Welcome to the Real World

By DAN AARON 
Online Editor

Starbucks was busy on Monday night. An endless sea of java drinkers flowed through the line, grabbing their mocha lattes and tall-why-bothers to sit on comfy leather couches underneath the angelic glow of halogen lighting. 

Joe after Joe after average Joe placed his order. And then The Boy stepped up for his coffee, disrupting the corporate clockwork that makes Starbucks, well, Starbucks. 

"She was just staring at me," laughed Jason Daniel Roberts, 24. 

Java girl dropped her fucking java pen. It was Danny from MTV's "The Real World New Orleans." 

"It was just a cup of coffee," he said, speaking to an audience of college students at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., a smug, conservative far west suburb of Chicago. 

But not too conservative. 

"This town is the cleanest, queeniest place I've ever been," the Georgia native chuckled. 

Danny addressed the group for nearly two hours, spilling his guts about anything and everything the star struck students wanted to hear. 

Two college clubs invited the Real-Worlder to speak about life after college and the recent explosion of reality television. But he only spoke for 20 minutes before turning to the audience to keep him going. 

"I'll stay as long as you keep asking questions," he said, adjusting his ass on the retro barstool atop the barren stage. He was truly a diamond in the rough. 

He glistened in the spotlight, seeming to enjoy the attention while shunning it at the same time. He insists that he's just a regular guy. A regular guy who's seen the light that only national television can give. 

It was a textbook case of self-deprecation. He's fresh off a Dawson's Creek cameo, and the girls in the audience wanted to know all about it. 

But six months in Hollywood was more than enough for Danny. 

"I'm done with that," he said, waving his hand. "It's not for me for so many reasons."

Like other Real-Worlders with ambitious agents, Danny thought he'd try his luck breaking into the acting biz. He thought he'd find a career to fall in love with, but instead he found a world of opportunists and fairies - all of whom wanted a piece of him. 

"There are so many gays in Hollywood," he laughed. "It seems like everyone is gay. Actors, directors, producers - everyone." 

But that's a good thing, he admits, because it gave rise to gay-friendly programs like "Will and Grace." 

"That's a great show," he said. 

Though you'll never get him over to your apartment if you try to tease him with a bottle of Pinot Noir, a chunk of Gouda and a tape of last night's "Queer As Folk." 

"That show is trash," he blasted. "It's soft-porn. It just continues all the stereotypes." 

It's a different world, though. Danny had a Melrose Place character to look up to when he was growing up. Today, there's a host of gay characters on the tube. And there always seems to be one on TRW. 

Norman pioneered it in New York, the show's first season nearly a decade ago. And Danny was the token gaymo in New Orleans. 

"(My sexuality) is about 10 percent of who I am," he said. "Every time I watched the show, I was like, 'Stop talking about being gay for Christ sake!' I got pretty sick of watching myself talk about being gay. But that's what they turned me into." 

Lots of tape ended up on the cutting-room floor, he laments. 

Take the skinny-dipping fiasco at a hotel in a nearby beach town. Yeah. The one they almost got arrested at before the local police realized they had just handcuffed half of the show's cast. 

"They let us go," he chuckled, beaming about how happy he was that footage didn't see the light of day. 

Then there was the Big Fight with Catholic poster boy Matt. The real talk lasted more than an hour. Jesus freak pussyfooted around the issues, and Danny says he got all up in Matty's face. 

The audience saw something else: Matt inviting Danny to come to church and everything suddenly smelling like roses.

Hey, it's TV. The show only has so many episodes, and the producers have several months of footage to sift through, he conceded. 

Amazingly enough, the scene featuring him cheating on his boyfriend, Paul, was the centerpiece of the Mardi Gras episode. 

"I'm still living that down," he said, hiding his face in his hands. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life." 



Paulie still loves Danny, though. 

The duo is spending their time in Europe, away from screaming American fans. Danny got his degree from the University of Georgia, majoring in French "by default" after abandoning plans to become a teacher. ("I couldn't stand the children.") He won't say where he lives, but you can do the math. 

Or the French, for that matter. 

They are still together (sorry boys and girls), but trouble is lurking in Europe pretty soon. The sucking-face-in-the-closet-oops-shit-you-caught-me episode will air later this month on MTV UK. 

Danny and Paul survived that episode (Danny immediately called him to apologize), and they've learned to deal with Danny's fame by being crafty if not outright undercover when they are in the States. 

When they go grocery shopping, they enter one at a time. Same drill when going out to see a movie. 

"It's dangerous," he sighs. 

As any good Danny stalker would know, Paul is in the military - an officer for that matter. So the whole "Don't ask, don't tell" mantra of the American government is pretty difficult to keep underneath the scope of Pop Culture radar.

The boys granted an interview to The Advocate last year, which Danny seems to regret now.

"They had the story figured out before they talked to us," he said. "That's bad journalism." 

Apparently, the magazine tried to corner Paul into lashing out at military. But that didn't happen. 

"Paul said, 'I like my job. I'll play by their rules,'" he said. "(The Advocate) didn't want to hear that." 

Every day is trial. Even walking into the supermarket separately has its problems. 

"People just stare at me. I keep thinking, 'Is there something wrong with me? No. It's just because you were on TV,'" Danny said. "I had no clue about the public recognizing us." 

Danny had little time to prepare for the changes TRW would bring. After getting cast, he had three weeks to come out to his parents. 

On Christmas Eve, he dropped the bomb. Mom took it well; daddy didn't. 

"It was a real somber Christmas," he said, hanging his head. 

Not even two weeks passed after wrapping the show, and TRW New Orleans was on the air. "Survivor" and a slew of other reality-based programs were hitting the airwaves, so MTV execs had to take their piece of the pie as fast as they could. 

There was money to make, damn it. 

So now that he's a Real World survivor - albeit he didn't get voted off the island like Puck or Tami's would-be rapist in California - he is pushing a message he admits he also learned watching "Fight Club" last year. 

"Our possessions own us," he said, immediately attributing the quote. 

"The working-buying cycle . I've woken up from that," he said. "There is so much more to life." 

Like the environment. 

Rather than use his fame to appear on another episode of Dawson ("James VanderBeek is a fucking stuck-up cock!"), he is hoping to make the world a better place to live. 

Awww. 

No, seriously. And he's not a poser, either. He started a recycling program in his town when he was in high school, and he won a scholarship for college based on those efforts. 

"Our environment supports us," he said, shrugging his shoulders at the Bush administration's plans to ruin the world. "I would chain myself to a tree." 

When he's not being a tree-hugger, Danny contributes to a Web site, www.countrytoconcrete.com. It's his site, but a friend helps him keep things running. The site has some biographical information about him, but the real action is on the message board. 

"There are some regulars there," he laughed, collapsing on the stage for a one-on-one interview after everyone cleared out of the lecture. "I almost closed the site down because people were whining so much. But it's changed now. Kids come on there (to come out). It's just awesome." 

He knows his html, but he rarely has time to work on the site. He rarely - if ever - visits the board to post his two cents anymore. 

In the meantime, he's burning himself out on the college lecture tour and making some serious money. 

He's even back in school, somewhere in Europe. Communications major? No. Try massage therapy. (Be still my beating heart.) 

"I can't work for anyone else," he says. "It's not something I'll do for the rest of my life, but who knows. Maybe I'll love it." 

Oh yeah. He's also doing some modeling for an agency in New York, because, well, hey, Paul and Danny need to pay the rent. 

Welcome to the real world, gaymo.