Category Archives: Brandeis

29
May
2024

Tags: Brandeis

Dear Journalists ~

Please watch, please listen, please take this video to heart before you try to give any sort of equalizing balance to the two political parties vying to lead our great country in this year’s election. From my alma mater, Brandeis University, this is the speech that Ken Burns gave to this year’s graduating class – and it’s one that needs to be heard by everyone in America – at least anyone who wants America to remain the democracy we know and revere.

One of the tenets of Brandeis that spoke to me most when deciding which college to attend was their motto: Truth, even unto its innermost parts.

23
September
2023

Tags: Boston, Brandeis, Music

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A Found Song For Fall

Thirty years ago I was experiencing my first semester at Brandeis University. That puts time, and age, in a very stark perspective. (Originally I typed ‘Twenty years ago’ then did the disturbing math and here we are.) A lot was learned that first semester, so much so that I thought I knew it all by the time the holidays rolled around that winter. Looking back, it’s amazing at how much I didn’t know, and how I still somehow had the balls to walk around like I had my shit together. Going back in time, it’s a wonder such hubris and insecurity could so functionally co-exist… and rewinding to the fall of 1993, I’m astonished at what I still feel when I allow myself to return to that time…

He said I must be dreaming
But I thought I heard the sound
The sound that lovers make
As they drop down from the window
Quiet as cats, across the courtyard
Moving from shadow to shadow
Past the guards to the forest
So quiet in her still reflection
Drawing them down, drawing them down to the lake
To the centre of her attention

In that fall semester, I steal away to Boston whenever I have a chance, finding more comfort in the chilly solitude of the city than the student-filled campus. At the Tower Records store that once stood at one end of Newbury Street, and is now occupied by a TJ Maxx, I browse the bins of CDs, because it’s still only the early 90’s, and I’m still only a few steps removed from boyhood. On this particular night, I’m feeling particularly daring, and so I gamble on an unheard purchase – the ‘Laid’ album by James – based on the accolades in the advertising blurbs, as well as the gents on the cover, decked out in dresses and eating bananas. It spoke to me.

The album would become one of the most profound musical connections at one of the more profound formative sections of my life – that tender time of the very last teen years, still a child in some ways, not yet a young adult in others, and nowhere near figuring out where I might belong and who I might be, but absolutely hell-bent on finding out by any means necessary. Music discovered at such crossroads invariably becomes imbued with significance and import, even if it’s only to our own ears.

Steal the moon tonight
Before the morning
Steal the moon tonight
I just love a good mystery
And on the West Bank a boat is being pulled
Across the sands they move so softly
Slip into water
Oars dip, don’t break the moon’s reflection
And drift like a cloud
To the centre
Beneath her cool attention

On the recent evening of the Super Blue Moon – the last of its kind for well over a decade or so – this song was revealed to me via the latest album by James. It turns out this was a B-side to the epic ‘Laid’ album – and I can hear in its melody and delivery the same tone and majesty that first drew me into their fan base two decades ago. It seems a fitting song to introduce the fall season of 2023 at ALANILAGAN.com, and it brings me all the way back to 1993; those tender early days at Brandeis are rife for exploration, though I’m not sure I’m up for that kind of triggering right now.

This fall also marks the 25th anniversary of when I got my first office job – at John Hancock – and I recently stumbled upon the blank book I had everyone sign when I left that gig. The revelations there are as hilarious to me as they will likely be mundane to you, but since this is still my blog I may post them anyway. (Don’t let that frighten you off from boredom – some of the things people wrote are enjoyably embarrassing for those who love to see me in such ego-busting peril. You know who you are, and I know who you are.)

What I don’t know is what this season will bring – and after the events of this summer, I really don’t want to think about it. Getting through it, day by day, will be enough for us to manage. Let’s do it together.

Still water
Still water
Steal the moon tonight
Before the morning
Steal the moon tonight
I want to drown in your moon dream
I’ve seen you rising from shore to shore
I want to drown in your moon dream
I’ve seen you rising
Steal the moon tonight
Shine
Shine
Shine

05
March
2016

Tags: Brandeis, Madonna, Music

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The Madonna Timeline: Song #121 – ‘Survival’ ~ Fall 1994

{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.}

“No need to listen for the fall. This is the world’s end.” ~ Rudyard Kipling

We were nearing the end of 1994, and I was about to have one of the worst illnesses of my life thus far: a raging case of mono that would land me in the Brandeis University infirmary. The nurses there were wretched… but I’m getting ahead of myself. We will be there soon enough. First, a bit of background and a brief lead-up.

Madonna had just released ‘Bedtime Stories’ – her first major artistic output in the aftermath of the tumultuous ‘Erotica’ and ‘Sex’ fall-out. The only particularly notable (and nefarious) thing she had done after ‘The Girlie Show’ tour was the infamous David Letterman interview where she said ‘fuck’ a whole bunch of times. It was mostly awkward because of the interviewer’s weaknesses, though Madonna was hardly at her best at the time. (There was also the sheer brilliance of the soundtrack single ‘I’ll Remember’ but for some reason nobody seems to follow the title’s sentiment.) ‘Bedtime Stories’ was a lovely little reminder of what had always mattered most in Madonna’s career, even when she herself didn’t feel it: the music.

I’d traveled into Boston for the midnight release at Tower Records. The vibe was exciting enough, but nothing like former and future frenzies (‘Erotica‘ and ‘Ray of Light‘ for instance). This was a mellow record, and its reception was warm but muted, not unlike the music itself. Madonna had scaled back the shock factor, and turned down the sizzle, resulting in a softer and quieter release. Still, lead single ‘Secret’ was a slow-burning bona-fide smash, and it paved the way for a pleasant return to form.

It was a cold November evening, and I would not make the last commuter rail back to campus, so I’d had to take the T to the last Green Line stop at Riverside, nearest to Brandeis, and hop into a cab the rest of the way. It didn’t matter much – the new album kept glorious aural company, and the first track ‘Survival’ was a soft-focus R&B shuffler that sounded as sweet as its message was strong, with lyrics that were self-empowering and referential from a woman who rarely looked back or owned her failings.

I’LL NEVER BE AN ANGEL,

I’LL NEVER BE A SAINT IT’S TRUE

I’M TOO BUSY SURVIVING,

WHETHER IT’S HEAVEN OR HELL

I’M GONNA BE LIVING TO TELL

SO HERE’S MY STORY,

NO RISK, NO GLORY

Sometimes November feels colder than the depths of deepest winter. By February or March the body is mostly hardened to the chill, but the first few seriously cold snaps are a jolt no matter how many winters you’ve weathered. This was one of those nights, and in spite of how tightly I pulled my coat around me, the chill was already inside.

Having just been unceremoniously dumped by the first man who ever kissed me, my heart felt a little battered. It made sense that my body would soon follow suit, and as I stood there in the sad yellow lamp of a single street lamp, alone and waiting for a taxi cab to take me back to a dark and empty dorm room, I allowed myself a quick moment of self-pity. I shuddered. At the cold, and at the emptiness. The voice of Madonna was my sole companion.

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL…

A few days later, a sore throat came upon me – hard and swift and debilitating. Despite all appearances to the contrary I’m actually not a baby when it comes to sickness – it takes a lot to fell me. I went to class and swallowed through the pain, but by Saturday it was difficult to simply get saliva down. I went to the infirmary for some guidance, and was promptly dismissed by a rude nurse. Returning to my dorm, I laid in bed for the rest of the day, alternately reading and sipping at water, even as it felt like shards of glass tumbling down my throat. By evening, unable to stand the pain, I called my parents. On the verge of tears, I listened to an endless string of rings; there was no answer.

I’LL NEVER BE AN ANGEL,

I’LL NEVER BE A SAINT IT’S TRUE

I’M TOO BUSY SURVIVING,

WHETHER IT’S HEAVEN OR HELL

I’M GONNA BE LIVING TO TELL

SO HERE’S MY STORY,

NO RISK, NO GLORY

A few hours later, I tried again. My brother answered and said they were at a party. After hanging up, I did cry a little. Not for the loneliness, but for the pain. It was literally becoming impossible to swallow. Somehow, I did not panic. I pulled a coat on and hurried down the Usen Castle stairs, then outside into the cold night and down more stairs to the infirmary again. I insistently told the nurse on duty that something was wrong and that I wasn’t being a baby. I couldn’t swallow because it hurt too much. She sighed, gave me some Tylenol with codeine, and told me to lie down on a cot in one of the rooms there. Out of fearful exhaustion, and under the cloud of codeine, I fell asleep.

The next morning I awoke in more pain, and a somewhat hazy state, in which I saw my parents standing up beside the cot looking concerned. I blinked to be sure it was real, but they remained. At that moment I got scared and realized I was sicker than I’d thought. Somehow they’d found out where I was and driven the three hours to be there.

It’s good to have a doctor and nurse advocate for you when surrounded by cruel and inept nurses (and those staffing the infirmary during my stay were horrid). Thanks to my parents, who advised the doctor to up the pain meds because I wasn’t someone who complained without good reason, I was put on some horse pills that knocked me out for the next three days while the mono worked its way into submission.

Those were The Lost Days. Into and out of consciousness I went, trying valiantly to finish ‘Kim’ by Rudyard Kipling for a literature class I was in, and getting confused between the fever-ravaged antics of the pages and my own cloudy predicament. Vaguely, I recognized fellow dorm denizens making their volunteer rounds, proffering paper cups of water and little bowls of unappetizing soup. I could barely swallow, and my stomach was entirely uninterested in filling itself up. For most of the day, I slept. My waking moments were mainly in darkness, beneath a solitary lamp over the bed, where I tried to keep reading and not fall behind in my classes. It was an indication of how sick I was that I did not stress over that. Usually I’d have freaked out royally from missing an entire week of classes, particularly as we neared finals for the first semester.

Instead, I gave up.

After love (or the dismal thing I mistook for love) departed, I gave up on it. It’s laughable when I think of how soon and how easily I gave in, but at the time all I knew was that it hurt. The loneliness I had always felt was not going away, and I reconciled myself to that. After a chilly fall of sadness, my body followed suit, giving up in its own way and landing me in the infirmary.

SO, HERE’S MY QUESTION:
DOES YOUR CRITICISM HAVE YOU CAUGHT UP
IN WHAT YOU CANOT SEE?
WELL IF YOU GIVE ME RESPECT,
THEN YOU’LL KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT.

