0:01

I imagine being one of the helicopter pilots

0:03

just hovering above George Michael. Like, are

0:05

they hoping that they're going to get

0:07

another Bronco chase out of this? Right?

0:10

Like, is this why I went to helicopter school? Welcome

0:15

to You're Wrong About. I'm

0:28

Sarah Marshall, and today we are

0:30

talking about George Michael, part

0:33

two of our two-part extravaganza

0:36

with our friend Marcus McCann.

0:39

Marcus is the author of Park Cruising, What

0:42

Happens When We Wander Off the Path. I

0:45

had such a lovely time making these episodes with

0:47

him, and I'm so excited to get to share

0:49

them with you. We talked

0:51

for a really long time when we made

0:53

both of these episodes. Some of you

0:55

might know we released an extended cut of part one

0:58

over on Apple Plus and Patreon, and

1:01

we're doing the same thing with part

1:03

two because we just had so much to

1:05

talk about. So if you're curious, if you

1:07

want to hear more of the context for

1:09

the discussion or the little cul-de-sacs that I

1:11

love to get into on the show, you

1:14

can hear that on Patreon or

1:16

Apple Plus. And we

1:18

also have part three of

1:21

our four-part series on Britney

1:23

Spears' memoir, The Woman and

1:25

Me, over there. I

1:28

recorded this four-part series with Eve Lindley.

1:30

It has been, again, such a joy.

1:32

I love to be in a multi-part

1:34

pop star saga, and right now we

1:37

are doing two of them. So it's

1:39

a thrill. In part three,

1:41

we were talking about the era of

1:43

Britney's marriage to Kevin Federline, and

1:46

we have a lot to say about it in

1:48

that time in her life. But I will just

1:50

tell you that I think Eve puts it best

1:52

when she says, she's everything

1:55

and he's just Kevin. That's

1:59

it for me. Thank you so much

2:01

for joining us. Happy

2:03

Taurus season. Happy

2:05

Barely Over Aries season. Happy

2:08

practically here summertime. I

2:11

can't believe it. Listen

2:13

to some pop music. Listen to this

2:15

episode. Thank you again. Welcome

2:22

to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall

2:24

and today we are doing part two

2:26

of the story

2:28

of George Michael with our guest

2:30

Marcus McCann. If you haven't listened

2:32

to part one, well actually Marcus, what

2:34

do you think? Should a person just

2:37

jump in the middle like this? I think

2:39

it's probably best to start at the beginning, yeah. I

2:42

mean, listen, and I don't, if you don't

2:44

like being told what to do, I don't

2:48

know what to do. We've

2:50

got some pretty good cameos in the first half. We've

2:53

got Freddie Mercury's got a cameo.

2:56

We got lots of folks, right? Elton

2:58

John was in there. Liza Minelli showed

3:01

up. She sure did. She sure

3:03

did. If that's not a reason to rewind and

3:05

go back to the last episode, I don't know what is. Yeah,

3:08

Liza Minelli showed up in multiple

3:10

ways. Where are

3:12

we coming into the story in the

3:14

second half? We left George

3:16

Michael at a grave site

3:19

in Brazil in 1993. I

3:23

feel like before we really get into the second

3:25

half, we should talk about cruising. It's

3:28

going to be an important part of his story, and

3:30

it's going to be something that's going to follow him

3:32

around a lot in the second half. So

3:36

Sarah, what do you know about cruising? Oh,

3:38

boy. Well, I

3:40

know what I learned from the movie, Cruising, which

3:42

I feel like was inaccurate, which

3:45

is a movie that was famously homophobic,

3:47

even in its time, its time being

3:49

1980, which is

3:52

about Al Pacino learning that there's

3:54

a leather bar murderer. And

3:57

so he asked to go undercover cruising as a...

4:00

gay man having public sex.

4:02

My understanding is that it's just like soliciting

4:06

people for public or maybe not even public sex

4:08

in the gay community. I honestly just think of

4:10

it as like, I'm going out tonight

4:12

and I'm going to have some sex. Yeah,

4:15

I think that's a good way of thinking about it.

4:17

I would say like at its most basic, it's just

4:19

a way of making yourself open

4:21

to meeting people. Wow. Well, that

4:23

really answers the question of our modern times,

4:26

which is how do adults meet each other?

4:28

So it's like really just a set of

4:30

nonverbal cues. For example, like looking,

4:32

looking away and then looking back at someone or

4:35

posture or like that kind of like

4:37

strategic tug on your clothing as

4:40

a way of indicating interest. Nice.

4:43

So predominantly men

4:46

will go to places that have a reputation

4:48

for cruising and they'll just hang out there

4:50

and it can be a park or a

4:52

street corner or a bathroom. Did

4:54

you know that when straight men approach

4:57

women for sexual

4:59

reasons, they have no signs of

5:01

interest or indications that they look

5:03

for because unless you're running away

5:05

or hitting them, they're like, this

5:07

is going great. That's

5:09

the thing that sets cruising apart from

5:12

other kinds of is this like circuit

5:14

of mutual interest or you

5:16

noticing them, them noticing you, you

5:19

noticing them noticing you, that situation.

5:22

Right. So there's an idea that cruising is

5:24

something that only queer people do. And it's

5:26

not true. Anyone can cruise, especially

5:28

in cafe culture or in bar

5:30

culture. Yeah. Going out in

5:32

public and expressing interest in men, my fear

5:35

is like, if I look interested in you

5:37

one time, you're never going to leave me

5:39

alone. If we go home together,

5:41

you might be unable to have sex with

5:43

me and then kill me like in looking

5:45

for Mr. Goodbar. And

5:48

if things go well, I might

5:50

accidentally have a relationship with you and

5:52

then get married and I'm afraid of that also.

5:54

My life is really ruled by fear is what

5:56

we're learning here. Sorry to drag this into George

5:59

Michael, but. This is so

6:01

basic. This is such a low

6:03

bar to say one of the

6:05

benefits of cruising is that it

6:07

teaches participants to think about and

6:09

value the signs of another person's

6:11

sexual interest as a precondition to

6:13

a sexual encounter. Like right, that's

6:15

a low bar, but here we

6:17

are, right? It is. But here

6:19

it's a low bar, but here we are. It's

6:21

a folk song if anyone wants to write it.

6:23

And that also leads us back to cruising the

6:26

Al Pacino movie where the

6:28

argument I think the movie makes implicitly is

6:32

that, and this is my read

6:34

of it, Al Pacino gets deeper and deeper

6:36

into the undercover life. Oh my God,

6:38

he's gay. Oh my God, he's

6:40

also a murderer. And there's

6:42

just this thing kind of like in basic instinct where

6:45

it's like, you know, gay, murderer, they kind of go

6:47

together. You can't do one without the other. And you're

6:49

like, what? I feel

6:51

like there is some kind of idea deep down

6:53

of like sex is really between a man and

6:56

an object. And if you have two like autonomous

6:58

willing participants, then like, that's the

7:00

thing we're scared of. And that's the thing we're

7:02

equating with violence in that narrative. Right.

7:05

Cruising comes out in 1980. While it's

7:07

being filmed, gay people are protesting, they're

7:09

disrupting the shoot. They like, for

7:12

example, we'll find out that they're

7:14

shooting in a particular apartment building and

7:16

they'll like go to the next department

7:18

over and play loud music so that

7:20

they can't shoot that day. Great. Oh,

7:23

a hundred percent. We assume that cruising is

7:25

just kind of this like two

7:27

macho guys pushing each other up against

7:29

a wall kind of thing like, like

7:31

it's portrayed in the movie Cruising when

7:34

the reality is kind of the

7:36

opposite. So like, for example, Samuel Delaney in

7:39

his book Times Square Red Times Square Blue,

7:41

which is about the history of

7:44

cruising in porn theaters in New York, especially

7:46

in the 70s. He

7:48

would just he would describe it as like he'd

7:50

be sitting in a row in the cinema

7:55

and someone would come and sit at

7:57

the end of the row and they'd like look over

8:00

And if they were making eyes at each other, then the

8:02

guy would move over so he's two seats away, and

8:05

then one seat away. And then

8:07

they were sitting next to each other and a hand would

8:09

sort of graze the other

8:11

person's knee. It feels almost Victorian,

8:13

right? In the how shy sounding

8:16

that ritual would be as

8:20

opposed to this kind of, I'm

8:23

going to, I'm doing this because I'm going to get

8:25

my rocks off kind of thing. Right,

8:27

in the sense of like gradually

8:30

easing a car forward, being

8:32

kind of idling in a position where either

8:34

party can put the brakes on.

8:36

Yeah, where either party can

8:38

put the brakes on, right? So I

8:40

think that's an important part of the

8:43

kind of stop and start rhythm of cruising

8:45

is that. And it's

8:48

also, I think, set up to avoid confrontation,

8:52

accidental confrontation with

8:54

non-participants. You're giving people

8:56

lots of outs. The places

8:58

where it takes place tends to be in

9:01

the kind of fringes on the

9:03

periphery of social situations, in

9:06

a kind of disused corner of a park or

9:09

late at night or behind the

9:11

bushes, somewhere that's not. Is

9:13

this something that has been a

9:15

cause of alarmist straight rhetoric for

9:17

a really long time? Was there

9:19

a moment when this emerged as

9:23

something people enjoyed freaking out about? What's

9:25

the history there? Cruising

9:28

is a very old practice. Like, for

9:30

example, we have evidence of it in

9:32

15th century Florence and in

9:35

18th century London. And

9:37

like Walt Whitman was cruising in 19th

9:39

century New York. So it's

9:41

something that has quite a long history.

9:44

And most of our records of it come

9:46

from police interactions or

9:48

other moments where there's a kind

9:50

of like social freak out. These

9:52

are encounters that are fleeting and

9:54

brief and kind of leave

9:57

no trace otherwise. As for

9:59

George, He would later say

10:01

that he first started cruising in London

10:03

while he was still a teenager. For

10:06

example, he like to sunbathe like

10:09

later in his life at Will Rogers Park, which

10:11

is in West Hollywood. And

10:13

if he got cruised there in the park,

10:15

he would go with the guy either to

10:17

the bathroom or take the guy

10:19

to his car or like go home with him

10:21

basically. He would also later

10:23

say that he'd been picking up guys in gay

10:26

bars since before the Wham days

10:29

and continued to do so while he's living

10:31

in LA. And I would

10:33

also say like I'm not here to

10:35

proselytize about park cruising. Some

10:37

people do it. Other people, it would be

10:39

too uncomfortable. They don't want to. That's OK. Right. I

10:42

think that it's part of the big

10:45

tapestry of benign sexual human variation that

10:47

we were talking about at the beginning

10:49

of the last episode. Right. And I'm

10:51

sure that certainly in the 90s, by

10:53

which point we had perfected this, people

10:56

were making the think of the children argument

10:59

here. Yeah. So I mean,

11:01

the police across the United States

11:03

and in Canada and Western Europe too

11:05

take a periodic interest in park cruising.

11:08

And the crackdowns are often very often

11:11

framed as we're concerned about

11:13

the unsuspecting innocent,

11:16

usually framed as a child, but not always. It's

11:18

a good band name. In

11:20

St. John's, Newfoundland, there was this cruising

11:23

thing that happened where they put video

11:26

cameras in the men's bathroom,

11:28

which is that's just gross to start with. And

11:30

the video cameras captured lots of

11:32

men engaged in sexual activities in

11:34

this in this bathroom in the village

11:37

mall in St. John's, Newfoundland. But

11:40

what they found was any time the door clicked

11:42

open, everyone would pull apart. And

11:45

so the like the Canadian criminal

11:47

law around this requires

11:49

an offended non participant. And

11:53

when it goes up on appeal, the court says

11:55

there's no offended non participant because they're pulling apart

11:58

every time. say

12:00

from a men's ray point of

12:02

view that they're demonstrating an intent

12:04

not to be seen by pulling

12:06

apart when the door opens. This

12:11

is great. I feel like we're having a legally-blund I

12:14

would that we were. That would be amazing. Also,

12:17

anyone who can manage public sex in that

12:20

harsh of a climate, you

12:22

know, definitely deserves it. Yeah. George himself is

12:24

going to say later, I

12:28

definitely think that the kind of sex that I'm

12:30

having is worth getting in the newspapers for. Oh,

12:33

George. God.

