We Will Always Love You :: Recently on my Instagram I answered a common question I receive: Who was your worst interview? The answer is this C-list reality star - watch the reel if you really want to hear about it - but I also went on to point out something interesting. Whereas it has always been the C-listers who are usually the most difficult to deal with, A-listers rarely are. They’re on time, they’re professional, they know who you are, they’re appreciative, they’re ready to play.

Dolly Parton is a perfect example of an A-list star who was delight to interview. When I was lucky enough to chat with her for my show, she was vivacious, charming, engaged, funny, quippy, open-hearted - just a joy to spend 15 minutes with. The conversation was effortless and enjoyable; Dolly made me feel wonderful.

It still blows me away that she died on Tuesday.

Apparently I am not the only one rocked by the loss.

Four days after Dolly died, my Facebook feed is now basically Dolly Parton Television.

Reel after reel of Dolly singing, Dolly laughing, Dolly with Kenny. Dolly imparting some down home wisdom. Dolly making some filthy joke while looking like a rhinestone-encrusted Sunday school teacher. Dolly being interviewed 30 years ago. Dolly putting Barbara Walters in her place. Dolly and a smitten David Letterman. Dolly reading to children. Dolly talking about poverty. Dolly talking about God. Dolly talking about gay people. Dolly on authenticity.

And people crying about her death. Lots and lots of people. Sharing their favourite Dolly song (“Here You Come Again” is mine, for the record.)

This expression of loss isn’t unusual when somebody extraordinarily famous dies. We collectively mourn people we never knew because they occupied space in our lives; Dolly is part of the soundtrack to many of our experiences, reminding us of childhoods, relationships, road trips, parents who are gone, versions of ourselves who are gone.

Somehow though, this feels different.

The response to Dolly Parton’s death has been astonishingly global. The King’s Guard played “9 to 5” outside Buckingham Palace the next day. The Empire State Building turned pink. I saw hundreds gathered outside a gothic cathedral somewhere belting out “Islands In The Stream” full-voiced, all together. Tributes have poured in from political leaders, rock stars, country singers, and people thousands of miles from Tennessee who couldn’t find Sevierville on a map. Dolly’s music immediately surged across streaming platforms.

So what exactly are we mourning?

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I think we’re mourning true goodness. Goodness gone in a time when it feels like there is such short supply (“Why Dolly not Donnie!?!” my brain screamed when I read the news.)

Dolly Parton spent her life performing one of the most difficult tricks available to a human being: she became phenomenally successful without appearing to become hardened by success.

Whereas many would have built walls around themselves, Dolly sent books to children. Her Imagination Library, created because her father couldn’t read or write, eventually expanded beyond Tennessee and America into Canada, Britain, Ireland and Australia. She helped families who lost their homes to wildfires. She put a million dollars toward COVID vaccine research. She gave to hospitals and education and disaster relief.

But we aren’t crying because Dolly wrote cheques. We’re crying because of the loss of the beautiful pure spirit behind them.

Dolly also seemed to possess something increasingly rare: an enormous capacity to let other people be, which may explain why her death has hit queer people especially hard.

Long before standing with LGBTQ+ people was an easy corporate branding exercise, Dolly stood with us. She spoke openly about the gay people in her own family. She talked about trans people. She talked to queer media when plenty of country stars wouldn’t. In 1991, she released a song called “Family” containing the lyric that some family members are gay — and, crucially, that none are turned away.

Think about that year for a moment. 1991.

For many queer people, particularly those of us old enough to remember those unspeakably brutal AIDS years, Dolly’s embrace at that time landed somewhere much deeper than politics.

It felt maternal, and I suspect that’s why some queer people are grieving her almost like family. Plenty of queer kids did not (and do not) receive unconditional love from the women who raised them.

Then along came this woman from the deeply Christian American South, with the giant hair and giant breasts and giant personality, saying, essentially: “Come here, honey. You’re fine.”

Dolly’s Christianity didn’t seem to require somebody else’s exclusion to prove its sincerity. Criticized by the likes of evangelical Christians about supporting LGBTQ people, her clap back was always devastatingly simple: “Why wouldn’t I stand up for everybody, for all people?” Now that’s a Christian. That’s Christ-like.

Imagine how she sounded to someone who spent childhood begging to hear exactly that.

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But that still doesn’t explain the expression of love from Buckingham Palace, an ocean away. It doesn’t explain Japan or Australia or Uganda or millions of straight people filling social media with Dolly clips days after her death.

For that, I think you have to zoom out.

We live in an age of sorting. Almost everybody is required to declare a team. Left. Right. Woke. MAGA. Gay. Straight. Religious. Secular. Rural. Urban. Good person. Bad person. With us. Against us.

Dolly refused the assignment.

Not by having no principles, which she had in spades. She simply didn’t seem interested in turning those principles into weapons.

She could sing to conservative churchgoing grandmothers - and become a drag icon. She could be beloved in Tennessee - and at Pride. She could talk about God without making atheists nervous, and embrace queer people without treating them like a political constituency.

She allowed contradictions to coexist because we human beings are contradictions.

Maybe that’s what feels so precious now: Dolly made room.

Room for poor people because she’d been poor. Room for people without education because she’d watched her brilliant father struggle with illiteracy. Room for queer people because, to her, we were already family. Room for believers. Room for nonbelievers. Room for ridiculousness and glamour and sex and faith and ambition and kindness.

Even her outrageous, wonderful, colourful physical presentation carried the glorious message: You are supposed to invent yourself.

Maybe that’s why the grief feels disproportionate to the death of an 80-year-old woman who lived an astonishingly full life.

We aren’t grieving the tragedy of a life cut short. We’re grieving the disappearance of things we desperately want more of, especially right now with the world on fire, things Dolly was over and over again.

Grace without judgment.

Conviction without cruelty.

Success without contempt.

Faith without exclusion.

Love without an entrance exam.

There are people whose deaths remind us that time is passing. Dolly Parton’s death seems to have reminded millions of us of something else: Who each of us would still like to be - and still can be, keeping Dolly alive in the doing.

Perhaps that’s why, four days later, we can’t stop watching her, talking about her, crying over her.

We’re not quite ready to let that kind of love leave the room.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Level 58

Whatever Happened To Being A Good Guest?

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

OMNOMNOM :: I’m back in the city following a serene week up north at my girl friend Terry’s cottage. When I say “up north,” I mean that North Bay was the halfway point; we drove nearly 7 hours to get there and were 20 minutes from the Quebec border at one point.

Worth it? So. Not just for the sun, the sleep, the cocktails, the boat, or the joy of watching my dog Léo soak up the freedom of being off leash, racing into the water to chase away the ducks, nor for the great pleasure of learning he loves a boat ride.

I also made a couple of excellent food discoveries as well.

The first was in North Bay, where we stopped at a place called Twigg’s to grab a bite. I followed Terry’s recommendation and shared their Mexicana pizza with her. The twist to it was that instead of a tomato sauce base, Twigg’s used re-fried beans.

Now. I know that won’t be everyone’s style of slice, but I love re-fried beans and found it not only original but it was effing delicious. If you love refried beans and get the chance to make or try a pizza using them as a base - do. (It’s my understanding Taco Bell also makes a pizza like this, but the catch is: Taco Bell.)

The second discovery I made was the idea of using a food we usually associate with one meal, one season, one very specific place on the plate: cranberry sauce.

I made a whipped feta using feta, herbs, olive oil, Greek yoghurt, lemon juice and a half a tin of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, smearing a generous dollop of the thick pink sauce on our plates, placing BBQ’d marinated salmon on top.

Honestly? Heaven. And the rest of the whipped feta kept for use later in the week with other meats. (We didn’t waste the remaining cranberry sauce, either, adding it to macerated fruit from a boozy sangria Terry had whipped up, pouring it all over vanilla ice cream. Eyes rolled to the back of my head enjoying that.)

Ocean Spray recently handed their iconic sauce over to some seriously creative chefs - Andy Hay, Matt Basile and Kara Quigley - who created everything from cranberry-jalapeño smash burgers and gochujang beef ribs to maple chicken wings and even a grilled peach sundae.

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Eryn Pasut, Head of Marketing for Ocean Spray Canada joined me to talk about their chef challenge and why cranberry sauce deserves a summer moment, as #SummerOfYes continued on The Shaun Proulx Show over the weekend. Hear our chat here:

You can also watch the recipe vids crated by Andy, Matt and Kara here:

Happy eating!

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Have You Seen My Sympathy?

Level 58

Whatever Happened To Being A Good Guest?

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

BOO-HOO :: I’m looking for my sympathy, following the alleged suicide attempt this week by the gossip Perez Hilton.

The attention addict, of course, tried the deed on TikTok, which “mistakenly” allowed a reportedly horrifying video of him trying to end his life to broadcast for an astonishing twenty minutes. (Moderator error? Ha-ha. TikTok knows good content when they see it. Just my opinion.)

Hilton’s three young children reportedly fled their house as Father of the Year began his social media suicide livestream.

Now there’s a core memory. One can only imagine what it was like having him as a father to begin with. Now this.

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It’s all just awful, yet try as I might, I can’t find any compassion for the man, whose family has asked that - brace yourself - his privacy be respected.

His what?

(Despite that privacy ask, Hilton is reportedly relishing the attention he’s receiving at the moment; those close to him are concerned he is already plotting on how to monetize the story.)

This is the man who made a fortune invading the privacy of countless celebrities, many of them in the middle of addiction, mental illness, heartbreak, or public humiliation.

It messes with my mind that we’re apparently supposed to separate this week’s tragedy from the decades of Hilton that came before it.

I can’t. It’s not like separating an artist from any alleged heinous behaviour, which I can do sometimes.

This is the man who helped build an internet economy around brutal humiliation. Before outrage became a common, Trumpian business model, Perez Hilton was already cashing the cheques. He was never simply reporting celebrity gossip. He was gleefully weaponizing it, scrawling crude drawings of penises and semen across celebrity photos - as though someone was jizzing on their faces - for an added touch of class.

