That’s probably the last lie I’ve told publicly. You created a whole fiction around not running a popular Nicki Minaj fan account. It makes things fun.įor you, what’s the best thing that you dropped into the world as a fact that is maybe a lie? I don’t think I have been lying much lately. “When I feel like I shouldn’t do it, I feel like that’s when I should definitely go for it.”ĭo you like creating fictions online? I love creating fiction in everything that I do. And I have a quiet moment with a cigarette. We go to the back, we sit down, I have a cigarette, we start talking more about ‘Dead Right Now’ and all the sad, dark stuff. At this part of the date, we've had a couple snacks.
I’m writing a movie of our date in my head right now. “For me, I had an image in my head that I was chasing. With the eyes of a puppy, he asked if it was going to be hard for me to not smoke the rest of the meeting. I set the cigarette back in the box and sat back down with him. It felt as though he were pleading, and I began to think about the many times he had mentioned “the future” and his excitement for it.Īs I stared at him imploring me not to smoke, I recognized that it was less for me and more for my future, the things I might be risking with each inhalation. Montero’s eyes at this moment grew wide and large.
“Quit now-quit while you’re ahead,” he said, looking at me. The cigarette was already in my mouth, unlit. There’ll be somebody, and I’ll say, “Okay, I want to make this person a priority.”Īt one point, Montero told me I should quit smoking. And when the time comes, I’m not going to force it or anything. But ultimately, I feel I’ve gotten to a place where I have enough love for me that I can focus on myself. Sometimes, when you get sad or whatnot, you just want to go with somebody and cuddle and kiss and hug. I don’t want anything that’s-not to be a whore or anything, but I don’t want anything that’s like, “I need your time right now.” Do you feel those things are going to be in conflict for a long time? I feel I still want to hang out with guys every now and then. The idea that right now you’re most in love with your work, but you do still have this yearning to be affirmed and loved by someone else. And I’m more in love with what I’m doing than people. And I like to go missing for like a week to focus…not talk to anyone and focus on myself. And you have to give this person your time. I’ve been wanting somebody for so long and wanting somebody to love for so long, but it’s a real responsibility. I don’t even like talking to DL boys anymore, you know?
But it happens in that time frame between 17 and 24. I feel every single gay person’s fallen in love with a straight person. It was also about falling in love with a straight boy. That song is sublime, and I think it’s one of the clearest articulations of queer yearning I’ve ever heard. “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” became the most listened-to song detailing overt Black gay male desire in American popular culture. The single’s visuals, too, struck chords heretofore unstruck: There was overt faggotry, an invocation of Satan worship, and the specter of the many American children, including my nieces and nephew, who would know almost every word. That line, in and of itself, is a frighteningly honest encapsulation of the loneliness of being young, Black, and queer, searching for affirmations in all the wrong places. But for every feature I did ask for on this album, like, every single one of them worked…besides Drake and Nicki. When you were working on the album, how many times did the people you reached out to for features say, “No, thank you”? I don’t usually ask for features like that. There are too many other wins to be upset. Drake, with this huge album and the most first-week sales of the year.
Everybody was like, “One-hit-wonder this, one-hit-wonder that.” And now it’s amazing that my competition was Drake. Nobody even thought that I would be here. Then I got out of it, and all I thought about was how blessed I am.
I’m sure you felt that when your album, Montero, didn’t go No. I know a lot of people see that as a bad thing, but people have to work harder to stay in this place. I feel like it’s knocking down the walls. Why do you think it does? Because there’s a new age of celebrities, and I don’t think a lot of people are comfortable with it. What’s wrong with “influencer,” though? Why does influencer have such a bad connotation? On the internet, they call me an “influencer playwright,” and that’s their way of diminishing me and what I do. Because part of the reason my play Slave Play got so popular was because I worked outside of the normal bounds of what people do in the theater.