According to about a zillion sites, Lady Gaga supposedly stated in an interview that she is a hermaphrodite. The following quote is attributed to her, but not one source I saw was able to name what interviewer she allegedly said this to or what publication or show it was for or what production company or publisher might supposedly have been involved.

“It’s not something that I’m ashamed of, just isn’t something that I go around telling everyone. Yes. I have both male and female genitalia, but I consider myself a female. It’s just a little bit of a penis and really doesn’t interfere much with my life. The reason I haven’t talked about it is that it’s not a big deal to me. Like come on. It’s not like we all go around talking about our vags. I think this is a great opportunity to make other multiple gendered people feel more comfortable with their bodies. I’m sexy, I’m hot. I have both a poon and a peener. Big fucking deal.”

At around ten seconds past the one minute mark in the video above, Lady Gaga hops off the motorcycle and some people feel she was not wearing underwear and what was dangling there was a cock. Given that, according to Rolling Stone, she hangs out with Marilyn Manson who tried to promote Mechanical Animals by wearing breasts, which maybe contributed to me being the only person who really loved that album, but still nobody believed he was actually a hermaphrodite. As a former adult boutique manager, I can state categorically that getting flesh panties with a bit of dangly is not difficult, although I’m entirely fine with it if she does have an actual penis, even a small hermaphroditic penis. I did hang out with her boyfriend a fair amount when I first moved out to Los Angeles and I’m guessing, based on that limited knowledge, that the hermaphrodite thing is a publicity stunt. An effective publicity stunt.

What do you all think? Is Lady Gaga a hermaphrodite?

People keep asking me why I haven’t mentioned that Forrest Black and I have some of our photography of American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert in the current issues of Star Magazine and Rolling Stone, so I suppose I’ll mention it now. The internet has been abuzz for weeks now that Adam Lambert was going to “come out” in Rolling Stone issue 1081. So many publications were reporting that Rolling Stone was going to report that Adam Lambert says he is gay that Rolling Stone had to rush to put the digital image of the cover, lensed by brilliant top photographer Matthew Rolston, online well before the issue hit newsstands. Which seems very meta-something.

For some reason, a number of folks desperately wanted to be the primary source for settling speculation on Adam Lambert’s sexual orientation. Forrest Black and I photographed Adam Lambert kissing Brad “Cheeks” Bell. In point of fact, all of the supposedly scandalous images of Adam Lambert kissing a male were of him kissing the same guy, Brad “Cheeks” Bell. However, as many fans seems to find boy/boy smooching inconclusive and seemed to perhaps care about orientation, I didn’t want any part of anything which might hurt Adam Lambert’s chances of winning American Idol. I heart Alex Burton, my editor at Star Magazine, because the deal he and I made for the first round of images he ran was that there would be no outing of Adam Lambert in the issue and Alex Burton, my man of the Led Zeppelin tattoo, kept his word and kept the article classy and positive. Word is that Star Magazine offered Brad “Cheeks” Bell $2,000 to tell all and Cheeks declined, saying that he’d turned down higher dollar offers than that and he would only ever do a positive interview about Adam Lambert.

Unsubstantiated rumor is that Rolling Stone ponied up $50,000 for Adam Lambert to tell them his sexual preference first. Rolling Stone contributing editor Vanessa Grigoriadis, my fellow Wesleyan University alum, did a great job presenting Adam Lambert as a whole interesting person with visceral prose and probing but respectful questions. In the interview, Adam Lambert tells Vanessa Grigoriadis that he waited to come out in Rolling Stone because he felt he could express himself in context there. Some of the context, however, is that he didn’t lose his virginity (presumably to a man) until he was twenty-one and that he’d made out with girls while drunk at nightclubs and was now somewhat bi-curious about what it would be like to have sex with a woman.

Rolling Stone has always had some of the best, most incisive and most intriguing interviews of any magazine (and of course Wesleyan grads tend to be terrific writers), so it is no surprise this is a good one. But I’m left uncomfortable that the issue of a sexual label was such a big deal. I feel like we don’t have enough words to describe sexual orientation for the terms gay and straight to have much meaning.

If Adam Lambert suddenly got a girlfriend, after years of going out with the same sex, would that mean he did not count as gay any more? How about if he just occasionally fooled with really inspiring women who really got him as a person, but only had relationships with men? I realize that I travel in circles which are perhaps a bit ahead of the curve on sexual openness. But I know men who are gay-identified who sleep with women from time to time. I know women who are bi-identified who only have relationships with men but also have sex with women. I know men who are straight-identified who will have sex with men provided there is a sexual configuration of enough people for it to count as an orgy. Everyone can think of the prison example for same sex relationships among people who do not identify as gay or lesbian. Etc. I think that maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the same gender and maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the opposite sex. But most people, in the right situation, are more fluid than that. They might have a preference, even a strong preference, but, in the right situation, the preference won’t dictate their actions.

At any rate, I feel most human sexuality is too complex for a tidy label to be genuinely descriptive. I thought it was cool that Adam Lambert told Vanessa Grigoriadis and Rolling Stone, “I loved it that this season girls went crazy for me . . . As far as I’m concerned, it’s all hot. Just because I’m not sticking it in there doesn’t mean that I don’t find it beautiful.” There is a certain combination of flamboyance and rawness there which is the reason so many of my friends were rooting for Adam Lambert on American Idol.

And it is a flamboyance and rawness which utterly transcends sexual orientation. I think that general America is far more afraid of that rock star counterculture essence than they are of male homosexuality. Senior Blue Blood writer Will Judy made the excellent point that, although Adam Lambert was runner-up to Kris Allen, rather than winner, on American Idol, “Lambert got to live my ultimate superdream from 5th grade though. Fronted Kiss AND Queen in the same night. (And KILLED, of course)” which is a really fine summation.

