Tuesday, June 20, 2006
CONFESSIONS ON A BLOG FLOOR: MY LIFE THROUGH MADONNA
Tomorrow night I will dance and sing at the throne of my queen – MADONNA - as the Confessions Tour hits Montreal! In honour of this exciting event being added to my list of substantial Madonna memories, I thought it appropriate to go back and do a little retrospective on my life with Madonna. Here are my 'confessions' ... I first got 'into the groove' with Madonna in 1984 when the 'Easter Bunny' brought me my first Madonna cassette, aptly titled Like A Virgin. To say
I was 'touched for the very first time' would be putting it mildly as I have been beyond your average fan ever since ... some might even say I'm slightly obsessed! The story of my first encounter with Madonna is easy to remember because it was at that time I discovered that the Easter Bunny does not really exist! My mom fell asleep before putting my presents out the night before and when I woke up the next morning she frantically came up with the excuse that she had to go out to check and see if "he had come" before I could go look for myself. Of course, what she was actually doing was running around in a panic trying to put out those Easter gifts before I found out the awful truth. Unfortunately, I heard her getting the stuff out of the bags and kind of figured things out for myself. I could have very well turned my back on Madonna after that traumatic experience, but even a dashed childhood fantasy did not sway my love for her. Who cares about losing the Easter Bunny when you've found the new Queen of Pop!!!Since that moment I haven't missed an album, single, video, movie, book, magazine cover, or TV appearance. And in the past 20 years there have been plenty of memories...
I remember going grocery shopping in the city with my grandmother where she bought me True Blue at Woolco. On that same day she bought me a gold initial ring that I only had a 
month before I chewed it to pieces while bored in Mrs. Mooney's 5th grade math class. My devoutly Catholic grandmother also bought me the Like a Prayer album and was not too pleased with herself when she watched the video for the title song and saw the burning crosses ... I think I was forced to say a few Hail Mary's and an Our Father that night before bed!I cannot count the times I dressed up like old school Madonna with my aunt Lulu's big orange dangly clip-on earrings and fluorescent green gloves, and
performed Madonna songs for my dad's in-house male dart league (please pick up a copy of Rocky's Rules For How To Make Your Father Proud). Embarrassingly enough, I also remember going to the local hang-out in my home town where Vogue was number 123 on the juke box. I would press those buttons and proceed to stand on the pool table and do the entire dance sequence for the song! I honestly have NO IDEA how everyone figured out I was gay years before I admitted it!!!Around the same time as this, I remember buying Truth or Dare behind my
mom's back and watching it whenever she’d go out, rewinding the segments with the gay dancers over and over and being totally amazed by them. Eventually she caught me watching it and burned it in the wood stove :-( I also remember 
watching The Girlie Show on Much Music with my dad. Of course, he assumed (or hoped) I was enjoying watching the topless female back-up singers while really I was most enjoying Madonna's outfit changes and the ripped, thong-clad dancers... but whatever delusions he had to believe in so that I could watch were fine by me! While in my first years of university, I went to see Evita with my cousin
Tammy and we were the only two young people in the audience (and I’m pretty sure I was the only male). We bawled our eyes out and I went to see it a second time. I was also ready to cry when she didn't get an Oscar nomination but was happy enough with her Golden Globe win and her performance and win for best song - You Must Love Me - at the Academy Awards that year.
And then there's Ray of Light, the album that will
forever be my favourite. This was the one released in the period leading up to when I came out of the closet. Today, RoL rarely leaves my headphones. My favourite Madonna moment of all time was when she performed the title track for the first time on Oprah.
Beautiful Stranger
became my theme song in the summer of 1999 and shortly after I was dancing in the gay bar (you can imagine what it’s like to dance in a gay club to Madonna for the first time) to Music. I even spent my last night in Newfoundland with Madonna before moving to Halifax. A couple of friends and I decided the best place to say good-bye would be the Zone while watching the Drowned World Tour broadcast on HBO! 
Two years later, Madonna saw her least successful album, American Life... I still argue it is one of her greatest. One of my funniest memories of this time was when Joseph and I 
discovered that when we were out walking and listening to Love Profusion on our headphones, we would both pretend we were Madonna and walk like she did in the video! And this album gave me a chance to see her live for the first time when she went to Toronto for her Re-Invention Tour in Toronto. There are no words! What a great weekend. I spent the night before the concert at a Madonna party filled with the most amazing drag queen impressionists and NOTHING but Madonna music and videos. Even a typically over-dramatic appearance from my arch-nemesis at the party could not get me down that night!
Over the years, I've had more fun times than I can count, shakin' it to her tunes on the dance floor. And since November I have not stopped dancing to Madonna's latest sensation, Confessions on a Dance Floor. I'll always remember doing the Hung Up dance with Jake on the stage at Reflections and even teaching a group of lesbians the moves so they could dance along! Dancing to Madonna is what I will always remember most about her ... in fact, I learned to dance to her music in the middle of my grandmother's kitchen floor.I stayed loyal to her through it all - the jelly bracelets and teased hair; the fake mole; burning crosses; conical bras and deep-throating water bottles; Dita; the SEX book; Geisha goddess; the cowgirl, kissing Britney and Christina, English Lady of the Manor; children's author; and my new favourite re-invention - pink and purple sequined leotard-clad disco diva!
Tomorrow night I will make another fantastic memory as I dance the night away with Madonna and thousands of other adoring fans. And my memories will not stop there - one day I'll dance at my wedding to Crazy for You.
Over 20 years have passed and after all this time, whenever I feel down and need some motivation to get up and moving, all I have to do is turn on a Madonna song and 'dance for inspiration.' After all, it was the queen herself who once told me...
"When all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today. I know a place where you can get away it's called a dance floor, and here's what it's for ..."
:: posted by Ray of Delight, 9:20 AM
