Michael Musto Does Not Like Calvin Klein And/Or Nick Gruber

by Julia Rubin | 10:32 am, January 23rd, 2011

Michael Musto is, in a word, irreverent. You might know the Village Voice columnist as the guy who dressed up in Gaga’s meat dress or coined the term “celebutard.” He also happens to be a huge supporter of gay rights. Musto is gay himself, and he has a big problem with Calvin Klein‘s very public relationship with ex-porn star Nick Gruber.

The Klein-Gruber affair is something we’ve been following for months now, and it culminated in Klein throwing Gruber a 21st birthday bash at Indochine on Friday. While our take back in September was that Klein (who was closeted for most of his adult life) was probably making up for lost time with his porn star boyfriend who is 47 years his junior, Musto has this to say: “Calvin, darling, you’re embarrassing yourself. What’s worse, you’re embarrassing the whole community.”

In a post on the Voice‘s website, he lays into Klein with little restraint. The way Musto describes it, Klein hastily got married to a woman because “AIDS made it uncool to be gay” and because it was easier for him to find professional success as a “straight” man. While Musto made a fuss about Klein’s sham of a marriage back in the day, he says he prefers that to what Klein is doing now.

Now you’ve hooked up with that almost-21-year-old ex-porn star, Nick Gruber, and you’re fawning over him as if this were real love and not a massive late-life crisis being acted out for the horrified masses.

Ouch.

Calvin, you went from deeply closeted to being more open about your shame-based antics, and I don’t know what’s worse.

Now those are some fighting words. Musto concedes he too has dated younger men, but that Klein is going about it entirely wrong. Specifically, he believes that Gruber is in it for the money and that Klein has deluded himself into thinking he is in a healthy relationship. While Musto makes all sorts of remarks about Klein’s lack of dignity, we think this is the line that stings the most: