Freddie Mercury was bisexual though
Nope, this is false! 🏳️🌈 Freddie was gay, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about his non-existent affairs with women, and much of it can be chalked up to a shit biographer named Lesley Ann Jones (aka my arch nemesis).
I've been deeply fascinated by Freddie Mercury and studying his personal life for years and years so excuse the following infodump (or jump in for a queer history lesson!)
Contrary to popular belief, Freddie was an out gay man. “Gay as a daffodil, my dear!” He’s clearly stated his sexuality in a handful of interviews; “I’ve done all that but I’m gay. Mary was my last woman.” (This interview was removed from youtube but you can find it mentioned in Freddie Mercury: A Life, in His Own Words which is a compilation of his actual quotes from interviews over the years.) Those statements got buried from the media in favor of promoting his more promiscuous quotes like "Darling, I'm doing everything with everybody." (Journalists LOVE to include this quote when talking about his AIDS...) He did purposely retain an aura of mystique around his sexuality, especially because it was much safer (trendy, even) for musicians to flirt with bisexuality than to be homosexual back then.
Here's a quote from Peter "Phoebe" Freestone, Freddie's personal assistant of twelve years, close friend, and "agony aunt" in his memoir, Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Memoir by the Man Who Knew Him Best:
"When the interview appeared, it was half the length that he imagined it would be. When confronted, Judy Wade said that it would have been impossible to have printed the whole text. She said she was holding back for his benefit, not for hers. Admissions such as, "I'm just going for a line and I'll be back in half-a-minute," would not have done anyone any good. However, she was fully prepared to underline in her second sentence that admission of being a fully 'out' gay man, although this does not lay the later myth which was popular which claimed that Freddie had never admitted his gayness."
Freddie's close friend Thor Arnold, a gay man and member of the "New York Daughters" (Freddie's gay friend group in NYC, of course Freddie was "mother!") corrected misinformation when fans on the Queenzone forum argued that Freddie was bi:
"Freddie NEVER tried to hide to his friends that he was TOTALLY gay. In his industry, he had to hide it to some extent although as I have said before, he certainly gave clues. This is the same man who came up with the name QUEEN for his band. This is the man who dressed very sexually, ambiguously 'glam' up until 1980. This is the man who threw an Easter bonnet party and had us all create Easter hats. This is the man who used the term darling (or Dahling) more than he used proper names, and renamed his friends with old actresses names. These things are doubtful for a straight or bi man. Many gays don't even act like this... I've never seen Freddie look twice at a woman but I have seen him look 3 or 4 times at an attractive man and say, 'Thor, Thor... Oh just look at him... Just gorgeous. I'd love some of THAT' We were genuine friends of Freddie and he would never hide that he was really bi. FREDDIE WAS A GAY MAN through and through...everyone...please get used to it."
LAJ, the biographer I previously mentioned, worked VERY hard to straight-wash Freddie in her book by erasing his gay relationships. She was obsessed with his relationship with Mary Austin and is the main reason modern journalists consider Freddie to have been in profound, romantic love with her his whole life. In reality, they dated for a few years in the 70s and remained close friends after they split up (because Freddie was having affairs with his boyfriend). However, he did rely on her as his "beard" to keep up with appearances for the press.
LAJ completely skipped over Freddie's first official boyfriend, saying it was "a covert fling with a young theatre." His name was David Minns. Freddie loved him so much he left Mary to be with him. They were in a serious relationship for three years.
If you're a Freddie fan, you're familiar with Mary's story of him coming out to her, saying "I think I'm bisexual," and her response, "I think you're gay." This story is probably not the truth. Mary has been very inconsistent with her story of how Freddie came out to her.
Another version she told for BBC Radio:
"I don’t know what sparked the conversation. But I remember standing in the kitchen and he was trying desperately to articulate how he was feeling, and his lifestyle and I just said, 'so you are telling me you're gay?' And he just smiled and 'we'll take it as a yes, you know, we'll leave it at that.' And that was it, it has been a long road getting to that point."
Honestly, I am a bit mistrustful of Mary Austin's intentions in general. If you're curious as to why, this post is a good primer on the ways she might have betrayed Freddie's wishes, namely being cruel to his chosen family after his passing.
Freddie only had one other girlfriend before Mary in college, Rosemary Pearson. When asked about Freddie on ITV's This Morning show, she said that he was more interested in her male friends than in her, and she suspected then that he was gay. This was in the 60s.
LAJ refers to his relationships with women throughout her book, but she doesn't list any names. That's because they don't exist. I could name at least seven of Freddie's boyfriends off of the top of my head. Minnsy. Joe Fanelli. Tony Bastin. Vince the Barman. Bill Reid. Winnie Kirchberger. And of course, his husband Jim Hutton, whom he spent the last six years of his life with.
