 |
|
| By Rex Wockner
 Gay pop singer George Michael revealed details of his April
arrest in a Beverly Hills, Calif., park toilet during a live
interview on MTV November 4.
"I got followed into the restroom and then this cop -- I didn't know it was a cop, obviously -- he started playing this game, which I think is called, 'I'll show you mine, you show me yours, and then when you show me yours, I'm going to nick you,'" Michael said. "Actually, what happened was once he got an eyeful, he walked past me, straight past me and out, and I thought, that's kind of odd. I thought, maybe he's just not impressed. And then I went to walk back to my car, and as I got back to the car, I was arrested on the street. ... If someone's waving their genitalia at you, you don't automatically assume that they're an officer of the law. ... I've never been able to turn down a free meal," Michael joked. Michael said he isn't in an open relationship, he's just oversexed.
 "I'm not saying that I have an open relationship with my
boyfriend but he knows who I am," Michael said. "He knows that
I'm generally oversexed, so he's been very, very good. ... We
love each other and he understands that it was a stupid mistake
and he's forgiven me, I hope."
Michael thinks his arrest may have involved some cooperation between Beverly Hills police and Britain's tabloid press. "I don't think it was by chance that this happened to me," he said. "We have some fairly vicious people in the country where I come from and they work in certain streets in London. I think it might have had something to do with it. ... There was a little more cooperation than you would expect between the police and the paparazzi." Michael also said he didn't feel outed by the arrest because he thought he was already out.
"I really thought to my fans I outed myself with the last album
because -- and it wouldn't seem that way in America because in
America there hasn't been that much publicity about me in the
last seven or eight years because I just haven't been here or
been on TV -- but, actually, there's been a lot of publicity
about my sexuality over the years in Europe and my ex-partner's
death was reported very widely, so when I dedicated the album to
him and wrote the album for him, I felt like I was coming out to
my fans, and I didn't really care about people who weren't
interested in my music," he said.
"So, I certainly wasn't gonna go to [the journalists on London's] Fleet Street and say, 'Yes, I'm gay,'" Michael said. "The main point is that I outed myself in my life about eight or nine years ago and I've been out with everyone in my life -- even casual acquaintances, my family, friends -- anyone who's met me within that time has known that I'm gay, just not the press. "So, really, this doesn't feel like an outing, this is just public outing. But any gay person who comes out realizes that the tough bit is your friends and family and that was a great thing - - it was a great, liberating thing and I did it a long time ago. I don't know if I would have come out to the press. They would have got me, some way or other. This is how it ended up because I wouldn't give it to them." Michael's new single and video, Outside, which debuted during the MTV broadcast, is all about public sex and police repression of its practitioners. |
George © 1997-2020 BEI