Lady GaGa Talks Vanity Fair – ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍᴏꜰɢᴀɢᴀ

Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Leisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy—“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”

She also says that she doesn’t trust anybody and doesn’t know if she ever will. Gaga tells Robinson, “I’m perpetually lonely. I’m lonely when I’m in relationships. It’s my condition as an artist.” Regarding men, she says, “I’m drawn to bad romances. And my song [“Bad Romance”] is about whether I go after those [sort of relationships] or if they find me. I’m quite celibate now; I don’t really get time to meet anyone.”

Gaga talks candidly about her drug use and she admits she still indulges at times: “I won’t lie; it’s occasional. And when I say occasional, I mean maybe a couple of times a year. I really can’t do [cocaine] anymore. I haven’t done it in, oh, probably six months.” She says she’s “terrified of heroin” and has never used it, and recalls her ultimate low point when she says, “I was laying in my bed on my stomach—this is so sick—but I was eating a salad, and I got a phone call: Can you be at this restaurant in 30 minutes? So-and-so big record executive wants to meet you. And the salad was like a really unhealthy salad, it was like fried chicken or something. So I said, ‘I’ll be right there.’ I got up, went to the bathroom, threw up the salad, did a line of coke, went to the meeting. I was completely mental and had just been through so much.”

Gaga is quick to tell Robinson that, if she writes about that incident, “I do not want my fans to ever emulate that or be that way. I don’t want my fans to think they have to be that way to be great. It’s in the past. It was a low point, and it led to disaster.”

Instead of rehab, though, when disaster struck, Gaga “went home.” She tells Robinson, “All I will say is I hit rock bottom, and it was enough to send a person over the edge. My mother knew the truth about that day, and she screamed so loud on the other end of the phone, I’ll never forget it. And she said, ‘I’m coming to get you.’ And I remember laying on the pullout bed in the basement in my parents’ house, and I said to my mom, ‘Can we go see Grandma?’ And we didn’t even call her; the next morning we got on the plane to West Virginia, showed up at the house, and I told my [82-year-old] grandma everything. I cried. I told her I thought my life was over and I have no hope and I’ve worked so hard, and I knew I was good. What would I do now? And she said, ‘I’m gonna let you cry for a few more hours. And then after those few hours are up, you’re gonna stop crying, you’re gonna pick yourself up, you’re gonna go back to New York, and you’re gonna kick some ass.

Gaga talks about her recent appearance at a Yankees game which made tabloid headlines, saying “Well, I guess I was my true New York 24-year-old Italian girl who grew up here and how dare you set me up? I want to go to things like ball games, but when I go to the ball game, they’re going to write the story that will sell papers. Look, I’m not an idiot—I recognize that I’m a public figure and I’m going to be recognized if I’m wearing a bikini or a potato sack. The trade-off is I get to see the Yankees, and what the Yankees mean to me in my soul as a young person from New York is more important to me than my reputation in terms of the tabloids. My real fans know who I truly am, and they know what I represent and what I mean, and my music and my performance is what really speaks.”

Despite her phenomenal success, Gaga tells Robinson that her level of fame has only just dawned on her. “About two weeks ago, I literally realized what had happened in my life. I almost wish it hadn’t hit me so late. I wish it had hit me gradually.” Gaga says that when she left a recent gig there were 5,000 fans waiting for her, and when she stopped her car and got out “the scream was so loud, it was a roar. I went over to the fence and signed as many autographs as I could without them pulling me through.” The crowd had waited for two hours, she tells Robinson. “It was insane … I thought, How could I possibly be better for you? That’s all I keep thinking: I just want to be better for you. I want to say and sing the right things for you, and I want to make that one melody that really saves your spirit that one day.”

The September issue of Vanity Fair will be available on newsstands in New York and L.A. on Wednesday, August 4, and nationally and on the iPad on Tuesday, August 10.