Foster the People

M.G. Lord's guest column about Jodie Foster -- "We Are All Her Foster Children" -- will make you wish you were a lesbian -- and is reason enough to subscribe to Kevin Sessums's new online magazine. (And there are many more.)

A Little Slice of Kevin

Ran into my pal Kevin Sessums a couple of weekends ago in Chelsea, while he was in town from San Francisco, busily working on the launch of his new online magazine. I first met Kevin when he recognized me at a Starbucks in Chelsea and kindly introduced himself. (I believe he was writing theater reviews for Towleroad at the time, so I instantly knew who he was.) Then I really got to know him when my brother Bill bought me "Mississippi Sissy" for Christmas a decade ago -- I had read some of Kevin's Vanity Fair stories, but the book was a whole other thing -- and have been a fan ever since. Kevin's new online magazine is now up and running -- chock full of interesting content building on his wildly popular Facebook feed. Do yourself a favor and check out sessumsmagazine(dot)com now HERE.

Follow HERE.

Kevin Sessums Exits FourTwoNine Magazine

Facebook's most prolific poster writes:

Kevin Sessums added 3 new photos.

Yesterday at 8:25am ·

Last Wednesday was my final day as Editor in Chief of FourTwoNine magazine. It has been an amazing, an interesting, and a fulfilling two years on lots of levels but I reached a point at which the only principled decision on my part was to move on. I will be forever grateful for being given the opportunity to launch this magazine - indeed, we were cited as Launch of the Year in Folio: - and to produce these five issues I've conjured along with my small band of young, dedicated staffers. I will always cherish the experience. I will also continue to be an advocate for the writers and photographers I hired while there.

During my time at FourTwoNine as its founding editor I featured Tony winners, Emmy winners, and an Oscar winner along with other more cutting-edge artists and performers and personalities. I published a Pulitzer Prize winner and a National Book Award winner and a Man Booker Prize winner and a MacArthur Genius Award recipient as well as writers who were being published for the very first time. I even pushed the magazine form a bit and published one-act plays by Charles Busch and Jon Robin Baitz. I was the first person to publish George Hodgman writing about his mother, Betty, before his book "Bettyville" became a national sensation and bestseller. I loved being the forum for such great writing by so many writers I admire and giving established photographers and talented new ones the pages to showcase their work.

I wish FourTwoNine continued success. It has been an honor to create the editorial foundation on which it can build.

Onward.

I always thought he should rebuild his reputation and then move on to bigger and better things. Step One was accomplished very nicely -- and I trust Step Two is just a matter of time.

UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in HERE.

More Answered Prayers?

Thrilled to see my friend Kevin Sessums' new memoir as the lead story on The Daily Mail's home page -- bring on the sales! -- but can't help but wonder if this misleading article and personal photos might ruffle some of his famous friends' feathers. (And not sure how this is an "exclusive" when the book is out!)

EXCLUSIVE: Hugh Jackman has 'a thing' for swingers clubs, Anna Nicole Smith had vomit breath and Michael J. Fox's dirty word discovery: Confessions of the drug and sex crazed 'interviewer to the stars'

• --Kevin Sessums was one of a few celebrity interviewers who was treated like an insider by stars
• --He lost both parents by age nine and was abused by a minister in rural Mississippi at 13
• He's interviewed everyone from Courtney Love to Diane Sawyer to Jared Leto 
• --Alan Cumming revealed he was bisexual and married to Grant Shaffer
• --Actor Tony Curtis said Sessums resembled his crush Yul Brynner. 'I haven't slept with a man in decades, but the night is young,' Curtis told him

Read HERE.

I Saw It On the Shelf

File this under "Serendipitous": Happened to go into Three Lives & Co. bookstore last night and noticed my pal Kevin Sessums' new book on the shelf. Took a photo to share with him online, without realizing the book wasn't officially coming out until today -- it was almost closing time, so the shop had obviously done its work for the following day already -- which meant this was the first time he was actually seeing it for sale. Having released a memoir of my own about a year ago, I know how emotional it is to have your most intimate thoughts exposed to the world.

Kevin responded with this:

Congrats, Kevin! His first book, "Mississippi Sissy," was incredibly poetic and moving. Cannot wait to dig in to your latest work.

Order HERE.

