photo by Larry O. Gay
In this section of the interview we discuss what brought him to Birmingham, Morrissey, his bands, and the book he had to write to come out of the closet. Stay tuned for part two in which we discuss his work as an artist and his colorblindness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BH: So what eventually brought you to Birmingham?
PCW: Of all things I moved up here, I did live in Montevallo, to do Americorps and work with Birmingham AIDS Outreach to work with AIDS patients, and I did that for two years
Oh that's a great organization. I know some people who work there. Their event, the Arty Party, you've been involved with that right?
Yeah I donate a piece every year. I was the featured artist one year so that was cool.
So you lived in Montevallo before you lived in Birmingham. Did you go to school there?
Yes. But I’m from Mobile, well technically a small town called Theodore south of Mobile, but I went to school in Mobile. I lived in Theodore. But Theodore’s like… It’s nowhere. It’s a little dot compared to a big dot.
Population 1200? So what did you study at Montevallo?
I started out as art, but I got frustrated with my teachers and didn’t know what to do and I switched it to English so I graduated with an English major and an art minor. I was really a rebel too much concerning the art. They would tell me something to do and I didn’t want to do it and then I would do it reluctantly and get mad so instead of dropping out of college, I just switched my major.
I wanted to learn, that sounds real dedicated, but I just felt like I wasn’t learning anything as an art major. I felt like I was being forced to do things and that was really frustrating.
So when, the other basic question to get out of the way, is when did you come out of the closet? This is your sort of Oprah moment.
I came out of the closet in Montevallo when I was 22, and I think that’s a long time to wait but
Eh I was 21.
Oh well I guess not then, but also when I was in Mobile I went to a Catholic school and I’m the twin of a straight person. So both of those factors made it extremely difficult. And what’s funny is people always say that Montevallo’s this big gay friendly school and it just didn’t seem that way to me when I went there. It wasn’t like people were rolling out the red carpet for my homosexuality ‘come out’ I still felt. It was kind of funny though I had really long hair and I wore it up in a hat, and I had layers of clothing and coats when it was warm and it was funny. I totally changed when I came out of the closet. But it was really not that easy because I’d made a whole bunch of friends in Montevallo and I just had to one by one tell them and It was just like.
You don’t know how familiar this sounds.
Well the hardest part was telling my twin brother and what was funny is the first, I don’t know if I officially told him, what I told him the first time, and he was the first person I even inched toward telling, but I told him I was bisexual just to get a flavor of what his reaction would be like, and he said uh, of course I was in tears when I was telling him, and he said, well at least you’re not gay, and then I cried even harder but what happened, after telling other people, he was told, and now, you know, now he’s really, ever since he found out, he’s really cool about it. And he’ll come to my defense, you know? It’s actually loosened him up a lot. I think he was pretty homophobic before that.
I mean I think knowing somebody, especially it being your,
Sharing a womb with somebody
Yeah, right, that womb-sharing it’ll help you get past some shit. Okay, so I totally relate to what you are saying, the one by one kind of thing. That was a good method.
What’s funny is so many straight guys I would tell, and I’d get real rip-roaring drunk and I felt real comfortable and I’d go “Hey Bryce or hey tom’ or somebody and they’d go ‘what’ and I’d say ‘I’m gay’ and they’d say ‘why are you telling me this?’ and I think it was occurring to me then that pretty much everybody already knew and they were scared I was telling them that because maybe I wanted them or, well I can’t think for them, I thought it was really amusing at the time because I was like ‘I’m just telling you. I just wanted you to know in case there’s any doubt.” Because they’d get really, it was funny to see somebody clam up: why are you telling me this?” not too many people acted that way but some people, I remember my friend John, and he got this big smile on his face and went ‘really?” and I thought ‘he’s known forever!”
I think I got a couple of ‘finallys’ and a big hug
I don’t know if I ever got that, but I was like known for, since I was in college, the rumor went around that I was asexual, and now I’m like if anybody says they’re asexual they’re gay.
Yeah, oh yeah, of course.
Because there’s nobody that’s asexual
Pretty much everybody, the general response was, and I was very after-school special about it, I would sit my friend down and say ‘Listen. I wanted to let you know that I’m gay. Do you have any questions?”
I wish I could have been that calm.
Yeah it was pretty calm, but I got some weird-ass questions, but this interview is not about me, so, it was fun, it was fun though, but yeah, asexual was kind of the response.
