Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken Podcast Network. Hey, this is Jordan. This is
Speaker 1: our last episode of but We Loved, and I want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for being on this journey
Speaker 1: with me. This was my first professional endeavor as a
Speaker 1: journalist and to think we've made forty episodes, forty emotional, surprising,
Speaker 1: revealing episodes. I'm just so grateful for your support. I
Speaker 1: don't know if but We Loved we'll be back, but
Speaker 1: I want you to stay with me on my journey.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow me on Instagram or
Speaker 1: TikTok at your underscore again, Solvice. That's Jar Underscore g
Speaker 1: O n SA l VS. I'm going to be producing
Speaker 1: a TV series called Unshaming as my next career move,
Speaker 1: where I interview people on the shame that they've overcome,
Speaker 1: and I want you to stay in touch with me.
Speaker 1: I read every letter you send, every message that I
Speaker 1: get on Instagram from you, and it means a lot.
Speaker 1: I want to say thank you for all of the
Speaker 1: encouragement and I cannot wait to take you with me
Speaker 1: on this next huge part of my journey. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Now let's get into the show.
Speaker 2: So I had an agent. I made an appointment to
Speaker 2: see him, and I brought the manuscript and I said, Stirling,
Speaker 2: I made sure the door was closed. Nobody else, none
Speaker 2: of the secretaries could here. I've written a book. It
Speaker 2: has to be under a pen name. Nobody can know
Speaker 2: I wrote this book. I don't know if there's a
Speaker 2: way you can do that. I'd like to get it published.
Speaker 2: I'd like you to read it. Are you willing to
Speaker 2: read it? On that basis? And no one will ever
Speaker 2: know that it's me? And he said okay. And the
Speaker 2: next day he called. He said, I want to got
Speaker 2: to published, and basically he did. This was kind of
Speaker 2: the first one written about coming out. Everybody in the
Speaker 2: whole world knew basically accept my parents.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Andy Tobias, the author of
Speaker 1: the legendary book The Best Little Boy in the World.
Speaker 1: We'll learn about the loneliness that he battled before coming out,
Speaker 1: and for Andy, what he believes is the opposite of
Speaker 1: that loneliness. For my Heart podcasts, I'm Jordan and Solves,
Speaker 1: and this is what we loved. In my first year
Speaker 1: of coming out, I read almost all the popular gay
Speaker 1: self help books, and one of them was called The
Speaker 1: Best Little Boy in the World. Before I even knew
Speaker 1: what the story was about. It almost felt as if
Speaker 1: the title of the book looked me up and down
Speaker 1: and tore into my life story. It's about a syndrome
Speaker 1: that so many queer people share, the idea that we
Speaker 1: can deflect from our shame of being gay by overachieving.
Speaker 1: I can overcompensate with accomplishments at school and at work
Speaker 1: and in the gym for the fact that I don't
Speaker 1: believe I'm truly lovable. I can compete against others and
Speaker 1: be the best, which will give me an artificial sense
Speaker 1: of self worth that I don't have on my own.
Speaker 1: It was familiar to me because it was my story
Speaker 1: growing up. I learned very early on that the accomplishments
Speaker 1: my parents could brag about were like a currency for approval.
Speaker 1: When I was thirteen, I got into one of the
Speaker 1: most competitive high schools in my city. In college, I
Speaker 1: landed one of the most competitive internships at Google, and
Speaker 1: I won the opportunity my senior year to give the
Speaker 1: student commencement speech at graduation. I had hoped to that
Speaker 1: by being the best little boy in the world, the
Speaker 1: best high schooler, the best intern, the best everything, it
Speaker 1: would distract from my deep inner belief that I wasn't
Speaker 1: worthy of love. But it didn't. It just left me
Speaker 1: on top of a big pyramid of achievement by myself alone.
