I have been courted by a politician (your text book kinky sex fiend), a mafia boss (bored with his own atrocities), academics (champagne socialists) and road sweepers (nice nice nice; toothless), a Greek waiter called Petros the town shagger (furry), a mullah from Syria who wanted me to be his fourth wife (beardy) and even a serial killer (from death row he drew sketches of me decapitated, to woo me I presume; I politely declined) and rockstars. I have learned that rock n roll been the biggest con and a world where women are demonized for their sexuality and the men idolised for it.
As my first book outlined, I did indulge pretty heavily with rock stars and it did leave a deflated sour residue. Like many wide-eyed men and women, girls and boys I swooned at rock legends; for their talent, charisma, fame, implied sexual prowess (which is all the product of fame, power and idolatry; all a vicious circle). Axl Rose was the first at 11 years of age whose image of raw dangerous alpha male trashy-ness gave me, a young Iranian refugee her first squirting orgasm, then Jim Morrison, dead, so safe from ever disappointing me a honeyed concoction of poet, intellectual, beauteous face, velvet purr, natural wolf-child swagger of torso and tortured sensitive soul. I am positive that had I met him I would be have been not only disappointed but grossed out by his treatment of women. Same as John Lennon. One of my adored but such a c…t to women.
This febrile carnality of famous rock stars: this guttural desire, need, that a mere mortal might feel towards one is easily dissipated when one does eventually meet, hang out and have sexual relations with one. A catalogue of them came into my life and went before I finally realised that it is all an image, a smoke and mirrors illusion produced by shadowy figures in the marketing and PR office to ‘sell’ this persona/product, to sell records, merch, the legend; a manufactured artifice. After all Brian Epstein did manufacture the concept of Beatlemania; mass worship of his four precious ones . Very clever indeed but devastatingly disappointing, rather like when one finds out that Santa Clause is not real or how Truman felt in the Truman Show when he found that his whole life was staged and a TV show.
The utopian playground I had imagined rock n roll to be full of free spirits and free love was actually a clinical place where the concept was now a simulation; a manufactured product illusion, and the vitamin pill munching, herbal tea drinking yoga disciples with early nights and macadamia nut facial scrubs were the rock stars I and others had all swooned over as our gurus of debaucherous, free spirited anarchists. In the age of advanced capitalism, AIDS and internet, rock n roll wasn’t gripped in the freed-spiritedness revolution of 1960s and ‘70s or even in the formulaic sleaze-buffoonery of 1980s hair metal. It wasn’t even a simulation of it. It was just two deflated milkless tits. I had bought into a mythology and the lost girls and boys who had subscribed to this fable thought they were engaging in this (manufactured) ‘utopian free spiritedness’ by excessive drinking and drugging and black-wearing.
Some extremely notorious rock legends famed for their cretinous behaviour and sexual charisma were more dull than, say, being locked in a bare room for weeks and stating at four walls. Don’t get me wrong, I never wanted a clichéd ant-snorting, orgy-starting, bat-chomping, driving into a swimming pool sweaty, tattooed long hair, who f..s all night long and takes me to the next city on his plane, but some decent conversation, a pinch of charisma, a laugh, humour, interest in the world around, but sadly it was more like listless, gormless, bimboy. And I wasn’t expecting Bono either, all pope complex and deep conversation but the series of rock stars never failed to disappoint me. maybe rock legends should all die young because the left-overs with their dullness are rendering their legend null and void.
Recently I had a fling with one legendary rock star and he too, despite being nice and so kind-hearted emerged as someone who never managed normal daily tasks. He was like a toddler having had his ‘people’ do everything for him since his early ‘20s, and never knew how to take initiative, how to make decisions, or how to be in social situations, even down to being able to communicate clearly and concisely with me. He was all muddled, sober and clean but mentally, like a kid who needed to be nannied,. He always wanted me to tell him what to do, where to meet, how to spend time.
When I had first been intimate with him the room was all liquid and wobbly. Images of his past famous girlfriends flashing in my head. I looked like a potato. A dumpy council state potato. He was so lioneque, so naturally sensual that I felt tiny. But also…. I did not want to feel a thing; like when you are at the dentist. Because if I let myself feel, the sutures of the heart would gently loosen, commencing a bloody lovely adoration that would metamorphose into a volcano of love which would become the death of me because I could never be with him. Yes he was cheating on his partner but he like me did not subscribe to the manufactured unnatural concept that pure romantic love should be affiliated to monogamy. He adored her and I adored him for that and I just wished that she like me, would love him so much that she would want him to have different shades and varieties of love and sex.
Most if not all of these rock legends have vanilla girlfriends/wives at home: docile, compliant, unquestioning, Bambi eyed and simple, like a favourite pair of slippers. No rock star wants to have a political journalist girlfriend who has fled a war and been through a revolution in Iran and interviews the KKK, despite her education, her devotion to him and their life. Because they get tired of being that persona and just want simplicity and vanilla to come home to. And I am the same: I want a devoted sweet husband who is there for me, and for whom I don’t have to put on my ‘Roxana Persona’; someone I can feel secure enough to be the boring, geeky housewifey girl that I am, someone with whom I feel comfortable enough to be the little girl me, the damaged me, the no make up, the pyjamas wearing, chubby, saggy, TV loving me and he would still love me; not the rock n roll persona that everyone thinks that I am.
But most of all it has made me realise that in rock n roll women are demonized for their sexuality while the men are idolised for it.