I always had it in my head that I wanted to be like Morrissey, and now, I mean I love Morrissey, but that is the last person I’d want to be right now, but at the time, it was the thing, “you know if I’m not comfortable with it, he must not be comfortable with it” because, I still, no matter what people say, Morrissey is fucking gay.
Oh he finally admitted it didn’t he?
Oh no I don’t think he has. I think he’s ambiguous till the end.
I thought I read that he had. No, wait. That was Michael Stipe.
Yeah I know Michael Stipe acknowledged it. I saw the interview.
Yeah, and he was in Butt.
Yeah he referred to it as his queerness and you know that’s very honorable, and that’s why I don’t honor Morrissey that much, because I don’t think he ever has, and it’s not like I want him to suddenly jump on my side of the fence and start cheering for our team, I just, I know how it is to not be out, and if he’s never going to come out, he’ll never know how it feels.
Morrissey’s so frustrating.
He’s so frustrated. His music has never sounded more frustrated as it sounds now.
Did you see him at the Alabama theatre? He ripped his shirt off on stage
And then ran away like an embarrassed old man. And he looked really stiff, and I have bootleg things from 83/85, and he might as well have been out then, but now he’s so stiff and so machismo: (in a fake British accent) I’m trying to be macho now,” but then he was practically a woman, like a woman with a pompadour. But this isn’t about Morrissey, but he was my icon for years. I just wanted to be like Morrissey.
Well luckily you got smarter much earlier than him. So when you moved from Montevallo to Birmingham, you went to work with Birmingham Aids Outreach?
Yeah, and that was my reason for moving out of Montevallo, because, I mean Montevallo is a great place to live, but unless you have a reason to live there it’ll kind of suck you dry. Have you ever been there?
Just for parties.
It took a lot for me to leave Montevallo. It was basically me and Justin saying “we’re going to start this band.” That was when we started nowhere squares, and you know we said, “we’re going to leave Montevallo and do something” because he was working this pizza job, and I was making salads and desserts at this restaurant. It was like “God, get us out of here.”
So did you have a lot of gay friends in Montevallo?
My entire life I’ve never really had a lot of gay friends.
So when you got to work at BAO, I know there’s a large number of gay men and women on staff, who you were now around most days, so how was it to move to a place where you were suddenly surrounded by a lot of gay people?
Well it was kind of gratifying to see what other gay guys’ lives were like b/c I didn’t really have a lot of others to compare/ contrast mine too. I wasn’t ‘oh yeah finally,’ but like I said, maybe three of my coworkers were gay guys and there was like a gay girl. Throughout the two years there were a lot of different gay people, and working with a lot of the patients and clients, that was another thing. Doing that kind of work, you’re not really supposed to get very personal with the people, but it was just, eye-opening, and it taught me a lot about myself and where I was coming from, which was I guess kind of a shell, because really most of my friends are straight still until this day, and I don’t know why that is or what it is, but I don’t feel like I need a cultural safety net to you know.
That’s interesting I have ideas about how that desire for a cultural safety net contributes to the way your identity manifests itself.
Well some people when they come out, they need that safety net and they kind of transform themselves to what is the expected gay person like. They suddenly have more of a lisp and dress more flamboyantly, and I think it’s because they’re suddenly like 'I’m a different person than I was’ or 'the real me was hiding.' And in some cases I think that’s true, but in my case I wasn’t really ever that different. And it doesn’t bother me that people do that, but I feel like I would be pretending if I acted all ‘gay’ like that. But you know it takes all kinds. There’s macho gay people, and half and half gay people, just like there’s effeminate straight guys.
And I think that what you’re saying right there just proves that identity is based on more than just what sexuality you find yourself and I think that’s obvious but sometimes it seems that people, god I’m speaking in such broad reductive terms, but at least around here you hear so much that ‘gay people are supposed to be like this and straight people like that,’ which makes it difficult.
Well that’s what society says but people need role models, or well, models, but we don’t need to depend on them or obsess over them. And that’s kind of why I really don’t like magazines because they’re almost like instruction manuals: “I must do this because it was in Details or Vanity Fair” or “I’m too fat.” People are always giving themselves hell because a magazine says don’t do this or do that or this is the latest crap, and it really bothers me that we’re such a gullible society. You have to be a man or a woman and it’s just horrible to be anywhere in between.
Yeah, but I think that’s where so many of the most interesting people are.
