My Queer Erotic City

I was at lunch with a friend yesterday when we heard the news - people started calling, texting, messaging. The first text was from my ride or die - "Prince is dead. Check your Twitter." The first call was from my 30 year old daughter to see if I had heard the news and was okay (she checked on me on and off all day). I'll remember that moment forever. Shock, disbelief, sorrow - and then the beginning of a day of stories - all of our stories, told to each other and over social media - of how Prince shaped our lives, was in our skin, and that we could viscerally feel the doves crying.

Worldwide mourning unfolding, with its epicenter in Prince's hometown and mine, Minneapolis. You can't have lived here over the past decades and not have Prince stories. He was among us and in us. This early morning after, I choose to share my Prince stories as part of our collective story. My stories are mostly on the sidelines, but they are deep and true and lodged inside my broken heart.

Prince was born in 1958 and I was born in 1956. I considered him an age peer and always looked to him as my shining star of how to keep doing you, keep reinventing yourself while never losing your inner core.

I remember the early Prince, who went from Bryant Jr High just blocks from where I then lived to superstar - who was "weird" but making amazing music that only could have been born from here - a mix of rock, pop, R&B and funk. He played very early at the Way, an old North Minneapolis organization that was housed where the 4th Police Precinct now exists. Then he blew up, mostly thanks to Purple Rain.

I remember standing in line at the old Varsity movie theater in Dinkytown to see the world premiere of the movie (is that even right, the world premiere, memory is a hazy thing). That foggy memory says it might have been raining.

During most of the 80s, I was a working, married mom with little kids. I missed all the concerts, the First Ave jams, Paisley Park. But between Raffi and other kid music, I'd play Prince, not shielding my kids' ears from those nasty lyrics and funky, funky dance beats. And we'd all see Prince everywhere - in clubs out to hear local live music, and about town doing his everyday thing. You couldn't live in Mpls and not experience that. We were all so proud of our hometown kid made good. That he launched a sound from Minneapolis that was of us - and it seemed, for us (even if the world loved it too).

Later, in the 90s, Prince became something else for me. I had all his albums and was still listening all the time. His sassy gender fluid self and music that celebrated sex in all its raunchiness stirred something that was just beginning to awaken in me. I was in my 30s and had a good husband and a good life, but something was missing - a thing that shimmered and quaked in songs like Cream, Get Off, and Sexy MF - my queerness. I knew I needed to find a place - the erotic city - where that music and that gender fluidity lived in me and those who surrounded me. And I did, finally, in 1995.

I spent the next decade dancing my heart out in queer clubs two or three nights a week. Prince was part of our soundscape, our love and our sex. Of course straight people had this same experience, but to be inside Mpls's queer erotic city and have those experiences with the people who made me want to "turn your big ass around so I can work on that zipper" was a homecoming. And life giving. 

I only saw him live once - his Musicology tour. My new girlfriend - who is now my spouse of almost 13 years - took me to see the man I referred to as "my husband" because, well, he was my husband. It was one of my first moments of cognitive disconnect with aging. The arena - Xcel Energy Center - was full of middle aged people like us. I think in our hearts we all were still somewhere in the 80s, but it was 2004. Yet there he was, on fire, in heels and fabulous, playing the hits and the new stuff, seemingly ageless and timeless, and reminding us you are never too old to get your funk on.

For years I was part of a group of friends who threw an annual "HalloQueen" house party, a gay affair where we dragged the night away in amazing, hilarious routines. One year my dear friend Erin and I did a Prince/Madonna medley to Little Red Corvette and Like a Virgin (she was Prince, I was Madonna). It was hysterical and epic. There is video evidence that I'll keep private. My friend passed away from cancer several years ago and I watch that video on occasion when I'm missing her. 

Over these last few years we all started seeing more of Prince out and around town again. At concerts here and there - he even had a table at the Dakota. More parties at Paisley Park. I was now free to go, but I still didn't. Most of my friends were wanting to stay in more, stay out late less, and if I'm brutally honest, I was right there, too. But reflecting back, I wish I had found my small crew of Prince peeps who would on occasion be willing to stay up all night for a chance to see his royal purple highness and eat pancakes.

I almost pressed "purchase" for his one of his three surprise gigs at the Dakota a couple years back, and recently, for his Piano and a Microphone Tour. But I didn't. Mostly I don't believe in regrets, yet this morning I regret those choices - or regret not working harder at calling friends who surely would have gone.

And finally, we are back to last night. After work, I was compelled to hop on the light rail, go downtown to First Ave and pay my respects with fellow fans. I wore the Prince jacket I made years ago and even had someone snap a photo of me in it in front of his star. I watched the crew setting up for the street party going down a couple hours later, but ended up going home. Looking at photos and videos this morning from that street party and the all night dance party inside First Ave (that is just winding down as I type this), I have this feeling of missing out, again. I have no one to blame but myself.

I have to catch myself from falling too far into the melancholic nostalgia that has been washing through me on this week of turning 60 - of knowing that what's ahead is uncertain and certainly too short. Most of my decades with Prince were intimate - in my home listening to music, or dancing at clubs or house parties. So my pilgrimage to First Ave alone and heading home before dark was perhaps my perfect goodbye to Prince the person. There is comfort in knowing his legacy and music lives on for all of us. Just last week I made a playlist (once we called them mixtapes) to celebrate my six decades of living, and the first song on it? Sexy MF. Of course. And Erotic City is there too, right in the middle, just as it was in my life. That Prince died just a few days later is unbelievable to me. And a reminder to us all - say yes more than no, hit purchase if you really want to go, or be okay chilling at home. Do whatever is in your heart. And most of all, do you.

Thank you, Prince.

Prince covering Joni Mitchell's A Case of You 
You're in my blood like holy wine/you taste so bitter and so sweet/I could drink a case of you, darling, and still be on my feet/still be on my feet.