Aussie singer Troye Sivan covers this month’s Attitude, and he’s opened up to them about growing up gay in the midst of modern hook-up culture. Sivan poses in a mesh vest, leather jacket and with tooth pick in hand – very Village People.

Sivan’s latest single My! My! My! portrays the grittiness of gay cruising and as he reveals, he was familiar with the subject matter. He recalls watching all of his friends hooking up, but feeling left out because he didn’t know any gay people:

“I didn’t really want to venture out by myself and so I just did stuff that a 17-year-old boy shouldn’t really have to do.

“I managed to get a fake ID and then I got Grindr on my phone and started to try to meet people who were like me, but you sort of are forced a little bit into these hyper-sexualised environments, and even though that’s awesome when you’re 17… I didn’t know what else to do.”

[RELATED: Singer Troye Sivan Covers Wonderland in Gender-Fluid Shoot]

As a teen, Troye would meet up with older guys, recounting:

“My heart must have been going a million miles an hour. I don’t remember specifically but, because I was always so small, I was so scared to meet up with people because I was like, ‘I’m going to get killed, I’m going to get murdered by someone.’

“When I see photos of myself, from when I was that age, and I think of the guys that I was meeting up with and talking to, I think: ‘Wow, I looked really, really young.’

[It makes me feel] Kind of a little bit creeped-out, but at the same time I really don’t have any regrets. Maybe I wasn’t ever truly scared, just really uncomfortable.”

Oh honey, you were scared, you were just equal amounts horny.

He goes on: “There’s actually a song about it on the album called ’17’… Originally the chorus of the song was ‘Here he comes / like he just walked out of a dream / doesn’t care that you’re 17’. And I was like ‘uh, that sounds a bit predatory’, and maybe it was a little bit.”