No More Hiding

Terrance Dean, a big player in the TV and music industry, perfectly recalls his first exposure to hip hop. "When I was 13 years old," he recalls, "I was in my aunt's living room and I came across an album by the Sugarhill Gang... at that moment, at 13 years old, I knew I had to be a part of that culture."

Six months later, Dean had another visceral, life changing moment when he came to understand the connection between sex and entertainment. "I was watching MTV and I saw LL Cool J with no shirt on," he laughs. "That was the second time I fell in love with hip hop."

His attraction to men was not something Dean could discuss, or openly act on, in his small Detroit neighborhood. But even after his ambition brought him to Washington, D.C. and New York to break into the production side of the entertainment business, he found the silence continued.

"I saw that there were no men who were openly gay in the business," he recalls. "So I knew, immediately, that I had to hide my sexuality." It wasn't until he moved to Los Angeles to work on The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show that Dean started to learn there were other men like him.

"At the time we didn't use the term downlow," he explains. "But working in L.A. I started going to all these music industry down low parties. It blew my mind. Now I knew there was a place, but we had to keep it a secret."

Standing before a small group of men at The Male Center last week wearing casual, baggy clothes and a humble smile, Terrance Dean didn't look like someone who'd rocked the entertainment industry. But that's what he did this spring when his book, Hiding in Hip Hop, hit the stands. A memoir of his career in the entertainment industry, from an internship at CNN to working with Spike Lee to becoming an executive at MTV, the book details Dean's struggles with his sexuality - and includes thinly-disguised accounts of other African-Americans living on the downlow in the entertainment industries.

Of course the book's big selling point was as a salacious tell-all (or tell-some) and there are juicy stories aplenty about the A list actor with a fondness for transsexuals, the old school rapper who's been in the closet for his entire career, and the chart-topping singers and rappers that Dean had doomed affairs with. But to Dean, the stories of bad behavior and downlow sex parties are just the sizzle. The real story is his journey to self-acceptance, and the real point of the book is to strike out against secrecy.

"The hardest part of writing the book was admitting I was gay," he confesses. "I always thought gay meant effeminate men who were going to come and snatch you. I didn't want that! It was very difficult for me to go to a gay club, to be with a bunch of out gay men. Still is.

"We as a community don't talk about sex and sexuality. That's why we continue to struggle. I think that's why HIV and AIDS is on the rise and teen pregnancy is such a problem. I hope because I come from the same environment as many of these struggling young people, they will listen to the book."

Dean certainly had a rapt audience at the Male Center gathering, where his down home manner had the enthusiastic group murmuring its agreement with many of his statements, asking questions, and tossing out jokes. Of course everyone was hoping for a peek behind the pseudonyms Dean used to protect the privacy of his famous colleagues, and he did offer a general hint.

"It's like The DaVinci Code," he chuckled. "All the real names are in the book, they're just placed somewhere else. Plus, every chapter is from a song title, and most of them are from artists in the book." Since a lot of actors and artists are name-dropped in the book, figuring out who's who is not easy as that sounds; but Dean said that he knew of one reader who correctly guessed everyone's identity simply by studying the book and using Google.

For people in the industry, especially on the downlow, no Googling was necessary. Dean says the book's publication ended his ten year friendship with a prominent musician, who was angry at how easily he could be identified. "The thing is," Dean sighs, "I went to everybody and told them what I was going to write. He didn't like the description I was going to use, and he told me how he wanted me to describe him. And that was exactly what got printed."

Fortunately that was the only really negative outcome of the book's publication. Dean has been pleasantly surprised at the positive response the book has received, both from hip hop fans and within the industry.

"Industry people know its time for someone to come out," he says. "Do you think Queen Latifah's career would be over if she came out? Look at Ellen Degeneres, Rosie, Elton John, kd lang.

"I expect a major hip hop star will come out in the next year or so."