What are the rules of homophobia nowadays?

Nik sits down with his best friend Brandon Herman to ask the big question: is a podcast like this even helpful? Together, they unpack Brandon’s coming out journey, his first crushes, and the role of art in his sexuality.

Transcript

Nik: This is a disclaimer for adult content. Beware. We’re gonna talk about some gay stuff. You might be offended, if you’re offended by that kind of thing.

Nik: You're blushing.

Brandon: Am I? 

Nik: I think so. I think I might be too. 

Brandon: I don't remember the first time I got turned on. I do remember a time I got turned on being Val Kilmer in that Doors movie. There's like a kind of crazy run around, like primal sex scene. 

Nik: I think everyone was turned on by, uh, Val Kilmer in the Doors. 

Nik: What up Queens? Nik Shriner here. This is All the Greatest Gays, where I interview my gay friends about being gay. And today I'm very excited because this is my dear friend Brandon Herman, beautiful artist, photographer, and art advisor. This was the beginning of all the greatest gays. This is one of the gays who inspired the gay podcast. Brandon and I sat down in his kitchen in West Hollywood and talked about: is this a good idea? Is this appropriate? Do I have any business sticking my nose in the gay world and asking my dumb straight questions? And the answer we came up with was, yeah, go ahead. Come on in. Plenty of gay to go around. 

Nik: As we've grown closer, I've really developed such a, a much keener ear to how homophobic things can be. 

Brandon: I think the thing that is hard about homophobia is how pervasive and normal it is. Like, 

Nik: I remember as a, I remember in high school it was like we threw gay around all the time. 

Brandon: Yeah. And I don't even know gay, the word gay, the way we all used it in elementary school, middle school and high school really even had to do with like what they would've called homosexuality at the time.

Nik: Right, right. 

No. Yeah, it would've been more of a slur. So how did you feel about your sexuality in middle school and high school when the word gay was getting thrown around all the time?

Brandon: I was afraid a lot. Mm-hmm. And I, I think I'm only really at my age now realizing how constant and pervasive that fear was.

I just knew there was something that was wrong with me. I definitely felt it around sports. I hated PE. It took me decades to even get comfortable with like being physical with my body. The gym was scary to me all that because, I don't know that I can even put my finger on specific experiences that I remember that gave me those messages, but I understood that like locker rooms were not a safe place for me.

Nik: Mm-hmm. 

Brandon: That sports I was gonna be bad at and be made fun of. And it wasn't like I got bullied terribly constantly or whatever, but before the homophobia that I understood in the world around me had anything to do with who I wanted to date or have sex with, it definitely somehow was connected for me in my subconscious with my value as a human. Like that's where it started. 

Nik: Hmm. 

Brandon: I think I sensed that there was something that made me a lesser citizen. I mean, like presumably I was gay all along, but before I knew it and before I was wanting to be, or trying to be gay in terms of like 

Nik: attraction and sex 

Brandon: Yeah attraction to and sex with people who identify as male, I already was feeling the effects of homophobia working on me as just like coming to understand that there was something wrong with me and I was like, of a lesser adequacy or importance, value, whatever. Yeah. I definitely like felt less than, 

Nik: I'm sorry bro.

Brandon: Thank you. 

Nik: It's fucked up. 

Brandon: Actually like before vocalizing that just now, I never made that connection that I didn't even need to be actively or actually gay yet to be feeling homophobia.

Nik: Was there a moment where all of a sudden there was attraction or all of a sudden there was clarity as opposed to being this kind of vague fear?

Brandon: I think the shift actually, I mean, I don't know what the. PG 13 rating is that you wanna, there's, 

Nik: There's no rating. 

Brandon: Looking back, I think the shift happened to me in masturbating. Mm. Like once I started, which I guess is the beginning of becoming sexually active. 

Nik: Right, right. 

Brandon: That was when I started to question, because your thought, thought who I was thinking about and what. My attractions were, and I remember thinking like, try to think about this girl. Mm. That was really, really different from like earlier in my life and that scared me a lot. 

Nik: Do you feel like that you were like trying to suppress thinking that way? 

