I gotta say Brummie you get a LOT of action whereas I have been in a self imposed celibacy for going on ten years. My sex drive has run out of gas and left me stranded on the side of the road.
I believe I read you mentioned the use of rent boys and that you are/were married with children. I find this juxtaposition very interesting. A straight marriage, and gay anonymous sex. You seem to be living two separate sexual lives.
You are obviously closely in touch with your feelings and emotions, and your observations regarding Morrissey's struggle with his heterosexual upbringing against his homoerotic fixations are astute. I think this grain of sand in his self/shell is what produced the pearl of his lyrical mastery of human emotions.
But it is one thing to write about how one feels or should act and quite another to live in or up to those words. You have pointed out quite successfully the gap between the two as it relates to Moz.
And this is why he falls short of being considered iconic. An icon has an inner strength to stay true to one's self and offers a natural inclusiveness of emotion, spirit and talent that draws others to their truth. Morrissey is definitely talented, but his lack of truthfulness leaves him short of ever achieving icon status.
I use 'rent boys' as shorthand, but they're male sex workers, not 'boys'. I'm not a paedo. In fact, they're workig class mates of mine from our schooldays, blokes I've had affairs with but who are broke, live in grim council estates in Brum and would f*** for free but that seems a bit much when I'm rolling in it. It's FWB and I leave a generous tip. LOL!
There's nothing separate or covert about anything I get up to sexually. I'm a libertine so nobody can slut-shame me or expose me as a hypocrite. I was monogamous for decades but, like you, my wife has moved on from the tempest of sex and is in her English Country Garden-Jane Austen phase. Unlike you, she doesn't she this as 'running out of gas' but rather as a natural phase of a woman's life-cycle. She's a feminist and isn't compliant with the idea that women exist to satisfy men. Guess what? I agree with her, but even though my 'devil regions' have calmed down, at 56 it's still pretty full on and that's without using any of the recreational drugs my str8/bi/gay mt8s load up on to become 'weekend warriors' after the M-F 9-5 corporate hell-zone.
It's a companionate marriage. We did not marry for sex, we married to raise children. Sexual intoxication is an annoying distraction to the real joy of family life: raising your kids. If she changed her mind and wanted to resume that side of our marriage we'd re-take our wedding vows and I'd re-commit to monogamous hetersexual marriage which I did for decades. I abhor and detest deceitfulness and infidelity. In my view, anyone who commits to fidelity then plays away or goes on the 'down low' is a scumbag, especially given the possibility of sexual infections. Needless to say I'm pretty clued up on all the safe sex/Truvada PreEP stuff.
Our kids are now raised. Our daughter's off to study Physics at University but she won't be plunging off any staircase as it's her choice to pursue astrophysics not ours. I'll soon make a decision whether or not to step on stage or just leave it all as a posthumous canon. I've zero interest in the delusions of fame, give away most of the money I make, and I've been living the dream of a life free from wage slavery since the eclipse of 1999. This is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
I was watching Adele explain to her Phoenix, Ariz audience that she's too ill to perform. Unlike Morrissey, she gives a f*** about letting folk down. So do I. I've recently been to various shows to see if it' something I'd be prepared to commit to, traipsing around the world, travelling for 18 hours a day to play for 2 hours. I don't think I'm interested though I might do a Kate Bush one-off in a few years if there's enough of an audience (assuming I actually release anything). Who knows. Or cares. Popular music is a busted flush. I only listen to Ludovico Einaudi, Nils Frahm and Sigur Ros these days. Vocal performances are pretty much ruined by the whole X-Factor melisma nightmare and Morrissey's part of that Vocal Hegemony fixation.
