George Michael: Stop talking, keep singing
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’m a major fan of George Michael’s second solo album. For those songs alone, I would go see him sing live. I also had a huge crush on him when he was in Wham! (You may think that’s funny, but it’s nothing compared to my soft spot - aged five - for Boy George.)
I also think that is nobody’s business what people do in their private lives. But when you take your private life into a public space, please do not expect sympathy for the ‘intrusion’ you have ’suffered’. Of Hampstead Heath, which is in my neighbourhood, Michael says:
…he did not know anyone who went there at 2:00 am “for anything other than the reason of playing about with another member of the human race”.
Except, of course, for tabloid photographers who know full well that George Michael is stupid enough to perform sex acts in the open air, on public property, expecting privacy.
I’d love to ask George Michael this question: Who are you to dictate what that public space be used for and at what time? If it’s fine for you to have sex there, how can you possibly object to photographers shooting pictures or ramblers taking a nighttime walk in this place of extreme beauty? To give a more extreme but equally valid example, if anonymous sex is a perfectly acceptable use of this public space, why shouldn’t anti-gay activists (perhaps from the nearby Finsbury Park Mosque) be allowed to show up there at 2AM to interfere with the cruising by exercising their freedom of speech, should they wish?
This other bit from Michael is pretty bizarre, too:
He said it was sad that words like “depravity” and “shame” were used by the media in relation to cruising.
“I think it’s deeply and ethically wrong that young people can be exposed to that kind of language,” he said.
Got that, kids? If you’re walking home via Hampstead Heath one night and are exposed to a bunch of guys in a daisy chain, just hope that they don’t start moaning words like “depravity” and “shame” in front of you.
Not to come over all “Some of my best friends are black,” but many of my friends are into cruising and I always find their tales rather amusing in a “Wow, I guess life would be a lot different if I had all that testosterone” sort of way. (I think it was Dan Savage who said, to paraphrase, that straight men would be having lots of sex with strangers, too, if most straight women were remotely interested in that.) But doing this stuff in the open air and then crying about the invasion of your privacy and claiming that any objection to the chosen venue for your behaviour is ‘homophobic’ is, well, rather less likely to sell than your concert tickets are.
(What this whole situation says about the problematic nature of public property is another post for another time.)
Filed under: Celebrities, Children, Life, Men and Women, Music
Embarrassed? No, no. That album is a thing of beauty. So rare, these days. On a number of occasions, I’ve considered writing George to compliment him on such an outstanding musical endeavor.
I love Listen Without Prejudice. It is a work of genius, representing the very best of what the early Nineties had to offer musically. I rate it higher than Achtung Baby, in fact, and I’m a big U2 fan.
Older was very poor in comparison, but still shines like a beacon compared to his new stuff. People often talk about emotional conflicts and bottled-up emotions leading to great art. Never particularly convinced, myself, but I do sometimes wonder whether coming out publicly destroyed George Michael’s muse.
As for the sex… as I understand it, the tradition of using public places for sex grew up among homosexuals as a result of their criminality, which is fair enough — if you can be jailed for having sex, it makes sense to do it somewhere whence you can make a quick getaway. Now that it’s legal, why can’t they do it behind closed doors? There are laws about public indecency. I have to obey them.
I sometimes walk the dogs in the middle of the night. When I was a teenager, I used to go out cycling in the middle of the night. Actually, come to think of it, it’d be great to be walking the dogs and bump into George Michael buggering someone: Phoebe would bark at him very suddenly, and Monty would want to say hello and dribble on him. He dribbles on everyone.