Table of contents for February 2018 in OUT

IN 1984, I was old enough to know that I was gay, and that sex would kill me. I knew that if I kissed another boy in public I could be arrested. My favorite song that year was “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)” by the Eurythmics, and in ways too complicated for me to articulate then, I knew at some deep and cellular level that I was a sexual outlaw and that my desires would be complicated and compromised for decades to come. Perhaps that’s why, seeing Call Me by Your Name at a special screening last summer, I was swept up in ways I didn’t expect to be: The movie is set in 1983, and is therefore free of the specter of AIDS. It is the least cynical depiction of gay…

DANIELA VEGA SPEAKS like a poet, artfully crafting her sentences in a way that feels organic. It’s no wonder the Chilean actress and opera singer—who gave one of last year’s greatest breakthrough performances in Sebastián Lelio’s foreign-language Oscar entry A Fantastic Woman—repeatedly mentions the work of Stella Díaz Varín, a late and little-known poet from Vega’s home country whom she implores others to read. “Poetry is an expression of what’s inside you,” Vega says, “and what’s most inspired me from Stella’s work is her relationship with time.” Born and raised in Santiago, Vega has also had an intriguing, tumultuous connection with the ticking clock, pacing herself and trusting her gut while chasing her destiny. The 28-year-old has been singing since she was 8, taking extensive classes paid for by her…

Nature’s verdant splendor isn’t the only thing that takes a beating during the harsh months of winter. Our skin, too, gets pushed to the extremes. And in these bitter times, lotion alone may not replenish a moisture-starved body. You might need to enlist the concentrated power of an unexpected friend: oil. While greasy skin is never the end goal, slathering on a bit of the slicker stuff can deliver a wallop of much-needed nourishment to dry legs, elbows, and shoulders (not to mention, it won’t clump in your body hair the way a thick cream can). Grooming brands are now harnessing oil’s natural healing properties, plus adding in subtle fragrances and vitamin-infused supplements, to create a new wave of must-have skin-savers. Here, six of our favorites CZECH & SPEAKE FRANKINCENSE…

I DID NOT PLAN to be in Palm Springs for the White Party. Every spring my best friend Kat and I have spent a long weekend in the desert at her mother’s vacation home. I didn’t even realize until we arrived to hordes of brawny men in teeny-tiny shorts sashaying down Palm Canyon Drive that the city seemed gayer than usual, which was saying something. Then it dawned on me. “This might be an opportunity,” I said to Kat. I was newly single, a month out of a long-term relationship, and my heartache was like a constant, ambient noise only I could hear. I wasn’t even in rebound mode yet—I was still licking my wounds. But if ever there was a time and place to cut loose, I thought, it…

HIP-HOP’S CONTINUED prevalence in today’s music landscape is just one facet of what Constance C. R. White explores in How to Slay, a thorough and groundbreaking document of how black style has pervaded every corner of popular culture. Rich with iconic photos, the book illustrates the influence of everyone from Josephine Baker and Sidney Poitier to Beyoncé and Kanye West, while celebrating intrinsically black style elements like hair, skin, diva origins, and the inspiration of Africa itself. A former editor in chief of Essence and executive fashion editor at Elle (a first for a black journalist at a major fashion magazine), White presents an authoritative catalogue, and an answer as to why black culture is inevitably appropriated in America: It’s cemented itself in the ways an entire nation makes art.…

“The first time I told her I loved her, we were actually at a strip club and we got a lap dance from the same girl. That’s how I told her I loved her.” UNCLE MEG, Rapper We met on a sidewalk in Williamsburg. I was talking to somebody we both knew, and Clara Rae came up, started flirting with me, and asked for my Instagram. I was clueless at the time and wasn’t looking for anybody—I was in a phase with my ex where we had broken up, but were still having sex. But I asked my friend if she thought Clara was flirting with me, and she said yeah, so I messaged her on Instagram. Our first date was at this tea place, and we both were super…