For many years I had the greatest of sympathy with Morrissey's predicament as I come from an identical background but in Birmingham, not Manchester. In fact, I used to be an infamous Irish Dancer and I know people who grew up with Morrissey. I shouldn't say that as it might lead him to start suspecting some of his friends but they don't care anymore either. Everybody's had enough of the nonsense. I've seen lads from the boxing club and the Irish Dance schools struggle with the whole homoerotic/homosocial thing but I've never seen any of them get to the level of bizarre contortionism that is Humasexuality! He's the Kenneth Williams of modern music now, a dismal fate for anyone but one he's studiously crafted even as he warned himself not to and read KW's autobiography over and over again. It's really very simple. If he doesn't have sex with men he should never have appropriated Queer Culture as a spicy 'outrageous' selling point for his insipid music. If he is a sword-swallowing shirt-lifter like me, what's the big deal in calmly stating it? This is 2016, not 1983. Young people just think he's ridiculous. So do I. So do most people around him. It's all rather tragic but he's rich and even if he croaks from the Big C, so what? We've lost Bowie and Caroline Aherne, both of whom didn't use their tragic illness as a way to shift product. Seriously, he's lost the plot with those throat plasters. And some of us have had encounters with the Blackstar of cancer and recovered, without making a commercial proposition of it......just sayin...to anyone reading this working with a frightening diagnosis, you just don't know if you will be lucky. BrummieBoy got lucky....
We must now wait and see what Johnny Marr has decided to do, whether to act as judge, jury and executioner of Morrissey's fakery or to play the long game to see if he gets his childhood friends aka 'the lawnmover parts' a pension pay-off by being diplomatic and waiting to see if Morrissey runs out of cash and has to re-form The Smiths. Or perhaps he really doesn't care anymore, like the rest of us and his Autobiography will be a celebration of his own long journey of recovery from the delusions of fame to the embracing of authentic veganism and his artistic re-birth. I'd drive to Manchester to watch Johnny Marr but I very much doubt I'll bother going tonight to see Morrissey even though I've got a free ticket and a lift. We'll see how the traffic flows are on the M5/M6/M60 later on. Manchester is a vivid, exciting city, a miniature version of Birmingham but not quite as dramatic because: Black Sabbath. LOL!
Morrissey was a total fool for making his pub rock band wear those 'f*** Morrissey-Solo' t-shirts in Bradford after I savaged his ridiculous demos for KAL, PATSE & AIMMN. Alongside banning DavidT in Copenhagen it was the absolute nadir of Morrissey's prissy hissy fit Diva strops and reduced him to ridicule.
Goodbye everybody at Morrissey-Solo.com and thanks to DavidT for having the balls to host this and not be bullied by that arsehole diva from Manchester. At some stage in the future, if there's time, I might ask DavidT is there's a way to download my comment history as a batch file to digi.me so I can shape it into a booky-wooky but it's not a big priority & I'm not sure if there's a bridge from digi me to XenForo yet.
I set out to explore the notion of Fame and was guided by a 'special friend' on Bowienet to use Morrissey as a research focus. It's been extraordinarily productive and fun. I'd also like to express my appreciation and best wishes to Skylarker, NHNS, Viva Hate, reality bites and Crystal Geezer as well as to Mozambiguous and BtBB. People moan about the crazy stuff on this site but it would be pretty boring if everybody was nice..."don't talk to me about 'nice'..." LOL! f*** You Morrissey, you may or may not be a cocksucker but you are deffo a Corporate Rock Whore arselicker. Icon? My arse you are!
None of this means you can't still enjoy his voice. I do when it pops up on shuffle in the car. But the gap between where he is now as he slides toward ignominious oblivion and where he could have been if he'd been authentic is a chasm, or as he said to Ian McCulloch, its a 'kazzum'...it was obvious from the start he was a thick upstart chancer but he's had 33 years to become the 'icon' he imagines himself to be. He is no icon. He is a crank. And a fraud. A crank-fraud. Bowie is an Icon. Prince is an Icon. And, if I decide to do it, it's a foregone conclusion that I will be posthumously seen as possibly the biggest Icon of popular music ever. But fame is for losers, real stars keep it hidden, that's why they're sometimes called The Blackstar......
with every good wish to one and all
"BrummieBoy"
aka:
The Blackstar
A∴A∴
[this presentation has been brought to you all by Zozo...over and out!]
Presley:
Bowie:
Prince:
BrummieBoy:
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