Reinventions: Sexuality

Lest we forget, pop star Elton John was not out of the closet when his musical career began. When he started writing songs with Bernie Taupin, the word was starting to circulate, and the emotional sophistication of Taupin’s lyrics in combination with John’s music suggested a more meaningful connection, which turned out to be very much the case. So Elton and later Melissa Etheridge came out of the closet. k.d. lang’s roadies had to clear many pairs of girly undies (and some others as well) from the stages after her shows. Madonna published her book Sex and dallied openly with Sandra Bernhardt between her alliances with celebrity husbands.

Now, gay is chic and everyone I know knows someone gay, if they are not themselves. Even in the little private community we visit in Cape Cod there’s a guy who got a divorce after being married and having kids and now lives there with his partner, a man, to the horror of my grandparents. But those grandparents are the ones who watch Fox News and despise Will and Grace, an update of The Odd Couple for thirty-something urbanites, which has already ended its successful eight-season sitcom run (guaranteering endless cable TV runs for the next several years). A year ago, when Madonna french-kissed Britney Spears at an awards show she provoked a stir, but it didn't last long (for some reason in the U.S. Janet Jackson’s nipple freaked people out far more – probably for the same reasons people are oogy about moms nursing their kids longer than a year or two here).


Tangent: As I write this I find that what I find odd about pop culture is how much emphasis on sex there is. Why would we want know anything about a celebrity’s sex life, much less anyone else’s, unless they actually told us about it themselves? But appetites for that sort of thing seem bottomless, and have inspired current media darling Diablo Cody’s willingness to go directly to the pussy shot to earn her fame and fortune without even passing Go and collecting her $200 first.

The people I know who are gay and out are among the most well-adjusted people I know. Those same grandparents who can’t stand anything that puts gays in a positive light are so freaking squeamish about the topic that you wonder if there wasn’t some real trauma behind all of this for them, some locker-room horror shows they both witnessed as kids growing up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. It’s clear they don’t feel it’s a "lifestyle choice." It’s not an option for anyone in their minds. They are a little cooler perhaps toward their Cape Cod neighbor and his new partner, but I still think it’s good for the older folks to see someone become themselves and not being answered by lightning descending from God on high.

A willingness to allow people to choose their partners seems like a healthy development for our culture, which is why I support efforts to pass laws that allow same-sex marriages. I fooled around with boys and girls as a kid, and while in retrospect I was an oversexualized kid, I was also glad I had the freedom to discover what I like. As an adult I have found that what I like turns out to be a fluid concept. Often I am very feminine, and sometimes I feel otherwise. I enjoy the way my body works in sex and I also have lots of experiential curiosity about what sex feels like to a man. For many years I have not thought of myself as strictly heterosexual even though that is the life I lead, but rather pansexual. But I'm happiest within my partnership with my mate.

I just finished reading Bebe Buell's autobiography, Rebel Heart. (She's actress Liv Tyler's mom.) I'd be shocked if that isn't made into a film in the next few years. She rocks, and seems like a kindred spirit. A little while ago I started looking for "people like me," people who have been so moved by music or a personal, unique desire for something unexpected, that they have done things they never would have expected to do as adults, perhaps things that most of their peers were not doing. And I am finding more and more of them. Bebe Buell is an interesting woman, along with Pamela des Barres (I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up), because they grew up as women who were initially subservient to these male self-styled rock gods (Led Zeppelin, Todd Rundgren, Elvis Costello, etc.). They had to discover their own power, figure out their own needs, and learn how to stop serving their men tea and propping their feet up when they came home after two-day benders. And it is these women who have in part gone before me and people like Diablo Cody. We rocker women owe them one.