#gq article

Taylor Swift GQ magazine October 2015

Aw, I’m sorry it made you cry.  I was extremely put off by that piece of “journalism” from the beginning and I was very clear about that.  I went back and found some Asks from that time in my archive and here is part of what I said about it:

I can’t believe she literally asked him “Was it real?”  That’s just stunning to me.  She worked things into the article that vary from eye roll inducing to catty, and some of them can easily be misconstrued as his own words, I mean to the point where I don’t know if she’s actually relating what he said or inserting herself into the narrative.

As far as what I thought…the whole tone doesn’t sit well with me.  If she was trying to take the idea of his incessant enthusiasm and mimic it in the writing, from the first paragraph to the final one, I understand that.  However, to me personally as a reader, it comes across as if she doesn’t quite buy it.

So, yes, I am glad that some people are now questioning the author.  I think it is absolutely interpretable as mocking to the point of being Mean Girl type jeering and I have a very hard time believing that her intent was otherwise.  

I understand what you are saying, I do think she was disrespectful.  But she didn’t force him to say anything he didn’t want to say.  He was honest.  She did editorialize to the point of putting words in his mouth and that’s bad journalism, period.  

That tweet is ridiculous.  I do not understand why some people are determined to defend her or not criticize her, it’s weird.  I want to ask them “So, any polyps to report?”  Because really.  

Don’t worry.  He’s moved on.  He’s had a wonderful year.  He has great days ahead, no matter what he does.  :)

“If you’re under attack,” he says, looking me square in the eye, his voice raw, “if your values are under attack, if you’re being shamed, if you’re being humiliated, the animal response is to hide in the bush. It’s to be less, to make yourself smaller, to diminish in size and volume. And the lesson of 2016 is we have to love more, we have to risk more, we have to be braver, we have to be more outspoken.”

It wasn’t until much later that night, after we’d parted, that I realized we had started talking about Taylor Swift long before we started talking about Taylor Swift.

“Taylor is an amazing woman,” where his voice has gone low. “She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time.” But I didn’t ask that, I say. I asked something else. So I wait, and he says, “Of course it was real.”

I ask if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party at which he donned that fateful tank top, about the rumors that she thought he was too eager. Does he want to say anything about any of it?

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July.”

“I only know the woman I met. She’s incredible. A relationship in the limelight… A relationship always takes work. A relationship in the limelight takes work. And it’s not just the limelight. It’s everything else.” He wanted a regular relationship. So did she, he says she said. “So we decided to go out for dinner, we decided to travel.”

After the breakup, he moved to Australia for Thor: Ragnarok, and each morning he’d wake up at five and go running, and the cameras would be there. “I’m getting up so I can do this job well. I’m getting up to go for my run so I can play Loki as well as I can.” Everywhere he went, whether it was checking e-mail on a park bench or looking at a menu, if he furrowed his brow it meant he was miserable and that would incite a new tabloid story about how hard he was taking all of this. It was a tough time, a public tough time. Chris Hemsworth gave him some good guidance; Hugh Laurie checked in. His family worried.

He looks at me finally and he says, “I’m not going to live my life in hiding.”

The next morning, I wake up at five to pack for my flight back to New York, and I see an e-mail from Tom, sent the night before, asking if he could come to my hotel to talk to me about something. I tell him yes. He lives 20 minutes away; 15 minutes later he knocks on my door.

He explains that he wants to be honest with me, that it would be hypocritical of him to talk about honesty in the world and then not be with me. I have to understand, he says, that a relationship is between two people, that it doesn’t belong to him alone. But like David Cameron now knows, it is neither practical nor wise to let rumors hang in the air. He wants me to know that he has no regrets, he says, “because you have to fight for love. You can’t live in fear of what people might say. You know, you have to be true to yourself.”

But I understood all that, I tell him. I understood last night. It’s six in the morning, Tom. I have a flight to catch. And he shakes his head, feeling foolish because maybe there was something he thought he could say that wasn’t quite coming out the right way, and instead he says, “Yeah, okay, I just wanted to make sure.”

I turn my tape recorder off and I stand up, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head again, his hands clasped together, and he hangs his head. I sit back down and we talk some more because I finally understand that he isn’t here as someone who needs to explain his side in a PR battle; he’s here as someone who is still crushed by the end of a relationship.

So we sit and talk for a while. We talk about how relationships go sideways, how the ripples of a breakup can still pin you to a wall even months later. We talk about heartache. We talk about sadness and healing. We talk about what it’s like to love and what happens when the object of that love withdraws but all your love is still there. We talk about how those things can really change a person. The world will chip away at your optimism, and you just have to fight back. You have to be someone who is still full of joy and full of love, who can still use a word like “obsessed” about porridge. You have to be bold and open. You have to be honest. You have to be like Tom Hanks. We all have to be more like Tom Hanks.