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THE ADVOCATE
Page
1|2|3
By: Bruce Vilance / october 9th 2001issue
Chad Allen: His own story
Forgive me, but inquiring minds want
to know: What was the prostitute thing? They had
the truth in the photo. I was in the pool with a guy. I don’t
know about the other stuff. It was weird. It was just made-up
stuff.
Sometimes they’ll make something up so you can deny it, and
that will spice up the story, or maybe you’ll say, “That’s
not what really happened. Here’s what really happened.” It’s
a time-honored trick.
I don’t know how those things work. The joke was,
they weren’t saying I was gay. They couldn’t print the word
homosexual in the article. All they had was a picture of me
kissing a guy, not from a movie or TV but from real life.
And that was enough to get everybody started.
It certainly was.
The letters started coming in from gay people—“Oh,
my God,” “I had no idea,” “Just knowing helps me so much.”
It helped me, actually, all this pressure I was getting to
identify myself, identify myself. It just meant so much to
know I wasn’t going through it alone either. After all, what
is it [loving men]? There’s so much attached to it, but at
the end of the day, it’s love. I’ll take it. Whatever it looks
like.
Tell me about the fallout.
The
truth was, just about everybody who knew me and cared about
me gave me support. The morning after it hit, I had to walk
from my dressing room to the set. I was petrified. And I thought,
Everybody who looks at me is gonna know… [Shaking his head]
What? That there’s a scared little boy inside? Is that because
a movie set is a homophobic place? No, it’s because I was
a homophobic place! You know, we hung out on that set, and
we had a real sense of give and take and community, and I
didn’t want that to change. And as I walked along, everyone,
the transportation guys, the engineers, they all came up and
slapped me on the back. They loved me, you know? We were family.
Speaking of love, you poor thing, you’ve been an idol all
your life. Has that made it hard for you to form relationships?
I haven’t been the world’s greatest boyfriend,
partially because I’ve spent a lot of time deeply involved
with myself and the things that I want to do. It’s tough for
people to be around somebody who gets a lot of attention.
A lot of people I’ve been with aren’t willing to get thrust
into that position.
Have you ever been in love?
Yes,
absolutely. I’ve loved deeply, in the romantic sense. I’m
very proud of that.
Is there somebody special in your life now?
No. I mean, lots of special people, but I’m not
romantically involved right now. I’d like to be! [Laughs]
What are the job requirements?
A huge amount of mental stimulation and capacity.
An intense desire for adventure and fun. My life is about
doing things that are extraordinary. I love to be out and
adventuring and traveling. And I also love to sit in deep
prayer and meditation. I don’t really enjoy spending a lot
of time in bars or clubs—and I certainly have, because there’s
not much I haven’t done at one time or another in my life.
Not so long ago you had a big reputation around drugs and
parties. Were you a circuit boy?
So, I was a guy who loved to push everything to
its limits. That included the use of drugs and alcohol to
expand and heighten every emotion to its absolute extreme.
I’ve experienced the rave scene, the underground New York
and L.A. scenes, the circuit party scene among gay men—all
of it.
I think I know where this is going.
At
the end of the day, I was alone, and I couldn’t stop drinking,
and it wasn’t a happy place. It was Chad sitting by himself
in a condo in Malibu with nobody else around, on the brink
of death.
Did someone step in and help you?
There
comes a time with addicts and alcoholics when you have to
say, “I’m not gonna watch you kill yourself. Don’t call me
until you’re getting some help.” For me that phone call came
from my friend Heather Tom. When she walked away from me,
I realized I was losing my family. I began working an intensive
recovery program that I’m still active with in my life. That
was four or five years ago. It’s been unbelievable since then.
Do you think being outed—and staying out—has limited your
options?
I’m asked that a lot. It’s interesting, and I don’t
know. In the end, of course, it hasn’t mattered. I’ve never
played a gay role on television or film. Still! And everything
I’ve done in the last year, three films and some TV, it doesn’t
seem to have affected that. Maybe I’m just not good enough
at being gay to be cast that way!
Doesn’t sound so bad somehow.
I
thought about it a lot at first, naturally. I wondered if
CBS would find a way to make me disappear from Dr. Quinn.
But they didn’t. And the last few years have been even more
interesting. I think the drama of it all has helped me in
my work. In fact, I think it has helped me to do better work.
And as an actor, who knows why you get certain parts or not?
I haven’t spent too much time thinking about it lately.
But you’ve played gay parts in theater?
Mostly in plays I’ve produced myself! One of them—and
this is seared in my mind forever—one of them was in this
cockroach theater in L.A., a tiny two-man play. My parents
had come. Now, my mother is a very emotional woman. My dad
is not one to convey emotion. And at the end of the play,
I was crying as my character, and there in the second row
was my dad crying. And I knew then that the only place we
were probably ever going to connect was in the safe context
of a theater. That’s why I keep returning to theater. You
don’t get that kind of emotional connection watching television.
That’s something I think only the theater is capable of.
In your teen heartthrob period, your posters were in thousands
of girls’ bedrooms. Were you ever attracted to girls, or did
you always know that guys were it for you?
Quite
honestly, this opens up a whole area of discussion that it’s
sometimes tough for people to understand. It’s easy, especially
speaking politically, to want to clarify things as gay or
straight or homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual. But I’ve
always felt like the word homosexual described a person about
as well as the word Republican or Democrat. It’s a nice little
label to give somebody, but what does it really tell you about
them? Nothing. I’ve had beautiful, intense romantic relationships
with women in my life. And in this period in my life I have
beautiful, intense romantic relationships with men. I don’t
know for certain that it will always look like that. It hasn’t
always looked like that in my life, so why should I assume
[it always will]? It’s important, I believe, to stand up and
say “I’m gay,” because people get hurt for doing that. And
until that’s not the case anymore, I and hopefully a hell
of a lot more other people will continue to do so.
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Advocate columnist Vilanch is head writer on the new Hollywood
Squares.
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