There is one name that LAJ has chosen to platform and exaggerate her importance, and that's German pornstar Barbara Valentin. If you've heard of her, you might think she had a relationship with Freddie in the 80s, you might have heard the story where he had wild threesomes with her, that they lived together, that he even proposed to her. Not one word of it is true. Freddie hung around Barbara during his time in Munich because she was his 'in' to gay clubs and cocaine dealers. She also served as his English translator and conveniently, another beard for the press.
Not a single person in Freddie’s life has ever corroborated that Freddie and Barbara were anything but friends. As for the claim they lived together, according to Peter Freestone:
In the event, Freddie never actually lived there although Barbara fulfilled a huge role in Freddie’s life at that time… Freddie became very disillusioned when with more and more frequency articles were appearing in the German press’s gossip columns… about the relationship between him and Barbara… After one article claiming to have knowledge of him and Barbara getting married, Freddie concluded that it could only be Barbara who was providing the information.
(He was actually living with his Bavarian boyfriend of the time, Winnie Kirchberger.) Freddie stopped seeing Barbara after he found out she was gossiping about being his lover and these stories started appearing in the newspapers. Barbara continued these lies after Freddie's death, making up ludicrous lies like how Freddie tried to kill her by smothering her with a pillow?? She also claimed that he put her at risk of contracting AIDS by having sex with her after his diagnosis in 1987, which is the lie that burns the most. Freddie stopped having sex altogether before his diagnosis because he was terrified of contracting it. Before there was any information of how it was transferred, he showered compulsively. There is such a fucked up narrative that Freddie threw caution to the wind and wasn't careful during the epidemic, that it somehow fits this twisted narrative that his death was a result of his immoral lifestyle. That's the pervasive homophobia that stained the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic.
LAJ is one of those biographers who publishes their books after the celebrity has died, so they wouldn’t be able to deny the information being written in the book. So if there's anything to learn here, is that you can't always trust a biography!
Anyway, Freddie was gay as a daffodil my dears, and he deserved better.
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🌺 ᯓ★୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ
𝐒𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐀𝐘!
STARRING. ノ dan heng
request. ノ anon: helloo if it's right up your alley, could you do a danheng x reader hanahaki au? one where the reader thinks he and someone else have something going on given how caring danheng is through that stoic face of his! but really, danheng is just too kind and you're much too caught up with your own feelings
word count. ノ 3.4k
contains. ノ hanahaki!reader, u and dan heng r both kinda dumb, angst pertaining to the hanahaki trope, you can tell how old this fic is because it's set during the jarilo-vi story quest, some unfounded jealousy of march 7th?, mentions of death and injury and some graphic descriptions of blood and illness
gia's notes. ノ this was the very first request that i ever received on this blog. over a year ago. i drafted this fic and wrote out about 70% of it then let it rot at the bottom of my drafts. anon, you have the patience of a saint if you're still here.
THE MOMENT THAT YOU STEPPED FOOT ONTO THE ASTRAL EXPRESS, you had the sneaking suspicion that you were doomed. Your fate was set in stone as soon as you felt the hard encasing of a seed clutch the walls of your heart in a vice grip when you first laid eyes upon him.
Dan Heng was elusive. The others had been warm in their welcome, but it took the combined efforts of yourself and March 7th to find him hidden in the recesses of the train’s records room. His greeting was a mere nod in your direction before Welt required your presence again, but that’s all you needed.
His eyes were cool, practically piercing through your skin as March 7th ushered you pack to the parlour car, and you felt yourself shiver as his intense stare burned itself into the back of your head.
And while he’s intimidating, sure, that’s not why you stayed away from Dan Heng. He had a cold and callous exterior that you had never seen crack, yet all the same you had felt the start of a crush start to take root.
And this may not have been a problem at all if it weren’t for two details that were like a slap to the face for you.
One, you were fairly certain that Dan Heng had his eyes for March 7th.
And two, if your crush didn’t return your feelings, you would die.
It wasn’t a case of exaggeration, either. You had been aware of the fact that to develop feelings for someone was dangerous, as it had been drilled into you from a young age by your parents. They had gripped your hands, steering you away from other children with little more explanation than that, always chastised you for wanting to forge a human connection, keeping you isolated from the world around you, better safe than sorry.
And you had felt so alone.
Being forced to live a life in confinement was not an easy one, and despite your parents’ wishes, you had told them of your plan to to finally go out into the world, to live a life from experience and not watching it unfold as an impassive reader of a book or on your phone screen, danger be damned.