I didn’t quite know who I was yet (some days I still don’t). I only knew that I was a very young guy, just nineteen years old, and I was barely beginning to feel rocked by the world. In the recent aftermath of a heart that didn’t know what it was to be broken, and in the blissful ignorance that likely helped me not to feel such pain, merely surviving was a Herculean effort in itself. I couldn’t, at the time, see the larger picture, the troughs and swells of the oceanic journey that, with time and distance, evened out into a placid pool of calm. The dark, ominous bottoming out was all I could feel.

Yet it was at the darkest moment that Madonna sang this song to me.

As the feverish state broke, and I came back to awareness, I was strong enough to climb the stairs back to my dorm room. It was a sunny, slightly brisk day. My friend Kate was arriving on the commuter rail to pick me up. We would go into Boston, where her parents and mine were in town for the weekend. All glory to God for providing my Dad’s conference and his accompanying room at the Ritz Carlton (then at its original location overlooking the Boston Public Garden) on that weekend. I made the most of it, recuperating in a gorgeous room overlooking Newbury Street. Indulging in a room service breakfast of French toast, I began making up for lost food in fine fashion, and aside from a few strolls through Back Bay stayed largely by the hotel.

By Sunday, I was feeling much better. The sun was out again, though the wind was cold. Fortified by some family time, and all that French toast, I returned to Brandeis. In another week it would be Thanksgiving. Life went on. Already, my mono madness felt like the stuff of dreams – a hazy patch of medicated stupor through which I stumbled. Some nights I still wake up in a panic recalling that period, worried that I didn’t complete all the work I needed to pass those courses.

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL…

I wonder at how I did manage to survive that year all alone, as I was just awakening to the fact that I was gay, that it wasn’t a phase, that the one that I was searching for would be a man. I wonder at how I managed to make it through the early-to-mid-nineties when being gay was intertwined with the AIDS crisis, and so much misunderstanding and prejudice. I also wonder at my naivete, and whether that helped or hindered me. Probably a little, or a lot, of both. Being ignorant of what one is supposed to feel, and of what we are truly capable of surviving, enables a sort of blind strength. The kind of courage that sees you through those times that might otherwise have ended up very differently.

I’LL NEVER BE AN ANGEL,

I’LL NEVER BE A SAINT IT’S TRUE

I’M TOO BUSY SURVIVING,

WHETHER IT’S HEAVEN OR HELL

I’M GONNA BE LIVING TO TELL

SO HERE’S MY STORY,

NO RISK, NO GLORY…

In the liner notes to the ‘Bedtime Stories’ album, Madonna thanked her then-assistant Caresse Henry for “keeping me from doing something I might regret later”. There was always something ominous about that chilling note of gratitude, a crack in the armor of the woman who was so seemingly invincible. The rocky road after ‘Sex’ and ‘Erotica’ may have been darker than any of us realized, even for a person who thrived on a love-hate relationship with the world at-large. I read those words and wondered what Madonna meant. Maybe there was something deeper in this Survival. Maybe the opening salvo of the album was a triumphant victory that spit in the face of chart positions and Billboard glory, and started Madonna on the path where mainstream success and acclaim mattered less than artistic expression and creative fulfillment. She would straddle both for the next two decades, so it needn’t have concerned her.

Ms. Henry, in an upsetting side-note, would end up committing suicide herself. Not everyone is meant for survival, even if you’ve personally managed one of the world’s preeminent survivors.

“This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.” – Rudyard Kipling

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL

A LITTLE UP & DOWN & ALL AROUND
IT’S ALL ABOUT SURVIVAL.

SONG #121: ‘Survival’ ~ Fall 1994

09
November
2014

Tags: Brandeis, Gay, Gay Blog, Music

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The Moon & The Fag

Apart from my first and last semesters of college, I didn’t socialize much on campus during my years at Brandeis. I didn’t relate to much of what college-age kids were talking about or going through – I wanted out, and I wanted out as quickly as possible. For such a supposedly progressive group of people, so many were so immature. Yet there were glimmers of hope, along with the possibility of friendship in that first semester, so when I started hanging out with my next door dorm mate I thought I might have made a friend.

He was from the south – New Orleans I believe – and he had a smooth Southern drawl and a bit of charm that matched his earnestness. Don’t misunderstand – I did not have a crush, I did not have an infatuation, and it was clear that he was very straight. At that time I was still pretending to be too, with a girlfriend from high school still in the picture. He didn’t have anyone other than a semi-casual girlfriend, and he also wasn’t confident or courageous enough to ask anyone out, even if he was rakishly handsome in his way. So that left us alone, and together.

There’s no set way for how a friendship develops, particularly between two young men. A few shared walks to class, a couple of shared dinners, and the usual freshman dorm ice-breakers and monthly meetings are sometimes enough to spark it if it’s ever going to happen. Living next door aided in that too – so much of life occurs due to sheer proximity. We passed each other first thing in the morning, and last thing in the evening. In boxers and t-shirts, in glasses and mussed hair, in hope and in dread. He also had a dick of a roommate whom we all pretty much disliked, and I had a roommate who was hardly ever there (and whom I loved for it.) In some ways it was only natural that we’d become friends.

He also had a fondness for pop music and for guessing which songs would hit the top of the charts. At the time, Ace of Base was big, but the latest entry from Mariah Carey was also about to begin its Billboard climb. He was thrilled with ‘Hero’ and proclaimed it the next big smash. While never a big Mariah fan, I did enjoy the song, though I wondered if it would make it to Number One. Of course, it did. (To this day that and her Christmas song are about all I can stand.) ‘Hero’ brings me instantly back to that late fall at Brandeis, when I was first starting to awaken to the fact that I’d made a new friend. And it was a guy – a straight guy – something rather rare in my female-centric cloistered world.

There’s a hero

If you look inside your heart

you don’t have to be afraid

of what you are…

Now, it sounds like he could very well have stood on the gay side of the Kinsey scale (Ace of Base? Mariah Carey?) but believe me, he most certainly was not. There was incessant talk of hot girls and breasts and butts and sometimes it was all I could do to hold my tongue to stop the flow of objectification that spilled from his southern mouth. It was never mean-spirited though, and never degrading – it was simply child-like and unrefined. In short, it was the stuff of straight guys – and it fascinated me. More than that, though, it taught me that I could be friends with someone who didn’t share all my politically-correct beliefs. No one was perfect, as I was finding, and you had to take the bad with the good because sometimes it was worth it. We challenged each other, and those challenges often led right to the verge of real arguments, but in the end we could agree to disagree and still walk back to the dorm together and meet up the next morning. This was new for me.

There’s an answer
If you reach into your soul
And the sorrow that you know
Will melt away…

By November of that year, I was finally getting the hang of college life after a couple of questionable months. I’d whittled my class-load down from an initial overly-ambitious schedule to just four courses (one of which was Water Aerobics – much more inviting at the end of August than in the first chill of November). I also had two difficult science courses, the first being Astronomy (which I also took with the hope it would be an easy pass of looking at the stars, not counting on all the physics and equations involved). In addition to the math, however, we did get to go outside and look up at the night sky from the roof of the observatory building.

Around us, the campus laid in quiet wait, and in the distance the glow of Boston once again beckoned to my desire. Above, the sky opened up and revealed more of itself as our eyes adjusted to the darkness. The moon, brilliant if only halfway in light floated in a corner, while the belt and sword of Orion stood at an angle. There was a brisk wind, and we hurriedly plotted things out on paper, took some measurements, and soon were set free by the professor. I walked down the stairs and back to my dorm. The hissing of the radiator was the only thing that greeted me in the darkened room. That hiss could be the loneliest sound in the world. Outside, the branches of a pine tree shifted shadows from a streetlight. I popped down the hall to see if he was around. There was no answer to my knock, and I went back to my room. The mark of a friendship is the dejection you feel when they’re not around. I put on the stupid Mariah Carey song and smiled. Maybe a guy could be a friend and a hero and I didn’t have to fall in love with him.

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive

So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you.

For his part, I’d like to believe that he felt similarly about me. Neither of us had a large circle of friends, and his southern friendliness was somewhat shocked by our cold northeastern indifference. We were both outsiders for vastly different reasons. He was on a pre-law track, and I was about to default to a degree in English and American Literature (hence all the science and water aerobics courses [?]) While we didn’t share any classes or interests, we had started sharing dinners at Sherman Hall, and spirited conversations that ranged in topic from Madonna to racial divides. I think each of us thought that he had the upper hand, and when that happens you sometimes create an unintended equality between friends that results in a mutual admiration. It’s so much easier to think better of someone if you actually believe that you’re better than that someone. Yet as misguided as we both may have been, that didn’t mean the burgeoning affection wasn’t real. Of course, I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t seen him in about eighteen years. Maybe he just didn’t want to eat dinner alone.

It’s a long road
When you face the world alone
No one reaches out a hand for you to hold.
You can find love
If you search within yourself
And the emptiness you felt will disappear.

In the way that it has often happened in my life, all it takes is one person – one friend – to galvanize me into confidence and serenity. Just knowing that another person out there cares, and is willing to come up to you across campus to say hello and have a chat about the day – it eases any loneliness in a way that no other source of strength can match. This was in the time before the bromance was an acknowledged part of life, a time when guys kept their distance for fear of being thought gay. It was only 1993, and it feels like a world away.

As November ripened, and we neared the Thanksgiving break, it was dark when we headed out to dinner. The first brisk days and nights that hint of winter to come are not always unwelcome, and I wrapped my arms around each other, pulling my coat close. We sat down to a warm dinner and talked of holiday plans. My drive in Thanksgiving Eve traffic would likely be just as long as his flight south. I realized then that I might miss him. I was just getting into a new way of life when suddenly I’d be whisked back to Amsterdam, to the past, to the town I’d tried to escape. He was excited to be going home, though, and I was happy for him. He missed Louisiana, he said. His friends and family. Even when it’s less than ideal, there’s no place like home. We finished our meal and dropped our trays off near the exit. Pulling our coats on, we met the night and the cold and hurried up the hill back to our dorm.

As we neared Usdan Center, the moon appeared from behind a stand of pine trees. It was glorious, almost full, and I said innocently, my recent Astronomy class still in my mind, “Hey, look at the moon,” as I pointed to the sky.

He paused in his stride and looked at me quizzically, in the way he sometimes cocked his head and questioned something I said. “You’re not going fag on me, are you?” he asked, rather seriously, and without a laugh or a smile.

