“I don’t kiss and tell, ma’am”: A Rolling Stone Interview with James Barnes

The former Howling Commando opens up about his life a year after the trial of the century.

◼ BY KAREN PAGE | June 22, 2017

I step into the apartment and a sweet smell of pastry immediately overwhelms me. It’s a warm June afternoon, sun almost setting, yet still very much up in the sky. The apartment is filled with honey-colored light, falling through the windows overlooking the street. Cozy.

“Hi,” Barnes greets me and immediately asks, “Tea or coffee?”

“Hi. Coffee, please.”

“Oh, shoot. I was kinda hoping you’d say tea, I got this amazing green sencha from Bruce. And hey, I have this heavenly apple pie from the bakery around the corner.”

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that James Barnes, more of a legend and a myth than an actual flesh-and-blood person these days, gives me a bashful smile while telling me I should try his tea. This is not the first time we meet, though I wish it was. I met James “Bucky” Barnes during far less pleasant circumstances – it was during the horrible roller coaster of a trial a year before.

“Then I have to try the tea.” He smiles again and quirks one eyebrow. Then I hear a click-click-click from one of the rooms down the hall and feel something cold and wet on my palm. “You got a dog!” I scratch the fluffy beast behind the ear. It’s a golden retriever.

“Correction: we got a dog. That was Steve’s idea and one of the better ones, I gotta admit. She’s called Paw.” He shakes his head (fondly). “Come on in, I’ll be with ya in a second, gotta brew the tea.”

***

We sit in the living room. Huge windows, leather couch (comfy), a lot of books on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and framed drawings on walls. Nice, warm colors everywhere. Bucky is wearing dark blue jeans and a grey hoodie with…

“A Captain America shield logo? There’s got to be a story behind this!”

He blushes like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.

“There really isn’t. Steve gets a lot of Cap-themed clothes and gadgets but he just puts them away in boxes and forgets about them. I found a whole stack in the spare bedroom the other day and thought to myself ‘Now that just won’t do.’ I think he’s too polite to outright refuse those. So I’ve been wearing them around the house since he doesn’t want to be Cap 24/7.”

“If it’s such a hardship for you to wear them, you could give them to an auction for charity,” I tease.

“Oh my god, this is such a great idea, why haven’t I thought about this? I think the Great Depression hoarder in me overpowered any potential for noble gestures, damn. You can take the boy out of poverty, but the poverty will always kinda stick with the boy.”

“That’s not at all how this saying goes!”

“I know. It’s fitting, though. But honestly? I like them.”

“Well, then problem solved!” I look around the room and remember my train of thought before the hoodie distracted me. “Tell me about the art.”

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Steve drew all of those,” Bucky tells me, sipping his tea. There are cityscape sketches, still life, a few portraits in color (I recognize the faces of some of the Avengers).

“It’s good to have a hobby,” I prompt him.

“Oh, yeah. Especially in our line of work. When I say ours… Technically, I haven’t been allowed in the field yet, so… Anyway, yeah, neither Steve nor I have been bored since the whole trial and other things cooled down. He’s been doing his art and I have had a lot of catching up to do, combined with a lot of getting used to.”

“So what’s a day in the life of Bucky Barnes look like?”

He snorts. “If you know what one is like, you know them all. I get up early, but not like ass-crack-of-dawn early, that’s Steve. I go for a run, grab a coffee, grab the newspaper. I usually read the most interesting bits from it and toss it away, I don’t want to get too annoyed at the stupidity in the world. I usually head home and sit with my laptop and another coffee. I google things, I read stuff that friends send me. It’s usually a ton of articles, some book recommendations, that kind of stuff. I’ve been devouring books, I’ve always loved reading and now there are so many of them and they’re so, so varied, I love it. I have traditional paperbacks and some with fancy glossy paper, too… I also have ebooks… although, it’s weird talking about ‘having’ ebooks, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

“It’s like… You can’t really touch them, the way you can a paperback. I mean of course you can touch the Kindle but it’s as though you can’t really touch the book itself, you know what I’m saying?”

“I never thought about it, now I’m going to have an existential crisis every time I pick up my Kindle!”

“Sorry!” He takes a sip of his tea, hiding his smile behind the steaming cup. He’s not sorry. “Anyway, you know, I haven’t been completely clueless when it comes to world history since 1943, I have flashbacks to certain moments and briefings when I was doing the Hydra dirty work, you know, they haven’t electrocuted everything out of that thick skull. So yeah, I haven’t been a blank slate like Steve, but there’s still a lot to read up on,” he laughs, bitterly, but then his eyes light up. “Wilson, though. He sends me those short videos and he thinks he’s being funny, he thinks they’re funny. They are, but don’t tell that to him. They’re mostly cats falling off things.”