12:39

But yeah, okay. So, so coming back

12:41

to where George is. After

12:43

the death of Anselmo, he returns

12:45

to London. He's very bitter about

12:48

the weak sales of his album

12:50

Listen Without Prejudice. He

12:53

blames the record company and he says

12:55

that's what he wants out of his

12:57

record contract. It's the contract

12:59

that he first signed when he's 18.

13:01

It's been renegotiated a couple of times.

13:03

He signed this contract initially

13:05

for 500 pounds in 1982 and he's now a

13:11

global superstar who's committed to

13:13

10 albums under the Sony

13:15

imprint. And like, is it

13:17

fair to blame Sony for the weak sales

13:19

of Listen Without Prejudice? I don't know that

13:22

objectively they were weak sales. It's

13:24

not the same level as Faith, but

13:27

as we were talking about in the last episode,

13:30

it probably would have been impossible to

13:32

match what happened with Faith. Faith

13:34

was just such a cultural moment. And

13:36

then also, okay, George, like

13:38

you got a part to play in this, which

13:40

is like, he's refusing to do

13:43

interviews and he won't put his face on

13:45

the record and he like won't appear in

13:47

the music videos. My analysis

13:49

is that this is somewhat

13:51

charmingly petty and stupid behavior by someone

13:53

who's like 30 years old, but who

13:55

has had as many career phases as

13:58

if they were 55. And

14:00

I wonder if there's just like

14:02

also an element of exhaustion here.

14:05

Totally. I think that's right. I also,

14:07

you know, like the idea that we

14:10

should support the artist in

14:12

their disputes against the record label

14:15

is something that now from from

14:18

2024 we can see, for example

14:20

with Taylor Swift rerecording her albums,

14:23

or Beyonce releasing the title

14:25

platform, whatever, right? Now

14:28

we say that's like just good business

14:30

sense. If a musician isn't

14:32

in control of their career

14:35

progression, then I think

14:38

we would recognize now that that is potentially a

14:40

problem. There was not that

14:42

sense in 1993, and George is going

14:45

to alienate a lot of fans by doing

14:47

this. Huh. Yeah, because it's

14:49

so interesting to get back to that. But

14:51

yeah, I feel like there was in a

14:54

general way more mainstream trust

14:56

of establishments in the 90s. Yeah,

14:59

right. Like when baseball players go

15:01

on strike, the common

15:04

refrain is that it's millionaires fighting

15:06

billionaires. And so like all

15:08

none of us have any skin in the game. We

15:11

remove from the equation, the kind

15:13

of like alienation of labor, or

15:15

the fact that the workers should

15:17

be in control of the end

15:19

product. And because

15:22

some, you know, and it's a minority,

15:26

some musicians and some

15:28

athletes make good money, it

15:30

means that we, you know, we can abdicate responsibility

15:32

or we don't have to care. We can tell

15:34

them shut up and get back in the studio.

15:37

These power dynamics, I think that exists

15:40

throughout human behavior, they're all

15:42

kind of fractals of each other. So

15:44

if an artist is being mistreated by

15:46

their record label, it's not the

15:48

greatest injustice in the world, but

15:50

the same dynamic continues, you know,

15:52

down the line because it's,

15:54

you know, kind of showing how capitalism

15:57

as we know it today is about what you can

15:59

get away with. I mean, that really happened

16:02

with Jive and with the record

16:04

label that most boy

16:06

bands had in the late 90s, which

16:08

was absolutely bleeding them dry. Right. The

16:11

deals got worse and worse from

16:13

the 70s to the 2000s, where even now, more of the kind

16:19

of expenses that come

16:21

with producing a record are expected to

16:23

be borne by the musician rather than

16:25

the record label. Right,

16:28

which is absolutely ridiculous because it's like who

16:30

has more resources, the capital records

16:34

or this 20-year-old from Eau Claire?

16:36

Well, that's just it, right? And

16:39

so that's what's being tested in this

16:41

trial. In 1993,

16:44

when the case begins, George

16:47

shows up. He's going to testify

16:49

at this hearing. And

16:51

I got to tell you, he is such a smoke

16:53

show. He's dressed in

16:55

a black suit, black shirt. He's

16:58

got the high shoulder pads, black

17:00

sunglasses. His hair

17:02

perfectly coiffed. He looks like

17:04

he stepped out of an Armani

17:06

ad in 1990. So

17:09

he's serving trial. Yes,

17:12

serving trial, I realize. One

17:14

other piece of background information that I think

17:16

is relevant here is that in the disclosure

17:18

as they're preparing for trial, it's

17:20

revealed that the Sony executives in

17:22

the United States have

17:25

been referring to George

17:27

Michael when they're talking to George

17:29

Michael's agent. They've been

17:31

referring to George as that F-bomb

17:34

client of yours. So

17:36

George knows that at the time of the trial, he

17:38

can't say that that's why he doesn't have trust

17:41

in Sony or the

17:43

Sony executives because it

17:45

would involve drawing unwanted attention to

17:48

something. But you've got to think

17:50

that that's their operating as well

17:52

as everything else. Oh, God,

17:54

yeah. I mean, it reminds me of the

17:57

way Judy Garland was treated by whatever

17:59

studio. or she worked for as a

18:02

teenager where it's like they wanted her to

18:04

be so different, you know, she needed to

18:06

lose weight, she needed to like take all

18:08

this speed, obviously. And not

18:11

that she was alone in this, but just that they

18:13

were so invested in like whittling her

18:16

away into something different from what she

18:18

was. I remember watching this as a

18:20

fairly naive teenager and being like, well, God,

18:22

if they don't like her, then like they

18:25

shouldn't hire her. Of course, what I

18:27

was missing is that like, no, they they want to make money

18:29

and they want to and they want

18:31

to whittle her into the best version to

18:33

make money with according to them. But just

18:35

it's depressing kind of comparing your dreams of

18:37

Sartem as a child with the reality that

18:40

you may find yourself working for a label

18:43

that openly disrespects you or even

18:45

hates you, but is using

18:47

you as an asset because you're like a

18:49

forest they're logging. Yeah, exactly. Will

18:52

not let go of you but also does not want to

18:55

respect you. And also is like 10 albums.

18:58

There are artists who have an

19:00

entire quite long career and never

19:02

record 10 albums. Right. And like

19:04

this man has been massively successful

19:06

with Wham, two albums,

19:09

and as George Michael, the

19:11

solo artist, two albums. So

19:14

he's still got a long way to go. So

19:16

also the trial takes six months goes on

19:18

and on and on. George

19:21

is going to end in the end spend three

19:23

to four million pounds on this litigation. And

19:27

at the end of it, he loses. There's an

19:29

appeal. But eventually the parties

19:31

agree not to pursue the appeal and

19:33

in exchange, Sony's going to

19:35

sell the contract to

19:38

this new label Dreamworks

19:41

for $40 million. The

19:44

idea being that even if the contract

19:46

is valid, the relationship is too damaged

19:48

to continue. And so in 1995, he

19:51

releases his first studio

19:53

album in five years. It's an

19:55

album called older. And I

19:57

will say that like five years is a long time

19:59

in the music. industry. Like that's several

20:02

cycles of cool even in the 90s.

20:04

I mean when you think about the

20:06

early 90s versus the late 90s, yeah

20:08

we were starting to move very quickly.

20:10

We had gone from like Paul

20:12

Reiser to Christina Aguilera. That's a weird

20:14

comparison. I'm sticking with it though. I'm

20:17

sticking. Maybe this is it. There's

20:19

a recognition that you need to really cash in while

20:21

somebody is at the height of their fame and

20:23

so it leads to this kind of like manic

20:26

version of their fame that burns

20:28

really bright and really quickly.

20:31

And I'm sure too because of the

20:33

sense of abundance and the record companies that

20:36

because you have so much money maybe it seems

20:39

easier to just get a new star than to

20:41

continue putting money into someone who's you know did

20:43

something two years ago. I think that's absolutely true

20:45

and that's what's happening here and it sort of

20:48

makes the decision to punish

20:50

George Michael in this way a little

20:53

bit difficult to process

20:55

from the perspective of

20:57

that model. But I also think it's like

21:00

I want to show like

21:02

I, Sony, want to show

21:04

every artist that if you

21:06

mess with this behemoth

21:09

we are going to destroy you. Wow

21:12

okay yeah so he's like the head

21:14

on a spike. Sony must have realized

21:16

at some level in like a kind

21:18

of cost-benefit analysis that like even if

21:20

Sony is able to keep him as

21:22

an artist that if George wants out

21:25

he's not going to produce the kind

21:27

of product for you

21:30

that you need in order to be able to

21:32

to sell it and make a

21:34

ton of money. Mary's gonna do one of those Neil

21:36

Young albums. Yeah right right

21:39

like the sort of classic to

21:41

get out of a contract people will very rapidly

21:43

do a compilation album

21:46

and a Christmas album. I

21:48

wonder how many Christmas albums that's the

21:50

reason for it. I think I

21:52

honestly like a lot of these deals

21:54

are five five album deals and if

21:56

you count that fifth album is often

21:59

just garbage. And

22:02

like, I won't say that about older. So older, he

22:04

pours his heart into it, it

22:06

is not going to be received very

22:08

well. The first single that they release

22:11

off of it is Jesus to a

22:13

Child, which is another very slow, dirgy

22:15

ballad. It's about Anselmo.

22:18

He also releases a song called Fast

22:20

Love, which is about the pleasures of

22:22

fleeting sexual connection, fast love meaning casual

22:25

sex. And both of

22:27

these songs are going to be number one hits

22:29

in the UK and barely break the top 10

22:31

in the US. In the end, older is only

22:34

going to sell about 700,000

22:37

copies in the US in the first six months. And

22:40

it's considered a massive disappointment.

22:42

Now, I mean, look, for a lot of artists, if

22:44

you sold 700,000 records, that would be a huge

22:47

smash for you, you'd be you'd be so happy.

22:50

But for someone who is selling 15 million records

22:52

before this, and also for whom

22:55

the there had been so much

22:58

invested, if I could put it that way,

23:00

it is it's just it's considered a failure,

23:02

essentially. And it's

23:04

the only record he does for Dreamworks. As

23:06

a result of it, he gets released from the contract. Oh,

23:09

nice. How does he feel about all that? It

23:12

gives him a sense of independence with the records

23:14

that he's going to release following that that and

23:17

what he'll do is

23:19

one album deals from from then on.

23:21

And in fact, he's going to end

23:23

up back with Sony making records on

23:25

these one album deals. But it's

23:28

like he's he's more of a contractor. At that

23:30

point, Totally. He can negotiate the

23:33

terms for each album as he's preparing it

23:35

as he sort of done his little vision

23:37

board for what this album is going to

23:39

be. I should

23:41

also say during this period, his reputation

23:44

as a philanthropist is continuing. So he's

23:46

giving for example, to Project Angel Food,

23:49

which is delivering meals to HIV positive

23:51

people in June 1996, he

23:53

meets Kenny Goss. Kenny Goss is

23:55

going to become his campaign his

23:57

like longest term partner in his life.

24:01

They're going to have a very grown

24:03

up and adult relationship. They meet at

24:05

Beverly Hot Springs, which is a day

24:08

spa in Koreatown in LA. I don't

24:10

know if it's sex on premises. His

24:13

biographer James Gavin describes it as

24:16

ostensibly straight, but

24:18

with a substantial gay clientele. And

24:20

also that it was known for attracting celebrities

24:23

and people who wanted to get with celebrities.

24:25

You just never know where you're going to

24:27

meet a celebrity. 100%,

24:30

right? Kenny is, he's

24:32

like a Texas small business owner.