Somewhere, the joy and hope I’d thought I was finding in another person froze. Something shifted right then for me, not only in our friendship, but in the rest of my world, and for the rest of my life. Something died in me. The little amount of faith I held in humanity diminished just a little bit more. And I felt someone I trusted – someone who was, or had already become, a friend – slip away. I waited for him to qualify the remark, to offer a joke or something to take away the sting of what he had said. I’d been called a fag before, and I would be again, but never by someone I considered a friend. Never someone so close.

I’m not one who usually cries, but at that moment, in the instant the words came out of his mouth, I wanted to cry. I swallowed hard instead, and then insisted of course I was not a fag, even managing to embolden the lie with a convincing laugh. I explained that I was merely commenting on the moon and what I’d learned in Astronomy that week. We were quiet for a few moments, then separated and went our ways. I think we both knew then.

The Lord knows dreams are hard to follow
But don’t let anyone tear them away
Hold on, here will be tomorrow
In time, you’ll find the way.

We had a few more dinners after that, and carried on outwardly in much the same way as before. But after Thanksgiving break, I mostly stopped going to dinner with Tony. I wanted to be alone then anyway. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was gay, and even if I wasn’t, I knew I couldn’t be friends with someone who could use the word ‘fag’ so flippantly even if it he didn’t mean it, even if it didn’t mean anything. Words matter – at least they did to me.

After winter break, when snow was on the ground and trudging through campus proved both depressing and difficult, it would have been nice to have someone to bear the burden, shoulder to shoulder, but when he knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to grab dinner, I repeatedly bowed out. He stopped knocking soon enough. When our first year was over, and my parents had loaded the last of my things into the station wagon for the ride home, I didn’t say good-bye to him. I’m not even sure where he was that day, because I had honestly stopped caring.

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive

So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you.

Somehow, I never saw him for the next two years. It’s strange, as Brandeis is a relatively small college, but I was keeping to myself, lying in wait until I could get into Boston and away from college guys who equated looking at the moon with being a fag. He may have nudged my closet door closed completely, but in the ensuing months it only made me want to kick it down more.

In my last semester, I saw him for the last time. It was at this time of the year again – November or December – and I was waiting for the commuter rail to go into Boston – where I had just moved. He was getting off the outgoing train, and I remember watching him walk down the steps and thinking I knew him from somewhere. He flashed the same puzzled recognition before we realized and recognized. We exchanged hurried pleasantries and caught up a bit. I noticed how his eyes traveled down my outfit: a velvet scarf tied around my neck, and a top coat in black wool. His gaze focused on the velvet.

“That’s an interestingâ€¦ scarf,” he said with the slightest bit of derision. It looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. I wanted to say more too, but I followed his lead. It was almost dark, and the wind was picking up. We said our good-byes, and when the train pulled away I watched him cross the tracks as I stood there waiting for the next train to Boston. The velvet scarf fluttered behind me as I stood facing the wind.

There comes a time when you have to be your own hero.

27
April
2014

Tags: Brandeis, Music

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What I Need…

It was one of the albums that shaped my life. There are just a few that have done that ~ Shirley Horn’s ‘Here’s to Life’, Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’, and REM’s ‘Automatic for the People’ come to mind – and to that ‘Laid’ by James must be added. Nowhere is that more evident than in the opening track, a quiet beginning to the maelstrom of emotions that the rest of the album would release. I like quiet beginnings.

I’m so alone tonight
My bed feels larger than when I was small
Lost in memories
Lost in all the sheets and old pillows
So alone tonight
Miss you more than I will let you know
Miss the outline of your back
Miss you breathing down my neck
They’re all out to get you
Once again they’re all out to get you
Once again…

As 1993 turned into 1994, and winter turned into spring, and my first year at Brandeis turned into something that was coming to a close, I sat up in my small twin bed, sheets twisted around my legs, the gray light from an outside lamp spilling in like some lame approximation of moonlight, and wondered at the predicament of being alone.

My roommate was gone. I felt relieved, but alone – always alone. Yet not lonely – not yet.

The red numerals of an alarm clock took rigid stock of the passing minutes. Spring rustled at the window. A restless longing was being tapped out by my heart. What did this life have in store? What message might I be missing? Do you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?

Insecure, whatcha gonna do?
Feel so small they could step on you
Called you up, answering machine
When the human touch
Is what I need
What I need, what I need, what I need, what I need…
Is you
I need you.

A bottle of urine stood beside the bed (the college guy’s method of avoiding fluorescent hallway walks past midnight.) My backpack slumped on the chair, filled with the books I’d need for the next morning’s classes. Looking back, I’m glad I never realized how alone I was. It would have broken me.

That night, I did not know. Or, rather, it was all I knew, and it was how I survived. Shadows and muffled laughter of passing students floated in from the hallway. I watched the shifting shaft of light beneath the door and bristled at the fading voices. There was no laughter inside my room.

Looked in the mirror, I don’t know who I am anymore
The face is familiar
But the eyes, the eyes give it all away
They’re all out to get you
Once again they’re all out to get you
Here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again, here they come again…

A bit of paranoia creeps into the song. It builds slowly, like an incoming tide, gently but insistently growing louder, and soon, too soon, it is a roar. Static in the head. A feverish state. I kick off the sheets and blankets, as a cold sweat soaks through my t-shirt. On the verge of crying, I wonder why they never loved me. Somehow, I don’t cry. It isn’t sadness that I feel, or even loss. Merely a sense of wonder, at the world, at the human condition, at what it was all supposed to mean. I made a tender reconciliation with the night then.

Insecure whatcha gonna do?
Feel so small they could step on you
Called you up, answering machine
When the human touch
Is what I need
What I need, what I need, what I need, what I need, what I need, what I need, what I need, what I need, what I need…
Is you, is you, is you, is you, is you, is you, is you…

If you let me breathe…

I call friends and lovers at strange hours. I need to talk, and listen, and hear from people I know. They buffer the fear. I ask them to listen to this song, to the whole album. They promise to try, but I know they don’t. I make mix tapes for them instead, counting on the effort to get them to hear it. They don’t respond or say they like it. I have no way of knowing if they hear it too, if they hear the loneliness.

I have never heard voices in the night. Not in the crazy way that would make it easier to make sense of who I am, the way they want so badly to make sense of me. Instead, I hear James. If they heard it – if they only listened – they would know too.

They’re all out to get you
Once again
To get you
Once again.

21
February
2014

Tags: Brandeis

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A Not-So-Lonely Grapefruit

At Brandeis, I used to eat breakfast alone. I tended to favor earlier courses – the first ones that others eschewed – not only to avoid the crowds, but also to get things out of the way for forays into Boston, or the simple luxury of free time in the afternoon. That meant I had to get to the cafeteria right when it opened if I was to make it to my first class on time. It was nice – there were no lines, no shouting students, no running out of Lucky Charms (not that I ate that nonsense). No, I was on my first health kick then, and I only had a grapefruit and some granola and an orange juice for breakfast. Occasionally, if I allowed myself a splurge, I’d take a twisted danish, wound with swirls of cinnamon and topped with a few ribbons of sugary drizzle.

It was an austere beginning to the day, but I was very disciplined. It was within my meal plan budget, it gave me enough fuel until I returned for a lunch-time sandwich (usually turkey and lettuce on a hard roll), and I could focus on the intricate task of carving out each section of grapefruit with my spoon.

Some opened up willingly, easily parting from their skin and membrane. Others put up a fight, and I would end up with their sticky blood on my hands, and sometimes more, when they decided to be extra difficult. It was good though – a nice start to making it through whatever the day had to offer. I especially savored the grapefruit at this time of the year, when the unyielding parade of snowstorms sapped the spirit and drained any remaining good-will. In the pink pucker of their orbs, I dreamed of a Southern sun, envisioning the groves where they came from, seeing the glossy green foliage thick and dark, waving lightly in the tropical breeze.

And then I’d return to the present moment, thumbing through the Living/Arts section of USA Today, ending with the weather map, hoping for more red and less blue. The half-shell of my grapefruit sat empty. I folded the paper in half. Another winter morning was passing.

07
January
2014

Tags: Boston, Brandeis

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Japan by Way of Porter Square

When I was attending Brandeis University, I had to take the Commuter Rail to get into Boston. The first T-stop it reached was the Red Line at Porter Square, which was just one stop from Harvard Square, so I usually got off there, and rode the enormous escalator down into the station. Porter Square has come a long way since the late 90’s, and when I was looking up some places to go for udon noodles, the Shops at Porter Square popped up.

It had literally been well over a decade since I strolled this part of Massachusetts Ave., and many more stores and restaurants had opened up. Within a tiny mall-type space, a cluster of Japanese restaurants and shops buzzed despite the early hour (it was about 11AM), and there was already a line of excited diners waiting to grab a seat at the ramen restaurant. I bypassed that (there’s nothing I hate more than a line) and found a more unoccupied place selling noodles a few doors down.

After gorging myself on a steaming dish of udon noodles and fresh vegetables, I waddled over to a store selling ceramics, tea pots, tea holders, and other objects from Japan. Beautiful glazed work set the hearts of bowls and dishes aflame, while intricately-patterned paper covered small boxes and containers. Chopsticks of simple yet elegant wood managed to be as striking as the glossy lacquered decorated versions that seemed to sparkle in the light. Beauty was all around. The gray day sank from my mind.

Then, as I made my way to the end of the store, a row of kimono hung in stately form ahead of me. I was powerless as to what happened next… (and I think you already know.)

20
September
2012

Tags: Boston, Brandeis, Music

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The Fall I Fell for Shirley

If there’s one album that signifies the start of fall to me, it’s ‘Here’s to Life’ by Shirley Horn. It’s not that there are any specifically fall-themed songs, no ‘Flaming September’, ‘When October Goes’, or ‘November Rain’ but on a personal level it brings back the fall I first went to Brandeis, and Boston. I still remember the evening I purchased that CD. I’d walked around the city before winding up at the end of Newbury Street. I passed through the revolving door of Tower Records (in the space that is now a thoroughly-depressing Best Buy) and rode the escalator up to the second floor. Back then there was no iTunes or online music purchasing, so the music store was still vital. I’d peruse the CD singles section for hours, finding old forgotten Madonna singles, or discovering new ones. (That sense of surprise and discovery is one of the things I regret most about the arrival of the Internet.)

On this particular night, I passed a stand of new music, and one of the titles being displayed – Shirley Horn’s ‘Here’s to Life’ – was getting all the accolades. A woman with some fierce, black, opera-length gloves sat gazing out from the cover, and the praise being promoted on the sticker was grand. Today we don’t have to buy music without listening to it first – at that time a new CD was a crap shoot, but something impelled me to take a chance and buy it, sound unheard.

