The Furious Spinner

Yes, you guessed it. I'm listening to Queen and their fellahs in great homoerotic rock 'n roll, Led Zeppelin. Good thing we don't have neighbors very close to us. "Whole Lotta Love" can't be played correctly unless it can be turned up all the way. Before the lovely boys, I played Annie Lennox's "I need a man." As I've mentioned here before, I appreciate the irony of that song. And before all that, trance dancing. I danced around the living room whilst my man read the Complete Far Side by Gary Larson. Could anything be better?

Freddie Mercury was a genius. Nobody like him. When Queen first came out, so to speak, no rock group was doing anything like what they did. The first time I heard "We will rock you," I just laughed. Why hadn't someone thought of that before? And "Someone to Love" is so poignant. I tear up every time I hear it.

Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I`m alright, I`m alright
I ain`t gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell

For me, it ranks right up there with "I'm so lonesome I could cry"(POPUPS) by Hank Williams.

When I first became aware of Queen, I was in college. I was a fairly naive about some things. I barely knew what the words gay and lesbian meant. I thought every boy was attracted to boys and girls and every girl was attracted to girls and boys—since I was. I'd always had crushes on boys and girls. So what? It wasn’t something we talked about. As time went on, of course, I figured out not everyone was attracted to the same sex. Anyway, like Freddie Mercury, I was looking for somebody to love. Boys or girls.

Can anybody find me someone to love?

It was the seventies. I either connected with girls who liked boys or boys who liked boys. My best friend in college was of the boy persuasion. After class I'd hurry to his studio apartment above a store on the main street running through campus. We'd listen to Heart while he cooked for me. Sometimes I curled up in his clawfoot bathtub while he told me stories. (It was easier; his bed was a hideaway.) We talked about me going out and getting a job while he stayed home, wrote, and took care of me. (This was a similar relationship to the one I had with my best friend in high school, only she was a girl.)

My college friend and I were platonic friends, or so I thought, since I knew he was gay. But one day when we were drinking at Hungry Charlie's, the hangout just down the street from his apartment, my friend told me he loved me. "I love you, too, honey," I said, grinning from too much beer. "No, I don't mean like that," he said. "I really love you." Now, remember I was very young. I had always thought it would be romantic to have a friend fall in love with me even if I wasn’t in love with him. Flattering somehow. I mean, come on, if a friend could love me that way even after knowing all my secrets and idiosyncrasies, I would have found my great love, and naturally, I would then love him right back. Well, it didn't work that way. He told me he loved me. I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, and nearly threw up. Although I didn’t have a brother, I felt like my brother had just told me he wanted to have sex with me.

It ruined a great relationship. We were never the same after his declaration of love.

I stopped looking for somebody to love. Instead, I decided I didn't want to have the power to hurt someone like that again. If I hooked up with a jerk, I wouldn't have to worry about his feelings. So that's what I did. For four long years.

Then I went to the Clarion Writing Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan where I lived with eighteen other writers for six weeks. (Many of you have heard this story before.) Surrounded by other creative people, I fell in love again, with myself and the world. I also found two new best friends, one was Bill Coleman, the other was Mario Milosevic. Bill was nineteen and had not come out yet. Mario was twenty-two, fresh from Canada. He was the most interesting and funniest person I had ever met. And he had gorgeous legs. The thighs of a man and the ankles of a woman. He had (and has) the most beautiful slender ankles I have ever seen. Sometimes I just sit and stare at his ankles. He was a complete innocent, perhaps because he was Canadian. (They are so different from Americans.) He had no bitterness, none of that "I'm twenty-something and I'm sick of the world already." He was fascinated by everything—especially me.

Can anybody find me someone to love?

Yep. A year later, I married Mario. Bill attended the wedding, along with several other Clarion friends. Bill stayed for the honeymoon, which we spent at our apartment in Ann Arbor—and wandering around Detroit and environs.

I married my best friend, and I've never been sorry. He loves me, cooks for me, and tells me stories. My friend Bill died last year, from complications from AIDS. (I've written about him previously.) I don't know if he ever listened to Queen. Although he probably appreciated Freddie Mercury's theatrical style, he was not a fan of rock 'n roll. He loved the opera. He never really found somebody to love. Not in the way that he deserved. The way we all deserve. When you know someone is finally on your side no matter what, you're able to relax a bit in the world. He never relaxed.

I hope he knew I loved him deeply, for exactly who he was.

Did Freddie Mercury ever find somebody, anybody, to love? His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar in 1946. His parents were Persian. His classmates called him Freddie, and he changed his name to Freddie Mercury when he became a rock 'n roller. What a fitting name for him: the hermaphrodite god of alchemy. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 of AIDS.

We miss you, Freddie.

It's dark out now and cold. The hills across the river are covered in snow. I stood out on our front lawn this morning shivering and staring at the snowy gorge. At my feet was a poppy. It was closed, as if the flower had pulled its orange wrap closer around itself. No other flower has an orange like California poppies. It’s different from any other orange anywhere, I'm certain of it. It's more vibrant, shinier—alive in a way that makes you want to touch it, eat it, and leave it alone all at once. California poppies are a song of orange.

Freddie Mercury's music is like a wrap against the wind and cold. A stylish wrap, of course, the color of California poppies. Nirvana, baby,.

May You Love and Be Loved in Beauty!

Bliss

You turn up
Annie Lennox
dance with air
pull me up
away from
my book
we twirl
jump
sweat
embrace
laugh
until Annie
falls silent
and the house
is just us
holding hands
and warming
the air
with our
breath.

—Mario Milosevic
Santa Fe, 1999

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