Speaker 1: When I read the book, it gave me language for
Speaker 1: the first time to explain this experience, and it helped
Speaker 1: me realize that my accomplishments would never soothe my innate
Speaker 1: need to be loved. My next guest, Andy Tobias, is
Speaker 1: the author of that book, The Best Little Boy in
Speaker 1: the World. According to Amazon, it has sold over a
Speaker 1: million copies since it first came out in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three and has never gone out of print. The book
Speaker 1: has touched the lives of countless queer people across decades,
Speaker 1: including many of my guests this season. Andy would go
Speaker 1: on to become one of the most well known financial
Speaker 1: thinkers in America, writing for Time, in Esquire and New
Speaker 1: York Magazine. He's written multiple best selling books on money
Speaker 1: and investing, and for many years was the treasurer of
Speaker 1: the Democratic National Committee. But long before that, in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, when he was growing up, Andy Tobias
Speaker 1: was also the best little boy way in the world.
Speaker 1: What was that moment for you when you knew that
Speaker 1: you were gay or different for the first time? As
Speaker 1: a child, we.
Speaker 2: Went to Palm Springs. My stayed at my grandmother's place.
Speaker 2: Who knew that Palm Springs would become a gay mecca.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't have been eight, so I must have
Speaker 2: been ten, and I was thumbing through a Sports Illustrated
Speaker 2: and I saw a particular picture that, oh, wow, boxer
Speaker 2: with us. You know, I probably somebody who had just
Speaker 2: won the lightweight something or other than Sports Illustrated. But
Speaker 2: there were stirrings' There hadn't been stirrings before that, I remember.
Speaker 1: So what kind of messages were you getting about being
Speaker 1: gay in the fifties?
Speaker 2: So basically I was watching tea in the den up
Speaker 2: in the country on a little black and white TV.
Speaker 2: Because this is nineteen fifty seven and I'm ten. This
Speaker 2: is now sixty seven years ago or almost sixty eight,
Speaker 2: and I remember it like it was yesterday. Ben Kosovar,
Speaker 2: who was an army buddy of my dad, comes through
Speaker 2: with my dad and they were talking about something and
Speaker 2: all they were just walking through the hallway, and the
Speaker 2: one snippet I heard was Ben Kosovar saying, oh, he's
Speaker 2: a homosexual. And they were gone, and I'm thinking, oh
Speaker 2: my god, that's the word for it.
Speaker 1: You didn't even know what they were exactly. You didn't
Speaker 1: hear talking about.
Speaker 2: Some awful person who was a queer, and which is
Speaker 2: the worst thing you could possibly be in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: seven among the straight guys. My father was a wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful man, my mother was a wonderful woman. But they
Speaker 2: hated gay people because everybody did or or they you know,
Speaker 2: they pitied them, and they it was just a horrible
Speaker 2: horror thing to be. You didn't want to have anything
Speaker 2: to do with gay people. So I knew, and from
Speaker 2: age ten to age twenty two, I had this terrible
Speaker 2: secret that no one could ever know. And there was
Speaker 2: no question about it. The only issue is how am
Speaker 2: I going to hide it for the rest of my
Speaker 2: life and how am I going to have a life
Speaker 2: because I probably won't be able to. I thought about
Speaker 2: it constantly, especially once the hormones kicked in more or
Speaker 2: less that year, and the next year and the year after.
Speaker 2: So for the next twelve years, which is a long
Speaker 2: time when you're ten, to keep this secret, and Jordan,
Speaker 2: I thought about it constantly. I was afraid of everything,
Speaker 2: including talking in my sleep. That was the one thing
Speaker 2: I couldn't totally necessarily control.
Speaker 1: You talked about kind of this experience with your dad
Speaker 1: and his friend in the army and understanding that that
Speaker 1: was a bad thing to be gay. What did that
Speaker 1: mentality sort of create for you in the next chapter
Speaker 1: of your life.
Speaker 2: I spent the next twelve or thirteen years being deeply,
Speaker 2: deeply in the closet and trying to do everything right,
Speaker 2: trying to get the best grades I could, trying to
Speaker 2: get my little varsity letters. I had to go to
Speaker 2: Harvard because my brother, my older brother, Goliath, who was
Speaker 2: four years older, almost four years, he had gone to Harvard.