The opening strings, and the gentle way she had with the vocals, instantly set my mind at ease when I settled into my tiny dorm bed later that night. A few cold-braving crickets chirped outside the window, which was open just a crack for the insufferable radiator that had only one temperature setting: “Hell.” My roommate was gone (as he was most of that year – for this reason alone I loved him), and I laid awake listening to the sounds of other students coming in from their revelries, and the string-laden jazzy nuances of Ms. Horn. A long-distance girlfriend, and much confusion, crossed my thoughts as ‘Where Do You Start?’ began – and the thought of having to start all over again first reared its nausea-inducing head. The music somehow made the pain exquisite – could this be what a work of art does, could this be why it might be so revered?

One day there’ll be a song or something in the air again
To catch me by surprise and you’ll be there again
A moment in what might have been…

In the solitude of that time, I learned how to be alone with myself, and all right with that. As much as I would fall for passing men, as infatuated and obsessed as I would sometimes become, I would always remember how to be alone if I had to be. And I would have to be, many times, and many nights. I remember the leaves of Harvard Square, swirling around my feet as I stood at the newsstand, browsing the magazines, hoping not to be called out for reading instead of buying them. The cafe across the street, where couples bundled up tightly in coats and hats, sat studying and reading, content simply to be in each other’s company, was as enticing as it was forbidden. I longed for the simplicity of that, the easy way people had with one another. I wondered if I would ever find it.

Over the wisdom of Ms. Horn’s occasionally raspy voice, the years of love and pain unfolded behind us. It would always be like this. I was old enough to understand, but too young to believe. I still thought there was a master key to all of it, a font of knowledge from which I had only to sip to find out the truth, the answer, the point. No one wants to realize that all the chasing and figuring out was for something that was in you all along – if I had been Dorothy I would have clocked Glinda for that almost-deadly exercise in futility.

And though I don’t know where

And don’t know when

I’ll find myself in love again

I promise there will always be

A little place no one will see

A tiny part deep in my heart

That stays in love with you.

06
April
2012

Tags: Brandeis

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The Passing of a Poet ~ The Power of a Poem

Poet Adrienne Rich passed away last month. I only know a few of her poems, but one of them made a huge impact on my artistic view of the world. It was my junior year of college, second semester â€“ right about this time of the year actually. I was enrolled in my first poetry course, and like so many other misinformed kids I thought it would be a breeze. Little did I know that poetry was one of the most difficult forms of writing to both execute and understand. The deceptively happy work of Emily Dickinson was revealed as a masked portal into the darkest psyche of a womanâ€™s heart. The Rape of the Lock was seen as both frivolous and ruinous. And an ancient Grecian urn contained the key to an entire world of artistic understanding.

That poetry course illuminated the power of words, the intricacies of a single letter, the way a single comma or period could change everything that followed. It also showed me that I could and would never be a proper poet. There was too much going on, too much space for disaster, too many opportunities to fuck it up beyond all recognition. But I gained a greater appreciation for the art form, and for one poem in particular.

On a dismal early Spring day, not unlike the ones weâ€™ve had this week, I made my way from the dorm to the small building that housed the poetry class. It was an early course, the way I liked it, and the campus was quiet. A few birds chirped in the misty upper-reaches of a barely-sprouting maple. Wet pavement and moss lined the short walk, echoes of a Grecian urn offering solace before the real warmth of Spring took hold, the solace of finding beauty in words.

Our professor, in his smoky, cigarette-stained voice, at once seductive and on the verge of ragged, read Adrienne Richâ€™s â€˜The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Messageâ€™:

A man in terror of impotence
or infertility, not knowing the difference
a man trying to tell something
howling from the climacteric
music of the entirely
isolated soul
yelling at Joy from the tunnel of the ego
music without the ghost
of another person in it, music
trying to tell something the man
does not want out, would keep if he could
gagged and bound and flogged with chords of Joy
where everything is silence and the
beating of a bloody fist upon
a splintered table

fromÂ Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972

Listening as he read, I had a visceral reaction to it. Having heard Beethovenâ€™s â€˜Ode to Joyâ€™ symphony in church every Easter, having played it on the piano, and having a childhood idea of what it meant, I was not prepared for how the poem turned everything I thought I knew upside down. This wasnâ€™t joy, this wasnâ€™t celebration, this wasnâ€™t happiness â€“ this was rage, pent-up and released. This was a pounding, a thrashing, a violent explosion. This was fear and terror and a strident, desperate crashing of pain. Richâ€™s words rent me from the inside out, her voice channeling Beethoven, and anyone who had felt such fear in a secret, silent world.

It was a lesson in how art ~ true, everlasting art ~ survives and changes according to the time. Rich gave her own voice, and her own ears, to a man who couldnâ€™t hear, who was no longer even alive, transforming his music into hers, reaching someone like me, who would have gone through life utterly unaware of any other sort of â€˜Joyâ€™ ~ assuming the superficial happiness otherwise attributed to Beethovenâ€™s Ode, or even Emily Dickinsonâ€™s poems. It was my first experience with how one artist could reach out and respond to another, traversing time and space and boundaries, and connect in a way that culminated with another work of art.

As I neared my final year at Brandeis, it showed me how much I had yet to learn.

12
September
2011

Tags: Brandeis, Madonna

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The Madonna Timeline: Song #48 ~ You’ll See ~ Late Fall 1995

{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.}

A castle turret, high above the campus of Brandeis University. The lights of Boston glow far off in the distance. A cold wind blows, deep into the fall. The window stands open, and a young man walks precariously along the ledge. The burning remnants of a letter leave his hand, swirled into the wind, lighting up the night and disappearing into ash. An act of defiance, of empowerment, of having no other choice. Then the tears fall, the countenance crumbles, and a crushed boy still stands on a ledge in the night wind. He thinks of dropping to his death – he will not deny it. But there is strength to be found in the most trifling pop song – and a legend-still-in-the-making for its singer – and perhaps even its listener.

You think that I can’t live without your love,

You’ll see.

You think I can’t go on another day.

You think I have nothing without you by my side…

You’ll see – somehow, some way…

This is one of those special Madonna songs ~ the ones that coincide perfectly with a life experience ~ and it is, for me, in my top-ten ~ if only for sheer emotional resonance. It joins the pantheon of watershed Madonna moments.

In the fall of 1995, ‘You’ll See’ was Madonna’s hit from her ‘Something to Remember’ collection of ballads. I was living in a single dorm room at the top of Usen Castle at Brandeis. While I loved it for its rustic charm, and the fact that it was a single (no more room-mate), the shower situation was, quite possibly, the worst I have ever experienced in my life. It was down a flight of cement stairs (super fun in the winter), and so dimly lit that you almost couldn’t use it at night. It was also the smallest shower I’ve ever seen, so tiny that it was a task to simply turn around in it.

Luckily, Boston beckoned, and I wouldn’t have to put up with campus castle-living for much longer. I was about to find a place right between Copley and the South End, which at that time was on the verge of blooming into the unaffordable family-friendly bourgeois battlefield it is today. At that time, it had not yet turned, but Braddock Park looked to be a safe bet, and I convinced my parents to purchase the place.

There was a romantic aspect to the city, in its seductive cobblestone paths and magical tree-lined history, and it was almost enough for me to simply look out at the lofty height of the John Hancock Tower as its windows twinkled in the night sky. In those early days the condo was all but empty. I slept on a thin, smaller-than-single-sized mattress from an old cot, not even supported by a frame. A fringed accent lamp sat on the floor, barely illuminating the bedroom at night. In the kitchen, I stood by the counter when eating a bagel, or drinking from the lone carton of orange juice in the fridge. There wasn’t even a couch or chair in which to sit, but I loved it. Copley was at my doorstep and the whole South End was my backyard. Yet in spite of all that was out there, I remained alone. I had no one with whom to explore the new restaurants, or go grocery shopping, or simply walk the quaint side-streets lined with brownstones. At the end of every night, there was silence, inadequately filled with the static-tinged radio of an old alarm clock.

You see, far more than a place in Boston, I wanted a boyfriend ~ someone to share my life with ~ to be there for all the moments in life, most especially the simple ones. The thought of going to bed while someone else showered or read filled me with longing. It wasn’t the passion or the excitement of love that I was after ~ it was the companionship, the camaraderie, the feeling and security of simply having another trusted person who loved you as you loved them. For all my drama, for all my emotional mayhem, all I wanted was a partner. I wanted the shared quiet, the down-time. I wanted the simple act of existing beside another, with no need for words or fancy outfits, no desire to act out or put on a show. Yet despite the simplicity and earnestness of my hope, I didn’t know how to manifest it ~ and so it turned into desperation, and a penchant for obsession and misplaced (and largely unwanted) affection.

Enter unwitting object of desire. He would be, if things went my way, the third man I ever kissed in my life. But at the start he was just our real estate agent. Yes, I fell for my real estate agent. I couldn’t help it. I fell for his seductive real estate sales pitch and his occasionally-physical sensitive-frat-guy hand-on-the-shoulder moves. I didn’t do the physical stuff ~ I enjoyed a healthy five-feet of personal space around me at all times ~ but when he did it I didn’t mind.

Before we ever looked at Braddock Park, he took me around to visit a few different properties, the first within minutes of meeting him. It was across the street from his office, and the day was bright after a run of rain. The yellow leaves of a maple tree were lit brilliantly against a suddenly deep blue sky. The stained glass window of a former church loomed above us. He let us into the building and we climbed to the second floor. On the clay-colored brick wall of the kitchen a small bouquet of dried and desiccated flowers hung sadly on a nail. All these years later, that image has stayed with me.

He showed me the other places later, both at night. There was something secretive-seeming about going into these empty places, switching on lights and walking across barren rooms that echoed with our footfalls. He offered his ideas on how to improve the space, what might be done with the floors ~ everything a live-in-boyfriend would suggest ~ or a savvy real estate agent.

The first man I ever kissed had dumped me before I even realized we were going out. The second man I kissed I dumped before he even had the chance. The third man ~ this man ~ seduced with a smile, endeared with a twinkle in his eye, and revealed just enough vulnerability and compassion to snag me with all sorts of messy emotions. It didn’t matter that he was only trying to sell me a property, or that he had given me no indication of romantic interest other than the occasional wink (which is always tricky to read) I pinned my sights and dreams on him, and conjured a blissful future all within my mind.

In his defense, he made it very clear where we stood and ~ this is important ~ I never asked him out. I didn’t ask if he was interested, I didn’t ask if he wanted to grab a drink or coffee, I didn’t ask anything. I hinted, I strongly hinted, but that was all. There was nothing between us other than the sale of a condo.