Brandon: Yeah. And feeling dirty around it. But that was a big shift for me. Cause definitely in seventh grade there was like a [girl who I had really strong feelings for to such an extent that when that ended, I was super depressed and heartbroken and it’s like that's not hiding. Definitely in high school when I had had girlfriends, because I was hiding, when those relationships ended, there was no feelings there. It was, that was different. So yeah. 

Nik: That sounds complicated. Having to have a relationship to hide what you're…I don't even know what you'd call it, what your true desires were. 

Brandon: Yeah, it sucked. There was part of it that was performative and exciting maybe at moments in terms of like, what can I pull off? 

Nik: Like dramatic?

Brandon: Like get away with, you know, like getting to be this person that maybe the world will respond to better. 

Nik: Like playing a character in a way.

Brandon: Yeah. But it like sucked being in a prom limo and wanting to be touching that person and not this person.. Kids who get to go to prom with who they want to go to prom with, or don't, obviously is not specific to being queer. I'm sure there's probably plenty of straight people who also don't get to go to prom with who they want to.

Nik: That was me too. Yeah. 

Brandon: But yeah, the hiding, 

Nik: But in a different way. 

Brandon: Yeah, in a different way. I think there's a level of yearning and of just not getting to have that excitement around sexual development and exploration. 

Nik: And so there wasn't any romance for you then in high school that you would've really wanted?

Brandon: I had a few secret hookups 

Nik: With guys?

Brandon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That felt kind of dirty and shameful and when I was a sophomore in— 

Nik: Other guys that you knew?

Brandon: In school or one from my school. One who was like a friend of friends who went to another school. And then one that I met online, and then by the time I was junior, senior in high school and could drive, then I would drive down to LA on the weekend and use my fake ID to get into a bar here. It's still all hidden, and I remember meeting this guy at the Abbey and I was 17 and telling him I was 18 and that I went to UCLA and I actually was in high school and 500 miles away.

None of that was any of the connection or excitement that I think like in my fantasy mind around high school or like when you watch TV shows about high school that would be connection and a boyfriend and going to prom and being excited and any of that. It was like having a relationship, it was scary, and it was adults and it was dangerous, honestly.

And the first time I was like with a guy sexually, other than kind of hook-upy things with other high school students, I was with an adult acting like I knew what I was doing and not, and being self-conscious and terrified and definitely not enjoying it at all, but trying to have some sort of connection or just trying to quell that yearning, I think.

I don't know if at that time I would've been that conscious of what I was missing. Because it wasn't like I could have imagined a world where I was like out to my parents living in their house and had a boyfriend like that. I mean, that was absolutely out of the question. Completely. 

Nik: Not even, itt hadn't even crossed your mind. 

Brandon: No. 

Nik: How old were you when you told them or they found out that you were gay?

Brandon: 18 or 19, maybe 19. I was in college. I was in a fight with my mom on the phone. I was living in New York. I think the context was, “you don't know me. You don't know me.” You know, and I blurted out, “you didn't know I was gay,” or something like that.

And she was like, “I asked you!”

 Nik: Had she asked you, did you remember her asking you? 

Brandon: I don't recall ever being asked. No. 

Nik: I remember my mom asking me. 

Brandon: Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. My parents, I think, did not ask me. Right. So your parents thought you were gay?

Nik: I don't know what my mom thought. I think my mom was just trying to cover all the bases. Are you on drugs? Are you drug addict? Are you on drugs? Are you gay? Are you, are you having sex? You know? Do you hate me?

Brandon: That's part of what is hard about like the experience of being gay or queer, those identities would be run through in a bullet point list of what's wrong with my kid? 

Nik: Mm. 

Brandon: It doesn't sound like your mom was like, “oh, you're doing so great in life. You were amazing in the play, and you're getting straight A’s. Could you be gay?” It's in the context of: Why is my kid acting out?

Nik: Why is my kid freaking out? Why is he so pissed? Why is he, yeah. 

Brandon: Yeah. And doesn't that show us that the way that we treat, you know, gayness, queerness, anything that's not heteronormative, like what we've done to ourselves and to our kids and to our fellows and friends and family members. 