Yeah, and I think it’s getting cooler. I think the whole weight of society is lifting slowly. I don’t really keep up with it that much, like TV and stuff, like I said it bothers me so much I don’t want to even be affected by it so I just keep up with just enough just to see if it’s loosening up anymore. Because, I mean, going to Catholic school was like, oh my god.
Yeah I bet. So, well going back to then, when did you know you were gay?
I think I knew I was gay when I was like three years old because, being a twin, there’s this other version of you, and he’s definitely playing with army men and just all kinds of stuff, and getting on the bike, and I like riding a bike, but I definitely wanted a doll. It’s funny because it was so stereotypical, but I loved unicorns and I loved flitting around and dancing, but I was more like my sisters and my brother was more like my brother and it was like, really obvious in the household what Paul was. And Peter, he took his side of things and ran with it, and I was the same way. Basically, I didn’t realize anything was wrong with that until school happened, when it was like ‘how dare you be yourself.’ No one came up to me and said that, but just seeing other kids, I thought maybe I should be more like Peter. But I was still pretty flamboyant and proud and it’s just year after year I inched more and more into the closet. It was a huge hurdle to jump over once I had sort of put on such a disguise after awhile.
Did you ever act on it during those years?
No like I said, I really and truly became Morrissey, really asexual. And I mean I was fun to be around, and had good friends, but you could have slapped them in the face if you told them I was gay, because I was just sort of this happy asexual person. I was an ‘artist’ I wasn’t boy or girl. And I remember in grade school, right before high school, which was when I really became asexual, in 8th grade this girl flat out asked me ‘are you gay,’ and it was pushing me in the corner, and I was like ‘no’ and giggled. And of course just acted gay as hell. Catholic grade school and high school you all wear uniforms and you’re not expected to show your individuality, it’s frowned upon, but I was a real gay little kid.
So when you came to Birmingham, your social sphere was more your friend you moved here with and the people you made music and art with?
Yeah and eventually you make tons of friends and other people who moved here from Montevallo, and half the band was still there, but Justin and I were at this point where we had to leave, and there was eventually this point where all the Montevallo friends eventually had this mass exodus to Birmingham, but early life in Birmingham for me was mainly Americorps. That job was so hard to think outside of, and in that two years, that was when I was seriously starting to paint, because I just had this sucky stipend and food stamps, so food wasn’t a problem, but paying rent was, so I started really painting, which was funny because my style then was so nothing compared to what it is now, humble beginnings I guess. I didn’t really have a life the first two years outside of the band.
Did you tour much?
I think altogether there were three short tours, but I can’t stand to be away from home for too long. I just kind of freak out. I like to travel, but I really like to get back. I think it’s because I always feel like I have to be doing stuff all the time, and all of that stuff is centered on where I live, and when you’re on tour you’re not really living anywhere, and I would just freak out.
What was the furthest you ever went on a tour?
I think when we went up to New York, and it was fun, that was the most fun one. The one before that was mostly Midwest, Ohio and Indiana. Bloomington, Indiana freaked me out because there were so many gay people, and it was this mixture of punk and hippie, and it still is, and there’s so many vegans. Who would have known that Indiana would be so cool? But they’re so liberal, and that was a big eye opener for me, I wanted to say “well, see-ya straight band buddies, I think I’m just going to move to Bloomington.”
Did you ever visit it again?
No. I mean I travel but not much, and I would have had to know somebody.
Okay, so the Nowhere Squares, how long did that last?
It’s funny because it’s, ’96 to 2007, so eleven years? Yeah, we had started before I moved to Birmingham. I think we technically didn’t evolve much until Justin and I moved to Birmingham. And that was a strange experience being the only gay guy, and I was very much the gay lead singer. And I was in a band before, but I didn’t make sexuality a part of it. But in the Nowhere Squares, I wanted to be as nerdy and gay as I could. I was basically wearing myself on my sleeve.
And you were the songwriter for the band?
Yeah. Justin wrote some, but yeah, most of them were basically a way for me to vent my frustrations on the world out and put it into something creative, something you could dance off all of your anger and your dissatisfaction with the world and society. So I guess doing that myself I was hoping I was encouraging people like me to do that like ‘hey you don’t have to be frustrated and hate yourself; you can scream and dance.’
I would say that you did, and I won’t name names so as not to embarrass someone you know now, but when I was in college, I had a friend who had a house party, and I had never heard of you or Nowhere Squares, but he put your music on, and I think he had that sort of visceral reaction to it.
That’s good.
Yeah I enjoyed it. I liked it a lot.
