Born to Be Brad (11 page)

“We’d stay awake until the sun came up and we’d talk and laugh and then the next weekend we’d do it all again.”

I thought, Maybe life will carry on like this forever. But my lifestyle started to ruin relationships. My sister and I weren’t getting along. She was in a serious relationship with her first love and their life together was crumbling, leaving her devastated. She didn’t call to tell me. What good would I have been to her? We’d drifted apart, and she knew my drug use was more than recreational. It sounds crazy, but I found out about her breakup in a dream. Our grandmother Ruby had always said that Mandy and I were more like twins than brother and sister. We had that cosmic connection that twins share. As damaged as I was then, I had a dream one night that my sister and her boyfriend were splitting up, and I called her the next morning. “I want to know if you’re OK,” I said. She wasn’t OK. Neither of us were.

It was all coming to a head. Tracy, my best friend from high school, was studying at Ryerson University, Toronto’s answer to the School of Visual Arts. She was eight subway stops away all of this time but we made excuses about not getting together. When we did see each other, she didn’t hide her concerns. Finally, we’d made plans, but when I showed up at her apartment, she was horrified. I was so skinny, and I hadn’t slept in days. It was a moment of reckoning. She’d wanted to believe that everything would work out for me. When you are young you can fool yourself into believing anything is possible, despite what you see plainly in front of you. We made awkward conversation and after twenty minutes I left. She couldn’t watch me hurt myself. We didn’t see each other again for six months.

I needed to get help. It was early on a December morning, and Nick was asleep in the next room. I was in our bathroom, staring in the mirror, and I didn’t recognize myself. Finally, I felt the weight of the situation. Finally it was real. I told myself, You can carry on like this and the drugs will be your life. You can accept the fact that you’re going to live this life and get by with this restaurant job. Or you can stop all of this and try to fulfill the potential that other people see in you. And have always seen in you. For a minute I fought back. Wait, I thought, this is what young people do! They try to find themselves and they do drugs and they experiment. But actually, I realized, I wasn’t doing anything with my life except wasting it.

Nick thought I should get sober, but there was only so much he could do. And only so much he wanted me to do. He liked our life of long dinners and late nights. He said, “You don’t need to stop drinking, you just need to stop using cocaine.” But it was clear to me: I couldn’t get healthy in that house. I couldn’t be with Nick if I wanted to be alive to see another Christmas.

I called my dad from a pay phone on a street corner in Toronto in the dead of winter. I was crying in heaving sobs, saying how I needed to get sober, saying that Nick and I were breaking up. And I was fine for another few months, sober even, going to AA meetings and crashing on Tracy’s couch. Until I saw Nick out at a club one night making out with someone else. And I fell off the wagon. When you’re in AA they tell you, “If you don’t understand the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous, you will when you relapse.” And I understood it now. The drugs had stopped working. Nick and I stopped working. And I forced myself back to AA.

It was May 3, 2001. I was determined to stay sober. This was day one: the first day of the rest of my life.

T
here was the detangling, and it wasn’t easy. In April, my father pulled up to Nick’s house to help me move out. “It’s a hard thing you’re doing,” my dad said. While he didn’t say much else that morning, that was enough.

It was cold out, I remember that. Nick had been giving me the silent treatment, but finally he cracked. “Why would I talk to you!” he shouted. “I have nothing to say to you.” As our van pulled away from the curb that David Gray song “Babylon” came on the radio. The lyrics stung:

I’ve been afraid. To tell you how I really feel, admit to some of those bad mistakes I’ve made.

“Can we please turn this off?” I said.

It was a turning point. Over the next few months, I attended regular AA meetings in Toronto. I had a new, sober group of friends and I was grateful for them. I made my amends, with my sister first, then with my mother. I was still working at the restaurant, but I decided I was going to leave Toronto. I didn’t know when I’d go, and I didn’t know where I’d go. But I knew I would leave. That much was certain. And I started preparing for it. I started putting money away—half of my tips each night went into an envelope that I kept hidden behind a broken computer in the bedroom.

“I was in our bathroom, staring in the mirror, and I didn’t recognize myself.”

I’d finished school only to discover that I didn’t want to be an actor. Of the thirty kids in the program at George Brown, only thirteen of us graduated. And I’d landed my first professional acting gig—a gay play put on at Buddies in Bad Times, a well-respected regional theater known for shock value. I quickly realized I didn’t have the drive to be a successful actor, and that was OK. I’d tried it on for size and it didn’t fit. Something else soon came up—an unlikely career option but maybe a fine escape route. I was out one night when a man approached me and suggested I try modeling. OK, truth time: I was flattered. But I knew what I looked like. I was cute. I took cute pictures. But I wasn’t a
male model.
Especially not with that bad haircut. I wasn’t quite tall enough, either. But I was looking for a parachute out of Toronto, and maybe this was it. The next day, I walked into the Ford Modeling Agency, and while they liked my cheekbones, I was a hair too short for runway work. Thankfully, a lesser (but still reputable) firm, Armstrong Model Agency, took me on. I was still not invited to the party! I was a “male model,” but I wasn’t at the best agency. I landed work, and yet I was in a Dentyne chewing gum commercial—with my back to the camera. I posed for the Sears catalog in khakis, which were all the wrong size for me. It was exciting, though I didn’t know how the shoot was supposed to work. “What’s going on?” I asked. The photographer said, “We’re taking product shots.”

