Table of contents for April - May 2020 in OUT

I’M WRITING THIS FROM my home office in Idaho, where snow-capped mountain ranges are the view from my new office window (so unlike our Los Angeles office). I’ve got two dogs at my feet and one on my lap, a cat trying to cover the keyboard, and a Slack alert pops up from my team about every 30 seconds or so. Even still, I was at one of the country’s hottest nightclubs last night, my first time dancing in a long time. But don’t fret, I’m still social distancing—a lot. You see I was at Club Quarantine (or Club Q for those in the know), an underground LGBTQ+ nightclub that happens every night on the Zoom app. (I was able to make my normal bedtime too, because on Saturdays the…

PEACHTINI Barnsley Resort/Adairsville, GA Shake things up with a perfectly balanced mix of sweet and spicy citrus and sugar. Ingredients • 1 ½ ounces vodka• ½ ounce Combier Orange Liqueur• ¼ ounce Fresh Lime Juice• ½ ounce orange juice• ½ ounces peach purée• grenadine• peach slice Directions Add vodka, orange liquor, lime juice, orange juice, and peach puree to shaker with ice. Shake ingredients well and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a peach slice and drizzle of grenadine. ARUBA MULE Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino/Palm Beach, Aruba Sip the refreshing flavors of the ‘One Happy Island’ with an aloe-inspired concoction mixed with ginger beer, mint and fresh lemon. Ingredients • 1 ½ ounces vodka• 2 ounces aloe vera juice• ¼ ounce fresh lemon juice• ¼ ounce simple…

GROWING UP IN MILAN, Mich., our model Evan James Betts planned to be an athlete. However, these days the 31-year-old has become one of New York City’s hottest fitness models and trainers. Some of you might recognize him as the ambassador of Fiji Water, or through his vast work as a contributor to magazines like Men’s Fitness and Cosmopolitan. The sky is the limit with this one, but of course that’s no accident. As a young student, Betts developed a “go get it” attitude pretty quickly when he was forced to make ends meet. “My dad was a very hard worker, but he lost his job while I was in college and our family came on tough times,” Betts opens up. “I didn’t think I was going to be able…

D.J. Pierce is known by a few different names. The actor, producer, and dynamic stage performer was born Darius Jeremy Pierce and created the famous drag persona Shangela Laquifa Wadley—known simply as Shangela to most of the world—after competing on three separate seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race (tying with a fellow fan-favorite, Latrice Royale, for most appearances on the show). Indeed, Pierce is one of the most popular, respected, and successful queens to come out of the Emmy-winning series. If you’re queer and have never heard Shangela’s famous catchphrase, “Halleloo!” it’s quite possible you may be living under a rock. With more personality packed into his lithe 5’6” frame than law should allow, the 38-year-old from Paris, Texas, is proving he’s more than just a pretty face. Alongside Brandon Voss…

Raised on California’s Fort Mojave Indian Reservation, Natalie Diaz spent four years playing pro basketball in Europe and Asia before finishing her MFA, then promptly set the poetry world on fire in 2012 with When My Brother Was an Aztec, her debut collection. Since then, Diaz has racked up both an endowed professorship at Arizona State University and a MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called genius grant), and the accolades will surely continue with the release of her sophomore effort. Postcolonial Love Poem is a densely layered meditation on “our many bodies of flesh, language, land, and water.” In it, Diaz reintroduces us to her brother, the high school basketball star broken by meth addiction—but the book’s purview extends well beyond the struggles of family. American history is a tale of the…

THE FIRST TIME I moved back to New York City (that time from Miami) on a snowy Halloween day in 1993, it was less than a week after accepting the challenge of being founding editor in chief of Poz, a magazine I fully intended to help make a seismic difference in the country. Even the positioning that owner Sean Strub insisted on—Poz was not to be about dying of AIDS, but rather living with HIV—was revolutionary, and I was here for all of it. When Poz made its splashy, headline-grabbing debut the following spring, I knew we were on our way to something big, something necessary, something, yes, revolutionary. Somewhere between securing contributions from the likes of media superstars Maureen Dowd, Andrew Sullivan, Albert Watson, Bruce Weber, and scores of…

MOZHDEH MATIN’S SLOW luxury fashion brand, Mozh Mozh, works with female artisans in Native Peruvian villages using local textiles (like alpaca) and innovative and traditional techniques to conserve Peru’s historical indigenous fashion. The result: Mozh Mozh’s colorful and timeless collection that brings a queer sensibility to reinterpreting the ancestral textiles of Peru. Their new Spring Summer 2020 collection features fusion of handwoven cotton fabrics, crochet knots, and beaded accessories for the “new ‘20s” (inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis). Also drawing inspiration from the Peruvian poet and plastic artist Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Matin incorporated elements of South America’s Andes Mountain Range, creating structural garments and bags inspired by Eielson’s “Nudos” sculptures. I love the Maska Multi Dress, a handwoven open back dress that steps up the rainbow fashion game for any…

AS PRIDE EVENTS WORLDWIDE ARE CANCELED or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, event organizers are refocusing their efforts to meet an entirely new set of challenges ahead. The International Association of LGBTI Pride Organizers (InterPride) and the European Pride Organizers Association announced they have teamed up to form the COVID19/Pride International Coordination Group to respond to the needs of the community at an international level during this crisis. “Today brings the devastating news that the number of Prides cancelling or postponing because of COVID-19 will pass 100, and it’s very clear that this pandemic is going to have a huge impact on our movement,” Kritine Garina, president of the European Pride Organizers Association, said in a press release earlier this spring. “Right now we must all be focusing first…

