A HUGE MESS

Nick Gruber Image Cleanup Step 1: “I’m Not Gay”

a_3x-horizontal-1It’s only been a few days since news broke about the fancy new publicist Calvin Klein hired for his 22-year-old lover, Nick Gruber. After years of appearing in headlines for his work in gay porn, cocaine addiction, infidelities and blood baths, Mr. Gruber is getting an expensive “image remake” courtesy of “pro publicist” Matt Rich.

Why? Because he wants to be a fashion model.

Cleaning up Gruber’s image will undoubtedly be tougher than cleaning the post-Pride streets of New York City with a child’s toothbrush, but Rich has already hit the ground running by landing his client a fancy profile in NY Magazine. It’s great fun.

The interview begins like most mainstream fluff pieces—a trendy description of what most people would call a pompous asshole, Nick Gruber ordering coffee at an expensive downtown eatery that’s “historically fabulous” and blah blah, something about Anna Wintour, Donna Karan, and Vera Wang.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about Nick’s first interview as a squeaky clean model—a “courtesan” was the most shocking word used to describe him—was an admission that he’s “not gay.” Pair this with a traumatizing story about his mother’s heroin addiction, a downplay of his work in porn (a blatant misprint of his “porn name”), and a failure to call him out on being a famous gold digger (Calvin Klein is just his “friend”), and voila, instant publicity!

Here’s some of our favorite parts of the interview, conveniently translated by Queerty:

“And they showed up, glad for their old friend’s bliss, and maybe just a touch luridly curious about how, after all these years of being so scrupulously un-public about his romantic life, Klein would pick this often-sweet, rough young man to so openly adore.”

Translation: Calvin Klein threw a birthday party to announce that he was having sex with somebody 48 years his junior. Famous people showed up to gawk and be jealous.

“It’s easy to feel sympathy for Gruber, or at least understand why he’s looking for someone to take care of him…He was born in Northern California, near Sacramento, and his parents split when he was very young, his mother moving with him to Florida and sliding into drugs. “As a child, I would walk in the house, I would see her on the floor with a needle in her arm. Like, in seventh grade, she was on the floor, like, shooting up heroin, and then she played dead. Like, she started to have a seizure and convulsion, and then she said something like, ‘What if I was dead right now? What would you do?’ ” Eventually she went to prison, he says.”

Translation: Everything that’s ever happened to Nick Gruber is his mother’s fault. Got it.

“Then after his mother got out of prison (she’s clean and churchgoing now, he says), he moved back with her to California and joined the Army, training as a water-treatment specialist.”

Translation: His mother is now religious, and don’t forget Nick served in the Army! What a great guy!

“He misses church: “the community, how friendly people are, the spirit. You know you could feel the energy, and everyone is so happy and loving.”

Translation: So very religious! Get a load of this guy, America!

“But Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was stationed, became a perilous place for him. “I mean, basically what happened was that the gay community—” he pauses to adjust. His sexuality is clearly undefined, even to him (he’s also dated women and tells me, “I plan to have a child when I’m 30 years old”). “I’m not gay, but I don’t believe in labels, I believe in love. So the gay community in Fort Riley, Kansas, was really bad”—he means this in the sense that it was dangerous to be gay there.”

Translation: Look, America! This guy had sex with Calvin Klein, but he is not gay. Doesn’t that make you like him even more?

“Gruber was already, in his way, Internet famous, thanks to a career, detailed in various gossip blogs, doing gay porn under the name Aaron Skyline, as well as building a revealing “modeling” portfolio on ModelMayhem.com under the name Nick London. On Facebook, he was reportedly known as Nick Oo.”

Nope, sorry NY Mag. His “modeling” name was actually Zeke, and he jerked off at SeanCody.com.

“‘I hate Google,’ Gruber laments in frustration.”

Ha!

To read the rest of this interview, visit NYmag.com

[Photo via NY Mag]

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