So Far, So Great! :: William J. Mann on Gay Fiction, Equal Rights... and the New Barbra Bio

William J. Mann has told the story of a generation that came through the AIDS crisis, dealt with the social and political turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s, and touched the very lives that he was describing in his seminal trilogy of books, "The Men from the Boys," "Where the Boys Are," and "Men Who Love Men."

But Mann has also told the story of Hollywood as a gay place where gay people--be they in the closet as they often were--made a profound impact on global culture. Mann's works include "The Biograph Girl," a fictionalized account of the life of silent screen star Florence Lawrence, as well as biographies of a prominent early gay actor, "Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines" and an Oscar-winning director, "Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger."

More recently, Mann has turned his attention--and his skill as a cultural detective--to divas of the screen, icons with big gay followings like Kate Hepburn ("Kate") and Elizabeth Taylor ("How to Be A Movie Star"). The book he now has in progress, "Hello, Gorgeous," concerns itself with arguably an even bigger star: Barbra Streisand.

Mann agreed to an interview with EDGE about the imminent Streisand biography. The friendly chat turned into a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion about his life and career thus far.

Growing Up and Getting Involved

Mann meets me at the door with a quick hug. "I've got a cold," he says apologetically. Then, in his usual solicitous manner, he escorts me inside and offers me a drink. "Sorry about the mess," he says, navigating his way around plastic sheeting, tools, and assorted displaced kitchen items. "We're renovating. This is the kitchen stage."

Mann's comfortable house in Provincetown is one of two homes that he and his husband, Dr. Timothy Huber, a psychologist, maintain. On this particular day, Huber is in New York, setting up a new practice. Until recently, the couple, who married in 2004, spent winters in Palm Springs, California. They've since sold their California home and bought a house in Connecticut, the state where Mann grew up.

Mann's younger years were those of a gay kid who didn't lie to himself when he realized who he was. The writer embraced his sexuality and the world of people like him as an 18-year-old in the 1980s. His coming of age took place in the wake of the sudden and devastating fury of the onslaught of AIDS, and on the cusp of the energetic activism that put gay people on the political map once and for all.

It seems like an appropriate place to start the interview: How did being a club kid in the midst of the AIDS crisis affect his view of gay culture and, by extension, color his novels? How does this club kid now see the gay world, and what does he think the future might hold?

"I'm might still be a club something," Mann chuckles. "But I'm sure not a kid.

"How did being a club kid influence my view of gay life?" Mann continues, reflectively. "I think that I was always in the midst of things as they were happening. It was an exciting time, with all the parties that used to go on, parties which eventually became the circuit. At that age, I wasn't as politically aware of the bigger picture as I became later, but because I was so versed in the gay bars and going out, I had a sense of the larger community out there, all the different kinds of people there were in the big gay world.

"I don't think that for many kids today, that world of the club still exists," Mann reflects. "It's online. Even today at Tea Dance, a young man I met told me he doesn't normally talk to anybody because he comes with his friends, his pack. They all travel together because they all know each other, and the idea of meeting someone at Tea Dance or in the clubs isn't a big part of what they do."

As he grew up and completed his education, Mann grew more aware and interested in the gay political situation.

"It was when I got my graduate degree at Wesleyan," the novelist tells EDGE. "Through meeting people at Wesleyan, I got to know some of the Connecticut gay activists. When I got my Master's, I was teaching at UConn as an adjunct, to make money. I got an apartment in Hartford and made friends with the local activists, and that woke me up and sharpened my awareness of the political situation.

"That was in the early 1990s, when AIDS activism was at its height, and we'd go to ACT UP demonstrations in New York or Washington. That group of activists in Connecticut really became my family."

Since then, of course, things have improved for the GLBT community in many ways--except, Mann notes, where they have not.

"It's infuriating, the political situation now," he tells EGDE. "More so than before because, 'God damn it, how come we haven't evolved already?' It's frustrating that's it's still an issue, that we have to defend ourselves from people like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. It's 2011! That level of homophobia should have gone away by now--and I think it would have, if George W. Bush hadn't been handed the White House in 2000.

