Interview: Hop into bed with out singer/songwriter Tom Goss and his new video for "Til the End"

“I don’t even use the term sex, to me it’s way beyond sex. It’s something so intense that goes beyond the physical. It’s a closeness and intimacy that’s far deeper than anything else you’ll ever share with anyone.”

Tom Goss, 27, is waxing poetic about the awesomeness of love-making. The gay singer-songwriter — who last summer had a gay anthem and #2 video on Logo’s Click List with his single "Rise" — has a new CD, Back to Love, out this week on iTunes, Amazon and CDBaby. And lunching in DC a few days prior, the impending release date of Goss’s musical baby has given him cravings: He’s pouring salt all over his plate, then mopping it up with meteor-sized gobs of butter on microscopic pieces of bread.

“I’m from Wisconsin. We eat a lot of dairy.” Dude, you may want to cut that with a fruit plate. “Could I have some crème brulee?” Goss asks the waiter. For those of you who still didn’t know — and I’m one of you — crème brulee is fancy speak for custard. More dairy. Goss seems pretty healthy now, but I see a big phlegm intervention in his future.

But, back to sex…

(More Tom, more sex, more music, and from seminary to gay pop star below, along with Tom’s new video…)

Sex is the issue under discussion because, Goss says, before entering Catholic seminary he had never experienced real sexual desire: “It just wasn’t there for me. … I had never really even had a crush in my life.”

Which made his experience coming-out while at seminary all the more harrowing. He says many of his fellow seminarians “were not integrated with their sexuality.” And a number of his fellow students ended up professing their love for Tom, then pursuing him in terrifying ways.

“Sitting in Mass, reciting psalms talking about how God loves you, God protects you, God blesses you,” recalls Goss “… while standing next to somebody who is actively being predatory towards me. It’s hard to listen to the gospel when it’s being read by someone who is breaking into your room, trying to sleep with you. It’s hard to see God then.”

Goss says his seminary experience quickly turned into “hell”. He left both the priesthood and his faith, and found himself with no friends, alone on the streets of DC.

That first night on his own, he ended up in the DC restaurant and progressive political hangout Poets and Busboys, “sitting there crying, eating my pizza at the bar, and really having no f**king clue what I was doing. How I was going to pay the next month’s rent? How I was going to get a job?”

Goss did find work — advocating for the homeless with various social justice non-profits in the city. And more life-changing, Goss found love.

“Mike (Goss’s partner) came into my life at a time when I needed someone like Mike more than I could possibly admit to myself. I was just a broken person. Emotionally, personally, spiritually.” Goss sees a million practical reasons that should have kept the two apart, but “there was something there that was just too strong, some healing force, me for him and him for me that was just impossible to ignore.”

And since the singer-songwriter “can’t describe in words” how happy he is in this relationship, how deeply he’s in love — He wrote a whole CD full of songs instead.

Back to Love has passionate love songs ("Lover"), songs about family love ("Legacy of You"), love that hurts ("Sometimes We Fall"), a mid-life crisis search for meaning ("Forty Years"), and returning to a lover after a separation ("Back to Arkansas").

Lots of his fans find religious messages in his work, and that’s fine with Goss; though he no longer qualifies as a religious person, and isn’t even sure if he can claim being a spiritual one. The latter is an assertion Goss’s friends find so preposterous they just laugh when he tries to make it. He laughs as well, trying to explain.

I saw Goss in concert last summer, and onstage he’s a big warm-hearted personality who clearly loves entertaining. He’s short with a big, leonine head that sits on top of his still compact body from his days as a gymnast and college wrestler. (Yes, college wrestling. Tom … we could have told you.) He’s also got great songcraft — you could imagine John Mayer singing a lot of these tracks — and he’s able to forge an affecting vocal technique out of sheer will-power.

Ultimately for Goss, his new religion of music-making is about connecting and communicating, being a voice for others: “If by putting these songs out there, I can say something that somebody else wants to say, and somebody else wants to articulate — and by hearing a song they understand a little bit more about their life or their relationship, or they question more … then I feel like I’ve accomplished something.”

You can learn more about Tom at his website. Now check out his latest video – where everybody’s in bed…