My grandparents and my mom prayed the rosary a lot, and later in life, I had a priest friend of mine teach me centering prayer, based on Father Thomas Keating’s work. That led to practicing different kinds of meditation off and on as I got older.
I think I wanted to sing, but I just couldn’t because I was so shy. I didn’t really know how to begin that other than like, singing in my room, locking the door, and trying to sing kind of quietly. I knew my mom would want to listen and she would probably bug me about it.
My mom’s whole side of the family, they’re all Packers fans. My mom’s a Bears fan. My stepdad is a Vikings guy. So that gets ugly. My mom sits upstairs watching the Bears game; he sits in the basement. They can’t watch it together. Football’s a violent anger in our family dynamic.
I remember my mom threatening me, half-serious: ‘You know what? I should take you to Pittsburgh and put you in dance lessons just to keep you occupied.’ Well, that brought everything to a screeching halt. ‘Jeeze, dance lessons.’ In retrospect, it would have been awesome, but then, ‘Ugh, dancing – dancing’s for sissies.’
I don’t feel like I sound like anybody from Houston. I don’t really feel like I have that Houston flow, that Houston sound. I feel like it’s a mixture of all the things I’ve listened to growing up, or even my mom, in a way. I feel like I have my own style.
I love being at home now, improving my cooking. I’ve got a really bad memory, so my first attempts were a disaster – I’d forget what ingredients to put in. But I do a lasagna that’s a crowd-pleaser, and a good lemon drizzle cake, which I take to my mom’s for the Sunday roast to fatten the family up.
When you have one kid, you feel like you can jet set around, and you can throw him on the hip, and you get your life done. You don’t realize how easy one is until you have two. Now I’m really a mom. Oh, I am a mom now! This is for serious – I am responsible for two people now.
Mom was a school teacher, and she had to be at work at 7:30 every morning. So Dad was in charge of us three kids around the breakfast table. He always made it creative: he did the bananas with the smiley face and the eyes with peanut butter on top, made us drink grapefruit every morning even though we had to do it holding our noses.
I like superheroes who are very human and underdog. That’s why I relate to my character in ‘A Flying Jatt’: because he is a very normal person and very human. He was very unsure about his super powers; he didn’t know how to use them. He is scared of heights, speed. Especially he is scared of his mom, but he has to listen to her.
My mom is proud of me. But she might not be too happy about the hours I keep or how little I eat. I wake up so late that it would be inappropriate to have breakfast. At most, I will have a snack in the day and dinner. I realize that it’s not the healthiest way to live, but it’s all I really have time for.
I remember my mom let me stay up late and watch Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan compete in the 1998 Olympic Games. I made paper medals and wore them the whole night. I didn’t start skating until 2000, but I was so inspired by their skating that it was why I wanted to start.
There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right?
I’m sure there were times when I wish I had thought, ‘Gosh, that might really embarrass mom and dad,’ but our parents didn’t raise us to think about them. They’re very selfless and they wanted us to have as normal of a college life as possible. So really, we didn’t think of any repercussions.
I grew up with a pretty tough mom. She was a self-appointed neighborhood watchdog, and if she saw that any of the local boys were up to no good, she would scold them on the spot. Although she is only 5 feet 2, she was famous in our neighborhood for intimidating men three times her size and getting them to do the right thing.
Dad’s Jewish and Irish, Mom’s German and Scotch. I couldn’t say I was anything. My last name isn’t even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I’m still looking for a home in some way.
If your mom asks you to do the dishes, do not pull out your pirate attitude. But if someone tells you you’re not good enough, says your dreams are too lofty, or claims there is no room in showbiz for a dancing violinist – well then, by all means, pull out your eye patch, my friend, and take to the high seas.
My mother is gay. She was married to my dad up until I was 9. She was just like, ‘I’m tired of this. I’m just going to be with who I want to be with.’ So I’ve been raised by women, through my mom and also my aunt. My aunt is bi, and most of her partners have been women. I was always surrounded by a very strong tribe of people.
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is I sucked my thumb until I was in like eighth grade. It’s cause, when I was a baby, I sucked my thumb and I guess my mom and dad never weaned me off of that, because they thought it was cute. And then it’s like an addiction. That’s your security blanket.
We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn’t afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.
You can dribble on carpet. I grew up in Queens, and we had carpet in our living room. And actually, even in some of these gymnasiums where we’re playing the game, we’re on carpet. If you’re 12 or 13 years old, you’ve dribbled on the carpet in your mom’s house.
My hair story has been unique because my mom’s a German Jew, so her hair is way different than my hair. She was always learning on my hair growing up, but I would sit there for hours, and she did learn how to braid hair. Early on, it was a lot of tears while my mom was braiding my hair.
Henry Hays was cheated all his life. He was cheated by his father who taught him to hate. His community taught him to hate. My mom told me, no matter what one does in life, he or she deserves some compassion, and I knew Hays deserved compassion more than anybody.
Once we got signed, I moved out of my house because I was having teenage issues with my mom. It really wasn’t my fault, looking back. You know, I’m gay; it’s weird. It was one of the things. She has no problem with me being gay, but she had a problem with me dressing the way I do at first.
I had some interesting costumes… the one that I remember right offhand is Zorro when I was a lot younger. I was a big time Zorro fan. My mom helped me make it, and I remember having a big issue with the fact that she wouldn’t let me carry around a real metal sword; it just had to be plastic.
The last time I saw my mom was in 1997. My mom started getting sick, and my mom finally passed away in 2002. My mom was my world. My mom was everything to me. We didn’t have money. We didn’t have a whole lot of materialistic things, but one thing I can truly say, that my mother loved me and all of her children unconditionally.
