCIENT CULTURES STILL

thriving today — the birthplace of democracy, a trailblazer in science and art. Though you can find little pieces of its history strewn around the world, nothing compares to seeing Athens and standing in awe at the Acropolis, but don’t stop there.

There’s much to see all over the country. We’ve outlined some not-to-be-missed itinerary items for those planning to visit Greece in the coming months, but a host of attractions are also available off the beaten path — in every beautiful shop, every conversation with a local, every mouth-watering meal, and every opportunity to take a picture of something beautiful that existed long before cameras were invented.

THIS PAGE: PHOTOS BY MADISON GULBIN

AN EPIC EXHIBITION This year, to celebrate its 150th anniversary, Greece’s National Archaeological Museum (namuseum.gr) will host a groundbreaking exhibit called Odysseys. Loosely based on Homer’s ancient epic, Odysseys aims to take visitors on a unique journey through human existence. Historical elements are combined with pieces of timeless poetry about how man became modern in small increments. But if you don’t want to miss it, you’ll need to book passage fast; this one-of-a-kind exhibition is slated to close in October of 2017.

KNOW THE FEELING A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700BC–200AD is a popular exhibit that gathers 129 pieces from all over the world (includ-

ing august institutions such as the Louvre, the Vatican and the British Museum) to explore the inner lives of people in times of antiquity. Now the show is heading to its namesake, where it will appear at the Acropolis Museum (theacropolismuseum.gr/en) through November 2017. The exhibit is a remarkable chronicle of how emotion has been recorded and represented through history in ways both familiar and unknown to modern auiences.

TRAVEL

Mykonos

CULTURE

Santorini

A TEMPLE TRIP While Greece offers an abundance of captivating ancient architecture, the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion must be on your checklist. It’s an easy day trip from Athens, and its beautiful ruins — which date back to the fifth century BC — are situated on a hill overlooking the ocean and are especially beautiful at sunrise and sunset. One can easily imagine our ancient ancestors gathering here to offer their praises to the god of the sea.

ONCE ON THESE ISLANDS The island destinations of Mykonos and Santorini are very popular with LGBT travelers. Mykonos has been considered a gay resort destination since Jackie O. made it chic back in the ‘70s, and today, much of the island’s nightlife and accomodations specifically cater to the gay community. South of Mykonos, Santorini is a less traditionally gay (but still gay friendly) island destination known for its sun-soaked seaside views and its own active volcano. For more information on these and other reasons to visit Greece, see visitgreece.gr.

■ METROSOURCE.COM

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Twilight falls over South Harbor in Helsinki

SLEEK AND SLINKY HELSINKI IT’S POSSIBLE THAT THE SINGLE MOST INDULGENT COURSE I’VE ever eaten was on a tasting menu at a restaurant in

Helsinki; that says a great deal about what you can expect from the EU’s northernmost capital.

My preconceptions about Helsinki have always been subconsciously fueled by Tom of Finland, the Finnish artist whose tributes to homoerotic sexuality have fueled fantasies for decades. Originally employed in the Helsinki office of international advertising firm McCann-Erickson, the artist (who was born Touko Laaksonen, 1920-1991) evinced a sex-positive sensibility interwoven with a military masculinity left over from his service in the Finnish army during World War II. Given Tom of Finland’s global appeal, it’s not surprising that Finland’s postal service sells Tom of Finland postage stamps and that his May 8th birthday is widely celebrated throughout the country. In Helsinki, boutiques and department stores celebrate “Tom of Finland Day” with

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window displays of hand towels featuring his Seaman, aprons featuring his Fellows, and truly erotic bed linens.

In the same way they take pride in Tom, Helsinki wears its design savvy with a confident insouciance.

Imagine a kind of Scandanavian Twin Peaks where Nordic sensibility mixes with Slavic exoticism. Designated a European Capital of Culture in 2000 and a World Design Capital in 2012, Helsinki prides itself on freedom and style. As Päivi Balomenos, PR Director of Design Museum (designmuseum.fi/en) says, “Democracy and design have always walked hand in hand in Finland.”

