Van Ness’ battle with abuse and addiction

There’s more to Jonathan Van Ness than joy and self-confidence, said Alex Hawgood in The New York Times. The stiletto-wearing co-host of TV’s Queer Eye says that many of his fans know him only as “the effervescent, gregarious, majestic, center-part-blow-dry cotton-candy figure-skating queen” that he portrays on the show. But the 32-year-old hairdresser has a darker backstory that he is only now starting to share. “I’ve had nightmares every night,” he says of his opening up, “because I’m scared to be this vulnerable.” Growing up well-off in Quincy, Ill., Van Ness says he was sexually abused by an older boy from church, an experience that planted the seed for other self-destructive behavior. In his early teens, he spent hours in internet chat rooms and met up with older men for sex. In his first semester at college, Van Ness blew his monthly $200 allowance on cocaine and—ashamed to ask his mother for more money—advertised sex for money online. His sex and drug addictions grew worse in his 20s, when he began smoking methamphetamine. One day, at age 25, he fainted in a salon while highlighting a client’s hair. Van Ness went to a clinic and tested positive for HIV—a revelation that led him to get clean. “I want people to realize you’re never too broken to be fixed.”