NYC- Four youths indicted in the alleged gay-bashing attack on Kevin Aviance said the well-known drag queen provoked them when he called one of them a “sweetie.”

“You ain’t Diesel,” suspect Gerald Johnson, 16, told Aviance, apparently referring to he-man actor Vin Diesel. “Don’t eva call me sweetie.”

Reached yesterday, Aviance, 38, snapped, calling the youths’ account “a lie,” and added the brutal attack that left him with a broken jaw was “unprovoked.”

The suspects claimed that they were talking among themselves in the East Village early on June 10 when Aviance bumped into one of them and said, “Calm down, sweetie.”

A fight ensued but it had nothing to do with Aviance’s sexual orientation but with feeling dissed, the four told cops in statements to police.

“I did not hit the guy because he was gay,” Johnson said in his statement. “I just did not want my friend to think … I was a p—y.”

Johnson, Jarrell Sears, 20; Gregory Archie, 18; and Akino George, 20, were each indicted yesterday by a Manhattan grand jury on two counts of first-degree assault – one describing it as a gang assault and the other a hate crime. Aviance, who had been on a liquid diet since the attack, has started eating solids again. The wiring holding his jaw came off yesterday.