He outed gay celebrities before they were ready, a shocking crime I can’t ever abide by; Hilton himself is gay - self-loathing much? He mocked women - relentlessly. Britney Spears became content during one of the most public mental health crises of our time. Lindsay Lohan’s addiction wasn’t treated as an illness; it was entertainment. Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, Mischa Barton, Amy Winehouse, Jennifer Aniston... there seemed to be no limit to who could be ridiculed if it generated clicks; he picked on a teenage Rumer Willis’ face, my god.

His site wasn’t famous because it was insightful. It was famous because it was spiteful and mean.

Toxic as fuck, too - I always felt I needed a hot shower and scrubbing down after I visited his horrible hub.

Back to mocking women. His misogyny wasn’t subtle. Women gained weight? Mock them. Lost weight? Mock them. Drunk? Mock them. Pregnant? Mock them. Divorcing? Mock them. Having a breakdown? Especially mock them.

The internet rewarded cruelty, and Perez Hilton became one of its first superstars.

Years later came his apologies, which somehow rang pathetic to me. Some celebs were gracious in their replies, like Khloe Kardashian, others understandably ignored the hateful troll and his mea culpas.

Then came the near-death experiences (a bad flu became an ulcer, a perforation, and then severe sepsis that left him hospitalized for three weeks this year; a deep vein thrombosis scare came after.)

After that, came his videos about rediscovering Jesus, reading the Bible, becoming a better person, returning to his Catholic faith, and promising that the second half of his life would look different from the first. He went on FOX News (self loathing much?) to tell hate monger Sean Hannity “I was wrong.”

I don’t know if those changes were sincere but I hope they were, and I hope they still are.

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But forgiveness and redemption isn’t something the public owes you simply because you announce you’ve changed - they’re something earned. And even then, forgiveness belongs to the people you hurt—not to bloodthirsty spectators.

Circling back, allow me to admit that I’m still just stuck on how the conversation right now is about respecting Perez Hilton’s privacy. So rich.

Hilton is a man who built an empire invading everyone else’s. He taught an entire generation that another person’s worst day could be monetized, that celebrity suffering was entertainment, and that shame sold digital ads.

None of that means I wanted to see what reportedly unfolded on TikTok this week, and I certainly don’t wish him dead.

I hope he recovers, and that he gets whatever help he genuinely needs. If this was a genuine suicide attempt, I hope it becomes the beginning of a quieter, healthier life than the one he’s spent performing in public. But recovery isn’t the same as absolution.

The people in this hot glue gun mess I feel for most? Where I have unlimited sympathy? His poor children. Those are the real victims in this story. Hilton’s three young kids now have to carry memories no child should have to bear.

But I can’t find my sympathy for him.

Empathy for mental illness? Yes, absolutely.

Hope for recovery? Sure.

Compassion for his children? Endless amounts.

But sympathy for the man who spent years teaching us to laugh at other people’s pain - until it became his own?

I’m still looking for it.

Hither and yon.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Level 58

Whatever Happened To Being A Good Guest?

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

BIRTHDAY BOY :: Two days ago I reached Level 58.

I’ve been declaring birthdays “levels” for a couple of years now, because it sounds less like a countdown to decline and more like an accomplishment. Which, if we’re being real, is what aging actually is: achievement.

Nobody reaches Level 58 by accident. You get here by surviving, learning, by making spectacular mistakes, recovering from them, loving the wrong people, loving the right ones, grieving, laughing, changing your mind, paying bills, walking the dog, and somehow finding yourself another year older without quite knowing how it happened - and how it all happened so fucking fast.

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You grow, in other words. And that growth deserves celebration more than apology.

This birthday had me thinking about Madonna. The Queen of Pop also has a birthday this month, she’ll reach Level 68 on August 16th.

Madonna doesn’t need me or anyone to defend her. She never has. But, every time another recent photo or concert or club performance of hers appears online, the comments seem almost identical.

“Grandma; geriatric; this is sad; she needs to accept her age.”

To that last critique I find myself wondering why. Why does she need to accept her age?

Mick Jagger, now in his friggin’ eighties, is celebrated for still strutting across a stage. Nick Cave has somehow become even cooler with age. Paul McCartney is called timeless. We admire older men for refusing to slow down. Older women, however, are expected to know when it’s their time to become invisible. Even Madonna. And many women do disappear, like they never mattered to begin with.

Related Post: Why People Hate Drag Queens

Madonna has refused this Western societal inanity; she’s been under this pressure for years.

Good. Still trailblazing, as is her wont.

The more I have thought about it, the more I’ve realized this issue with Madonna isn’t really about Madonna.

It’s about visibility.

We’re surprisingly uncomfortable with people who continue taking up space after we’ve collectively decided they shouldn’t. Society wants older women to be dignified and gracious, to even dress a certain way, to grow old with grace.

What does that even mean? Often it seems to suggest, “Please become smaller so the rest of us don’t have to think about getting older.”

I’ve now reached the glorious point where I have very little interest in becoming smaller for anyone. Madonna definitely has.

Maybe that’s because my relationship with aging has always been a little different.

I’m HIV positive. Undetectable. Healthy. Happy.

When I was diagnosed, HIV medicine had reached the point where people were being saved. Looking back, my timing for acquiring HIV was impeccable. It sounds like an odd thing to write, but it’s true. A little earlier and my story might have been very different. I might not be here typing this today, at Level 58.

Still, medicine doesn’t erase memory. I remember times when there seemed to be multiple funerals a day. I remember going dancing with a group of friends one weekend and, by the next, we were down a man because he’d died. That was simply life for so many of us.

Ironically, I wasn’t especially afraid of dying when I was diagnosed.

By then, what worried me was the medication. In those days some of the treatments caused dramatic changes to the body. People developed hard protruding bellies or humps on the backs of their shoulders. The disease announced itself before they ever had to.

I was able to take meds that didn’t do that, thank God.

Today I have a soft protruding belly instead.

Universe has an odd sense of humour. I’ll take it.

Years after my diagnosis, I sat across from Matt Galloway in a CBC Radio studio early on a Friday September morning. The AIDS Walk For Life was that Sunday, and as it’s 25th Anniversary Chair, I was there to promote it.

But. I had made a decision before I walked through the doors. It had been co-ordinated between my PR and Matt’s producers: I was going to tell listeners something I’d never said publicly before. I was going to say four words.

“I am HIV positive.”

I hadn’t disclosed to family or close friends. Very few people in my orbit knew. Of course I had told people I slept with. Some super tight friends. But I never wanted to be known as “the HIV-positive” anything - my career as a writer and broadcaster was burgeoning when I was diagnosed, so I kept it private. Over time, something private can begin to bear the weight of a secret. There exists so much stigma around HIV and AIDS still; I was a happy, successful guy - maybe my coming out publicly would do something, however small, to help smash that stigma.

I’ve worked in radio for decades. I’ve interviewed Oprah, Lady Gaga, politicians, grieving parents, people in crisis and people at the very top of their game. Live microphones have never intimidated me.

That day at the CBC they did.

As the moment approached, something happened that I never expected: I wanted to run. Not figuratively, literally.

I wanted to bolt from my chair like a freak, race out of the studio, get in the elevator and disappear before those four words ever left my mouth.

They were caught in my throat.

Matt stared at me, waiting. I had to force them out. My voice shook.

Looking back now, I understand what was happening. I wasn’t afraid of saying I was HIV positive, I was afraid of what people would think of me after I said it.

At Level 58, that version of me doesn’t exist anymore.

Somewhere over the years I stopped organizing my thoughts, my actions, my life around anyone’s approval. I stopped believing that my worth rose and fell with strangers’ opinions.

I stopped asking permission to be visible.

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Maybe that’s why I understand Madonna better than some of those misogynist, ageist fools mocking her.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Madonna. But I do know what it’s like to feel the pressure to become quieter, less complicated, and easier for other people to accept.

I also know what it feels like to decide you’re no longer interested in that bargain.

Here’s the thing about Level 58.

I don’t feel old. I feel lucky. Lucky to still be here, lucky to still have work I love, to still be curious, to still laugh too loudly. Lucky to have a rescue dog from Turkey who has no idea how old I am and couldn’t care less.

Lucky to have outlived an era when many of us weren’t sure we’d get the chance to grow older at all. Some of the friends I have loved never got to complain about a sore back, the inability to see without reading glasses, or the few extra pounds around the middle I’m now jabbing with Ozepmic to ward off.

They never got to find out who they might have become at 58.

I did. How bloody blessed am I?

So indulge me as I celebrate another level, and brace yourself as I refuse to apologize for taking up space. Forgive Madonna for doing the same.

Growing older isn’t the privilege. The privilege is still being here.

And once we truly understand that, becoming invisible because of what others expect feels like the saddest choice of all.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Whatever Happened To Being A Good Guest?

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

HEAR HERE :: Firstly, a big shout out to the lovely Substack Subscriber who read that cupping was on my #SummerOfYes list, and who also knew I had a pulmonary embolism in 2020. She replied to my newsletter to warn me cupping and blood clots do NOT work well together - so that’s become a hard pass. Thanks for saving my life, Dear Reader!

What I do have checked off #SummerOfYes list is achieving my Reiki Master certification, just this past Wednesday. I have long enjoyed and benefited from the Japanese form of energy healing, and always wanted to be able to practice it myself, and soe have spent the last few months studying. Completing each level has been a fun ride!

Onto our latest episode: actor and pal Kristin Booth joins me in conversation. Kristin was the best reason to watch The Kennedys mini series and it’s sequel: The Kennedys: After Camelot, where she played Ethel Kennedy; Hallmark Channel viewers know her from the wildly popular Sign, Sealed, Delivered franchise. Like any artist, Kristin leads a yes-based life, and in our conversation talks about the power of that, plus how she has said yes to nurturing her mental health.

Mental health struggles are something Montreal singer song writer (and another friend) Satya has boldly been open about sharing. Her new album A Note To Myself is out now, and it’s an intimate pop-R&B debut that transforms Satya's journey through heartbreak, sobriety, healing, and self-acceptance into an empowering collection of songs about finding strength by embracing your authentic self. I encourage you to take a listen to her new release, and to check out what she has to say about mental health in our interview.

