Melissa & Tammy: A love story

How did you get cast?
Michaels: Angela Robinson, who wrote and directed D.E.B.S., this little short film that I'm in, was writing an episode of The L Word, so when they asked me to guest-star, I said yes. And then they kept just asking me, "Will you do another one? Another one?" So it turned into three of the first four episodes.

As a lesbian, what do you think of the show?
Michaels: They are so respectful. It's not a joke. They don't take lesbianism as a way to get [men] hard, which is how some people have dealt with it.

Respectful is good. But is it fun? Is it sexy?
Michaels: OK, it's hot. I'll tell you, there was a pool built on the set for some of the love scenes, whereupon there will be nudity with steam coming off the pool. It's hot. And those girls kiss each other. They're sexy, they throw themselves at it, they're not afraid.

Is your career going in a different path since Melissa came along?
Michaels: I don't think it's that Melissa came along.

Well, then, since being out, I guess.
Michaels: You know, I had so many people tell me at the very formation of my career, "You cannot be out and a successful actress." And I think when I was like, I can't continue going to bed at night crying and having anxiety attacks about my life--when all that stuff started kicking in, I wonder if there was a piece of me that went, This is not worth it. Acting is not worth this. Acting is just cheap, cheap time that's making me feel rotten because I'm lying. I can tell you that I'd rather make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than hit my mark. I'd rather make sure that all their slippers fit and all of their clothes are warm and they've got their stuff for school and that [Melissa]'s got the stuff she needs. That fills me up and makes me go to bed full, rather than memorizing some lines.

What do you think acting meant to you that brought you into the career in the first place?
Michaels: [Sighs] I had to get out of Indiana, and I needed a vehicle that would move me out, and my dreams were my vehicle. My first passion is writing. I would love for something to happen with my children's books.

You write children's books? Just like Madonna!
Michaels: Yeah. Mine are for children from alternative homes. There's no books for kids about sharing, playing, copycat little sisters, hitting with their younger brother--a nice sweet story--where the two daddies are lecturing them, you know?

Etheridge: But the book is not about two dads. They just happen to be gay.

But at the same time, Tammy, you haven't given up on acting.
Michaels: Oh, no, no, no, no. I went to an audition yesterday, I met my agent. Etheridge: She would like to work, but she would like to work on projects that move her. Not just anything that comes along. The L Word, she was so excited--not only did she love the part, but she loved the writers and the people. I think she's more selective now.

Which leads me to ask you, Melissa: What impact has Tammy had on your music?
Etheridge: The next project, called Lucky, is some of the most powerful-- it's not just a bunch of happy songs, it's songs of discovery. It's just--I'm back on my feet. I'm rocking; I don't have this black hole in me where everything's just seeping through. It's real. I cannot wait to get onstage with these songs and play and lose my mind with this solid base underneath me. I don't have to get in front of an audience to fill me up anymore. I get to get in front of an audience and have a celebration and have a great time. Not suck it all out of them, but be there with them.

Is this a new direction for you?
Etheridge: It's not a new direction. It's just better at what I do, you know? I've realized in the last few years, being out in the world, that there are people who love my music, and there are people who know me just for me. Every now and then I'd like for [those two] to meet. And I think this is one of those albums that can do that.

Skin was almost a concept album, very specific to a painful moment in your life. And Lucky is--?
Michaels: --a kegger party! [Both laugh]

So, Tammy, when Melissa starts touring in February, will you go along or stay home with the kids?
Michaels: Sometimes she goes out and we have the kids, so I'll just stay here and take care of the kids. And then she'll come and meet us, or we'll go out and meet her. Whatever she needs.

You're both entertainers? Any kind of competition there?
Etheridge: No.

Michaels: Oh, no. [Laughs] I can't sing.

Etheridge: And I can't act. She's a fabulous, fabulous actress, and I love her talent. I watched every episode of Popular. I became this crazy kind of fan about it, and I was sad that it got canceled, because I loved it. But no, there's not a competition at all. When I first was with her, I remember once we were up in San Francisco and we got caught in--

Michaels: Oh, at the museum.

