Is he in? Is he out? Michael Musto provides a few hints about everyone’s favorite CNN anchor.

Anderson Cooper once asked me out—on camera. At the end of a gossip segment in ’03, the wry and charming CNN anchor mentioned that we should hang out sometime and I could fill him in on more dish.

All right, I may have read too much into that. It wasn’t exactly a coming-out on the level of Jim McGreevey. In fact, it wasn’t a coming-out at all, just a polite remark that my Norma Desmond–level delusions instantly turned into a marriage proposal.

Actually, Anderson has only really been out in that he gracefully lives his life while never bothering to claim he’s straight. The child of complicated parents and a product of fame, class, and some darkness, he’s evolved into a fascinating paradox who’s reportorially fearless about everything but himself.

Sexuality-wise, he’s performed a delicate high-wire dance that most of the media have helped provide the silent accompaniment for (though the same scribes are not so timid about reporting on Christiane Amanpour’s marriage or Soledad O’Brien’s twins). Lengthy profiles have been written about Anderson that take pains to not mention anything romantic—but this ultrapolite routine makes the loosey-goosier press so antsy that in ’03, Metrosource magazine jumped the gun and called Anderson “openly gay.” (“He is? I guess now he is!” I responded at the time in my Village Voice column.) And last year, when a CNN.com transcript said he'd referred on the air to gays as "we," it prompted a blogging fury of sheer glee, until the transcript was dutifully corrected to "they" and the world saddened.

Of course, the more the fringe media want him out, the more the mainstream media conspire to keep him in. They’ll even address his brother Carter’s tragic suicide in ’88—Anderson himself has discussed it on the record—but not Anderson’s sexuality, and Anderson carefully goes along with that proviso, preferring to cover rather than be the story. But watch him clean up after his doggies in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood and you realize Anderson’s still living a pretty open-secret life—out but in but himself but guarded but definitely gray, I mean gay.

To read more about Anderson Cooper, including an official response from CNN (contrary to some media reports, Out did seek comment from Anderson Cooper himself), pick up a copy of the April issue of Out, on newsstands within the next week.