Nik: Yeah. It's made it, it's made it like a bad thing.

You got to be out in college and like, start a new life out on the east coast. 

Brandon: Yeah. I was out, I was,. College was like, the first time I was out, I like tested the waters. 

Nik: Like you just started like, all right, new life out here. 

Brandon: I showed up and in college, probably the first day, I told people I was bi. If I didn't say that I also liked women, what would happen to me?

Nik: If I went all the way, then I'd get stuck out here. 

Brandon: Yeah. I seemed really extreme. And I also, you know, I mean, I remember having crushes on girls in college. And there was this girl who kind of like chased me around a lot. I remember one [time she busted in, and I was in the shower in my dorm room and she like wanted to like, see me, and I was covering myself like wanting to, but being like, oh, but not wanting to. It was so many years of being a fraud, and I think the jig was kind of up, but it's like letting part of yourself die or something, you know? Like I was presumably a straight person until I realized and then said I wasn't, I guess, and didn't want to be one anymore. 

Nik: Was that liberating at first, being able to be somewhat out, even if you didn't feel like you were all the way out?

Brandon: I mean, being out on my own was exciting. I would play around with things like, I remember I was dating a guy my freshman year in college and when we would walk around New York, I would hold his hand. That was the first time in my life I had gotten to hold the hand of someone I was attracted to. In public. I was in New York and so felt safe and exciting. 

Nik: Must have been, must have felt amazing. The energy of the city and the energy of love and attraction and public display of that attraction.

Brandon: I wish I could say that I was really conscious of it. I was now all of a sudden having access to crossing—

Nik: the threshold. 

Brandon: Yeah. But I think, you know, it's just a lot for like a young little brain. I definitely was very excited to be in New York. I was really overwhelmed. I was really intimidated. So all of that's happening together, right?

Like I have no relationship experience at all with guys my age or any age, I had a lot of fumbling along in college with attractions to guys I felt a connection with. But I had a few times where it was someone who was in a questioning place, but it was like it took a few drinks for them to be interested.

Or there was one guy my freshman year who presented straight and was a straight guy and dated girls, and then when he would get drunk, he'd put his hand in my back pocket. That's confusing. 

Nik: Feels like a whole new level of that same shit, different day.

Brandon: I found myself in a lot of that versus some of my fellow students who were maybe more clearly out and available.

I guess it makes sense, since any attractions I had when I was younger, even not fully realized, would've definitely been to unavailable people. When I was a kid, I didn't know any out gay, you know…there wasn't like some other gay guy I could date at my small college preparatory high school. And I would assume that would be anybody's experience having only unavailable people around.

But for some reason that was something that was a trend for me, even into my thirties. 

Nik: It's like, it was like a, a new level of challenge around romance and intimacy. What do you think that was about?

Brandon: So I'm getting these messages all my life that gay is bad, right? And then I'm like, fine, I can't hide it any longer.

I'm fucking gay, or gayish or whatever. But then those messages are still like, gay is bad. So then I guess it makes sense to then looking outward, be like, okay, well this guy's gay, so ugh, he's that bad thing. Then I guess fucking I am, too. That's the internalized homophobia. So maybe, maybe it's something where if someone's closeted, that's more attractive to me 'cause they're less gay.

It was a long time too, before I stopped having to be so emphatic about masculinity, in terms of attraction. And it's funny when I see that on Grindr or whatever, someone being like, masc dude, only into masc dudes. 

Nik: Like masked, mask? 

Brandon: Like masculine. 

Nik: Like MASC?

Brandon: Yeah. Masc.

Nik: Okay. And a masc dude could be like a, like a bro dude?

Brandon: I guess so I guess a more masculine, I mean honestly like a guy who could pass for straight. I guess I feel like that's currency, right? Like a level of superiority. That was something that I learned as I started to maneuver the gay world. Then was like, okay, so the more masculine you are, the better you are.

Nik: The idea of being a better or worse gay? Jesus. You can't win, heaven forbid.

