They were gonna pull the gay out of you?

Tune in to hear stories from Scotch: a gay dad to triplet teenagers, owner of half the lips responsible for the first same-sex kiss broadcasted during the Emmys, a loyal friend to all his ex girl- and boyfriends, and (in the words of Nik) a man-God sex symbol reminiscent of Lenny Kravitz. 

Transcript

Nik: This is a disclaimer and a warning that this podcast is sexual in nature. We get explicit, so if you don't want to hear none of that, y'all just turn it off now. Okay. Bye-bye. 

Scotch: I'm from an older school. I'm not today's actor. If you were gay, you just were relegated to only gay swishy rules. 

Nik: Sure. 

Scotch: I've gotten to play a couple of those. The most fun of my entire career is playing an all out balls to the wind queen. I love it. Once I got this character, it, it was, it is literally the most fun I've ever had in a role, on stage in my entire career.

Nik: Do you feel like you get typecasted now as, as the gay guy or? Another friend of mine who's an actor, and he has been on Broadway and worked as an actor for a long time like you he says, I'm always avoid getting on the lavender list, as he calls it. 

Scotch: No, I would love it. I would love it. I would love more of it. 

Nik: You would prefer, you'd prefer to be the go-to gay guy or 

Scotch: I would love to do more gay roles.

Nik: What up Queens? Nik Shriner here. This is All the Greatest Gays. My podcast where I interview my gay friends about being gay. That's right. These are my gay friends, and you can't have them. I'm just kidding. We can share. They got a lot of love to go around. Wait till you hear Scotch. He's up in this episode.

But first I have to thank my Uncle John. Uncle John was so moved by his own interview that he, um, helped fund the show. 

For those of you who don't know, I produce this with my friend Bri. We keep the expenses low, so that we could do as many as we can. But, John is gonna make it a lot easier, and hopefully make it easier to get more ears on it because, um, I don't wanna brag, but these are some great stories. Okay?

So scotch is an extraordinary actor. I call him a Man God. Maybe that's a little ego inflating, but he is, he's like this, you know, kind of like a sex symbol really. Especially if you look at old pictures of him, no offense Scotch. But he's kind of this, like Lenny Kravitz meets Earth, Wind and Fire. But he’s got dad hands, you know, he could catch a fly ball with those hands. He's a big love bomb. We've never worked together, but we have had lots of breakfasts together. He's become a good friend, and it's just an amazing story. He has got triplet kids with his husband Todd, who's also a famous director, like Uncle John, but of a different generation.

He's awesome.

 Nik: What's happening in the house? The kids are.. 

Scotch: I picked them up from school.

It was really coming down heavily. There's a Bat Mitzvah going on tomorrow 

Nik: It’s coming down heavily with Bat Mitzvah kids?

Scotch: Yes, exactly. Um, no, we had to run out and get a Bat Mitzvah gift.

Nik: Are the kids Jewish?

Scotch: No, but they've been invited to two within the past three weeks, and this is the second one. And they have very concerned with the right gifts. The right, what are you wearing? What are you wearing? What are you wearing?

Nik: That's like prom.

Scotch: There's so much social pressure that I don't know how I escaped it at their age, but I did.

Nik: What kind of, so, so you didn't have any social pressure growing up? 

Have you always just been sSotch out of a box? Like have you always been this like, Man God? 

Scotch: Oh my God, you're the sweetest thing ever.

Nik: Do you know what I mean though? Like, because you're so sure of yourself, but have you always been like that even as a little kid? 

Scotch: Absolutely not. But I just wanna say that you saying Man God, 'cause I had a band in San Diego. We were called Manchild. ‘Cause that's what I've always felt like, I've always felt like a man child. I did always sort of have this larger or maybe ahead of my time presence amongst my peers or my family.

Nik: Did you pick that up? 'Cause you have so many siblings, right?

Scotch: Yes. I'm, I'm number six of seven. 

Nik: So you like probably had cool older siblings to model yourselves after, right?

Scotch: I idolized them, but I was very different than them. I was the fourth of the four boys that happened sequentially. I felt very protected by them, which gives you a little bit of room to, you know, spread your wings and not worry.