You think that I can never laugh again,

You’ll see.

You think that you’ve destroyed my faith in love.

You think after all you’ve done,

I’ll never find my way back home,

You’ll see – somehow, some day…

The fault was within, the fault was all mine. That didn’t make me want him less. It didn’t erase the need to be loved. That he happened to be the one there at the time was simply unhappy, and unlucky, circumstance ~ as it would prove to be time and time again. It still didn’t take away the hurt, and sometimes losing what you never had is somehow more painful than losing something you’d actually had the chance to experience.

When you are told no, when you are told you are not wanted ~ not in that way ~ it stings. When you are told nothing, but can sense enough that you are not wanted, it hurts differently. You may have retained some shred of pride in not forcing the question to a head, you may have let another person off the hook from having to gently but insistently refuse, but you have let yourself down. You have wimped out.

I didn’t have the voice to ask him out. I didn’t have the courage. And I certainly didn’t have the confidence. Instead I saved face, withdrawing before revealing my hand, backing away before any real risk of being burned, but he had to have known. Granted, when you do ask the ‘Do you like me back?’ question there is always the chance that it will blow up in your face (See the insanity of ‘You Must Love Me’).

Yet if you don’t ask you will always wonder, and the darker side of you, the one you pretend to friends isn’t there, will blame the innocent. There was rage here, there was anger, and there was the humbling sadness of having to survive on your own. There was grit here too, and a steely, brutal resolve to pick myself up again, stoically wipe the tears away, and move on in the world. So though my question may have technically gone unasked, his silence and utter disinterest in me was an answer in itself, and one that I largely accepted (compared to what I would do in the future).

My anguish over a non-existent love affair was both silly and debilitating. Coming out as a gay man, as difficult as it sometimes was, did not hold a candle to the obstacle course of love. And to be worthy of love was some out-of-reach enlightened realm that seemed closed to me, inaccessible despite my best efforts. Upon realizing this, part of me crumbled. I had been defeated, and my heart grew bitter. If this was love, if this was what came of love, then I wanted nothing to do with it. Woe to those who followed.

From my hurt grew an icy chill, one that I’m sometimes afraid remains to this day. It’s an edgy bluntness that takes the offensive before there’s a need to be defended. I have to do it. It’s something I need to prove. I took the sadness and the hurt and the anger and turned it into the way I dealt with the world. I took the flippant disregard of a stranger and the questioning wonder of a friend to heart, and I raged against both.

Fall turned colder. Winter would be long. And all I had was a song.

All by myself, I don’t need anyone at all.

I know I’ll survive, I know I’ll stay alive.

All on my own, I don’t need anyone this time,

It will be mine, no one can take it from me.

You’ll see…

Back on campus, I opened my empty mailbox in the basement mailroom of Usdan Student Center. I listened as the new Madonna song came over the radio. A flicker of hope and fierce determination to never again be hurt lit my heart, but quickly went out as the song faded and I made my way back into the crisp fall air. There were times I wanted to literally fall down ~ in the hidden corner of the courtyard, at the train station waiting for the other commuters to board, and as I closed the door behind me at the condo.

Visions of sharing the place in Boston haunted the cold nights, rising and falling before my mind’s eye, teasing and tormenting with their just-out-of-reach possibility. I longed for companionship, I wanted for warmth, I wished I had someone to fall asleep with ~ such simple pleas, such basic prayers, and such soul-crushing loneliness. It crept up on me, and as I headed back to the condo one night I almost let it hit me. After rounding onto Braddock Park from the Southwest Corridor, feet shuffling through dry, brown leaves and the scent of burning wood in the air, I looked up at the dark windows of the living room. There was no one there. I hesitated and paused. I could not go in.

It must be said that I don’t usually get lonely. I am often alone ~ at lunch, on trips, in the car, even in my own home ~ but rarely if ever do I get lonely. This was one of the only times I felt it, the chill of loneliness, and it shook me. I turned around, retracing my steps the way I had come, returning to the lights and the bustle of Copley Place. I could not walk into the empty rooms at that moment. I knew that if I did, the loneliness would have its way with me, and I might never come back to the person I was, to the place I loved, to the way I wanted to be. So I wandered around the warm store windows of Copley Place, like I did when I was a kid, when we used to stay at the Marriott and Mom would only let my brother and me explore the adjacent Mall on our own. I didn’t need to talk to anyone, I just needed to be around people, to have them close, even if they were strangers. Once the loneliness subsided, I returned to the condo, and never felt that way again.

You think that you are strong, but you are weak,

You’ll see.

It takes more strength to cry, admit defeat.

I have truth on my side, you only have deceit,

You’ll see… somehow, some day…

There was still the winter to get through, and it would be a snowy one. Up to the very end of March – and even early April – a few late-season storms pounded Boston. Somewhere in that crystalline time, beneath the blanket of dirty snow, I healed, and I got over it. Even if it was all in my head, as most of these things tended to be, it changed me.

To this day, ‘You’ll See’ fills me with both dread and drive – a prickly little ball of courage, conviction, contradiction and inner-strength. Whenever I feel myself slipping, or losing sight of who I really am, under the wishes and whims of others – family, friends, anyone – I reach deep, think of this song, and persevere. That’s what this song has always meant to me – it’s a warning to everyone who ever doubted, to everyone who ever questioned whether or not I could do something, and to everyone who thinks that a fancy wardrobe and a cocktail are all I have to offer the world.

On the Madonna-centric side of things, ‘You’ll See’ debuted, if I remember correctly, at Number 5 on the Billboard charts. They likened it to a modern-day take on ‘I Will Survive’ and thematically that’s pretty accurate. She’s only performed it live a scant few times while on her Drowned World Tour. For the first time she added the song (in place of the lackluster ‘Gone’) for certain stops only. Usually a Madonna show is on robotic autopilot, with little to no room for variation or interpretation. That in itself was striking. That she performed it in Boston moved me even more.

It was my first time seeing Madonna live, and she was singing one of my favorite all-time songs on her Boston stop. She stood on that stage alone, a single spotlight glinting off her dirty blonde hair as she sang. Her husband, perhaps hidden somewhere in the shadows, or not even present at all, lurked only in the mind. Listening to her sing ‘You’ll See’, in the city where so much heartache and happiness had happened for me, I was brought back to the Fall of 1995.

I stood on the ledge of a castle in New England. The letter I had burned had just left my hand, fluttering into the dark air in a bright burst of quickly-fading flames. Bits of silky ash floated back up in the night wind. The stone felt cold against my hands as I reached for something to hold onto. Her voice, and her words, sounded in my head, pulling me back from the edge of despair, pulling me back into the warm light of my room, into the hushed safety and terror of solitude.

All by myself, I don’t need anyone at all.

I know I’ll survive, I know I’ll stay alive.

I’ll stand on my own, I won’t need anyone this time,

It will be mine, no one can take it from me.

You’ll see.

Madonna sang the song for all the broken-hearted among us. Yet for all its empowering qualities, at the end of it I felt nothing but defeated – tired and exhausted from loving those who would not, and perhaps could not, love me back. That takes its toll, that leaves its own casualties – and the parts of you that die from it don’t ever come back. At least not so far.
Epilogue:
Years later I would be sitting at the counter in Francesca’s Cafe, reading a book, and the man I thought I loved then – the man who found our Boston home – would tap me on the shoulder to say hello. He would have had no idea what I went through, how much he meant to me, and his smile would betray that. My smile betrayed nothing.

You’ll see.

Song #48: ‘You’ll See’ ~ Late Fall 1995

20
April
2011

Tags: Brandeis, General, Madonna, Music

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The Madonna Timeline: Song #40 – ‘You Must Love Me’ ~ Fall 1996

Where do we go from here?
This isn’t where we intended to be.
We had it all – you believed in me.
I believed in you.

I don’t remember the first time I saw him. Is that strange? For someone who supposedly meant so much to me, I don’t recall the first time we were in the same room together. It must have been in the Literary Criticism class that we were both taking – my final requirement for an English degree from Brandeis University. I had tumbled off the commuter rail a bit later than anticipated, and had to rush up all the hills and steps before making it to the humanities building. In a sleeveless gray shirt and tattered jeans, I didn’t care how I looked when the weather still clung to August. I was decidedly not dressed to impress, not that first day. (It was a bit of an anomaly, as every day thereafter I would wear a different outfit, as impressive as I could muster, for the remainder of the semester.)

Sitting here racking my brain for our first moment of interaction, I still cannot come up with anything. In a way it makes sense, I never shit where I eat – so when on campus I was never looking for love, or even open to any bit of flirtation. It was probably what got me through college. I saved my obsessions for city folk, for unattainable real estate agents, would-be actor-waiters or gone-in-a-flash T-riders. At school, I was all business, and that Literary Criticism course was the last one I would have to take seriously.

The summer lingered on a bit. I always forgot how hot the start of the Fall semester could be. Above, the sun hovered, slowly traversing the sky over the duration of those September days. There were blue skies then – the gray of November was a distant impossibility.

The first bit of interaction with him that I can recall was a simple exchanging of glances in a second floor hallway. I was sitting on a couch waiting for my next class to begin, and he was headed in the other direction. My eyes followed and caught him turning around as he went down the stairs. From that moment onward I noticed him. He was usually smiling or laughing, entertaining a giggling gaggle of girls, and across the room in our literature class he occasionally smiled at me, raising his eyebrows in question or acknowledgment or invitation.

Certainties disappear,
What do we do for our dream to survive?
How do we keep all our passions alive,
As we used to do?

Dappled sunlight beneath a fiery grove of maple trees. A Nathaniel Hawthorne day in New England. The smell of warm leaves, the whisper of copper-colored pine needles. He sat on a rock, thumbing through a notebook. I stopped and said hello. I mentioned his Structure sweater, explaining that I worked there and could spot them a mile away. He told me he liked them, but all his sweaters ended up unraveling at the end of the sleeve – “something I must be doing with my hand” – and I let the entendre go by without a wink or a saucy word. My nervousness rendered me quiet and submissive around him – an incongruity to what made me fun to be around, and perhaps the fatal flaw in my ultimately winning over those who most impressed me. I left him there, beneath the trees, amused at my own ‘discombobulation’ as Suzie would call it, and wondering at what was going through his head.