Speaker 2: I was very competitive with him in a way, I guess,
Speaker 2: and so would look for any opportunity to be the
Speaker 2: better performing child. So he would get in trouble, and
Speaker 2: I would oh, Andy's such a good boy. And when
Speaker 2: it was time to apply to schools, I didn't know
Speaker 2: where to apply, and I really was very out of
Speaker 2: it in so many ways, including this one. But my
Speaker 2: parents said, well, you're applying to Harvard. What do you mean?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, yeah, but okay, where else? They said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean? Where else? You're applying to Harvard?
Speaker 2: And I said, what if you don't get in? I
Speaker 2: had to go to Harvard, and thank Heavens, I got
Speaker 2: in because I would have been deep trouble, I guess
Speaker 2: with the Supreme Court if I didn't.
Speaker 1: Well, how was it at Harvard being gay? I mean
Speaker 1: I came out my senior year of college, and I
Speaker 1: feel like those years were turmoil for me because it
Speaker 1: was becoming harder and harder and harder to conceal my
Speaker 1: sexuality and stay in the closet even to myself. What
Speaker 1: was it like for you during those years in college?
Speaker 2: Well, in high school I was in love with various people,
Speaker 2: I mean deeply in love, but couldn't do anything. And
Speaker 2: in college I was madly in love with a whole
Speaker 2: succession of people, none of whom ever knew. I mean
Speaker 2: two of my roommates. One went on to be mayor
Speaker 2: of Cincinnati, and the other roommates that I was in
Speaker 2: love with became dean of students at the University of
Speaker 2: British Columbia with sixty five thousand students, and oh my god,
Speaker 2: college was so lonely on Saturday nights day and everybody
Speaker 2: else would go out looking for women. Harvard was all
Speaker 2: I pretended. I hated it, but there was all guys
Speaker 2: and we weren't even allowed to have women in the
Speaker 2: rooms except for it was called parietals, and the parietals
Speaker 2: on weekdays.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, this was before it was a co ed.
Speaker 2: Ye. Yes, we had electricity, but we didn't have women.
Speaker 2: So Saturday nights Arnt and Brian and the others would
Speaker 2: go out to parties and looking for chicks and all
Speaker 2: these things. And I would pretend that I had a
Speaker 2: turn paper I had to do, or this or that
Speaker 2: the other thing. I was very busy with extracurricular stuff.
Speaker 2: But what I would really do Saturday night, I would
Speaker 2: sit alone in our dorm room or our suite I
Speaker 2: guess you call it, with the lights off. I would
Speaker 2: listen to albums over and over again. One Johnny Mathis.
Speaker 2: The album is called Heavenly. It is the most romatic
Speaker 2: album you will ever hear. And I would listen to
Speaker 2: these love songs basically they were so beautiful and the
Speaker 2: express the yearning, the yearning and the yearning and the
Speaker 2: yearning that I've felt. That's how lonely I was, and
Speaker 2: so that really spoke to me.
Speaker 1: So andy. At some point in your coming out journey,
Speaker 1: you decide to write this book, The Best Little Boy
Speaker 1: in the World. What was that like?
Speaker 2: When I was twenty three, I went back to business
Speaker 2: school basically to have something respectable to do while I
Speaker 2: came out of the closet. I was did very little
Speaker 2: of the homework, and I was terrible in the classroom
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. But I needed some cover.
Speaker 2: I needed something respectable to do.
Speaker 1: This was another form of compensation, another form of being
Speaker 1: the best twenty three year old boy in the world.
Speaker 2: You know, I was my cover story. Every night, while
Speaker 2: I was supposed to be studying the cases, I would
Speaker 2: get in my little eighteen hundred and eleven dollars Fiat
Speaker 2: Spider and drive down to Sporters, which was the bar
Speaker 2: of k bar, of course, and there were like four
Speaker 2: bars in Boston, and this was the kind of the
Speaker 2: collegiate one and where I might meet somebody that I like.