But my home was not really one that they were like, “oh, Michael's strengths are this. Let's make sure he supplied with whatever he needs to grow in that direction.” There wasn't a lot of support. It had to come from within a lot of the time.

Of course I was extremely mad about that in the beginning, but as I got older I realized, oh, wait a minute. My Parents were kids when they had us. 

Nik: So how old, how old were they when they started? 

Scotch: The way that I was telling the story until my father recently, before he passed, corrected me was, “yeah, you guys had all seven of us by the time you were 28.”

He went 27. I said, what? He said, yeah, we were 27 by the time we had all seven of you. And I went, ohhh. Because I got incredible empathy for them when I turned 28. I just thought about, okay, I'm 28 years old. I'm standing here. I turn around and look behind me. There's 14 eyeballs looking at me going, Hey, feed me, teach me, love me. Show me, set my boundary. I mean, I just, I don't know how they did it and, and you know what, it's crazy cliche, but I really know they did the best. I think we terrified both of them, which is understandable. But I think I terrified my dad the most because, of the kids, I'm the one that would look him in the eye and go, “okay, dude, so you know, what's, what's going on here?”

Nik: Like, you were honest, looked him straight in the eye and asked him what was real?

Scotch: Yeah. And the way he received it was me squaring up with him. 

Nik: So, so when you guys are kids and you guys are running around causing chaos, and you were the different one because you had this larger than life energy, but was there also part of you that knew you were different in some way, like sexually? And you also mentioned Michael. 

Scotch: Michael's my oldest was, was my oldest brother. He's the only one we've lost so far. But yeah, it was tough. He happened to be gay. So it was good to have him around.

Nik: Right and then do you identify as gay?

Scotch: Ooh, that is a really interesting question. It's ever evolving. I think for the first time in my life I probably identify more as gay than, than anything else. I used to feel very, very split down the middle. 

Nik: I remember you mentioning in the past bisexuality and having all kinds of different 

Scotch: Yeah. Absolutely. Partners over the years. Yeah. I had boyfriends and girlfriends in high school, and that was completely like, out in the open. But my parents didn't know until I was 16.

I was outed. I got a phone call to the house and I was outed, and that changed the dynamic completely in every direction. But my feelings about who I was attracted to was always really clear to me. There were a couple of women in my youth, in my preteen—women. Girls that I just absolutely adored.

And, um, you know, really just did the classic courting, dating. But I got my first real boyfriend in my junior year in high school.

And that's when I started to understand everything that I'd experienced before was kind of a crush because 

Nik: That's when you felt love for the first time? 

Scotch: It was, it was definitely love and it was completely jarring and, it felt like a whole completely different universe because I'd had a lot of relationships.

But when I saw James, I just was like, wow, this is nothing I've ever experienced before. And that tilted my whole experience as one of the seven kids in the house. I moved out, and moved in with him before I graduated high school. 

Nik: And that's because your parents couldn't handle you being outed?

Like how, how did the outing happen? Someone called the house, you said? 

Scotch: Yeah, my best friend in high school called my house.

Nik: What an asshole.

Scotch: What an asshole, right? Um, a total asshole. He was jealous, because a group of friends had come to Fresno, which is where the bulk of my family is now. And I returned to Los Angeles with them.

And these are a lot, these are older people, you know? We're we're 16, 17, and they're 21. 

Nik: And what and what year? What year was this? 

Scotch: 1978. 79. 

Nik: Okay. So you're 16 and hanging with some people who are real adults. 

Scotch: Real adults. 'cause they can legally, you know, drink and stuff.

Nik: Yeah. 

Scotch: And this guy was jealous. He, he was really jealous. And Mitchell called my parents and said, we just wanna tell you that he went to Los Angeles with some gay people. And so when I came back, you know, the house— 

Nik: Oh oh, while you're gone, he hits them up and said, just FYI. 

Scotch: Yeah. 

It was dead, it's like a funeral home I walked into. I didn't know what had happened.

Nik: You were, you were coming home to an ambush!

Scotch: Completely.