"At that point, a lot of the evangelical movement was disenchanted with politics. There was talk of them just retreating to their own worlds and teaching their kids what they wanted. They were discouraged that the public wasn't more on their side during the whole Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. But with Bush getting in there--and he looks positively pro-gay next to Bachmann and Santorum--the evangelical movement had eight years in which to reorganize, get their judges appointed, and get their message out through Fox News.

"I'm not saying we wouldn't have homophobia today if Bush hadn't been president," Mann continues, "but if we'd have had eight years of a pro-gay bully pulpit under a President Gore. We would have seen a continuation of the kind of gay acceptance that we saw growing all through the 1990s. Can you imagine what these crazy people would say about "Will and Grace" today? It's no surprise we haven't had such an unapologetically gay show on TV since that point.

"The rhetoric that we hear today is worse than it was ten years ago, and not just on gay issues," Mann adds. "Now we talk about whether burning a Koran is free speech. Ten years ago such a discussion would have been seen as beyond the pale to have on national TV. Anyone advocating such a view would be marginalized and not given airtime. But now extremism dominates the national conversation.

"And we've gone beyond homophobia. Now it's 'Death to gays.' We're an abomination, we should be killed--it's happening in Africa, and there are now religious fundamentalists who actually float that idea in this country as well. That, again, would have been beyond the pale to even infer ten years ago.

"The rhetoric has just become much more extreme on so many levels. Look at the disrespect the office of the President is given under Obama. That would have been unthinkable under Bush."

Gay Generation Gap

EDGE notes that there's a persistent divide between older gays, who often see their sexuality as a rebellion against the heteronormative world, and gay youths, who don't understand why they should be legally locked out of participation in many of society's essential institutions.

"The younger kids on some level are more conservative in their outlook on gay identity and where they fit in the world," Mann says. "I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, and I'm an old leftie talking. My closest mentors as a young gay man were all pretty radical types. Most, sadly, are dead now, but I can imagine them saying, 'Marriage? This is the issue? This is what we're fighting for?'

"But I don't think that's a contradiction at all," the esteemed writer continues. "In some ways, claiming the institution of marriage is just as subversive as doing away with it, which is what some of the old-time radicals wanted to do. We're claiming and redefining some very basic social institutions here, and in a good way, a more accepting way and a more equal way.

"The notion of who is the wife and who is the husband doesn't exist in gay marriage--certainly not in my marriage. It's a marriage of equals. I think that's what's happening in heterosexual society, too, but not nearly on the level as it exists in same-sex marriages. I don't think it's a rejection of the old radical way of thinking; I think in some ways we're taking up radical notions and applying them to some fundamentals of daily life."

EDGE ventures to ask whether Mann's own marriage to Huber was a political act, or whether the couple entered into wedded bliss in an apolitical, strictly romantic way.

"It was both a personal and a political statement," Mann exclaims. "We'd been together sixteen years. We didn't need to get married to validate that or to make it stick. But we wanted our families there so we could stand up and claim the same respect from them they'd given our heterosexuals siblings and cousins. It was as much an expression of my commitment to Tim, and his to me, as it was an opportunity for affirmation, to stand up in front of all those people and say, 'Our relationship is just as good as yours.'

"But it was surprising how personal it became in the course of doing that, how really empowering it is to stand up in front of a community and express your love for each other, and that's true, gay or straight.

"I did get a little political at the reception, though," Mann smiles. "Making the toast, I said, 'You're all here... and some day this is not going to be a big deal, but it is right now.' I couldn't not say that. Marriage equality is a big deal, not just for Tim and me, but for everybody.

"And I think the difference is, with younger people, that they still kind of see marriage as being a fairy tale happy ending where you find one person for the rest of your life who meets all your needs. A lot of the young people I know are kind of frantic about it: 'I've got to meet somebody! I've got to find Mr. Right! I've got to find him now! My life is half over!' Whereas most of the people my age that I know met their spouses in their mid-thirties.

"But there is that pressure in the culture," Mann notes, "and in straight culture, as well. 'You've gotta find your mate, your soul mate. You've gotta settle down. You've gotta have kids.' It's kind of a fantasy."

Freedom for All Families

EDGE notes that the ideal of marriage as an eternal romantic haze with a perfect soulmate is something deeply embedded in American culture. Even apart from that, human beings are hard-wired for pair bonding, and that is just as true for gays as for anyone else.

