Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness on his new book Love That Story

It's something that shone through our television screens as he became a household name through Netflix's Queer Eye. And it was only solidified when we discovered his podcast Getting Curious - that actually predates Queer Eye and was turned into a Netflix series earlier this year - and his stand-up comedy, for those who were lucky enough to see him on tour in early 2020.

Even now, as we chat about his new book, Love That Story: Observations From a Gorgeously Queer Life, he is still the human ray of sunshine that audiences have come to know him as - even though it's a day after his COVID diagnosis. "I've definitely felt better in my life," he says over Zoom.

On the surface Love That Story is a collection of essays that range in topics. Van Ness touches on the grief that comes after losing a pet, overcoming body issues, and impostor syndrome. He discusses about what it means for him to be living his best, authentic nonbinary life, for which he prefers he/him pronouns, but has also used she/her and they/them. And he also pens a love letter to his first career, hairdressing.

But at the heart of Love That Story is Van Ness' curiosity and compassion. It's his driving force that helps him become a better person.

And as part of Love That Story, that curiosity led him to where it all began. His hometown of Quincy, Illinois.

Van Ness wishes that he was one of those people who loved the place where he came from. While hometowns don't determine who you are as a person, they do play a role in how you see yourself, he says.

And as a queer kid growing up in Quincy, the town didn't do Van Ness many favours in the self-love department. The town made Van Ness feel like he had to bottle up who he was, and when he did start to come out, some reacted as if he was the first effeminate, queer person to emerge from Illinois.

"As a young queer person in a seemingly straight-as-they-come town, there weren't any places I knew of to turn to for support," Van Ness writes.

"For the most part, I felt completely alone and got the hell out of my small town the second I could."

But through distance and time, Van Ness started to soften towards Quincy enough to wonder about the generations of queer people living in the town. Had people been fostering a better existence for the LGBTQIA+ community that he just didn't know about?

"What I really wanted to discover was how much more queer history happened in Quincy than I realised," Van Ness says.

"What I found was actually, there's been queer culture happening in my hometown for hundreds of years, which was quite a revelation to me. And I also learned that there were a lot of people that were my contemporaries or a little bit older, that had actually been doing so much work to make Quincy a more welcoming place even before I was born, and then while I was there."

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The essay centres around a place called Irene's Cabaret, which opened in the early 1980s. With its etched-tin ceilings, dim-red lighting and a David statue adorned with a feather boa, it was a focal point of queer activity and had people driving from around Illinois just to spend a night there.

But, as Van Ness discovered, it was more than just a bar. The bar's owner and namesake, a drag queen Irene West, also created a space upstairs from the bar for a community church, so that the LGBTQIA+ community who didn't drink and/or struggled with how the religion they'd been raised in had somewhere to go.

The bar was also the first place that nurse Carleen Orton went to connect with the queer community when she was setting up HIV testing in the town in 1985 - something which up until that point didn't exist in Quincy, meaning some people resorted to donating blood to try and get a diagnosis. What's more, Carleen also convinced the state health department to set up a hotline so people could be given a code number that could be used as personal identification for privacy reasons.

It's stories such as these that are a stark contrast to not only the Quincy Van Ness experienced when he was growing up, but also later in life.

Van Ness returned to Quincy during the fourth season of Queer Eye to makeover his former teacher Kathi Dooley.

On-screen the town looked like a haven of acceptance. Off screen though, some parents were refusing to let their kids go to school while the Netflix show was filming and a local pastor wrote an opinion piece condemning the Fab Five - Van Ness and his Queer Eye counterparts, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, Tan France and Bobby Berk. A week after the cast and crew had gone home, a young gay person was also jumped and beaten up in a hate crime and didn't feel safe enough to report it.

These and similar experiences are not to take away from all of the good that people in that community put into creating a safe environment for LGBTQIA+ people. And Van Ness encourages his reader to look at these examples to learn from the strength shown by queer people in generations past, and be inspired by it.

"So many LGBTQIA+ people already grow up in hostile environments, and while we're busy just trying to survive day-to-day, it's easy to forget why it's important to connect with our pasts," he writes.

What started as an investigation into Quincy's history turned into a love letter to queer people living in rural spaces across the world.

"So often we feel like there are no queer people in rural small communities, and there are. I think that's a beautiful thing that needs to be celebrated more," Van Ness says.

