Home

Where do live and why?
I live in Portland, Oregon. I moved here after 13 years in Europe because I missed trees and thought it would be nice to be closer to home (Alaska) for a while.

Do you live alone or with someone else?
I live with my girlfriend.

Do you have any pets and what are they called?
I’m allergic to cats and my girlfriend’s allergic to dogs, so we recently welcomed two very lovely male guinea pigs into our home: Machu (Pigchu) and Julio (Piglesias).

What’s your must-see TV programme?
Battlestar Galactica.

What’s your favourite gadget?
A Japanese watch I ordered back in 1999. It transforms into a little silver robot and it also sends you random messages in both English and Japanese (purportedly Zen messages, but so far they been like “UFOs UFOs” and “Are you hungry?”).

Away

Where was the last place you went on holiday?
I went back to London for the cast and crew screening of the feature film I co-directed, The Viva Voce Virus, at the Dalston Rio. We’ve been working on it for four years, so we were ecstatic to have it finished! See it soon on the festival circuit!

What is your favourite city?
Barcelona.

Where is favourite place in the world?
In a canoe floating in the middle of Stormy Lake in Nikiski, Alaska, eating M&Ms and reading.

Where was your most memorable holiday?
A recent trip to South Korea for my youngest brother’s wedding. He married a Korean woman in a traditional shamanist ceremony complete with (non)sacrificial hen and rooster. My entire immediate family (6 people plus 1 fiancée) slept on the floor in one small room for 10 days. It was memorable: both wonderful and stressful.

Speedos or shorts, bikini or swimsuit?
Shorts, swimsuit.

Style

What’s your favourite item in your wardrobe?
I have a fuschia ski-type jacket that I adore, and a pair of teetering heels that look like Prada (they aren’t), but then if you look very closely they appear to have motorcycle detailing. They’re pretty kick-ass.

Do you prefer to be smart or casual?
I prefer to be funky messy.

What was the last item of clothing you brought?
A pair of purple fishnets and a pair of teal tights from Topshop.

What are your extravagances?
Books, Vietnamese food, good coffee, arthouse films on DVD, costume jewellery.

What’s your favourite aftershave/perfume?
Hypnotic Poison and also Karma.

Soul

What are your inspirations?
I’m inspired by rebellious people. People who speak out even when they’re very much the minority (Stephen Colbert, Moomintrolls). I love satire and humour in art (Angela Carter’s books, Guy Maddin’s films). I also love just plain idiosyncratic work that may have nothing to do with rebellion, but which is so totally the artist’s own: painters like Chagall and Anselm Kiefer. I love kindness and gentleness. Trees. I also love dance-pop music with clever lyrics. I love dancing. I love being alive. Drawing breath is pretty inspiring.

What is your favourite cause?
Equality in its many equally important forms – social democracy, racial equality, women’s liberation, gay rights, animal rights. Environmental issues feed straight into many of these.

What is your favourite recent discovery?
That scientists think that time must go backwards as well as forwards, closely followed by the ‘hobbits’ of Borneo, the newly discovered giant gorillas in the Congo and the isolated human tribe in the Amazonian rainforest that is still uncontacted by modern culture. I think about these things a lot.

What is your philosophy of life?
Every human is born with bisexual potential, like most other mammals. We are animals like any other organism on this planet. We are an amazing species among countless other amazing species. Although I’d like to have a kid myself, there are many other ways of contributing to our society without giving birth and those should be celebrated just as much. We’re social animals. There is no way of knowing what originally started the Big Bang and created the stars and planets and all of creation, but I have a good feeling about it. When I think about it too much I feel wonder and delight. I think everyone ought to slow down a bit and smell the roses.

Who would you most like to meet for dinner?
Ken Livingstone, Angela Carter (if she were still alive), Alan Cumming, my girlfriend, all my good friends, my family, people with good senses of humour (I always thought that Ken and Angela and Alan seemed like they would have great senses of humour), all having a delicious dinner together.

A Night Out

When did you come out?
I assumed I was generally heterosexual from birth to 19, when I suspected that I might be bisexual (I was in a straight relationship at the time, so it would have been difficult to explore, and besides I was in love and didn’t particularly want to explore my lesbian feelings), began to deal with the fact that I was bisexual when I was 22, decided I was a lesbian for a few months when I was 25, and then had to re-deal with the fact that I truly was bisexual when I was around 26. Most of this took place in the early/mid-1990s. There’s a nice simple answer for you.

What does your gay utopia look like?
My gay utopia looks like a bisexual utopia, where people are free to choose either or all genders as partners and it doesn’t mean a thing more than that. Where kids get to read fairy tales about princesses falling in love with each other, and where same-sex couples get absolute parity with opposite-sex couples in every advertising, film, radio or television medium. Where everyone on earth might date a man, and then a woman, and then a man, and then a man, and then a woman.

What does Pride mean to you?
I think it is enormously important politically, and I think it should be free, fun and highly politicised – even a little bit of anger wouldn’t go amiss. Queer people have become so fucking timid and reluctant to rock the boat.

Who do you currently have a secret crush on?
President Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica. Maybe Felix as well. I’m a big geek.

When and where was the last gay bar/club you went to?
Sluts ’n’ Squares in Portland, Oregon. But seriously, the whole city is gay here. It’s not just assimilation, it’s a complete colonisation of the straight venues (mwah-ha-ha – my evil bi-topia plans have just begun!).

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