A few days later, we got our first set of papers back. After a stern lecture on how this first batch had disappointed him, and how they weren’t at the level we should be at, the professor gave a lovely build-up to what I assumed was a disastrous grade. He went on to say, in one of those dastardly frightening professor moments, that he would leave them on the table and then leave the room, as he didn’t want to see the looks on our faces when we saw the grades. (Still a bit lighter than the sign next to one professor’s office hours that read, ‘Professional Slaughtering’.)

There was a mad rush for the papers, but I didn’t bother. No sense is hastening the arrival of bad news. I slowly got up and saw my name, but couldn’t quite get to it. He then reached over the other students to grab my paper along with his, and handed it to me. I think I fell in love with him at that moment. That he knew my name, that he struggled against the others to find mine, or that I got a B+ – I don’t know what made me feel happier. Who can say why we fall when we do?

We continued to see each other around campus – he would always seem to be where and whenever I least expected him, and I was continually caught off guard -“ the way my whole experience with him threw me off guard. And I couldn’t entirely be fabricating that there was something on his end too, could I? Certainly, I had lived out further-fetched fantasies of love and affection before him (wait until ‘You’ll See’ hits the timeline), was this just another etching solely in my mind?

At work, I confided to my manager who said I should just ask him out. I balked at the idea. I couldn’t, and that would never be my style. Even if I could, what would I say? “Do you want to go out sometime?” I would feel ridiculous. I was too shy for that. I liked to play it off as aloof and nonchalant, but it was simply me being shy, and an acutely killing form of shyness that I was nowhere near ready to combat at that moment.

Deep in my heart I’m concealing
Things that I’m longing to say
Scared to confess what I’m feeling
Frightened you’ll slip away,
You must love me,
You must love me.

A few days later, I thought I might be ready. In the cafeteria of Usdan Center, I saw him arrive at his lunch table. He was alone. My heart was pounding. I picked up the nearby pay phone (yes, there were such things back then) and dialed my store manager and friend John for one last bit of encouragement. He told me to just do it. Thanks, Nike. But it was enough. I marched quickly over to his table, and in what can only be the quickest blurting out of a pathetic pick-up line, said, “I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out sometime.” He smiled and said sure, he’d like to, and he gave me his phone number. It would be one of the only times in my entire life that I asked a guy out.

That was it. I smiled, said hello to the friend who had just joined him, and then said goodbye. If only we could have left it there – when there was nothing but possibility ahead. If only I could have kept it all in my head, living on the remote chance of all the what-ifs my racing brain could giddily conjure. If only… I hadn’t been so lonely. But I couldn’t see that then. All I knew was that he said yes.

I almost danced out of the student center, taking steps two at a time, bouncing off the walls in gleeful celebration. The boy I liked said yes! He said yes! And I was off – literally, figuratively, mentally, you name it – off on a thrilling one-man race that had but one inevitably sad destination. I did not know that yet, and for all the happiness and hope I felt, there was the one nagging worry – what if he didn’t like me the way I liked him? I put my faith in Madonna, and her latest ‘Vanity Fair’ cover story, where she quoted from ‘The Alchemist’:

If you want something bad enough, the whole world conspires to help you get it.

How I wished and prayed that was the case. How my heart yearned for it to be true. There was another quote that haunted me from that Madonna article though, and they were her words directly. It stayed in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried to dislodge it:

Power is being told you are not loved, and not being destroyed by it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

We shared a few late-night phone talks. I was in my bedroom in Boston – lying in bed looking up at the ceiling, then sitting on the cool hardwood floor, staring out the window, then back beneath the covers – warmed by his words, enthralled by his high school stories, and touched by the recitation of some of his writing. Maybe that was the moment I fell in love with him. This once-overweight kid, out of place, hurt by his family – my heart ached for him and his childhood, and for the fact that I could easily have been one of his torturers. (That’s just the kind of mean kid I was.) I wanted to hold him and make it all better. A surprise to myself, this fierce shard of protective instinct, this desire to shield him from the worries of the world, when so often I assumed it was me who needed to be protected.

We talked of silly and frivolous matters too, Broadway musicals and Madonna, and I ended up giving him a copy of Madonna’s latest single, ‘You Must Love Me’, hoping he would read into it all that I intended. There was shared laughter over the phone, and once there was a crash and he admitted he had fallen off the chair. It didn’t necessarily mean anything – all college kids are prone to romantic delusions during late-night phone conversations. The deciding moments would be determined during the day.

He sat next to me when we had class again. It was jarring, and strange, since most of us didn’t shift our seats much – not from one side of the room to the other – yet it was intoxicating to be so singled-out. As uncomfortable as I felt, as much as I was sure that all eyes were on us (and as sure as I am today that they were not), it was another little gesture that stirred the dormant heart.

Being close to him left me dizzy with nerves, erasing my wit and replacing it with a silence that could only be read as disinterest, or, worse, haughty superiority. Yet I couldn’t be myself around him, not with so much at stake. I couldn’t believe that I was someone to be loved, even if it was all I wanted him to see.

Why are you at my side?
How can I be any use to you now?
Give me a chance and I’ll let you see how
Nothing has changed.

I think we shared a book in our next class together, and it was easier being near him. Maybe we wrote a few quick words to one another, as if we were two silly kids in high school, sharing a secret moment of fun amid the criticism of Kant. On one of our phone talks I asked him if he wanted to attend ‘Master Class’ with me – I had just gotten two tickets. Suzie and Anu were coming into town for the weekend, and if he couldn’t make it, I reasoned, I could go with one of them. He accepted, and we agreed to meet up at Copley, have dinner with the girls, then go to the show. It would be, unsaid and unacknowledged, our first official date.

I wore a red velvet vest, and I greeted him as he rode up on the escalator. We walked quickly over the glossy stone floor of Copley Place – me pushing us faster so we wouldn’t be late. I was too nervous to talk much, and the rest of the evening those nerves wreaked uncomfortable havoc with any of us having a particularly good time. After the show, I walked him to his car. We paused in front of 500 Boylston, and he said it was one of his favorite buildings in Boston.

I looked back at the Courtyard in front of the building. It suddenly felt cold. And then it was over. We either hugged or shook hands as we said goodbye, but we did not kiss, and somehow, as I walked home alone, I knew. We would never kiss.

I left a series of phone messages the next few days, and he didn’t call back. Yet I didn’t give up. Oh boy, did I not give up.

You must love me…

There I was, trying desperately to turn this treacly little love song from a command to a realization, and failing at every turn. Who knows why we fall in love? Maybe it’s the turn of someone’s step, or the little smile that seeing you elicits, or maybe the simple act of grabbing the paper you couldn’t reach – of seeking out your name, or just knowing it. A midnight phone conversation that you don’t want to end, and when it finally is over the inability to sleep for all that hope and happiness. What do you do with that? And what if it meant more to you than it ever would to him?

Like most of the major mistakes I made in life, my honesty was to blame for setting me up for the most embarrassing form of getting rejected I could have ever crafted. I couldn’t be left in the dark, not knowing whether he felt the same, or if he wanted to go out again, and I just had to know. I did what I would do time and time again, with equally disastrous results: I wrote him a letter. (God only knows what that says about my writing ability.) Laying it all on the line, my feelings about what I thought we could have together, how much I liked him already, and all the things you are never, ever supposed to tell another person until the day after your wedding, I wrote down everything. I did everything ‘The Rules’ said not to do. I even gave him an easy out (well, easy for him). I said that if he didn’t feel the same way about me, to simply not sit next to me in class the next day. [Pause for reasonable absorption of The Worst Idea in the World, culled from the annals of teenage nonsense.] So certain was I that he liked me too, it never occurred to me what I might feel or do if he declined. That wasn’t a possibility in my mind, that wasn’t an option.

I gave him the letter the next time we met, along with a mix tape (it was still the 90’s, and I was apparently still trying to live the teenage dream), and then it was up to him. When our next class rolled around I was a nervous mess, and rightfully so. No matter how it ended up, it would be awkward – whether sweetly or disastrously so, it would be awkward. A tinge of regret already loomed over the overcast morning.

I still remember the shirt I wore that day – a loose black Nehru-collared number with grommets that laced up the top half. Part peasant, part pirate, part tragic historical figure – I loved that shirt. And I would never wear it again.

Sitting down in class, I took a deep breath and waited. Students started coming in, taking their seats, and I took out a book to appear busy and uninterested in whatever the outcome might be. On a blank page, I started writing – well, drawing – fake lines of non-existent words, intended to look like writing – anything to distract. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him walk into the room with one or two other classmates. He crossed to the other side of the room to his old seat. The one beside me remained empty.

I looked up, pretending to notice him for the first time. He gave a faint smile and a conciliatory shrug. Smiling my own ‘that’s that’ type of smile, I looked down and pretended to be engrossed in my notebook. I began writing so I wouldn’t have to see him again, and this time words came out. Simple words of simple instruction that I implored, willed, forced my physical being to focus on and accomplish.

“He did not sit next to me. He did not sit next to me and I will have to get up and walk out of this room when the class is over.”

It was a tiny act of survival, and the written words made it both real and palpable, designing a way of dealing with the situation I created, starting with the simple act of standing up and walking. When the interminable hour was up, I hurried out of class, not looking back. I made it down the steps of the building before he caught up to me.

He was kind. Most of the men I’ve liked have, in their way, been kind. He explained that he felt like I was running, going too fast, and he just wasn’t ready. It was as good an excuse as any, surely better than, ‘I just don’t like you that way’, even if the latter may have been more honest, and heartbreaking. Blame the intensity, blame my neuroses – just don’t let it be something intrinsic to my being, don’t let it be… me. Even if it was.

Before we separated, he said he liked my shirt, and that it was his favorite so far. I thanked him for that. If I had nothing else to offer the world, I would always have style. It was a sad recompense.

I did not cry. I would never cry in front of him. I would save it until I made it to the very edge of campus, ducking into a small building and finding an empty bathroom, then letting it all out in heaves and gasps. No one noticed my red and swollen eyes on the commuter rail. I slumped into the window, watching but not seeing the barren landscape rushing by. This was the fall. We were well into November, and in a few days I would board the ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ plane bound for San Diego and a family wedding, at which I would come out to my brother as a gay man and tell the sad tale of this recent heartbreak to little if any consolation.

Deep in my heart I’m concealing
Things that I’m longing to say
Scared to confess what I’m feeling
Frightened you’ll slip away,
You must love me,
You must love me.