Also from La Belle Province is Jeannarie, singer and songwriter extraordinaire. The Montrealer with the killer voice joins us for a big #SummerOfYes convo. She was doing covers for many years, thinking that’s where she belonged, until finally saying yes to emerging out of that lane - to sing her own songs. Her voice is something to behold - check out Stop - and don’t miss our chat, a powerful convo about never boxing yourself in.

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Then it’s on to another kind of art: interior design. Shelley Weinreb and Jill Steinberg, the genius creatives behind the knock-your-socks-off wallpaper company Fine & Dandy Co. (I have a beautiful pink mural they created, in my home) talk to us about how you can redecorate a room in your home - or even your whole space - just using existing objects you already own that you have forgotten about, or that should be more on display than they already are. I had two fashion sketches in my bedroom that Shelley and Jill declared were too beautiful not to put on more prominent display, which led me to move them into my living room where they get to be enjoyed by me and seen by guests far more often. They were right. Get their design tutorial on this latest show - and say YES to making your home your castle.

Enjoy the listen!

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Whatever Happened To Being A Good Guest?

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

WELCOME TO MY HOME? :: There has been a strange and disturbing pattern emerging in my life over the past few months..

As I have chronicled on my Instagram (here and here and in updates in other reels) some hookups are behaving in a way that leaves me standing in my own home thinking, Did that really just happen?

Adding to the wonder is my flatmate, who tells me a story about someone who treated our home like it was an extension of theirs. Then a close friend calls, equally baffled by the behaviour of his roommate.

The details are all different, but our reactions are all the same: “Who does that?”

Here’s the odd thing. Every single one of them has been around 35 years old.

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Now, before every 35-year-old reading this unsubscribes, relax.

I’m not convinced the problem is being 35. But I am convinced something in the culture has changed.

I know I’ll sound like an old man - in fact read the following in your best senior voice - but when I was growing up, entering someone else’s home carried an almost… sacred weight.

Maybe it was the British mum who raised me. You didn’t assume. You asked. You didn’t help yourself. You were offered. You said ‘yes please’ and ‘no thank you’. You didn’t leave a mess, you left the place looking as though you’d never been there.

And you certainly didn’t walk into another person’s home believing your comfort ranked above theirs.

Somewhere along the way, though, that script seems to have been quietly rewritten.

At this point, I’ve watched people arrive chez moi with the energy of hotel guests checking into an all-inclusive resort. The assumption seems to be: I’m here, now accommodate me.

Not everyone, of course, but enough people that it’s become impossible not to notice.

And it’s made me wonder why.

Is it social media? When every platform tells us we’re the star of our own movie, maybe everyone else slowly becomes supporting cast? If your life is the story, then perhaps other people’s homes become little more than the set?

Or perhaps it’s because so many people have spent years living with roommates, in Airbnbs, short-term rentals, and temporary spaces that “home” has become less holy than it once was.

Maybe nobody teaches etiquette anymore. Or it could be that a lot more people than we knew have been raised by wolves.

There’s never been university course called How Not To Be An Asshole In Someone Else’s Home Or Boudoir. Most of us learned by watching our parents. We absorbed invisible rules:

• Don’t open cupboards.

• Don’t criticize someone’s home.

• Don’t invite yourself.

• Offer to help.

• Say thank you.

• Lift. The. Seat.

• Flush. The. Toilet.

• Leave before they secretly want you to.

Those lessons didn’t feel restrictive, they felt respectful.

Voila - a peek at my recent experiences:

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Example One

A 35-year old lad “needs” my softly lit bedroom pitch-black. Without asking, he stands and removes my crystals and smudger from the window sill, mixing some loose crystals up with others that are in a bowl. I didn’t want them mixed up, that’s why they were separated. I grit my teeth, watching him. He then fiddles with the blackout blind, pulling it out of it’s side track. Then he wants the the lights totally off, and the porn off too. So what? So I get to sit next to you in pitch black like two C U Next Tuesdays? Get out!

Example Two

A different 35-year old “needs” my softly lit bedroom bright as day. (I should set him up with Example One and watch their heads explode.) He begs me to change the lighting, several times, though I have refused each time. He then wants to know where the loo is, and then heads towards it, hitting the light switch on the wall as he passes so the overhead light - THE OVERHEAD LIGHT! - turns on, blinding me. No gay man in their right mind ever wants overhead lighting on. It’s like lights going up in a club at closing time. “Off!” I command, and he mopes as he does as he’s told. “Can I go sit in the living room then?” he asks. Buddy, that is not why you’re here; get out!

Example Three

Yet another 35-ish arrives with a large shoulder bag. What’s in it is anyone’s guess. Rather than set it down on the floor or even the ottoman in my room, he proceeds to remove delicate breakable, valuable objects I have on “his” bedside table, handing them my way presumably for me to put somewhere safe SO HE CAN PUT HIS FUGLY BAG DOWN ON IT. Get out!

Example Four

Flatmate texts me. A guy who he was thinking of having over (age 35) wants to know if I am home, and do I have anyone over, and if not, do I plan on having anyone over? Flatmate tells him he doesn’t have a clue. “Could you go find out?” NO, BECAUSE IT’S NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS AND IT’S NOT YOURS EITHER! Block! (This actually happens again to my flatmate, with another 35-year old, the next week.)

Example Five

Meanwhile, over at my 62-year old’s friend’s place, his 35-year old flatmate begins compiling a list of the times my friend is too loud. 6:50 am: he is being too loud dishing kibble out to his cat (even though 34-year old gets up at 7:00 am.) 11:00 pm: my friend is just in from a long day working and making himself a late meal - too loudly. On and on the list goes: he cleans too loudly, he doesn’t leave enough room in fridge…. I say to my friend he ought to bring up the time his little brat roommate left his monstrous black dildo on the floor of the loo, but he doesn’t. The complaints continue to build and my mate is now looking for a replacement; Listmaker has given notice. I don’t know about you, but at 35 I wouldn’t have had the gall to tell someone nearly twice my age to pipe down while I was a tenant in their home. But kids these days… apparently he’s now hoarding toilet paper in his room as a… show of defiance? But I digress.

I could go on but I rest my case.

Each story, on its own, is annoying, but together, they paint a picture.

Not of truly terrible people, just people who seem genuinely unaware that they’ve crossed a line.

That’s almost more fascinating to me than if they had done it intentionally; if you’re deliberately rude, at least you know you’re being rude.

If you’re oblivious, like this messy lot, then: WTF has happened?

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The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether we’ve slowly confused being authentic with being entitled.

The culture has spent years encouraging people, especially young people, to be themselves. See Lady Gaga: “Born This Way.”

You doing you is a wonderful thing. But “being yourself” doesn’t mean ignoring the needs of everyone around you. Confidence without consideration isn’t confidence, it’s self-absorption.

Somewhere between “Don’t ever apologize for taking up space” and “Live your truth,” perhaps we forgot one tiny detail:

Sometimes you are standing in someone else’s space.

And that matters.

I’m not bitching about all this because I think manners are quaint. I’m bitching about it because our homes matter. Home is where we recover from work, celebrate, fuck, fall apart, recharge, grieve, grow, laugh, watch The Young & The Restless…etc.

When someone invites you into that space, they’re offering something profoundly personal. They’re saying, I trust you here.

That trust deserves respect.

Not because the furniture is expensive, or the floors are spotless. But because home is one of the last places on Earth where we’re supposed to feel completely safe.

Maybe that’s why bad behaviour in someone else’s home feels so jarring. It’s not just someone forgetting to say thank you. It’s someone forgetting they’re walking through another person’s sanctuary, their oasis; it’s primal.

And perhaps that’s the lesson worth remembering.

Not just for 35-year-olds, for all of us.

Because customers expect accommodation, whereas guests offer gratitude.

If we could all remember that one simple distinction, I suspect my friends and I would have a lot fewer horror stories to tell.

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PS: Congrats to Richard S and Jacques C who are on their way to Casino Rama tonight to catch the hilarity that is Atsuko Okatsuka! Thanks for reading my Substack, gentlemen, and thank you to everyone who entered our giveaway. xS

Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

Hear Here :: What have you said YES to this summer? From my list: making sure I hit the Toronto Islands at least once a month through September; my July date is just a few days away. And I have always wanted to try cupping; if anyone knows a good place to do so, let me know. Though perhaps I’ll try it after I’m shirtless at the beach. I wouldn’t want to spook sun lovers with a back covered in circular bruises… or would I?

This #SummerOfYes episode: Noted architect, interior designer and 3-time Oprah Winfrey Show guest Dee Dee Eustace joins me to share the story of the time she said yes to moving to New York City for a year - and the wonder that resulted from that bold move.

The astonishing Bif Naked has said yes throughout her life, from taking the journey to becoming a global musical star, to surviving cancer. Bif’s in studio with me this episode to talk about the power of yes in her life.

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And the incredible mind-reader Mysterion, who’s gift has been witnessed globally through shows like America’s Got Talent, joins me too. He shares the story of how saying yes to a gig many would have turned down landed him a lucrative follow up gig - and how being yes-based has allowed him the success he enjoys nows. Mind you, he tells us all this AS he’s reading my mind in real time - it’s something to hear, he really is outstanding.

Enjoy the listen!

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Madonna Has Entered Her Own Multiverse

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men
Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

MADONNA REMEMBERED SHE’S MADONNA :: That’s probably the best headline I’ve read about Madonna’s Confessions II, and I’ve now read countless pieces on the Queen of Pop’s monumental, ecstatic, brilliant new release, in which she is at her very best.

Confessions II isn’t merely a return to the dance floor. It is Madonna walking through the bedrooms, churches, nightclubs, family wounds and ghosts of her own extraordinary life. It is her best record in decades, and so inspiring I not only haven’t stopped listening, but have done a deep dive into the lyrics, and toured the themes, moods, and many references on this dance floor masterpiece. Here we go:

The first thing Madonna does on Confessions II is disappear.