Yeah but it’s not the type of thing that you can keep doing forever. It’s like, once you know it’s done it has to be done forever.
So what was the final death knell for the band?
To be honest, we were happy with what we were doing, but our bass player was starting his own plumbing business. I don’t even know what it’s like for him now, but at the time he had too much on his plate, and we had already replaced our bass player once, and that was a huge thing too even finding him, because we didn’t want to work with just anybody, and he told us, ‘at the end of this year I can’t be in the band anymore.’ So I was thinking about it, andI thought you know we’ve made like seven albums or something, and just the amount of time and energy and trying to find the right person to replace him, so I felt like we’d just run our course.
So what was the last show y’all played?
It was New Year’s Eve at Bottletree with Enon, which was a good way to go out. And after that, I wasn’t like brushing my hands off. It was weird. I felt sad about it, but I also felt kind of relieved, but I was glad we’d gone out on a good note
Yeah I was there. It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, but what sucked was we had just put out two things, just put out two recordings, and we couldn’t go out and promote or tour them. It was just bad timing in that situation. So those were instantly post mortem kind of things, but what’s funny is that one was called “How to Become Someone Else” and that’s kind of what we did. So in a way, it was almost like fate said this is how it should be. It made me completely reanalyze what my lyrics were at that time. It was like, ‘oh wait’ I kind of knew that was going to happen anyway.’
It’s funny how that can happen.
Yeah, and I think it’s happening all the time now. My life’s kind of more like that now. Like, you know I don’t have a regular job so you’re just kind of making one coherent sentence run into the next.
So explain what Fred and Daily is, another of your projects.
Well it started out, when me and Peter were little, we would dress up, and sometimes that would just be putting a blanket around your shoulders with a Burger King crown and sunglasses, but if we didn’t want to be Peter and Paul, our brothers and sisters would walk up and they’d see we were dressed up and they would say “Where’s Peter and Paul? We can’t find them.” And we’d say “We don’t know.” And they’d ask “Well who are you?” And we’d say “We’re Fred and Daily,” and we’d have funny accents, and sometimes I was Fred and sometimes Peter was, but that’s where it came from, so when I found Garageband, I just started fucking with shit, and me and Peter would start singing stuff to it.
We still aren’t serious about it, which is the best part about it, but it’s kind of a well-produced joke, but when we thought about what we’d call this project, we decided we’d call it Fred and Daily, because it was kind of a continuation of that idea. Instead of dressing up, though in the videos we do literally dress up, it’s kind of like dressing up in a sound costume. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to make videos to everything, because a lot of times it doesn’t sound like you’re listening to anybody, it doesn’t sound remotely like me and Peter and that’s the coolest thing about that project is you can totally pretend to be anybody.
Yeah I like that idea. I like how it’s evolved so much over the years. It’s really interesting.
Yeah we also have a totally different musical thing we’re about to record, but it’s way more, not totally serious, but kind of quiet. It’s another thing that kind of reflects on the music we started making when we were teenagers. It’s called Fields Big and Small. Even the name is such a departure from Fred and Daily, but it’s kind of acoustic, it sounds kind of like mysterious and dark acoustic music with harmonies.
Are you going to play live and record?
Yeah we wouldn’t mind playing that live, though Fred and Daily will probably never be live. We’re actually going to start recording Fields Big and Small this month. About twelve songs.
So is that your primary musical project?
Well, both of those. Because one of them you can have fun and be silly and make videos and the other you can write serious music and perform it live. That was a thing about Nowhere Squares. Whatever we recorded we wanted to make sure we could do it live and Fred and Daily that’s never been a concern. With the video you can be as crazy as you want and it matches up to the music, but live it would be very karaoke. And it would be fun, but
Yeah you could have costumes, be like Peaches or Hawnay Troof.
Yeah but I’m thinking for my brother. I could do it, but I think after awhile Peter would be like “I can’t do this.” You always have to think for the other one. We have to think for each other sometimes.
I just thought of another question I wanted to ask earlier, pre music. How did your family outside of your brother take everything?
You know what’s funny with that, and I haven’t done anything with it, not even looked back at it, but while I was coming out I made this little novel, and it was about a person, roughly based on me a little bit, but I was pretending that all of my brothers and sisters, who are actually older than me, were younger than me, and then I have this weird psychotic mother in the novel. So I was writing it and writing it, and as I was writing it I would tell a different brother or sister in real life.
