Lance Wails Loudly" at Tarnished Image:

By Andy Port

L.A. Times/Washington Post Service

NEW YORK-The very same Lance Loud who sat on a Manhattan rooftop in the summer of 1971 and wished he were a superstar now says, "I worry more and more about coming out of this in one piece."

Since his private life in New York's Gay scene has gone public in a 12-part Public Broadcasting Service documentary called

An American Family." Lance Loud, the eldest son, is going through changes.

For one thing, he's two years older. a wily 21. His hair is cropped and hennarinsed. He lives on $44 a week unemployment insurance in a 15th Street walkup with a tub in the kitchen and a disconnected telephone. He fancies himself a writer or an actor or whichever comes along first, and lately he's been bristling over a host of bad notices.

Lance's complaint was with a recent newspaper article, in "three-quarters of which was just blasting me and talking about how awful I am and calling me a Goyaesque dwarf and an electric eel and the devil and the evil one in the Loud family." he says defensively.

"It's really dehumanizing to see myself obliterated into a bunch of arty lines that are so cruel," says Lance, still groggy from partying the night before when he arrived 45 minutes late at the village apartment of his friend, business manager, personal photographer,

Chris Makos.

No. he isn't prepared to defend his style of life or that of his six-member fam3 ily back in California. He just never thought that people would be that interest-

1 ed. he says.

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But, as the show becomes more and more a topic of intellectual chitchat. Lance feels a certain compulsion "to jump in front of every1 body that thinks about me 1 and explain it all to everybody, to every last person. "I don't feel that the film [ is all that good but I feel there are certain conces' sions people should make because we are human 5 beings." he says.

"Everybody seems to think we stopped living af5 ter the 12th show, that we , just went back into media land. My grandmother called my mother in tears when she read the New York Times article saying I was a big homo.”

Although Lance has appeared nude for Screw magazine and was written about in the current issue of Gay, he never thought of the series as a public coming-out. Not one bit, he says.

"The idea that I was declared a homosexual makes me feel that all of a sudden they're calling upon me to play to some cheap little stunt." he says before launching into a five-minute diatribe on how unimpor'ant his sexuality is to him.

Lance seems comfortable in his newfound role as interviewee. He crosses his legs. He yawns. He suddenly raises his voice an octave เ and he mimics his mother

or a critic or a stranger

who called with condolences "about my abnormality.”

What bothers Lance more than his lack of sexual privacy ("I'll never go to any of the gay bars anymore. I walked in once and everybody started whispering and looking at me and it was just awful.") is his media image the Lance Loud on the tube.

"The film reveals someone who isn't extending-a person who is very immobile-I've reached this place of mooching and not doing anything else. They've taken out all of that need to re-energize and change slowly. It just seems that I'm a definite statement of failure."

"They didn't bring out any of the youth in me." he wails. They cut out all of the life continuum. he says, all the evidence that life would go on and the family was going to change.

Lance offers tangible proof that he's different: His father is no longer paying the rent ("God. I wish he were") and he's about to work on his book, which used to be called "Teenage Whores" but since has been labeled, "Lance Loud's Love Story."

"Things aren't very good, but at least they're definite," he says of the present. "Now I know I can change my situation or I can go away and never come back. There were times when I didn't know whether I was coming or going or whether, I was living a good life or a bad life."

And yet, he longs for a lover. male or female," so that I can understand what it's like not to be selfish. Maybe that will break this selfishness inside me, because I really am being overwhelmed by thatselfishness. now more than ever."

I know that if I care about other people I would become more self-assured and a better person. But for some reason, I just don't do it. I'm too lazy. I don't know where to begin.... Oh, I wish I had someone to tell me what to do."

Lance explains that he's overly critical of himself. that he expects a lot of himself but then I go ahead and do nothing just to make myself upset.

Do you mean you're selfdestructive?“No. Yes. Well, I'm not a doper... I hate needles ... I tend to be destructive for other people. he answers.

And the interview goes on like that, Lance is petulant one moment, insightful the next, "gaggily witty" the next. "Mere and more people don't understand what I say," he moans, "and it's making me nervous.'

Lance is getting practice in the art of speaking out. The interviewers from Time, Newsweek. Rolling Stone and more, have gone the circuitous route of trying to ring his disconnected phone.

And Lance Loud no longer wants to be a superstar.

"That was a very young Lance talking," he explains. “It's just not that important any more.