The Doctor is In
We finally get Chris Kirkpatrick to talk -- somewhat.

by MORGAN THOMPSON
Rolling Stone Staff Reporter

In the first half-hour after I arrive at Rainbow House in Atlantic City, NJ, I am handed a baby with the blithe instruction not to drop her, asked to answer a phone that's ringing off the hook, interrogated about my job and my personal life by a bunch of bright-eyed children, invited to serve as a stand-in for an injured member of the basketball team, and taught the words (and some nice harmonies) to an uncomplimentary song about the Salvation Army -- which was written by Joe Hill, patron saint of the early American labor movement, I am informed by a young man with an eyebrow piercing and tattoos stretching up and down his arms -- with which a group of ten or eleven clients are serenading the bell-ringer on the corner across the street. It's chaos, or perhaps whatever happens when you get one step past chaos, inside these walls. I assume it's because of the upcoming holidays.

I mention this to one of the volunteers who's helping me look for the guy I'm here to see. She stops and looks at me, obviously surprised. "Oh, no," she says. "It's always like this here." Then she pauses and chews on her bottom lip for a minute, thinking. "Well, sometimes it's worse."

Rainbow House is one part homeless shelter, one part adult-education center, one part day-care facility, one part counseling service and crisis intervention center, one part community arts program, and entirely unlike anything I've ever encountered before. I'm surprised to find myself having so much fun that I almost forget why I'm here: to interview Dr. Christopher Kirkpatrick. Two years ago he catapulted into the public eye when his boyfriend (partner, significant other, whatever PC euphemism I'm supposed to be using these days), Justin Timberlake, international pop sensation, not only came out with a bang but announced his long-term relationship with Kirkpatrick, no doubt breaking the hearts and cherished dreams of fourteen-year-old girls everywhere.

Kirkpatrick has since become a favorite topic for reporters' speculation. He's more likely to recite pages of poetry in public than answer a simple question -- a tactic which drives many of my colleagues up the proverbial tree -- and once spent an entire week responding to photographers by pretending not to speak any English. Timberlake, when asked, just shakes his head. "Chris is Chris, man," he said to one of my colleagues in the magazine's last interview with him. "He's a really private person. And I wouldn't have him any other way."

Someone must have convinced him to pull back that curtain of privacy a little bit, though, and I've been invited to spend a day with him in the shelter he runs (assisted by, it's speculated, generous financial contributions from Timberlake). My guide finally turns him up in a tiny room in the recently-built art wing, where he's winding up a guitar lesson by telling his young protégé, who's clearly new to the instrument, to go home and soak his fingertips in a cup of tea. Kirkpatrick spots me coming in just as the young man is asking him to play something, and if I didn't know better, I'd call the expression on his face a smirk. "Sure," he says, and picks up the guitar again.

I am treated to a rousing rendition of "Cover of the Rolling Stone". This is my first clue that, no matter what else you can say about the man, his sense of humor is first-class.

It's easy to underestimate Kirkpatrick on first glance. He looks more like one of the shelter's clients than a psychiatrist, social worker, and author of two international best-sellers. He's wearing jeans that might be older than half the people in this building and a t-shirt with a slogan unrepeatable in polite company, and his hair is currently alternating shades of red and green -- for Christmas, one presumes. Appearances can be deceiving, however; the man holds two doctorates and is working on a third -- "in my copious spare time," as he says.

"I always loved school, when I was growing up, no matter how much I pretended I didn't care," he explains as we walk back to his office, down the corridor decorated with signed handprints. Clients, volunteers, and visitors, he tells me. I recognize a few names. "When I graduated high school, I didn't think I was going to be able to afford college, but with scholarships, student loans, and working myself stupid, I managed it. My mother wanted me to have more chances than she had."

Kirkpatrick's fairly open about his past: the oldest child of an unwed mother, who became pregnant with him while she was still in her teens, he and his family moved around often during his childhood. "We were pretty damn poor. I made it through school on grants and loans and fifty-hour work weeks, and let's not even talk about grad school. It's what got me into this field, though. I got through with a lot of help from a lot of really fantastic people, and it's time to give it back."

