Anatomy of a Flirt

by Ashley Howard   
Posted December 19, 2007

Coming to terms with being gay was just the first step in Zach Sweet's journey from promiscuity to fidelity, but he still charms when he tends bar.

It’s Flirt Friday at the Den in New Brunswick, and the bartenders are fair game. Dance music pumps, strobes flash, and the cute bartender’s cheeks dimple as he smiles and reaches for a patron’s empty martini glass, asking, “Can I get you another, hon?”

The Den, the first openly gay bar in New Jersey, has been around for decades and is still a happening place. It’s about “letting loose and letting go of all worries,” says manager Mark Kelso. Central to the entertainment are the bartenders, who usually strip off their tank tops as the evening unfolds. That certainly works for 26-year-old Zachary Sweet—he of the dimpled smile—who lavishes hugs and kisses and flirtatious winks on Den denizens.

“I prefer to bartend topless,” he says. “I mean, look at me.”

Laughing, he sashays behind the bar, flaunting his toned pecs, tight abs, and sexy tattoos. Male eyes appreciatively follow his every move. You wouldn’t guess that Sweet has been in a monogamous relationship for almost two years. “Just because I’m flirting doesn’t mean I’m actually interested,” he says.

“I’m just having fun.”

You also wouldn’t guess that Sweet was a troubled and insecure teen, seriously overweight and conflicted about his sexual desires, his deep religious faith, and his equally deep musical talent.

“I’ve come a long way,” he says.

Christianity and classical music are part of Sweet’s inheritance. He was born in Philadelphia to Presbyterian Minister John Sweet and Sharon Sweet, an operatic soprano whose international career suddenly took off when Zach and his twin sister, Sarah, were four, and their brother, Joshua, was six. A year later, the family moved to Germany, where they lived for the next eight years as Sharon became a star with the Berlin State Opera. When Zach was thirteen, the Sweets returned to the United States and settled in the outskirts of Princeton.

By that time, Zach had become a proficient cellist and a serious Bible student. He liked theater. And sports? In a sense. He developed a crush on the captain of the Princeton High School football team.
“I’ve pretty much known I was gay since the day I was born,” Sweet says.  What to do with that knowledge was more troubling. As a teenager, Sweet concealed his desires while fantasizing, he says, about nearly every guy in school.

Tipping the scale at 230 pounds on a 5-foot-11-inch frame, Sweet became the object of teasing and bullying. “My nickname was ‘Chunk,’” he says. “I lived a majority of my puberty years in my head, and so only in my own head was I loud and proud.”

In his junior year Sweet had his first homosexual experience. “We were very inexperienced, and it was not pleasurable,” he says. Sweet was in the front seat of a car with another guy, and a female friend of Sweet’s was in the back with her boyfriend. When the back-seaters started making out, Sweet and his date exchanged glances and followed suit. Between the steering wheel and the shift lever, it was cramped and awkward, and the passion fizzled out.

Sweet hid his homosexual feelings until senior year, when they surfaced unexpectedly. At the dinner table, the family was discussing whether gays should be admitted to the Presbyterian ministry.  “I grew up in a religious household where being gay meant you were going to hell,” Sweet says. As the discussion grew heated, he lost his patience and blurted, “I just don’t understand why we don’t have the same rights!”

The room fell silent. “My father was, like, We?” Sweet continued with what became a confession. His mother burst into tears. “My mom was definitely more devastated,” he says. “My dad initially said he’d love me anyway.” The declaration led to endless arguments. If his mother asked him to take out the garbage, he immediately protested, “Why? Because I’m gay?”

He and his mother grew distant. “I was always a mama’s boy,” he admits. “Once I came out, the close relationship faded.”

In high school, Sweet’s refuge was music. He had taken up cello at age eight, and now began practicing for hours a day. In the fall of 1999, he enrolled at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. In a milieu of art and music, Sweet reinvented himself. Vigorous exercise and a strict diet peeled 60 pounds off his frame. By the time he graduated he had shed 90 pounds.

“I had this image in mind of portraying a ‘twink,’ ” he says. “A fun-loving, thin, very cute type of gay guy.” Sweet fell into a cycle of club-hopping and promiscuous unsafe sex, followed by panic over HIV exposure, rushing to doctors to be tested, having the results come back negative, then starting all over again. Depression set in. “I remember my senior year as one big blur. I constantly thought I was dying.” 
He shifted to the opposite extreme, remaining celibate for three years while he completed a master’s degree at Eastman and rededicated himself to his faith. He returned to Princeton in 2006 and landed a part-time job as a cellist with Symphony C, formerly the Haddonfield Symphony. 

Sweet and his boyfriend plan to move in together. Their commitment to each other has eased familial relations. “I prefer to see him happy with just one man he truly loves,” says sister Sarah.
Thursday and Friday Sweet tends bar at the Den. Carefree, soaking up attention, he dispenses hugs and kisses. He is ever the flirt, but at least one with a compass.