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A friend has just drawn my atten­tion to this teas­ing ‘Let­ter to David Beck­ham’ by Mr Rollins recorded a cou­ple of years ago, warn­ing Becks when he moves to LA to play for LA Galaxy he’s not going to be so spe­cial: the town is already full of ‘met­ro­sex­u­als… with crunchy hair and dis­tressed jeans and absolutely glow­ing skin’.  And warn­ing him that he’s not going to sell soc­cer to Amer­i­can kids because they when they see a soc­cer game they think ‘soc­cer… gay!’

It’s funny, and per­haps given Beckham’s State­side for­tunes today also on the money, but the fun­ni­est part of it is per­haps not entirely inten­tional.  When Rollins talks about ‘us met­ro­sex­u­als’ the gag, like the image of Henry primp­ing his crew cut under a salon hairdryer, seems to be that no one could be less metro than thick-necked, bulldog-voiced, tat­tooed Henry.  But I’m not so sure.  There’s some­thing intensely nar­cis­sis­tic about Henry, it’s part of his star qual­ity — and his pumped, buzz-cut mas­culin­ity does look self-conscious and a lit­tle acces­sorised.  (And I should know about acces­soriz­ing such things.)

What’s more, like many met­ros Henry’s sex­u­al­ity has been the sub­ject of rumours and innu­endo for years, some­thing which he has often com­plained about — though he him­self seems to be here mak­ing josh­ing innu­endo about Beckham’s sex­u­al­ity him­self.  Maybe the rumours are so per­sis­tent because he’s out­spo­kenly pro-gay rights (only a gay could care about the gays so much, the ‘rea­son­ing’ per­haps goes), he’s middle-aged and unmar­ried, and quite a few gay — and straight — men fancy him.  Or maybe it’s because he does look a bit ‘gay’ in that slightly car­toon­ish, slightly over-drawn, over-inked butch way.

For what it’s worth, I’m more than happy to accept that Henry the per­son isn’t homo, but Henry the per­sona does have a cer­tain queer­ness about him that just won’t quit, which is an impor­tant part of what makes him intrigu­ing to the pub­lic.  This is what I was try­ing to get at, I think, in the brief inter­view below that Rollins gave me in his modest-sized hotel room dur­ing the Lon­don leg of his 1998 Spo­ken Word Tour.

Tip: Topak

Henry Rollins inter­viewed by Mark Simpson

(Atti­tude mag­a­zine, Sep­tem­ber 1998)

Henry Rollins is not gay. Okay? Can we get that straight­ened out right now?  The ex Black Flag front-man, stand-up comic, author, actor, weightlifter and lead­ing expo­nent of pen­i­ten­tiary chic á la Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, may come across like the Amer­i­can Mishima, but he’s into chicks.  Though not that much.

‘There was this rumour going round,’ says Henry in his oddly artic­u­late jock/jarhead/jeffstryker way. ‘Fuck­ing MTV called me up and asked me if I’d like to come out on some show of theirs. ‘So I’m gay, huh? I think I’d remem­ber some guy fuck­ing me up the ass!’ The thing that bummed me out about it is that when you have the ‘he’s gay’ fic­tion spread around the media about you it’s only to slan­der you. Every­one is like, ‘That guy, he’s a fuck­ing fag!’. But for me being gay is just such a non event. You are into what you’re into. End of story.’

Why do you sup­pose peo­ple think you’re homo?

I asked my gay friends why peo­ple thought I was gay, and they said, ‘You’re 37 and in shape. You are thor­oughly focussed. You have a great ass.’

Maybe the rumours have some­thing to do with the fact that you don’t have a girlfriend?

Well, yeah. That’s pos­si­ble. I don’t want a girl­friend because I don’t want to have to call some­one every day. The only thing I miss on tour is my bar. I got a pre­ci­sion engi­neered York pow­er­lift­ing bar; I miss that fucker because it feels so good! I’ve had enough girls in my time, but I’ve slowed up lately. I’d rather jack off than get into some­thing shal­low. But I think the prob­lem is that I don’t make a song and dance about the women I do fuck. I don’t go out on the town with them on my arm. I go to the bookstore.