24:35

Like Anselmo, he's a little bit older

24:37

than George. There's a five year age

24:39

difference. And by the following

24:41

summer, they move in together. There

24:43

are actually not a ton of photos of

24:46

the two of them together, but they do

24:48

appear. They actually appear in public regularly

24:50

through the 90s and early 2000s as a couple, as

24:52

demonstrably as

24:56

a gay couple. I know that for

24:58

a lot of gay activists in the 80s and

25:01

90s and, you know, AIDS activists during that

25:03

time, they really would have

25:05

preferred to see George Michael come out in the

25:07

early 1980s and be an

25:09

out and proud gay man at that time.

25:11

It didn't feel to George like it was

25:14

available to him. And so when he

25:16

gets the second act and he can be a little

25:18

bit more outspoken, he craps it

25:20

and runs with it. Anyway,

25:22

the two of them exchange rings, but they're

25:24

never going to get married. Of course, in

25:27

1997, they couldn't get married. But

25:29

by all accounts, it's a healthy, supportive,

25:31

loving relationship. According to

25:34

George, the relationship is never monogamous,

25:36

but it is honest. Kenny

25:39

and George have sex together and

25:41

also apart with other men. This

25:44

is fairly common among gay

25:46

couples. For example, there's one study

25:48

in San Francisco where half

25:51

the participants in a long

25:53

term same sex

25:55

relationship were non-monogamous. I

25:58

was just going to give George a little George

26:00

quote here, he said, anyone

26:03

who didn't like it could stick it up

26:05

there expletive. It's

26:08

time that we accepted gay men for what

26:10

they are as opposed to the tea

26:13

and biscuit version. Ah,

26:16

yeah. I mean, I also

26:19

feel like monogamy as a social

26:22

value is very deeply rooted in

26:25

the patriarchy. And there's

26:28

this great, completely bonkers Samuel Johnson

26:30

quote about how, you know,

26:32

if you steal a man's pig, you know, that

26:34

sucks. But if a woman is unfaithful, then she'll

26:36

corrupt a man's entire hereditary line

26:39

and steal everything from

26:41

him. And like the idea of

26:43

monogamy as a virtue is very,

26:45

you know, inevitably rooted in the idea of

26:48

marriage as a transfer of capital and

26:51

a way to merge and protect

26:53

assets. The lack of historic

26:55

neutrality about that is interesting because it

26:57

seems like the more reasonable

26:59

way to look at it is that monogamy works

27:01

for some people and non

27:04

monogamy works for some people. And

27:07

it's just like anything else. Right. And or it

27:09

could work for some fruit for a person for

27:11

one period of their life and might not work

27:13

for them at a different period in their life.

27:16

Right. Yeah. In a way, that's the George Michael

27:18

story. Right. In in

27:20

1984, he's singing I Don't Want

27:22

Your Freedom, Part-Time Love Will Just Bring Me

27:24

Down. And then in the

27:26

video for I Want Your Sex, he's writing Explore

27:29

Monogamy. And by the

27:31

time we get to the older album, he's

27:33

singing more openly about the pleasures of these

27:35

kinds of fleeting encounters. Yeah.

27:37

Yeah. It feels like forbidden

27:39

knowledge, but very, very true

27:42

and very reassuringly true that people are

27:44

different from each other. To quote Eve

27:46

Segwick and also that people

27:48

are different from themselves. You know,

27:50

like we will want different things

27:53

at different times in our lives, in

27:55

our relationships and sexually as well as every

27:57

other way. And that's great. Like, I

27:59

think. It's very exciting. That

28:02

year, the same year that Kenny moves in

28:04

with him, George's mother dies

28:07

after a short battle with cancer.

28:10

George will remember the deaths of

28:12

Anselmo and Leslie as really defining

28:15

this period, and

28:17

will later report that he

28:19

was depressed, sad, grieving, not

28:23

producing new work. He's also smoking a

28:25

lot of weed, like you do. Especially

28:28

in times of grief. This is also the same

28:30

year that Princess Diana dies, 1997. George

28:34

and Diana were friends, but

28:36

they weren't super close. George

28:39

actually will later say that Diana had

28:41

reached out to him and tried to

28:43

be more of an active friend, and

28:46

George hadn't fully reciprocated, and

28:49

that he regretted it. He will

28:51

say, I didn't realize how isolated

28:54

and lonely she was. And

28:56

they were about the same age, right? Yeah,

28:59

absolutely, yeah. And

29:01

how far back did they know each other? Oh,

29:04

like from the Wham days. And Diana

29:07

is doing early AIDS activism in

29:09

the 80s, right? They actually looked

29:11

pretty similar to each other. Same feathered,

29:13

blonde haircut, is that what you mean?

29:16

Yes, absolutely. Same beautiful jaw, yeah. Apparently,

29:19

she quite fancied him from

29:22

seeing him on TV in 1984. That's

29:25

the beginning of their relationship. Okay,

29:27

so that's 1997. And

29:29

then the next time that George is in the news

29:32

is when he's caught in

29:34

the public park in Los Angeles. On

29:38

April 7th, 1998, George and Kenny are having

29:41

lunch together at

29:43

a restaurant in Los Angeles. George has

29:46

a couple of glasses of wine, which is

29:48

not unusual for him. It

29:50

seems like it's a nice, quiet lunch. There's not

29:52

like a big fight. There's no altercation. But

29:54

afterwards, the pair go their separate ways for the

29:57

afternoon. At about 4 p.m., George and Kenny

29:59

are having a lunch. arrives at Will Rogers

30:01

Park. He's wearing casual

30:03

clothes, baseball cap, t-shirt,

30:06

sweatpants, and he's

30:09

hanging out there when he catches the eye of what

30:12

he will later describe as a six

30:14

foot two hunk. The accounts vary

30:16

a bit, but they agree

30:18

on the key points. They made eyes at each other in

30:21

the park, and then they

30:24

go into this public bathroom together. It's

30:26

like park bathroom. It sounds like George

30:29

goes over to the urinal and

30:31

the other guy goes into a stall, and

30:34

he leaves the stall door open as

30:36

a kind of invitation. George

30:38

says that when he looked over, the

30:41

guy is jerking off in the stall, and

30:44

he goes over and he joins him. He

30:47

enters the stall together. So it's a

30:49

nice, nice stall. Yes,

30:51

that's right. In the other guy's account,

30:54

George is in the stall and he pulls

30:56

down his own sweatpants and begins to jerk

30:59

himself off in the stall, and the guy

31:01

leaves. There is later some sensationalistic reporting that

31:03

there were other people or even children in

31:06

the bathroom. There's nothing to support that at

31:08

all. It's just these two guys. And

31:11

so I think it's worth thinking about, like how

31:13

public or private is that situation

31:16

if you're in an empty bathroom

31:18

and in an empty stall? When you're in

31:21

a bathroom stall, you do

31:23

things that you would not do on

31:26

the lawn of Wilbur Rogers Park, right?

31:29

And why? Because you think of them

31:31

as more private or more intimate or

31:34

more personal, right? So they're using the

31:36

stall as a way to have

31:39

a bit of privacy, to do whatever it

31:41

is that they do. When George leaves the bathroom,

31:44

he's arrested. And it turns

31:47

out that the man was a plainclothes police

31:49

officer. Which like, at what point

31:51

does that become Entrapment, the

31:53

title of my favorite Catherine Zeta-Jones

31:55

movie? Great movie. Yeah, I

31:57

mean, the legal standard for Entrapment is very high.

32:00

It has to be such that if

32:02

it weren't for the police officer, the person would

32:04

not have been in a position to do the thing

32:07

that they did, like wouldn't have been able to.

32:10

And so I think the argument would be

32:13

in the entrapment side of things that he

32:16

was there cruising. So like, whether

32:18

he ended up cruising with Officer Marcelo

32:20

Rodriguez, or whether he ended up cruising

32:22

with somebody else, it was something that

32:24

was was that like the

32:26

opportunity was there for him to have engaged

32:28

in it. It must be really awkward when

32:31

they're casting the officers who run these sting

32:33

operations. Like they do like some kind

32:35

of beauty pageant. Yeah. And then

32:37

you're like, what if you're what if they

32:39

don't pick you would be really sad. Like

32:42

the L.A. police will later say that

32:45

this isn't the first cruising arrest that

32:47

day. Like this is a sting

32:49

operation. They're catching more than one guy. Why? What

32:51

like Officer Rodriguez is

32:53

spending his day flirting with

32:55

men. You know, it's a

32:58

big city. Surely they have

33:00

better things to do than make

33:02

arrests in the victimless crime department. That

33:05

said, the LAPD is not exactly covering themselves

33:07

in glory in the 1990s. Right.

33:10

It's been a it's been a tough decade. A

33:12

lot of dirt has been

33:14

revealed. They got to cheer themselves

33:16

up by arresting a bunch of gays. Totally

33:19

right. They will later say and I think this

33:22

is true, that they weren't targeting George Michael, that

33:24

they were just there doing this undercover sting. I'm

33:28

sure they weren't targeting George

33:30

Michael. That's actually not my

33:32

primary concern about their behavior.

33:35

That's right. They're like, don't worry, everyone.

33:38

We are not biased against celebrities. It's

33:40

like, yeah, nobody thought that. No, that's

33:42

right. You're biased against queer people. It's

33:45

the queer people vote. After

33:48

the arrest, by all accounts, George

33:50

is polite and cooperative. He's

33:53

allowed to make a phone call. He phones

33:55

Kenny and

33:57

Kenny gets some cash together and he

33:59

goes. It's like only about $500 for

34:01

him to be released. By

34:05

five minutes after 8 p.m. that

34:07

afternoon, George is released and

34:10

goes home. Not a fun day,

34:12

but okay, fine. They

34:14

will later report that Kenny's reaction

34:16

initially was, I was concerned

34:18

that he was getting busted for drugs. And

34:22

the fact that it was park cruising,

34:24

I was relieved. By the end of

34:27

that night, that first night, the tabloids have been

34:29

tipped off by police officers. And on

34:31

the next day, on April 8th,

34:33

1998, the

34:36

LAPD puts out a press release, identifying

34:39

George Michael and saying that he was

34:41

engaged in a lewd act in

34:43

a public park. Oh boy, oh God. Which

34:46

makes you immediately think that he was like

34:49

exposing himself to minors when you

34:51

hear the phrase lewd act. Yeah, right.

34:53

I mean, and that's the legal category that

34:55

he's arrested under, but it's such

34:57

a broad and vague category. It could mean almost

34:59

anything. In George's word, it's

35:01

a complete circus. The

35:03

television stations send helicopters to

35:05

circle his house. There

35:08

are reporters and paparazzi

35:10

and also well-wishers and

35:12

gawkers outside of his house day

35:15

and night. Like crowds, like hundreds

35:17

of people outside his house. I

35:19

imagine being one of the helicopter

35:21

pilots just hovering above George Michael.

35:23

Are they hoping that they're gonna

35:25

get another Bronco chase out of

35:27

this? Right, like is this why

35:30

I went to helicopter school? Yeah.

35:36

You're like up there with someone from the

35:38

local news. You're like, yeah, I lost a

35:40

lot of buddies in Vietnam. And they're like,

35:42

yeah, that's great. Gotta

35:44

see if George Michael takes his trash out.

35:47

Maybe it's a waste of helicopter

35:49

pilot training. It's also a waste

35:51

of the journalists skills as well.

35:55

The next day, April 9, 1998, The

35:57

headline in the sun reads, Zip

36:00

me up before you go go. The

36:02

New York Post headline is down and

36:05

outed in Beverly Hills in the coming

36:07

days. went headlines as can when the

36:09

headline sat and gay with his picture.

36:12

You'll recall that George tie it

36:14

said he had come out of

36:17

the closet. Gray. Because

36:19

like we did this before

36:21

and like I'm putting aside

36:23

whatever George's self perception of

36:25

that is the like. international

36:28

press treats this as his

36:30

outing. Which. Is a much less

36:32

fun. Way to do at than it

36:34

had a catering an album to your

36:36

dad partner who you loved like a

36:38

one hundred percent sir. Like it. I

36:40

mean it's I don't think it's an

36:42

accident that the presses. Connect

36:45

saying. He's gay, and

36:47

he sleazy like that's inextricably linked

36:49

in the mind of the media.