The Design Museum’s exhibition Utopia Now illuminated the central role of design in the development of the Finnish Republic, which has been celebrating its centenary throughout 2017. Founded in 1550, Helsinki has been Finland’s capital since 1917 when the nation became independent following the Russian revolution.

Balomenos pointed out a dress worn by Jacqueline

THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF VISITHELSINKI.FI/EN

Somewhere near the top of the world waits a city devoted to design and democracy, saunas and foodstuffs, and our favorite erotic illustrator. BY MARK A. THOMPSON

THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF VISITHELSINKI.FI/EN AND MARK A THOMPSON

Hotel Lilla Roberts

Kennedy in 1960 on the cover of Sports Illustrated from Finnish design force Marimekko. According to Balomenos, Jackie purchased the dress to assuage mounting criticism about the costs of her haute couture, thereby sanctioning Finnish design as indulgent enough for a glamorous First Lady while also highlighting its affordability.

Certainly the First Lady would have appreciated the way Finnair (finnair.com) incorporates Marimekko into their textiles and tableware —not to mention that the airline’s lounges showcase local designers and design firms such as Arabia, Iittala, Marimekko, Alvar Aalto, Eero Aarnio, Eero Saarinen and Yrjö Kukkapuro.

Impressive Finnish design is also on display in the illustrious dining room of the Savoy (ravintolasavoy.fi/en). Opened in 1937

by Finnish designer Alvar Aalto in cooperation with textile artist Dora Jung and the newly-established Artek, the historic restaurant atop the Industrial Palace remains a paragon of perfect proportions.

Birch veneers and club chairs are complemented by sleek lighting fixtures and such design details as the Savoy’s signature vases.

Overlooking the esplanade, the Savoy’s eighth-floor dining balcony offers a bird’s eye view of Helsinki and its beautiful cathedral. With the setting sun, the maritime city is suffused with a lambent glow. Few perspectives are more romantic.

The restaurant’s dinner menu is a celebration of Savoy classics from its previous eight decades, with a focus on seasonal dishes that are plated with an elegance befitting its environment.

In keeping with Finland’s democratic ethos, Helsinki hosts Restaurant Day (restaurantday.org/en) four times a year during which pop-up restaurants burst into bloom throughout the city. Since the first Restaurant Day in 2011, nearly 40,000 restaurateurs have served a million customers and the celebration has become the world’s largest food festival.

With all that going on, perhaps it’s no surprise to learn that Finland is the most caffeinated nation on earth with an annual per capita consumption of 26 pounds of coffee. What do they do with all that energy? Apparently, they walk and they forage. Fortunately they’ve got plenty of room. Helsinki is one of the greenest cities in the world with more than 60 miles of shoreline and over 300 islands. A third of Helsinki’s area consists of parks and green areas.

Krog Roba

Helsinki Sauna Day

“Since the first Restaurant Day in 2011, nearly 40,000 restaurateurs have served a million customers and the celebration has become the world’s largest food festival.”

Pike perch and cucumber at Olo

Malt Cracker and Evergreens at Olo

Gin-soaked rhubarb at Nokka

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Wood-heated sauna in Bock’s

Gloaming along Pohjoisesplanadi Main dining room at the Savoy

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Finland’s forests are a smorgasbord of superfoods: blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, and chanterelles abound alongside wild herbs and root vegetables, all of which are cherished by the staffs of Helsinki’s four Michelin-starred restaurants.

Under Chef Jari Vesivalo, dinner at Olo (olo-ravintola.fi/en) becomes a three-hour gustatory adventure. A tasting menu might include rainbow trout from Kotka, emmer semolina from Malmgård, pike perch from Porvoo, cod from the Barents Sea, and birch, spruce, and pine from Kuivalahti — providing a gastronomic safari through the indigenous bounty of Finland. For Vesivalo and his staff, who plate produce in ways that preserve its purity, the kitchen at Olo serves as a conduit for Finnish nature. Amidst a tangle of evergreen boughs and pine cones rests a malt cracker spread with a dollop of infused butter and sprinkled with spruce salt. Bambi never ate so well. The emmer semolina porridge (the “most indulgent course” mentioned earlier) is whipped with cream and conceals a pool of chanterelle consommé; the semolina is speckled with puffed quinoa and malt.