Back from California, there were just a few more class days left of my last semester at Brandeis. Having spurred my coming out to my brother, my grief then prompted me to tell the story to my friend Danielle. We walked along toward the bottom of campus on a cold December day – and I simply said I loved someone and he didn’t love me back. I still remember our hug at the end of that walk, and how soft her hair felt. I wondered if those hugs could be enough to sustain someone throughout life, or if they were only there to catch us when we fell out of love.

Near the end of the month, with the semester finished, and my final papers completed and submitted, I was standing near the ATM when he came around the corner. Though the afternoon was young, the light had gone, and in the dim shadows of an early dusk we said a quick hello, and then it was done. My time at Brandeis was over. My memories of him, once emblazoned upon my heart and head, would only fade, lacking nourishment, first from him and then, months, maybe a year later, from me.

But at the end of 1996 I only had Madonna to snap me out of it. She triumphantly returned with her star-turn in ‘Evita’, attending the premiere in this gorgeous Galliano ensemble (he was okay then), and for me it was a welcome distraction to the tumultuous turbulence of an insatiable heart.

In the darkness of that December, I made the determination to never be ignored. No matter what it took, no matter how outlandish I ended up, I would make myself into the brightest ball on the fucking Christmas tree. If he couldn’t see that, if he couldn’t realize how wonderful it could be, how wonderful I could be, then I would make the rest of the world see it and know, and when they were all pointing at me, when they were all whispering, and his was the last head that turned to look, I wouldn’t even care.

There was rage, there was want, there was hurt and pain and tears like I’d never shed before. All for a boy – a silly boy who didn’t sit next to me in class.

If anything, I learned a lot from that last semester. I learned that those games were played for a reason. I learned the unattractiveness of wanting something so badly. And I learned to hold back, to hesitate, to hold my heart in check. I learned to not feel, to harden myself off to people. It was a reluctant lesson, one that I fought against until I could not fight anymore. And it was, I am foolishly happy to report, something I would forget when the next cute boy showed me the least bit of interest. My heart would not be tamed so easily, even if my head knew better.

Years later, I would wonder at the craziness of my behavior at the time, at the strange fixation I had on someone I hardly knew. I would wonder whatever came of all the intense, seemingly-insurmountable feelings I harbored for this man. On the few surreal moments where we randomly encountered one another in later years (the first being a Madonna concert) the magic and enchantment that once held sway over me in regards to him had dissipated, not even the merest wisp of longing or desire remained. In its place was a strange sort of war-torn affection, a feeling that we had been through something important together, and a realization that it was mostly one-sided. I would always wonder what, if any, effect I had on him, if he remembered me fondly, if he remembered me at all. And after all the time that had passed, and the way our lives had gone, all I seemed able to muster was a befuddled amusement at the whole thing, a sheepish bit of foolish pride in how ridiculous I once acted, and the reluctant admission that I would do it all again if given the chance.

Post Script: Both the-boy-that-got-away and I ended up getting married- to different, and wonderful, men. I remained in sporadic touch with him, at strange and fortuitously key moments in our lives, but that’s another story for a ‘Celebration’. (And rest assured it has a much happier ending.)

You must love me.

Song #40: ‘You Must Love Me’ ~ Fall 1996

12
November
2010

Tags: Brandeis

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Dorm Room Scene

A dorm room at Brandeis. The month was November, the sky gray, and the air damp â€“ the time of year when it might rain or snow at any moment, but canâ€™t make up its mind. Dusk settles early after the changing of the clocks, and at the dinner hour it is already dark. The radiator by the window hisses, as tiny beads of water condense on the pane. In the room, the only light comes from the outside safety lamp and the sliver of hallway fluorescence beneath the door.

The question is whether to walk all the way across campus to Sherman Hall to eat a quick dinner, or to take a nap and vainly attempt an escape until itâ€™s really night. So much of life is taken up with these in-between moments â€“ the ticking of the clock before or after what you think really matters. The waiting for something to begin. Five and ten-minute chunks of time where the real stuff of life happens. (Like sitting next to my husband in the moments before a movie is about to begin, holding off on the popcorn or not, and reading silly movie trivia over and over.)

On this November night â€“ the night I am remembering from college â€“ there is one of those transitions of time, in which I debate what to do next, while the clock ticks away. My coat is already on, but I hesitate, leaning back against the desk and looking outside. In my head, I go through the evening of coursework that should be done, that needs to be done, that absolutely must be done.

Our days are filled with hundreds of little decisions that must be made, and the thought that any one of them could be the one that changes our lives is a daunting, sometimes crippling idea. I donâ€™t get bogged down in the details, in the endless decision-shifting. Make a choice and make the best of it. We cannot dwell in the past â€“ but sometimes, on certain November nights, the past returns, if for no other reason than to remind us that while waiting for something to happen we might miss what is already happening.

The pockets of time we throw away â€“ alone in a dorm room, commuting to work, waiting for the doctor to see us â€“ have their own dim beauty, while carrying their own little light. I remember that night at Brandeis whenever I feel time might be getting away, when I question whether my life is on auto-pilot, when I need the inspiration to live in the moment. To be fully aware, to be completely cognizant, to notice and take in all of what surrounds us â€“ this is how to be present, how to be a part of something. And after everything, all we really want is to belong.

18
September
2010

Tags: Boston, Brandeis, General

3 comments

The First Time I Kissed A Man

If you’ve only kissed girls all your life, the first time you kiss a man is a shock. A rough shock. Literally. My face feels like it’s being shredded by some ridiculous grade of sandpaper. He holds my head in his hands, and this will not be the only way he hurts me. For now, though, it is completely what I want.

In the afternoon light of September, in an apartment on the steep incline of some side street in Beacon Hill, I am sharing my first kiss with a man. The year is 1994 and it’s the start of my sophomore year at Brandeis University. The room is small, and comprises both the bedroom area and the kitchen. A bathroom is outside off the hall.

The sheets on the bed are white, or the lightest of gray, and he doesn’t seem to have many worldly possessions. I’ve always envied that sparse sort of set-up, and those not bound by attachments or material goods. Even in a few short weeks I manage to accumulate things, my closet over-stuffed and scarce of empty hangers. Here, just a small collection of plates and kitchen utensils dries in a wire dish rack. A lone towel hangs on the doorknob. By the window a cluster of books stands on a table.

He excuses himself to take a quick shower, and I am shocked at his simple, instant trust of me, having only met a few hours before this. Already jaded before I’ve even been hurt – or maybe there’s some sort of hurt that I can’t even remember anymore, a phantom pain from not feeling loved or protected – and my suspicion lies hidden like a dagger, hidden but always present, ever-ready to strike, to slash, to slay.

He returns wearing only a white towel, and in that white light of the bed my summer-tanned body lays atop of his, the cool bright sheets blocking the slight breeze from the half-cracked window. I wonder what the other people on the street are doing in their apartments on this afternoon.

My face and lips feel raw after sliding against his stubble. It tickles and stings and troubles in a dangerous, intoxicating way. He admires me like no one has ever done before, but I’m still uncomfortable as he watches me pull my pants on. It seems odd to just leave, but he mentioned something about his shift, and it’s even stranger to think of staying, so I depart after leaving my phone number.

I step out of the stale smell of the old brownstone row, and back on the street I look up to his window. He is there smiling and waving. I wave back and walk down to the bottom of Hancock Street. Across the way is the site of a former Holiday Inn that my mother once stayed in with me and my brother. We saw ‘E.T.’ in the movie theater there that no longer exists. Part of me still feels like that little boy, but as I board the train I catch my reflection, and, aside from the backpack, it is the visage of a young man.

How to explain the heady giddiness of my heart in those early days of Fall? Every phone call with him carried me further away from the campus, away from the silly dorm antics, the childish college pranks. I wanted no part of that carefree fun, looking down on my fellow school-mates and disconnecting from that world irrevocably, in a way that risked future regret and silly behavior long past the point when it should have been out of my system. I was far too serious for my own good, thinking I was setting up my life for happiness at some time far in the future, putting off a good time in the moment and mistakenly eyeing what was to come, what was always ahead. I gave it away for him, as I would do for countless others, but in the beautiful light of that flaming September there was nothing else I could have done.

Somewhere there is an old 35-mm photograph of me, taken while I was on the phone with him, showing a rare unguarded moment where the camera was set up just as he called, the sun was setting, and my face betrayed not happiness, but worry. High in Usen Castle, in our semi-circular dorm room on the top floor, I sat on the bed talking to him. He was squeezing in a conversation just before his shift started at the hotel restaurant, from a pay phone no less, back when there were still pay phones around. He must care, I thought.

Every place he moved through held meaning for me. Across the street from the fancy hotel at which he worked was a park. An unlikely oasis in the midst of downtown Boston, it was quiet there, and workers in business suits and sneakers sat on benches reading books. I spent a lot of time in that park. Even when we weren’t meeting, I sat there, reading or writing or just watching the few people who meandered along its walkways.

Sometimes we did meet, for dessert or dinner, and there was a night when we kissed in the shadows of the Southwest Corridor, before the condo was even a glimmer in my eye.

In his apartment, we spent most of the time in bed. The flickering light from a tiny television glowed on the stark white walls. Night air drifted in from the window, along with some muffled shouts and street noise. I asked him how you could tell if you were truly in love with someone. He told me he once heard it said that if you were really in love with someone, you could envision spending the rest of your life in a tent with them and be perfectly content, never wanting for anything more, and never wanting to leave.

Sometimes I tell people that I could envision the two of us doing just that – other times I express doubt that anyone could be happy in such a situation. I never tell it the same way twice because I still don’t know how I feel about it. How could someone who was capable of being so hurtful possibly know anything about love? I trusted in his years of experience, putting a blind faith in simple human decency, only I never let him know. In my silence was acquiescence and the assumed aloofness that would destroy so many chances. I did not know that then – sometimes I don’t know it now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know when you’re not supposed to be with someone. It starts with a pang so small you’re not really sure that the doubt is real, but as the days and weeks pass, the pang becomes a full-fledged throbbing, and every moment you’re with them threatens to suffocate with its worry. When it happens for the first few times, you do not yet have the sensitivity to feel it coming, nor fully experience the hurt it leaves. At least for me, this was the case. I liken it to the first time you’re really hung over. You swallow and swallow as the saliva mounts in your mouth, and you know you don’t feel right but you still don’t know how not right, so you trudge along to work or school and from sheer ignorance or refusal, you do not stop to vomit and end it all quickly.

When his calls stopped and the lingering light and warmth of fall gave way to the harsh chill of October and November, I didn’t know enough to feel the pain of having such affection withdrawn. I also didn’t know how to cling or hang onto someone, to emotionally obsess and hold onto something that was already dead. This may have been what saved me – my ignorance of how to feel that pain, how to access that hurt. It would be the last time I didn’t know.