On the cover, she sits above a stack of speakers, her body partially obscured beneath a vast sheet of translucent pink-purple fabric. It looks like a veil, a shroud, a curtain and a cocoon. Madonna is concealed but hardly absent. Her shape remains unmistakable.

Most intriguingly, the fabric appears to form a triangle around her.

That immediately invites comparison to the pink triangle: once forced upon gay men in Nazi concentration camps and later reclaimed by the queer community—most famously by ACT UP—as a symbol of resistance, survival and collective fury.

Madonna has not publicly confirmed that interpretation, so it should remain an interpretation rather than a declared fact. But Madonna understands symbolism. She understands what happens when you combine Catholic imagery, sexuality, concealment, death, resurrection, queer history and the colour pink.

She appears simultaneously like the Virgin Mary, a nightclub apparition, a body awaiting burial and a queer icon being reborn beneath the banner of the people who first understood her.

The message of the cover may be: You think you know Madonna because you recognize her outline. But you still cannot entirely see her.

That is also the artistic intention of Confessions II.

Not simply a sequel to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, it is a sequel to Madonna herself.

The album grew partly out of her stalled attempt to dramatize her life onscreen. (Fun fact: to cut costs, Madonna offered to shoot her biopic in… Serbia. Universal declined the offer, expressing doubts she would stay in a country with high-risk regions and a biting, bleak winter.)

After developing a movie and then a possible television series that is now halted, Madonna found herself in that dangerous place all creatives face at some point: waiting for someone else to give her permission to create.

She turned instead to Stuart Price, the producer who helped build the original Confessions. Madonna told Interview she contacted him because “the world is in a very dark place and people need to dance.” She proposed returning to the world of what she called “inspirational dance music.”

But she was carrying darker material into the studio this time. Her brother Christopher Ciccone was gravely ill. Her stepmother Joan, with whom Madonna said she had endured a traumatic relationship, had recently died.

“It’s hard for me to write a song about nothing,” Madonna said. “I have to tell a story.”

And so she did.

She described beginning the album by writing through family trauma before asking how she and Price could move out of that darkness. Her answer was the place that had saved her before: the nightclub. Madonna described the dance floor as a community where outsiders can belong without having to explain themselves.

The first Confessions was famously designed as one continuous DJ mix. Confessions II again refuses to stop between songs, but the transitions now serve a deeper purpose. Madonna is not simply keeping the party going. She is travelling through time.

The album moves through Chicago acid house, Detroit techno, disco, French touch, synth-pop, trip-hop, UK garage and shadowy ’90s atmospherics. At different moments it resembles the exhilaration of the original Confessions, the sexual darkness of Erotica, the nocturnal intimacy of Bedtime Stories and the spiritual electricity of Ray of Light.

The first portion is the nightclub as escape, possibility and communal salvation. The middle begins opening doors into Madonna’s history.

The last stretch is the nightclub after the emotional defences have come down and everything waiting beneath them - grief, family, motherhood, mortality - starts demanding attention. Here’s where we enter Eroitca territory.

Beginning around “Love Without Words” and continuing through “Bizarre,” “School” and “My Sins Are My Savior,” the record becomes more bodily, whispered, dangerous and psychologically murky. The rhythms grow heavier. Madonna’s voice often drops lower. Desire becomes tangled with power, secrecy, shame and control.

Then the album slows and darkens further. By the final songs, we are no longer merely hearing Madonna make a dance record. We are hearing her conduct a reckoning while the bass continues beneath her.

Every song here is a work of art. Work of art.

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Madonna’s Confessions, Track by Track

1. “I Feel So Free”

Madonna begins by talking about anonymity, hiding, inventing identities and becoming whoever she wants to be. The spoken passage functions as the album’s thesis: freedom may come not from being recognized, but from dissolving into a crowd.

The song’s acid-house pulse draws directly from Lil Louis’s “French Kiss,” while its atmosphere also evokes “Future Lovers” and the Giorgio Moroder–Donna Summer school of erotic electronic repetition.

For a woman who has spent more than four decades being watched, photographed and publicly dissected, the dance floor offers something almost impossible: the ability to become just another body in motion. Apple Music’s album notes frame the song around this tension between being seen and becoming invisible within a crowd.

2. “Good for the Soul”

The dance floor becomes medicine.

Madonna presents music, movement, fresh air and release as necessities rather than indulgences. This is the album’s clearest expression of dancing as emotional survival: when life becomes too heavy, the body may know how to move before the mind knows how to heal.

It connects naturally to “Nothing Fails,” “Like a Prayer,” “Sky Fits Heaven” and “Ray of Light”—songs in which pleasure, transcendence and spirituality occupy the same room.

The nightclub is not the opposite of church here.

It is church. Let us pray.

3. “One Step Away”

Madonna challenges the idea that dance music is shallow by placing personal transformation inside a hypnotic deep-house track.

The song is about being close to release, revelation or change, while questioning what motivates us: Are we acting for ourselves, for approval, for love or for an audience?

Its restrained piano recalls the warm, soulful minimalism of classic Chicago deep house, giving the song an emotional intimacy that separates it from more bombastic dance music.

The title also belongs to Madonna’s long history of threshold songs: “Jump,” “Nothing Really Matters” and “Let It Will Be” all ask something I think is so important, a question Madonna has inspired me to ask in my own life: what happens when we stop resisting the next version of ourselves?

4. “Bring Your Love,” feat Sabrina Carpenter

This is a playful but demanding invitation: arrive honestly, arrive fully and do not bring half-hearted affection into the room. Blam!

Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter trade energy across generations, but the song is less about Madonna seeking approval from a younger pop star than it is about two women interrogating performance, desire and the reasons we present ourselves to the world.

The track interpolates Inner City’s “Good Life,” linking it to late-’80s Detroit dance music and to an enduring club fantasy: a better life made briefly imaginable through rhythm.

Madonna has always asked lovers and audiences to meet her intensity. “Open Your Heart,” “Express Yourself” and “Give It 2 Me” all hover behind the song’s central demand.

Bring your love. But bring the real thing. My new Grindr headline.

5. “Danceteria”

This was the first song on Confessions II that I loved instantly. The album’s first major autobiographical explosion takes us back to New York before Madonna was Madonna.

She recalls arriving at Danceteria with a demo of “Everybody,” pursuing DJ Mark Kamins and finding community among figures who would become part of both her mythology and downtown cultural history: Debi Mazar, Martin Burgoyne, Maripol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others.

Madonna has now told the story herself in extraordinary detail. She described being broke, housing-surfing, dressed mostly in dancer’s clothes and determined to convince Kamins to play her cassette. When he finally worked it into his set and the crowd kept dancing, a future of unforeseeable magnitude that would soon see her crowned Queen of Pop began.

The wonderful roll call recalls “Vogue,” but with a crucial difference. “Vogue” summoned the gods and goddesses of old Hollywood. “Danceteria” summons Madonna’s own ghosts.

The song also interpolates Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” placing her early story inside the broader mythology of downtown New York outsiders.

This is not nostalgia as embalming fluid. It is Madonna returning to the room where she first became possible.

And “Puerto Rican boys they drive me crazy.” Concur!

6. “Read My Lips,” featuring Feid

The album’s language becomes explicitly physical.

Madonna treats the body as a form of communication that can operate before, beneath or beyond speech. The mouth becomes both messenger and invitation, while Feid adds Latin-pop and reggaeton textures without entirely breaking the record’s after-hours spell.

The song belongs to Madonna’s long belief that sexuality is a language. “Justify My Love,” “Where Life Begins,” “Erotica” and “Skin” all explored bodies saying what respectable conversation refuses to say.

It is flirtation, but it is also a statement: sometimes the truth is not spoken. It is performed.

7. “Everything”

This is one of the album’s sharpest observations about modern isolation. A global loneliness epidemic is in full effect, we are addicted to our devices, and she isn’t having it: “I don’t fuck with it!”

Madonna looks at a world in which everything has become crystallized and “no one wants to go outside. It’s not ok it blows my mind.” The image suggests life made fixed, polished and visible through screens, but no longer fully lived. The world can be observed, archived and displayed without anyone actually entering it.

Her response is not gentle concern. It is disgust.

The song rejects a culture of staying inside, remaining emotionally protected and experiencing existence at a digital remove. Madonna has spent her career insisting on bodies meeting bodies—on streets, dance floors, stages, churches and beds. To her, isolation is not merely loneliness. It is a refusal of life.

That makes “Everything” an important companion to “I Feel So Free.” The album begins with safety in numbers; here Madonna diagnoses what happens when there are no numbers because everyone has stayed home.

8. “Love Sensation”

This is joy without apology.

Madonna has described the song simply as “just joy,” and that is precisely its function: love experienced less as a relationship than as physical energy, electronic voltage and emotional restoration.

Its shimmering house and disco production has been compared to Daft Punk and Kylie Minogue (sidebar: I was really hoping for a Madonna / Kylie duet surprise on this album. Oh well.) The song serves as the brightest point before the record begins moving into stranger and more psychologically complicated territory.

Love is not being analyzed here. It is passing through the body like electricity.

After “Love Sensation,” the atmosphere alters.

The first eight tracks are largely concerned with escape, release, community, memory, desire and the healing mythology of the club. The next group becomes more private and ambiguous.

This is where Confessions II begins to smell like leather, incense, sweat and Erotica. And perhaps a hint of poppers.

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9. “Love Without Words”

The “club of love,” as Madonna described it, is a place where people connect without speech and enter something like a fever dream or out-of-body experience. “Love Without Words” turns that idea into music.

The song is an ode to communication through rhythm and physical presence. It is about transcendence, but it also contains something darker: wordless connection can mean spiritual unity, erotic surrender or the inability to say what must be said.

An acid-house line erupts inside the production, deepening the sense that the club itself has become a consciousness into which Madonna is trying to disappear.

There are shades of “Waiting,” “Secret,” “Forbidden Love” and “Justify My Love,” songs in which silence can be seductive but also punishing.

10. “Bizarre,” featuring Martin Garrix

“Bizarre” looks back on a powerful, volatile relationship with a Hollywood man whose physical description, emotional insecurity and connection to a Shelby Cobra (that’s a car, I have learned. I truly thought at first she was singing about a type of snake, and that confusion is what prompted this deep dive in the first place) have caused widespread speculation that the subject is Sean Penn.