36:52

And like you would think, I don't

36:54

I don't. I can't imagine how this

36:56

would be more than a one day

36:59

new story, more specially these days when

37:01

like someone in Congress doing this would

37:03

be frankly a nice break from the

37:05

kind of shit they got a sale

37:07

right? But it it's not, It's the

37:09

nineties and so this is going to

37:11

become a multi day circus. Were.

37:13

Like were tired of talking about Titanic?

37:15

We're gonna spend two weeks on this

37:17

bank at like absolutely they do like

37:19

leader in the week. George. Michael

37:21

goes out to a restaurant. He just goes

37:24

out to an Italian restaurant called Spy Go.

37:26

The. Paparazzi have been camped out

37:28

of sight of his house for

37:31

like more than one night. He's

37:33

basically doing it just to show

37:35

I'm not ashamed I'm not hiding

37:37

in my house. My. My

37:39

ring like us. Subprime at the end

37:41

of Pretty in Pink. Yes, But like

37:43

the result is like it if Molly

37:45

Ringwald at the end of Pretty in

37:48

Pink is mobbed by reporters and like

37:50

a caravan of cars follows her. Which

37:52

is what happens to George A. Like,

37:54

there is. Reporters.

37:56

And photographers. In

37:59

a long line of. There's following him to

38:01

this restaurant. Where. He goes. And

38:03

just eats a meal and goes home. Like

38:05

nothing happens. So it's like her as

38:08

see and are all for assassin. Big

38:10

test for a man eating. Some.

38:12

Rigatoni totally like the the reporters

38:14

will then like scope out who

38:16

else is in this fancy restaurant

38:18

and it turns out. Not

38:21

just Lionel Richie but also Tony Curtis

38:23

are there that night. Wow, Not to

38:25

have dinner with George Michael. They're just

38:27

they're on their own having dinner. Yeah

38:29

and they're interviewed about what are their

38:31

thoughts and for Michael and both of

38:33

them say. They. Support him. Ah

38:36

yeah Tony Korea says like that

38:38

that's illegal Yeah yeah you be

38:40

as Us Tony Curtis where the

38:42

bodies are hidden. We

38:44

have just as basic police

38:46

at at this period and

38:48

American Life said public sectors

38:50

antisocial. I. Love that. Examining the

38:52

story, Is is as a way of getting

38:55

to the heart of fan taking that apart

38:57

as a concept that held us back yeah

38:59

I I can. I completely agree. Later

39:02

that week is the help of

39:04

London Child Telethon. And

39:06

he asks his sister to phone

39:08

in his donation of fifty thousand

39:10

pounds rather than do it himself

39:12

because he he wants to avoid.

39:15

Turning. The hubble and in

39:17

child telethon into a spectacle about

39:19

him and. Public. Sex read.

39:21

He does quickly move to go

39:23

on the news. He appears on

39:26

Cnn that Saturday. And

39:28

he gives his first public public statements about

39:30

it. And going to send

39:32

you a quote from. What? To what

39:34

he had to say if you could be be read

39:36

that. He. Said I don't feel

39:39

any same Fl stupid and I so

39:41

reckless and we for having allowed my

39:43

sexuality to be exposed in this way.

39:45

but I do not feel any same

39:47

whatsoever and neither do I think I

39:49

said. I love it. I also feel

39:51

like it's the kind of thing that like be would

39:53

be told not to say. Right because that

39:55

the far we had you tube or

39:57

apologies we had. You. know name

40:00

these PR types who would tell you

40:02

to like get out there, eat

40:04

a big slice of humble pie on the

40:06

largest, you know, late night

40:08

show you can find or whatever the

40:11

most appropriate venue is. And then,

40:13

you know, just hope

40:15

people kind of accept your

40:17

show of contrition to your audience. It feels

40:19

like the dynamics, the unspoken dynamics are like,

40:22

people want you to be a certain way and you've

40:24

stepped out of line and you need to say that

40:26

you're never going to do it again. And I

40:29

love that he's being like, no,

40:32

I he's, it feels like

40:34

he's essentially saying, I mean, I'm sorry I got

40:36

caught, but no, I'm doing, I'm still, I'm

40:38

gonna keep doing it. Yeah,

40:41

yeah, yeah. Like, I'm sorry this has ended up in

40:43

the newspaper. I feel, I feel

40:45

foolish. I'm sorry you made such a

40:47

big deal out of that. So

40:50

he's gonna he's gonna plead no contest. I

40:53

love no contest as a plea that

40:55

exists. Oh, God, it's so American. Yeah,

40:58

no, 100%. The punishment is going to be

41:00

a $910 fine.

41:02

Not terrible. Two

41:04

years of probation. He's banned from Will

41:06

Rogers Park for two years. And

41:09

he has to do 80 hours of community service.

41:12

And I feel like we don't like to punish our

41:14

celebrities with jail nearly so much as we like

41:16

to punish them with attention, you know? Right,

41:19

right. And he's getting that just heaped on him.

41:21

He's like the butt of late night jokes for

41:23

weeks and weeks and weeks. He

41:25

continues to be in the paper.

41:27

Any little scrap of new information

41:30

that someone can sell about George

41:32

Michael becomes newsworthy in this cycle.

41:34

So like, for example, there's a photographer that

41:36

photographed him in Will Rogers Park a year

41:38

earlier, like in 1997. And suddenly this photo

41:40

that like, who cares is

41:46

now like this valuable photo commodity that he can

41:48

sell. You know, what scares

41:50

me most now is not these situations where

41:52

you get a media convoy following you around,

41:54

which seems rarer as a

41:57

phenomenon because in the 90s, it was like the media

41:59

was the eye of The around and can only be

42:01

on one thing at a time and now

42:03

we're kind of living in this individual surveillance

42:05

say where everybody has phones. Everybody can take

42:07

video whenever they want. And.

42:10

In a way, we're actually. In.

42:12

Greater pretty because we outsource the

42:15

sort of. Public. Eye

42:17

to. Individuals rather than a

42:19

professional. The of course we still have

42:21

plenty of tabloid media to go around

42:24

that I always think of. The bird

42:26

cage has a great example of like

42:28

just distilling what this looks like an

42:30

accent as we have the. Scandal.

42:33

That Gene Hackman. Colleague

42:35

Unlike the Ways and Means committee

42:38

within were and under age sex

42:40

he died while visiting and under

42:42

a sex worker. Then they're driving

42:44

down to Florida with like this

42:46

convoy of tabloid reporters following. Them

42:48

and. You. Know it's serious when

42:51

it turns up I'm Jay Leno like I

42:53

feel like that was litmus test of like

42:55

if if this is something that we're obsessed

42:57

with and can set up about as an

42:59

ace and than like it'll be on Leno.

43:01

He. Got to get Leno. that's how you know.

43:04

It's. Like how he is he of like frogs

43:06

are owls or whatever. you know you have a

43:08

healthy for us. It's

43:11

I mean, that's that's it exactly. And

43:13

I think they don't like the kind

43:15

of like Snl. Also would be another

43:18

example of a yeah, totally oh my

43:20

god and those outlets would. Just.

43:23

Recycle those jokes over and over

43:25

again for days or even weeks.

43:28

Like. There's these little coders the come

43:30

afterwards. so for example, The

43:32

police officer. Marcella. Rodriguez.

43:35

Sues. George Michael. He.

43:37

Is Susan for Defamation It

43:40

for defamation and claims emotional

43:42

distress damages. About

43:44

I like I think that's pretty

43:47

rich that the a police officer

43:49

who was doing an activity that

43:51

likely to detonate a shame bomb

43:53

in most people who get cause.

43:56

I mean, he didn't know who he was tangling

43:58

with with George. Michael. But to

44:01

turn around and say George Michael

44:03

was causing me emotional distress. George.

44:06

Michael to his credit doesn't pam

44:09

off and instead defend himself and

44:11

wins a poor it will later

44:13

rule. That. George Michael's comments

44:15

were non actionable, non defamatory expressions of

44:18

opinion. Man, I love that he got

44:20

to have a a when and there.

44:22

Are one hundred percent right! A couple

44:25

years later, the West Hollywood City Council

44:27

is gonna pass a motion to end

44:29

the practice of undercover sting operations like

44:32

this and we hope it as that

44:34

they've day passes in two thousand and

44:36

one thing guide. And then

44:38

the the other thing that happens in

44:41

the in the fall of. Ninety.

44:43

Ninety Eight is that George Michael is

44:45

working on a best of record. And

44:48

so he quickly rights a new song

44:50

about. Cruising. It's cold

44:52

outside and it's gonna be a

44:54

number to hit in the Uk.

44:56

It it doesn't go to number

44:59

one because shares believe is unmovable.

45:02

I only wish there had been like a We Are The. World

45:04

type sign up about this

45:06

topic give it Should have

45:08

assembled other celebrities to do

45:10

the leg. the defensive George

45:12

Michael outside music video yes.

45:14

At. Least some of them were. You're like, why is.

45:16

That per cent Here They say gun dannatt

45:18

crime and assign assigned he was on We

45:20

are the world. So

45:23

he's going later say of this encounter

45:25

at the end of the day. I.

45:27

Am gay. And I'm a

45:29

slut. And. Some of us are. And

45:32

we should be fine with that. And more

45:34

familiar with that has a son women are and

45:36

that I think it's true generally that the kind

45:38

of closer were and really, these. Flooding.

45:41

S. As. A

45:43

maladaptive. Response to something in

45:45

our something intrinsically bad. And.

45:49

Just like pride and sledding s

45:51

and slap pride feels like. One.

45:54

Of the Harness frontiers. To. get

45:56

tail and else and the same people who

45:59

have been there since the beginning or

46:01

at least for a really long time. Yeah,

46:03

he's going to say like the reason he goes

46:05

on TV in that first week

46:08

and the reason he responds the way he does

46:10

is he's like in this moment, maybe the only

46:12

thing I can do is reduce

46:14

the stigma, make it so that other

46:17

people don't have to be ashamed or

46:19

embarrassed or feel bad about

46:21

what they're doing in their private lives. You

46:23

know, shame even if it's

46:25

not powerful to destroy George Michael at

46:27

this point, then that's great, but there are

46:29

plenty of people who it can destroy then and

46:31

now and that's, you know, it's for them too.

46:34

Yeah, shame is a form of social control.

46:37

And so the refusal of shame is really about

46:39

a kind of autonomy that like, I get

46:42

to decide what I do with my body. Yeah,

46:45

and not sort of internalize the

46:47

violence. I think you can do

46:49

that in a way that can feel manic or

46:53

a way that can feel reparative where you can say, this

46:56

is actually just a part of who I am. And like our culture

46:59

is not going to want to see that about George Michael in

47:01

the years that follows. They're going to like really zero in on

47:03

this and every time he does any appearance, there's

47:07

going to be a segment about him

47:09

getting arrested in this bathroom. Every

47:12

journalist is going to ask him about it forever. Just

47:15

like Julia Roberts talked about in Notting

47:17

Hill. Yeah, that speech. Oh my God. That's

47:19

exactly that, right? It's so good. Yeah. And

47:23

at the same time, like George's life is just

47:25

moving on. But during this time,

47:27

he's back in the UK. He's

47:29

living mostly outside the city at Goreng

47:33

on Thames, which is north and

47:35

west of London, about 60 miles

47:37

or so from where he grew up, except

47:40

now he's living in a 16th century

47:42

castle. And Kenny's living with him. Kenny's

47:46

dividing his time between Goreng and Dallas where

47:48

he's opened an art gallery. And

47:51

he's selling art from the YBA, like

47:53

the young British artists generation, to Americans.

47:57

George and Kenny have dogs. And

48:00

their life together is pretty quiet. Like

48:03

George likes to watch

48:05

Coronation Street. He likes eating

48:08

McDonald's for lunch and

48:11

sitting in the garden and walking his

48:13

dogs. Well, yeah, I

48:15

mean, I feel like he hasn't really been able to sit in

48:17

the garden for about 20 years. So

48:20

like the next album that's going to come out in 2004 is Patience. Patience

48:24

has got some lovely tributes to Kenny, some songs

48:26

that he's written for Kenny on it.