My parents invite me along for a weekend in Chatham, MA and I gratefully accept. In the air is the misbegotten notion that he might miss me, when my absence would only bring relief at the most, if it registered at all.

The weekend is gray and cold. There is no going back to any hope of Indian summer throwback days – we are too far gone. The first thing I do as my parents settle into the room is to walk to the forlorn, empty beach. It is dark and windy, and the town and beach are deserted. Wind whips wildly around in a savage attack, sparing no bit of shelter or respite. I pull my coat closer around me. In the sky is the promise of an imminent storm, but I don’t care. Dark clouds threaten, the cruel wind stings, and as I arrive at the beach, the sand and salt water shoot poisoned pin-pricks into any exposed skin.

Part of me wants to walk into the ocean, numb myself with its cold, be helplessly drawn out with the undertow, and let come what may. What else could a thinking person want on such a dismal, gray day, in such a dismal, sad world? Of course I don’t, deliberately walking up and down the shore instead, dodging the tide and peering behind at footprints that will come to nothing.

To this day, I can point out which bench I was sitting on when we first spoke. I want to pretend it doesn’t have that power, that it no longer matters, but the memory won’t let me. In Copley Square, before the rising spires of Trinity Church, there are just a few benches that face each other. I pass them first, and then pass him. His eyes, sparkling and blue, glitter in the September sun, and I can’t do anything but stare into them. And so I turn around and settle on one of those benches, pulling out the book I’m reading, ‘The House of Mirth’ by Edith Wharton.

I was not meant to be in Boston today. I was supposed to be at a school newspaper meeting at Brandeis, but halfway through it I knew I would never like being told what I had to write. I snuck out as they were touring their make-shift office space and got on the commuter rail to the city.

It is a beautiful September day – a little on the warm side but when faced with what is to come, quite welcome. For some reason the city seems quieter, and despite the recent influx of college kids, less crowded. Maybe it’s because I only see him.

I read the same page about three times before I acknowledge him sitting on the bench before me, and he is the one who speaks first. It would always be the other guy who speaks first because I will always be too afraid.

He asks if I want to walk with him, and I nod. We turn toward the river. I had never been this way before, and if there’s one thing that makes an indelible impression and memory, it’s discovering some new part of a city you thought you always knew. We must have meandered along the Esplanade, past the Hatch Shell, in the dappled light of the changing trees. I remember the walk, but it is dim and vague, and the only thing I could focus on at the time was him. We are going back to his place, and while I had never done anything like this before, somehow I knew what to do, what I had to do.

At the tender age of nineteen, how could I have been so sure? This was before the ubiquity of the Internet, before ‘Will & Grace’, before Ellen. No one had ever told me it was okay. He was no exception. He told me nothing. To all my questions, he gave out no answers, at one point snapping viciously that he didn’t want anything to do with “this education crap”. That no one had helped him to come out, and he was not about to help anyone else figure it out. But all this had yet to come.

There is no use recounting in detail how our weeks together passed. He was callous and cruel in ways that cut me deeper since it was my first time, and because of that it would take years to thaw the icy boundaries I erected to deal with it.The bigger person I sometimes try to be wants to absolve him of his guilt, but I can’t forgive him for how he treated me.

I am now almost the same age he was when he met me, and I still can’t fathom treating another person like that. At first I thought I might, when I reached this age, but it’s not an age issue. My introduction to the gay world was a cold, cutting, every-man-for-himself attitude that should never have been. There were other atrocities too, darker things that I will never put into words, but I’ve written enough about him already, and it’s not fair to post just one side of the affair – God knows I’ve never been an angel. For now, I am done, and the story ends here.

I wish I could say that it didn’t affect me, and that I was mature and knowledgeable enough to chalk it up to an isolated individual, but I can’t. Even if was just one bad seed, it happened to be the seed I tasted. You can’t get rid of that so easily, no matter how intellectually you understand it shouldn’t matter.

16
September
2010

Tags: Boston, Brandeis, General, Madonna, Music

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The Madonna Timeline: Song #2 ~ ‘Bye Bye Baby’

{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 the iPod shuffles along to ‘Bye Bye Baby’, from 1992’s ‘Erotica’ album. I don’t think this got a proper US release, but I believe it was released overseas in the latter half of 1993, while Madonna was on her “Girlie Show” Tour, and that’s the period of time that comes to mind. She did perform it on the MTV Awards, opening the show with one of her less-than-enthusiastically-received moments at a time when her career was sagging thanks to the ‘Sex’ backlash.

I was entrenched in my first semester at Brandeis University, so I missed the whole show. While all my hometown friends had returned to Amsterdam for homecoming or other nonsense, I stayed away until Thanksgiving. It was just something I had to do – I was not ready to go back. My girlfriend and I had tried to stay together when we left for school, but the long-distance (and gay) factors didn’t really give us a fighting chance, so emotionally things were messy and rather difficult.

Of course, I was the bad guy in the whole scenario, a not wholly unfair categorization, and so I was left feeling attacked and ostracized – which is not unfamiliar territory for me. But in late Fall, when the leaves were down and the wind was cold, it was even more lonely, and rather than throw myself into the Brandeis social scene (cue laughter), I withdrew into myself.

Still, this silly trifling of a song about self-empowerment was a welcome distraction, even if the tiresome vocal distortion was just this side of annoying. The remixes were a riot – with an added-on ‘Star Spangled Banner’ ending to one of them. All in all, an insane song for an insane point in my life.

I don’t want to keep the bright flame of your ego glowing, so I’ll just stop blowing in the wind – to love you is a sin. Adios!

Song #2: Bye Bye Baby – Late Fall, 1993

Category Archives: Brandeis

Still water Still water Steal the moon tonight Before the morning Steal the moon tonight I want to drown in your moon dream I’ve seen you rising from shore to shore I want to drown in your moon dream I’ve seen you rising Steal the moon tonight Shine Shine Shine

There’s a hero

If you look inside your heart

you don’t have to be afraid

of what you are…

There’s an answer If you reach into your soul And the sorrow that you know Will melt away…

And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone Look inside you and be strong And you’ll finally see the truth That a hero lies in you.

It’s a long road When you face the world alone No one reaches out a hand for you to hold. You can find love If you search within yourself And the emptiness you felt will disappear.

The Lord knows dreams are hard to follow But don’t let anyone tear them away Hold on, here will be tomorrow In time, you’ll find the way.

And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive

So when you feel like hope is gone Look inside you and be strong And you’ll finally see the truth That a hero lies in you.

Insecure, whatcha gonna do? Feel so small they could step on you Called you up, answering machine When the human touch Is what I need What I need, what I need, what I need, what I need… Is you I need you.

If you let me breathe…

They’re all out to get you Once again To get you Once again.

One day there’ll be a song or something in the air again To catch me by surprise and you’ll be there again A moment in what might have been…

And though I don’t know where

And don’t know when

I’ll find myself in love again

I promise there will always be

A little place no one will see

A tiny part deep in my heart

That stays in love with you.

You think that I can’t live without your love,

You’ll see.

You think I can’t go on another day.

You think I have nothing without you by my side…

You’ll see – somehow, some way…

You think that I can never laugh again,

You’ll see.

You think that you’ve destroyed my faith in love.

You think after all you’ve done,

I’ll never find my way back home,

You’ll see – somehow, some day…

All by myself, I don’t need anyone at all.

I know I’ll survive, I know I’ll stay alive.

All on my own, I don’t need anyone this time,

It will be mine, no one can take it from me.

You’ll see…

You think that you are strong, but you are weak,

You’ll see.

It takes more strength to cry, admit defeat.

I have truth on my side, you only have deceit,

You’ll see… somehow, some day…

All by myself, I don’t need anyone at all.

I know I’ll survive, I know I’ll stay alive.

I’ll stand on my own, I won’t need anyone this time,

It will be mine, no one can take it from me.

You’ll see.

You’ll see.

Where do we go from here? This isn’t where we intended to be. We had it all – you believed in me. I believed in you.

Certainties disappear, What do we do for our dream to survive? How do we keep all our passions alive, As we used to do?

Deep in my heart I’m concealing Things that I’m longing to say Scared to confess what I’m feeling Frightened you’ll slip away, You must love me, You must love me.

If you want something bad enough, the whole world conspires to help you get it.

Power is being told you are not loved, and not being destroyed by it.

Why are you at my side? How can I be any use to you now? Give me a chance and I’ll let you see how Nothing has changed.

You must love me…

Deep in my heart I’m concealing Things that I’m longing to say Scared to confess what I’m feeling Frightened you’ll slip away, You must love me, You must love me.

You must love me.

I don’t want to keep the bright flame of your ego glowing, so I’ll just stop blowing in the wind – to love you is a sin. Adios!

Song #2: Bye Bye Baby – Late Fall, 1993

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Still water
Still water
Steal the moon tonight
Before the morning
Steal the moon tonight
I want to drown in your moon dream
I’ve seen you rising from shore to shore
I want to drown in your moon dream
I’ve seen you rising
Steal the moon tonight
Shine
Shine
Shine

There’s an answer
If you reach into your soul
And the sorrow that you know
Will melt away…

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive

So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you.

It’s a long road
When you face the world alone
No one reaches out a hand for you to hold.
You can find love
If you search within yourself
And the emptiness you felt will disappear.

The Lord knows dreams are hard to follow
But don’t let anyone tear them away
Hold on, here will be tomorrow
In time, you’ll find the way.

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive

So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you.

Insecure, whatcha gonna do?
Feel so small they could step on you
Called you up, answering machine
When the human touch
Is what I need
What I need, what I need, what I need, what I need…
Is you
I need you.

They’re all out to get you
Once again
To get you
Once again.

One day there’ll be a song or something in the air again
To catch me by surprise and you’ll be there again
A moment in what might have been…

Where do we go from here?
This isn’t where we intended to be.
We had it all – you believed in me.
I believed in you.

Certainties disappear,
What do we do for our dream to survive?
How do we keep all our passions alive,
As we used to do?

Deep in my heart I’m concealing
Things that I’m longing to say
Scared to confess what I’m feeling
Frightened you’ll slip away,
You must love me,
You must love me.

Why are you at my side?
How can I be any use to you now?
Give me a chance and I’ll let you see how
Nothing has changed.

Deep in my heart I’m concealing
Things that I’m longing to say
Scared to confess what I’m feeling
Frightened you’ll slip away,
You must love me,
You must love me.