Speaker 2: But that summer I realized, hey, this is crazy. Some
Speaker 2: of the people I'm meeting the bar. One of them's
Speaker 2: a priest, one of them is a cop. So after
Speaker 2: a couple of years, when I was just finishing business school,
Speaker 2: I'd already had some stuff in New York magazine for
Speaker 2: other reasons, and I realized I should write about this.
Speaker 2: This is an unbelievable story. There is this whole world
Speaker 2: out there that millions of people know about, including some
Speaker 2: straight people, mostly gay people, but straight you know, in
Speaker 2: the theater and this and a lot of people know it,
Speaker 2: and nobody else knows, but most of America know it,
Speaker 2: just wasn't discussed and so on and so forth. So
Speaker 2: what a book, What an opportunity to now. I was
Speaker 2: not brave in any way, so I couldn't let anybody
Speaker 2: know that I wrote the book. But I wrote this
Speaker 2: book under a pen name. I remember going kind of
Speaker 2: vibrating with nervousness and sweating. I went to my agent,
Speaker 2: because I had a literary agent, because I had.
Speaker 1: This is the best little boy in the world. You
Speaker 1: write this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Before that book, I had had a couple other books,
Speaker 2: and I'd had articles. I was on the cover of
Speaker 2: New York Magazine and all these kinds of things. So
Speaker 2: I had an agent and he was such a straight
Speaker 2: lace waspish well I can say his name is passed on,
Speaker 2: and he was in many ways a wonderful man. His
Speaker 2: name was Sterling Lord. I made an appointment to see
Speaker 2: him and I brought the manuscript. This is before PDFs
Speaker 2: or any of that stuff. So I had one copy.
Speaker 2: I guess I made a xerox or something. I brought
Speaker 2: the manuscript and I said, Sterling. I made sure the
Speaker 2: door was closed. Nobody else, none of the secretaries could here.
Speaker 2: I've written a book. It has to be under a
Speaker 2: pen name. Nobody can know I wrote this book. I
Speaker 2: don't know if there's a way you can do that.
Speaker 2: I'd like to get it published. I'd like you to
Speaker 2: read it. Are you willing to read it? On that basis?
Speaker 2: And no one will ever know that it's me? And
Speaker 2: he said okay. And the next day he called and
Speaker 2: he said, I want to got to publish, And basically
Speaker 2: he did This was kind of the first one written
Speaker 2: about coming out.
Speaker 1: So the book comes out and it changes so many
Speaker 1: people's lives. It's the first of its kind. But your
Speaker 1: parents still don't know that you're gay.
Speaker 2: Everybody in the whole world knew, basically except my parents.
Speaker 2: I mean, how could I tell my parents. They loved
Speaker 2: me so much and I love them so much, and
Speaker 2: this was a terrible thing to be And I didn't
Speaker 2: want to, you know. And I thought it over and
Speaker 2: over again a billion different times. When I would go up,
Speaker 2: you know, get in my car, drive up to visit
Speaker 2: them for Thanksgiving or for this time or for that time,
Speaker 2: I would think through my head how the conversation would go,
Speaker 2: and I would this time, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: This went on for years.
Speaker 1: By his mid twenties, Andy had graduated from Harvard and
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School, and he was a regular finance contributor
Speaker 1: to New York Magazine and had even appeared on the
Speaker 1: cover of the magazine in nineteen seventy. When he published
Speaker 1: The Best Little Boy in the World in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: it quickly began impacting the lives of many gay men
Speaker 1: across the nation. The initial printing sold thousands of copies
Speaker 1: and quickly sold out, and Andy would receive powerful letters
Speaker 1: from readers telling him, I can't believe you've written my story.
Speaker 1: At a time when being gay was still very shameful,
Speaker 1: this was deeply rewarding to him. But even though he
Speaker 1: had a full fledged gay life with friends and fans
Speaker 1: and even a few romantic relationships, he was still closeted
Speaker 1: to his parents.