So that means you gotta understand with me walking in the door, there are eight different unique responses. It's like this, it's the House of Horrors. Were okay, this door opens one sister, “don't tell me I'm hearing what I'm hearing. What am I hearing?” And then she's gone. That door slams. The other door opens. It's your brother and he's bawling his ass off and you're like, dude, what's wrong?

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's pretty bad. First thing, my, my mother said was, “please tell me you don't wanna hang out with those people.”

Nik: Aw. 

Scotch: And I said, actually, I do. And that was like the worst response. My dad, says—by the way, I gotta pinpoint that he and I had been on this sort of silence, I'll act like you don't live in the world sort of existence for maybe about.

Two and a half years. We just, we acknowledge each other, but we did not talk or hang out or nothing. 

Nik: For two and a half years from that moment on, you guys just really didn't talk. 

Scotch: From—no, before. 

Nik: Oh, prior to, you guys were strained, even though you'd been squaring up with him and looking him in the eye historically.

Scotch: Yeah. But he said to me, he looks at me and he goes, “you know what, what I need to do is take you down to Street and get you laid.” And G Street is where the prostitutes hang out. And my mother said, my mother went, “oh, Chago.”

And it made me laugh, and it made my dad laugh. And it was the first time we shared a laugh in years. 

Nik: Mmm. 

Scotch: And actually from that moment on, my dad and I just grew closer and closer and closer and closer.  

Nik: Wow. So you coming out and him kind of making a joke was the beginning of some acceptance on both your sides?

Scotch: It was the beginning and, um, my mom, had just discovered the Jehovah's Witnesses. Because she was religiously obligated to save my soul, she went into a completely different mode and tried to help me. Eventually I was turned into the elders at the congregation and they said, “We're here to help you.”

Nik: They were gonna pull the gay out of you, is that the plan? 

Scotch: Yes. And once I refused their assistance, they said, “Well then you'll have to leave the congregation until you're ready for our help. You're not allowed to speak to other Jehovah's witnesses that are baptized.” So I was you know, politely kicked outta the church 

Nik: Was that a blow or was that like, fine, I didn't want to come anyways? 

Scotch: My boyfriend was in his sky blue Firebird running the engine outside. I said, “Are you guys, can I go now?” And they're like, “Really? You don't want our help?” I said nope. They said okay. And I left, got in the car with him, and went home.

Nik: Hey, at least they didn't tie you down and pour holy water over you.

Scotch: Yeah, no, I look at it in a couple of ways. Me and my personality, my spirit, the the person you know, was saved that day. Because if we had tried to box who I am and who I was and who I was gonna become, it would've been a disaster. God knows what would've happened to me spiritually, psychically, or emotionally if they tried to change the part of me that I didn't even really fully understand yet.

You know, I didn't even know it, but they just decided, you know? 

Nik: Right. All of a sudden you met James, fell in love, felt this whole realm of feelings that you'd never felt before. It probably felt a lot like God, you know.

Scotch: It did. It was great. And it was one of the best things.

Nik: “I’m getting a lot more outta this guy than you guys ever gave me.”

Scotch: Yeah. And I got a chance to move outta the house, and I was like, wow, okay. So I was 17 and three months, something like that. In retrospect, I'm like, wow, I was a minor. Thank God they didn't try to get him arrested. Thank God they didn't physically force me out of my home.

But of course, being one of seven kids, nine people in a three bedroom apartment, they're like, ah. My dad's kinda like, eh, one less mouth to feed. But I did very well. Never went back home. It took me a while to forgive the situation. I'm still grateful that I left, I'm still grateful that I got out. Because I looked at a couple of my other siblings that stayed in the religion and their lives got bad and their personalities disappeared.

And one in particular—

Nik: Was it hard for Michael? 

Scotch: Well, Michael was outed after me, so. 

Nik: Meanwhile he's like staying quiet when you come home from your trip.

Scotch: He's quiet. He stayed quiet, but he eventually, you know, got out and had a very long-term relationship with a wonderful man who we still consider family. 'Cause he is family, period. 

Nik: Sure. 

Scotch: Michael ended up being very happy, but some of my friends, my sisters that are still in the religion forgive the situation and sometimes take it upon themselves to break the law because they're still not supposed to socialize with me. 

