You’re the only single one in the “Queer Eye” group. What is that like? It makes me acutely aware of how many 14-year-old girls want to be my best friend. O.K.?

I ask because one thing people love about the show is how it explores the ways that men can have intimacy and love in their lives outside romantic partnerships. Yes. I call this the “Sex and the City” syndrome. We all think that we need that connection, that all-encompassing love so deep that a mountain or the ocean would be jealous, but connection does come in so many forms.

The show is filmed in Georgia, and a lot of the guys that you made over seem like jocks — guys who had friends but weren’t necessarily used to opening up to other men. How did you help them with that? I’m the youngest of three boys, both of the older two are very heterosexual football-watching, married, child-rearing, cornfed Midwestern guys. A lot of times people have asked me, “Did you feel culture shock going to Atlanta?” But I think it was much more shocking for a lot of people in small towns in Georgia to see me — a 6-foot-2 gay man with a really fierce blow dry and a midriff-baring top — than it was for me to be there.

But even though you grew up in a similar environment, you never felt pressure to pass or hide your sexuality? I literally cannot do it. Like, if you picture me at 13, imagine big curly hair, imagine buck teeth, imagine me at 5-foot-4; I could not stop talking about, like, Miss Alabama, who had won the Miss America pageant. I could not pass if you held a gun to my head. I can’t do it.