“Falcon? Falcon sends you cat videos?” This is it. The scoop of the century. Avengers’ guilty pleasure: cat videos.

“Yeah. You should see the stuff that Clint sends me, though. He sends me videos with himself falling off things. What was it… Parking… Park… Parkering…”

“Parkour?”

“Yes! I don’t see any differences, Clint’s like a cat falling off a shelf in every single one of them. Hilarious.”

“I do follow him on Vine, though, I know all his crazy stunts.”

“You do? They’re great, aren’t they?”

“They are! So, a lot of Internet surfing. What’s usually next on the agenda?”

“Some lunch, a walk around the city. You know, I needed a couple of weeks to see all my old haunts around Brooklyn and get reacquainted with them. I still haven’t seen all of Brooklyn, how it’s changed, you know. I’ll need years for that, thank God.”

“You don’t get recognized?”

“Come on! I could disappear the moment you turned your head, if I wanted. I know my spy stuff alright, I know how not to be seen.”

“That’s not ominous at all!” He laughs at my remark. “How are you liking the city, then?”

“I like how it’s different. I changed and the city changed, too. Maybe we didn’t change together but it’s comforting that it did change and that it isn’t just me who’s different. I have this irrational fear sometimes, you know, that everything remained the same and it’s only me who changed completely. I think that’s maybe partly why I walk around so much, I need to make sure that everything is different. Does that make sense to you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. I also go to VA meetings sometimes. I will talk shit about Wilson anytime to tease him but he’s such a good guy and a good professional, too. If it hadn’t been for his patience with me and Steve as well, we’d be mentally stuck somewhere in the 40s when everyone, especially men, carried on with their lives, while being empty husks inside after experiencing so much trauma. I mean apart from the whole brainwashing shit, I have been through a lot of crap during the war and so was Steve. Let me tell you one thing, thank God for Sam Wilson, because really, we wouldn’t be as adjusted if it hadn’t been for him.”

“That’s so good to hear.”

“I know, I know. I’ve gone through my fair share of shrinks over the last year and I could be all secretive about it, as though supersoldiers and superassassins don’t need no mental health therapy, but really, what’s the point? My life has been put under public scrutiny when the SHIELD data has been dumped online and when the UN shooting happened and the whole mess with Zemo went down. Not to mention the trial itself. So I’m just going to be frank about it. It’s been shit and I had days when I didn’t know if I could drag myself out of bed, I still have shitty days, but you know what? I got help and I’ve got Steve so it got better. Slowly but surely, it got better.”

“So is Bucky Barnes completely back?” I ask – before the interview we agreed that nothing was off-limits, no dancing around uncomfortable topics.

“I don’t think he’ll ever be back, not entirely. I mean, I have been myself for quite a while now, whatever that means. But I’m not the same person that I was before all this. Neither is Steve, truth be told. But anyway, I’m not the Winter Soldier, although that will be a part of me that won’t ever go away completely. I have this joke that I tell to random people who sometimes look kind of afraid of me. I always say that the only mind control I experience these days is having a Justin Bieber song stuck in my head after a visit to the shopping mall,” he laughs and I join him. “If I can’t joke about it, then what else can I do? Damn, I have to cope somehow.”

“What reactions do you get?”

“Confusion and then laughter. Usually gets the job done to dissolve the tension. I won’t snap and start killing people, you know, a small army of shrinks confirmed that, but people still have this image of me that the media created during the trial.”

“About that. How have you been coping with this Winter Soldier myth that’s been woven out of the hearsay, gossip, and partially out of the actual data from your files?”

“I try to ignore it all and go on with my life, what am I supposed to do, break down and cry? Nah, I feel like there’s nothing much to be done on my part, except just living my life, finally, and through that proving them wrong. I mean, it’s been a year since the acquittal and there are still people demanding my head for all the blood I have on my hands. It’s Steve who has the patience for that, even more than just patience, he’s just… I’ve always admired that in him, you know? Maybe not the part when I had to haul his ass from a wet sidewalk when he got punched by a random asshole, but I have always admired his courage and persistence. He just stands up and tries again and again, it can be frustrating at times. Whenever I hear bullshit I usually think to myself: just leave me alone. I don’t have the patience to explain the difference between abusing and being abused, if people are that stupid to think I had much, if any, agency over what I was doing, then have a nice life, au revoir.”

“You’ve read Steve’s interview from 2012, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Why?”