Listen to Kevin read an excerpt from the book HERE.

Description:

On his 53rd birthday, Kevin Sessums woke up in his L.A. hotel room wondering how he would get through his scheduled interview with Hugh Jackman. For years he had interviewed the bright lights: Madonna, Courtney Love, Jessica Lange, and all the other usual suspects; but, Kevin knew that his rapidly unraveling life was as shallow as the hotel's hip furniture and he was hanging on by his fingertips. In I Left It on the Mountain, Sessums chronicles his early days in NY as an actor, his years working for Andy Warhol at Interview and Tina Brown at Vanity Fair, countless nights of anonymous sex, his HIV Positive diagnosis and his descent into addiction. It's also the chronicle of one man's spiritual redemption found while climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostelo and trudging across the cold, lonely winter beaches of Provincetown. Peopled with the famous like Daniel Radcliffe and Diane Sawyer as well as anonymous companions corporeal and otherwise whom he met while mountain climbing and hiking, I Left It on the Mountain is the story of one man's fall and rebirth, the next moving chapter in Kevin Sessums' extraordinary life that takes him from the high to the low and back again. For readers who loved Mississippi Sissy and want to know what happened to that tenacious little boy with the baseball mitt, I Left It On the Mountain is the sometimes very dark, but ultimately hopeful answer.

Kevin Sessums Honors 429 Magazine Coverman Alan Cumming

Had a great time with my pal Tim Teeman at Kevin Sessums' party for Alan Cumming Sunday night at the Soho Grand Hotel. Traded book-publishing horror stories with the 429 magazine cover man and "Cabaret" star, then had the pleasure of getting to know Richard Pérez-Feria (far right) and his partner, Marco Medrano, who swapped Gore Vidal stories with Timmy! 

Kevin Sessums: The hostess with the mostess

Hello, Columbus!

Other highlights of the evening included having two young dancers "make" me cup their incredible asses to decide whose was hotter -- and then finding a lost boy (above) near the Xmas tree who had (literally) just gotten off a plane from Columbus, Ohio, Straight, 20, and perhaps the hunkiest young man I have seen in a while, he wants to be a model ...

Subscribe to FourTwoNine HERE.

Congrats to Kevin and Alan for a wonderful night. Order the men of the hour's new memoirs below:

"Not My Father's Son" HERE.

"I Left It on the Mountain" HERE.

Kevin Sessums Climbs Every 'Mountain'

It's been an exciting week for my pal Kevin Sessums, whose blurb was one of the highlights of my getting published. The former Vanity Fair writer had a stellar profile in Sunday Style section of The New York Times -- complete with correction and a clarification -- and now his upcoming memoir has become available for pre-order on Amazon.

The chapter titles from "I Left It on the Mountain" -- which I can only assume is a reference to his meth needle -- sound like another page-turner from the skilled and sweet scribe:

ONE ..................... The Starfucker
TWO ..................... The Climber
THREE .................The Role-Player
FOUR ....................The Brother
FIVE ......................The Mentor
SIX ........................The Factory Worker
SEVEN...................The Dogged
EIGHT ................... The Pilgrim
NINE ......................The Addict

Here is the book's subtitle:

My Adventures with Madonna, Courtney Love, Jessica Lange, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Radcliffe, Edward Albee, Andy Warhol, Mary J. Blige, Diane Sawyer, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, the Angel Lucifer , Ganesha, Jesus Christ, God, and others

If you're as intrigued as I am, pre-order your copy now HERE!

Kevin Sessums Will Only Cher So Much

On what is Mrs. Bono's 68th birthday, I share with you this great Facebook post by my noted celebrity journalist (and my pal) Kevin Sessums. He maxed out on friends (you just have to meet him to understand why), but you can still follow him -- and get juicy stories like this one -- HERE.

Happy birthday today to Cher.

Twenty-four years ago I did a cover story on her for Vanity Fair and Herb Ritts shot the photos. She hated it all. First off, she didn't want any of her then six tattoos displayed on the cover and Tina Brown ran one of them on the cover as well as putting the fact she had the six in the cover's title. Cher despised the story and went on television to bad mouth it and me every chance she got. I certainly didn't fawn over her and now that I've re-read some of it, it does have a bit of a hard edge. But I think it was a fair assessment of who she was at that moment in time. And I adored her back then even if not fawningly so. I still do, bless her heart.

