Troye Sivan
Australian singer-actor Troye Sivan recently told gay magazine Attitude that he hooked up with older men when he was 17, mainly because he “felt left behind.”
“All my friends were hooking up with random people at parties,” said 22-year-old Sivan, who came out in 2013. “And I just felt so left behind because I didn’t know gay people; I didn’t know where to meet [them]—I didn’t really want to venture out by myself…so I did stuff that a 17-year-old boy shouldn’t have to do.”
The “Strawberries and Cigarettes” singer elaborated that he used a dating app: “I managed to get a fake ID, then got Grindr on my phone and started meeting people who were like me, but you’re forced a little bit into these hypersexualized environments, and even though that’s awesome when you’re 17…I didn’t know what else to do.”
Uncomfortable
Sivan admitted to being uncomfortable when recounting the period. “When I see photos of myself [at] that age, and I think of the guys I was meeting up with, I think, ‘Wow, I looked really, really young.’ [It makes me feel a] bit creeped out but, at the same time, I don’t have any regrets.”
Sivan will be in Joel Edgerton’s film “Boy Erased,” about a teen pressured to undergo gay conversion therapy. His costars include Edgerton, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe.—OLIVER PULUMBARIT