48:28

It's number one hit in the UK, but

48:31

it peaks at number 12 in the US and

48:33

only sells 381,000 copies.

48:36

But you know, still

48:38

wouldn't kick those numbers out of

48:40

bed for eating crackers. 100%, 100%.

48:42

But like the public perception

48:44

of George Michael in the United States

48:46

has by now completely shifted. So

48:49

like, for example, when he's trying to promote

48:51

the album Patience, he gets booked for a

48:53

full hour on Oprah. producers

48:56

tease the interview episode as quote,

48:59

George Michael's darkest secrets.

49:02

And they refer to him as quote, 80s

49:05

musician George Michael breaks his silence.

49:07

No, breaks his silence. He's

49:11

been around. It's not like he's

49:13

Salinger. Like,

49:16

and also, here's another quote from the promos

49:18

that they're going to provide quote, intimate

49:20

details about his fall from fame. Oh,

49:23

my God. Come on. That's

49:25

rude. The framing in

49:27

the United States. Yeah, it's just like, he's a

49:29

he's a sad has been. Oh,

49:31

my God. That feels like the

49:34

need to believe that like, we

49:36

with our media have toppled him

49:38

from the pedestal. And we're like,

49:40

he's not famous anymore. And he's

49:42

like, I'm famous in Europe. And

49:44

we're like, that's what we said.

49:46

He's not famous anymore. But

49:49

also, he's like, so not famous that he gets booked

49:51

for a full hour on Oprah. Yeah,

49:53

come on. The

49:56

only way you get that is if you're famous or if

49:58

you fell down a well. Like

50:02

in the UK, he's still so

50:04

famous that he has stalkers. Like

50:08

in the year that this album

50:10

comes out in October, it's discovered

50:12

that there's a woman that's been living

50:14

under his deck in

50:17

Hampstead. No, no. We're

50:21

like, look at this has been, he only has

50:23

one stalker. Yeah, that's right.

50:25

And I will say like, despite everything

50:27

else, that there is this kind of

50:29

like loving core of George Michael supporters

50:32

fans who feel very protective

50:34

of him even in his like darkest

50:36

periods. So this is now George

50:38

Michael's in his 40s. And

50:41

it's around this time in 2005, that

50:43

he begins seeing

50:45

an escort and adult film

50:47

actor named Paul Stagg

50:49

in the UK. Paul

50:52

brings drugs, particularly GHB into

50:54

their sexual encounters. GHB

50:56

is a drug that

50:58

is known often as the kind of date

51:01

rape drug, but is also

51:03

used as a party drug in

51:05

especially in gay male circles at

51:08

this time. Paul's story

51:10

is not totally reliable. Most

51:13

of what we know about it is because he was

51:16

paid, you know, like, right, he was paid

51:18

for interviews in the British tabloid press. What

51:22

Paul is going to say later

51:24

is that George quickly loses interest

51:26

in him sexually, eventually just becomes

51:28

his primary contact for supplying him

51:30

with GHB, whichever text message they

51:32

refer to as champagne. And

51:34

so it's with that kind of

51:36

background in mind that we

51:39

reconnect with George Michael at

51:41

1.30am on February 26, 2006, a few kilometers

51:43

from George's London home. And

51:52

there, there are reports of a

51:54

black Mercedes stopped diagonally

51:56

in the middle of the lane. and

52:00

the driver is slumped over the wheel. When

52:04

paramedics attend and

52:06

knock on the window, the driver stumbles

52:08

out of the car and it's George

52:11

Michael, and he's

52:13

semi-conscious. The police search

52:15

his car and they find pot and GHB,

52:19

and also the tabloids

52:21

report that there's fetish gear in the

52:23

back of his car, like obviously unrelated

52:25

at not anyone's business, but the

52:28

mirror, for example, prints a giant

52:30

picture of a leather mask with

52:32

the zipper mouth. He

52:34

leathered himself nearly to death, ladies

52:36

and gents. And police give

52:39

him a warning, he's released without charge. And

52:41

what was going on on his side

52:43

of it? Well, I mean, I think

52:46

that's a good question. In the early

52:48

2000s, there is a turn among a certain segment of

52:53

gay partiers toward drugs

52:55

like GHB and ketamine,

52:58

drugs of extreme forgetting. And

53:01

it's also a drug that can be

53:03

an antidote to kind of like a

53:05

risk paralysis. I can see

53:07

why it would be an appealing drug

53:09

to take up for him in this moment, for

53:12

many people in our communities to take up

53:14

in this moment as ways of

53:16

letting go. And

53:18

especially when you're thinking of

53:20

every sexual act or

53:22

activity through the lens

53:25

of comparative risk, there's

53:28

like a kind of cash register of risk

53:31

that's dinging in your head with every

53:33

activity that you do, taking

53:36

a drug to shut that off. Like

53:38

I can see that, I can empathize with that. For

53:41

example, Flick Thornley, she's a

53:43

lesbian who

53:45

worked in the AIDS Hospice Movement in

53:48

London in the 90s,

53:51

describes this turn. Like, I mean, it's

53:53

not just George Michael, it's not happening

53:55

in isolation. It's just this sort of

53:57

turn toward these drugs that can.

54:00

Have to promise or the offer

54:02

of amnesia to people who are

54:04

badly scarred, people who have a

54:06

who are badly hurt and wounded.

54:08

Maybe this is he simplistic that

54:10

it almost feels like you can

54:12

talk about seeing evidence of complex

54:14

Pts see within. A

54:16

demographic or culture. George has

54:18

has been drinking his like in particular

54:21

loves red wine. throughout the the period

54:23

we've been talking about up until now,

54:25

he's been smoking, smoking pot like lots

54:28

of pot sometimes. as much as fifteen

54:30

joints a day series is not naive

54:32

to the world of of substances. I.

54:35

Do also think that people who have

54:38

that kind of sensitivity, people who are

54:40

may be prone to being over stimulated

54:42

in moments will look for what do

54:44

I do to self regulate what what's

54:47

available to me? And there's like, kind

54:49

of like healthy and unhealthy ways. I

54:51

think most of us most of the

54:54

time use a mix of healthy and

54:56

unhealthy ways. He now it's the price.

54:58

Active, had assertive, survive. the hits the

55:00

is hake. And the course

55:02

of your life and. How to

55:04

sort of create? The inside of

55:07

your body and and your psyche as

55:09

as a livable place for you like.

55:12

Those. Answers are hard to come by. It's

55:14

hard to fault people for not finding

55:17

them sooner, finding them better, and yet

55:19

we never run out of ways to

55:21

fault celebrities for failing to find them

55:23

sooner. and and regular people feel that

55:25

we get he is a celebrity is

55:27

as an example I represent. I mean,

55:29

now that said, like he shouldn't have

55:31

been driving. it seems pretty clear he

55:33

should have been driving on that day.

55:35

He's gonna have a troubled relationship to

55:37

his car for the rest of his

55:39

life. That was in

55:41

February of two thousand and six

55:43

in April. Two months later, there's

55:45

another incident. He. Gets into

55:47

his navy blue Range Rover. At.

55:50

Eight in the morning. And

55:52

I mean it sounds like me leaving

55:54

any parallel parking situation but he like

55:57

backs up into or a car causing

55:59

damage. And then forward and hicks

56:01

the fender off. He does a sure

56:03

and sound and casino escape damages three

56:05

different cars on his way out. The

56:07

sorry that's gonna get told us that

56:09

he was up all night doing drugs

56:11

and having sex. But. He

56:14

send someone back later in the day

56:16

to knock on doors. To. Identify

56:18

the owners of the cars that he

56:20

can. He can pay for the damage.

56:22

Me: I'm like yeah now. If

56:24

he can afford. It he got a guy v the.

56:27

Generous Are the people his currency? The

56:29

thread? yeah, I feel like it's it's

56:31

interesting cases we have. And as

56:33

happen so frequently with the a story as we

56:35

have someone who like it's fair for the public

56:38

to be genuinely concerned about. And. For

56:40

particular reason the six have to do with is

56:42

kind of the wear and tear of life and

56:44

pain and. Substances: Making

56:46

you a dangerous driver. Potentially that

56:48

getting that into that as lake

56:50

is a dangerous time Herpes has

56:52

of he is gay hurt us

56:55

read exactly if we if we

56:57

wanted to express concern for him.

56:59

That's one thing. But like the

57:01

press are reporting this kind of

57:03

gleefully after that April incident. They.

57:06

Run up a story where they

57:08

call him a quote sad tortured

57:10

porker yes he was so sad

57:12

and gay A seats s lost

57:14

control of the vehicle a slave

57:17

is ah guy had i feel

57:19

like is the we need to

57:21

immediately make our lakes. To.

57:23

Sad and gay to drives

57:25

button fruitless. Got

57:28

into an adventure over by that

57:30

time. In

57:34

July of two thousand and six. He.

57:37

Is caught by by

57:39

paparazzi. Exiting. The

57:41

Bushes at Hampden. He's that London,

57:43

which is another popular cruising around.

57:45

For a second I thought you're

57:47

gonna say The Bushes compound at

57:49

Hyannis for it or wherever they

57:51

eleven. I was like, oh, now

57:53

he's friends with conservatives, but now

57:55

it's just some. but it has

57:57

some shrubbery. that's fine. Fear not.

58:00

That during this period he he

58:02

releases an anti war song called

58:04

shoot The Dog is mostly aimed

58:06

at Tony Blair, but there's like

58:08

Tony Blair and George Bush in

58:10

the video. Like cartoon characters of

58:12

them know he's he's. A.

58:15

Against the War in Iraq and he's

58:17

very public about it, actually. cyclone. Jeremy

58:20

and Peepshow, you can kill us

58:22

access to protect your legacy. You're

58:25

Not Blair. Oh My. God. Yeah.

58:29

By say we're in in. Hampstead

58:31

Heath at night. In July

58:34

of two thousand and six is cut. Leaving

58:36

the bush is not by the police but

58:38

by photographers. He realizes he's

58:40

being photographed. He confronts them

58:42

and he's basically like. Are.

58:45

You gay know than

58:47

ass off. Like. This

58:49

is my culture. So I love that

58:52

I feel like he was like one of the

58:54

first people I can think of who is like.

58:57

It is offensive of you to stop

58:59

from having sex. and this bass like

59:01

that's a very Zimmer argument. A successor

59:03

in every hit. Like here's a youth,

59:05

more of the quote he goes on

59:07

to say, i doubt effing believe it.

59:10

If. You put those pictures in the paper

59:12

All sue. I'm not doing

59:14

anything illegal. The police don't even come

59:16

here anymore. I'm. A free

59:19

man. I can do whatever I

59:21

want. I'm not harming anyone. Ah,

59:23

top. last. The. Reporters that are

59:25

there follow another man who comes out of

59:27

the bushes home. In. Orders like

59:29

interview him about whether or not he

59:31

had sex with George Michael in the

59:34

Bush. We Now Go Live suggests who

59:36

was in a bus but exactly that.

59:38

They referred to him as like a

59:40

pot bellied truck driver Select Again, they're

59:42

They're making these kind of like class

59:45

markers. There also are it's obviously sad

59:47

for back. And like the guy says

59:49

the newspaper, I don't even like George

59:51

Michael's music. Nice. I love. I

59:56

love that he like lack. Luster?

59:58

Don't get it. twisted. I am not a fan

1:00:01

of his music. October 2, 2006,

1:00:03

he's in another car accident. He spotted

1:00:05

driving erratically and then stalled in an

1:00:08

intersection. Like basically, the

1:00:10

lights change and the car doesn't move. The

1:00:12

lights change, the car doesn't move. There's

1:00:14

no one who's gonna be injured by any of

1:00:16

these incidents. But yeah, he found

1:00:19

by the police again. They

1:00:21

search his car and in his car, they only

1:00:23

find pot. But he's taken to the hospital

1:00:25

before the police station and they do a blood draw. And

1:00:28

so they get the

1:00:31

toxicology report and it

1:00:33

shows antidepressants, sleeping

1:00:35

pills, pot, and GHB.