And give it back he does. He's animated and enthusiastic when he talks about the Rainbow House program, reeling off statistics and success stories as though he eats, sleeps, and breathes them. As we go, we're greeted by everyone from a very pregnant teenager to a man who looks like he's in his seventies, and Kirkpatrick frequently stops to chat for a few minutes. He remembers names with a facility that puts me to shame, and pulls details about each person's life from a seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of memory.

He corrects me, as we finally make our way into his office, when I call Rainbow House a shelter. "That's only part of what we do. It's an important part, don't get me wrong, but it's not the only part. See, the problem is we've got this huge segment of the population that just doesn't have the basic skills training to integrate into our society. Not only the education, but the coping skills, the basic ways of interacting with each other that keep our society running. Hell, most of the people I encounter outside this place don't have those skills. People come in here and they're hurting, they're lost, they're convinced they're worthless. We show them that's not the case."

Certainly not your typical celebrity boyfriend, but it doesn't seem to concern him. "I don't have time for that kind of stuff," he says, referring to the Hollywood scene. "And Justin doesn't bug me about it. I make it to the awards shows and stuff when I can, but he knows I've got a life away from him. I mean, don't get me wrong, I support him just like he supports me. But we're both completely functional, independent human beings away from each other."

How did this unlikely couple happen? Industry rumor runs rampant, everything from Timberlake having a nervous breakdown to Kirkpatrick conning a backstage pass for one of his four sisters. Kirkpatrick laughs when I bring it up. "Honest truth, man, I was babysitting a diner for a friend of mine, the overnight shift, and he came in looking for breakfast. I hate to disrupt the conspiracy theories." Conspiracy theories abound; gossips point out everything from their nine-year age gap to their difference in social station to the fact that Kirkpatrick appears to be Timberlake's first same-sex relationship. Kirkpatrick dismisses them all. "Sometimes people just click. We met, we talked, we got along. Neither of us was really in a spot to start dating when we met, but things calmed down a little later, and then we ran into each other again and the time was right."

And what about the rumors that their relationship was more professional than personal at first? After all, Kirkpatrick is a psychiatrist. He gets very quiet when I mention it. "You know, a lot of people say stuff like that. People want to believe there's something wrong with Justin, because of who he is. Like I said, there are a lot of people in this world who just lack basic humanity skills."

Point taken.

Kirkpatrick is quick to talk about his professional life, but details about his personal life are harder to pry out of him. "I find it hard to imagine that people would be interested in me," he confesses over coffee, after pushing aside a stack of paper that makes my desk look neat. Clearly, paperwork hasn't even made it up to the status of secondary priority. "I mean, I'm just this guy. Nobody would have heard of me if it weren't for Justin. I don't have a problem talking about my personal life to the people here, but I live in mortal dread of waking up and finding myself misquoted on the entertainment pages, or something."

But given his choice of significant others, a bit of public attention is inevitable. "The first time I showed up in the Enquirer, my mom called me up and said 'Christopher Alan Kirkpatrick, why are you staring out at me from the pages of this tabloid?' It took her a while to get used to it, but now she calls me up every week and tells me what I did the week before. She thinks it's funny."

That sense of humor runs in the family. Kirkpatrick has made it a game over the past two years to see what kind of outrageous stories he can coax the media into printing about him, from the time US Weekly wrote about his (fictional) summer in Tibet to Liz Smith's habit of referring to him as "Dr. Freud". When Kirkpatrick is invited to deny a rumor, he usually turns right around and makes up something even more outré. Detractors have accused him of doing it for more attention, but the impression I get is that this is all one giant game to him. Nobody can accuse him of taking himself too seriously.

One thing he does take seriously, though, is his work. When there's a plumbing emergency in the women's bathrooms -- a broken pipe, I gather, from what Kirkpatrick's administrative assistant/right-hand-woman says when she pokes her head in to fetch him -- I exercise some of the skills they taught me in journalism school and track down some people who might be more willing to talk. The knot of young men I find all look like they could answer a casting call for the stereotypical Hollywood hoodlum, but they count among their number two artists, one writer, and a budding accountant. Angel Gerardo is a college student at nearby Stockton State University, studying marine biology. His face lights up when I ask him about Kirkpatrick. "The doc? He's high class, man. Cares about every single person who walks through these doors, even if he doesn't know them yet. I was nothing when I walked in here, and he picked me up and showed me there was something pretty special underneath it all."

