Morrissey has always remained tight-lipped when it came to specifics of his private life, but he's not shying away from revealing some personal details in a new memoir.
The Guardian has printed excerpts from Autobiography, in which the former Smiths frontman speaks at length about an intimate relationship he had with another man in the 1990s.
"For the first time in my life the eternal 'I' becomes 'we', as, finally, I can get on with someone," Morrissey recalls of the first time he met Jake Owen Walters.
The publication notes that while the book never specifies whether or not he and Jake were lovers, Morrissey writes, "Jake and I neither sought not needed company other than our own for the whirlwind stretch to come." In addition, he recalls being photographed with his head "resting on Jake's exposed belly."
Also questionable is Morrissey's recount of an airport exchange:
'Well,' says the woman in the British Airways lounge, 'you're either very close brothers or lovers.'
'Can't brothers be lovers?' I imprudently reply – always ready with the pointlessly pert, whether sensible or not."
Speculation over Morrissey's sexuality has abounded for decades. In the 1980s, the 54-year-old singer became an icon of celibacy, claiming he was "never a sexual person."
“I’m just simply inches away from a monastery and I feel that perhaps if I wasn’t doing this that I probably would be in one … which of course is a frightening thing to dwell upon,” he is quoted as telling Picture Disk in 1984. Two years later, he apparently told Melody Maker: "Sex is a waste of batteries."
Earlier this year, Morrissey made headlines for suggesting that a larger gay population could be a solution to much of the world's political turmoil, describing war as "the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality."
He went on to tell Rookie Mag writer Amy Rose, "If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men ... Wars and armies and nuclear weapons are essentially heterosexual hobbies."
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