when a famous romance book cover model happens to be one of your best friends

What do you do when your childhood friend becomes a supermodel? You tell everyone! And you celebrate not only his success, but the way he’s using his own story of addiction & recovery to help others.

Three of Kevin’s book covers, all photographed by Golden Czermak

You may recognize my friend Kevin Davis from one of his many book covers. Or you might be one of his 200,000 (and counting) Instagram followers. He might even be one of your “book boyfriends.” But for last four decades, this beautiful man has simply been “Kev” to me. It’s what I’ve called him for the entirety of our friendship, a friendship that started way back in the 1980s.

The two of us grew up in Gadsden, Alabama, a minuscule town about an hour north of Birmingham. We met in the parking lot of the Gadsden Mall in 1985. Every weekend, teenagers from all the local high schools would head to the mall after closing hours and drive around the parking lot. I’m not kidding. Driving around the mall was the only thing we had to do for entertainment in Gadsden. That’s one of the main reasons Kevin and I both wanted to move out.

We went to different high schools, so Kevin and I would hang out together on the weekends. Our Saturday nights began parked outside a liquor store in the Agricola Shopping Center. We’d ask someone of legal age going inside if they’d buy us a bottle of Bacardi if we gave them the money, plus a generous tip. It worked every time. Then we’d meet up with our friend Staci (pictured below) and immediately head to Sonic for frozen slushies to mix with the Bacardi. After that, it was off to the mall, or to a house party, or later – after the mall banned all teenagers from the parking lot – we’d “cruise” Broad Street.

Even though we had to get creative to have any kind of fun in Gadsden during the 1980s, that decade gave me some of the best memories of my life. Driving around town with Kevin and Staci…blasting Cheap Trick… singing at the top of our lungs…nights spent hanging out in Kevin’s swimming pool, talking about how he wanted to be George Michael and how I wished I could dance like Janet Jackson. I asked Kevin what he remembered most about those days.

“Definitely cruising Broad Street and the mall,” he said. “And Gulf Shores.”

I laughed, remembering a beach trip when Kevin and I found ourselves both interested in the same cute guy. He was your typical 1980s-Tom-Cruise-looking-muscle-guy, driving around the local beach arcade in a fancy convertible. I won that summer fling, but to this day, we both agree that it was only because Kevin wasn’t trying hard enough.

I remember having a birthday party in January of my senior year. Inside, my house was filled with all these people eating and drinking, but Kevin and I were outside in the cold taking photos of each other with a disposable camera and laughing uncontrollably. We were trying to hold the camera facing us so we could take selfies way before the term “selfie” ever existed. We were definitely becoming our authentic selves, but we both knew we had to get out of Gadsden in order to live authentic lives. Gadsden is an extremely conservative town. Kevin and I were not.

After high school, Kevin joined the Air Force and I went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I moved to Atlanta in 1994 to pursue an acting career, and Kevin ended up relocating there soon after.

“I’d visited Atlanta and had my first experience of what a gay community could be,” he said. “When I first came out to my family, it was a bit rough. I felt like some distance would be best, so I took off for Atlanta.”

Things did get better with Kevin’s family after that, and he and I picked up right where we left off. There were endless brunches at Einstein’s on Juniper, coffee dates at Cafe Intermezzo, and all night dance parties at The Chamber and Backstreet. 

Kevin and I continued to hang out together over the next five years, and then I moved to New York. He visited me in Manhattan, and we’d still see each other every year in Gadsden when we were both home for Christmas. We had this tradition where everyone that was home for the holidays would meet up with friends that still lived in town at a local bar on Broad Street, the same street we used to cruise when we were younger. (If you want to get an idea of what our annual holiday gatherings were like, watch the 1996 movie Beautiful Girls, and just replace the snowy setting of Knight’s Ridge, Massachusetts with small town Alabama.)

The one thing Kevin failed to mention during our hometown reunions was that after struggling with chronic pain for several years, he’d managed to develop an addiction to meth. It got so bad in fact that he ended up homeless, sleeping in his car. Then he got arrested for possession. And I knew absolutely nothing about any of it. I asked him why he didn’t reach out to me back when all of this started.

“I didn’t tell anyone about what I going through when I was homeless,” he said. “It just gradually got worse and I was embarrassed at the situation I was in. I just kept hoping that I was going to be able to pull myself out of it, although I was feeling a bit hopeless at the time.”

Kevin did pull himself out of it eventually. He got clean and sober in 2018, and then a year later, he was approached by a photographer asking if he’d be interested in doing some book cover modeling. The rest, as they say, is history. Kevin has been sharing his story of addiction and recovery with hundreds of thousands of people and giving them hope that not only is there light at the end of the tunnel, but that life on the other side of addiction can become more fulfilling and purposeful than you can possibly imagine.

This photo of Kevin and me still remains one of my favorites. It sums up our friendship in so many different ways. It was taken at Einsteins in Atlanta one night in 2009 when I was home visiting. Afterwards, we went out dancing and Kevin spilled his drink on my “naked” dress. Now half my chest was soaked and I was even more naked. I just laughed and said, “It’s okay, only one nipple is showing through.” He immediately poured a little of his drink on the other side of my dress, patted me down, and said, “Okay, now both your nipples are showing so it doesn’t look awkward.”

I asked Kevin why he thought our friendship has lasted for so many years and through so much distance.

“We just clicked from the very beginning,” he said. “But also because we had such similar viewpoints, dreams, and aspirations. I think moving out of Gadsden opened our minds up to bigger things. We’ve continued on the same path and are still going after our dreams, even at this age. It’s just nice to have someone that goes so far back with you and that is still one of your favorite people in this world.”

The feeling is mutual. We may not be related by blood, but Kevin is definitely part of my chosen family. My mother adored him, and when she passed away in 2016, Kevin was one of the first people to step up to be a pallbearer. That day, he not only helped carry my mom to her final resting place, he also helped carry my grief. That’s who Kevin is, and that’s what real friendship is all about.

So, even though Kevin never became George Michael, and I still can’t dance like Janet Jackson, at least we’ve managed to stay true to who we are, and to each other. 

This article originally appeared in the holiday issue of VINTAGE fashion magazine, an editorial publication featuring items from Shop Stylaphile Vintage.

You can read more about Kevin’s personal journey in this lovely article from Instinct Magazine, and join his thousands of followers on Facebook or Instagram.