My Gay Life
Written by Tony Hayden
04/28/2010
Life was linear until I entered my late forties. To borrow from quantum physics, I feel like time has exploded and everything I’ve ever experienced has now happened all at once. I’ve never subscribed to the theory that life has definite chapters and somehow like slices of time I could characterize, summarize and conveniently wrap up each moment. Could I really believe that time doesn’t overlap and bleed into the next chapter like someone left my scrapbook in the rain? I will admit that there was an age of “coming out” and for the sake of my theory we’ll title this my “Gay Life”
Today I celebrate the 29th birthday of my “Gay Life” and in appreciation I salute the one common denominator that has dependably provided the soundtrack to the past three decades. Madonna.
Rewind to April 1982 and somewhere sandwiched in between Laura Branigan’s Gloria and Yaz’s Situation, my friend Mary leaned over to me on the dancefloor and screamed.. “HER NAME’S MADONNA”. We danced to “Everybody” in a cloud of Benson and Hedges Ultra Lights smoke mixed with an intoxicating cloud of Kouros men’s cologne and poppers. I remember thinking, “well, we’ll never hear from HER again.” Later that night we sat on the floor of her bedroom and gazed at the cassette.
I’ve been to almost every party on the planet and there’s always a new set of friends ready to fill the dancing shoes of whoever recently dropped out, freaked out, bottomed out or opted out. Boyfriends change as do the priorities of how I spend my money these days. Ticket stubs, hotel receipts and party clothes that I needed for THAT moment and then never wore again. Madonna is the ONE thread that remains the same. As I go through boxes and files of photos, there are hundreds of pictures, bodies, faces, lights and shows from parties past. Some I knew for the moment and some I shared the ride with for a while, however if you could listen to the photos, somewhere there was a Madonna song echoing in the background.
I was working at Kmart in 1984 when “Like a Virgin” came on in the Automotive Department on an Audiovox car radio. My first studio apartment in 1987 had “Causing a Commotion” blaring from a cassette player and I can’t explain how the beaches of Fort Lauderdale resonated when “Express Yourself” blasted at The Copa. By 1992 “Erotica” was echoing between the walls of “Warsaw” in Miami Beach. I danced in Montreal for the first time at Black & Blue to “Ray of Light” in 1998 and in 2006 I drowned out the sorrow of losing my Mother to “Confessions on a Dance Floor”
So today my Gay Life turns 29. That’s practically 48 in real time and in dog years it’s a number that only rivals the amount of magical memories that Madonna’s music has provided.