I think her manager back then - whom I like and still know - got the brunt of her ire. And mutual friends who vouched for me received the rest of it.

She didn't like all the facts and figures that Tina Brown always liked having in a story. Tina called it putting in "process." She also didn't like that I brought up her then daughter being a lesbian and how poetic that was sense Cher herself is such a gay diva.

But most of all she hated that I spoke to her mother. She told me not to speak to her since she wasn't speaking to her herself back then. Well, that's a red flag to a writer or journalist. She couldn't tell me what to do or how I was supposed to write the story - telling me not to speak to her mother because she was not speaking to her at the time seemed the very key to the story I was writing - so I set up a tea with her mother Georgia at what was then The St. James's Club - now the Sunset Tower Hotel. That made Cher crazy. But I don't regret a moment of that tea. It was the key to the story. And softened any hard edges that the story - and even Cher herself - had.

Years later after I had moved back to New York City from Paris I got a call one night out-of-the-blue from Chaz, who was then still Chastity. "Is this Kevin Sessums, the writer?" asked the unfamiliar voice.

"Yes," I said.

"This is Chastity Bono. I'm sitting her with my grandmother. Do you have the time to talk to us?"

"Yes," I said, a bit shocked.

"We were talking about the book my grandmother wants to write about her life and we decided that you are the only person who should do it with her."

"Wait. Me?" I asked. "Have you talked to your mother about this?"

"No. But that story you did on my mother captured her more than story anybody's ever done on her."

"It sure did," said Georgia, who had by then gotten on the other line. "Hey, baby," she said. "How are you? You think you'd like to do this book with me?"

"But wait. Now wait. I'm confused. Cher HATED that story," I told them.

"That's why she hated it," said Chastity. "You really captured her. You could do the same with my grandmother."

I flew out to Palm Springs to hang out with Georgia for a week but decided not to do the book with her for a variety of reasons. If you want to hear them, you'll have to have dinner with me. Hell, you might even have to buy me dinner to get some of that out of me. I don't know if Cher ever knew Georgia was talking to me about writing that book. But Cher should not only thank me for not writing it but also thank me for not putting that week with her mother and all we talked about in my own next book. I decided not to share Cher's family secrets. I still haven't.

'Pick' Me Ups

Tickled for my book to be alongside Rosanne Cash's stellar new LP on FourTwoNine's editor's picks for the week! Read HERE.

Oh, and did I mention what I found at my doorstep when I woke up this morning?!!!

 

Four Two Nine Ready for Take-Off

Had a great time last night at the launch party for Four Two Nine magazine. Although editor in chief Kevin Sessums didn't make it in from San Francisco -- where the publication is based -- saw a bunch of familiar faces at No. 8 (the former home of Chelsea's XL, I realized!), and met even more. (That's Tim up top, a 24-year-old aspiring actor from the Philly area.) Look for a smiling Andy Cohen and Sarah Jessica Parker on your local newsstand, or to subscribe, click HERE.

FourTwoNine Magazine Makes 'Friends' With Premiere Issue

If you contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for the new LGBT magazine FourTwoNine then you'll be happy to know the premiere issue just went to press. (The theme of Issue 1 is frienship.) Gracing its cover are Andy Cohen and Sarah Jessica Parker, who discuss their longtime membership in the Mutual Admiration Society. The debut also covers the friendships of Calvin Trillin/Larry Kramer and Thom Browne/Andrew Bolton, as well as articles by Salman Rushdie, Michael Cunningham, and Amy Siskind, new poems by National Book Award winner Mark Doty, and works by photographers Ruven Afanador, Christian Witkin and Torkil Gudnason.

Here's what editor in chief and friend of KIT212 Kevin Sesssums had to say about it:

This is the cover of the premiere issue of FourTwoNine magazine - for those who haven't seen it yet. There's much more inside than what is highlighted on the cover. Can't wait for everyone to read it and see it and hear the feedback in a few weeks. It all went to the printers this afternoon. Thanks to everyone on my staff who helped make our vision of this magazine come true. The hard work put in by my young co-workers has inspired me as their Editor in Chief. They are more than my young colleagues; they are my true and tested friends. 

On to No. 2.

