The sex inspector; Gay sex guru Michael Alvear helped save the marriages of several straight couples, then lost the love of his own life

Link: Creative Loafing Atlanta

Excerpt:

With a million television viewers in the United Kingdom watching, Michael and Katie sit down on a bed.

Katie is in her mid-20s. But her face is marked by the physical and emotional exhaustion of a long-term relationship with Mark that has grown tense and largely sexless since the birth of their child.

Katie wants her partner to be more assertive in the bedroom, but has to modify her own behavior if it's going to happen. That's why she's with Michael.

Michael is the co-host of "The Sex Inspectors," a reality show that helps struggling straight couples reinvent their sex lives. The show debuted in the U.K. in 2004 and on HBO in the United States in 2005. Cameras in Katie's and Mark's bedroom allowed Michael to study how the couple interacts. Viewing the footage, he easily spotted one of the reasons Katie's partner had become less assertive and affectionate, and he's ready to talk to her about it.

"Can I show you what you do?" Michael asks, after they sit down on the bed.

He invites her to put her arm around him. But as her arm touches his back, he slaps it and turns away.

"I'm not that bad, am I?" she asks, laughing nervously.

"How did that feel?" Michael asks.

"It's just blatantly 'don't touch me' isn't it?"

"What else do you feel?" he asks.

"Rejected, which is kind of sad. It's not a nice feeling."

"It makes you feel hurt, rejected, abandoned and not very loved. Fair?"

"Definitely," she says.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

She nods and Michael leans in to whisper in her ear: "Men have feelings, too."

After spending much of his professional writing career in Atlanta on the fringe as a gay relationship columnist and author, Michael Alvear didn't decide one day to go mainstream. The mainstream came to him.

Alvear, 49, is no longer merely a gay sex and relationships guru. He's a sex and relationships guru who happens to be gay.

He is proud, he says, to be part of a cultural movement that shifted the common perception of gay people away from malicious, hateful stereotypes.

"Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" was a great leap forward, Alvear says, precisely because its central premise became passé so quickly. Gay people advising straight people is now so OK that it's almost dull.

Alvear, however, has just relearned the painful lesson that even though he may be a mainstream figure whose work appeals to both straights and gays, he's still ostracized in many essential ways from the straight world.

While in London, Alvear met the man he considers the love of his life. They want to build a life together in Atlanta. The only way Alvear's boyfriend can get a visa to stay in the United States is through marriage. But because they're in a same-sex relationship, they can't legally marry.

The striking difference between the two worlds hit home recently when Alvear was in a dressing room preparing for a television appearance. He overheard a woman talking about falling in love with a Brit. "I met the most wonderful British guy," she said. "I married him and now he can work here."

It was a wrenching conversation for Alvear to hear. "Isn't it rich?" he asks. "I've helped so many straight people improve their love lives and yet it's straight policy that has ruined mine."

[...]

Even though it was popular, "The Sex Inspectors" stopped airing after its third season. When Alvear returned home to Atlanta for good, Robert came with him.

Alvear immersed himself in his next project, a relationship advice website called Blabbermash.

His most talked-about columns, he says, have always been the ones with the best questions. Blabbermash features user-generated videos of sex and relationship questions. The answers are secondary.

While Alvear put Blabbermash together last year, Robert looked for work as a financial analyst and tried to find a way to stay in the United States permanently.

He had two ways of obtaining a long-term visa: Marriage or an employer willing to sponsor him to get a coveted H-1B visa, which allows skilled workers to stay in the United States for three years.

Marriage was out of the question because gay and lesbian marriages aren't legally recognized in the United States, or under U.S. immigration law.

Robert also couldn't obtain an H-1B visa. Post-9/11 security concerns, and more recently, anti-immigrant sentiment in Congress, have conspired to cut the number of H-1Bs available annually from 132,000 in 2004 to just 65,000 last year. With so many high-tech firms desperate for overseas talent, the State Department gave out all of 2007's H-1Bs in just two months.

Robert couldn't stay without a visa. Alvear couldn't leave behind his life in Atlanta to move to England and start all over again.

So when Robert's visa expired seven months ago, he moved back to London and left their relationship in limbo.

"I've never really experienced that kind of blatant discrimination before – that you're nothing, you mean nothing, you are nothing, you are worthless," Alvear says.

Several years ago, he was with a friend walking to a gay nightclub when they narrowly escaped being attacked by a group of kids carrying baseball bats and pipes.

"This is the same feeling I had when those four guys came out with bats and pipes," Alvear says. "One is physical assault and one is psychological. After this, it's hard for me to sit here and say we're living in the golden age of gay acceptance. Life for gays is so much better than it was, but sometimes it's still glaring."

[...]

[jw]