Rich and creamy and delicious with hints of umami, this porridge exemplifies the various concepts of Nordic hygge (roughly translated as “coziness”) served in a single bowl. By meal’s end, this Michelinstarred waterfront restaurant feels like home.

Given Finland’s specific logitude and latitude, its gastronomic culture is influenced by both East and West, a fact that holds true for Finnish design as well. The restraint and simplicity of Scandinavia is often complemented by vibrant color and a walk through Design District Helsinki (designdistrict.fi/en) reveals the innovative breadth of Finnish design. A neighborhood of 25 streets and more than 200 curated boutiques and showrooms, this dedicated area serves as a hub for artists as well as a state of mind for Helsinki’s creative class. As the district’s executive director Minna Särelä has said, the neighborhood provides a brilliant canvas to witness “the bravery and creativity of Helsinki’s designers.”

Housed in an Art Nouveau building from 1909, Hotel Lilla Roberts (lillaroberts.com/en)opened in 2015 on a charming side street

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Helsinki in Autumn

Löyly Sauna Interior (above) and Exterior (right)

where its corner restaurant Krog Roba and lobby bar “Lilla e.” serve as the unofficial commissary for denizens of the Design District. A member of SLH (Small Leading Hotels of the World), the 130-room design hotel is a part of the Kämp Collection, which also operates Hotel Haven (hotelhaven.fi/en) a few blocks away. The stylish rooms at Lilla Roberts are marked by dramatic Art Deco furnishings in black velvet and velour with leather and chrome accents. Walk-in rain forest showers are large enough for two, as is the case at Hotel Haven where the luxurious rooms are furnished in tones of aubergine and gunmetal with dark wood accents. If Lilla Roberts is for one’s inner movie starlet, Hotel Haven is for its ever-elegant older sister.

Breakfast at Hotel Haven is served in a stunning enfilade in the historic Sundman House, which overlooks Old Market Hall and the Helsinki waterfront. As the sun rises, the waterfront comes alive with locals who frequent the historic market hall, which has been serving customers since 1889. The restaurant Story’s salmon soup evokes ancient narratives of Finnish fishermen.

Equally delicious, the Design District’s Grön (restaurantgron. com) seats about 20 lucky patrons in a small dining room that opens into the kitchen where the amiable staff work the tight quarters as smoothly as a choreographed corps.

The four-course, plant-based “Grön Menu” is based on seasonal Scandinavian produce supplied by foragers, fishermen and “forest men” whose nettles, beetroots, mushrooms, berries and fresh catches are rendered with delicacy into stunning starters and mains.

Biodynamic wines are perfectly paired by a knowledgeable sommelie, and the overall atmosphere is akin to eating in the kitchen of a dear friend who happens to be an exemplary chef.

One of the most frequently cited statistics about Finland is that there are 3.3 million saunas in a land of 5.4 million people — which works out to about one sauna for every two Finns. In recent years, the nation has seen a resurgence in public saunas to foster a sense of community — without body shame.

Situated on a peninsula along the Helsinki seashore, Löyly (named for the steam that rises from hot rocks doused with water) is less than a mile from the city center and yet the coastal atmosphere

is akin to being in Helsinki’s outer archipelago. What was once an industrial area is now a toney residential neighborhood with a stunning architectural statement at water’s edge.

With two wood-heated saunas and a smoke sauna, Löyly offers breathtaking panoramic views over the sea from within the public saunas and its convivial restaurant and bar. An expansive wooden terrace built over the water brings the sound of the waves to your table. Should the weather prove inclement, both the sauna and the restaurant are heated with massive fireplaces. For those with the DNA of polar bears, there’s also a hole in the ice for winter swimming.

Throughout its yearlong centenary celebrations, Finland has focused on equality and democracy, which was made manifest for numerous LGBTQ couples when same-sex marriage took effect here in March 2017. For those seeking a taste of Tom of Finland’s world, the exhibition Helsexinki transforms the fourth floor of Helsinki City Museum (helsinginkaupunginmuseo.fi/en) into a red light district — complete with a comfort stop well known amongst gays as a trysting spot. Throughout the exhibition, visitors learn how the city’s landscape hosted public sex throughout the decades.