So it wasn’t really your fault that you had been so quick to develop those feelings that had been so often described in the books you read, as an explosion of butterflies erupted within you upon meeting someone else, another person for the first time.
And yet you found yourself in the same predicament- a watcher from afar. The heart wants what it wants was a bitter mantra that seemed to enjoy your misery as you watched March 7th excitedly chatter with Dan Heng, and you could have sworn the man even cracked the smallest of smiles at whatever she was saying. And really, could you blame him for it? March was kind, bubbly, outgoing- a perfect match for the stoic and seeming immovable Dan Heng.
It was more common sense than pessimism that had you concluding that you didn’t really stand a chance for his affections against someone like her. You doubt that Dan Heng even looked at you more than he had to. You, so secretive and elusive that you gave him a run for his money; and two similar poles never attracted each other. It was a funny hand that fate had dealt you, but you had to play with those cards regardless.
As if to mock you, you ducked away from the outskirts of the room, feeling a coughing fit coming. You had barely made it to your room before you doubled over, feeling your insides run ragged by the prickly thorns of the rose bush that grew inside you.
A single bloodstained petal fell into your palm.
Besides the quickly growing issue that you refused to acknowledge, life on the Astral Express wasn’t awful. You hadn’t yet confided in anyone about your condition, so to speak, and not entirely because you didn’t want to. To be completely honest with yourself, there was much that you didn’t know about it.
And so you timed it well- you waited for the subject of your affliction- for Dan Heng to leave his unofficial bedroom before you slipped through the door into the records room, desperate to find any sort of information that might help you find some sort of cure.
There was a small computer in the corner that you quickly typed your symptoms into- flower. unrequited love. coughing fits. You didn’t know if the single digit of entries was a cause for concern or not, but your brows furrowed as you began to scan through them. The number of obituary entries that were listed on this one document alone was making you shiver. You clicked out of it, about to open the next one before the door sliding open had you starting like a frightened animal.
Dan Heng strolled in, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline as he registered that you were in the room, in his room. He spoke your name, softly, as if trying not to scare you further. You would have said something, honestly, if it weren’t for the sudden explosive coughing fit that came on a lot quicker than usual.
You could barely get a word out before you were bent over from the force of your coughs, tears pricking your eyes from the newfound intensity of the pain coming from inside you. Despite your hands clasped over your mouth, a couple of petals escaped and fluttered down to the floor, some distance between you and the horrified Dan Heng.
He was frozen in place, fingers itching to reach out to you and comfort you, but with the way you practically flinched away from him, he wasn’t sure if his presence was wanted. He barely caught a glimpse of your pained face before you darted around him and back to your own room on the train.
Dan Heng scrubbed a hand over his face in frustration at his inability to act, before his attention diverted once again to the bloody petals on the floor, and the files on the record searcher that you hadn’t completely closed. He cast one last guilty glance back in your direction before heading closer to the screen and beginning to read.
The Trailblazers’ journey must progress, and your heart hammered for another reason other than a sighting of the raven-haired male who you still harboured feelings for. You had ultimately left your home to explore the world, and with the Express finally stopping at the planet Belobog- your promise to yourself was a step closer to being fulfilled. You disembarked alongside Stelle and March, doing your best to avoid Dan Heng like the plague ever since that fated day. You didn’t know how much he exactly knew, but you had no intentions of finding out.
Your plans of peaceful exploration, however, were short lived with the arrival of Silvermane guards to greet you. In the chaos of the smoke, it was not lost on you that Dan Heng had instinctively protected March, practically shielding her with his body. As Stelle dragged you along some backway path in pursuit of some mystery saviour, you felt the excruciating addition of a new thorn in your heart.
The adrenaline of the escape had worn off by now, and you could feel your secret threatening to spill over any second now. You could barely warn Stelle to let you move off to the side before you were keeled over, closer to gagging than coughing as a large ball of petals and dark, dark blood forced its way through your throat. You felt faint, barely registering the panicked calls of your name as you felt your world turn sideways, Stelle’s face and voice being quickly replaced by another deeper one, with fear in their eyes and a certain desperate edge as you felt yourself slip into unconsciousness.
It's a dreamless sleep, yet it isn't restful, judging by how you feel like you've been hit by a bus when you sit up. Every fibre of your being aches, and there's a harsh overhead light that dazzles you as you blink awake.
As your eyes grow accustomed to it, there's a surge of panic as you don't recognise your surroundings. It looks like a clinic of some sorts- and there was the cloying smell of chemicals that invaded your nostrils. You struggled to sit up, until you felt a hand place itself gently against your chest.
