“Brian Kinney” by Michael Walek

From TRUTH BE TOLD's June 10th, 2025 show ("First Love/First Lust") Michael Walek's "Brian Kinney" tells how a secret late-night TV show changed one boy's life.  

Michael Walek is a director, producer, and writer based in New York City. 

TRUTH BE TOLD was created by Susan Kim and David Zellnik and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svejcar. Logo designed by Joseph Zellnik.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello and welcome to Truth Be Told Season 1, Love and Monsters. Each of these 14 episodes will feature one story performed at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City as part of the live event Truth Be Told. This story night was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick and features members of EST and friends who tell heartbreaking, embarrassing, hilarious, true stories based on a theme. This seven-week season draws from our first two sold-out nights, one called First Love, First Lust, and the other Scary Monsters. Please note, our first night was not captured live, so this season's love stories were recorded and scored in a studio. And now, without further ado, how a secret late-night TV show changed one boy's life. Written and performed by Michael Wallach.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

My parents are asleep in their room. I know this. I know they're asleep because it's three o'clock in the morning, but still I go check. I creep across the landing and stand as still as possible to make sure I hear nothing behind their bedroom door. I am terrified, but also erect. I go downstairs, taking each step one at a time, careful to hold on to the banister, because if I hold on to the banister, I am sure not to trip. Not that I've ever tripped before, but my head is full of all the accidents that could befall me on my way from my bed, out of my bedroom, down the stairs, across the entry, into the family room where it sits. My final destination, the brand new Sony television set with a TiVo recording device that not only lets you record live television, but allows you to rewind in real time. It is a miracle of the new millennium. It is December 2000. Al Gore and George Bush are recounting Florida's ballots. Creeds with arms wide open is the number one song in the country, and I am in the eighth grade. I carefully pick up the TV remote, press power, and instantly use two fingers to hold down the volume button, muting the speakers. And then I wait. I close my eyes and listen to make sure there is no one moving in the house. I wait for what feels like minutes but is probably seconds until I am brave enough to move. I scroll through the TiVo guide and find it. The show I've been waiting up all night for. I saved a copy of Entertainment Weekly with the ad for its premiere, checking the date and time daily so I didn't miss it, counting down in my head for this very moment. I select the show from the TV menu, and the screen fills with the most shocking images I've ever seen in my life. A parade of muscular men in tight speedos with full bulges, go go and enter the room where I learn to walk. The title card of the show in sparkling letters fills the plasma screen. Queer as folk. I turn up the volume. One, two, three, four, four is too much. I put it back down to three. I move my body as close to the TV as possible and watch as Brian Kenny enters the screen and changes my life. For some context, Queer as Folk started as a British show before Showtime adapted it for American audiences. This was at the start of the golden age of television, when Sex in the City and the Sopranos were new, and every network tried to outdo the other for the most adult, violent, and sexual show possible. The American Queer's Folk, My Queer As Folk, was the first gay television show on American premium cable. It lasted for five seasons and got a lot of attention when it premiered, but it isn't really talked about nowadays, and I think it has a lot to do with that first episode I watched in the dark. The principal romantic relationship of the show is between Justin, a blonde 17-year-old high school student, and Brian Kinney, a 29-year-old ad executive, to say that age gap Twitter would set themselves on fire if they saw it isn't hyperbole. In the first episode, Justin sneaks into a gay club, meets Brian Kinney, goes home with him, loses his virginity, and the next morning Brian drives Justin to school. They kiss goodbye in the carpool line. As a side note, in the British version, Justin's character was 15, but even in 2000, American studio executives were like, let's add two years. Of course, in 2000, sitting in my family living room watching Brian Kinney pull down Justin's pants and make out with his asshole, I didn't know men did that to each other or that it had a proper name, Rimming. All I knew was that I was in love with Brian Kinney. Owner of a loft with a freight elevator and a sliding metal door, gorgeous men pounded on every night to get pounded. He drove a doorless black jeep and always parked on the curb. He wore Amani suits to meetings where he eye fucked the closet cases across the boardroom table. He was the first alpha male ad executive on TV beating Don Draper by seven years. He lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but we won't hold that against him. In one episode, there was a two-minute disclaimer because Brian Kinney engaged in breath play. I was also not the only person to like this character. Camille Paglia in her salon.com column mentioned him many times. She called him the swashbuckling bitch king stud. And while I loathe Miss Paglia, I do love that description. Still, it was not the material or the sexual excess that made me fall in love with him. Well, not entirely. It was one scene in particular. In the pilot episode I watched, volume at three, alert for any movement, Brian speeds down the highway in the middle of the night, radio playing a bad pop song, and he turns to his teenage conquest and explains the world. There are two kinds of straight people in the world, he yells, those that hate you to your face and those who hate you behind your back. This woke me from my erotic stupor. There are two kinds of straight people in the world, those that hate you to your face and those who hate you behind your back. It was the hottest thing I'd ever heard. Cause in 2000 it felt like all gay people were doing was apologizing, explaining, negotiating. Love is love. We're born this way. We're no different from you. But here, here was something else. They are going to hate you, so just hate them back and move on with your life. Don't worry about straight people. Have gay friends and fuck who you want and dance with who you want and wrap a scarf around your larynx and jerk off if that's what you want to do. I guess what I'm trying to say, it was the first time I realized a gay person could be cool. I came downstairs, this frightened little boy, and sure, it took me another six years to come out, but I saw something that night that changed me forever. Ten years later, I was at a Broadway opening, drunk on champagne, and across a jam-packed dance floor, I saw him, Brian Kinney. Of course it wasn't him, it was the actor who played him on TV, but in my champagne haze it didn't matter. I gathered up my Dutch courage and pushed my way through the crowd. He smiled as I approached, and I was painfully uncool. I said how much the performance meant to me and how much I loved him, and for the first and only time in my entire life, I asked someone for a selfie. He looked down at me, his green eyes sparkling from the light of the disco ball above, and said, Fuck no, and walked away. I couldn't help giggling. It was exactly how Brian Kinney would respond.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Michael Wallach is a director, producer, and writer based in New York City. Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svaikar. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening. More stories of love and lust will be released every Monday and scary monsters every Thursday. And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps. Till next time, remember, truth wants to be known. Yours too.