Ask the Flying Monkey! (April 14, 2009)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey! (Please include your city and state and/or country.)

Q: I am seeing a lot about Luke Grimes on  gay-related blogs and sites.  Do you know whether he is an "out" actor, or are we all just in awe of him and suffer from the disease of "wishful thinking?" – Greg, Sacramento, CA

Luke Grimes

A: Wishful thinking. Grimes, who plays the “new” Walker son, Ryan, on Brothers & Sisters, is straight.

And for the record? Around our house, I refer to Ryan as “Poochie,” because, like the infamous Simpsons episode where Itchy and Scratchy adds a new character to hip it up, Ryan reeks of network interference – in this case, some executive saying, “Brothers & Sisters is skewing too old! I don’t care how you do it, just add something for the kids!”

Q: My grand-niece (!) is doing a paper on the fight for gay rights and asked me whatever became of Rod Jackson since his divorce from Bob Paris.  A gay buddy in Seattle says that Rod got religion and joined the "ex-gay" movement, which is why they divorced.  Do you know of his whereabouts today? – Tom, Decatur, Illinois

A: For gay men of a certain age – not me, mind you, just, uh, older friends of mine – the names Rod and Bob Jackson-Paris are instantly familiar. In 1989, Bob Paris, a former Mr. Universe and Mr. America bodybuilder, married (in a Unitarian service) Rod Jackson, an amateur bodybuilder and Playgirl model. They even hyphenated their names.

Basically, they were sort of an early version of Reichen Lehmkuhl and Chip Arndt.

But keep in mind this was in 1989, when same-sex marriage was basically unheard of. So Bob and Rod’s public announcement, their minor celebrity, and the fact that they were not stereotypically gay, all blended together to create a media frenzy. They even appeared on Oprah.

Eventually, the fame of being out negatively impacted their existing careers, so the pair turned to writing and talking about being gay and – this, perhaps, is what got them into trouble – their abiding love for each other.

When they broke up in 1996, most of us never heard of or thought about them again, despite the fact that – let’s face it – Rod and Bob Jackson-Paris were decades ahead of their time.

So where are they now? Bob lives on an island in British Columbia, writing a novel and the pilot for a TV drama he hopes will be shot in Vancouver, and he still acts, with a small reoccurring role in the new Fox sci-fi series Defying Gravity. He also still models, most recently for the fall 09 Arc’teryx catalog.

Bob Paris today

“I’m busy, grounded and wonderful with all the usual ups-and-downs of life folded in for spice,” he tells the Flying Monkey. Bob now lives with his partner of twelve years, Brian; the couple married legally this time, in 2003, right after BC changed their marriage laws. “We live a quiet life, fully-immersed in our community and our shared love of the outdoors,” Bob says.

But what of Rod and the rumors that he’s become an ex-gay? I queried all the ex-ex-gay experts. “No one I could ask has heard of such a rumor,” David Roberts over at Ex-Gay Watch told me.

Even Bob doesn’t know what’s up with his former partner, and if that’s the reason they split, he isn’t talking. “It’s been many years since I’ve needed to be put in the context of a relationship that ended – what has it been now? Somewhere around fifteen years ago,” he says.

Next page! Swooning over Cats gay castmates. Plus, Progressive's progressive(?) ad.