A lot of the best ones happened when I would tell them in car journeys because I would get them to drive—a captive audience. I remember my sister burst, well not burst, but eased into tears, and I said, “why are you crying,” and she said, “Because you’re going to miss so much,” and I said, “Like what” and she replied, “Like the wedding” and it was just like, she completely saw life as everything building up to this bride and groom on the cake, and I just thought that was so ridiculous, but to me it was very amusing that she was crying.
But what’s funny is in the novel it was all leading up to me telling my mother, because I didn’t know how my mother was going to—it’s funny in hindsight, it would have been real easy had I already known, but I had no idea what she was going to do. But in order to tell my mother, in the novel I had to kill her off, because it came up in the novel, she’s in the bedroom, and she can kind of already tell, and she’s kind, and this is terrible, she’s kind of having this adulterous relationship with the son too, and in the novel you kind of can’t tell if some of the kids are actually his kids, because he’s her oldest son, but she kind of knows, but she doesn’t want to hear it. So he tells her through this closed door, finally says it, like “mom I’m gay’ and he doesn’t hear anything, so he busts through the door, and she’s hung herself.
So, then I was like, I can’t even write anymore on this. That’s it. I don’t really care anymore, so the next time I was home, she was sitting across from me, across the coffee table, and my stepfather was outside, and I said, “I need to tell you this while he’s outside,” and she went “Okay” and I was like “I’m… gay” And she said, that’s funny, because I thought you were either going to tell me that you’re gay or you were getting married,” And I was like “Not unless it’s a guy” but it was like, so nothing. She kind of already knew, and it was like, you tell him however you want to, because I’m not going to tell him.
Because my stepfather, he, kind of “talks like this” (in a redneck accent), but he knows now, he’s known for years, and he sometimes calls me ‘sugar’, but he’s really cool about it but, I had to write a novel in which I killed my mother off in order to get to that point. It’s quite melodramatic now that I think about it but it would be funny to read that back. I think there was a whole other part where I fucked a dog. I mean there were all kinds of things I was having to do to tell each brother and sister.
It was kind of crazy. I had this really old typewriter and I was furiously typing it all. I was really into the Beat Generation and Jack Kerouac so I would just type for days and days.
So you had to kill your mother and fuck a dog in order to come out?
And also be having an adulterous relationship with my mother, and there was something also about how my father had actually not died, and he had actually been abducted by aliens or something. There was all this fucked up shit in it. (Laughs). Like I would ask “Where’s dad?” and she would say (in a melodramatic voice) “I can’t tell you.” It was really David Lynch. Like just fucked up. But once I told her I completely abandoned it. Before that, in my mind, I was like “This is the novel!” but once I told her and my brothers and sisters it was just like.. nothing. It’s just in a big box somewhere untouched.
It’s not in your mother’s attic is it?
No. I have a whole bunch of writings and stuff that are either in boxes or book bags. Just notebooks and paper stuffed in the book bags that I think I’m planning on revisiting. It’s just the idea of doing it though, right now in my life, oh my god. It would just be like lifting a whole house. Just too much of a burden. I think I’ll probably do it later in my life. Have some secretary, she’s sifting through it and I’m bedridden being spoon fed applesauce. (In an old man voice) “Read it to me. Read it back to me. This is the one where I came out of the closet.” I’d probably laugh at it.
I can just imagine the secretary’s face reading some of those scenes, the part where you. Ha. That’s fun though. I think it’s the most interesting coming out process I’ve heard.
I had no idea though how any of them would take it though.
It’s funny how frightening that can be even when, like my family is a really accepting family, but I was scared to death, but then it was the easiest thing.
Yeah if I didn’t have my stepfather outside, I probably would have never gotten up the courage to do it. But he stepped outside and I thought “I’ve got to do it now!” And then it stuttered out of me. It’s the type of thing you wish you could just project into someone’s head.
Maybe you could have just etch-a-sketched it. Sitting at the kitchen table, hold it up when you’re done.
Ha this reminds me of Heavenly Creatures, have you seen it?
No.
Oh fuck! You’ve got to see that. It’s Peter Jackson’s second movie. There’s this one part where this psychiatrist’s mouth is filling up the screen and he is going ‘Ho – Ho – Homosexual’ That’s all I’m going to tell you. The movie is really great. But that part is so funny. It makes me want to sample it and put it in a Fred and Daily song. I’ve got a huge folder of stuff to sample for Fred and Daily. The next thing we’ve got coming out and it’s probably just going to be digital releases on the End Up Records label, we have a Halloween album and a Christmas album.