I got to have the conversation with my mother before she died, she said to me, “I just wanted to tell you, you know, I never would've taken you if I knew that that was gonna happen.”

Nik: Mm-hmm. 

Scotch: I said, “I know, mom.” She basically apologized for the prior 18 years of my life where I was kicked out, the whole thing. And I know, I know for a fact, my mother loved who I was because they don't celebrate birthdays, right? 

Nik: Oh, the Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays?

Scotch: Yeah. No birthdays. 

Nik: What? No, no birthdays, no Christmas. 

Nik: No birthdays cause we're all gonna die.Got it. 

Scotch: Yeah. My mom would call me on my birthday and she'd go, “Hi, well, I'm so glad you made another year.” “Yeah, me too. Love you.” 

Nik: Like another year alive or just in general? Like, it like avoided the fact that it's your, the day you were born?

Scotch: It's code for happy birthday. And she's technically not supposed to acknowledge it at all, but she never missed my birthday. 

Nik: Aw. 

Scotch: Until she died. And last conversation we had when she was saying, “I thought I was helping you.” She just wanted me to understand it was love and not for anything other than love.

Nik: So let me ask you this. Do you feel like the love that your mom had, the acceptance that your dad had, the kind of clean slate that you got to have from the coming out, do you think that that really shaped your ability to be Captain Scotch? You know, 'cause it sounds like you got off kind of easy. 

Scotch: As it goes, and from some of the stories that I've heard, yes, but I have to tell you, it's all relative. I surprise myself, I surprise my husband to this day, because I'll say something to him like, “oh my God, I can't believe I had to come out again to this person.”

And it blows him away that it just doesn't roll outta my mouth. I have the husband, you know, I'm gay. I can't say “I'm gay” without a little title hitch in my spirit. 

Nik: I hear it. I hear it a little bit. 

Scotch: Yeah. I'm working on it. But, so for me, it seems like it happened rather smoothly, but there were a lot of traumatic experiences in between, you know, being outed by my family and moving and the loss of communication.

Nik: So I take it back. You didn't get off too easy, 

Scotch: I didn't get off too easy. No, there was a lot. There were a few therapists along the way and then trying to define my, you know, where is my line? Where is, what is my Kinsey number?

I love women. I love sex with women. I love watching sex with women. 

Nik: And you were moving into the late seventies and eighties and moving down to LA. Is that where you moved to?

Scotch: I moved to Los Angeles when I was 19. I left that person I moved out for, and then had a couple of incredible girlfriends, one of which is still in my life today.

It's just, she's the one that got away. If, if, if, if a woman got away, we had a nice, we had a nice life and we almost had a family.

It didn't work out. 

Nik: And did you always want to be a dad? 

Scotch: From the first spurt, yes. 

Nik: Because you grew up with all these siblings. Like, “I gotta have this kind of thing, but my version.”

Scotch: It's kind of crazy, 'cause I don't know anybody else who's grown up like I did that thought, “well, I want to have kids.”

But yeah, I've always wanted kids from the moment I hit puberty, I was like, “Wow, I can have kids now.” 

Nik: Well, and fast forward, you had to wait a long time. 

Scotch: Nope, because my ex-girlfriend got pregnant. And we had a baby. And, um, I married her. And about, I don't know, six months in, I looked at this child and went: I don't know if this is my biological baby.

Nik: Gnarly, 

Scotch: Gnarly. Very gnarly.

Nik: This is a different, this is a different girl.

Scotch: This is later. This is different. Yeah. A different, different girl. This one I actually married out of a sense of responsibility and, um— 

Nik: Because she got pregnant? 

Scotch: She got pregnant, and it felt like the right, it was the right thing to do.

I think I really did have a sort of confused sense of honor and responsibility, but I did love her very much. 

Nik: Sure. 

Scotch: But that changed real quickly after we got married. 

Nik: And then did you eventually find out that this, that you were not the biological father? 

Scotch: My ex-wife did such a great job convincing me before we got married that this was my baby. And when we were getting divorced, I said, “We need to talk about visitation.”