A dark-haired woman with a doctor's coat smiles down at you warmly, and you eye her warily.
"Who are you?"
"My name's Natasha, I'm a doctor in the Underworld. Try not to move around too much, dear. You've been unconscious for quite some time and your condition is unstable, you still need rest."
"Where's the people that I was with?"
"They've all awoken a few hours before you." She casts a quick glance at the clipboard in her hands, as if to fact check herself, giving herself a quick satisfactory nod. "Don't worry, you haven't been abandoned. They should be just outside. The young man sat by your bedside while you were unconscious only left a few minutes ago- he got whisked away by one of my... colleagues."
Your mind's racing now, wondering who she could be talking about. Hoping that it was who you thought it was. But she reiterates her request to lie back down, and you comply begrudgingly. You start to settle down, until you catch a glimpse of the mess lying atop your blankets. A visceral combination of blood and crumpled petals rest upon the fabric, and you watch the doctor's expression become grave.
"That is the unstable part of your condition that I wanted to discuss." She pulls up a chair besides you, settling neatly, hands folded in her lap. "How long have these symptoms been ailing you?"
You furrow your brows, recalling how they started a mere month or two ago, after you joined the Astral Express. After you met him.
"A couple of months." Natasha nods, a frown forming on her face again.
"Considering how quickly it has developed, I imagine that your case is rather severe." You shrug, a humourless smile on your face.
"There's not much that I can do about it, Doc."
"I'm sure that you're aware of the risks that come with a confession, but as a bystander rather than a doctor, I think that you should talk to him."
"Who?"
"The man who refused to leave your side for all of these hours."
You hoped that Natasha was right. Deciding to ignore her advice of continued bed rest, you force yourself up, walking out of the clinic in search of him. Welt was no young man, and there wasn't anyone else that came to mind based off of Natasha's description. It couldn't be anyone else than him, right?
You stumble out onto the streets of the Underworld, garnering a few odd looks from passerbys as you wander around, looking for not just Dan Heng but anyone that you recognised.
You round a corner, seeing the back of a head and clothing that looks an awful lot like him. Who you're planning to confess to. You call his name, out loud, voice a little hoarse.
And he turns, beautiful crystalline eyes meeting yours. Call it a trick of the light, but you could have sworn that they shone a tad lighter when he saw you. But your gaze drifted past him, and all bubbling hope was quelled once again in your heart as you recognised the figure of March 7th stood with him.
Of course he would be with her.
If you looked closer at the pair of them, all signs indicated an intimacy to them that made you feel sick. There was a serious look on her face, one of her hands rested against his arm, but she soon recognised you too, her face instantly perking up as she began to ran towards you, calling your name.
"You're finally awake, you're OK!" she calls out in delight, her arms wrapping around you as she practically barrels into you, threatening to knock you off balance. You stumble, returning the hug, the nausea turning to guilt as you remember how the girl has been nothing but good to you. Of course Dan Heng would harbour feelings for her, not you.
The Doctor's order was wrong.
You sigh to yourself in defeat, unwinding your arms and shooting March 7th the best smile that you could muster in the moment.
"I feel better, but I'm still feeling weak so I might go back to the clinic."
March 7th frowns, eyes scanning your figure in concern.
"Are you OK, Y/N?"
"Do you want me to walk you back?" You twitched, not even realising that Dan Heng had caught up to the pair of you. He was also looking at you with concern, and you could feel an onslaught of petals coming.
"No, it's fine, I'll go back on my own." You don't really give either of them the chance to respond, spinning on your heel and trying not to run back from where you came.
You felt... worse. Before, you had at least been able to function, but now you felt so much limper, and weaker. You cursed at yourself for allowing false hope to be instilled, just as the coughing begins. It wracks through you, so hard that you almost dry heave as you keel over, and you watch in horror as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and see it come back crimson.
At least the clinic was around the corner.
You barely make it inside, unable to stand up straight by this point. Natasha springs to action, helping you back into a bed, helping you through the worst of the coughing. It's so much more draining than before, and you're quick to fall into a fitful sleep.
Even unconscious, you don't get a reprieve. Even in your dreams, he's all you can think of. There's a spitting image of him stood before you, eyes soft and voice like honey as he calls out to you, hands outstretched. And you try to join him, fingers straining to touch his before you watch them turn into branches and flower before your very eyes. You look down, and it hurts, with brambles wrapping themselves around your middle. And just as fast as they grow, your new floral appendages wilt before your very eyes. Branches drooping, flowers losing their hue, and you feel yourself start to fade, his name one last desperate cry from your lips.
