Ian-Michael Bergeron

I was finishing up work on Friday when I got a text from one of my good friends, GF: “Want to go to a birthday party for my friend B tonight?” I’d never met B, but I love an impromptu party. I responded to my last email, shut my laptop and made my way to Brooklyn. B, an aspiring artist, lived in a two-story brownstone that he’d completely redone: The walls were vibrant with fresh,...

One evening, I got into what I like to call The Facebook Spiral. It starts with something simple: Maybe someone shares an old photo of you. Before you know it, four hours have gone by and you’re looking at photos from 2004, wondering where all the time has gone. Said evening, I got as far as 2008, looking at a photo of me wearing dark boot-cut jeans and rubber flip-flops: my days as a “model”...

When I was living off of 181st Street a few years ago (thank God for the Express A train), I found myself on Squirt during a restless night. After messaging all of the boys with sharp jawlines and sharper bios (to no response), I got a message from a blurry torso asking, “Can’t sleep?” I couldn’t, so I decided to respond. Niceties lasted about a minute before he asked if I wanted to “come over...

I was never really into The Fourth of July until I moved to New York City. It’s not that I don’t have good memories of Fourth of Julys past. I remember being young, maybe third grade, and sitting in the back of my dad’s truck with him, watching the fireworks ignite and trickle away, vanishing into the stars. We were right by a lake, and I was freezing in shorts and a sweatshirt, but I...

Last week, Nathan Ayon invited me to his private studio to get a sneak peek at his new collection of swimwear. Between nights at the Grace Hotel and trips to Fire Island, I NEEDED new swimsuits. Nathan Ayon splayed his newest suits on a table for me: It was a dizzying array of colors, sparkles and hardware. “I have some special ones to show you,” he winked, digging into a leather satchel at his side....

I don’t often write about my childhood, but this Pride month has me feeling nostalgic. I remember the first person I ever came out to, my freshman year of high school. Actually, I remember the first person I THOUGHT I came out to: Her name was Jenn, and she was a cheerleader. She wasn’t your typical bouncy blonde cheerleader—she was the cool cheerleader, a junior with dark hair and darker eyeliner, who traded her cheerleader...

After J and I agreed to live dorm-style in a single bedroom (just until another room in said apartment opened up), we decided to go furniture shopping. We’d both ordered full-size beds—yes, this room was so big that two full-size beds fit comfortably—and two standing clothing racks, since one tiny closet was definitely not enough for the both of us. So, we were on a hunt for… well, everything else. We went to my favorite...

Despite the fact that I kissed J at our company’s Christmas party, we remained friends. In fact, we never even talked about the kiss—I think he assumed it was just a drunken mistake on my part. I wasn’t sure what it was. I knew that I’d wanted to do it. And, if I’m honest now, I was pretty sure that I wanted to do it again. All the same, we pretended that we’d never kissed....

I first met J two years ago. It was six or so months into my relationship with AJ, but we got through the “honeymoon phase” (if you can even call what we had a honeymoon phase) long before. I was hosting at a restaurant then. I went to the employee bathroom in the basement, passed through the downstairs lounge (which wasn’t open yet), and there he was—filling out paperwork at Table 62. Two other servers...