Park Cruising by Marcus McCann

Author:Marcus McCann [McCann, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2023-04-10T18:51:28+00:00

No Hard

Feelings

Pop star George Michael looks over his shoulder, checking to make sure he is being followed. Across the back of his jacket are the words “Let’s go outside.” His jeans are tight, his butt exaggeratedly round. Over a colour-blocked park scene beyond him, text reads, “George Michael Wants You.”

Such is the illustration on an invitation to a party at Hampstead Heath. The date on the flyer is April 8, 2017, a little more than three months after Michael’s death. The venue is the park in London where Michael was caught emerging from the bushes in 2006 with a “pot-bellied van driver,” to borrow a phrase from the Daily Mail that efficiently anchored the newspaper’s response not just in homophobia but also classism and body shaming.

The event was co-organized by the Camden lgbt Forum and a group that runs historical outings called Queer Tours of London. People were encouraged to attend to “celebrate our sexuality and sexual freedom.” The dress code? “Wear whatever makes you feel fabulous.”

George Michael’s proclivity for park cruising was first made public in 1998, when he was thirty-four years old. He earned headlines when he was arrested for engaging in lewd behaviour in a public washroom in Beverly Hills. In Michael’s response to the arrest, and later to the publicity surrounding his outing at Hampstead Heath, he refused the narrative that was expected of him. He never confessed to shame or embarrassment. In fact, he did just the opposite.

From a Daily Mail headline: “George: I Am Not Ashamed of Cruising.” Elsewhere, he described himself proudly as a “dirty, filthy fucker.” In an interview in Attitude, he later said, “I felt that lightening the stigma around cruising was the most immediately beneficial thing I could do.” This refusal of shame is what the organizers of the Hampstead Heath party admired.

A video produced for HuffPost shows that hundreds turned up for the event. Homemade bunting and flags flap in the wind; a poster sports a print of a tub of cottage cheese, a winking reference to the British slang “cottaging” for sex in public bathrooms; another poster displays Tom Cruise’s face under the word “cruising”; a neon pink, hand-painted sign reads simply “I am dancing with the freaks.”

In the video, people dance, picnic, chant, listen to speeches. Celebrants have taken the dress code seriously. There are butches with shaved heads, sissies in frocks and jewellery and moustaches, and queer and trans people of a variety of ages and skin colours and abilities, including seniors and queer families with youngsters. One person is wearing a jockstrap and another is wearing a wrestling singlet with a peekaboo butt cut-out.

It’s so wholesome. The sun is out; there is a campy, do-it-yourself vibe. Nothing is polished, perfect, overly professional. The music is upbeat; there are lots of smiles. In its sexual freedom and unironic invitation to joy, the event celebrates George Michael’s refusal of shame, and, in so doing, follows in his shameless footsteps.

Poor Kyle. Kyle is an out gay man who lives in Los Angeles.

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