Speaker 2: The book had come out, it had been reviewed in
Speaker 2: The New or Times Sunday. I had had an excerpt
Speaker 2: of it in New York Magazine under a pen name.
Speaker 2: But I had a friend from high school called from
Speaker 2: California say hey, Andy, congratulations on this. You know. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, How did you know? He said, oh,
Speaker 2: it's obvious your style. You know, it was obvious it
Speaker 2: was you. So he knew, but my parents didn't know.
Speaker 2: And this went on for years. Okay, the book came
Speaker 2: out when I was twenty five. Everybody knew, People at
Speaker 2: New York Magazine knew, and I would drive up to
Speaker 2: visit my parents and go through my head. Finally, age thirty,
Speaker 2: the paperbacks about to come out, and I just couldn't
Speaker 2: stand it anymore. And every Sunday, I would call my
Speaker 2: parents to say hi, because that's what you do. And
Speaker 2: I called my mother picked up, and I said, Mom, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm about to tell you something that I either should
Speaker 2: have told you ten years ago or I should never
Speaker 2: tell you. And this is certainly not the way to
Speaker 2: do it over the phone. But I can't stand it anymore.
Speaker 2: There's no good way to do it. And my mother
Speaker 2: said instantly, okay, but don't tell your father. He's coming
Speaker 2: to he's coming to the phone. And so he came
Speaker 2: to the phone. So we talked about something else or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then I reconnoitered with my mother and I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, don't tell my father. This went
Speaker 2: on for two years. I finally said, Mom, this is
Speaker 2: just ridiculous. This is insane. So she said, all right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to California. I'll be gone for a few days.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, call your dad. Ask him to stop by
Speaker 2: your apartment on the on the way in from the
Speaker 2: country back into the city, because that's what we did,
Speaker 2: and asked him to come by. So I did. He
Speaker 2: came by and I basically told him and he said okay,
Speaker 2: and I said, what do you mean Okay. I was
Speaker 2: kind of expecting that this was I've been I've been
Speaker 2: waiting her twenty years to finally and he said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, you're not a bad looking guy. You never
Speaker 2: bring girls home, you never have, you don't talk about
Speaker 2: girls into I can't say I'm completely surprised. So now
Speaker 2: I'm feeling you know, I've gone through all that. So
Speaker 2: I said, would it surprise you to know I've written
Speaker 2: a book about it that was reviewed in the New
Speaker 2: York Times? And he said, what what? I So I
Speaker 2: gave him the book, and now I wow. I gave
Speaker 2: him the book, and it's hard to do the rest
Speaker 2: of this way out getting a little choked up because
Speaker 2: he was wonderful, wonderful man. And he called at nine
Speaker 2: o'clock the next morning and he was crying. It was clear.
Speaker 2: I said, why are you crying? He said, I stayed up.
Speaker 2: I stayed up all night and I read it twice,
Speaker 2: and I just feel so bad that I didn't do
Speaker 2: anything to help you. I had great parents, so that's
Speaker 2: how I told him. Only took me, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: years from when I knew and five years from when
Speaker 2: I wrote the book. And I guess I was thirty
Speaker 2: two by the time I told my dad.
Speaker 1: The nineteen eighties were a decade of success for Andy.
Speaker 1: He became a household name as a financial guru, but
Speaker 1: it was also a time of unbearable loss. Andy was
Speaker 1: living through the AIDS crisis. He was watching his best
Speaker 1: friends get sick and die, Young brilliant men, friends he
Speaker 1: had danced with at Fire Island, laughed with over intimate dinners,
Speaker 1: friends who had become family to him disappearing one by one.
Speaker 1: And at the time, it seemed like the presidential administrations
Speaker 1: of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior were largely indifferent.
Speaker 1: After all, AIDS was a disease shrouded in shame because
Speaker 1: it largely affected queer people, a segment of society many
Speaker 1: viewed as worthless. But when a young governor named Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton decided to run for president, Andy and many LGBTQ
Speaker 1: Americans felt a glimmer of hope. Bill Clinton was the
Speaker 1: first president to appoint qualified gay Americans into his administration,
Speaker 1: showing the nation that LGBTQ Americans were respectable, dignified people.
