'Say Anything' singer Max Bemis comes out
Max Bemis, vocalist for rock group ‘Say Anything’ sent a long letter to the groups fans last week. The letter covers many subjects – among them the group’s latest album Oliver Appropriate – but the topic most covered by the media is that Bemis comes out as bi.
The letter opens saying, “This is a statement about my current status as a dude and Say Anything’s upcoming record and plans as a band.”
His status as a dude? “I have always been bi-ish or queer or a straight guy who can also like boys,” he wrote. “I always talked or joked about it with my friends and found it to be blatantly clear I was. I was bullied for it and called a ‘fag’ (without irony). This is, sadly, common. I’m not special. I even went so far as to tell people I was also attracted to guys repeatedly.”
But the singer affirms his love for and marriage to his wife, musician Sherri DuPree Bemis. The couple has three children.
He says friends chalked up his bisexuality to his bipolar disorder. He adds, “They also minimized it because I found true love early in life,” referring to his wife. I “saw that as a negation of my sexuality, or at least a minimization of my right to even identify as bisexual or queer. Because I don’t want to hook up with guys. But I also didn’t hook up with a lot of girls. I wanted to fall in love with a woman, so I did.”
Bemis asks, “So why should you care? Because this all applies to Oliver Appropriate.
“Years of being ‘that guy’ led to exhaustion with explaining myself to everyone. So I chose to write a full length about a self-loathing, slightly homophobic misogynist; essentially my opposite as a semi-actually-kinda-gay neurotic moralist who has been married to the female love of my life for ten years.”
The character – “who I would normally loathe” – was “a true product of the subliminal Millennial Fixation with wealth, power, denial, and the need to possess. I am a Millennial too, but, I’m a good one.”
He goes on to explain in depth the story of the album. And he talks about Say Anything, which it appears is ending at least this phase of its existence.
You can read Max Bemis’ full letter here.
Copyright The Gayly – August 20, 2018 @ 4:30 p.m. CDT.