Hilton Als - My Pinup

Copyright 2022 by Hilton Als

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published as New Directions Paperbook 1545 in 2022

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Als, Hilton, author.

Title: My pinup : a paean to Prince / Hilton Als.

Description: [First edition.] | New York : New Directions Publishing, 2022.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022028205 | ISBN 9780811234498 (paperback) | ISBN 9780811234504 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: PrinceCriticism and interpretation. | Als, Hilton. | Sex role in music.

Classification: LCC ML420.P974 A75 2022 | DDC 781.66092dc23/eng/20220722

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028205

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

D ick jokes, ass jokes, black-women-versus-white-women jokes, Taliban jokes, Whitney Houston jokes, more sex jokes, and then, finally, the best joke of all, because it plays like a confession telegraphed directly out of the comedians subconscious. From Jamie Foxxs 2002 television stand-up special, I Might Need Security: Hollywood is freaky... You get the chance to meet all your, you know, your favorite stars when youre in Hollywood. And I met Prince... the man, you know what Im sayin? Applause.

Jamie Foxx, dressed in a blue shirt with a satin sheen and dark trousers, his considerable ass in the air, traverses the stage, a pin spot following him as he follows his thoughts. Im not no fag, he continues, almost bashfully. But uh. I mean, hes cute, he pretty... I just aint never seen no man that look like that. Just dainty and shit. Beat. Hangdog expression. I couldnt look at him in his eyes. Because this little pretty bitch... came out with a little ice-skating outfit on, you know? With the boots sewn into the shit. And Im like, Thats nice... Im not gay. Im just saying thats nice. More existential shrugging of the shoulders, turning away from the audience, embarrassment and confusion as Foxxs desire attaches itself to a different, or rather unexpected, form. This is America, after all, where for sex to be sex it needs to be shaming. He flashes his goofy overbite. I know you thinkingyou thinking Im gay, Foxx says, more to his own heart and mind, perhaps, than to anyone in the audience. Im just saying I challenge any dude in here not to look in his eyes and feel some kind of shit... Cause he was pretty. He looked like a deer or something, or a fawn... I shouldnt even be telling you this shit. More laughter from the audience, more abashment from Foxx.

Then Foxx recalls how Prince started talking with that shitadding a little audio to his distinctive visuals. Princes speaking voicewhich Foxxs audience may or may not know from a thousand and one uncandid interviews on VH1 and the like, or an awards show, or somethingbelies his slight frame: its deep and steady with few inflections. In any case, Foxx is spot-on when he imitates it. Foxx as Prince, utterly cool: So hows everything going? Foxx as himself, his eyes downcast: You know... As Prince: I heard you and LL [Cool J, the rapper who costarred with Foxx in Oliver Stones Any Given Sunday (1999)] got into it... What do you think Jesus would have done in that situation? Foxx, again as himself: I dont know. Knuckle up. Laughter. And then, shaking off his Prince impersonation: I glanced in his eyes once. After a while, defiantly: Okay, yeah. Okay, I was a fag for two seconds. But I wasnt on the bottom of the shit, I was on top, dont get it twisted... Id have fucked the shit out of that motherfucker. That troubled me though, man... When I left, the security guard knew something was wrong with me. He was like, Whats up playa?... You looked in his eyes, didnt you? Foxx admits, sheepishly, that he did. He is so confused. Freeing his mindwill his ass follow? And then what? Will he be a fag, forever desperate to stare up into Princes slightly-lighter-than-the-color-of-Mercurochrome prettiness? Then Foxx asks the security guard if hes ever looked into Princes eyes.

And one thinks, Looking into Princes eyes must be like looking at the world. Or, more specifically, the world of one black man loving another. How freaky is that? And whos on top in that kind of mind fuck? (Probably Prince, given that hes capable of articulating this basic truth, as he does in his 1992 song Sexy M.F.: In a word or 2its u I wanna do / No, not cha body, yo mind you fool.) In any case, as Foxx moves away from Princes world, the maestros security guard answers in the affirmative; hes looked into Princes eyes as well. Foxx asks him what happened after that. And the guardanother brother in love, but, unlike Foxx, okay with itsays, as if the whole thing is the most natural exchange in the world: Ive been fucking him for two years now.

B eing enthralledor, more accurately, frightened and turned on by Prince and what his various looks said about an aspect of black male sexualitywas that something only comedians could talk about? And when they did, did Princes weirdness have to be the butt of the joke, so to speak, along with colored queerness? For the most part, I wasnt interested in the Prince who produced 1999 and Purple Rain and Around the World ina Day and at least half of Sign O theTimes (all released between 1982 and 1987). Those felt like self-consciously white pop albums to me, a craven desire on The Artists part to belong to the world outside the colored queens I had known growing up, who called Prince Miss. Why did he want to leave us for that nonworld of convention he seemed to aspire to, where she got married to a woman who looked like her, then, to make matters worse, dressed as Miles Davis had while on tour promoting his rock-jazz fusion album Bitches Brew? Why did he want to betray the colored queer in himself?

At parties in New York, uptown and down, I stopped dancing when frat boys pumped their fists in the air to 1999, or slid across the floor when Kiss came on, or grabbed their obliging girlfriendsgirls unlike the fierce dykes who sang and played backup for Prince in his early yearsand twirled them around to Raspberry Beret. They didnt know what he meant by any of it, but his queers did, and yet I no longer mattered; what mattered was Princes acquisition of a larger audience, those people who purchased records and filled concert halls, not the black queens who lip-synched to Sister while voguing near the Hudson River in the clear light of night. But in 1988, Prince redeemed himselfsomewhat. That year, he released Lovesexy; the record made things different again. It was as if Lazarus had risen from some strange frat-boy-populated cave. The cover told us everything: it was Prince, naked, his hair feathered, one hand shielding a beautiful nipple. The album featured another female doppelgngerCat, a dancer and singer who looked like Prince insofar as anyone could look like Prince. She was spectacular in ways that Prince felt he had to own during his