You wake up, tears staining your cheeks and you trembling. For a few panicked seconds, you think you're still dreaming because he is here, sat by your bed, and as he stands up to wipe your tears you shrink back in fear of turning back to branches again.
But his warm palm cups your face, solid against your trembling state, deft thumbs wiping away your tears, an uncharacteristically soft hushing and cooing coming from Dan Heng as he promises you that everything is okay now.
It's easy to believe him, with the way he moves even closer to hold you, cradle your form against his warmth, patting your hair and letting you cry until you can't any more amidst the petals on your bedsheets.
You don't know how long the pair of you stay like this, your face pressed into his chest, his heartbeat leading yours back into the range of one at rest rather than its prior pounding against your ribcage. You would stay there for the rest of time, if you had a choice, but you had to admit that the oxidation of blood and its drying against your skin was making you feel ever so slightly uncomfortable.
You clear your throat, as best as you can in your hoarse state, and Dan Heng picks up on your withdrawal as he all but flinches away from you, returning the distance that usually lies between your two bodies. But his eyes still scour your figure, your face, for any and all signs of discomfort. Like a lover would. The thought melds with the already-bitter taste of blood residing against your tongue, and you frown down at your lap. At the petals. At your pathetic form lying beneath the blanket, obscured from view.
“How long has this been happening for?” Dan Heng sounds so timid, as if he were walking on glass sheets around you. Ever since that fateful day in the records room, it felt like he had done nothing but tiptoe and tread around you, a careful dance of avoidance that you were forced to be his partner in. You sigh deeply, a hand gingerly beginning to gather the gorey sight of such beautiful pink marred by the visceral crimson that remained, not yet dried.
“I’ve had it all my life, apparently, but it only started making itself known once I joined the Astral Express.” Once I met you.
“I, um- I looked into it more. In the records.” His admission made you snap your head up to face him, cautious of his next words, whatever they may be. He looked nervous himself, with eyes that refused to meet yours and fingers that twisted into his clothes, toying with the hem of his jacket.
“I read of many such cases where people were able to make a full recovery.” He sounds so hopeful, even daring to meet your eyes, that you almost feel bad for him. It was like looking back at a past version of yourself, so hopeful for a happy ending that once sparkled in your eyes, now a dull flicker you can see when the lighting is just right.
“It’s not that simple, Dan Heng.”
“What do you mean, it said that there weren’t any later cases of symptoms returning-”
“That’s because it’s not an illness from the body.” You’re snappier than you intend to be, you see it in the way his mouth snaps shut and his throat bobs against his collar, as he sits up straighter, waiting for you to continue. “The only cure is to confess to the person that I love.”
“And why haven’t you?” His voice is barely above a murmur, and even from his place in the seat next to our bed, you hear him just fine.
“Because I’m sure that he has eyes for another.” You’ve collected all the petals in your palm by now, observing them with a dry humour as you notice that they’ve begun to wither, much like yourself. You doubt that you could go on much longer after this conversation. Part of you urges to get it over with, to confess now and let yourself bloom with one last glance upon his face.
Dan Heng must have scoured each and every record, because you didn’t need to offer an explanation of what would happen with such unrequited feelings. He’s silent again, an awkward and palpable tension as you can feel his confliction from here.
He finally manages a lame “you never know” that has you laughing, a brief reprieve before you dissolve into another coughing fit. It’s hardly something to worry about, but Dan Heng is by your side again, palm smoothing over your shoulder blades as you are wracked with coughs. You appreciate it nonetheless.
“What would happen if someone else confesses to you?” You shoot him a sideways glance, confusion written all over your features, urging him to elaborate. “What if you held no feelings for them, but they confessed to you all the same. Would that cure you?” He’s earnest now, hands scooping up your dirtied ones, clasping them in his grasp as he looked at you with stars in his eyes.
Your shrivelled heart begins to beat again.
“What- what do you mean?” Play dumb. Don’t mistake curiosity for what you desire most.
“What if I told you right here and now that I love you?” His eyes are searching yours, pleading with you for an answer that you’ve been screaming at him for so long. One that he does not have to search for, because it’s been laid there at his feet this whole time.
“I would tell you, Dan Heng, that such a confession is not unrequited.” You’re grinning now, the smile on your face growing wider and wider as you watch recognition flood his features.
And then he’s smiling too, laughing, holding you ever closer to him before he pulls away again, just to cup your face now. It’s only natural to close the distance between the two of you, lips touching his for a kiss that quickly becomes searing, welcoming a new season of heat into your body.
The thorns in your heart reside. Spring begins to bloom.
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