21/12/2024
"Mary, I think I'm bisexual." "No Freddie, you're gay." With these two sentences ended one of the most endearing romances in pop history, the love story of two young people— Freddie Mercury and Mary Austin — who shared it all until one of them stopped fooling himself.
The scene, one of the peak moments of the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody" was produced in 1976 at his home in the London neighborhood of Kensington, when they had already been in a relationship for six years. They had met very closely, at the neighborhood street market, where Freddie and drummer Roger Taylor sold second-hand clothing. Although there was no instant flush, his destiny was written. "It took me about three years to really fall in love with him." “But I’ve never felt that before about anyone,” Austin confessed in an emotional interview with the “Daily Mail” in 1999.
They initially lived together in a room rented for £10 a week on Victoria Road. "We had so little money then that we could only afford a couple of curtains, so we hung them in the bedroom." "We had to share the bathroom and kitchen with another couple," Austin reported, who shortly later would become a direct witness to Queen's meteoric rise.
Get out of your way
In fact, some of the photographs illustrating the band’s first album were taken in the floor they moved into when Queen signed a record deal, on Holland Drive. Everything seemed to go smooth for the couple, but Austin began to feel alienated. "Things changed for him and the group." Freddie was so good on stage I felt “here’s a future star”. He's on his way, and I don't think he needs me anymore. "I pulled myself away to let him go."
But Mercury must have felt the love of his life slipping away, and tried to tie her up by proposing on Christmas Day in 1973. "He gave me a gift in a box." Inside was another box, and so on until I found that tiny box. When I opened it there was that beautiful Egyptian beetle ring». However, they never talked about a date and the wedding plans were slowly diluted into the sea of excess that overcame success.
When Queen was already at the peak, after the release of her first three albums, Austin began to feel that her fiancé wasn’t entirely happy with her. I loved him like no other, but something was wrong. It was like I needed something else. "I told him I felt like I had tied him with a strap, that it was time for me to leave." But he insisted: "It's okay, really." "I love you."
In 1976, Austin no longer had any doubt that Freddie had been in numerous homosexual relationships, and decided to open the closet doors for him. The next day she left the house ending her relationship as a partner, but in no way the friendship. Freddie ordered his record label to buy him a £300,000 apartment, and she kept in touch with the group by becoming their secretary.
After years of excess—the 1978 Halloween party Freddie threw was one of the wildest in history, legend says—when the singer contracted HIV, she was the first to know. And she was with him until the last moment: "One day he decided that enough was enough and abandoned all the medical aid that kept him alive. He looked death in the face and said "okay, I'll take it, I'll leave now." It was somewhat quiet, he died with a smile on his face».
Austin had a hard time making his life over ("everyone felt overshadowed by Freddie"). The pop hero left her half of his fortune - more than €13 million - part of his royalties and a mansion. And only she knows where his ashes are.
