When I made it up those four flights of stairs, my legs were shaking, my chest was heaving, and my body was spraying sweat clear across the room every time I turned my head. Call it a combination of nerves, stress, and utter weakness, but I was having some kind of attack, possibly of the heart variety or more likely the panic variety, and it wasn’t pretty.

Jackie, the head of the department I was interviewing for, found me leaning against the wall trying to catch my breath, and offered me a towel—not just a tissue, but a towel—and I said, “No thank you, I brought my own towel,” and eventually we went into her office, and I sat in front of a fan, and everything went just wonderfully after that.

I got the job, obviously—Jackie was no idiot—but I did have to walk up those stairs every morning, and it took a full two months before my entire body stopped convulsing after the entire process. Although the actual office wasn’t any better than the staircase. The only air-conditioning in the reception room where I worked was a spitting window unit that took approximately seventeen hours to start breathing. My first week, there was a wasp nest outside the window, so we couldn’t even open it for relief. And somehow, the wasps would find their way in, and obviously, because I was the biggest and youngest and manliest (i.e., the only man), it was my responsibility to kill them.

But I worked in that shitty jungle office for three entire summers. And it wasn’t in a basement. And there were no goddamn customers. So I’d say I’d moved sufficiently far up in life.

ON MY TROUBLED HISTORY WITH FASHION

I have no idea what to wear. And I don’t mean right now, because right now I’m wearing gym shorts, socks, and a T-shirt, and I’m perfectly comfortable with rocking this whole look, but eventually, I’m gonna have to get out of bed, and I’ll have to put on something that is generally acceptable to wear in public. And I have no idea what to wear.

Everybody expects gays to have a sense of style, but I blame the ladies on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the preppy couple from Glee for that one. Thanks to them, society expects me to flawlessly execute a fitted blazer, bow tie, suspenders, skinny pants, and a thong at any given moment, and I can barely put on two of the same socks in the morning, let alone an on-theme ensemble.