1:00:39

That's a few different things you shouldn't drive while

1:00:41

using. And early the next year,

1:00:43

he pleads guilty to driving while unfit and they

1:00:45

take his license away for two years. Like

1:00:47

from the legal systems point of view, probably a good decision,

1:00:50

but he's obviously gonna feel like

1:00:52

he's having his wings clipped a

1:00:54

bit. Yeah, I mean, driving

1:00:57

is such a strange thing for us to get used

1:00:59

to doing all the time. But if you lose your

1:01:01

ability to do it in adulthood, it can feel like

1:01:04

losing the ability to do any of

1:01:06

your other adult functions, like

1:01:08

opening a door with a key.

1:01:12

Yeah, for some people, it's like, it's synecdoche.

1:01:14

It stands in for the whole of what

1:01:16

it is to be free. But

1:01:19

also at a practical level, like he lives 60 miles

1:01:21

out of town. I guess he needs to get a

1:01:23

horse. Like at one point, one

1:01:25

of the tabloid journalists in

1:01:27

one of their many, many articles

1:01:30

about him says, George, for God's

1:01:32

sake, get a chauffeur. Which like,

1:01:35

okay. That's at least more helpful than what

1:01:37

they normally talk about. I think that's right.

1:01:40

I'm like, it's like a kind of a stopped

1:01:43

clock is right twice a day kind of thing,

1:01:45

but I'm with him on this one. After

1:01:47

he gets his license taken away, there's

1:01:50

a lull in reporting of sort

1:01:53

of bad behavior. I

1:01:55

think that's in part because he's like literally not behind

1:01:57

the wheel. He's also touring.

1:02:00

So he releases tickets for

1:02:02

the 25 Live concerts where

1:02:05

he's celebrating 25 years in the music business.

1:02:08

Yeah, so he's touring and by all

1:02:10

accounts, it's a successful tour. People

1:02:13

get their monies where they feel like he's given them

1:02:15

a real show. Yeah, the next

1:02:17

time he's in the tabloid press, he's

1:02:19

at Hampstead Heath again. And

1:02:22

this time someone thinks he's selling drugs

1:02:24

and he phones the cops. And

1:02:27

George has searched the police find pot

1:02:29

and crack cocaine. And

1:02:31

while he's arrested, he's not charged. Even

1:02:33

though he's not charged, the tabloids get ahold of it. Of course they

1:02:36

do. And

1:02:38

his former friend Tony Parsons,

1:02:40

the guy who published the

1:02:42

three-part tell-all about about

1:02:44

George and Ensalmo, writes in the

1:02:47

mirror, somewhere inside that

1:02:49

fat, sleazy, bloated old geezer is

1:02:51

the George Michael I used to

1:02:53

know. Okay, God. But

1:02:57

of course the real problem is that

1:02:59

he's gained weight and

1:03:01

aged. Why would he do that? When

1:03:05

he could have simply not. From

1:03:07

the time that he is arrested in

1:03:10

Beverly Hills in 1998, it's just a

1:03:12

matter of like, what are we going

1:03:14

to use to pillory

1:03:17

George? It's not a matter of if, it's

1:03:19

a matter of like, let's pick our implement

1:03:22

of choice. He becomes one of

1:03:24

those characters like Anna Nicole, who's always good

1:03:26

for a little laugh. Yeah,

1:03:28

yeah, it really does just go on and on and

1:03:30

on. These car

1:03:33

accidents are going to culminate in 2010

1:03:35

with him. He

1:03:37

gets into a one-person car accident, like he drives

1:03:39

into the side of a shop. And

1:03:42

there's like a big dent in the wall

1:03:44

after it's cleared out. And the next day

1:03:46

a fan, well

1:03:49

somebody, writes above the hole in

1:03:51

the side of the wall, wank

1:03:53

a wham. George

1:03:58

then does go to rehab. He

1:04:00

goes to rehab for two weeks

1:04:02

as a show of remorse. And

1:04:07

the judge doesn't buy it. He says that

1:04:09

you put people at risk, which

1:04:11

is true. And the sentence is a fine of 1,250 pounds,

1:04:18

a five-year driving ban, and

1:04:20

eight weeks in prison. I'm glad that we're

1:04:23

treating this more seriously than the bathroom thing,

1:04:25

because I realize things very wildly and it's

1:04:27

just kind of a coincidence that it lined

1:04:29

up this way, but it feels all right.

1:04:32

I mean, I think that's right. I do

1:04:34

think legitimately that he was putting people

1:04:36

at risk and it's a

1:04:38

good thing that no one got hurt. He's

1:04:41

taken out of the courtroom and immediately to jail

1:04:44

and he serves four weeks in jail. Because

1:04:46

of this conviction, he

1:04:48

can't get an American visa and he never

1:04:50

tours there again. I mean,

1:04:53

this is another example of the consequences,

1:04:55

not being the actual sentence, but

1:04:58

something that's an external consequence of the

1:05:01

sentence that could have potentially

1:05:03

a more significant effect. In George's life, he's

1:05:05

gonna continue touring in Europe. He's gonna be

1:05:07

fine. While he's in jail,

1:05:09

he's getting letters from like Paul McCartney and Elton

1:05:11

John. And before he leaves,

1:05:14

he signs autographs for staff and

1:05:16

all the inmates who want one. And

1:05:20

he's never caught doing anything unsafe behind the

1:05:22

wheel again, although there is one more accident.

1:05:24

It's somewhere in this period that George and

1:05:26

Kenny break up. They deny it for a

1:05:28

while, so we actually don't, like we can't

1:05:31

pinpoint the date. Somewhere between 2009 and 2011,

1:05:33

they break up. And

1:05:37

at the same time, Kenny goes into

1:05:40

inpatient treatment for alcoholism. And

1:05:42

George has a new man. He

1:05:44

starts dating a guy named Fadi Fawaz. And

1:05:47

I don't know whether there's overlap

1:05:49

between the Kenny period and the Fadi

1:05:52

Fawaz period. It seems like

1:05:54

it's a relationship that starts more as

1:05:57

a casual dating or casual sex

1:05:59

scenario. that becomes more

1:06:01

serious over time. Farifuaz is

1:06:04

described in different ways by different newspapers, and

1:06:06

you can sort of tell what

1:06:09

the newspaper is trying to tell you by

1:06:11

the way he's described. He's described as a

1:06:14

Lebanese hairdresser, and he has cut hair in

1:06:16

his life. It's not what he does his

1:06:18

whole life. He's also described

1:06:20

as a former gay porn star, and that's

1:06:23

also true. He performed under the name Isaac

1:06:25

Mazar. I mean, in this

1:06:27

economy, you have to diversify. However

1:06:30

it starts, the two are gonna remain companions

1:06:32

for the rest of George's life. Well, good.

1:06:34

I'm glad that he was with someone. My

1:06:37

child, my baby boy, George Michael. Right,

1:06:40

right, right. Your baby boy, who is now, he's

1:06:42

in his late 40s, right? He's

1:06:44

about to turn 50. At one

1:06:46

point, he's like so exhausted. Well, there's like a kind

1:06:49

of undisclosed illness. We're not totally sure what happens in

1:06:51

2011 as he's

1:06:53

preparing for his gig in Vienna, and

1:06:56

he goes to the hospital. He's admitted for several

1:06:58

weeks. He's in a coma for a little while,

1:07:01

and he has to reschedule some dates. When

1:07:04

he reschedules, he's gonna give 300 free tickets to

1:07:07

the hospital staff in Vienna. Our boy,

1:07:09

George. Our boy, our

1:07:11

baby boy. He

1:07:13

reschedules some tour dates, and him

1:07:15

and Fadi take a vacation together.

1:07:18

Maybe I could send you some photos of their vacation.

1:07:22

They're on Twitter, and

1:07:24

they're posting photos of themselves. This

1:07:26

is not, these aren't paparazzi photos.

1:07:30

It's so weird when you get all the way after the Twitter

1:07:32

era in a story you're telling. Okay, I'm

1:07:34

gonna send you two photos, and I'm

1:07:36

also going to send you what

1:07:38

George tweets about

1:07:41

this tour. So they've rented a yacht, and

1:07:44

they're traveling around the Pacific Rim. So it

1:07:46

says, I'm on the first real holiday I've had in many a

1:07:48

year, sipping a cocktail

1:07:50

on a balmy night, listening to the sea

1:07:52

in the company of a painfully handsome

1:07:54

man. I love those

1:07:56

moments when people use social media and

1:07:59

a very honest and... simple way, I guess, feel like, things

1:08:02

have worked out for me. Brag.

1:08:04

Yeah, exactly. Ah,

1:08:07

and do you see the pictures as well?

1:08:09

I love that it's so touchy and they

1:08:11

just look really happy. Yeah. In

1:08:14

both photos they're hugging. Fuddy's

1:08:16

a swarthy guy, right? He's got

1:08:18

like a hairy chest and he's

1:08:20

got like big, like a dad

1:08:22

bod arms. Yeah. It's two dad

1:08:25

bods in paradise. Yeah,

1:08:27

totally. So he does return

1:08:29

from this and, uh, finish

1:08:31

the tour and the rescheduled

1:08:34

dates. There's also a symphonic

1:08:36

album. There's some more difficult

1:08:38

things that happen in 2013 and 2014. For

1:08:42

example, he's found in a pool with hypothermia

1:08:44

and it's believed that he's been there overnight

1:08:46

and we're not totally sure why. Right.

1:08:49

He's like found passed out in a bathtub

1:08:52

and maybe the strangest incident. It

1:08:54

happens in, in may of 2013. George

1:08:57

is the passenger in a range rover. They're

1:08:59

like driving in the highway. Suddenly

1:09:02

the passenger door opens and

1:09:04

George rolls out of the car onto

1:09:07

the highway, bouncing several times

1:09:09

to the shoulder of the road.

1:09:11

He's treated on the scene and

1:09:13

miraculously he's fine. He like never

1:09:15

even loses consciousness. He's not

1:09:17

charged with anything related to the incident

1:09:20

because they don't know what to charge

1:09:22

him with. Like riding without a seatbelt,

1:09:24

but he's like not the driver. He's not, he's

1:09:26

not driving when this happens. It's

1:09:28

just bizarre. Yeah. But

1:09:31

it's like he, he's become an

1:09:33

extraordinarily accident prone person, that's fair

1:09:35

to say. What all of these

1:09:37

incidents have in common, the incidents

1:09:39

in the car in 2006. And

1:09:42

then these ones like being found in

1:09:44

the bathtub and being found in a, in

1:09:47

a pool are this

1:09:49

kind of like freezing reaction. Some

1:09:52

types of drugs can have that effect, the kind of

1:09:54

like K hole where you

1:09:56

become kind of immobile or sometimes immobile

1:09:58

for a long time. time. And

1:10:01

I don't know that that fully explains

1:10:04

the falling out of the car on

1:10:06

the highway story, but it

1:10:08

does sort of blink the rest of them. Yeah,

1:10:10

I guess, well, it just seems, I mean, what's your take

1:10:13

on his drug use,

1:10:15

you know, in roughly this period? Like

1:10:17

I say, people use drugs for all kinds

1:10:19

of reasons. And I'm not somebody who's going

1:10:21

to say that using drugs are bad on

1:10:24

their own. He's a grown woman. He can

1:10:27

do whatever he wants. He really,

1:10:29

I mean, legit, like he doesn't have anything,

1:10:31

he doesn't owe anyone anything at this point,

1:10:33

if he wants to, to use

1:10:36

party drugs and, and have sex and have fun,

1:10:38

like have at it. He

1:10:41

comes to see it as destructive himself

1:10:43

though. And in June of

1:10:45

2015, he finds he

1:10:47

goes to rehab for an a sustained period.

1:10:50

It's actually like almost a full year he goes

1:10:53

to Zurich, Switzerland. And for the

1:10:55

first several months, he's inpatient.

1:10:58

And then even when he's an outpatient, he's

1:11:00

still living in Zurich and doing like several

1:11:03

hours of intensive therapy several times a week.

