Getting Camp

You may not have heard of Matthew Camp in the UK, but over in the good ol’ U.S. of A his name commands stiffies at its mere mention. (Yes, even despite the less than butch surname, which in many ways is wonderfully ironic.) He’s a well-packaged, nicely honed bundle of sexual lust that’s a familiar face on the NYC scene as the city’s most high profile gogo dancer. With over 8000 Twitter followers, 9000+ Facebook fans, his own fragrance, a range of his and hers leather jackets, and now a lead role in racy new docu-movie Getting Go that’s out now on DVD, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that Brand Camp is the Madonna of the gogo dancing world.

Camp was the perfect pick for director Cory Kruekeberg’s exploration of the New York club scene in his docu-film Getting Go, which blurs a real life perspective with a fictional tale of a director that falls for a sexy gogo dancer. “I worked the nightlife in New York City for a long time, for maybe six to eight years and gogo danced for five or six of those. I won an award here, like the Grammy’s for gogo dancing,” he says with self-effacing sarcasm. “I have a long standing notoriety in New York and so I think I was a prime suspect for Cory. I know that a lot of the film was shaped around my nightlife persona.”

Despite putting himself out there regularly in short shorts and nude photo shoots, Camp professes that contrary to his sexualised image he’s a total homebody and a bit of loner away from the cameras. “It’s different. Working as I do it’s not that different to acting. You are putting out an energy and emotion for a performance.”

The film presents Matthew Camp playing Go, a New York club dancer. How different is ‘Go’ to ‘Camp’ then? “A lot of it is me. There was an outline of who the character was. I know who they wanted for the film, so there’s a little more characterisation of my personification, if that makes sense. The general intentions were to make a film that explored the New York City nightlife. The way that I looked at the project was my love letter to the city and its nightlife. It’s very difficult to take apart what was me and what wasn’t. Also, we filmed that maybe two or three years ago. I feel like a completely different person now.”

The film is also explicitly sexual. The sex scenes are as realistic as you can get without being pornographic or gratuitous. How real was the sex? “It’s pretty real. It wasn’t difficult to film. At first I was nervous, but they got us a little tipsy before. We had help along the way in the form of alcohol. But Tanner [his co-star] is very professional, very sweet, very sincere and we had a very good working relationship.”

To watch the film, scan his Facebook profile and Google his pics it’s easy to assume Matthew’s just another hot boy in a pair of Speedos. But that’s the fantasy world he knowingly creates. He seems quite savvy about it, too, and very aware of a profile that’s built around him, to the point where he’s released his own fragrance. After Britney Spears, Rihanna and Katie Price joined the perfume industry it was only a matter of time before we were treated to ‘essence of gogo dancer’.

“I’m constantly trying new things. The fragrance is an array of essential oils that is reminiscent of gogo dancing. It doesn’t smell like a regular fragrance because it’s made from natural oils.” Not quite the blend of vodka, poppers and lube you might expect of it, then. He tells me it sells well, and to his credit it’s even cheekily packaged in the shape of a poppers bottle.

Matthew grew up in California, with a background that mixes “German, Italian, Scottish, Irish, everything” into a handsome mix. His dad was a construction worker and his mum works at a hospital. They’re hardly wall-flower types as his mother belly-danced for a while, while his sister travels around the country belly-dancing. As family upbringing goes it’s hardly conventional. Yet even his mother has asked him to tone down his images at times.

“I came out when I was 15 and I had a boyfriend at that age, until I was 20 and that was really turbulent. I was a wild child and I did a lot of growing up during those years,” he says of his teenage years before he moved to New York to establish himself there.

“Sometimes people get so hung up on the idea of being monogamous that it gets in the way of them growing as people”

Being so prevalent on the gay community in New York, how does he deal with a sometimes harsh and bitchy scene? “I don’t have to deal with a lot of that. I don’t go out that much. The only thing they really see about me is this generic version that’s online. And that sounds sad but it’s not. I completely control my identity online. It is alienating in a way, but I don’t mind. I mean how many times have you gone out to a club and had an amazing conversation with everyone you meet there?”

We talk about his life away from the podiums of New York and he tells me the thing that most people would be surprised about would be his love of science and spirituality. “People are most thrown off about that. I sound like such a hippy at times.”

To Camp, sexuality and spirituality aren’t two conflicting concepts, unlike the continuing battle between religion and sex. “I love the idea of monogamy and I’ve definitely been in the headspace before where I’ve wanted to be monogamous with someone, but I see it more as a Christian ideal than a human identity thing. I think that it’s important for people to constantly be growing and constantly be interacting with other people and to learn from other people. Sometimes people get so hung up on the idea of being monogamous that it gets in the way of them growing as people. They are cordoning themselves off from interacting with other people, and that’s the whole reason we are here.”

Where does that leave the traditional definitions between gay and straight I ask? “I always go back and forth with this. I don’t think there’s such thing as a straight person or a completely gay person. I think it’s very much like the Kinsey scale where people fall along these sexual identities that are pretty dependent on the people that they meet and that they let themselves meet. I know it’s very important at the time we’re at to have these identities, but I think the future will be very different.”