“The word assassination has a political and social overtone because Versace was targeted. This tragedy could have been prevented. Basically, homophobia killed Gianni Versace.” For months during the filming of American Crime Story, Ricky Martin found himself back in the closet—this time playing Antonio D’Amico, the longtime lover of the late Gianni Versace. In the pilot episode of the FX series, a detective with the Miami Police Department interrogates D’Amico after the designer is murdered. Unsure what D’Amico means when he refers to Versace as his “partner,” he questions the nature of their relationship, invoking the young men D’Amico would procure for him, some of them duly compensated, and asking, “Did he pay you?” “To love him?” responds D’Amico, still covered in the blood of his boyfriend of 15 years,…

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DOUG INGLISH “I got to dance with Ricky Martin,” says Doug Inglish, who casually lived out our ’90s fantasies while shooting Martin and Édgar Ramirez for this issue’s cover. “And Edgar is always brilliant,” he adds. One of Inglish’s favorite gigs ever was a men’s fashion shoot in the Bahamas for a past issue of Out, and he’s recently worked for GQ Style UK and GQ Australia. LUKE FONTANA “This was my first time shooting for a publication only using natural light,” Luke Fontana says of his work on this year’s Love Portfolio. “I set up my lights for the very first shot and something just felt off.” The fruits of Fontana’s instincts have also appeared in Vanity Fair, Elle, and People. MENELIK PURYEAR “I shot these photos on the…

IS ANYTHING better than biting, bleary-eyed and hungover, into a bacon, egg, and cheese on a Saturday morning? Actually, yes. Restaurants across the country have started putting new focus on the breakfast sandwich, transforming an already-perfect classic into something sublime. It all started with the epic lines at L.A.’s Eggslut (Eggslut.com), whose oozy, insanely delicious creations have convinced a waistline-obsessed city that there can be much more to look forward to in the morning than oatmeal and green juice. The crowds are drawn to chef-owner Alvin Cailan’s subtle yet inspired approach, which includes mixing in a few extra flavors to ignite taste buds. Witness The Fairfax, a vegetarian-friendly marriage of soft-scrambled eggs and cheddar spiked with a bit of heat (sriracha mayo) and laced with umami (caramelized onions). The chefs…

THE 1986 FILM noir Mona Lisa was a major step forward in the big screen recognizing queer humanity. It’s a crime story and a love story set in the underbelly of London: an illicit world of prostitution, drugs, strip clubs, and porn shops—the disreputable places frequented by the city’s outcasts, including its sexual outlaws. But the magnetic attraction between ex-con George (Bob Hoskins) and hooker Simone (Cathy Tyson) encompasses sex, longing, alienation, and pain—all the feelings common to gay people trying to understand themselves and their place in society. Writer-director Neil Jordan tours the same demimonde that the Pet Shop Boys sang about in their sophisticated queer ’80s anthems “West End Girls” and “King’s Cross.” Instead of showing two people as victims of tragic fate, crushed in the system of…

“Kindness doesn’t always mean ‘Oh, I’m a pushover, and I have flowers in my hair.’ Sometimes it actually means a lot of fire.” RHEA BUTCHER, Actor-Comedian I had moved to Chicago and was taking improv classes at Second City—just for fun. I’d always enjoyed comedy, but I didn’t know how to do it. So I started to get into the local comedy scene, and very soon after I heard about Cameron, because she was the most popular stand-up at the time. She hosted an open mic down the street from my house. It was at a really great neighborhood bar, and I’d go with some friends and sit in the audience. One time she came up to me and said, “So when are you going to go up?” And that…

“When you’re in a car and you’ve got the windows open and it’s that loud rush of the wind and everything is hitting you and hitting you, and then you close the window and you get that moment of silence and quiet that descends—that’s what love feels like.” AARON WALTON, Co-Founder, Walton Isaacson In the 1980s I was working in the marketing department for Pepsi on their sponsorships, and had just finished David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour, and was getting ready to hit the road with Michael Jackson [for the Bad Tour]. I said to my friend Nancy, “I just need a break,” and she said, “Well, why don’t we go to the beach house?” The house was in Kismet on Fire Island, and we’re lying on the beach one…