"Yeah... but, you know, Tim and I have an open marriage," Mann points out. "In some ways, I wish more heterosexuals might see that as an option, because they might stay together longer. And here's the qualifier before anyone says, 'Nonmonogamy isn't right for everybody!' Of course it isn't, but wouldn't it be good if it was an option for those for whom it is? Tim and I are heteronormalized on some level, but I think we've also brought our own definition -- in many cases, not in all cases -- to marriage."

The writer offers an example of just how marriage is evolving and adapting, and, in some ways, staying much the same, even among same-sex families.

"A Facebook friend noticed after marriage became legal in New York that in the wedding pictures you'd see of same-sex couples, the men all tended to dress the same," Mann says. "They were both grooms. But the women, an awful lot of them still did the butch-femme look: One was in a tux and one was in a dress.

"I'd love to see a study about that, because I do think that in men's relationships there's much less of the old, 'Who's the top and who's the bottom? Who's the husband and who's the wife?' In most of my friends' relationships, there's really much more of a sense of two partners playing different roles at different times and in different situations. I think this is a much more interesting dynamic, because it goes back to the idea of marriage between equals, overturning the old 'husband-controls-the-wife' paradigm."

States of Equality

For a time, before voters in California snatched family parity away from gay and lesbian couples at the ballot box, Mann and his husband were living in two marriage equality states. (That's once again the case now that their second home is in Connecticut.) EDGE wondered to what degree the change in California after Proposition 8 affected the couple's situation.

"I remember when we were living in California, the questions was, do we get married again in California, or will California recognize our Massachusetts marriage?" Mann reflects. "That was never answered satisfactorily, and then of course it became a moot question. But now, as I understand it, Connecticut will recognize our Massachusetts marriage, so we don't have to get re-married in Connecticut.

"We're also spending a lot of time in New York, and that's where Tim has opened his new practice. We'll be recognized there, too, so part of me just says, 'We'll stay in the Massachusetts-Connecticut-New York circle, and we'll be fine. Let Alabama do what they want.'

"Sometimes I really do fantasize about what life might be like if we could just let all those red states go have their own Talibanic country," Mann adds. "Of course, there'd be a mass exodus of people out of there, and probably a mass exodus of people out of the blue states, too. And really, I don't know if that would be so bad."

Since the advent of marriage equality in New York last year, the issue of adding anti-gay language to the Constitution of the United States to deny gay and lesbian families legal status as families has resurfaced; indeed, the slate of Republican hopefuls for the GOP nomination in this year's presidential race have almost all said that they would press for such an amendment.

If such a legal obstacle were placed before same-sex couples, the practical effects could be devastating. But to what extent would such an amendment impinge upon the essence of loving same-sex unions?

"I think it's important to have legal recognition," Mann states. "Tim and I were together for 16 years before we got married. We didn't need a law to keep us together. But it was a damn important milestone in our lives and fuck anybody who wants to try to take it away from us.

"I was just reading online about the Republican candidates' debates and some married gay guy in Iowa said to Tim Pawlenty, 'You're trying to take away a right of mine,' " Mann continues. "You could tell Pawlenty was completely uncomfortable with the question, with being confronted face to face with some of these things, with a guy telling him, 'You're trying to destroy my life, here!'

"That's what infuriates me," Mann adds. "These people out there, living their sanctimonious lives, who don't know me or my friends, and they want to come in and take rights away from us and take away the [legal meaning] of our weddings--happy days where families came together, and what business is it of Michele Bachmann's--or Mitt Romney's for that matter, he supports a federal amendment, too--to try to take that away from us? How dare they do that? Do what you want in your own communities but stay out of ours, where two-thirds of the people of Massachusetts want same-sex marriage to stay legal. What right does someone from somewhere else have to tell us how to live?"

Or, EDGE suggests, for that matter, assume that our values are so very different from their own.

"Right, and I'm sure they would look at me and say, 'He's not practicing marriage the way that we would traditionally describe it,' " Mann says, clearly a little hot under the collar. "Well, in fact, the true values are about love and commitment and honesty and integrity. Those are the things that I think are really important to marriages, and I would say heterosexual marriages don't have a monopoly on those values. I know many, many couples, no matter how they define their particular relationships, who love each other very, very much, and are committed to each other. To look just at the externals and say, 'You don't share my same values' is small-minded and just really, really hateful."