Speaker 1: He also declared war on AIDS and made major strides
Speaker 1: in ending the crisis, and when Clinton got elected, Andy
Speaker 1: got the chance to tell him thank you.
Speaker 2: Through a series of lucky, odd coincidences, I got to
Speaker 2: know the governor of Arkansas, very young guy, at his
Speaker 2: very pretty.
Speaker 1: Wife Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he went off and got himself elected.
Speaker 2: And on January first, nineteen ninety three, nineteen days before
Speaker 2: he was in fact going to be inaugurated, they were
Speaker 2: he and his wife were at the thing that where
Speaker 2: I met him, a thing called Renaissance Weekend that about
Speaker 2: thousand people went to, and they put me on a paddel.
Speaker 2: They called it a panel, each one with two minutes,
Speaker 2: and your assignment was New Year's Day, nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: What I would say if I had two minutes to
Speaker 2: say anything I wanted to the next president of the
Speaker 2: United States. And then there was a big, big footnote,
Speaker 2: don't expect him to be there. He won't necessarily be there.
Speaker 2: I decided I didn't tell anybody. I was too scared
Speaker 2: to tell anybody. I didn't tell any of my friends.
Speaker 2: The people who knew me there knew I was gay.
Speaker 2: I've been gay forever, but there are a lot of
Speaker 2: people I didn't know there. But I was so scared
Speaker 2: because eight hundred people whatever it was in the audience,
Speaker 2: And so I got up there and I say, and
Speaker 2: I'm looking straight at him, and I say, if I
Speaker 2: had two minutes to say anything, you might expect me
Speaker 2: to talk about smoking, because they knew I was a
Speaker 2: big anti tobacco guy. But really, there's only one thing
Speaker 2: I could say, which is thank you. You haven't even
Speaker 2: taken office yet, and already you have dramatically improved my
Speaker 2: life and the lives of millions of other gay and
Speaker 2: lesbian people around the world. So I did my little
Speaker 2: two minutes on that, and the response I got afterwards.
Speaker 2: Remember this is nineteen ninety three, long after Snowmall much
Speaker 2: progress had been made. But Bill clint was the very
Speaker 2: first presidential candidate who would ever put our topic on
Speaker 2: the national stage and who had ever done a fundraiser
Speaker 2: with LGBT people when he was a candidate.
Speaker 1: And this is the backdrop of all of this, is aids.
Speaker 2: Yes, I lost half my friends and age they died.
Speaker 2: Half my friends, including my partner of seven years, Scott.
Speaker 1: You know when you were talking about coming out to
Speaker 1: the Clintons, it made you emotional. I wonder why that
Speaker 1: that was such a touching moment in your life.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to
Speaker 2: throw a wedding for my two best young friends. I'd
Speaker 2: never thrown a wedding before, and I was the epiciant,
Speaker 2: and I was going to I decided not to say
Speaker 2: this because it was about them, not about me. But
Speaker 2: I was thinking, as I kind of m seed the
Speaker 2: thing I was thinking of saying. You know, a lot
Speaker 2: of you think that I walked down here, like eight
Speaker 2: blocks from south from where I live, which is true,
Speaker 2: But really the journey started about eight blocks west and
Speaker 2: twenty blocks north. And it's been seventy seven years, and
Speaker 2: I get emotional because we have been through so much.
Speaker 1: By the late nineties, Andy had become an important voice
Speaker 1: in Democratic politics. As the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.
Speaker 1: He would help prop up two wildly successful presidential campaigns
Speaker 1: for President Obama, and at one point had become one
Speaker 1: of the highest profile gay public officials in America. As
Speaker 1: part of his service, in twenty thirteen, he traveled to
Speaker 1: China and came out to the country's Vice president. Andy,
Speaker 1: once a lonely gay child who hid his sexuality and shame,
Speaker 1: had completely transformed into a global advocate for LGBT causes.