"Going back and doing this made me feel so much gratitude and respect for the people from Quincy, that have been there having these conversations and creating safe spaces for people, and the LGBTQIA+ community in Quincy, which is just such an important thing.

"And it was incredibly healing to learn, and also just so cool the way that people are making safe spaces in a time and a place when there weren't any other safe spaces."

We're chatting in the lead up to the Easter weekend. Love That Story has just launched in the United States and prior to his COVID diagnosis, Van Ness was all set to head out on his book tour.

In a week from now, Van Ness will find out that it would be his second New York Times bestselling book - following the success of his 2019 memoir, Over the Top. A few days after that, the book will then go international, including an April 26 launch date for Australia - somewhere he hopes to return after visiting previously for his stand-up comedy and a special Queer Eye episode filmed in Yass, NSW.

Today though, he's on social media to break the news to followers that a positive COVID test means he and the tour to support his second book are now - as with a lot of things in the past two years - pivoting.

"I'm totally devastated, and to all of you who purchased tickets I love each and every one of you and I'm so, so sorry I won't be able to be there, but so appreciate your support of your local bookseller," he posts to Twitter, assuring everyone that thanks to vaccines and a booster he is only experiencing the mildest of symptoms.

What his fans don't see, however, are the interviews originally scheduled to be done from the road, that are now shifting to Zoom, all with journalists from across the world wanting to know more about this collection of essays Van Ness spent a fair chunk of the pandemic compiling.

Love That Story is not a part two to Over the Top - a book that saw Van Ness come out as HIV positive, surviving sexual abuse and overcoming hardcore drug use. But in a way, it is a continuation - if only from the point of view of processing the memoir's fallout.

"At first it was writing about that just creatively, just cathartically," Van Ness says.

"It wasn't even that I didn't feel good the first time around when Over The Top came out, it was just such a shock when I finally realised that my story wasn't going to come out in my own voice, but rather in this other piece written about Over the Top.

"And the other thing that I realised was that maybe some of the trauma that I wrote about that I thought I had fully processed, maybe I hadn't fully processed yet. And that was just a little bit of a surprise to me.

"Then in realising that I realised that the writing process isn't about anybody's validation or the accolades. Writing, and being a storyteller is about doing the best that you can with this artistic experience of storytelling and putting your thoughts to paper. And in this case, it was also about research and interviewing and melding that into my voice."

It seems fitting that Love That Story has been dedicated "to those who choose curiosity and compassion, loving themselves, and asking for help should they ever lose their way".

It's the type of comment that we have come to expect from Van Ness. However, to say that it is "on brand" would almost take away from his authenticity and sincerity behind this and similar comments that he has made.

In a world which at times feels as if it was controlled by cancel culture, Van Ness' compassion is (sadly) refreshing. When faced with hate directed at him or his community, he is not one to shut off someone without giving them a chance to grow.

In an essay titled TERF Wars: Or, why are trans-exclusionary radical feminists Dolores Umbridge incarnate, Van Ness dives into J.K. Rowling's transphobic comments made in regards to a 2020 Devex opinion piece titled Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate.

"People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?" the Harry Potter author tweeted at the time. When someone pointed out that she was dismissing the experience of trans men, Rowling doubled down on her stance.

For someone who is a proud queer and nonbinary person, who is grateful to be part of the wider trans and nonbinary community, but also someone who grew up loving the Harry Potter series, Van Ness understandably found the comment painful.

But also says that he wouldn't use this as an excuse to cut the author off from making amends.

"There's so much constant heartbreak for nonbinary and trans people. And I think that in J.K.'s case, it was compounded heartbreak because she was a hero for so many of us," Van Ness says.

"I think that it's also one of those spaces that's so complicated because someone can be your hero and you can also be really disappointed by stances that they've taken. And that's the duality of the human experience that I want people to take from this book that you could have really disappointing problematic views, and I can still hold out hope that you're going to heal and make amends for those views and for the harm that you've caused.

"I don't think you have to totally write someone off. J.K. is not cancelled to me. It's not about cancellation, it's about inclusion and activation and acknowledging our humanity, and realising that just because nonbinary and trans people are asking for equity, that doesn't take away the equity of women, and that doesn't erase the womanhood of women."

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