To subscribe, click HERE.

Forewords and Afterwords

This post has been a long time in the making. I haven't mentioned three books I've read recently, and no sooner did I get my reading list down a bit there are a bunch of new titles I've itching to dig into.

Read and recommend:

"Mississippi Sissy": Kevin Sessums' beautifully written memoir about growing gay up in Jackson, Miss., in the '60s and early '70s has an perverse psychosexual mystery running through it that had me gasping for air with each turn of the page. (Anyone else feel it? Surely it was intentional.) Kevin recognized me in Starbucks the other day and said hi and I couldn't have been more tickled. I've seen him every day since -- we're now "office mates" as he puts it. Look forward to the sequel. His life has only gotten more exciting in the ensuing years. Learn more here.

"Boston Boys Club": My pal Johnny Diaz's debut novel examines the lives and loves of three good gay guys in Boston whose lives intertwine at the local watering hole. It's a fun and quick "beach read" style book, although I have to say it was especially fun for me because I'd spent four days up close and personal with Mr. Diaz at a conference last year and I could see bits and pieces of his personality (and obsessive-compulsive tendencies!) in each of the characters.

"Look Me in the Eye" by John Elder Robison. An interesting memoir from the older brother of "Running With Scissors" author Augusten Burroughs, Robison grew up with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome and didn't know why he was so "different" until middle age. His years on the road with the rock band KISS are particularly fun. Learn more on Robison's blog here.

Next up:

"The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy" by Robert Leleux. If you crossed Augusten Burroughs' mom without the crazy with Kevin Sessums' life minus the tragedy, you'd have Leleux, or so the delightful review in today's Times has me thinking: "My mother is my movie star and my football hero, and nothing feels impossible when she charges forth, mink coat abristle." By the time his mom seeks a cure for her baldness "caused by years spent wearing showstopping wigs" I knew this book was for me. Learn more here.

"The Sixth Form" by Tom Dolby. A look inside New England preps schools from the author of "The Trouble Boy." Learn more here.

"The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. A Christmas gift from a friend who says this is the best nonfiction book he's read in ages.

Coming this summer:

"Band Fags" by Frank Anthony Polito (out May 27). Perhaps the most anticipated book of my lifetime because the synopsis -- well, minus the instruments -- reads like my childhood in Madison Heights, Mich. The author and I became friends when he came across my blog and noticed striking similarities between our stories. Best friends growing up in suburban Detroit are both gay but can't come to terms with it in the same fashion or at the same time. Learn more at bandfags.com.

"Miami Manhunt"by Johnny Diaz (out June 24). My pal's followup to "Boston Boys Club": One star. That's what Miami News resident movie critic Ray Martinez would give the local dating scene. He wants to meet a guy to take home to his Cuban mami and papi -- but can real romance live up to his Hollywood fantasies? Learn more here.

Love Me! Love Me!

So on top of having my family being so sweet and traveling from all over to surprise me for my 40th birthday, would you believe I also got a bunch of cool presents? First, my friend Mark sent me a package of hilarious Over 40 and Still Cookin' gag gifts along with a framed photo from when we were 12. Then my sister gave me a fun T-shirt and that incredible scrapbook she made, complete with personal notes from my family and some of my closest friends.

Then my friend Nina came up with a clever retro idea and got eight classic albums CDs from the year I was born. As you can see, 1967 was a great year for music:

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
"Carryin' On With Johnny Cash and June Carter"
"Up-Up and Away"
"Cabaret"
"Take Me to Your World"/"I Don't Wanna Play House""I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"
"How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
"Revenge"

My brother Terence got me Glenn Frey's "No Fun Aloud," which was the source of great amusement back in the early days of MTV when the omnipresent video "The One You Love" would come on repeatedly, its sax solo sending us both into hysterics for some reason.

My brother Bill and his wife, Jacqueline, gave me "Mississippi Sissy" by Kevin Sessums, which I have been absolutely dying to read.

And my friend Greg got me the recently released DVD of "Apartment Zero" -- which was one of our favorite movies of the late '80s and featured the ever-dreamy Hart Bochner. (Woof!)

And last but not least, my friend Jean sent me a box of Hostess cupcakes, my absolute favorite!! I have to say I'm very lucky to have friends and family with such good taste who spoil me so.