Etheridge: There's a little museum where 15-year-old girls were on a field trip. And [to them] she was like the Beatles. They were screaming, and they all were gathered around her asking her for an autograph.

Michaels: Pushing her out of the way.

Etheridge: Literally! I literally held her purse while she signed a hundred autographs, while the chaperones were looking at me like-- [mimes surprised recognition and pointing].

Gay people have certainly been the center of attention in the news this year. Did you experience the victories of the year together? Did you sit down at night and go, "I can't believe Canada...sodomy laws..."
Etheridge: Yeah. She was up in Canada when all that was happening. And she would bring the newspapers back, and we would hang them up.

Michaels: There was a clipping that I had for so long--

Etheridge: "Court Approves Gay Marriage." We stuck it up [on the wall]. A Canadian paper, but we had it up there. Yeah, as homosexuals in this world, it is an interesting time and a good time. And I am just about to do a press conference call with 20 journalists from Iowa to talk about Howard Dean. [Melissa leaves to do her telephone interview.]

So, Tammy, now it's your turn. Take me to the point of wanting to leave Indiana when you were 18. Tell me a little bit about your growing-up.
Michaels: It is really hard to grow up in a very small, religious town when there is no father in the picture, when the town looks at your mother like she's got the scarlet letter on her chest because she's [whispers] divorced in a Catholic town. And there were times we were homeless and sleeping in other friends' houses. It was hard. Me and my mom and my older sister.

When did your father leave the picture? After you were born?
Michaels: Yeah, I look at him as a sperm donor that happened to my mother for a second. So he was pretty much gone, but my mom worked. My mom was a bartender--she worked as an account clerk during the day; she was a bartender and a cocktail waitress at night. I had to get my own job when I was 11. My poor mother could barely afford the rent. The family had shunned her completely--no help. My uncle Don kept his true ties with us; he's the one man that was my angel. He's one of my guardian angels, my uncle Don.

When did you know you were gay?
Michaels: I knew I was gay in first grade. I wanted to grow up to be a boy so I could marry my teacher. Like, I was in love with her. I found her to be so beautiful and so kind and so wonderful, and I just thought, Well, she's not married, so I'll just grow up and be a boy. I didn't know how that was going to happen, but I knew that I wanted to marry a woman.

When did you know what gay was?
Michaels: I put the word to my feelings when I was 13, and that was when I was very suicidal. I went through about four years, five years praying to not wake up every morning. I had no clue how to get through the day.

Did you ever try anything?
Michaels: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the most difficult thing to be a gay teenager, especially in the Bible Belt--that belt will strangle you dead. It will kill you. My mom did the best she could, but she had a lot to do--she had jobs, she had to keep her jobs. My sister--out of respect, I don't want to talk about her life much, but she had quite a journey. And overall, I was abused in every way until I was 12. And so my adolescent years were about I've got to put myself together if I'm going to get through this alive--I'm on my own. And so I wrote. I kept journals, and that's how I got through my life. And they're all in there [points to a side room] in the office--I have rows of tearstained, wrinkled journals saying, "Please, God, don't let me be gay." It was hard. Parents looked me in the face and called me a dime-store hood and told me to get my white-trash self out of the school. And the born-again Christian church in our town hired private investigators to follow suspected gay teachers and then kept transcripts of all their movements for a year, and they were all fired. Seven of them. Actually, I'm sorry--they were "asked to resign." And in a small town, you resign and move on.

What's the name of the town?
Michaels: Lafayette. It's across the river from Purdue [University]. It's in Tippecanoe County. But does that give you an idea of my path? I'm 28, and I've been in therapy since I was 3.

Really.
Michaels: Yeah, my mother--God bless her, this woman, so smart--saw that something was not OK with me. I got back from a visit with my dad once, and she looked at me rocking myself in the corner and said, "I need to get my little girl to talk to somebody." And so she took me to a therapist.