Speaker 2: So I got a call from Howard Dean, who had
Speaker 2: been the governor of Vermont and had been the chair
Speaker 2: of the Democrat National Committee, so I knew him that way.
Speaker 2: And he said, Andy, there's this thing. Every six months
Speaker 2: they have some Democrats and some Republicans go to China
Speaker 2: and then every six months the Chinese Communist Party come
Speaker 2: to Washington. I've done it twice, can't do it again.
Speaker 2: You should be one of the three Democrats who goes.
Speaker 2: It's an exchange between the parties of the United States
Speaker 2: and the Party of China. And I said, you crazy.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about I don't speak.
Speaker 1: Chinese, I don't when was this.
Speaker 2: This was twenty thirteen. But after saying no, no, no,
Speaker 2: about a million times, they finally persuaded me to do it.
Speaker 2: And I was very nervous about it, and I was
Speaker 2: going to have to deal with people that I didn't
Speaker 2: know and who didn't certainly didn't know about my life.
Speaker 2: And I had been asked to give the first little
Speaker 2: remarks with the Vice President of China, and my topic
Speaker 2: was supposed to be the you know, gridlock between the
Speaker 2: two parties in Congress and all this stuff. I addressed
Speaker 2: the topic, and then I said, and if I might,
Speaker 2: as a point of personal privilege, as we call it
Speaker 2: in the US, I explain that, you know, three of
Speaker 2: the nine officers of the Democratic National Committee, including me,
Speaker 2: were openly gay. I said, you know, they're probably about
Speaker 2: one hundred million gay people and LGBT people in China,
Speaker 2: and of your eighty five million Chinese Party of the
Speaker 2: Communist Party members, do you have any sense of how many?
Speaker 2: You know, how many are in your leadership in America?
Speaker 2: He's a professor. Do we know anything about that professor? Whoever?
Speaker 2: It was no, but we could look into him all
Speaker 2: that anyway. Frankly, it was thrilling to me because the
Speaker 2: goal was maybe we can show them that, you know,
Speaker 2: this is not a big deal, because nothing to make
Speaker 2: a hundred million people happier. Things To make somebody happier,
Speaker 2: you need to build things, or you need to grow things,
Speaker 2: or you need to you know, hurt somebody else, make
Speaker 2: them un more or less happy. Here, you can make
Speaker 2: one hundred million people happier just by you know, letting
Speaker 2: them live their lives without fear of persecution. That kind
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 1: We've talked a little bit about this amazing life that
Speaker 1: you've lived. Andy. As gay men, it's no secret that
Speaker 1: we tend to chase the ideals of what we think
Speaker 1: will make us happy, working out for hours on end
Speaker 1: in the gym, in our body, image and sex and wealth.
Speaker 1: But what has made you happy in your life?
Speaker 2: Chosen family. I have an amazing family of astonishing friends.
Speaker 2: I tell my young friends, if you've got your health,
Speaker 2: you've got your friends, you've got a good Internet connection,
Speaker 2: and you have purpose in your life, you have everything.
Speaker 2: I wrote a book called The Only Investment God You'll
Speaker 2: Ever Need, you know, two hundred and whatever pages. I
Speaker 2: wrote another one called The Only Relationship Guide You'll Ever Need,
Speaker 2: which is just one sentence, so I couldn't actually publish
Speaker 2: it as a book. But it's be nice to each
Speaker 2: other and find humor in the compromises. They're worth it.
Speaker 2: Friends are everything, and so that's the opposite of loneliness.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is it's it's community or family.
Speaker 2: You build your own family.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. If
Speaker 1: you want to write in to tell your story, email
Speaker 1: us at but We Loved at gmail dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can send me a message on Instagram or TikTok
Speaker 1: at your underscore goa and solve this. We are a
Speaker 1: production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts, but
Speaker 1: We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
Speaker 1: are Joe pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norville. Original music
Speaker 1: by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Roquel Willis.
Speaker 1: If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and
Speaker 1: follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you
Speaker 1: for listening.