1:11:06

And he gets sober. There's

1:11:08

lots of photos of Foddy visiting him

1:11:11

during this period, having lunch

1:11:13

together in fancy restaurants

1:11:15

in Switzerland. And

1:11:17

I love that for them. I love that

1:11:19

that got to be part of the

1:11:22

story. Yeah. And that's 2015 to

1:11:24

2016. He gets back to the

1:11:27

UK in the summer of 2016, approximately.

1:11:31

And when he does, he stays

1:11:33

almost exclusively at his country house

1:11:36

in Goering in the castle. He's like

1:11:38

kind of a bit of a homebody. Castle

1:11:40

body, if you will. That's right. At

1:11:42

this point, he has a trach

1:11:44

scar from the Vienna hospital incident.

1:11:47

And he has a big scar on the back

1:11:49

of his head from falling out of the car.

1:11:51

He goes out to dinner at an Italian restaurant.

1:11:54

And guess what? People take pictures

1:11:56

of him with their cell phones and

1:11:58

sell them to the press. And

1:12:01

the journalists say, wow,

1:12:03

it looks like he's put on a lot of weight. This

1:12:05

is the Phantom of the Opera's real backstory. You

1:12:08

know, he just gained some weight. And he was

1:12:10

like, I just got to stay in this opera

1:12:12

house forever. The concern

1:12:14

trolling that the journalists were doing

1:12:16

before was like, oh, he's so

1:12:19

unhealthy. And then he goes and

1:12:21

spends 12 months. He

1:12:23

spends a whole year getting healthy. And

1:12:25

what happens? They're still trolling him.

1:12:28

We don't want people to be healthy. We

1:12:30

want people to be at death's door, but

1:12:32

looking the way we prefer them to. Yeah,

1:12:35

I mean, I think that's right. I

1:12:37

also think for George in particular, he's

1:12:39

somebody who had such attention

1:12:41

on his physical appearance from the time he

1:12:44

was a teenager. And

1:12:46

like everything we know about that is it's

1:12:48

a formula for, at a minimum,

1:12:51

people getting to middle age and not even

1:12:53

knowing what their body's natural set point is.

1:12:56

Like, right? He's probably been on a

1:12:58

diet or thinking about his weight in

1:13:01

some way or another, his entire adult life, and

1:13:03

most of his teen years too. In

1:13:06

a weird way, the fat and gay

1:13:08

insult has a certain revealingness

1:13:11

to it because it's the two things that

1:13:13

your body wants naturally to be, but that

1:13:15

you must work for your entire life to

1:13:17

keep it from doing. And

1:13:20

so that's where he is in, for Christmas of

1:13:22

2016. He's

1:13:25

at the house of Goring. He's

1:13:27

not going out. He's staying in. On

1:13:30

Christmas Eve, on December 24th,

1:13:33

George and Foddy have a late lunch together, and

1:13:36

reportedly there's some kind of friction,

1:13:38

a fight, some kind of disagreement.

1:13:41

His biographer, James Gavin,

1:13:43

says they upset each other, which

1:13:45

is just a light, full-lead bag. Who

1:13:47

knows what that means? But George retires to his bedroom

1:13:50

in the afternoon,

1:13:52

and Foddy's photographed coming and going

1:13:54

from the house throughout the day. But

1:13:57

One of the mysteries of this day is... Body

1:14:01

will later say. He

1:14:03

got into his car. And.

1:14:05

Decided that he was to an unfit

1:14:07

to drive. And. Slept.

1:14:09

They're like he slept in his car

1:14:11

overnight on Christmas Eve and then like

1:14:13

he later says that, that's not true

1:14:16

and not so I don't know. It's

1:14:18

a weird thing to make up in

1:14:20

the evening on on Christmas Eve. It's

1:14:22

tradition in the town as boring for

1:14:24

their to be this candlelight procession. The.

1:14:26

Townspeople come out and they christmas hims

1:14:29

together as a holiday procession passes below

1:14:31

towards his house. Some people say that

1:14:33

they can see him watching the festivities

1:14:35

from his darkened bedroom window. That is

1:14:37

a lovely memory and exactly the kind

1:14:40

of thing that people would fabricate later

1:14:42

on. One hundred percent of the i

1:14:44

don't know, I like to think of

1:14:46

it that way. like if it's true,

1:14:49

It's sort of sitting that the last people that

1:14:51

would see him alive. Would. Be

1:14:54

the public as opposed to his friends or

1:14:56

family. And the next day

1:14:58

in the early afternoon. George.

1:15:00

Fails to emerge from his bedroom. And.

1:15:03

Thought he goes to try to a month. The. Room

1:15:05

is dark. The. Curtains are drawn.

1:15:08

And. Or George's in bed under

1:15:10

the covers. And. He's not

1:15:13

breathing. His body is cold

1:15:15

and blue. Party. Claims

1:15:17

that when he found George he

1:15:19

then tried to revive him by

1:15:21

it later emerged as that thought

1:15:23

he did not immediately call for

1:15:25

an ambulance. And. Instead, he called

1:15:28

like several of his friends and acquaintances

1:15:30

before. He called Eve causes

1:15:32

nice He calls David Austin his

1:15:34

like. I have a longtime friend

1:15:37

of George's and damn the license

1:15:39

like. Hang up with me and

1:15:41

call the whole nine nine nine which is the. British.

1:15:44

Nine One One which is what a

1:15:46

Fatty Than does So it's one forty

1:15:48

five in the afternoon on Christmas Day

1:15:51

and are funny cause Nine Nine Nine

1:15:53

because it's Britain and because of the

1:15:55

tabloids. That's. The text of that

1:15:57

phone call is going to be leads to the

1:15:59

media. And I would

1:16:01

say Foddy doesn't come off very well in it.

1:16:04

He seems like he's in a

1:16:06

rush to get off the telephone,

1:16:08

and he's asked what George's birthday

1:16:10

is, and he gets it wrong.

1:16:13

At one point he says, do I have to stay on

1:16:15

the line while the ambulance comes or can I hang up?

1:16:18

George Michaels fans are grieving when they receive

1:16:20

this leaked 999 call, but

1:16:24

they're going to lash out pretty

1:16:26

strongly against Foddy in

1:16:28

response. To me

1:16:30

it's not strange behavior. That's just

1:16:32

somebody who is expressing surprise

1:16:35

and grief and shock. And

1:16:38

yet if you want there to be

1:16:40

someone to blame for it, then he's kind

1:16:42

of making himself a soft target. Yeah,

1:16:45

I think that's right. When the

1:16:48

emergency personnel do arrive, it's

1:16:50

clear that George has been dead for a

1:16:52

long time. In a practical matter, it

1:16:55

wouldn't have had any effect on anything. Yeah,

1:16:57

I mean when someone's dead, you

1:16:59

can usually tell. I think

1:17:01

also because of this story about

1:17:03

the car, people blame Foddy because

1:17:05

this idea that he was messed

1:17:07

up on drugs asleep in the

1:17:09

driveway during George's final moments.

1:17:13

But the two slept in different bedrooms. So

1:17:16

the alternative was that they would have been

1:17:18

in different bedrooms, and the same thing would

1:17:20

have unfolded. But I also

1:17:22

think, I mean, so people blame him for

1:17:24

the way he behaved that day, but I

1:17:27

think even more people blame him for the

1:17:29

fact that George Michael died alone.

1:17:32

And I feel like when you love someone as a

1:17:34

public, you have the sense of, you know, if only

1:17:36

I could have been around,

1:17:38

I would have done a better job. But

1:17:41

that's the thing about relationships. It's also,

1:17:43

we can believe all kinds of things about something you weren't

1:17:46

a part of. For a

1:17:48

lot of people, myself included, the idea

1:17:51

of passing away suddenly in

1:17:53

my own bed at night is

1:17:56

comforting, maybe even ideal. See, it

1:17:59

seems harder. and harder to get the chance

1:18:01

to do it these days. If

1:18:03

it's any consolation, after he

1:18:06

died, his fans left

1:18:08

cards and notes and flowers and

1:18:11

little stuffed animals in

1:18:13

front of his house in London and also in Goreng.

1:18:16

And the message is not to

1:18:19

sort of flatten the whole thing,

1:18:21

but with greater or lesser degrees

1:18:23

of complexity, the messages were essentially

1:18:25

that. I love you, George.

1:18:28

I'm here. I won't forget you. You're

1:18:31

safe. How

1:18:33

did you feel about this news when

1:18:35

it reached you? Do you remember this? Like

1:18:38

a lot of people, I was struck by how young he

1:18:40

was. He was 53 when he died. We

1:18:43

got to see his life in so many

1:18:45

different phases, you know, from

1:18:47

the kind of like bubbly youth to

1:18:50

the kind of sex pot figure to

1:18:52

the like kind of older gay uncle. When

1:18:56

I was a kid growing up gay in the

1:18:58

1980s, we didn't have examples

1:19:01

of gay adulthood kind

1:19:03

of taken to completion, like a life

1:19:05

from beginning to end. It's not like

1:19:08

role model. I wouldn't use that word

1:19:10

about George Michael, but just an example.

1:19:13

Here's an example of a life. Here's what a life could be. Queer

1:19:16

people growing up today have examples

1:19:19

of people who were

1:19:21

gay and lived full

1:19:24

and complete lives. Yeah.

1:19:26

And I mean, and lives, you know, shaped

1:19:28

by hate and trauma

1:19:30

and injustice, but also lives where he

1:19:33

had a life where he had love. There

1:19:36

were so many men who jitterbugged into his heart.

1:19:44

And I do think there was this kind

1:19:46

of outpouring of unironic

1:19:49

love and grief for George Michael after

1:19:51

he died. And even

1:19:54

the newspapers, which had been so cruel to

1:19:56

him in the years before he died, published

1:19:59

these glowing accounts. like

1:20:01

one of the things that emerged as a

1:20:03

theme in the writing afterwards was, oh,

1:20:05

it turns out he was such a philanthropist. He

1:20:08

was like hiding how secretly he was

1:20:10

giving money away. And it's true that

1:20:12

some of the money he

1:20:14

gave away was in secret. But it's

1:20:16

also like that was hiding in plain

1:20:18

sight. He was giving

1:20:21

away money from his, from the release

1:20:23

of Sing, I mean, we talked about a bunch of it,

1:20:25

the money from last Christmas, the

1:20:27

money from his duet with Elton John. There's

1:20:30

like a report in the 80s that he'd already given

1:20:32

away 6 million pounds to his friends

1:20:34

and family. And it's like

1:20:36

kind of like what do the tabloids want to

1:20:38

see? Like when they were just like kicking this

1:20:40

man when he was down, all

1:20:42

of that philanthropy was on the

1:20:44

record. Yeah, but they didn't want to do, but

1:20:47

they needed the fat shrubbery sex

1:20:49

gay headline. So you can't use

1:20:51

that information, right? It's only once

1:20:54

someone is dead that you can

1:20:56

be nice to them profitably, electedly.

1:20:58

Maybe it's that, that they, that

1:21:01

it was profitable for the tabloids to put

1:21:03

up this image of George Michael as this

1:21:06

quote, sort of sad haunted

1:21:08

porker. And then once

1:21:11

he's dead, it's profitable to put up

1:21:13

this other version of him as like

1:21:15

St. George. And so

1:21:17

the coroner's office does a second more detailed

1:21:19

examination, but it takes time. It ends up

1:21:21

taking about two and a half months. And

1:21:24

so the media is left during

1:21:27

this period of following his death

1:21:29

without conclusive answers. And

1:21:32

that leads to a lot of speculation. And for

1:21:35

the family and for his loved ones,

1:21:37

it's also means they can't bury him

1:21:40

until the second examination is concluded. And

1:21:43

so they're stuck in this kind of

1:21:46

period of perpetual mourning. The

1:21:48

second examination, the conclusion

1:21:50

is that he died of a heart

1:21:52

failure and that he had fatty liver.