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

A PLAYLIST TO MEND A BROKEN HEART

“Unbreak My Heart,” Toni Braxton

“Here with Me,” Dido

“Stronger,” Britney Spears

“Fear,” Sarah McLachlan

“Someone Like You,” Adele

“Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart,” Alicia Keys

“Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here,” Deborah Cox

“Bleeding Love,” Leona Lewis

“Call Your Girlfriend,” Robyn

“It’s Not Right but It’s Okay,” Whitney Houston

“No More Drama,” Mary J. Blige

“Tralala,” Lush

“Get Outta My Way,” Kylie Minogue

“Find Your Love,” Drake

“Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Beyoncé

“Cool,” I said. Until I realized that “product shots” meant you’d never see my face. Oh, well.

I soon met a representative from a Greek modeling agency who said if I could get myself to Greece for the summer, he’d represent me. And I took it. It was an emotional moment. My mom and sister were devastated to see me go. I’d had long, up-all-night conversations with my mom about what I was going to do with my life and how I needed to get out of the rut I was in. At the airport, she refused to cry. She knew this was the right thing for me. And she didn’t want me to see her break. She didn’t want me to see how much pain she was in.

I was supposed to be in Greece for two months. I had $1,500 in my pocket and the lessons of AA running through my head. One day at a time. Easy does it.

M
y life in Athens might not have been glamorous, but it was a wild adventure and exactly what I needed. I pulled up to my new home and the sign read
HOTEL TONY
. If there was an actual Tony, I never met him. There was no view of the Aegean Sea, just twin beds for the bargain price of four thousand drachmas a night—or less than twenty American dollars. I was sharing the room with Francesco, a male model from Portugal who didn’t speak English but was very hot. I pointed at objects in the room and said, “bed” and “clo-set,” while he tried to sound out the words. I quickly made friends with Esther, a model from London, and we traveled around together. It was amazing.

“I wasn’t booking jobs, but I certainly felt glamorous.”

I was expected to get work immediately. Unfortunately, at the precise time I arrived in Greece to make my modeling debut, the fashion world took a sharp turn. Tastes changed and all of the designers wanted buff male models with long hair. My look—close-cropped hair, bony frame, preppy style—was out. Yet there I was, toting my modeling portfolio around Athens. I went on plenty of modeling appointments but I didn’t book any modeling jobs.

At a hotel in Mykonos. I was dancing to “The Boss” by Diana Ross—my favorite Diana Ross song. As for the turban? It’s a look.

I wasn’t complaining, believe me. It’s not like I was working in a salt mine or anything. I wasn’t booking jobs, but I certainly felt glamorous. Forget the Toronto club scene. I was running around Athens with a pack of models. And the local club owners were so desperate to have a fashionable crowd adorn their places that they invited us in for free. This was the island of misfit, handsome toys. I didn’t really belong with this crowd; I knew that. But I’d rather have been there at the beach staring out at the most beautiful crystal-blue water than just about anywhere else in the world.

I was broke in Greece, but I didn’t care. We ate souvlaki and smoked cigarettes all night. I met a Greek guy from Canada who showed me around town and acted as my translator. I met a gay ex-military Greek guy who became obsessed with me. I decided to take a weeklong vacation to Mykonos. What I needed a vacation from, who knows? But I booked a dirt-cheap motel for seven drachmas a night. I was going only for a week, but this Greek soldier followed me to the airport and took a photograph of my plane taking off. It was a true Greek tragedy.

There was a moment of reckoning. What was I doing in Greece? Was I just running away, or was something more profound going on? Yes, I’d always wanted to see Greece. I’d had a friend in Toronto named Markos who was Greek and talked nonstop about how beautiful it was there. (Side note: His mother would cry every time we went out dancing. “Why are you going out so late?” She also refused to acknowledge that her son was gay—even though he wore red sequin-and-rhinestone cowboy boots.) But it was more than that. Something Nick said came back to me. We’d had a fight about my relationship with my mother. About how I called her too often, about how I was needy. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Nick wasn’t really talking about my mom. He was telling me that I needed to grow up. And there I was, clean and sober, living on my own in a foreign country, proving to myself that I could do something.
That’s
what modeling was about for me.

Boardwalk Empire

SIX ESSENTIALS FOR A DAY AT THE BEACH

1. Flip-flops are meant for the sand. But not for anywhere else.

2. Your bathing suit is not an outfit. The beach is a big, sandy runway—even for men. Wear a button-up shirt or a polo. Wear a boat shoe on the beach, or a driving loafer. Wear a flip-flop to dress down an outfit. Get it together.

3. A cute beach bag is a must. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. A cute $10 tote from H&M will do.

4. Beach towels: They don’t have to be Hermès, but please, no frayed edges.

5. Bring a book. Even if you’re not going to read it.

6. Don’t just sit there and text on your phone. It’s gross. Engage with your surroundings. You’re at the beach. Look up!

When I first landed in Greece, I’d made a pact with myself. My world at home in Toronto had become so small, this insular cave of drugs and alcohol. Now I was turning a corner. I would be open to new experiences. I would see what cards the world dealt me. I would let chance play out. I would live again. I would be naïve again. I didn’t want anything to tie me down. I didn’t get sober to be miserable.

The best-laid plans of male models …

I was on vacation in Mykonos with my friend Tony, the Canadian Greek translator. It was July and hot as hell, but the sea felt like a silk Hermès scarf on my neck. We were walking down the main thoroughfare, in a stream of people, like salmon swimming downstream, when we passed a restaurant called Nico’s Taverna. Outside, my translator recognized his friend Sal, who was sitting having dinner with another friend. And they flagged us down.