Life and Art

EDGE notes that Mann's writing, particularly his trilogy, traces the evolution of gay relationships in a way that proceeds hand in hand with the complex back and forth of same-sex families' degree of recognition.

"The trilogy did follow my own life in many ways," Mann notes. "It's not an autobiography by any means; there's lots of stuff that's very different. But in our own life we have a niece, my sister's daughter, who is very much a part of our lives," just as the couple central to the trilogy becomes a role model to a nephew by the third book.

"She's here in Provincetown a lot, and has been since the time she was very young," Mann continues. "Tim is as much an uncle to her as anybody else; she's grown up with gay being a completely normal part of life. She's 16 now. She wears 'Legalize Gay Marriage' T-shirts to school and things like that. So you see that in the character of the nephew in the third book.

"When I wrote the first book, however, I was very disengaged from my family," Mann continues. "That's changed a lot in the last ten years, especially with my parents.

"My sister has always been fine," the writer adds. "My parents had a little bit more trouble in the beginning, but nothing like some parents do--and now, if Tim doesn't come home with me for a family event, they're disappointed. So it's completely normalized. They stand up to their church, and say things like, 'The Pope doesn't speak for me!' As a kid, I couldn't ever imagine them saying that. As Catholics, they believed the Pope was infallible. Not anymore. And I think a lot of that has to do with me."

In some ways, though reality has caught up with Mann's books, his writing remains ahead of the curve. The issue of acceptance within the GLBT community, for example, may still lag somewhat behind developments in the third novel, which introduces a trans character and treats him with complete respect.

"I'll tell you a fascinating story of life imitating fiction," Mann says, with a brilliant grin. "The whole notion of gender and sexual orientation fascinates me, and that's why I had the subplot in the third book of the gay man and the trans man. Well, this summer I met a guy here in town who is as hot as you can possibly imagine. He's gorgeous, he's hot, he's sexy. And he's trans. He hasn't finished having all of the surgery yet, so, as he says, he still has different plumbing. But it's quite amazing to realize how freaking attracted I was to him! And yet, ten years ago, if I had seen him, when he was still identifying as a woman, would I still have been as attracted to him?"

EDGE ponders how much sexual attraction relies on the facts of the flesh, versus the ineffable mysteries of an individual's spirit--gender identity included.

"Right!" Mann exclaims. "Exactly. I always wonder about that, because, in fact, he told me he wasn't dressing that much differently ten years ago, so he would have looked basically the same as he does now. So would I have been attracted? Or would I have just reacted automatically with, 'Woman; lesbian; I'm not attracted.' That's something that I'm fascinated by and I might write more about."

In a new novel with new characters? Or in a fourth book to his celebrated trilogy? Would Mann consider re-visiting those characters?

"I don't know," Mann tells EDGE. "I've kind of gotten away from the fiction in the last few years, and people always ask me if I'm going back to writing novels. I'd love to, but I'd have to have a really good story.

A Historical Thriller

"The next non-fiction book that I want to do after this one, after Barbra, is hopefully gong to be a creative approach to merging fiction and non-fiction, using the skills and techniques I've developed for both.

"It's about a murder that happened in Hollywood in 1922, of a director named William Desmond Taylor," Mann clarifies. "What I've discovered is because of that murder, Hollywood really reorganized itself. The studio system grew out of the scandals of the 1920s, and the biggest scandal of the 1920s was the murder of this man. The studio system and all of its attendant structures, like the Hayes Code and all of that, were in response to these scandals, which threatened to shut the industry down. There was talk of taking film production out of Hollywood and bringing it back to New York. Hollywood as we know it could have ended right there. In response to these scandals, and in order to survive, the movie industry created these structures that came to define American filmmaking for the next 60 years.

"But that sounds very dry and academic," Mann continues. "I want to tell the story of the murder and all of the interesting things and fascinating characters that were part of the Hollywood scene; people like Mary Pickford, who we think of as the dewy-eyed girl. She was actually a brilliant businesswoman with a real vision for the future. I want to bring these people alive and tell the story of the mystery surrounding the murder and all the suspects. Was it her? Was it him?' It'll be a murder mystery with a lot of colorful stories about how Hollywood came to be.