Madonna reportedly gave a Shelby Cobra to Penn during her marriage, and the song refers to a movie star, deep blue eyes, speed, intensity and a man threatened by the woman beside him. Madonna never names Penn, so it remains a compelling interpretation rather than a confirmed identification.

The song is about desire that remains potent even after a relationship has become unworkable. Attraction, resentment, regret and erotic memory keep circling each other. Musically it is glamorous danger: the Madonna world where obsession and emotional violence share a cigarette outside the club.

11. “School”

“School” is darker, stranger and more sexual. I didn’t dig it at first, but an FB of mine said it was his fave song and so I paid more attention and now je love.

Madonna challenges someone to teach her something she does not already know, which can be heard as arrogance, flirtation or an invitation to erotic instruction. I hear arrogance, but then again she is a fellow Leo, so that explains that. The track’s hissing techno textures and shimmering percussion have drawn comparisons to both Erotica and Bedtime Stories.

After a lifetime of experience, fame and reinvention, what could possibly still surprise Madonna?

The title turns intimacy into education. It also plays with the imbalance between teacher and pupil, dominance and surrender, expertise and curiosity.

It is one of the album’s most teasing songs, but beneath the teasing sits a serious question: Can someone who has seen everything still be transformed?

12. “Fragile”

This is the album’s emotional hinge.

“Fragile” was inspired by Madonna’s relationship with her brother Christopher, who died while she was making the record. Their history included childhood intimacy, artistic collaboration, estrangement, public betrayal, a dishy memoir he wrote about her (he came on my show to discuss when his book first came out, making facelift allegations during our chat) and eventual reconciliation.

Madonna has said she wrote the song after speaking with Christopher and described the experience as cathartic—almost an exorcism.

The song does not turn their relationship into a sentimental family movie. Its power comes from allowing love and injury to coexist. Grief does not stop the dance. It changes its rhythm.

“Fragile” is about accepting that people can wound us deeply and remain precious to us. Forgiveness does not erase the break. It acknowledges that we were breakable all along.

The final four songs are the album’s deepest descent: sin, family betrayal, motherhood, memory and mortality.

This is the after-hours suite, when the room has emptied enough for Madonna to hear herself.

13. “My Sins Are My Savior,” featuring Stromae

The title could summarize Madonna’s career.

The things for which she has been condemned—sexual expression, ambition, blasphemy, queer solidarity, disobedience and refusal—became the very things that liberated her and millions of people who followed.

The song contains one of the album’s clearest musical nods to the Erotica era, while its religious contradiction places it in conversation with “Like a Prayer,” “Human Nature,” “Devil Pray” and “Isaac.”

It also draws from Army of Lovers’ “My Army of Lovers,” adding another layer of theatrical, queer European pop history.

Stromae is an inspired presence because his own music frequently turns shame, family damage and psychological fracture into elegant dance-pop.

The song’s theology is pure Madonna: perhaps redemption does not arrive after the so-called sin.

Perhaps the sin is what saved you. I get that.

14. “Betrayal”

Over murky trip-hop production Madonna confronts unresolved rage toward her late stepmother, Joan Ciccone.

Joan entered the Ciccone household after the death of Madonna’s mother, and Madonna has described their relationship as traumatic. The song appears to address the agony of replacement: the child’s conviction that no new woman could occupy the place of the mother she lost.

But family betrayal is rarely contained within a single relationship. The anger may also encompass her father, the household itself and the emotional system in which grief was never properly named.

Musically, this is more Bedtime Stories than Confessions: breakbeats, suspicion and emotional claustrophobia.

Madonna does not sound healed.

She sounds controlled.

Sometimes control is what rage wears when it wants to remain elegant. More Leo behaviour.

15. “The Test,” featuring Lola Leon

Madonna’s daughter Lola joins her for one of the album’s most exposed moments.

Madonna has said Lola approached her about writing together as a way to heal their relationship. She called the collaboration an important, healing moment that helped convince her the album needed to exist.

The song examines how Madonna’s fame affected her child and what it meant to raise a daughter inside the machinery of celebrity.

It also directly recalls “Little Star,” the Ray of Light lullaby Madonna wrote for Lola. Critics have therefore heard “The Test” as the older, more complicated sequel: the mother who once sang devotion to an infant now speaks to the adult that infant became.

Madonna has spent her career writing about the absence of her own mother. Here she stands on the other side of the mirror, confronting what it has meant to be someone else’s mother while still carrying an abandoned child within herself.

The song does not offer motherhood as sainthood.

It offers it as consequence, inheritance, misunderstanding and attempted repair. It’s a a pretty yet sophisticated track that long-time fans and followers of Madonna and her life will appreciate and adore.

16. “L.E.S. Girl”

Confessions II closes not as it began, with the global icon, the provocateur or the woman seated atop the speakers.

It closes at the real beginning of Madonna, the Lower East Side girl.

Madonna remembers the life surrounding the clubs: unstable housing, little money, worn clothes, artists, musicians, street corners and people who once seemed permanent but have disappeared.

“Danceteria” remembers the moment she forced her way into history. “L.E.S. Girl” remembers the vulnerability underneath the force.

The production contains an echo of Ray of Light, but its emotional texture is quieter and more bruised. Pitchfork described it as unusually tender for Madonna, a song haunted by the friends, relatives, collaborators and lovers who died too soon.

The title strips away the accumulated identity: not Queen of Pop, Material Girl, Madame X or cultural institution.

Just a Lower East Side girl who wanted more.

The album began with Madonna trying to become anonymous in a crowd. It ends with her identifying the earliest version of herself beneath every costume she has worn.

And, perhaps, she is asking whether that girl would recognize the woman beneath the veil.

The genius of Confessions II is that it understands the meaning of a dance floor changes as the night progresses.

At 11 p.m., it is possibility.

At 1 a.m., it is sex.

At 3 a.m., it is freedom.

At 5 a.m., it is truth.

The record begins with Madonna escaping her public identity and ends with her returning to the first identity she created for herself: the broke, ambitious New York artist.

Its first section is euphoric and expansive. Its middle becomes historical, physical and increasingly strange. Its third quarter - very much beneath the atmospheric shadow of Erotica - turns sexual, secretive and psychologically complicated. Its final stretch moves through grief, family trauma and motherhood before depositing Madonna back on the streets of downtown New York.

That progression reflects what Madonna has said about the record’s creation. She began by writing about darkness, illness and family pain. Then she and Stuart Price asked how one escapes that darkness.

The answer was dancing.

Not because dancing makes pain disappear, but because it allows the body to carry what the mind cannot solve.

Madonna has always understood that dancing is not the opposite of seriousness.

Sometimes it is how serious people survive.

That is what makes Confessions II different from a simple sequel, nostalgia exercise or victory lap. It does not recreate 2005. It uses the architecture of Confessions on a Dance Floor to examine everything that happened before and after it.

The abandoned biopic has not entirely disappeared either. Its material has simply changed form. Instead of presenting her life in a conventional cradle-to-icon narrative, Madonna has turned memory into a nightclub mix: fragments arrive, bodies pass, doors open, faces vanish and the music refuses to stop.

The woman on the cover is veiled, but not erased. She is enclosed by a triangle that may evoke persecution, queer resistance, Catholic holiness, feminine power, death or rebirth.

Probably all of them.

Because with Madonna, the true confession is never that she is only one thing.

The confession is that she has always been… everything.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

AI On Your Face

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

#SUMMEROFYES :: One of the funniest comedians on the planet is coming to Casino Rama Resort, and I’m sending two lucky subscribers to the show.

There are funny people, and then there are people who make you laugh because their brains simply work differently.

Atsuko Okatsuka is one of the latter.

If you’ve never seen her before, prepare yourself. She has an uncanny ability to take the smallest, most ordinary moments in life and turn them into comedy gold. Her stories are quirky, joyful, delightfully awkward, and completely unpredictable. Just when you think you know where she’s going, she takes a left turn that leaves you laughing out loud.

It’s no wonder she’s become one of the hottest names in comedy.

On Saturday, July 25, Atsuko brings her Big Bowl Tour to Casino Rama Resort, and I can’t think of a better excuse to plan a summer night out.

In fact, why not make a weekend of it?

Casino Rama Resort is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and there’s never been a better time to visit. The hotel has been beautifully renovated with gorgeous new guest rooms, there’s a brand-new spa to help you unwind, three new restaurants to tempt your taste buds, and an updated gaming floor that gives the entire resort a fresh new energy.

Whether you’re there for the comedy, the food, the gaming, a little pampering—or all of the above—it makes for a pretty fantastic getaway that’s only a short drive from the city.

Now for the fun part...

I’m giving away TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS to see Atsuko live.

Entering couldn’t be easier.

Simply reply to this newsletter with:

• Your name
• Your age
• Your daytime phone number
• And the words: “I wanna go!”

That’s it.

I’ll randomly draw two winners next Friday and let them know they’ve scored a pair of tickets for what promises to be one of the funniest nights of the summer.

Good luck!

And if you don’t win, don’t let that stop you. Grab some friends, book a room, enjoy everything Casino Rama Resort has to offer, and spend an evening laughing until your cheeks hurt. Frankly, given everything happening in the world these days, I can’t think of a better investment. Book your tickets here.

See you in my inbox.

Reply now with your name, age, daytime phone number, and “I wanna go!”

Let’s laugh. It’s a legit summer plan.

Good luck!

x Shaun

From inspiring journeys and unexpected opportunities to personal breakthroughs and unforgettable adventures, you’ll hear stories from people who discovered the extraordinary power of one simple word: yes.

This episode:

Michael Muhney is best known from TV’s Veronica Mars, and as Adam Newman on The Young & The Restless. He shares two big yeses: Saying yes to reinventing himself after being fired from Y&R due to his off-camera feud with his TV father, Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) and his big yes to ending the feud with Braeden this spring. (Sidebar: Now that Muhney and Braden have kissed and made up, and given that a new head writer will take over Y&R storytelling soon, this is an excellent opportunity to somehow write Muhney back onto the canvas. I know I’m not the only one who misses seeing his excellent talent on the daytime soap.)