1:21:55

In other words, his death is ruled to

1:21:57

be from natural causes. The report

1:21:59

looks like the report of somebody who drank

1:22:01

and smoked heavily during his life, which is

1:22:05

undoubtedly true. However, the toxicology report, like

1:22:07

what was in his bloodstream at the

1:22:09

time that he died, is withheld

1:22:12

from the public. And we don't

1:22:14

know. So we can't say for sure whether

1:22:17

he relapsed at the end. And I think

1:22:20

people at the time were really, were

1:22:22

really sad that they couldn't get

1:22:25

that finality from, from these

1:22:27

reports. And I don't know, like, to

1:22:29

me it's like, why does that matter?

1:22:32

Yeah, why does it matter? Right? What are

1:22:34

what's being unsaid and the need for

1:22:36

that information? Right. Like, are

1:22:39

we waiting to cast our final judgment

1:22:41

on on George to say the toxicology

1:22:43

report is clean, and

1:22:45

therefore, he is a somebody

1:22:48

who overcame his demons. We

1:22:51

can tell that arc, like it's a pretty

1:22:53

clean narrative story. Or if he

1:22:55

if there is something in his in his blood

1:22:57

at the time, then we have a

1:22:59

different story that we have to tell. But I,

1:23:02

I actually don't think that's true.

1:23:04

He was both

1:23:06

things through his throughout his life. He was

1:23:08

a high achiever. And he was

1:23:10

a person who used drugs. And

1:23:12

he was somebody who sometimes

1:23:15

had battles. And

1:23:18

whatever was happening on that

1:23:20

last day, doesn't erase. It's

1:23:22

like the least important part or it's

1:23:24

just a tiny fraction of the story.

1:23:28

Yeah. Well, I feel like, you know,

1:23:30

one of the kind of human

1:23:32

behaviors around death is the

1:23:35

need to come up with a reason for why

1:23:37

it wouldn't happen to us or why the person

1:23:40

deserved it. Right. And I feel like we're

1:23:42

trying to create some kind of cause and

1:23:44

effect narrative out of, you

1:23:46

know, if someone is found

1:23:48

with drugs in their system, then we can

1:23:50

blame that on

1:23:52

them. We can blame their death on their

1:23:55

behavior in a

1:23:57

way that probably makes us feel safer.

1:24:00

And I think really, you know, it doesn't

1:24:02

make us safer to do that, even if

1:24:04

it feels that way sometimes. And really, it's,

1:24:07

I don't know, what feels relevant about

1:24:10

the information that we have is that

1:24:12

he lived a long life, not

1:24:14

necessarily in years, but in terms of the

1:24:17

events crammed into all of his

1:24:19

adult years and had survived a

1:24:22

lot. And there's

1:24:24

just a limit to what our bodies can survive one

1:24:26

way or another. Yeah,

1:24:28

yeah. I think

1:24:30

it's, in a way, it's kind of nice that

1:24:32

we're denied that total closure. The public should have

1:24:35

more limits placed on what we know. The

1:24:37

funeral isn't broadcast. And when

1:24:40

he's buried, he's buried in a private plot.

1:24:42

They don't want, you know, heaps of flowers at his

1:24:45

grave site or the risk of

1:24:47

vandalism. For a number of

1:24:49

years afterwards, he's in some sort of private

1:24:51

cemetery where the only way you could

1:24:54

get in to even look at it was if you're

1:24:56

on a guided tour, basically. He

1:24:58

gets to have some privacy, which I think it's

1:25:00

really high time. And

1:25:02

you know, it matters how we treat the dead, you

1:25:05

know? If the dead don't know, then the living

1:25:07

do. Yeah, and the

1:25:09

service too, like the service is very

1:25:11

private. It's not televised. In

1:25:14

this moment, the family decides not

1:25:16

to invite Fadi Fawaz. But

1:25:19

he shows up anyway. Like

1:25:21

the service is set to start,

1:25:23

the doors swing open, Fadi Fawaz

1:25:25

swaggers in with a pair of

1:25:28

aviator sunglasses on. He

1:25:30

will not be excluded. And they let

1:25:32

him stay. Kenny, on the other hand,

1:25:34

is invited to be a pallbearer. What

1:25:37

do you think about that? It's clear that the

1:25:39

family doesn't like Fadi. Like the family has a

1:25:41

sort of favored member

1:25:43

of George's sexual

1:25:45

life or past, and it's Kenny.

1:25:47

Like after George's death, Fadi is

1:25:50

living in the London house. He's

1:25:52

not at Goring. He's in the

1:25:54

London house. And Fadi

1:25:56

says that George has told him, you can

1:25:58

stay in this house. for it, like

1:26:00

even if after I'm gone, this house is yours.

1:26:03

But he's not in the will. Yeah, I get

1:26:05

it in writing folks. There's a question

1:26:07

of like, would he be have been a common law spouse

1:26:10

in other jurisdictions in the in, for example,

1:26:12

in the US or in Canada, but

1:26:14

in the UK, somebody

1:26:16

in that kind of conjugal relationship isn't

1:26:19

entitled to what we

1:26:21

would call the matrimonial home in as

1:26:25

inheritance. And so

1:26:28

the family says, you don't have a claim

1:26:30

to this house and eventually send a

1:26:33

bailiff to forcibly remove him. I

1:26:36

should also say that his

1:26:38

estate is valued at this time at around

1:26:40

95 million pounds. In

1:26:42

the will, the money mostly goes to

1:26:44

his family, in particular, his sisters, he's

1:26:46

got two sisters. But he

1:26:48

says that his art should be sold

1:26:51

and the money should be donated to charities. He

1:26:54

gives a list of other other charities and

1:26:56

people that he would like to say receive

1:26:59

some money. But he's not specific. He

1:27:01

says, I trust my sister Melanie to decide on

1:27:04

the distribution. But Fadi is

1:27:06

not on the list. This is

1:27:08

the kind of height of Twitter, right? 2016,

1:27:10

2017. So Fadi is on Twitter and

1:27:13

his first messages after George's death are

1:27:15

like, I'm heartbroken. I'm never going to

1:27:17

be the same. I

1:27:19

loved him. You know, I will

1:27:21

never I will never have a happy Christmas after

1:27:23

this messages like that. And then he

1:27:26

starts sending these messages out that say, I hate

1:27:28

you, George. And he sends

1:27:30

messages out purporting to

1:27:33

reveal secrets. And

1:27:35

he's later going to renounce those messages and say even

1:27:37

that his Twitter was hacked, I don't know. But

1:27:40

things like George had

1:27:42

five or six suicide attempts and this

1:27:44

last one was finally successful and

1:27:47

that George had HIV. And

1:27:50

of course, this is also somebody who's

1:27:52

in the midst of grieving and who's

1:27:54

sad and also is being

1:27:56

evicted from his house, which is what happens.

1:27:59

He after he. is removed

1:28:01

from the house in London. He spends

1:28:03

some time in a low-rent

1:28:06

hotel hostel kind of situation

1:28:08

and then at least

1:28:11

some time living on the streets in London.

1:28:13

He's living in his car, he eventually sells

1:28:15

his car because he's trying to get money

1:28:17

to move on to his next thing. In

1:28:21

the James Gavin biography the

1:28:23

last glimpse we have of

1:28:26

Fadi is it's nighttime and

1:28:28

he's in one of the Tony neighborhoods

1:28:31

in London with a hammer and

1:28:33

he's smashing the windshields of cars

1:28:35

as he passes. And

1:28:37

then Fadi's tweets

1:28:40

disappear like he had there's no

1:28:42

tweets since 2019 and

1:28:44

he fades from public memory. Well

1:28:46

I hope he's okay. I mean what do

1:28:48

you think about the reliability of the stuff

1:28:51

that he's saying? How do you read

1:28:53

that personally? I can see in those

1:28:55

tweets that he is trying to say

1:28:57

the most hurtful thing possible and

1:29:00

also is it hurtful

1:29:02

and true or hurtful and

1:29:05

untrue? That I can't tell. If he

1:29:07

had been kind of like smart and

1:29:09

together about it he would have approached

1:29:11

a British tabloid and

1:29:13

said I knew he was HIV positive

1:29:16

or I knew this was a suicide attempt

1:29:18

and sold the story for some amount of money and

1:29:22

releasing this on Twitter means that the next

1:29:24

day all the tabloids get to report it

1:29:26

for free. And I don't know like I'm not I'm not

1:29:28

trying to say that that Fadi Fawaz was

1:29:31

a saint or a martyr. Everybody's

1:29:33

relationships are a mystery. We're always

1:29:35

on the outside of them. My

1:29:39

own relationships are a mystery you

1:29:41

know it doesn't even have to

1:29:43

be someone else's relationship. We know

1:29:45

that there were happy times like

1:29:48

and we know that there were periods where they

1:29:50

were fighting. Also most people

1:29:53

fight and sometimes that's like

1:29:55

just a normal part of a of

1:29:58

the relationship and sometimes it's awful

1:30:00

and abusive and I don't know in this and

1:30:02

you know what I mean? It's like it's outside

1:30:04

of my realm of

1:30:07

visibility So my favorite thing about

1:30:09

this show is that this is a place where we

1:30:11

can bravely, you know Step up

1:30:13

to the soapbox and say I don't

1:30:15

know a relationship Can

1:30:17

be bad or good and we just

1:30:19

can't know it from the outside, you know

1:30:21

Sometimes we have enough material but often we

1:30:24

don't and I love This

1:30:26

being the show where we don't know things and where

1:30:28

we celebrate not knowing and it's like it's

1:30:31

easy to say George's Relationship

1:30:33

with and Salmo was the love of his

1:30:35

life and it you know, it was pure.

1:30:37

It was kind of like undiluted in a

1:30:39

way But also

1:30:41

like his relationship with Kenny, you know

1:30:43

long long-term

1:30:46

stable loving secure

1:30:49

and Then I also think

1:30:51

about his relation his even shorter-term relationships the

1:30:53

relationships with the guys that he picked up

1:30:55

in the gay bars or Picked

1:30:57

up in the bathrooms his shrubbery

1:30:59

relationships Well, right I mean

1:31:02

what he describes in that in that

1:31:04

quote from earlier is that there were

1:31:06

like bonfires and parties and he had

1:31:08

friends up There that it's like in

1:31:10

a way. It's not necessarily a relationship with

1:31:13

a single person but with a community of

1:31:15

people and I kind

1:31:18

of like the idea that

1:31:20

maybe the his relationship with

1:31:23

Strangers was the most

1:31:25

enduring relationship of all Well

1:31:39

Marcus if people want to learn

1:31:41

more about George Michael and related

1:31:43

topics What

1:31:45

books do you recommend? I

1:31:48

I've consulted a number of his biographies I

1:31:50

would say probably the best

1:31:53

and most complete is the James Gavin

1:31:55

biography The best short

1:31:57

biography is the Rob Yovanovik

1:31:59

books I would say. But there's

1:32:01

other good biographies out there. There's one by Robert

1:32:03

Steele, one by Sean Smith. Andrew

1:32:06

Ridgeley wrote a memoir about his time

1:32:08

in WAM. And if

1:32:10

you're interested in thinking more about the

1:32:12

law and culture of cruising, you can

1:32:15

pick up my book, Park

1:32:17

Cruising, What Happens When We Wander Off the Path.

1:32:20

And I'm so excited for

1:32:22

your book. I think this is such

1:32:24

a wonderful area to learn more about,

1:32:26

and also an important ethic, you know,

1:32:29

as we think about how

1:32:31

do we build the societies and the

1:32:33

communities that we're missing and that we're

1:32:35

so starved for in modern life. And

1:32:38

maybe get in the shrubbery. And

1:32:47

that is our episode. Thank you.

1:32:50

Thank you so much for being with

1:32:52

us today. Thank you

1:32:54

to Marcus McCann for being

1:32:56

our wonderful guest. Marcus

1:32:59

is again the author of Park

1:33:01

Cruising, What Happens When We Wander Off

1:33:03

the Path. And we were so lucky

1:33:05

to have him. It was such a pleasure working

1:33:07

with you, Marcus. Thank you

1:33:09

so much, as ever, to Carl

1:33:12

and Kendrick for producing and for bringing

1:33:14

these stories to our ears. Thank

1:33:16

you to Colin Fleming for editing help.

1:33:18

Thank you to you for listening. We'll

1:33:21

see you in two weeks.