When you wrote in your journals about how you didn't want to be gay, were you at the same time able to connect with anybody who would understand that?
Michaels: Oh, no. I was so in love with [one of my teachers].

Was she gay, do you think?
Michaels: All I can think of, it's such a small town, and if they read this, are they going to break her windows too? I can tell you this: I've had a gaydar from the time I was born. And I was awakened with this intense crush.

When you were a teenager?
Michaels: Yeah, when I was 13 and at Central Catholic High School. It was the first feeling that wouldn't leave me alone--wanting to be around her all the time, being sad if she wasn't [there]. And she was young--she was in her early 20s, so there was a 10-year age difference. That's when I went, I know nobody else [in class] is experiencing this. There were a couple of girls where I was like, Hmm, maybe, but I don't know if they ever decided to be honest with it. But for me, that was when I really went down to my journal and I was like, "Oh, my God--what if I'm gay? That's disgusting!" And I started repeating everything I'd learned in CCD and in church and the Bible. And so it took quite a bit to get over that shame. It took moving to New York and seeing a gay pride parade! [Laughs]

So you never came out to anyone in Indiana.
Michaels: No. I told two girls on a field trip once. It was like that, you know, when you're in ninth grade and it's dark outside and everybody's asleep on the bus and you've been in Chicago all day watching Miss Saigon. And it was me and these two girls, and we were having midnight talks on the bus and nobody was listening. And we all said, "Sometimes I think I'm gay." I don't know what the other two girls are up to now, but I know that they never spoke about that night again. Ever. And then the summer before I moved to New York, I told my friend Brooke, "I'm moving to New York to be gay." She was like, "OK." She was a big fag hag, so she was like, "Whatever!"

When did you know that things were going to work out?
Michaels: Oh, sweet baby. I dropped out; I got into psychotherapy three times a week for two years, cleaned up any old, unhealthy patterns I'd learned; I started nannying, which was the best job I ever had, nannying for this little baby for three years. And I'd say when I started nannying, I knew I was going to be OK. The family took me in, they got me an apartment, they bought me food. Up until then, I'd been eating cereal and water. So I knew it was going to be OK about the second, third year. But let me tell you something: It was never an option to go home. There was no home to go home to. And thank God, because it made me build something better for myself than what had been provided in my family's legacy.

What did you do when you actually got to New York?
Michaels: I tried to date boys for a while! [Laughs]

Did you?
Michaels: I did! I tried. And they were so nice! But then they'd move in to kiss me, and I'd be like [groans], "You were doing so well until then!" I was still carrying a great deal of shame and baggage and that "trashy Tammy" now. I just was like, Let me just make sure that it wasn't just the guys in Indiana I disliked. And then a friend of mine said, "Hey, I work at a restaurant with this girl and she says she's gay," and I ran down to the restaurant and sat and waited for her to show up to work. I immediately fell in love with her. I just was like, There is one other lesbian on this planet. That has to be my girlfriend. And I stalked her for about a month.

Good material for The L Word.
 Michaels: [Laughs] See? They knew! And I would "just happen" to show up at work when I knew she was going to be there. And then she was my first girlfriend. One of the ways that I was loved as a child was by abusers, so I thought to be abused was to be loved. And it took me a couple relationships to go, Oh, I'm just fucked up and this is not OK--I'm not going to be happy if I keep seeking out this kind of relationship. [Melissa returns] And then she walked in. By pure accident.

Etheridge: By accident.

Michaels: By God, I say.

So what's the takeaway lesson for Advocate readers from your story?
Etheridge: Love happens.

It's worth saying.
Etheridge: Yeah. You know, I have made a career of singing about love and writing about love and dreaming about love. Romanticizing about it. To actually sit and be surrounded by love is amazing. And it can happen. Once you love yourself. As corny as it is, love yourself enough to be loved right. That's my lesson.