In Letter To Fans, Say Anything Lead Singer Max Bemis Comes Out And Opens Up About Mental Health

In a really straightforward and vulnerable letter to fans, Max Bemis, lead singer of Say Anything, discusses the (sort of) end of the band, his own sexuality and his own mental health. In the letter, Bemis describes his sexuality as “bi-ish or queer or a straight guy who can also like boys.”

“I always talked or joked about it with my friends and found it to be blatantly clear I was. I was bullied for it and called a ‘fag’ (without irony). This is, sadly, common,” Bemis writes. “I’m not special. I even went so far as to tell people I was also attracted to guys repeatedly. They chalked it up to my bipolar shit, which was hurtful.”

Bemis went to say that people often negated his queer experiences because he was married to a woman and has been for a long time. Most of his queer experiences have been “limited and remain mostly emotional.”

Bemis talks about Say Anything’s upcoming record titled, OLIVER APPROPRIATE, which sounds like a drag name. He writes about how this character, Oliver, was something he created in the middle of dealing with his own identity stuff.

“I chose to write a full length about a self-loathing, slightly homophobic misogynist; essentially my opposite as a semi-actually-kinda-gay neurotic moralist who has been married to the female love of my life for ten years.”

The character Oliver, in Bemis’ eyes, is a critique of “new age masculinity.” He’s cheated on every woman he’s been with. He parties too much. “A man who kisses boys at beer-soaked coke parties as some kind of ironic joke instead of because he actually allows himself to find them attractive in an emotional sense.”

Bemis states that this end of Say Anything is more of a spiritual ending; this is the ending of this character, Oliver. Although, at this point, it’s unclear what that actually means for the future of the band.

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