Frankie D is used to being seen as a wild man. Look at him: he's a hairy beast! Despite his follicular bounty, Frankie's not keen on being labeled a bear. In fact, it's probably best you don't label him anything. This New York City bartender and student's one in a million.

For full disclosure, we've been friends with Frankie since the beginning of time. Well, at least since editor Andrew Belonsky used to work at a now defunct Chelsea coffee shop. He was eighteen, Frankie was twenty.

Despite their history, Belonsky's never had a real opportunity to pick Frankie's brain. So, in the interest of The Wild Issue, we enlisted Interview's Lucas Lai to do a little NYC photo shoot, after which Belonsky and Frankie went to one of their favorite fag dives, The Boiler Room, to get a little wild with a tape recorder.

Read the grizzly results, after the jump...

Andrew Belonsky: Do you find that you’re fetishized because of your body hair?

Frankie D: Yes, I’m totally fetishized because of my body hair! It goes both ways in the homosexual community. It’s like, “Why don’t you shave?” or “I wish had body hair!” What I really don’t like about it – these names that everyone has. If you’re old and fat and hairy, you’re a bear. And then you’re a cub. And then there’s this new one…

AB: An otter?

FD: Yes, there’s that. I don’t know… Are otters cute?

AB: Yeah, they’re cute. They're kind of like beavers. It’s better than being labeled a twink, which I used to get a lot.

FD: I’ve never had that moment. I somehow surpassed the twink stage. I went from child to…

AB: Otter.

FD: Otter, right! [Laughs] A leap.

AB: Do you get wild in bed? Are you kinky?

FD: It’s weird. If I have sex with someone I don’t know, it’s easier.

AB: Because you’re uninhibited?

FD: Right. But it’s also the other way around – I have problems getting an erection with people that I like, after the third or fourth time. I just have to be completely comfortable and understand two bodies together. So, having crazy sex, but yeah, it actually works both ways. But, usually it’s just totally uninhibited, because you don’t know them and all they’re asking you is what you like. Whereas, when you like someone, you don’t want to scare them [if] it’s going to blossom into a relationship -

AB: Well, you might as well get it out in the open right then and there. But, it’s [also] nice when you learn new things about each other. Are you a timid lover, then?

FD: No, not at all – I’m an extremely passionate, romantic human being.

AB: Romantic?

FD: I am. I know it sounds corny, but I am.

AB: You like flowers?

FD: The last flowers I’ve give someone was about a year and a half ago – running up the steps of the public library on 42nd Street, with the big lions in front – I was infatuated and slightly in love with a librarian I used to call “Dewey Decimal”. I gave him flowers and this book of poetry and nothing ever came of it.

AB: He never called you?

FD: We had a week of romance, sort of, we slept together like three times and I thought something was going to evolve, but nothing did. He told me his heart was waiting for someone else. I also really tried to rush into that one.

AB: Why do you think you did that, because you liked him or you wanted to be with somebody?

FD: Both. Also, the chemistry was really on.

AB: When was the first time you had gay sex?

FD: I was 19.

AB: Was it good?

FD: It was okay. I actually met the guy here… It was okay. When I gave my first blow job, all I heard was, “Watch your teeth”. [Laughs] I remember being with this guy a lot and he got into these weird moments where he would get into rough trade a bit, like punching and shit – not extreme punching, but you know… I always thought he was trying to compensate for his masculinity. If you can’t hold me and kiss me and fuck me and still be really masculine and sexy, I’m not really interested. There’s something about being really tender but masculine and not having to compensate.

AB: Do you remember the first time you were attracted to a man?

FD: I can’t remember it, [but] I remember in the eighties there were a bunch of kick boxing movies and I would always get a hard-on during the kick boxing movies.

AB: I remember [as a child] going to museums with my family and always looking up the bronze statue’s tunics to check out their junk, but of course they had none. And He-Man was formative to the development of my sexual identity.

FD: I didn’t watch He-Man. I was really into The Dukes of Hazzard. I remember being so into it that everyone in the house knew that was my TV time and kids from the neighborhood would ring the bell and my mother would answer and say I was watching The Dukes.

AB: What was it about the show that you liked so much?

FD: There was this whole other sort of masculinity I didn’t know about. I was raised in this Italian neighborhood with guidos and here were these two guys with hot rods, you know? I didn’t know anything about that stuff. Also, I was so intrigued by the Midwest.

AB: Have you ever been to the Midwest?

FD: No, [but] I have this fantasy of moving to Minnesota just for shits and giggles.

AB: Minnesota’s very nice. I went to camp in Bemidji, Minnesota. Camp was also very [important for my sexual identity] – taking showers with all those men. I actually had my first gay experience at camp with another counselor – I had become a counselor, too. He was kind of dating a girlfriend of mine, but we would suck each other off. I think I actually gave my first blowjob after a Bob Dylan/Paul Simon concert. We were walking down this trail through the woods and it was very bright because of the moon and we sucked each other off in the woods.

FD: How old were you?

AB: I was like sixteen or seventeen. What about women? Do you find women attractive?

FD: There are women that – yeah – it actually happened last night. I’ve had sex with three girls and the second relationship lasted three years: from seventeen to nineteen.

AB: And you weren’t out yet?

FD: No.

AB: When did you lose your virginity?

FD: When I was sixteen or seventeen.

AB: With this girl you dated?

FD: No, this one girl before – that was a mess. It lasted very briefly. I’m not even sure I can call it losing my virginity. I had difficulty having an erection. But, it was in the same year. But, [me and my girlfriend] were also doing a lot of drugs. We were using heroin and having sex…

AB: Heroin? Really?

FD: Oh, yeah, that was horrible. I had a heroin overdose at nineteen. It was creepy.

AB: I had no idea.

FD: Yeah, I remember my father coming into my [hospital] room and he came in and he was really shaken up because he had lost a son before and he was like, “Look, I already lost a son, I don’t want to lose another one, what’s going on?” That’s when I told him.

AB: You came out after the overdose?

FD: In the hospital. I told my father I was gay and he went back to tell my family. He went home and said, “Sit down, I want to tell you something about Frankie”. And my mom was like, “Don’t tell me Audrey’s pregnant!” [Laughs] And my dad’s like, “No, your son’s gay.”

AB: How did they take it?

FD: My mother told me later that my brother’s response was, “It’s better than being dead.”

AB: That’s true, but weird, as if it were caused by the overdose…

FD: Yeah, as if I had a choice – dead or gay?

AB: Are you parents still married?

FD: Yes.

AB: Do you think they’re in love?

FD: I don’t think they’re very sexually active. [My mother] won’t even talk about sex. She won’t mention it, she won’t hear about it.

AB: Do you think it’s religion? Are you Catholic?

FD: Yeah. She’s being going to church more ever since I told her I was gay.

AB: But she didn’t before?

FD: No, not really.

AB: Do you think she’s praying for you?

FD: Yeah, but she’s also an older lady – a lot of people go back to the church when they’re older, anyway. I think also me almost dying – it’s not just about me being gay.

AB: Do you go to church?

FD: You know, I went to church last week.

AB: How was it?

FD: I was walking down Ninth Avenue and saw the Guardian Church on Ninth Avenue and 21st street and I saw the priest outside and I thought, “Frankie, give this a shot”. It was a great experience! I took notes… I was thinking, “Why are people atheists? There’s all this ancient wisdom that people are depriving themselves of.” You don’t have to live by it, but there are all these great stories.

AB: Are you going to go back?

FD: I am going to go back, I’m serious. It’s good to learn the Bible – it’s a crazy book… You can have fun with it intellectually. You don’t have to live by it, but why deprive yourself of anything? I’m not going to be making any relation between homosexuality and Catholicism and raise my hand and say, “Do you like me?” That’s its own thing, I’m my own thing and not everyone in the Catholic Church thinks that way.