Singer/songwriter Lady GaGa appears on the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone. The cover is shot by photographer David LaChapelle. David LaChapelle has shot many Rolling Stone covers, is known for his bright colors and elaborate sets, and started in photography taking naked pictures of club kids. Lady GaGa went to an Upper West Side high school and became a New York club kid. Maybe I am biased because I enjoy Lady GaGa’s work and I enjoy David LaChapelle’s work and I’ve spent a fair amount of time inside edgy nightclubs, but I don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Rolling Stone has certainly run nakeder covers than the Lady GaGa one. Anyone remember the full nude of model Laetitia Casta on a bed of petals? It is not like you’d find artistic nudes likes these on PukingOnPenis.com. Seriously don’t click that, but you get what I mean. Today, in a world where all sorts of depravity is a click away, why does a teensy bit of authentic club culture make so many people hyperventilate?

Although a certain sort of bohemian club culture has existed since time immemorial and that artistic counterculture has always made some people uncomfortable, is it really that big a deal? Or is the problem that we have come to expect pop stars to be the best-looking possible actresses hired by management teams with songwriters and stylists and something which came about more organically now seems wrong? Lady GaGa is widely credited as having written on songs for Akon, Britney Spears, Fergie, Pussycat Dolls, and oddly enough New Kids on the Block. Although I’m not sure how or if Lady GaGa is credited in ASCAP, I’d be happier if I could find her songwriting credits. Still, I tend to believe that she actually writes songs. Even if you don’t find bluffin with one’s muffin as entertaining as I do, surely the combination of artist and performer is still better than solely artist or solely performer. At the very least, it is not worse, is it?

From my point of view, the most controversial thing about the David LaChapelle Rolling Stone cover featuring Lady GaGa is that New York fashionistas credit the whole bubble outfit look to designer Hussein Chalayan. Although neither a bubble dress or bubble corset appear on the web site for Hussein Chalayan’s 2007 collections, I’ve seen credible photos from his runway show stuff for that year. The designer was reportedly disappointed that Lady GaGa knocked off his design, rather than wearing the original.

So, if you’d like to recreate Lady GaGa’s Rolling Stone look, you now know where to commission your own bubble outfit, if you don’t feel crafty enough to make one. Then all you have to do is round up a bunch of your naked and barely-clad friends and get wet and messy. Photos optional.

Rolling Stone #1080 is on newsstands now.

Over the years, I think Rolling Stone magazine has maintained a higher standard of journalism than most music rags. The majority of music publications are written by writers in the employ of publicists and most rarely have an article on topics other than a performer’s favorite color or fictional creative process. Although their musical tastes and mine are not always precisely the same, Rolling Stone is usually an example of what journalism ought to be.

A week or so ago writer Elizabeth Goodman did a brief piece for Rolling Stone’s online incarnation where she really blasted Trent Reznor. Full disclaimer: The Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life. When the “Get Down, Make Love” single came out, I drove from DC to Chicago, partly so I could get it from Wax Trax before it was widely available. Some of this is a topic for another article, but I wanted to fully disclose where I’m coming from on this.

In the recent Rolling Stone piece, Elizabeth Goodman chortled about Trent Reznor not being allowed to be giddy with happiness, being goth and all. Reznor apparently confided to Rolling Stone that he had perhaps taken so long between albums because he had sort of lost his confidence and was too worried what people thought of him. The goth-industrial icon went on to explain that he felt he was developmentally past that and was likely to only improve as an artist. The writer quoted what he said and summed it up saying, “After tiring of patting his own back, Reznor went on to pontificate on another of his recent epiphanies.” A little harsh. Apparently, Reznor’s second epiphany was realizing that he didn’t care much for the twenty bands playing overly-generic, over-produced, whiny-ass emo songs he had heard on the radio and that he couldn’t much tell them apart. (Bad news Trent: most radio stations don’t really have a whole twenty bands in rotation at any given time.)

The artist went on to say that he was suspicious of the motives of why a guy might be trying to start a band today: “Is he trying to change the world and do something different and express himself…or is it because they want to fuck Paris Hilton and be photographed outside trendy restaurants?”

I think Trent is right. The nature of celebrity has changed so much. For example, I used to get so excited when a channel like HBO wanted to come shoot at my punk rock group house and interview me and Forrest Black, even though none of us had cable at the time. But HBO was not secretly trying to set up cameras in my house to catch me breaking it off with a lover or having an argument with a housemate about whose dishes were in the sink. (The dishes were mine; I use plastic now.) At the time, if HBO sent a production crew over, they were going to let me outline which areas were public and which were private, they were going to respect my wishes, and news was a straighforward interview, and not getting photographed with the wrong sex partner in a trendy restaurant.

The really cool thing about the Rolling Stone article is that it has enough rawness to be journalism. The cynic in me wonders if maybe it is not just a very very clever placed article, something designed to appeal to the sort of people who liked Pretty Hate Machine. But Elizabeth Goodman’s article feels like actual music journalism. She didn’t just write the same nonsense bullet points from a publicist which one normally sees in music articles these days. She held my interest. She may not have personally liked Trent, but she wrote her article in a way where readers could actually get a human feel for both the journalist and the journalistic subject.

So, kudos to Rolling Stone and Elizabeth Goodman and Trent Reznor for all still flying the flag.

Incidentally, Trent has been on the cover of Rolling Stone at least twice. I’m just sayin’.