James Whiteside Unwinds With ‘Gay Pulp’ and In-Shower Whiskey – Vanity Fair

“I thought that by becoming a ballet dancer, I was doing something super gay, but it turns out my life’s work is just another heteronormative endeavor,” James Whiteside writes in Center, Center, out this week. (The book’s name borrows from theater slang for the midpoint onstage—by depth and width—usually denoted by a scuffed X in tape.) After all, principal roles for men are the fairytale suitors, tasked with parading around their tutu-clad love interests. But leave it to Whiteside to point out that a name like Prince Désiré (of Sleeping Beauty) sounds ripped from a “plot synopsis of a 1995 Falcon Studios VHS porno tape,” which he merrily proceeds to supply:

Jeff the big-dicked trucker fell asleep for one hundred years at the Sunoco off I-95. His boner grew and grew until Prince Désiré discovered and awakened him by kissing his sleeping cock. 

Whiteside, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, is known for exuberantly coloring outside the lines of classicism. In a similar way, Center, Center—billed as an “almost-memoir,” with enough teen hormones and parental strife to fill a modern ballet—benefits from a no-rules approach to form. There is third-person biographical exposition alongside a mini-play set in airport limbo. I found myself suddenly teary-eyed while reading about his mother’s labored last breaths, only to flip to the next chapter: “How I Met Jesus on Grindr.”

“Adding ‘writer’ to my list of alter-egos feels like a natural progression,” Whiteside says in a call from his Brooklyn apartment, alluding to his turns as choreographer, drag persona, and Instagram Live ballet master alongside BFF Isabella Boylston. “I just like to make things.” He doesn’t subscribe to the idea of writing as a torturous exercise—maybe because his chiseled physique gets plenty of the real thing. (He credits his trainer Joel Prouty, a former dancer and onetime roommate whose creative strength training is lately shaping the city’s ballet stars.)

That state of peak fitness is what allowed Whiteside to slip effortlessly back onstage in Vail, Colorado, earlier this month—never mind that it was George Balanchine’s high-energy “Stars and Stripes at 8,000 feet.” But his approach to well-being takes many forms, as the dancer chronicles in this three-day wellness diary. That means custom tulle, easy listening, and the right kind of wakeup call.

Tuesday, August 10

7:30 a.m.: I am awakened by my boyfriend’s “horny-morning-hands,” which is my favorite alarm cock. Oops…I mean clock. The only thing that makes getting up before 9 a.m. survivable is getting off. I make some post-coital covfefe, and we sit out on the rear balcony of my Vail hotel room, gazing upon the hazy morning sun lazily spilling over the Rockies. And if that ain’t a good way to start a Tuesday, then I’m a goddamn Ninja Turtle!

10:30 a.m.: I have just finished performing in the marvelous, two-week Vail Dance Festival, and it is time to return to New York City. Vail is two hours away from Denver, so I hop in my hilariously incapable rental car and wheeze and burp up and down the mountains, toward the airport. I oscillate between music and podcasts while driving. I started a new podcast recently called Gay Pulp, and it’s some mincing old kween reading ’70s and ’80s erotic gay fiction. The story I listen to is called “Glory Hole.” It’s incredible because it is simultaneously arousing and comical. The narrator pronounces homosexual like “hyomosexual,” cock like “gock,” and nude like “nyood.”

2 p.m.: During the flight back to NYC, I watch Elite, a Spanish show that is simultaneously calming and completely manic. Every character is capable of murder and polygamy. It’s so inspiring. Everyone is kinda gay too. Television makes sexuality so easy. These Spanish teenagers are banging and murdering everyone like no es gran cosa. 

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