Gerardo has a severe case of dyslexia, which was undiagnosed until he was twenty, and repeated so many years of school even he can't keep track of them all. "Doctor Chris and his people got me in here, got me a learning specialist, and I got my GED. And now look at me. We all come back here, even when we don't need to anymore. This is the kind of place where people actually give a damn about you, and we all feel like we have to pass it on." Gerardo is serving as "big brother" to three disadvantaged youths himself now. The way his eyes light up with pride when he talks about them is eerily similar to the passion Kirkpatrick displays for his work.

I ask them if things have changed since the media, myself included, began paying more attention. They laugh. One of the other young men, who goes by the name of Penguin, says, "Yeah, we ain't trying to raise money for the electricity at the end of the month anymore." They seem supremely unconcerned with the world of celebrity. The impression I get is they find it much like a foreign country: fun to visit every now and then, but not as good as coming back home.

They speak easily and readily of Timberlake, who spends most of his weekends with Kirkpatrick at the oceanfront house they share to the north. Apparently Timberlake is no stranger here. "He's solid. And he and the doc are really tight," Penguin says. "A lot of us really look up to them. We don't have a lot of models of good relationships, you know? They're making it work."

When I ask -- as delicately as possible -- about whether or not some of the people who walk through the doors have problems with Kirkpatrick's sexuality, it garners me a few frowns. "A few brothers start talking trash when they realize. Someone usually sets them straight pretty quick. Doc is Doc, you know?" Gerardo says, unconsciously echoing Timberlake's description. "He doesn't judge us by what we come in here looking like, and we don't judge him by his personal life." It's a far more tolerant attitude than I was expecting, but I'm coming to realize that little about this society is what I was expecting at all.

I keep trying to get more details from them, but nobody seems to want to spill. The loyalty Kirkpatrick inspires is fearsome. Plumbing emergency dealt with, Kirkpatrick returns, and when I notice the fresh grease stains on his knees and shins, I realize his choice of attire may be more "sensible" than "rebellion against your typical officewear". There's a further delay while he asks about Gerardo's calculus class, Penguin's latest magazine submission, and one of the unnamed young men's paintings. I broach the topic of sexuality again with Kirkpatrick once we're back in his office and he's apologized for the interruption. "You know, for a society that claims to be so moral, we're sure obsessed with sex and sexuality," is all I can get from him at first, until I pry a little deeper.

He clearly doesn't want to talk much about it. "See, the thing is, when J came out, everyone was falling over themselves to get the story, and they've tried to turn him into some kind of queer role model. And it doesn't work like that. I mean, ask any psychologist. Sexual orientation is just one little facet of someone's whole personality, and you can't -- people keep trying to magnify it, to blow it up until it's all we're defined by. Neither one of us woke up one morning and decided we wanted to be the poster child for queer America. We met, we dated, we fell in love, and now we're living together. Is it going to last? I don't know. Nobody knows the future. But we're doing pretty well. We both walked into this with open eyes, and neither one of us is looking back."

Everyone I talk to agrees that this assessment of the relationship is pretty much spot-on. Timberlake keeps a house on the west coast, mostly for convenience, but he spends a good half his time in New Jersey, and Kirkpatrick occasionally flies out to meet him -- assuming no plumbing crises arise -- when he's on tour. The bicoastal lifestyle seems to work for the two of them. "I love Justin," Kirkpatrick says, "but both of us realized a while back that we're a lot happier with three thousand miles between us every now and then." Distances aside, the fact that they've survived as a couple for so long says they must be doing something right.

Then again, Kirkpatrick is, in his own words, "terminally laid-back." Evidence of this can be found in the grace and competence with which he handles the countless interruptions during our interview, including the drop-everything crisis when one of the shelter's current clients is on the phone talking about suicide. He kicks me out of his office with a distracted gesture and I wander the halls alone this time, though everyone I see offers a smile or a wave.

I eventually come back to something that caught my eye when I first arrived: there's a plaque in the entryway of the complex, with a Bible verse in beautiful calligraphy. It seemed out of place for what I knew of the ideals behind Rainbow House, which is aggressively secular in its approach, but when I go back and read it, it makes a little more sense. "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" By now I'm starting to understand the spirit that motivates this place, and I'm beginning to realize that the article I write from this interview is going to have to talk as much about this organization as it does about Kirkpatrick himself, because at the most essential levels, the two are inseparable.

