Jason June (like Mary-Kate) identifies as a “genderqueer mermaid”. But he’s so much more than that. She is also a mother dog …
Over six years of being a dog mom and it’s still so wild and disgusting how proud I am of my little guy every time he poops ??
– Jason June JAY’S GAY CALENDAR is NOW AVAILABLE! ?? (@HeyJasonJune) August 11, 2021
A fan of Heidi Klum …
I can’t help but think of Heidi Klum bangs and need you to talk me out of it before I do anything drastic !! ????
– Jason June JAY’S GAY CALENDAR is NOW AVAILABLE! ?? (@HeyJasonJune) August 8, 2021
And the author of Jay’s Gay Agenda, a hilarious homosexual comedy for teenagers published earlier this summer about first loves, first contacts and first sorrows …
My first YA novel about gay hopes and dreams and love and sex and hormones and relationships is out TODAY !! JAY’S GAY AGENDA is such a piece of my rainbow heart that I hope shows how beautiful and exciting it is to be queer. GOOD PRIDE! pic.twitter.com/JnzMJBqHAZ
– Jason June JAY’S GAY CALENDAR is NOW AVAILABLE! ?? (@HeyJasonJune) June 1, 2021
Queerty got a chance to chat with Jason June about the book, his homosexuality, his own personal gay agenda, and this time he was punched in the head by Kylie Minogue. Here’s what he had to say …
QUEERTY: First… Tell me about the time you kicked Kylie Minogue in the head.
JASON JUNE: It’s a moment I’ll never forget! I was an extra in the video for “All the Lovers”, the one where we are this mountain of bodies twisting. So the group was lifting Kylie to the top, and when she turned around to be put in that fabulous diva position, she hit me in the face with her heel. She was so so so so so so sorry and kind and was checking me out. I totally was, and it didn’t even have a mark because I’m sure she has magical heels or something. She probably doesn’t remember it because I’m no one, but I felt like I was blessed then!
At Queerty, we’re all on the gay agenda. Coincidentally, your first novel YA Jay’s Gay Agenda just came out at the start of this year’s pride season. What has been the response so far?
It’s so great to hear from people who relate to Jay who mention going through the same experiences or are currently going through some of the shenanigans Jay does when he’s finally seen as a romantic and sexual being for the first time. That’s the only reason I wrote this, to get them in touch with teens and young adults who find themselves in similar situations to Jay as the only queer kid in their community who suddenly finds themselves thrown into a very gay space. It can be overwhelming, you can make mistakes when you first go out, but overall I hope readers feel how magical this time is too, when you finally get gay.
What was the most unexpected reaction you have had?
It’s a book about dating someone for the first time, before locking yourself into a relationship while finding people who think they could be a great first mate, and honestly I didn’t. never thought Jay would be called a cheater, but some readers do. Jay never promises loyalty or boyfriend to someone he’s dating, but he doesn’t say he’s dating other people. I think we can and should say he lied in these instances, and that’s a huge no-no, but I wouldn’t call it cheating. I think there’s a big distinction there, and there’s a theme I’m exploring about lying to save someone’s feelings and how it almost always ends up hurting someone worse than if you had just come out with the potentially gross truth from the start.
I think it’s so common for teens who are dating that they don’t necessarily share all the facts about who they’re dating with all of their romantic interests and drop dates when they finally decide to be in a relationship. committed relationship with someone. I’m not saying it’s fair to lie by omission in the slightest. But I think it’s human error, and calling these people cheaters or bad people is too harsh in my opinion, especially when they realize how fucked up they’ve been and try to make things better. At the same time, I would certainly never say that readers cannot feel what they are feeling, as their life experiences and point of view may be different from mine, but that in no way makes them wrong! And I’m so grateful to everyone who read Jay’s story!
The book has been described as a “hilarious, sexually-oriented teen romantic comedy about the intricacies of first love, first contact, and first grief.” I listened to the audiobook version and, I have to say, that’s a pretty accurate description. It’s instantly relatable and funny and down to earth and just fun. I’m curious how autobiographical this is?
First of all, thank you very much for listening! Isn’t the narrator, Mark Sanderlin, amazing? I think he did a great job capturing Jay’s energy. As for how autobiographical it is, there are a few seeds from my real life that started Jay’s journey. We were both the only queer kid in our rural eastern Washington high school, and although I didn’t have a gay list / agenda of all the things I wanted to do when I finally met another person gay, I had a diary where I detailed everything I wanted to do romantically and physically. But from there, other than the fact that my gay awakening also happened in Seattle, our stories really diverge. For starters, I ended up throwing my journal away before I went out because I was afraid someone would find out and find out about me before I was ready. So in this story, I wanted to embrace Jay’s gay agenda, his hopes and dreams and make it all a queer joy and feel the magic of finally becoming yourself gay when you’ve been physically separated from the LGBTQ + community. your whole life.
As you just mentioned, in the book Jay creates a list of things that make up his gay agenda. What are the five things on your own personal gay agenda?
Ohmigawd I love it! So here we go:
1. Keep making novels with main queer characters for the rest of the time.
2. Continue to have relationship milestones with my husband. We just lived ten years together, four of them got married, and this is the love story that I was told could never happen when I was a kid, so this is so heartwarming every time we have another year together.
3. For example, really learning to do eye makeup (I’m getting better, but I have to get good).
4. Be one of the first genderqueer panelists to attend a daytime talk show.
5. Getting kicked by Kylie on the other side of my face so that my soul is cosmically and diva-ly balanced.
You identify yourself as a “genderqueer mermaid”. When did you first start adopting your genderqueer identity? How did your family react?
I didn’t really unlock my genderqueerness until two years ago, when I was 32. I finished my senior year in high school, and then after moving to Weho’s gay paradise in my early 20s, I thought it would all be rainbows and roses from there. But I still felt so insecure about myself and realized that the more I tried to fit into the “perfect gay man” mold, the more I felt bad for myself. But when I started to embrace my femininity inside and out, I finally felt like me. And it was that femininity, plus a few things of the heart that are for me, that helped me discover that genderqueer was the term that best describes me. My family has been so supportive of me and it’s great that the people closest to me in my life see how more I am by expressing this part of my gender.
A while ago you posted a side-by-side photo of yourself from 2009 and 2019 on Instagram with the caption “I look exactly like myself”. When you look at the photo of this person from over ten years ago, what do you see today? And what would you like to say to him with more than 10 years of hindsight?
I look at 2009 me and see a person who was so insecure and was looking for validation in all the wrong ways. I needed people to say they loved me / loved me / wanted me because I didn’t love / didn’t love / didn’t want me. I felt like I was trying to be what society – both straight and queer – said a biologically male homosexual person should be, and a lot of that was unrelated to what was in my heart. On the other hand, I’m watching 2009 myself and I’m so proud of how far I’ve come and I can appreciate my journey and my respect that I still haven’t 100% understood everything. So I was like 10 years ago, “Breathe, ma’am. Explore the parts of yourself that you were afraid to let go, let your hair grow now, stop worrying about dating people who only care if you’re masc (spoiler: you’re not!) , slip on a pair of heels and bask in your self-woman.
Last question: what do a lot of people not know about you?
I practically stopped reading in high school, except for school. I think a lot of people assume that writers are still reading their entire lives. I read like the wind from about 7 to 13 years old, but after that I quit until my mid-twenties. I think it had something to do with not seeing myself in the books, only seeing straight characters, and even before I recognized myself as gay, I didn’t connect with these protagonists. In other words, representation counts! Yay!
Follow Jason June on Twitter and Instagram. Jay’s gay calendar is available now.