"I'd like to juxtapose the creation of this dream factory against the background of these other scandals talking place at the time," adds the writer. "By telling the dark side of Hollywood and juxtaposing that with the bright lights of movies, I'm hoping to tell a new and interesting story."

EDGE asks Mann whether his novel "The Biograph Girl" was similar in genre to the book he's describing.

"That was historical fiction--real people who were completely fictionalized, where I made sixty percent of it up," Mann explains. "What I'm talking about here is a book like Eric Larson's 'The Devil in the White City.' It reads like a novel, but the story is 100 percent true. Or like Sebastian Junger's 'A Perfect Storm.' These books were pages turners, but everything in there was real, footnoted and documented. It's completely non-fiction, but reads like a novel with characters and plot."

The Lives of the Divas

EDGE ventures to ask about the Barbra Streisand biography.

"I'm almost done," Mann says, looking relieved. "It should be out next October. It'll be her 50th anniversary in show business, and she's got a movie coming out at the same time, 'Guilt Trip' with Seth Rogen, and she's hopefully going to be re-making 'Gypsy.' Plus, 'Funny Girl' is being revived with Lauren Ambrose. So there'll be a lot of attention on Streisand [in 2012], and hopefully this book can ride that wave."

EDGE recalls that when he was writing his biography of Elizabeth Taylor, Mann was not able to secure an interview with the screen legend. Did he have any better luck with Streisand?

"No," Mann says. "But I wrote to her publicist and told him I was doing this. I never actually requested an interview, because first of all I knew she doesn't do them... Well, actually, it's not that I didn't request an interview. I wrote, 'If Ms. Streisand would like to talk to me or if she has any questions, she can certainly get in touch with me.'

"But as with Elizabeth Taylor, I talked to people very close to her, and she hasn't tried to put up any obstacles to me doing the book," Mann continues. "[The book covers] just her very early years, from seventeen to twenty-two. Just how she became a star, and I'm telling it very similarly to how I described the non-fiction novel. Hopefully it will be a page-turner.

"I think she's going to like the book when it comes out," adds the writer, "but whether she likes it or not, I think she'll respect it. Someone who is as in charge of her career and image as Streisand is doesn't necessarily want to tell all of the secrets, and by that I don't mean secrets of a scandalous sort. But the trade secrets that reveal what it takes to make someone really, really famous. There's a lot in my book about what went on behind the scenes [and led to events] that we might have thought were simply spontaneous and inevitable. There's a lot of manipulation to make those things happen, and that's the part that probably any star would want not to have revealed, and that's what this book looks at. That my thing; that's what I write about, the machinery behind the stardom."

That was also the focus of Mann's Elizabeth Taylor biography: How savvy Taylor was about controlling her image and shaping the narrative that eventually became her legend and her legacy.

"The three women that I've written about, Hepburn, Taylor, and now Streisand, have all epitomized, in three different ways, the kind of fame that creates institutions," Mann notes. "They all did that in their own ways, and they all managed to outshine their contemporaries. That's what interests me about these larger-than-life figures. How does someone become that famous? How does someone go from being an unknown kid from Brooklyn in 1960, kind of an ugly duckling with zero connections in showbiz, to being the biggest star in the world by 1964? How does that happen? Yes, a lot of it was simply that she was magical. But magic is never enough to create a star. You need a lot of craft as well."

Looking Inward

Were Mann to undertake a biography of himself, EDGE asks, how would he conceptualize himself? Would he, as he's done with others, define a figure who is the sum of his entire life--a figure that might only be glimpsed day to day, but who would be recognizable once his life was taken as a whole?

"It's interesting that you ask me that, because I've had a couple of people say, 'Will you ever write a memoir?' " Mann responds. "I've met a few interesting people in the course of my life, and hopefully will meet a few more interesting people, and I've lived through some interesting eras and been to some interesting places. I've thought of how I'd tell my own story, and you're right--it couldn't be a traditional biography, because I'm not that famous or important, or that interesting.

"But if I could tell a story about a guy who came from a very working class background and had a sense of, 'Maybe I could do something with my life, maybe I could do something a little bit different than what everyone expects,' then maybe there'd be a story there," Mann adds. "When I was a kid, I used to say, 'I never want to have a job. I never want to have a boss.' I saw how my parents had jobs and bosses, and I so didn't want that. I wanted to do something different, something else. That was really thinking outside the box for a working-class kid--but, luckily, I found a way and all these years later, I'm still my own boss."