And she said, “Why? She's not yours.”

Nik: Wow.

Scotch: That's the first, that was the first and last direct conversation we had about that. So.

Nik: Quite the bomb.

Scotch: Yeah. I've had these challenges in my life that, you know, I've had to upright myself from.

Nik: You've had to reset and kind of start, start over, start from scratch, recenter.

Scotch: Yeah. 

Nik: But it sounds, I love it sounds that, it sounds like you've always had that center. 

Scotch: I, uh, I'm not even sure where it comes from. But, you know, I think, well, no, it's probably just love. 'Cause I loved that girl. I still love her to this day. She's a young adult. She's in her early thirties. After she went through her whole journey of finding her biological father who could care less—he's, I pray, somewhere in the world, he's recovering.

But when they made their connection, he and his family rejected her entirely. And I thought, well, there's still a slot for me. I loved you. I welcomed you in the world, and you were taken from me. And we have an opportunity to at least form a friendship. And now I've got three biological children with my husband and t's what it's supposed to be.

Parenthood and life and family and honor and joy and anger and learning and mutual respect. All this stuff. It's what it's supposed to be right now. 'Cause it's under the right conditions.

Nik: Sure. Yeah. And there's no denying those kids are your kids. Walk me through how that happened and, and maybe going back one step further before you do, about what it was like when you got married.

Did you always know that you wanted to get married? I mean, well you were married before, but more out of that sense of responsibility. You'd already lived a life and then you met Todd or what? Walk me through that love story.

Scotch: I've been a serial relationship person, because I've honestly only experienced maybe nine months in my whole life of being actually single.

I'm really relationship oriented. I love partnering.

 From the time that I had serious relationships, there's only one person that I was in a romantic relationship with who detests me and will not tolerate me. Because I've worked very hard to save or salvage whatever I could out of those relationships, because my investment was an investment. 

I never thought of, “Well, let's just have a hot time. If it works out, it works out, great. And when I'm done with you, bye.” 

Nik: You want the love, and you don't wanna lose the love you got. “I created this space of love for you who's, who's gonna fill this? Only you.”

Scotch: A lot of people, even my husband, says, “you're the only person I know who is in touch with all of his exes.”

If you were very aggressive with me, you were probably going to get a serious dating sequence with me. And it didn't matter who you were, almost not what you looked like. I don't know why that was, but I almost didn't really have a filter.

So a lot of people got a lot of chances with me. I do not mean in bed, but they got a lot of chance to explore future possibilities. 

Nik: And just like get to know you. 

Scotch: I gotta get to know you, and if it clicks, if it works. I just heard there's a word for that the other day. I just can't believe there's another word.

I'm not kidding. I think it's called demi, demisexual. I just heard it. If there's not a connection, it's not happening. But um, Todd came in my life at a time when I had had a few very significant relationships that didn't work out, and they didn't work out for lots of reasons.

Personal insecurity. Uh, one of them I think was my infidelity. I had no idea, in the self-esteem arena, how to level what I really deserved. I swear it was never really about sex or winning or conquering another person. 

Nik: You didn't feel like you were worth being in a loving, committed relationship. 

Scotch: Absolutely. That's the crux of all of the, uh, issues that I had when I look back at them.

Nik: How do you fast forward into triplets?

Scotch: So at first date with Todd, I said, “How do you feel about kids?” He said, “I love kids.” And I was like, great. Seriously. First date, and two years later, I said, “So about those kids?” He went: “Oh. You mean, how do I feel about having kids?”

 Nik. Nik. My entire innards just crumbled and fell to the ground. I'm like, “Oh no. Oh my God. He misunderstood.” 

Nik: You're like, “yeah, Todd, I wasn't talking about birthday parties!” 

Scotch: He had been directing Malcolm in the middle. He's like, “I love kids. I work with them every day. I love kids.” 

Nik: Yeah. What's not to like about other kids that exist in the world?

Scotch: It took him a little while because he was not planning on being a dad, and he has turned out to be the most amazing dad.

Nik: So walk me through, how did that go down?

Scotch: Well, we went through a lot of our friends, like, “Hey, you wanna carry a baby for us? Hey big sister, are your eggs still usable?” 