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Speaking of firings, when I was fired eons ago from the afternoon drive on PROUD FM, it was Mike Chalut who took over the reigns. This episode is the first time we’ve ever been on-air together, an interview 20 years in the making. We talked about the hot glue gun mess of that situation, and then zero in on the yes Chalut said to taking on his latest gig as Executive Director of legendary nighclub, the El Mocambo. It’s been a rollercoaster ride for Chalut, and it’s saying yes all the way that has created the success taking place, and the love an joy Chalut feels along the way as the ride unfolds.

We also chat with Sonja Scharf, who has become a DJ - in her sixties, and to Janine Smalls, who said yes to her dream of creating a vegan restaurant.

What will YOU say yes to this summer?

Enjoy the listen.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

I SPY WITH MY AI :: Remember when we all laughed at Google Glass?

Giggling at Goole happened in 2013. Google promised the future: a pair of glasses that could record video, answer questions, take photos, and bring the internet into your field of vision.

They were a punchline. People wearing them were mocked, restaurants banned them, and a new insult entered our vocabulary: Glasshole.

It wasn’t that the technology was terrible. The timing was.

Simply put, society wasn’t ready to accept the idea that the person standing across from you might be recording every word you said.

Fast-forward a little more than a decade to today, and it seems tech and society are more in alignment, especially given how artificial intelligence has exploded into our everyday lives.

And so now, creepy Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta—the company formerly known as Facebook—is taking a shot at it, doing something Google never quite figured out: They’re making their glasses… desirable.

Gone is the image of an awkward geeky tech enthusiast wearing an expensive science project on their face. Meta has partnered with eyewear behemoth EssilorLuxottica, and invested heavily in making these glasses something people actually want to wear.

They are fashion, darling.

Meta has now got a fashion division and fashion is front and centre as promo unfolds for Meta glasses. Celebrity influence is also built into the launch. Kylie Jenner is one of the major faces “co-designing” and promoting them. You can watch one of her ads here.

As you can see, the message isn’t “Look at this incredible technology.” It’s: “Look how great you look wearing it.”

And that’s exactly why I think this moment is scary as fuck.

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Because this isn’t really a story about glasses. It’s a story about what happens when artificial intelligence moves off our desks, out of our pockets, and onto our faces.

These new glasses - and this is just a short list of their capabilities - can take photos and high-quality video, answer questions about whatever you’re looking at, translate conversations in real time, give directions, play music, send messages, manage your calendar, identify objects, summarize information, and provide an AI assistant, available with nothing more than a spoken question.

Imagine walking through Berlin and instantly translating every street sign or menu. Imagine someone who is vision impaired hearing descriptions of the world around them. Imagine fixing your sink while an AI talks you through each step without ever picking up your phone.

There are genuinely exciting possibilities here. For accessibility alone, this technology could be life-changing.

But, as we have by now learned the very hard way, every technological leap asks us to give something up in exchange.

So what are we giving up this time?

Privacy seems like the obvious first answer.

We’ve already become accustomed to security cameras, Ring doorbells, and smartphones pointed in our direction. CCTV cameras abound. But smart glasses feel fundamentally different because the recording device disappears.

If someone pulls out a phone, you know you’re being filmed.

If they’re wearing glasses, you may never know. There will be a recording light, sure, but that can be turned off by taking the glasses to one of those side shops who do sneaking things already, like unlock your phone for you.

That’s a profound shift in the social contract.

We’ve always assumed that when we sit down with another person, we’re simply having a conversation. Increasingly, that conversation could include a silent third participant: artificial intelligence.

The AI isn’t just hearing what you’re saying. It’s seeing what you see. Where your eyes linger, what catches your attention, who you met, where you went, what products interested you, and perhaps even how your facial expressions changed throughout the day, your emotional reaction to things.

That’s not just data.

That’s your whole damn life.

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And once that information exists, history tells us someone will quickly find a way to monetize it, or should I say… you.

Then there’s something even more subtle: What happens when we stop relying on ourselves?

Today, I might struggle to remember someone’s name after meeting them once. Tomorrow, my glasses may quietly whisper it into my ear, along with where they work.

Today, I wonder about a flower I pass on my morning walk. Tomorrow, AI identifies it a lupine before I’ve even finished asking the question.

Helpful? Absolutely. Je love.

But what happens when curiosity, memory, navigation, and even social skills and conversation become things we outsource? Every generation has worried that new technology would make us less capable. Calculators, GPS, smartphones - they’ve all muted the skills we used to rely on.

Smart glasses may represent the biggest leap yet because they don’t simply assist our thinking. They constantly accompany it.

There’s also the cultural question.

Phones still require intention. You decide to pull one out.

Smart glasses don’t.

They’re simply...there.

Recording can become effortless. Looking something up becomes effortless. Sharing becomes effortless.

When everything is frictionless, everything becomes possible, including things we may later wish weren’t.

Maybe the biggest question isn’t whether these glasses will succeed, but whether we’ll even notice the moment they become normal. Because that’s how real technological revolutions happen. Not with a bang, but with a shrug.

One day, someone at the next table is wearing AI glasses.

A week later, three people are.

A year later, everyone is.

And suddenly, we’re living in a world where every interaction carries the possibility of being recorded, analyzed, remembered, and interpreted by a machine.

Google tried to sell us technology - Meta is trying to sell us lifestyle. That difference may prove to be worth billions, and it may quietly redefine what it means to be human.

I’m not convinced we’ve thought nearly enough about that. Because once AI moves onto our faces, it may never come off again.

Which would really make us all glassholes.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

The Year Pride Made Me Cry

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

BEEN THERE DONE THAT :: I’ve been fortunate enough to have done Pride every way imaginable. I’ve been to many different Prides, I’ve had floats go down Yonge St during Toronto’s Pride Parade. I’ve danced at too many circuit parties to count. I’ve hosted stages. I’ve been to galas. I’ve worked the crowds. I’ve closed the bars. I’ve interviewed icons. I’ve done my show live from the festival. I’ve celebrated until sunrise and recovered well into the following week. And I’ve watched my city’s festival grow from a grassroots gathering to the behemoth it is today.

For decades, Pride wasn’t just something I attended—it was part of who I was.

At 57, though, something has shifted.

I still love Pride. I still believe in everything it stands for. But these days I don’t feel the need to do All The Things. Maybe that’s age. Maybe it’s wisdom. Probably it’s simply knowing I no longer have to prove my place in my own community.

Living in the heart of Toronto’s Pride festival doesn’t exactly encourage a quiet weekend, either. The streets fill with hundreds of thousands of people. Music from multiple surrounding locations pounds into the early hours. Sidewalks disappear beneath glitter, laughter, costumes, booths, and endless movement. It’s joyful. It’s chaotic. It’s exhausting. And hard to walk your dog in it!

This year, if I’m honest, Pride mostly felt like something… to get through.

Then Sunday happened.

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My friend Terry and I wandered over to Yonge Street, barely half a block from my front door, to catch a bit of the parade. I wasn’t expecting much. I’d seen countless Pride parades over the years. I figured we’d watch for a while, wave at a few floats, then head home.

Instead, something completely unexpected happened.

I started crying.

Not the polite kind of tearing up, the ugly cry. Thank Christ I was wearing big sunglasses.

As Terry chatted away beside me, I found myself trying to pull it together, straighten out my face, hoping my tears wouldn’t turn into full-on sobs.

But the more I stood in it all, the harder it became.

There were people cheering simply because other people existed. Colourful floats from organizations proudly supporting the LGBTQ+ community rolled past. Joyful music blasted through the speakers. Barely clothed buff boys laughed as they sprayed strangers with water guns. Couples held hands, and friends danced in the street.

The afternoon sun made everything seem to glow just a little brighter. It was one of those perfect Toronto summer days.

And suddenly, all at once, it hit me.

This. This is us. Not perfect or polished. Certainly not quiet. But gloriously, unapologetically us.

I wasn’t crying because I was sad, nor was I wasn’t crying because I was nostalgic. I was crying because I was overwhelmed by beauty. By belonging and by community.

Somewhere between watching rainbow flags wave against a blue sky and hearing thousands of strangers cheer for one another, every ounce of love I’ve ever had for Pride came rushing back at once.

And suddenly, it didn’t matter that I’ve “been there, done that.”

It didn’t matter that my neighbourhood had looked like someone attacked it with a hot glue gun and several million pieces of glitter. It didn’t matter that I’d spent most of the weekend wishing the streets would quiet down.

Standing there, I remembered exactly why Pride exists.

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Not for the parties, not for the corporate floats, not even for the spectacle.

Pride exists because there was a time when none of this was possible. There was a time when we couldn’t gather like this in broad daylight. There was a time when joy itself was an act of resistance.

And while the world has changed in remarkable ways, we also know progress isn’t permanent. Rights can be challenged, acceptance can shrink. Fear can return. Here in Canada we are so blessed compared to dozens of countries around the world, including the one just below us.

Which makes these moments matter even more.

Sometimes we don’t realize how deeply something still lives inside us until it catches us completely off guard.

That’s what happened to me. I thought I had outgrown the emotional pull of Pride. Turns out, Pride hadn’t outgrown me.

Sometimes our hearts quietly wait for the exact right moment to remind us who we are. Mine chose a sunny afternoon on Yonge Street, with Terry, surrounded by my community, while strangers danced, laughed, and thousands of people celebrated the simple, extraordinary act of being exactly who they are, and loving who they wish to love.

I went to watch a parade. Instead, I remembered why I fell in love with Pride in the first place.

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Pride may only come once a year, but The Shaun Proulx Show is loud and proud 365 days of the year. Our annual Pride series was a joy to host once again. If you missed the first episode you can catch it here, and below are our remaining three Pride Month shows.

This episode: Queer artists James Fowler and Pearl Van Geest, director Mark Kenneth Woods, and conversion therapy survivor Matt Ashcroft.