How would Mann summarize achieving that goal? Has it been a matter of luck Of persistence? Or maybe the result of his refusal to go along with how things are typically done?

"All of those, I think," Mann says thoughtfully. "But also... One of the things that infuriates me about people is when they say, 'Ugh, I don't like my life, I don't like my job, I don't like my relationship...' So fucking do something about it! It just makes me crazy when people can't get it together enough to figure a way to make things happen.

"Tim's always teasing me because I have lists of things that I have to do every day--actually I have lists of lists. I've always been this way, ever since I was a teenager," Mann adds. "I have to do A, B, and C to make this happen, or get this position, or move to this place, or get this article published. And if I do all the things on my list, I can get what I want. Sometimes it takes years, but you have to have that kind of discipline and commitment.

"Even the renovation of the house," Mann continues. "Tim and I have been talking about it for the last year and finally I was, 'If this is gonna happen, we gotta start making some calls and getting some people in here.'

"Too often, people say that they want to do something, but they just don't do it. I understand that there are obstacles; 'I can't quit my job today, because I've got to support my family.' I understand that, but there's always a way out. You're never trapped. You can always figure a way to do what you want to do. Make a list. Go step by step. Because if you don't make it happen, then you must not really have wanted it. And I always really, really wanted it, ever since I was a kid. Whatever that 'it' was."

Personal Best

Okay, so--has Mann reached his personal "it," or is "it" at least in sight?

"Oh, no, no," Mann laughs. "I'm not ready to rest on my laurels quite yet. Is 'it' in sight? Maybe. If I knew I was going to be hit by a bus tomorrow, I guess I could say I was happy with what I've gotten so far. I'm not rich, but I'm not poor. I've got a wonderful husband. I live in Provincetown in a house I love. I have lots of friends, and I've probably achieved more than I expected when I was ten years old... This is sufficient.

"But, the kind of person I am, I always want to go try something else, do something more," the writer is quick to add. "I really want to write a movie. I'm working on a screenplay at the moment; I'm also working on the book for a musical based on my book "Wisecracker." These are all things that I want to do because I haven't done them yet."

If, God forbid, Mann were to be hit by that hypothetical bus, what would be his regret?

"My regret? I don't really have any regrets," Mann says. "Regret is such a big word. Would I regret not having had an opportunity to write a film if that never happens? I'd be disappointed, but I'd get over it.

"I think the only regrets I might have at the end of my life, and I hope I don't have any, but--my dad was sick this week," Mann adds. "For half a day we thought maybe this was the end for him. Thankfully he's bounded back just fine, but it made me think.

"Now, my dad never made a lot of money. My parents still live in a small house that they bought in 1960. There were times when they hoped to move into a bigger house, but it never happened. They had four kids, and they put three of us through college, which was a big thing for them, because they never went themselves.

"But the thing is, my father has so many friends," Mann continues. "A few years ago he retired and his friends gave him a party. One older man came up to me and he said, 'You know, your dad is one of the good ones.' I said, 'Yeah, he is.' He said, 'No, I mean, he really is. He never has a bad word about anybody. Everybody likes him. He's kind, he's compassionate.'

"So I think if I were to have any regrets, it might be that I wasn't one of the 'good ones' in the way my dad has been. He wasn't as successful, financially or professionally, as I have been, but he's been much more successful with people. He's been kinder, he's been more sensitive, he's been less selfish, he's been a much better friend.

EDGE suggests that this could be a new action item for Mann's list.

"I guess I could put it on there! 'Be nicer to people," Mann chuckles. "I don't think I'm an unkind person by any means, but I don't think I make time for people the way my father does. My father would walk into the grocery store and he'd be in there for two hours because he'd be talking to people. My mother would say, 'Come on, let's go already.' He loved to sit and talk with people. I've been more like my mother, 'Come on, we've got to get these things done.' My father took time to smell the roses. I think I could do with a little more of that."

Is that something Mann's husband is better at?

"Oh, absolutely," Mann smiles. "Tim will say, 'Come on, sit down, relax.' He's much better at that than I am.

"We pick our partners, even when we don't realize it," Mann adds. "We pick them because they fill a blank for us. They make us more of what we need to be. They make us complete."