“He made some very profound statements in that interview. When it came out, there was a huge mess in the media because a lot of people thought of Steve as this beacon of conservative values and then he came out, quite literally, and said all these things about socialism, feminism, etc. How do you feel about all that has changed in society? You keep saying you like changes and you need to see them happening but how do you feel about the kind of change that doesn’t manifest itself in a renovated building or a new park?”

“Oh… Yeah, I read that article a while ago, I think around the time before Zemo. I have known Steve a long time and nothing he said then surprised me. Well, almost nothing.”

“Almost?”

“The queer part wasn’t… I mean… You see, the thing with us old men from the 40s is that waking up in a future with major social progress and tolerance is not enough to purge yourself of years of internalized fear and repression. Okay, maybe I’ll try and be brave just for once instead of lying by omission the way I have always been used to. So I didn’t know about that. About how Steve fancied fellas, too. It wasn’t something you just talked about back then and it’s not something you can magically switch off when you wake up in this better future. Because it is better, definitely better in so many ways. Apart from the fact that Hydra has been alive and kicking throughout all those years, maybe,” he purses his lips and looks to the side, eyebrows knitted.

“What I’m trying to say is that… We never talked about it, never discussed… We lived in a queer neighborhood, yes, but the desire to not get beaten to a pulp was stronger than anything else. So we kept our mouths shut, even to each other. We were surviving as best as we could.”

“You keep saying we.”

“Well I am queer, too. I never thought I’d say this out loud, much less to a journalist to write down so that everyone can read. But what Steve said back then in that interview stayed with me for a long time and after a lot of deliberation and heart-to-hearts with Steve I thought: what the hell, do I really have anything to lose at this point?”

“Heart-to-hearts?” Our mugs are on the coffee table, the tea already cold and forgotten.

“Yeah, I… You see, I’ve loved this punk since I knew what the word meant. But I never told him, before. That was, you know… Out of self-preservation, mainly. We were extremely good at hiding our feelings. I don’t know if… I mean what do you do when you have a solid friendship with someone that you know you can always depend on but then you also have romantic feelings for that person? And what if these feelings may destroy this friendship? And a bonus: these feelings may leave you bleeding in an alleyway if any hostile third parties notice anything? As I said, I needed a lot of thinking before I got where I am now. But I did tell him eventually.”

“When was it?”

“Right after I got out of Wakanda and before the trial. I had a lot of time to think about that and the trial could go either way, you know… I mean, I know we had strong evidence in my favor but it wasn’t exactly a straightforward case. A lot of foul play on the part of the prosecution. So I thought: if I am to be put down or rot in a high-security prison cell, I gotta tell him. And I did.”

“How did it go, then?”

“I don’t kiss and tell, ma’am,” he smirks at me, a glint in his eyes. We are on a first name basis and I bet the ma’am didn’t just slip. That’s just Bucky being all charming and cheeky.

“By saying that you kind of did tell, though! I take it that it went well?” I laugh. I noticed that we laugh a lot, which should be odd, considering the topics. I guess after all he’s been through laughing is better than keeping up a sober face.

“It did. I was acquitted so I suddenly had a lot to look forward to and not just to living my life as a free man.”

“You said ‘I am queer, too.’ Is this the label you want to identify with? I mean, have you read up on things like gender identity and sexuality? What do you think about that?”

“I did, yeah. On the Internet, Steve and I googled things together. It turned out he didn’t know all there was to know. It’s an ongoing process, getting to know the lingo and all that jazz. I love reading personal stories online, people are sometimes so ready to share their experiences, struggles,  and joys and I’m so grateful for that, because after all what a lot of us are seeking, I think, is validation of our experiences and feelings. I can only speak for myself but I guess it’s safe to assume a lot would agree with me on this.”

“And what about the label?”

“I’m not that keen on labels but I get why they're important to some people. I come from a time when there were just two: normal and pervert, so it’s not exactly easy to get your mindset out of that binary. I think even modern people still struggle with this?”

“They definitely do.”

“Exactly. So if I ever was to put a label onto myself, it would be ‘queer,’ I read it’s what a lot of people call themselves when they don’t feel a hundred percent sure if gay, bi, or anything else fits them. I also like to think that I’m embracing the word which back in the day was used against me. Not literally against me, since I was extremely closeted but… you know. I feel as though I’m laughing in the face of all homophobic assholes whenever I say ‘I’m here and I’m queer.’”

“Are you happy, though?”

He stays silent for a while, pondering his answer. “Yes,” he admits and gives me a smile, one that’s so wide and warm that it crinkles his eyes. “I am. We are.” Then his eyes go wide and terrified, the deer-in-the-headlights kind of terrified. “Oh, shoot! I forgot about the pie!”