MONDO EXTRAS

There is definitely an unnatural acceleration of a relationship when you're famous. You can't just be dating and hanging out and deciding if you're going to be serious about someone while people are writing stuff about you. I mean, we'd known each other a month and all of a sudden we were mentioned in a gossip column. It makes you sit down and go, "Hey, where is this going?" We should totally be in the honeymoon phase of our relationship but we're under a microscope. That's weird.

But Melissa has already gone through this. She must be a pro at this sort of thing...relatively.

Well, she was out before, but she was with Julie when she came out so it's different. Julie wasn't famous or anything. I had a name because of Popular and so when we hooked up and we were both famous, it was like this big fireball.

On some level, it's awesome that we're all gossiping about this. Lesbians used to be either invisible or some object of scandal. Now housewives in middle America read about Melissa Etheridge's new girlfriend in People while standing in the checkout line at the supermarket.

Really? It's great that I have to put down magazines and turn off the TV for the next several weeks?

Yeah. I mean, I understand that it sucks for you to be under a microscope, but I'm sure it sucks just as much to be in a high-profile straight relationship.

I'm not aware of what is going on out there. Friends of mine call me and they're like, "You are such water-cooler talk," but I have no idea what people are saying about me.

Well, it's not Tom and Nicole and it's not vicious or anything. The people in my office are like, "Oh wow, Melissa has a new younger girlfriend." It's not pro-gay. It's not anti-gay. It's just gossip. And I think that's progress.

Exactly. I mean, it sucks that people emphasize the age difference, but it's great that no one is emphasizing anything else.

But I have to say, Kate Hudson and her husband have the exact same age difference and nobody's picking on them.

Well, that's because everyone is focused on the aesthetic difference, if you catch my drift. No one cares that he's older than her. It's that she's so much better looking than him.

That's true, but nobody's picking on the age difference. It's great that that's the only thing they could find to pick on us about.