No one loves a falsetto more than Jake Shears. It was always the greatest and most reliable instrument in his group Scissor Sisters’ musical arsenal. Now, after a too-long absence, it’s back, and as fruity and fruitful as ever. It’s been almost six years since Scissor Sisters released their fourth album, Magic Hour, a curate’s egg of genre-hopping that showcased both the band’s versatility and its consistency. Scissor Sisters always had range, but the foursome also had form. Collaborators and producers would come and go, but they were always undeniably Scissor Sisters. Now, though, lead singer Jake Shears has gone solo, and the results are glorious. His upcoming album’s lead single, “Creep City,” is a sky-high slice of infectious glam rock with shades of Queen, and some flirty, dirty sax…

Nox Music Calm your agitated brain with soothing lights and sounds. That’s the promise of Nox Music, a combination reading light, speaker, and alarm clock that tracks your sleep schedule (with the help of a free app) and sends you off to dreamland in a calm state of mind. When it’s time to rise, Nox’s lights and sounds wake you just as gently. The company will soon launch a new version called Nox Aroma that adds aromatherapy to the mix. ($149, SleepAce.com) EarlySense Live Just how restful are your resting hours? While there are plenty of sleep trackers on the market, many need to be clipped to your PJs or worn like a bracelet, and they need to be charged. EarlySense avoids these hassles with a sensor that tucks under…

2017, Over and Out At its onset, 2017 seemed like an insurmountable year. America’s queer community, like many others, was without a vocal ally in the Oval Office for the first time in eight years, and bills, executive orders, and tweets seemed like daily retractions, set to limit the hard-won freedoms of the Obama era. And yet, the year ended with what felt like a stronger LGBTQ community, determined to face whatever challenges came—or may come—from small-minded oppressors. Our OUT100 cover stars, Chelsea Manning, Jonathan Groff, Lena Waithe, and Shayne Oliver represented vastly different, yet fundamentally linked, facets of our indefatigable culture. “It was, for lack of a better term, a moment,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter, referring to Waithe’s history-making speech during her Emmy win for comedy writing, in which…

Mellow Yellow In the middle of winter, when our meticulously crafted outfits are hidden under big, heavy jackets, it’s hard to make a fashion statement. One solution: slipping on some brightly tinted sunglasses. And if you’re going to go bright, why not opt for the brightest shades of all? Not only is yellow the season’s hottest color for lenses, it’s also functional—and friendlier. Ditching darker-hued specs means that you can see better, and that others can see you. Whether it’s a classic pair from Tomas Maier or Carrera or some funkier frames from Retrosuperfuture or Polaroid, you’ll have plenty of styles to choose from—all of which will get you thinking of the warmer, sunnier, carefree days ahead. The Pink Shoe: Anything But Bashful We’ve extolled the pristine simplicity of white…

What is 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. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP? Before taking TRUVADA for…

PHILOSOPHER, scholar, journalist, and educator, Alain Locke is considered the Father of the Harlem Renaissance for his support of, and writings on, the cultural movement that empowered generations of black people. A Harvard graduate, Locke was named the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, but he still experienced racism and discrimination at Oxford—a particularly heavy blow considering, like many black artists and intellectuals, Locke sought in Europe freedom from America’s ceaseless oppression. Compounding his difficulties as a black man, Locke was a homosexual, and the following edited excerpt from The New Negro, Jeffrey C. Stewart’s definitive new biography on the scholar, details his unrequited attempts at wooing legendary Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. On Hughes’s last day in Paris, the two of them took a “trance-like walk up the Champs Elysees.” At…

“Sleep, those little slices of death—how I loathe them,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, who was no fan of bedtime. But love it or hate it, sleep is essential, and something like 35% of us don’t get nearly enough. Seven hours should be a minimum to stay healthy and wise. One solution: Take a break from your electronics. Make time in the evening to read a book, take a hot bath, or meditate—just turn off your cellphone first. That tweet can wait until the morning. Before Night Falls, Prepare Do you get too little sleep? If so, you’re not alone. The CDC says 35% of adults in the U.S. don’t get the recommended seven hours or more per night. Maybe you’re out every night at an after-hours club, but more likely…