At the National Museum of Finland (kansallismuseo.fi/en), I spotted a vintage poster depicting a lady sipping champagne on a terrace in the city center with a Helsinki tram in the background. The inherent glamour of that scene is replicated at Nokka (ravintolanokka. fi/en), the harborfront restaurant that opens out onto the Baltic Sea. Voted Best Helsinki Restaurant numerous times, Nokka works with a curated collection of small producers and purveyors located throughout Lapland and Finland. Should you wish to picnic with champagne along the water, Nokka makes gift bags of produce and handmade products available at its restaurant’s café and shop. Sip along the Baltic and toast, ‘Hell Yeah to Helsinki’ — a cosmopolitan wonderland at the top of the world.

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“One frequently cited statistic is that there are 3.3 million saunas in a land of 5.4 million people, which works out to about one sauna for every two Finns.”

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PASSING THE TORCH

Michael Urie, Moisés Kaufman, Merecedes Ruehl

EMMY AND TONY-NOMINATED DIRECTOR AND PLAYWRIGHT MOISÉS

Kaufman — famous for creating such incandescent theater as The Laramie Project, I Am My Own Wife and Gross Indecency — is directing Harvey Fierstein’s iconic Torch Song (starring Mercedes Ruehl and Michael Urie) at New York City’s 2nd Stage Theatre this fall. The play transports audiences back to 1979 New York City, where Arnold Beckoff (Urie) is on a quest for love, purpose and family; he’s “fierce in drag and fearless in crisis and won’t stop until he achieves the life he desires.” Kaufman spoke with us about setting Torch ablaze again.

METROSOURCE: In terms of revisiting Torch Song, what drew you to the play?

MOISÉS KAUFMAN: It’s a masterful piece of work — it still resonates, and I cannot wait to share it with today’s audience. I first saw it when I was 17, and it played a huge role in my life. It connected me to characters that I never knew existed. Coming from an orthodox Jewish home in Venezuela, I had no role models, and so seeing four completely different gay men in the play made me understand my life was possible. So I was thrilled to revisit this play and begin to consider its relevance to an audience in 2017.

The show is now 35 years old. Why revive it now?

This is a play about a man who imagined a life for himself and then went about creating it — at a time when that which he was imagining was considered by everyone to be impossible: He wanted to be out in every aspect of his life; he wanted to have a lover and to marry a man and he wanted to adopt a son. It would take the rest of us over 30 years to imagine and achieve everything Arnold does in the play.

In a way, Harvey chronicled the next 30 years of the movement before they happened.

I think our ability as members of this community to imagine our own lives and then build them is as relevant today as it was then, but we’re also at a unique time in our culture where the very idea of identity is being questioned and even challenged. How do we fit in? What roles do we all play in this global community? And how do we navigate and overcome the inevitable backlash that our recent progress has devolved into?

Is there a message you hope people will take away from this production?

In as much as an act of imagining and creating your own life can be an act of hope, yes.

I’ve heard you’re working from a newly edited text. How involved were you with the edits?

Harvey did a beautiful job in revisiting the script. It’s the same story, with some trimming.

How will those who loved the original react to this new version?

Devoted fans of Torch Song will not be disappointed.

President Barack Obama presented you with a National Medal of Arts at the White House a few years ago. Did you know you were being considered for the distinction before you were notified, and can you share a little about finding out you were to receive this honor?

I had no idea it was happening. I was told that I should expect a call from [National Endowment for the Arts Chairperson] Jane Chu, but I didn’t know what it was about, so it did come as a surprise.

The experience of receiving the medal was impossible to explain. I was overwhelmed. I admired and respected President Obama a great deal, and he did so much for our community, so it meant a lot to get it from him. Had it happened this year and had I been asked to receive it from our current president, I would have declined it.

The Tectonic Theater Project, which you co-founded, recently celebrated its 25th anniversary; how do you feel the company has grown over the years?