That’s faggy.

Yeah, ‘He must be a fag—he’s literary!’

On the other hand, you are ‘gay’ in the sense that you’ve built your­self your own masculinity.

Is that a gay thing?

Not specif­i­cally. But char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally.

Yeah, you do get some gay guys who are like hyper-masculine. Look at that guy in leather! Hell, that’s two guys in one man! He’s really get­ting his point across. When I was in high school I was very skinny. It was a Viet­nam Vet that got me into weightlift­ing. It was the first time in my life when I achieved some­thing: I put on 15 pounds of mus­cle mass. In life you’ve got to have a bit of the ‘Come on moth­er­fuck­ers! I got some­thing for your ass!’ mentality.

Tell me about it. Do you get offers from men?

Oh yeah. Sure. All the time. And I go, ‘Well, that’s cool, but I’m not from that bolt of cloth,’ and they go ‘Really? I thought you were.’ And I go, no, no I wouldn’t kid you about that. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Not even maybe just this once?’ ‘Nah, really I don’t want to go there.’ One guy hit me with a really great propo­si­tion. He said, ‘Well, close your eyes and you really can’t tell the dif­fer­ence. And I’d do it a lot bet­ter than any chick you’ve been with.’ ‘Well, since you’ve got a cock I bet you would.’ But you know, it’s just not my scene.

Your look, the tattoos—have you done time?

Nah. But other con­victs… other convicts!—convicts come up to me. One man I’ll never for­get. Nebraska, 1988. Old school prison tat­toos. Guy walks by and goes, ‘Brother!’ ‘Scuse me?’ ‘Soledad, ’85 Right!’ ‘Er, no.’ ‘Chino?’ ‘No.’ ‘Hell, I’ve done time with you some­where…’ [in a nerdy book­worm voice:] ‘Well, no sir, actu­ally not’.

How do you think you’d fare in prison? Do you think you’d be some motherfucker’s bitch?

I don’t know man. You’re look­ing at me about eight pounds under­weight, usu­ally I’m 200, but I can’t get the lifts because I’m tour­ing so much, I think that kind of keeps me out of lit­tle bitch mode, I’m not anybody’s idea of a piece of chicken, and as far as fight­ing goes, I know a lit­tle bit about that. But in prison, I’d prob­a­bly be fuck­ing ter­ri­fied man.

But hasn’t your whole life been a kind of prepa­ra­tion for prison? No fam­ily life, no time off—all that lift­ing weights…

Well, other peo­ple tell me where to go because I want to go there, I let them struc­ture it for me. But yeah, I see what you’re say­ing. I went to a mil­i­tary school for seven years and that had a big impact on me. My dad was also ex-military. My Dad would say stuff like, ‘Fall-out for McDon­alds’. Fall-out for your fuck­ing Happy Meal. Shit like that gets to you after a while.

A shrink would say that you have a very pun­ish­ing super-ego.

(Rollins shrugs his large shoulders)

What I mean is, it sounds as if a part of you is always watch­ing over your­self, polic­ing you –always demand­ing better.

Oh, that’s true. A lot of my work is result ori­en­tated. I’m always try­ing to do a bet­ter show, a bet­ter CD, a bet­ter book. I have to grade myself nightly. I come off the stage and I often kick myself….

I’ve heard that you were recently ‘watched over’ by some­one else.

Oh yeah well, {act­ing out the scene very loudly} this guy is stand­ing next to me just star­ing at my dick, and I’m think­ing, this is cool, I can deal with this, and my bladder’s fuck­ing burst­ing but I can’t go, man! I said to myself, Watch me take a leak with this guy watch­ing me and me not give a fuck. But this guy totally took me. He won. Maybe he was some kind of urine comp­trol­ler. Fuck­ing crazy shit, man.

Copy­right Mark Simp­son 2009