To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Aug. 31, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/31/npmon Simmons: No comment, sort of Exercise guru absolutely won't discuss his personal life -- unless you insist; Tammy and Jim's boy going Goth? India's giant sucking sound: Official blows it with Lewinsky remark. Plus: Kids would rather chill with an aardvark than with Clinton. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter People don't come much more open than Richard Simmons, the flamboyant diet-and-exercise-hawking flab fighter who has made a career from sharing his own personal struggles and says he has at times considered himself a "freak." In his upcoming autobiography, "Still Hungry After All These Years," the soldier against cellulite lays bare the details of his battle with bulimia, anorexia and starvation; his childhood struggles with bullies, ill health and semi-poverty; and his steely commitment to bringing home the proverbial bacon by helping the obese slim down. But there are two things Simmons says he won't talk about -- his "personal life" and death. And while, despite his protestations, Simmons discusses his painful struggle with the loss of both his parents in his book, he still draws the line at his bedroom door. "I gave 90 percent of my guts and my heart and my soul in this book and I kept 10 percent for me," he said, responding to my question during a press conference on Monday, quipping that 90 percent is "not bad. I think it's what William Morris gets." I was willing to drop the topic, but not so a reporter for a Florida paper, whose gentle "a lot of people perceive you as a gay man" got the poster boy for happiness (but not gaiety) really riled. "Look, I'm not your average man in his 50s. I don't have the gray hair slicked back, I don't have glasses on, I'm not in a coat and tie," the 51-year-old curly haired shorts-wearing aerobicizer testily replied. "My persona was always what a man was never supposed to be: outrageous, gregarious, crazy, silly, funny. But my mother told me ... never change, be who you are, do the good things that you do and ... let them think whatever they think." Simmons' PR folks cut the Florida reporter off before he could pose more probing questions, but Simmons wasn't done. "You have to understand I was not ever close to men," he told the next reporter, who was innocently trying to get in a question about bulimia. "I had my father, who was like my grandfather because he was older. I had no relatives. I had a very serious strict brother. And [my] Uncle Milton seemed like a really gruff guy, but he let me sit on his lap while he'd tell me a story. He hugged me. And no one that I'd ever met from my father's family ... none of them hugged me, none of them kissed me -- only Uncle Milton. So having a relationship that there was a male in the house that gave me some kind of affection was very important to me." So much for not answering questions about his personal life. Listen, Richard, whatever you do, don't run for president. You simply don't have the double-speak for it. And now I have one more question -- about death ... - - - - - - - - - - - - The lineage of liner "In ninth grade I started hanging out with punk and Goth kids. I can recall this one time wearing all black and putting on black eyeliner -- and, of course, I had the most famous eyeliner on in the world: my mother's." -- Jay Bakker, son of tainted preacher man Jim and painted lady Tammy Faye, on getting Goth with a little help from his mom. - - - - - - - - - - - - Like Lewinsky? Them's fightin' words And you thought things were getting ugly in American politics ... Indian Information Minister Pramod Mahajan may favor curry as much as the next guy, but he sure ain't currying much favor with his country's female voters at the moment. According to the Press Trust of India, Mahajan is backtracking with remarkable gusto after getting attacked for tastelessly likening opposition leader Sonia Gandhi to knee-pad queen Monica Lewinsky, a comparison that women's groups have labeled "an insult to Indian womanhood." "If some people felt hurt ... I am sorry about it," Mahajan said Saturday. However, the Hindu nationalist added, his meaning was somewhat misconstrued by the media. Mahajan, whose party believes that Gandhi, who didn't become an Indian national until 1983, is a "foreigner," was originally quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying, "If we are so keen on having a foreigner as prime minister, why not have Tony Blair or Bill Clinton or even Monica Lewinsky?" The remark was then picked up by the Times of India, which reported that kids cheered Mahajan "when he equated Gandhi with Lewinsky." Gosh, sounds like that prime minister job could be Monica's to blow ... - - - - - - - - - - - - Ouch, that's gotta hurt! It might not come as a huge surprise that 200 kids, ages 8 to 16, recently surveyed by HNTB, an airport-specializing architecture and engineering firm, would rather hang out and wait for their plane with Michael Jordan (44 percent) or the Spice Girls (16 percent) than President Clinton (10 percent). But the fact that Arthur the Aardvark, an animated character on PBS, edged the prez out by a full 2 percentage points has definitely got to burn. The president did manage to rank ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio (9 percent), Calista Flockhart (5 percent) and Hanson (4 percent). But I know of at least a hundred kids who can kiss their invitations to Air Force One so long ... salon.com | Aug. 31, 1999