This episode: Queer authors Darren Stehle, Kathy Anderson, Jeff Copeland, and activist Titan Capri.

This episode: HIV activist James Watson, Christian singer-songwriter Grace Marr, Pakistani activist Bali Ali, who fled her homeland to Canada after 30 men broke into her safe house while she slept and shot and stabbed her, and sexuality teacher Bridgett Khoury.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

The Future I Couldn’t See

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

I FEEL SEEN :: Last week, in The Last Closet in Entertainment?, I wrote about why some people still feel the need to hide who they are.

This week, I’ve been thinking about the opposite: visibility.

Not the corporate kind, rainbow logos and Pride merchandise, but actual visibility.

Being seen.

When I first arrived in Toronto, Pride wasn’t something my friends and I attended. We were too afraid. Sure, we went to gay bars and danced every weekend, but that was our maximum act of visible, out homosexuality.

There were lots of fellow gay men at bars, bars felt contained, anonymous enough, and they felt safe.

Pride? Pride, out in the glaring sunshine on a Sunday afternoon with who knows who there to see you? Pride was different.

Pride was public, it was photographers, media, neighbours, co-workers.

Pride was proof.

I remember one Pride weekend in particular, possibly my first late spring in the city. Rather than go downtown, I went to… brace yourself … a hardware store.

I bought paint for my bedroom. I spent the afternoon inside, painting instead of partying.

A curious part of me wanted to go. Another part of me was deeply terrified.

At the time, I worked in finance, an industry where homophobia wasn’t unusual. My friend Brian worked in insurance. We talked about Pride that year and he summed up our thinking perfectly:

“The last thing I need is to be seen in a crowd photo on the front page of the Toronto Sun.”

For younger readers, that may sound dramatic. It wasn’t.

Visibility carried a domino effect of consequences.

A photograph would raise questions, which could become rumours, which could become professional obstacles.

Whether those fears were justified almost didn’t matter. We believed they were. The fear therefore was real.

So we stayed away.

Today, as another Pride Month unfolds, that young man and those feelings of fear feel almost impossible for me to imagine.

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I’ve hosted Pride stages. I’ve watched the parade from the curb; I’ve ridden down the parade path on floats. I’ve gone to all circuit parties, community barbecues, fundraising events, galas, marches, concerts, runs, and celebrations.

If there is a way to experience Pride, I’ve done it.

These days, I will wander into the festivities, but I don’t stay very long. Crowds, which once thrilled me, now make me want to be airlifted and placed down on my private balcony which overlooks the madness, with a nice distance between it and me.

Age has a funny way of editing our priorities and preferences.

But something else has changed too: I no longer need Pride for the reason I once did.

When I was younger, visibility was about permission. Every openly gay person I saw gave me a little more courage to imagine my own future. Every person living honestly challenged the lie that happiness required secrecy.

Visibility wasn’t symbolic, it was practical. It answered questions I didn’t yet know how to ask:

Could I have a career?

Could I have friends?

Could I have love?

Could I have a life that wasn’t built around hiding?

The people who came before me answered those questions simply by existing.

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That’s why I sometimes struggle when people ask whether Pride is still necessary. I understand the question, we’ve made extraordinary progress.

But I also remember what it felt like to stand outside the party looking in. I remember what it felt like to believe that being seen might cost me something.

Visibility matters because somewhere there is always someone who hasn’t arrived yet.

Someone who is still calculating the risks, who is still wondering whether life gets better, who still believes they are alone.

For them, seeing an openly queer musician, politician, athlete, teacher, neighbour, parent, executive, radio host, or friend can change everything.

Not because visibility solves every problem, but because visibility expands possibility.

You cannot imagine yourself in a future you’ve never seen.

Pride gave me that future. Not all at once. Not with a parade, a float, a party - but with people. People who were visible long before it was easy, who risked being seen.

People who helped create a world where a young gay man could eventually stop painting his bedroom to avoid Pride - and start living his proud life instead.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

As someone who has lived much of my life in the LGBTQ+ community, I know Pride is about more than parades and rainbows. It’s about resilience. It’s about visibility. It’s about the people who fought for rights many of us now enjoy — and those who continue that work today. Pride traces its roots to the struggle for LGBTQ+ equality and remains a powerful celebration of identity, community, and belonging.

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Throughout June, we’ll share stories from people whose lives, experiences, and voices remind us that our differences are not something to fear — they’re something to celebrate.

This is our Pride Month series on The Shaun Proulx Show. Thanks for being part of it.

Later in the show we’re going to tell you how you can celebrate Pride through film, and before that we’re going welcome two members of the iconic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charitable street performance movement that uses drag along with religious imagery (they all dress as nuns) to raise money, education, erase hate, all while satirizing issues of gender, sex and morality. They expiate stigmatic guilt and let people know they are loved. They are featured in a new doc called Hunky Jesus and they along with the film’s director are joining us this episode.

Related ::

But up first, Uncloseted Media is a new investigative media organization committed to providing readersyou with objective, nonpartisan, LGBTQ-focused journalism that examines anti-LGBTQ ecosystems and elevates the voices of everyday heroes.

The publication was founded in 2024 by journalist/producer Spencer Macnaughton, who has worked at 60 Minutes and The Wall Street Journal and teaches LGBTQ journalism at NYU. Spencer joins us first.

Enjoy the listen.

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ICYMI:

Someone Stop Victoria Beckham

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

And we’ll talk to someone who’s gotta be one of the US Postal Service’s best customers second half of the show - a woman who types over 1,000 thank you notes every year. She’s here to explain why it’s not just an underrated gesture - I love getting a thank you note in the mail - but a really powerful tool that you can easily harness to make your professional and personal life even better.

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We’ll also talk to the author of a new book many men will relate to, one that shows how over time, men work at meeting expectations, solving problems and maintaining composure, while performance slowly replaces expression. A slippery slope. What begins as strength, dependability, resilience and the ability to endure, gradually narrows into something more restrictive. Emotional range diminishes, connection becomes functional, and rest feels unearned. Sounds vaguely toxic and I can’t wait to dig in.

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But up first: non-binary fashion and identity. As if figuring out who you are isn’t messy enough. A new docuseris called In The Closet is now available to view on the NFB YouTube channel, and we have delightful star Ajahnis Charley in studio to kick things off.

Enjoy the listen.

PS: Our annual Pride Month series kicks off this weekend - watch your inbox after that to join in our celebration!

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ICYMI:

Someone Stop Victoria Beckham

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

ROCK ‘N’ POLE :: A report late in May suggested that the decision by Caleb Shomo, of prominent metal band Beartooth, whom I’ve never heard of because … Madonna … to come out as a “proudly gay man” has some corners of the industry very nervous.

The report alleges that Shomo’s announcement “shattered the illusion this stuff always stays hidden,” and that an understanding was in place that “everybody protects everybody.”

What year is it? What continent am I on?

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The idea that there might be gay men in rock music can hardly be breaking news. There are gay people in every profession, every city, every church, every boardroom, every hockey arena, and yes, every backstage dressing room. You’re reading a gay man’s post right now.

What’s remarkable isn’t that queer musicians exist. It’s that some people still - in North American in 2026 (I checked!) - believe they have to hide.

Rock music has always sold a particular fantasy of masculinity. Think Tommy Lee (I do, all the time.) He’s the rebel. The ladies’ man. The outlaw. The guy who parties too much, sleeps with too many people, and never apologizes for any of it. (I want to be the girl on the back of his motorcycle.)

That type performance, played by countless rockstars, has generated billions of dollars for the metal industry.

But a performance can become a prison.

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For decades, the entertainment industry has quietly operated on a system of selective blindness. Publicists knew things. Managers knew things. Journalists knew things. Fans suspected things. Everyone agreed not to talk about certain things.

Not because being gay was scandalous, but because the possibility of being perceived as gay was considered commercially dangerous, which tells us far more about society right now than it does about the people keeping secrets.

We live in a very toxic culture.

It’s Pride Month* and the focus is often on the people who come out. The courage. The celebration. The visibility.

We spend less time talking about the people who don’t. The actor who worries a role will disappear; the athlete who fears the locker room (hello Heated Rivalry!); the exec who wonders if clients will see them differently.

And the rock star who built an entire brand around an image that no longer feels like home.

Coming out isn’t difficult because people are gay. It’s difficult because other people still attach mindbogglingly negative meaning to it.

The real story isn’t whether there are closeted stars in rock music.

The real story is that, after all these years, some of them still believe they have reason to stay that way.

And what a sad, sad shame that is.

Happy Pride, Caleb!

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*June is Pride Month — a time to celebrate the courage, resilience, diversity, and contributions of 2SLGBTQIA+ people, while also honouring the history of a movement born from the fight for dignity, equality, and the freedom to live authentically. Pride is both a celebration and a reminder that the work of building a more inclusive world continues.

Throughout this month, The Shaun Proulx Show will bring you our annual Pride Month Series: conversations with remarkable people from across our communities and beyond — sharing stories of triumph, challenge, love, identity, advocacy, and hope. Some stories will make you think. Some will make you laugh. Some may even change the way you see the world.

Whether you’re part of the community, an ally, or simply curious, you’re welcome. Hear TheSPS on SiriusXM 167 every weekend or subscribe for free to this Substack and get episode straight to your inbox. Happy Pride! 🌈

ICYMI:

Someone Stop Victoria Beckham

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

As the child of an alcoholic father myself, specific details of her story mirrored mine, and I bawled watching this doc; I spoke with Teresa Alfeld, the director of Chasing Hearses after I viewed it.

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And imagine having your most private and painful moment suddenly and unexpectedly captured by the click of a camera. You are not a public figure, a celebrity, you are a member of a family burying your murdered sister.

That’s what happened to my first guest, who writes about the experience in such a beautiful way, and with such evolved perspective on her Substack. Ronit Novak is a Toronto based visual editor, creative strategist, and founder of The Grain, a platform exploring AI, creativity and culture through a podcast, editorial newsletter and live events (which is how we met) and she joins me first.

Enjoy the listen!

