From: M Petrelis Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 14:10:55 EDT Subject: Fwd: Camille, George Micheal and Steam Micheal, Here's the Camille piece about George Michael with "Steam" reference. It will cheer you up a little. Rick More of Camille can be found at: http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/pagl/ Dear Camille: So, George Michael is caught red-handed (or something like that) in a posh Beverly Hills toilet. What do you think? Did he, subconsciously, want to get caught, like those serial killers whose murder scenes scream, "Stop me before I kill again!" or was this his routine MO with an embarrassingly unimaginable outcome? And why do men go for these thrill-seeking sex encounters and women, on the whole, do not? Right-wing Fan Dear Fan: The X-rated George Michael saga has been carefully suppressed by the liberal major media, which barely reported the facts and then buried the incident as quickly as possible. In contrast, actor Hugh Grant's 1995 Los Angeles arrest, while he was receiving the back-seat attentions of a spirited streetwalker, went on and on in the news, prolonged by the ribald jokes of talk-show hosts. The Michael incident, occurring across the street from the luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel, is dangerous to the gay image, since it threatens for the first time to expose the sexual realities of gay male life to the multitudes. Though his career is long past its 1980s creative height, Michael remains a far bigger international star than Grant. The refusal of the American major media to explore or follow up on the story shows just how biased news management can be -- and how cowed Northeastern journalists are by gay-activist intimidation. The fear, of course, is that long-derided conservative allegations about a "gay lifestyle" would be too richly substantiated by full reporting of Michael's tastes and adventures. Into the vacuum left by supposedly unbiased "serious" journalism has stepped, as usual, the National Enquirer, our tabloid of record, to which I give fervent thanks for its fascinating account of the Michael arrest (in its April 28 issue). Here are the lurid, nitty-gritty details, along with a sunny photo of the Spanish hacienda-style men's toilet in Will Rogers Park where Michael was nabbed. We also get photos of his flamboyant, clothing-designer Brazilian lover, who died of AIDS five years ago, and of his current, hunky but rather generic boyfriend, a fresh-faced Texan seen strolling with him in France. No, I don't think George Michael wanted to get caught. He was just doing what comes naturally in the social fast lane, protected by a media culture that facilely equates homosexuality with heterosexuality and asks no deep questions about human psychology beyond the superficial liberal-vs.-conservative, freedom-vs.-oppression dichotomy. Gay men used to explain away their attraction to sex in toilets by blaming it on homophobia: There was supposedly no other place for the persecuted to meet. That reasoning is clearly specious today when the industrialized nations are dotted with hip gay meccas. My current theory (see Michael Hattersley's interview with me in the current [Spring 1998] issue of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review) is that toilets provide anxious gay men with a form of aroma therapy, boosting their testosterone levels and subjective sense of manhood through the acrid hormones excreted in male urine. I loved the now-defunct magazine Steam, which reverently chronicled hot spots for anonymous gay sex across the country, from rural highways to big-city bus stations. If I were a man, I'm sure I would have gone whole hog for this -- the murky shadows, electric glances, risky chances and hit-and-run raids on bulging meat baskets. I can see the excitement of it, and I understand George Michael's addiction to it. Women, however, as I pointed out in "Sexual Personae," to the aggrieved squeals of the politically correct, do not have compartmentalized equipment that can be conveniently whipped out, heated up, honed to a peak and pacified in alleyways and toilet stalls. Give us "the comfort zone," to quote the delectable Vanessa Williams. My libertarian position is that all people, gay or straight, should be free to pursue any brand and degree of consensual sex, as they see fit. But I'm getting sick and tired of the sentimental, feel-good, liberal propaganda that is concealing and denying the blatant, Nero-era decadence of so many gay men's lives, where compulsive, tunnel-vision promiscuity has become institutionalized. A gifted artist like George Michael should be focusing his obsessiveness on the recording studio, not the Beverly Hills latrines. Gay culture is progressively being lost in provincial self-absorption. As an open lesbian, I have no problem conceding that heterosexuality is and always will be the great human norm. Indeed, as a disciple of Oscar Wilde, I positively glory in homosexuality's oppositional character. One reason I reject gay studies and queer theory, as they are presently practiced on campus, is that self-interested partisans seem constitutionally incapable of honestly facing the disturbing ambiguities and complexities beneath the party-time surface of modern gay life.