Brandon: Yeah. There were like horrible things gay dudes would say about each other, like there was a lot of bottom shaming and, oh, she's a Nelly bottom. You know.

Nik: What’s a Nelly? 

Brandon: I don't know, like a queeny bottom

 Nik: Like a pain in the—

Brandon No, like Queenie, it was, you know

Nik: Frilly?

Brandon: Queenie? Like effeminate. 

Nik: Right? Okay. Like as if that were annoying or as if that were hard to deal with?

Brandon: I guess it just was lesser, right? Yeah. 

Nik: . So again, they can't get away from this fucking lesser shit. 

Brandon: The messaging that I'm understanding in terms of what consciously and subconsciously, through language and then also through all the other ways that we communicate with each other, is like gay is bad. I also think it's worth mentioning AIDS. When I was a kid, before I even knew how AIDS applied to me directly, I remember being very afraid of AIDS. I remember hearing about AIDS, and it was sometimes in the news in the nineties. I mean, it was a lot in the news. It was something to be scared about— 

Nik: Whether you were having sex with men or not.

Brandon: My understanding was it was the worst disease you could possibly get. It was worse than cancer and that it had something to do with gay men. 

Nik: Hmm. 

Brandon: So it's like, first section of life is: gay is bad. And then second section of life is, guess I can't get around it. I'm gay. But there's a hierarchy and you definitely don't want to be certain types of gay.

Nik: The Nelly bottom.

Brandon: You don't wanna be a Nelly bottom, was my understanding. Right. 

Nik: Not all gays are created equal. Yeah. Where did you feel like you fit into that spectrum?

Brandon: At the time, I already felt inadequate about my physical prowess and like, you know, I'm not that tall. 

Nik: So you felt shitty before and then, and then you're finally out, you still felt shitty about who it is that you were. Like there wasn't even a change there. Is that what you're saying? Like a new version of the same feeling? 

Brandon: Yeah. So I think part of the attractions then to like closeted guys or straight guys or unavailable guys had something to do with still wanting to be validated and still wanting to be okay, you know, and trying to find my place within the hierarchies of the world.

Nik: That must have been so, that sounds so complicated. Let alone for like a young person who's also wanting to find who they are. Yeah. Outside of their sexuality. Like who you are as an artist, and who you are as a voter, and who you are as like, yeah, I don't know, a fan of the arts and sciences.

And did it feel like the sexuality took so much of your mental capacity? Like did it feel like you were thinking about it all the time? Because I remember thinking about sex all the time, too. It felt like I didn't have enough, there wasn't enough time or bandwidth to think about other things.

Brandon: I don't think I had that developed of a consciousness about myself that I would've been able to say that at that time. That like, oh, this is also complicated, or whatever. 

Nik: Right, right. Of course not. 

Brandon: I do think once I started becoming really creatively active in terms of starting to develop a creative practice for myself, it definitely was all I was interested in.

It was like an outlet for me. It was a place that I could put my sexuality or something. Being an artist helped me talk about sex.

Nik: Gave you an outlet

Brandon:  It was, yeah, it was. It was an outlet. 

Nik: Thank God. Thank God you found art. You might have killed yourself. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don’t know. It sounded like there was so much fear and pain and even with coming out, phobia of self…that art allowed, and then especially getting such positive attention about your art—

Brandon: For like a good part of the time that I was at RISD, I felt this thing I really hadn't ever felt before. I felt like I was good at something, you know, I was making good art and I was. I found a—

Nik: A calling. 

Brandon: Yeah. I felt like I experienced recognition on campus around it. Professors respected me, my peers respected me in what I was doing, and I felt like I was able to take up space in a way that I hadn't maybe before.

Nik: All of a sudden as a great dopamine hit. 

Brandon: Yeah, totally. Totally. I graduated feeling like I was the best in my program, which felt great. I didn't want to be making anyone else's art there.

Nik: Right. You really loved what you were doing. 

Brandon: But it was interesting. There was a really strong sexual component to my art.