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

Someone Stop Victoria Beckham

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

YOUTH DO :: The Beckham Dynasty, led by David Beckham and Victoria Beckham, has reportedly trademarked “Haiku By Harper” — the name, apparently, of a new skincare line from their daughter, Harper Beckham.

She is 14.

Perfect baby skin
Taught to search for imperfections
Profit thanks her well

Parents want the best for their kids, this goes without saying. And from a purely business standpoint, this probably makes perfect sense. Victoria’s beauty and skincare ventures reportedly outperform her fashion line commercially, and beauty brands are the kinds of businesses celebrities can eventually sell for staggering sums, ie: billions. The Beckham machine understands branding better than almost anyone alive (except, obviously, Madonna.)

Which is partly what makes this feel so grim.

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For a family that has slapped Beckham onto virtually everything they touch, it’s interesting they are not doing that here. “Haiku By Harper” sounds… softer. Poetic, obviously. More organic, less dynastic. But make no mistake: this is still Brand Beckham.

Victoria has said Harper has sat in on meetings since she was tiny, absorbing the business from her mother’s lap, laying the groundwork for this devilish endeavour already.

It’s also key that there are reports Harper damaged her skin experimenting with adult skincare products her young skin simply did not need.

That part, unfortunately, speaks to something much larger.

Tweens are now obsessively buying luxury skincare brands like Drunk Elephant, filled with active ingredients intended for aging adult skin - like mine, not theirs. Children with naturally perfect, elastic, glowing skin are being sold products meant to “correct” flaws they do not even possess yet.

Meanwhile, we adults are spending fortunes and injecting things into our faces trying to get back the skin these children already have naturally.

So yes, there is a market for a tween skincare line. An enormous one. Beauty companies are increasingly targeting children, especially girls, under 10. Let that sink in. If I had a child that age, I’d just want to grab them and hide them away from it all.

Honest to Estée Lauder — it’s all so bleak.

Again: their child is 14.

And after the year the Beckhams have had publicly, you would think there might be some reflection about what happens when your family becomes a brand before it becomes a family. Have they learned nothing?

Their reported estrangement from eldest son Brooklyn Beckham has dominated headlines for months.

From his statement: “My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. Brand Beckham comes first. Family love is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up for a family photo-op.”

Fair or unfair, there is already a growing public perception around this family that image management, promotion, and public performance are deeply woven into the emotional fabric of their lives.

And now here comes the daughter. With a skincare line.

What a mad way to raise your child.

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Because Harper is not launching a lemonade stand. She is being positioned inside a ruthless, billion-dollar industry built largely on convincing women and girls that they are perpetually unfinished. That they require improvement. Correction. Maintenance. Optimization.

At 14.

Related Post: Why People Hate Drag Queens

And what makes it especially maddening is that there are countless celebrity children living relatively normal lives. Going to school and staying private, developing identities outside their parents’ fame. But with the Beckham children, there is often a feeling that they are being raised not simply as children, but as extensions of the enterprise itself.

They are content; they are optics. Public-facing assets.

Dave and Vic can explain to the world it’s what Harper wants to do. Maybe she does. I bet she does. But teenagers want lots of things. That is part of being a teenager. It is the job of parents to occasionally say no. Or at least say not yet.

Not every ambition needs to become a monetized brand before graduating school.

Beneath all the polished branding and the inevitable “girl boss” language, what is actually being sold here to very young girls is the idea that even childhood itself now requires a skincare routine.

And maybe the saddest part of all is this:

When your daughter is 14 and already launching products to help other little girls fix themselves, it no longer feels like her choice.

It feels like family business. And there’s nothing beautiful about it.

Childhood in glass jars
Marketed before it blooms
Beauty eats the young

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

What Really Matters

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

Taking Stock :: For years now I have been an MSNow (formerly MSNBC) junkie. Rachel Maddow is my TV boyfriend, and I am in awe of the genius way in which she weaves the news like a tapestry and helps us understand why certain stories matter. I also love that she is an out lesbian who mentions her wife and covers stories of queer significance with frequency. When Maddow moved from five nights to just one a week, I wept openly. Chris Hayes has been a nightly sit-down must-watch, and I putz while Jen Psaki, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Stephanie Ruhle (if I’m still up) opine on the same stories the previous hour just covered. (And yes, I know this is all American news. I do eyeball Canadian politics, especially when Big Daddy Mark Carney is the headline, but I love a soap opera, and U.S. politics just serves up more.)

The month of May has brought a shift though, and I noticed it become concrete when the headlines this week became about Trump’s enormous, history-making heist to the tune of billions, as he sues the government — which he is in charge of — for an unimaginable sum of money because the IRS wasn’t more careful in guarding his tax intel. He is suing himself. Blah blah blah, I won’t go on — it’s a sickening story that turned me inside out. I was over the daily drama.

I turned the TV off. What would once have had me glued — or at least paying close attention with my ears as I folded laundry — was intolerable. I have reached my limit. So much so that I haven’t finished the last two episodes of Maddow. Yes, my dear Rachel.

I took yesterday off to enjoy a four-day weekend. I’m giving my bathroom a makeover, and painted it this gorgeous colour called Outer Space (see pic above.) As I edged, dabbed, and rolled, a podcast playing in the background, my mind and body in the zone, I thought: “This is what really matters.” That I was simply being, working on a project, experiencing pleasure.

While the first coat dried, I called someone who has been on my mind for weeks: my friend Arlene. I caught her in her car, travelling with her beloveds, 10 km from where she spends the summer, and we recalled something I won’t detail here but that had us cackling and howling to the point my ribs were sore. I told her about this weird phenomenon of not being able to cotton to the news right now, and she told me all she wanted to do was get to her summer place and get to gardening. She had artichoke plants in the back of her car; that’s what really mattered.

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I had to take my boy Léo to the vet this week. He’s okay, a real trooper, but the vet team led him to another room to deal with what was ailing him, and my heart both raced and broke hearing the fear in his cries. But soon after, through the frosted-glass window of the room where I was waiting, I saw his silhouette pulling hard toward the door, into the room, and up onto me, licking me. That gorgeous beast loves me.

I am his safe person.

That’s what really matters.

My girlfriend Chrystyna’s sister, Daria, subscribes to this Substack, and wrote me back after my newsletter about being sextorted. Chrystyna was my first friend when I moved to Toronto in my early 20s, but despite the longevity of our friendship, Daria and I have only met a couple of times. I wrote her back and told her I remember holding her now-grown and married son, Andy, at a party, when he was an infant, a recollection that astonished her. Then I reminded her that she, Chrys, and I once went to see Peter Ustinov’s sensational one-man show and, in so doing, was transported back to my 20s, when everything was fresh, exciting, and new. That lovely nostalgia I manifested — the feeling eager anticipation imbuing my third decade alive — is what really matters.

My mum and I texted this week, as we do, and we talked a lot about my late father. He was also a writer, very gifted, and we remembered a photo he took that won an award. He had been visiting a prison for a story, and as he was leaving, a prisoner made his escape; my dad captured an image of the prisoner running for his freedom in that very moment. Remembering my dad, and honouring what a cool thing he accomplished that day, is what really matters.

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For weeks now, I’ve been recording my annual #SummerOfYes series to air on SiriusXM in July and August, and have already been planning my own yeses for Summer 2026: I want to try cupping; I have an art project I’m going to attempt; I’ve promised myself a trip to Toronto Islands — my city’s crown jewel, in my opinion — once a month from June through September. I’m sick of making it over to my happy place just once a summer, if that. These things are what really matter.

I’m not saying world events don’t matter. That policies that affect us don’t matter. That tariffs, Alberta, women’s bodily autonomy, queer hate, racism, corruption, that annoying pimple on a flea’s ass, Pierre Pollievre, all the things that ail us right now, don’t matter. But for some reason — blessedly — this month, what has given me sweet reprieve has been simple abundance, and the turning off of MSNow (for now; and besides, you can’t avoid the news, it’s everywhere) and focusing on myself, my needs, my mental health, and my joy. They are the things I’ve put on the back burner, taken for granted, or forgotten.

They are what really matter.

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Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com

ICYMI:

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

If you missed my video interview with RuPaul’s Drag Race S18 stand-out, black sheep, fan fave Discord Addams, you can hear it this episode.

And I’m not a woman, but I know that every woman I know has been told, “You can have it all.” But what if “having it all” is the very lie keeping high-achieving women exhausted, guilty, and quietly miserable?

That’s the premise of The Success Lie: Reframing Your Reality to Thrive Personally and Professionally, the new book coming this July from Chantell Preston. This episode Chantell and I look at nine lies keeping women stuck.

And here’s something I used to do many moons ago; we all have: I shrank to please others; I took up as little space as I could. So I loved talking to Leslie Lee Sanders, someone else who learned early how to shrink herself to fit the world around her. Staying silent kept the peace and ensured approval, but it also kept her - and me, maybe you? - from fully living.

“I come from being afraid to speak up to needing to speak out, from listening to what society told me I was, to listening to spiritual guidance and intuition,” Sanders says. “From seeing how systems and ‘structure’ can keep us in a box, to the realization that breaking out and being unique is a superpower.”

In Ready to Listen?: A Spiritual Self-Help Memoir, Leslie chronicles her transformation, not just as reflection but as lived experience. If you’ve ever played small - or are playing small today - this is a conversation for you.

Enjoy the listen!

ICYMI:

I Woke Up To Sextortion

Reaching For Peace

Straight People Are Queering Their Relationships

Why Some Straight Men Are Afraid Of Gay Men

Looksmaxing: Straight Men Have Discovered Moisturizer And Are Calling It Sexual Strategy

All My Good Ideas Start With A Leash

Pedophiles? Groomers? Don’t Look At The Queer Community, Look Up

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Thousands Of People (And Why It Matters To You)

The One Thing I Hate About Having A Pet (It Rhymes With Vet)

Manitoba’s Methy Problem

We Fixed Sex. Now We’re Breaking It Again

The Death Of Grindr

Gambling With Our Mental Health

Shaun Proulx hosts The Shaun Proulx Show heard weekends on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. Subscribers can listen to it on this Substack as well. More: ShaunProulx.com