Nik: So you're like going through the Rolodex.

Scotch: But long story short, everybody's eggs were too old. And I actually had one of my sisters say, “I cannot emotionally hand a baby over to you. Even if it's not biologically mine that I've carried. I just can't.”

So our process. We went through two surrogates. We only worked with one agency. We went through a total of five transfers. We had a false pregnancy around the third one. Todd and I set out to find this sort of vain, narcissistic, “I'm gonna find a girl that looks like you, get eggs from her. You can find a girl that looks like me, and then we'll spin it, and then we'll throw it in the oven and take what we get. We'll have that baby. We'll have that baby. You see this? I see that one baby.” 

Nik: Oh, I see. So that was the plan. So you guys were gonna take both of your sperm, mix 'em up, give them to some one person that, or give them to two people?

Scotch: What the doctor does, he literally takes your single sperm and he injects it into a single egg, right?

Nik: So you find one swimmer.

Scotch: One swimmer into one egg. wWll, we put in three eggs for the fifth time. 'cause it didn’t work so many times. 

Nik: Right, right, right. That must have been exhausting. 

Scotch: Expensive and exhausting. 

Nik: Yeah. 

Scotch: And so on the, first three times with another surrogate, she was doing something incorrect with her end of medically preparing her womb for the transfers 

And our doctor was not very happy. And to tell you what it costs, you know, me and you could rent a studio for the next year. But, this woman at the agency heard about our problem that we had, and 

Nik: The debacle

Scotch:  And she volunteered herself to us.

Nik: Wow. 

Scotch:  And she had just had twin boys for another gay couple, and she did not get pregnant the first time. And on the second time, we put in three. All three took. They tell us right away, “listen, don't start the party. 'Cause you know, there's natural reduction that happens. Nature just says, this is too many. Or they fight each other and throw one out.” 

Nik: One of my very best friends is a triplet, and I'm very close with his brother and sister as well. And that's the, like the old story goes that their mom was too little to carry. And they say, they said, “No way are you gonna be able to carry three babies.”

She said, “No way are we canceling any of these. God put me with three. I'm carrying three until you tell me until something happens otherwise.” But eventually Bren was eating all the foods. He was first on the line and not sharing with his siblings. So they eventually said, “all right, we gotta have, we gotta have these babies. ‘Cause he is the only one getting the nutrients.”

Scotch: Wow. Because ours was, “we gotta take these out because you, surrogate, you're not getting any nutrition. They're taking it all.”

 Nik: Wow. 

Scotch: We had a five pound, nine ounce baby; six pound, three ounce baby; and a six pound, 11 ounce baby at 35 weeks and four days. 

Nik: Dang. Short pregnancy. Big babies. 

Scotch: Unheard of. 

Nik: Wow. 

Scotch: Unheard of. But the doctors were literally like, “They are eating you. You are five pounds over your pre-pregnancy weight.” 

Nik: Holy cow. That is holy, holy cow. 

Scotch: That's not supposed to happen. It was amazing. 

Nik: She was a hero. 

Scotch: She was a hero. And you know, what's kind of cool about this whole story is like, they're about to turn 13. When this happened, when we, Todd and I, interracial gay couple had biological triplets…2020 had us on. 

Nik: Oh yeah. You guys were front row center. This would've been what, 2010? or no, 2007? 

Scotch: Yeah they were born in 2010. But I'm thinking like. Really, was it that long ago? It was pretty remarkable. It was pretty remarkable. 

Nik: But but you were saying it was a whole big thing. 

Scotch: I'm thinking about how big it was back then, but now it's not so big a deal. You know, we're two guys.

We've got biological children and it's, uh, 13 years later. And how incredible that it was that unique at the time.

Nik: What is it like being the actual dad?

Scotch: I love it. I love it so much. There there's not really words to describe it. There are bruises and bumps they experience that I have no control over that I wanna protect them from. 

Nik: Yeah, of course You wanna be the big bear dad and watch out for 'em. 

Scotch: Absolutely. 

Nik: Do you feel like they have like a target on their back because they have two gay dads?

