Doogie Style

So Neil Patrick Harris has been nudged out of the closet to what appears to be general gay acclaim. Interestingly, now that he’s out I’ve kind of lost the fever that I was feeling for Mr. Harris earlier this year. I met him at an almost obnoxiously A List gay party on Gay Pride in New York and had a brief exchange with him that left me rather smitten. He seemed to be paying tremendously close attention to what I was saying, deploying a laser beam of focus that flattered me to the core and elevated his sex appeal from moderate to high in my estimation (which y says something fundamental about attraction and how to generate it in others). When I later learned that he had a nearly identical encounter with a friend I chalked it up to a neat actor’s trick: acting like their interested. I felt rebuffed, and tricked, and smitten. Never mind that he was really just being friendly, or that he and his boyfriend were never more than three feet apart. It was just the kind of challenge I like: a closeted actor, who’s very happy with a hot younger boyfriend and who doesn’t swing (as he told my friend.) Totally dreamy. Add to that his lusty turn both as a fictionilized verion of himself in Harold and Kumar ("I'm tripping balls") and his rabid het cocksmith Barney on the acceptable sit come How I Met Your Mother and I was practicing writing ‘Jason Partick Harris Rowan’ on my pee chees for hours.

Now that he’s out it suddenly feels like he belongs to everyone, and my private little fantasy of driving a wedge in between him and the BF has been decimated. This whole experience kind of reinforces the value of the closet-it’s private and dim and fantasies flourish better in the dark. Is it perhaps better to let it be endlessly conjectured that you’re gay, then to speak up and remove all doubt? Where's the furtive and sketchy appeal in that? It's all just a fantasy from the audience's perspective anyway, and my personal encounter was only marginally more real than one you'd find in an magazine interview.  Possibly less, actually. And I guess it's also my straight guy obsession (there, I've said it) that makes this pill a little bitter-even though I knew he was gay before that fact that he played and tried to pass as straight allowed to to inject his image with hetero appeal, thus making him somehow hotter. How fucked up is that? He’ll probably get some image award soon and really kill the love.

Sorry for the headline, Neil. Call me?

P.S. Photo of NPH and offending boyfriend to his right not from said party. Photo pirated from Getty Images. Arrr!

Comments

[d.nial tastes like a river of chocolate]

george michael just said something about how the gays only care about you until you come out of the closet, and then they don't give a shit. it's your (our) response to neil coming out, as well as the vicious response to lance's outing from bitter gays, who make staying in the closet the obvious choice for gay performers. unless you're 50 and already been put out to pasture by the age-nazi gay world, it's clearly better to stay aloof, noncommital and unavailable. fuck the cover of the advocate. where is rupert everett, anyway?