I'm in the hallway when Timberlake arrives, fresh from his flight in from L.A. I hang back and watch as he gets the same kind of greeting I received, complete with babysitting duty, basketball recruiting -- which he eagerly accepts, but postpones for later on in the evening -- and invitation to harass the bellringers outside. He seems comfortable here, far different than the public mask he wore at this year's American Music Awards, and it's clear he's earned the respect of the shelter's clientele. More than that, the respect is mutual. His level of comfort approaches the kind of ease he displays on a stage.

Still, his eyes light up and he crosses the hallway quickly when Kirkpatrick emerges from the office. They don't embrace -- I get the impression that neither one of them is big on public displays of affection -- but Timberlake catches Kirkpatrick's hand briefly and says something, too low for me to hear. Kirkpatrick looks tired. Little wonder, since his administrative assistant tells me he's been running since six this morning, and it's marching rapidly toward dinnertime. He smiles at something Timberlake says, though, and from their body language they could be the only people in the room.

Kirkpatrick introduces us, and Timberlake turns that world-famous charming grin in my direction. "So, you're the one who's trying to get Chris to talk?" he asks. In between crises, which I'm beginning to understand are par for the course around here, yes. His smile gets wider. "Did you get him to agree to the photo shoot yet?"

"Justin," Kirkpatrick says, with the patience of someone who's repeated the warning a thousand times before. "Be careful, or I'll tell the whole world the story behind your latest single." My ears perk at that, but Timberlake takes it in good humor and promises to return as soon as he checks in on the arts wing. (He is, apparently, learning pottery from one of the shelter's temporary residents, and jokes that he's found his retirement career.)

Kirkpatrick watches Timberlake go, and if there were any doubt left, the look in his eye would finally convince me that there's something here beyond the usual type of industry relationship I encounter. Even more rare, Kirkpatrick catches me looking and doesn't immediately put on a tough-guy act in response. He just watches me for a minute, then says, as though we're talking about this week's football scores, "There are two types of family in this world: the kind you're born with, and the kind you make for yourself. Sometimes they match up, and when that happens it's great, but sometimes you get to find them yourself later. You know what the trick is, though?"

He's clearly waiting for me to ask, so I oblige him. He drapes an arm around my shoulders. His skin is warm, like he's running off his own body's reserves to fuel himself, but it's comfortable and friendly. "Recognizing them when you find them. Come on, let's go watch Justin make a fool of himself with clay. Think you could get a good photo for the article out of it?"

There's something about this place, these people, that puts me at ease, and I have the sneaking suspicion the blame lies solely on Kirkpatrick's shoulders. It makes me want to come back when I'm not on the clock, next time I'm in the area. I ask if they could find something for a reporter to accomplish, figuring there's enough going on here for just about any pair of hands to be of use. "We can always come up with something," Kirkpatrick says. "Besides, I'm pretty sure you've already figured out the important part of volunteering here."

What's that? I ask. Timberlake's the one who answers, and I get the feeling it took him a while -- not to learn the lesson, but to believe it, way down deep where it counts. "Everyone's made up of something special. The trick is learning to get out of the way of the parts of you that tell you you're not worth it. Once you start believing that, everything else is just small details, and you can always fill those in later."

The world would be a better place, I think, if more people thought like this. Looking at Timberlake, at the smile on his face and the way he slaps clay-covered handprints onto Kirkpatrick's rear, I think back to the Timberlake of five years ago: child star struggling to redefine himself in an adult business, wearing his misery on his sleeve while trying not to let it show. It's clear he's learned Kirkpatrick's lesson well. There's a kind of confidence that shines through, one that can't be faked or dismissed, and Timberlake has it now. He isn't the only one I've met today who has it, either.

So if you're in the area, and you have an afternoon to spare for people who've never gotten much from others and yet somehow manage to give back more than they ever received, take the time and look up Rainbow House, because this is a place where good things happen. Tell them I sent you. You might not find what you were looking for, but you'll probably find what you need.

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