Most companies don’t survive their own successes. I am deeply proud that Tectonic continues to thrive today with more shows in development and a more robust education department than ever before. I still can’t believe it’s been 25 years! We are still today a laboratory for new work and we are still obsessed with exploring the potential of the stage. Tectonic has been my life’s work so far and it will continue to be as long as I am able to work — which I hope is another 50 years.

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KAUFMAN DISCUSSES THE EXCITING NEW PROJECTS AHEAD FOR HIM AND TECTONIC AS THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES — ONLY ON THE FREE METROSOURCE APP AND AT METROSOURCE.COM.

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VIEWS

LAST CALL

We talk to Moisés Kaufman, deft examiner of LGBT life through theater, as he brings a landmark play by Harvey Fierstein back to the stage. BY JEFFREY JAMES KEYES

LAST CALL EXTRA

Michael Urie is Arnold in Torch Song

PHOTO COURTESY POLK PR

As our conversation continues, Moisés Kaufman discusses coming out, the overall themes of his work and his hopes for the future. BY JEFFREY JAMES KEYES Can you share a little about how you are approaching the story of Torch Song?

For me it’s about one individual’s ability to imagine his future against all odds, and then making it happen.

It is, in part, because of the countless members of our community that imagined their future, that we are here today. And this production is also about us today revisiting this play — this artistic artifact — that not only touched so many of us, but in a way helped us visualize what was possible. And of course we’ll embrace Harvey’s humor as well as the enormous heart the show has.

When did you come out of the closet and what was the experience like for you when you did?

I came out to some friends and close family members when I was in my early twenties. And, for the most part, it went ok. And then The New York Times outed me (with my permission — after writing Gross Indecency), and so that took care of the rest.

What stands out in your memory about the day you received the National Medal of the Arts?

I obsessed about what I wanted to say to [President Obama] in the three seconds we would be standing together. But I had been invited to the White House once before for the signing of the Matthew Shepard/ James Byrd Hate Crime protection act — the hate crime legislation that finally included gender identity and sexual orientation. So I thanked him again

(clockwise from top left) Jack DiFalco is David, Michael Rosen is Alan, Ward Horton is Ed, and Roxanna Hope Radja is Laurel in Torch Song.

for signing it, and told him what great impact that legislation was having around the country.

How do you choose which projects to work on with Tectonic? How are they similar to or different from each other?

That’s a really difficult question, and there’s no straightforward answer. Most of our work begins with a question — when I wrote 33 Variations, it began with a question about the creative act. On the other hand The Tallest Tree in the Forest was about the legendary Paul Robeson. So it varies. Right now I’m working on two new plays: one tackles the experience of long term survivors of the AIDS epidemic, and the other is about a historical artifact newly discovered by a Washington museum. So they are as diverse as can be. I try not to spend too much time trying to figure out why I’m attracted to a certain idea. Writing the play is answer enough.

Do you feel you might be searching for any specific answers in your work?

I’m searching for what makes us human. I want audiences to feel a radical empathy for the people they are meeting on stage and off.

Many of your projects have strong socio-political messages. Can theater can affect social change?

You don’t have to look very far to find plays that have

changed the world. Even in recent history - think about the global impact of Hamilton and the way it has changed our view of history. Or the political relevance of Eclipsed, which exposed the horrifying plight of women in war torn Liberia. For Tectonic, we’ve never start out with a political agenda in our work, but for us, the very nature of theater is political. And as artists living in these perilous times, our work invariably reflects that.

What is next for you and Tectonic?

We have about 6 shows in development at the moment.

I am particularly proud of our fall production of Uncommon Sense, by our company members Anushka Paris-Carter and Andy Paris and directed by Andy. It’s about four people on the autism spectrum and it’s a stunning production.

As we head toward the end of 2017, do you have any hopes for us this fall and winter?

I hope that theaters around the country will serve as our meeting place in these very difficult, scary times.

And I hope that the theater will lead the way for coming together, and resisting.

■ LEARN HOW YOU CAN SEE THE NEW PRODUCTION OF TORCH SONG BY VISITING 2ST.COM.

PHOTOS COURTESY POLK PR

TK

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