Gant: That gets explored. Ben is still in the process of embracing his status, and so he does still engage in behavior that is questionable. I have to contemplate, Should he have a glass of Perrier in his hand, or should he have a glass of wine?

Paige: [Laughs] I contemplate that in my life every single day.

In our first Advocate interview, Peter, you said that you never felt more masculine and empowered than when you play Emmett. If being ourselves means, for some of us, walking down the middle of the gender line, why isn't that something we celebrate?

Paige: I got a great E-mail from an acquaintance in Los Angeles - notorious for disliking nelly gay guys - who found himself in an argument with someone about integrity, and he brought up Emmett. He said, "I realized in that moment that I had great respect for Emmett and who he is, and I find him attractive and all these things I never thought I would in a man who was less than hyperbolically masculine." I'm so proud to have been a part of that. The nicest thing that people say to me is that I give nelly queens a good name, and I'm glad. Nelly queens deserve a good name. The more we challenge ourselves on what we find attractive and what it means to be a man, the easier it's going to be on the generation coming up behind us.

Gant: What's been exciting for me, as one of these guys who only liked "masculine" guys - in the classic sense of the word - was discovering that I liked "feminine" traits and found them sexy. They turn me on. I realized that my previous perspective was about the fact that I didn't love that part of myself.

When you say "feminine" traits, are you talking about emotional traits like compassion and nurturing? Or about overt nonmasculinity?

Gant: It's such a hard thing to pin down, because they're such subjective things. My idea of what that means may be vastly different from what someone else means. I mean a lightness of freedom, [someone] who doesn't exist in the rigid confines of what it has traditionally meant to be "a man." There are certain things that ...