It is odd that I feel the need to justify this, but I do. Perhaps it is his current incarnation as gay icon that makes me want to explain. To explain that it isn’t that he is an icon and I am gay so of course I like him. Because I met Rufus many years ago, before he had achieved his cult status, and before I had reason to feel uncomfortable being a part of that cult. The cult of the Gay Messiah.

I was in the backseat of a car, driving back to Indiana from a week-long exploration of the darker side of New York City. Spring break, 1998. It was my second time visiting the city, the first being with a high school teacher and two of my peers. That trip had been more of a cultural exploration of New York’s glossier half: museums, hotels, taxis, and plays. This latest trip was the opposite: drunken wandering to dive bars and piercing parlors. Hitting on and being hit on by beautiful men. Coming in to my own.

So I had bought a magazine before we hit the road, Alternative Press, and was scouring the pages looking for things to feed my new-found appetite for all things underground. And what I found was a very small interview with a new artist who was about to release his debut album. Rufus Wainwright. The interview asked him about his fondness for opera and for boys. And he owned up to both. In a magazine, speaking openly about all of his personal loves. It caught me at a time when I was still trying to find a vocabulary for what I had not talked about for 5 or 6 years. It was during the time when Michael Stipe was still being cagey, saying things like “Labels are for soup cans.” That little half-page interview burned itself into my brain.

Two months later I was home from my first year of college, and soon to be having my first sex with a boy. It was an extremely melodramatic affair, and we both had a flair for the extreme. It had very quickly become too much for either of us to handle, but before we had ended he was to take a trip to the city. New York (again). I asked him to look for an album by Rufus Wainwright, because there was no chance my small, midwestern town would stock such a thing on its shelves. “Who?” he asked several times. Just look, I said. And he did. The morning of his return, while I was in the shower, he snuck into my house and left a gift upon the table. My album. I had precious few minutes to rip it open before I had to run off to my summer job at the automotive factory, but rip it I did. An opening piano interlude, and the lines: “I don’t wanna hold you and feel so helpless. / I don’t wanna smell you and lose my senses. / And smile in slow motion, with eyes in love.”

A slow pause. And then another verse. “I twist like a corkscrew, the sweetness rising. I drink from the bottle weeping. Why won’t you last? Why can’t you last?”

Framed only by his piano, the song defines a sparse but elegant cabaret-influenced melody. The second half of the song slowly slips into a lush, orchestral-soaked ballad, with incredible strings. Lyrically, the song is also a direct projection, sort of a letter to himself, defining his goals and sense of purpose.

I was hooked. This was the story of the love affair. My love affair. And it was gorgeous.

The album sustained me for years, and then I found myself in a similar summer position. Another affair was over, with the same boy as before, only this time I had just (barely) graduated and had no idea what or who to do. I worked three jobs and drank at least one forty every night. It was June 2001 and I was lost.

So Rufus released “Poses” and comforted me to sleep at night. A torch-song to the brokenhearts and their discontent. The title track beautifully articulated the emptiness he feels in the world in which he has found himself. “I did go from wanting to be someone…now I’m drunk and wearing flip flops on Fifth Avenue…” Sigh.

And it has continued. The music and the memories. Rufus brought his tour to my small midwestern town and my new (and improved) boyfriend took me to see him play. And later we (Rufus and I) sat and smoked on the porch, talking. When I moved to New York (finally) he played several times as he continued to record albums with purpose and soul. And I’ve continued to listen.

So there is a part of me that feels a bit silly to claim my love for this cabaret-pop genius, as every queen prancing around the streets does the same because they saw him on Out magazine. But there comes a time when it is silly to deny yourself or what you love. “The Lady Gloom and her hornets circling round / Is now before us, the screaming’s done without moving / One little move and for sure you will be stung…”