Michael Musto is a groundbreaker. As the first openly gay gossip columnist, he has become a veritable institution. His newly released book, La Dolce Musto (named after his column), is a collection of the columns he has been penning for 22 years at the Village Voice, the nation's premier alternative newspaper.

With chapter titles such as “Confessions of a Sound Bite whore,” “Pianist envy: A visit with Liberace,” “Alien vs. predator: The sickening McGreevey scandal,” “Rosie's b.s. isn't cutie patootie,” “Did I blow my chances with Anderson Cooper?” and “Slap happy star is anything but Gaboring,” you know it'll be anything but Gaboring to read.

His column garners lots of reader response, but the craziest comments are by people who consider it a guilty pleasure. “I get dozens of emails saying, ‘I love your column, but I'm straight!' or ‘I'm a big fan — and by the way, I'm a man and I have a female wife,'” Musto recently told AfterElton. “I can't believe people are so insecure that they feel they have to spell out their supposed sexuality just so I know they're not ‘one of them' just for liking me. Relax, people. After all, I enjoyed The Color Purple, but I don't have to tell people, ‘But I'm white!'”

Some people try to turn the tables on him. “Someone else emailed me that they spotted me at a gay sex party. Wow. That's like finding out the pope is Catholic or a bear s---s in the woods. No s---, Sherlock. I'm gay and go to gay places!”

One of the things this flamingly (and proudly) gay reporter pioneered, along with Michelangelo Signorile, was the outing of celebrities. New gossip bloggers, such as Perez Hilton, have followed happily in his footsteps, forcing several celebrities to come clean this year, notably Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D., How I Met Your Mother) and J.R. Knight (Grey's Anatomy) in what has become the new venue of choice for gay celebrities: People Magazine.

“I've long found it absurd that they cower in the closet while promoting every other aspect of their personal lives,” Musto says, “and the media helps them go along with that. But now, with the internet, a lot of celebs are forced to come out because everyone's read that they're gay already. It's a wonderful advance, and I'm thrilled to have been some part of the development of this process.”

Will this spell the end of the closet for celebrities? “There'll never be an end to closeted celebrities. There will always be stars and their managers cowering for fear of losing a buck. But I do think there are more half-out stars than ever, and that'll become the norm. The Ricky Martins, Jodie Fosters, Clay Aikens and so on will all continue to be out but not out, and though there are limitations to that, it's better than the old days, when they all would have been publicly denying being gay.”

Surprisingly, even though his fellow gossip-slingers are rivals, Musto says he gets along with them. “We're a happy family despite, or maybe because of, the cutthroat nature of our business. I was at a party with Richard Johnson the other night; I'm having dinner with Cindy Adams this Wednesday; and Perez Hilton is co-hosting my book party. So, as much as people would like to gossip about the gossips, the shocking truth is we all get along! Probably because we all have an understanding of how tough it is to churn this stuff out, so we all have compassion for one another.”

As a college student, he was already attracted to the gossip genre. “I wrote fan letters to Rex Reed, Liz Smith and John Simon. They all meant a lot to me — Rex as a spot-on celebrity profiler and critic, Liz as an ultra-likable disher, and Simon as an acidic observer of the arts. This was before I realized the full scale of his bigotries. Reveling in their love of language made me want to write with a vengeance. And I was deeply encouraged when they all wrote back with encouraging words. I remember that, and now I always write back to young fans myself, knowing how much a pat on the back means to someone on the outside looking in.”

Musto first honed his craft in college as the theater editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator (and used Tony Kushner as a writer, by the way). “I loved it because it allowed me to see all the Broadway shows and write whatever I wanted about them,” he recalls. That led to freelance articles for the SoHo Weekly News and the West Side Spirit. After graduating, he landed a nine-to-five as the managing editor of TV Star Parade, “a fan magazine with made-up stories straining to justify the screaming headlines. A title like ‘ Cher leaves Sonny!' generally meant that she left him to buy groceries, but came back a half hour later. I was dying to quit, but it folded first.”

That magazine provided an entree, and afterward he continued freelancing for SoHo Weekly News, After Dark and others, and got hooked into the celebrity and party scene. “Since I was already plugged into the circuit and had a knack for tattle-taling, it made sense that I'd eventually write about the whole thing.”

He had done some freelance features and film pieces for the Voice when an opening for a gossip columnist came up. His editor, Karen Durbin, “was impressed with my professionalism and clean copy,” and asked him to submit a sample column. He turned in a column mixing “Broadway, nightlife, movies and my gay sensibility, all in a breathless, first-person whirl of name-dropping and opinions.” They hired him on the spot. “They even paid for the sample column, which I thought was very classy. Paying someone to audition!”

The Voice column turned out to be his dream job: “My ultimate venue — a full page to vent and rant and gush and say whatever I like, armed with an arched eyebrow and a libel lawyer.”

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