Roxanne Rhoads: On the Rox- All The Purple Tears

The news of Prince's untimely death Thursday April 21, left me shocked and empty, then came the tears, all the tears. All the purple tears. My heart broke into 1999 pieces with the shrieking sounds of doves crying.

No other celebrity death has shaken me this bad, no one else has received this many tears. Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston's deaths left me sad- but no tears, David Bowie's cut a little piece of my artistic soul, but Prince.

Damn. A piece of my purple heart is gone.

I was 6 years old when I first fell in love with Prince. I loved music, I was an MTV child. And every Saturday morning was dedicated to cartoons, the top forty countdown on the radio and to the top music video countdown on TV.

The 80s was truly a decade dedicated to music. And Prince was one of the 80s icons, true music royalty.

But it wasn't just his music that entranced me. It was him. He was beautiful and unique. Tiny but a powerhouse, a giant personality. And sexy. Sexy as hell. So much sex appeal a small child could recognize it- of course that has always been one of my super powers, recognizing sex appeal.

People always described him as feminine over the years because of his frilly clothes and flamboyant nature, but I never seen him that way. To me he was all male, completely masculine, everyone was just judging him by the wrong standards of masculinity.

For example-

There's an animal compound and a male peacock arrives, no one has ever seen a peacock before. They don't know if it is male or female. So they try to determine its gender by its appearance and actions. They compare it to the wolf, the white tailed deer, the gorilla, the baboon...but it isn't large, or dominant, it doesn't showcase force or strength, it doesn't want to fight. It wants to dance, it is simply beautiful and extravagant.

That was Prince, beautiful, sexy and extravagant but always male, always extremely masculine and male. He was the peacock in a world of wolves, gorillas and deer.

He showed males that it was alright to be the peacock and he surely showed us girls that it was more than OK to love the peacock, we didn't have to flock around the brutes and the jocks, we could love the softer artistic souls, the beautiful ones. And the women did love him.

So for me he was an icon of sexual beauty and seduction as well as a musical genius.

I grew up listening to his songs, they are quite literally part of the soundtrack of my life as much as he was an icon in my life.

His songs echo in my mind- I know all the lyrics by heart....1999, Let's Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret, Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U....the list goes on with the decades- that's just the 80s.

One of the first records I ever purchased was the 45 single of Purple Rain. I believe it is still in the entertainment center at my mom's with her old record player. I hope so.