I was working out this morning, and as I was on the elliptical, hoping my heart wouldn’t explode, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” popped up in my playlist. This isn’t surprising, because I’m a Gen X-er and it’s one of my go-to songs from my adolescent years. And on this particular morning at the gym, it made me think about how that song represents a lot of what it was like growing up as a kink-leaning Gen X-er. I’ve already written about how our predilections start to rise up in our childhoods. But listening to “Relax” made me think about some bigger social things that were happening.
First of all, we need to talk about the song itself. It was released in the US in 1984 (1983 in the UK). I was 12. It was all over the radio at a time when Ronald Reagan was president, and we were in the thick of the old-fashioned Reagan/Thatcher conservatism (of which I wasn’t that aware at age 12). At the same time, gay men were dying of a disease that was just starting to enter into mainstream heterosexual consciousness. The first AIDS discrimination lawsuit happened in September, 1983; The WHO held its first meeting to assess the global AIDS situation the following November; and within a year, San Francisco public health officials ordered bathhouses closed1.
This is why it blows my mind that a song only slightly ambiguously about (probably gay) sex reached #1 in the UK and, after a slow burn in the US, hit #10 in January of 1985 (although it had consistently remained at #1 at alternative rock stations (especially KROQ in Los Angeles)2
Most of the kids my age knew what the song was about. Our parents most certainly did not. At least my mother didn’t. I’m guessing my father did, for reasons I may get into in a later post. It did cause some controversy in the UK3, but pre-internet, that controversy didn’t make it over to the US. The song basically went under the radar in the states, which is amazing to me, given that this was the chorus:
Relax, don't do it When you wanna go do it Relax, don't do it When you wanna come Relax, don't do it When you wanna suck, chew it Relax, don't do it When you wanna come When you wanna come Some more amazing lyrics: Relax (don't do it) When you wanna go to it (what's inside me?) Relax, don't do it When you want to come And one last little snippet: Come Get it up The scene of love Oh feel it
Now, any Gen X-er who wanted to ensure that they could listen to good radio stations on family car trips knew that we had to avoid our parents finding out the truth about the song at all costs. I remember sitting in the back seat while the song came on, and my mother saying “What is he saying? When you wanna … what?”
I am forever thankful that my parents tended to buy shitbox cars with bad sound systems.
“He’s saying ‘go,’ Mom. ‘Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it. Relax, don’t do it, when you wanna go.”
“Oh. Okay. I like this song!”
The video that appeared on MTV was the 3rd incarnation of the video, while I had seen the 2nd on rare occasions, none of us knew about the original video that was banned both in the UK and by MTV in the US, which most certainly confirmed the true nature of the song:
I have to say, had that video been released on MTV, yes, parents would have been up in arms, but I doubt it would have affected any of us more than any of the other sexualized videos on MTV at the time, or seeing Boy George or Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. If we could handle a song about sucking cock and (not) cumming, I think we could handle some leathermen grinding in a gay bar.
Although I may just be speaking for myself here. Growing up in the New York City suburbs, I had seen leathermen at various times when we went into the city. And we vacationed in Provincetown, Massachusetts every year (I also believe that to be my father’s choice … are we noticing a theme? Again … I may explore this in a later post). So I was unfazed by seeing men in leather and the occasional drag queen.
It also needs to be said that the release of the song sparked the “Frankie Say Relax” t-shirt craze of the mid-80s, which made the whole inside joke to anyone around my age even sweeter. When grandma inadvertently gets you a t-shirt about not cumming, you’ve kind of hit peak fire, really.
But, on a more serious note, I think that the entire Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Relax” episode had a more lasting effect on the people now generally in their 50s. We watched an entire cultural phenomenon arise around one of the most taboo things there could be as the specter of AIDS started growing. The paradox of it all may not have been fully comprehended by our teenage brains then, but it most certainly nested there in some way, and for some of us contributed to the “cynicism” we’re often accused of harboring by other generations. Adults condemned the “filthy” lifestyles of gay men, Ronald Reagan was just as happy to watch them die en masse, yet our folks were also low-key tapping their toes to a “catchy” song about gay sex.
Add to that the laundry list of things we witnessed as children with absolutely no context, counseling, or aftercare, and we were piecing together a world of paradoxes and hypocrisy. We were encouraged to watch The Day After to teach us about the horrors of nuclear war, while the very same political leaders saber-rattled against the USSR on a regular basis. All it did was show us what our seemingly inevitable future would be: if we were lucky, burned to a crisp instantly; if we were unlucky, die slowly of radiation poisoning. They wheeled TVs in to our classrooms to watch a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe, blast into space on the space shuttle Challenger, only to watch it explode. They turned off the TV, wheeled it out again, and moved onto the next lesson. No words. No talking about our feelings. No counselors. Just, “open your math books.” I wish I was exaggerating, and I think that several of my fellow Gen X-ers can confirm the same thing happening in their schools (I know this is a popular meme on Instagram, but it definitely was true).
Yet we also lived to see the collapse of the USSR, the fall of the Berlin wall, and people living with HIV via antiretroviral therapy and vaccines. Talk about ups and downs. We’ve seen amazing progress, and just as terrifying regression. I won’t say we’re numb, but we are … hardened.
I remember teaching a class at a leather conference about bringing the next generation into the fold. Most of our audience consisted of Millennials and Gen Zs. I remember a comment by one of them regarding Gen X being “terrifying.” I’ve since pressed a few Gen Z-ers and Millennials about that, and for those that don’t lump us in with Boomers, they tend to say that we have a cutting, biting quality about us and a withering sarcasm. Others have told me that they see Gen X as being fiercely self-sufficient and pessimistic, savvy and ambitious. They also say things like “Gen X knows things,” which is both ominous and flattering at the same time. So many paradoxes. That checks out. But it’s not Frankie’s fault, per se. I think we just were left to figure out a lot of paradoxical things for ourselves, holding space for antithetical ideas at the same time, while also protecting the things we could to make sure that we had some kind of joy. As a latchkey kid myself, it was up to me to make my own fun (I was also an only child). Most of the time, that fun consisted of things my parents didn’t care to know about. When they did, those joys (even the ones that weren’t dangerous), were taken away. So why risk losing the fun you did have by cluing them in?
Looking at other people my age on social media, I’m seeing that my generation has gone one of two ways: a) they’ve retreated so far into themselves – and up their own asses – that they’ve become awful right-leaning, intolerable conspiracy theorists; or b) they’re queer, queer-leaning, queer-adjacent, or otherwise eschewing heteronormative and patriarchal traditions, and living lives that will forever be disappointing to their aging boomer parents. I have chosen the latter, thank you.
Yet I understand the paradox.
Gen X-ers, I think, tend to be able to hold spaces for conflicting realities better than most. Maybe that’s why those of us not steeped in dark conspiracy theories tend to be queer or queer accomplices, and perhaps why Gen X kinksters have a way of merging aspects of “old leather” or the “old guard” with some of the more enlightened tolerances and diversity of our younger successors.
Regardless, I wouldn’t give up my capacity to live in these liminal, paradoxical spaces for anything … even a “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt.
HIV.gov: https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline#year-1984
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relax_(song)
Ibid.
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