Today is the day to cry. For he is gone. Prince is gone.
There is an outpouring of grief like I have never felt for a celebrity before. But then he wasn't just a celebrity to me or plenty of others. He was our father. Father to all us oddballs, the weirdest, the freaks, the loners, the quiet ones. He was one of us and he gave us permission to exist.
This is the first time I have felt it necessary to write an obituary piece and I expect it will be the last, but I have to tell those who were there that I never left and those who weren't there, I have to try and get them to see. To understand. To know that this isn't just the passing of someone famous. This is a death in the family.
Where to start? Do I start with the joy I felt at seeing this scrawny little dude on stage KILLING IT OUT THERE in a raincoat and stockings? With the opening riff of Lets Go Crazy with its chaotic wall of sound that perfectly matched the chaos in our heads? That last scream of TAKE ME AWAY echoing in the darkness?
Do I start with the lazy summer days listening to Raspberry Beret with my friend, the only one who got it in her room? Or the permission that Darling Nikki gave me to be sexual on my own fucking terms?
Do I start with the teenage me sobbing into her pillow to the guitar solo in Computer Blue knowing that she could hold on to life for ONE MORE DAY because it proved there was beauty in the world?
Some of us know what it sounds like when doves cry. We heard the pain when he sang that he was so confused on The Beautiful Ones. We shook our asses and creamy thighs at Erotic City and held our heads high at the very idea of having The Look.
We knew each other. We saw each other at school buy the flash of purple and the Paisley we managed to get away with at school. Way before NPG, way before Diamonds and Pearls, and the beautifully named Princestagram, we knew each other and we felt less alone.
He gave us permission to be. This tiny, sexy, scrawny, freaky as fuck man who was never anything but himself. When I was at my lowest he gave me permission to live, when I wore a bit of net curtain round my head and got pointed at and called a weirdo it was ok because he did it. He wore what he wanted. He could be himself, sexy in a way that wasn't toxic or abusive and that meant that maybe, just maybe, so could I.
So goodbye Father of the Freaks, the Disenfranchised, the lonely, the alone and the sad. In you we could be ourselves and I hope you are proud of us like we are of you.
And thank you for making my life by flying over the NEC on a zip wire with the chain mask and gun microphone screaming that your name was Prince, and you were funky.
Fucking right you were. The one and only.
Sleep well sweet Prince.
