Southpaw/I'm Not Sorry

You are right the David Bret 'book' is tragic but I do agree with him about that. Perhaps it is a generational thing, but I've known and had gay friends use the slang 'leftie' as a a metaphor for being gay. It did come from the idea that being left-handed is somehow naturally wrong, hence someone who is gay is a leftie. Please don't shoot the messenger but I've heard that slang many times and actually assumed most people were aware of it TBH.

So yeah, a Southpaw in boxing terms is also a leftie. We must remember that this album was recorded post-breakup of Morrissey's first 'proper' relationship. By all accounts Jake was at least a amateur boxer and ignited an interest in the sport for Morrissey. So i always took the album title as something of nod to that relationship. In The Operation he is even more explicit,

'You fight with your right hand' (the boxing part) 'and caress with your left hand' (the homosexual/leftie part.) \

As for Southpaw, wow what a stunning song, I always assumed that 'the girl of your dreams' might hark back to Morrissey's teenage obsession Ann-Marie McVeigh, and the idea of what 'normal' (coda for straight) life might have been like had a relationship like that have worked out for him.

Anyhoo, all just specs-u-lation.
There is a Gene song called ‘left-handed’; it may or may not shed some light on this. But I can’t remember the lyrics. I’ll have a listen later on.

And being a leftie is also slang for being a total wishy washy c***...oh no, wait-that’s just in politics.
 
I think that Morrissey is a student of Gore Vidal's, as he's said multiple times that people aren't "homo-" sexual or "hetero-" sexual. They're just sexual. Vidal believed that there were no gay or straight people, only gay/straight acts. He was against labels because he thought they were limiting and oppressive: “To create categories is the enslavement of the categorized because the aim of every state is total control over the people who live in it. What better way is there than to categorize according to sex, about which people have so many hang-ups?'
“[T]o make a category means a hierarchy of categories, at the top of which is breeders, at the bottom is same-sexualists.”

I believe the word for people like that is pomosexual.
Gore Vidal also described himself as a "born-again atheist", a term used twice by Morrissey (in Black-Eyed Susan and in Nobody Loves Us), so he has definitely studied him.

"To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all."

(From Vidal's At Home: Essays 1982-1988)
 
Gore Vidal also described himself as a "born-again atheist", a term used twice by Morrissey (in Black-Eyed Susan and in Nobody Loves Us), so he has definitely studied him.

"To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all."
Was he a paedo?

(From Vidal's At Home: Essays 1982-1988)
 
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