It had this feeling of intimacy like being in some intimate moment. Or, um, something playing off of like budding sexuality, like playing on the wall. Like, you know, I remember this shot that I did of my friend Charlie that's shot from ceiling view in a bathroom in a house. That, that's clearly like a domestic space that's probably not his, you know? He was, I don't know, 21 or something at the time, but looked very young and so kind of felt like you were looking down on a teenager in the parents' house, and he's in nothing but boxers and just starting to pull his boxers down. It's a teenage guy like alone with himself in a bathroom.

And so I liked things like that that felt intimate and sexually charged and had that kind of like exploring sex and sexuality, excitement to it. It felt like I got to be a little more gay than I had ever been. I mean there were, my female friends were in the shots, plenty. Also, like I would shoot female friends naked.

I would shoot male friends naked. So it wasn't just about shooting guys naked, but I think even just putting that sexualized gaze on a guy was gayer than I had ever been in public, in the public eye before. So that was cool. But that was big.

Nik: That’s a big way to be out. 

Brandon: But I do think, looking back on it, it was still kind of playing by the rules of like general homophobia that I had kind of always had to go along with, it was very heteronormative. All of the references were all the coming of age movies that I had seen. It strikes me that, you know, there was no gender queer exploration, androgyny, anything that was outside of like, you know the eroticism felt very much like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, you know, who is a straight character in a straight movie where the only queer character in that movie is a joke. 

Nik: Do you feel free now? 

Brandon: Do I feel free? I feel more conscious now of the messages and restrictions and confines of my understanding of the world than I ever have before. I think there's a freedom in that for sure. But I am 38, so it's a lot of years of being unconscious about these things and being restricted by them and behaving according to them and making choices according to these understandings. So it's like, well-practiced behavior, right? Following the rules of homophobia is well practiced behavior. 

Nik: What are the rules of homophobia nowadays?

Brandon: Just as simple as the messaging that gay sex is gross. Right? So that idea starts to like set up some rules, like, what the limits are. I gotta live in this way of what I talk about, right? What content I want to watch with other people, or admit to having watched, it starts to set up guidelines for how I behave at work at a party with my family, with my grandmother, on a first date.

And so I feel at this point in my life, I’m more aware of all of that structure, that sort of conceptual structure existing in my mind than I ever was before. Right? I definitely spent most of my life totally unaware of it. And so at the mercy of it, because I didn't realize, like when I was an estate manager, I interacted with a lot of construction workers and plumbers and electricians, and something that was interesting to notice about myself in those situations was finding myself downplaying or emphasizing behaviors, cadences, ways of talking words, just tailoring my behavior. Kind of playing to a specific audience. Playing to the room. Even though I worked for a very high profile and out queer person. 

Nik: Mm-hmm. 

Brandon: Somewhere along the lines, I must have learned it is unsafe to be gay around certain types of people. And so I need to behave and perform this specific way. The messaging being: this is safe. This is not safe. So that's what I mean by the rules of homophobia.

Nik: Yeah. I got that now. 

Brandon: So like in coming back to the idea of, oh, am I free now? The answer's probably not completely because you still will have to be aware that like, oh, here I am playing the son. 

Nik: Yeah. I think that everyone deals with the character that I'm gonna play, because I notice that too. I notice that like if I'm out at a gay bar with friends, I'm gonna be way more flamboyant and fun and cheeky and use the lingo as opposed to, I don't know if I'm surfing. I think that's just like the big takeaway. It's like, we're all just fucking humans trying to figure out who are we, really?

Brandon: Yeah.

Nik: Yeah. I was very moved by hearing the cliff notes of part of the story of your sexuality, and I think that our experiences are transferrable. We're all just humans that are playing these parts. And we all deserve the right to have freedom. 

Brandon: Thanks so much.

Nik: Thank you. Love you.

Brandon: Yeah, love you. 

Nik: Don’t you just love Brandon? He has an ability to look within himself and share from a really honest, simple place. I’ve learned a lot about what it’s like to be gay as a result of having in my life and traveling together and just being buds. Hope you enjoyed Brandon. Keep coming back, and adios.

This podcast is a labor of love. So do your homie a favor and press the like button and subscribe. It makes it, it makes it more real.