From Noah Michelson:
Last night, after word spread that pop star George Michael died at the age of 53, I sent out several tweets honoring the man who meant a lot to me as a queer young man who came out in the late '90s. My first tweet instructed those unfamiliar with Michael (and the brilliance of what he created) to seek out his music. This was my second tweet:
I suggest we all find a public bathroom wherever we are and go and have sex in it with a stranger tonight to properly honor George Michael.
— Noah Michelson (@noahmichelson) December 26, 2016
I was referencing Michael's well-publicized history with cruising for sex in public places (he was arrested by an undercover policeman in a Beverly Hills men's room in 1998 and again 10 years later in London). While I was being cheeky in a way that I thought he would appreciate in the big Wembley Stadium in the sky, I also meant it. It was my way of paying tribute to how open, outspoken and unapologetic he was about who he was (once he came out in 1998), his sexuality and looking for gay sex in what could be referred to as non-traditional locales.
But shit soon hit the fan. People who thought I was being "disrespectful" and "tacky" and "tasteless" flooded my Twitter mentions. A few people commented "too soon." Others couldn't believe that this was the only aspect of his life that I had chosen to concentrate on (which means they obviously didn't read my aforementioned tweet). How dare I! One person called me "the 2016 of people" (which is actually kind of amazing) and another promised to "piss on my grave" when I died (I mean… don't threaten my corpse with a good time, right?).
I tried to explain that as a queer, sex-positive man, this part of Michael's life―these moments of queer sexuality and his sex life that were made very public―helped to reorganize and shape how I saw and embraced my own sexuality, which was nothing short of a miracle considering the homophobic and sex-negative culture we live in.
My tweet wasn't a joke and it wasn't rude or disrespectful. If you read it that way you're implying that gay sex―public or otherwise―is shameful. I don't and neither did Michael.