Best Madonna Performance Ever

I know, it can’t get more gay than this…

I remember when I first watched this live performance on MTV in 1990. I was eighteen and had just recently come out. In those days, the RFSL centre in Stockholm arranged informal get-togethers for young gays and lesbians on Monday evenings. Socially, I would say that was the best time of my life.

To many gay men of my generation, Madonna represents something very special. Not that she was ever the best singer or dancer, but her open flirtation with gay culture gave us strength in a world dominated by homophobia and the grim reality of a life-threatening virus. I don’t think my straight friends ever realised how tough if was to be a gay teenager in those days. My straight friends’ biggest fear was to get a woman pregnant my mistake; mine was to get killed by neo-Nazis or HIV.

Anyhow, I remember this Madonna performance and how we watched every Monday for weeks. And although effeminacy never appealed to me, I was caught up in the drama of Madonna and her semi-drag-queen dancers. The in-your-face gayness of it all was simply irresistible to a teenage queer in 1990.