{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
Universe is full of stars
Nothing out there looks the same
You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for
I don’t even know your name.
I’m in a trance,
I’m in a trance.
It is The Moment. You see him across the room, your eyes instantly lock, and you feel like you’ve known him all your life – or maybe it’s that you want to know him for the rest of your life. Whatever the case, and whatever tricks the universe is playing, you feel the spark and the catch and the racing of your heart. It isn’t just his beauty you admire, or the way his body moves – it’s in the way he looks at you. His eyes seem to see into your soul, examining all the things you’ve tried to hide, but somehow you feel he won’t judge them, somehow you know even then that he would never use them against you. At least, it feels that way, in the first instant.
Cosmic systems intertwine
Astral bodies drip like wine
All of nature ebbs and flows
Comets shoot across the sky
Can’t explain the reason why
This is how creation goes.
The throbbing bass of this song reminds me of my time in New Orleans many years ago, on the fateful evening when I lost my gay virginity. On the second tier of Oz, I leaned over and looked down upon the bar and dance floor. It was still early, and I was so young. In my lace-up International Male shirt (which a go-go dancer would later tell me he loved, as he squatted down with his crotch in my face), part of me thought I was such hot shit, and the other part of me thought I was just plain shit. Untouchable, because I never let them touch me, not in any real way, not in any way beyond the physical.
I don’t want nobody else.
All the others look the same.
Galaxies are sliding into view,
I don’t even know your name.
I’m in a trance,
And my world is spinning,
Spinning, baby, out of control
I’m in a trance
I let the music take me
Take me where my heart wants to go.
I’m in a trance…
I turn around and find my way to the bathroom. A few doors are in a row, like some fairy-tale choose-your-own-adventure scene. I don’t want to choose the wrong one. Selecting the one in the middle, I open it without knocking and see two guys fucking.
They are joined at the hips and lips, in a frantic sort of desperate dance to some kind of death. Annoyed, one of them turns around and slams the door shut. In one hedonistic glimpse I saw the moment we’d all be chasing for the rest of our lives, whether we know it or not, whether we admit it or not. The moment of passion. The moment of ignition. The moment of connection.
The impressive instant.
Kiss me…
Kiss me…
Kiss me…
Kiss me…
In the way that gay clubs have of filling up in the span of a few minutes, Oz is suddenly brimming with people. Sitting at the bar in the midst of it all, I watch as the go-go dancer spins and squats before me, his combat boots deftly avoiding glasses and drinks, his smile an invitation and a warning all at once, his body the unattainable visage of distracting perfection that always leaves me befuddled.
“You’re not leaving already?” he asks with a grin, then a pout, when I stand up and back away from the bar. I thank him and wave good-bye. A few blocks down, I will meet a Greek sailor, and in an abandoned warehouse on the Mississippi River I will denounce the last remnants of what little innocence I ever possessed.