Like, is that what you wanna protect them from or do you wanna just protect them from heartbreak and falling down or?  

Scotch: I'm not worried about them being the product of two gay dads. It comes up a lot. They talk about it, but I can also tell how kids talk about things. It's like a badge of honor.

Nik: Their badge of honor like, this is my cross to bear and I got it kind of a thing? 

Scotch: Yeah. So-and-so's trying to get under my skin about this, and I'm not gonna let it happen.

It's like, “yeah, but you kind of enjoy that they're under your skin because this is theatrics.” I don't think they've ever been embarrassed by Todd or myself. They know they're loved. I think it's when I start to dance or sing in public, then I'm the most awkward and embarrassing, shameful thing they can imagine.

Nik: Well then you're just a regular dad who's embarrassing, you know? 

Scotch: Yeah. 

Nik: It doesn't have anything to do with having a husband. 

Scotch: Yeah, I'm embarrassing. So that, that's fun. 

Nik: Do you ever think about the families that you and Todd have inspired? 

Scotch: Occasionally we get to hear it, you know. Maybe a first year of dating Todd, I got to go to the Emmy Awards with him.

He said, “I'm gonna hold your hand on the red carpet.” I'm like, “Well, what am I supposed to do?” He said, “nothing. They never, ever stop me.” You know, here's a man that won five or six cable ace awards for the Larry Sanders show, first time Emmy ever, he's nominated for Malcolm in Middle.

He's like, “Let's just walk. Let's get outta the limo. You hold my hand and let's just go.” Well, he didn't get five feet. He's pulled into every single interview and we're like, “wow, okay.” And I'm standing there and he keeps saying, “my boyfriend did this for me, got me this.” And we're holding hands. We go in, he gets his name, gets announced for the award.

He wins. He turns to me. He plants one on my mouth. He kisses me. It's really sweet, cute. And then he gets up on the stage, and he thanks Scotch at the end of his speech. Like the way, you know, they do it. “I wanna thank Scotch for, bah blah.” The next morning, Howard Stern talks about this director who won his Emmy award, but he thanked Scotch, and he made a drink joke about it.

20-something years ago, there weren't a lot of guys kissing.

My point is like the impact, right? I have people still to this day come up and say, “I saw you kiss him on the Emmy Awards  It was the first time I'd ever seen it.” I mean, you know Tony Awards: yeah. But we are the first same sex kiss on the Emmy Awards, and we got a lot of positive response from it.

Nik: I'm so happy for you, bro. 

Scotch: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. 

Nik: I think this world, uh, I think this world is a better place to have you as a dad in it and bringing up three kids. That's a world I wanna be in. 

Scotch: What about you? Anything like that for you on the horizon? 

Nik: Oh, I think that's actually the end of the show. 

Scotch: Oh, look at that. We talk about kids and you're gone. I don't get to convince you that I was like, at least 20 years older than you before I had my first kid.

Nik: Oh my gosh. No. You know, who knows? I'm turning the whole thing over. We're, you know, I don't wanna have kids now. 

Scotch: Yeah. 

Nik: I think it's really brave to bring kids into the world right now.

Scotch: I think, “who knows” is a perfectly good answer. Yeah. 

Nik: Yeah, I think that you are and have been, such an amazing person. Such an amazing force. It's nice to get some more context through it all. 

Scotch: I'm humbled by your opinion. 

Nik: Thanks for being here. Love you. 

Scotch: Love you too.

Nik: Wow. Wow. Scotchy Wawa. Isn't he great? Wouldn't he be an awesome dad? We just got off the phone. He moved out of LA. And lives way up north, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and has had the house all to himself.

So he's been having a grand old time a day off from being a dad. Can you imagine triplets, man? Three at once. Go from zero kids to three kids. You only have four hands between two dads. So I don't know how that spreads out. 

Woo. What a rush. Who would've thought a gay podcast would fulfill me so greatly. If you love this show, what would be really helpful, and you don't wanna just give us money, you can follow, like, subscribe, rate, comment, share, you know. Let us know that we're your favorite gay podcast. It's not a competition, but we do have all the greatest gays. 

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