Depending on your cinematic perspective, even before the current pandemic, early Sunday mornings on New York City’s subways can be like an extinct Krell-like set piece from Forbidden Planet, or that no-one-else-around experience where you imagine meeting the train-dwelling ghoul in Ghost. Film iconography aside, entering the subway’s southbound entrance and passing through the turnstile at an ungodly hour I fully expected to be alone on the platform. I was returning from Bed Bath & Beyond, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, to my Tribeca apartment a mere five stops away on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Local. I carried shopping bags full of items: new pillowcases to replace the fraying ones I’d been apologizing to overnight guys—er, guests—about for too long; clear shower curtain liners, the heavy grommetted ones I like, which the…

Ever feel like you need a vacation from being queer? I have. Spend 25 years living in New York City’s Chelsea gayborhood, followed by another three in Fort Lauderdale, and it can sometimes seem as if your entire adult life has been but 30 seasons of Queer as Folk (The L Word? Pose? Will & Grace? Noah’s Arc? Sense8? Please select the era, demographic, and pronouns of your choice, hunty.)—and all you want to do for a holiday is escape every cliché of “the lifestyle.” Well, if that’s your worst problem, consider yourself blessed. Seventy years ago, our LGBTQ forebears could only fleetingly enjoy a carefree, 24-hour-a-day queer life by running off to a handful of destinations comfortably removed from a homophobic America: most notably, Provincetown, Mass., Cherry Grove, N.Y.,…

PUTTING OUR BEST FACE FORWARD isn’t always easy, is it? Well, this is one time you’ll want to be brow beaten! Many of us have learned to achieve clearer skin through diet, exercise, and rest (and now social isolation). But there are other ways to step up our game of making our finer attributes more pronounced. It’s called face framing. Allow me to explain. Very few of us know how to capitalize on our brows, lashes, and eyeliner—let alone, how to apply color or shape perfectly. A lot of us do have a go-to eye pencil and concealer stick for those moments of imperfection, while others have drawers full and can apply makeup and cover-up flawlessly. I’m not one of those people (at least not on myself). Eyebrow “threading” is…

KENTA SEKI Los Angeles-based fitness guru and entrepreneur Kenta Seki will be familiar to the hundreds of thousands of his fans who’ve been motivated to lead healthier, happier lives by his positive personality and challenging workouts. Having starred in more than 100 fitness DVDs, Seki sees an ever-growing technology platform for fitness-minded individuals in all stages of their wellness journey. “There’s a lot to look forward to in 2020, with all the new apps, products, and methods out now,” he says. “It’s important to stay informed and stay healthy and fit in these ultramodern times.” DAVID COWLES The distinctive and unmistakable work of award-winning illustrator and animation director David Cowles has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. He’s also directed, produced, and designed…

I’VE ALWAYS LAUGHED at the sections in many popular magazines that exclaim in sheer amazement, “Hey, look, celebrities are just like us!” Who else would they be like? The stars are just people too, right? We asked some of our famous friends a simple query: “When you have to get away, where, oh where, do you go?” You know what, they are just like us. Who would have thought? “When I have to get away, I always like to travel to Paris. Why? Because that’s where my second apartment is.”—J. Alexander, America’s Next Top Model (The CW) “When I have to get the heck out of town, I travel to Provincetown, Mass. For those perfect Americana vibes, P-town is my fave destination. It’s the gayest, friendliest, and most quaint town…

“So, you voted?” The mail clerk pointed to my sticker. It was 2016 and I was absolutely 100 percent “with her,” ready to see Hillary Clinton break through sexism and the ultimate glass ceiling by becoming the first female president. I’d been a Hillary supporter for a long time, since I helped launch the lesbian magazine Girlfriends in 1992. That same year, Hillary relocated to Washington, D.C., for her husband’s new job. Her inability to be the kind of wife to stay quiet and look pretty cursed her for many conservatives in the decades to come. If you’d asked if anyone was more qualified to run the country at that moment in November 2016, I would have said “No.” Still, when the clerk pointed at my T-shirt and said, “I…

Emily Estefan is an artist. Sure, that can be said of any multitude of singers and musicians, but what strikes me as most astonishing about this young singer’s course is how aggressively—fiercely—she’s taken that path without regard for naysayers or doubters. And it’s a wonder to behold. As her surname gives away, Emily is the youngest child of Cuban musical icons Emilio and Gloria Estefan. The resemblance in physical appearance and vocal tone to her superstar mother are undeniable, but that’s precisely why Emily’s choices are so stark, daring even. She’s decidedly not a pop singer, though she certainly could be. Her latest album, Take Whatever You Want, is exhibit A in the wondrous (and sometimes frustrating) exercise in trying to describe, let alone categorize, Emily’s musical choices into a…

One of the main things I love about the fitness industry is that it’s constantly evolving. Yes, a push-up is still a pushup, but now with the boost of technology, there are myriad new ways to work out and stay healthy. Even now, in a time of mass closures, you can stay healthy using fitness apps, devices, and innovations. But since so many claim to be the next big thing, shopping for the right one can quickly become an overwhelmingly confusing (and frustrating) endeavor. We’ve all seen those ads for any number of unproven or even sketchy fitness products and supplements. And I hate to break it to you, but most of those skinny teas and waist trainers probably won’t work. Just saying. So we’ve done some of the heavy…