Taking the pressure off is a summer habit we learn from our very first summers free from school. Somehow, even with jobs that run year-round, some of us manage to maintain that idea of releasing the pressure in the summer months – the living being easy and everything. Even if it doesn’t involve vacations or beach-trips or even time off, there is a mood and atmosphere to summer that slows everything down. This season, I’m jumping on board and taking things a little easier here too – and that begins with a bohemian theme that is really just an excuse to be lazy and messy and unfocused – the best possible attitude to hold for summer.
Doffing the swim trunks and skinny dipping is a bohemian rite of passage, and a fitting entry into the summer season. When you’ve been bound by pants and belts and shirts and ties since last summer, there is a fundamental freedom in gliding through the water completely unfettered. Summer unfurls in liberating fashion, recalling the heady glory of that last day of school. I remember walking home from a last day of fifth or sixth grade and throwing my pencils up in the air like some graduation commercial.
Summer in these parts has always been coupled with music – and every first day of the season comes with a musical accompaniment. Here are a few of those songs and related posts:
Last summer it was ‘How We Used to Live‘ – a song that went back decades to a summer in Boston. Later that night, it was all about the ‘Summer Wine‘.
June 2019 feels like a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was one of the last moments of innocence before we all understood what a deadly worldwide pandemic was really like – even if we didn’t want to know. The music was lighter, as were the blog posts, and I’m still looking for the way back there.
As for this summer and its bohemian spirit, I’m going to do my best to keep things relaxed and easy, taking the moments as they come, inhabiting each day whether it’s sunny or rainy or something infuriatingly in-between. Summer should be the least-serious season, and I’m just starting to celebrate that. Swimsuits off!
Norma Desmond may not be the ideal image of a human being aging gracefully, considering she ended up murdering a bloke when confronted with her own age and reality, but the woman who portrayed her so magnificently, Gloria Swanson, had quite a different story. Swanson turned her life after ‘Sunset Boulevard’ into one glorious adventure after another, and while she never matched the once-in-a-lifetime frisson of her portrayal of Ms. Desmond, she went on to live quite a happily-ever-after, and so we take a page out of her 1972 book to revisit these wonderful photographs by Allan Warren (a fuller set of which may be found on Trey Speegle’s exquisite website here). They form the inspirational kick-off for my summer wardrobe, and since caftans forgive the most devilish of middle-age paunches I’m running with it. Aside from the free-flowing form, however, I’m transfixed by the colors – both of her outfit and the surrounding green of her Fifth Avenue apartment.
The idea of summer in New York City has fascinated me, and as much as I attempted to avoid it, there would invariably come a moment when I had to be in the city for something in the middle of summer, and I always wondered how the locals did it for the entire season. When the heat got into absolutely every stationary thing – sidewalk, street, cement, building, subway station, stairwell, and entryway – I wondered how anyone kept their cool. For someone like Ms. Swanson, it appears she stayed chill by keeping her wardrobe vibrant and alive. That brings us to a song from the 1970 musical ‘Applause’ which was a loose musical adaptation of ‘All About Eve’. Flashes of brilliance from the black-and-white past lend a summer sparkle to this last post of spring.
Like Lauren Bacall, who starred in ‘Applause’, Swanson was a show-business survivor. These photos were reportedly taken in her apartment at 4 AM after she finished a performance in one of her shows. I’ve seen an interview where she recalls getting her second wind at 11 PM. As someone who’s typically in bed at that time after sleeping through his first wind, I’m struck by the drive it takes to make one a star, and how that drive never really goes away for some people.
I’m also struck by the idea of a New York City apartment in the 1970’s – this one looks like a quieter cousin of the one held by Diana Vreeland, so boldly soaked in red, red, RED. It conjures the notion of creating little floating hubs of beauty in the midst of a city besieged by heat and humidity and the general stickiness of summer.
Such colorful fabulousness is a much-appreciated jolt in a season that hasn’t given us many hints of warmth in the last few weeks. Perhaps this post will change that as we turn the page to summer proper.
If you’re on the hunty hunt for a banging and blessedly-brief Pride anthem, look no further than our reigning pop royalty pairing of Madonna and Sam Smith in their new collaboration ‘Vulgar’. This is arguably Madonna’s best release since some of the cuts on her 2015 ‘Rebel Heart’ album, and comes at a time when we need new Madonna music after the lackluster reception of 2019’s ‘Madame X’. It’s not even a full song, or what most of us would consider a full pop song (“Don’t need a chorus!”), but it is just enough – a tantalizing tease from two of the most brilliantly provocative and controversial artists who continually refuse to be cowered by the haters.
Speak, bitch, and say our fucking names…
Look like I’m dressed to kill, love how I make me feel All black in stripper heels, mood like Madonna Rich like I’m in the Louvre, got nothin’ left to prove You know you’re beautiful when they call you vulgar I do what I wanna, I go when I gotta I’m sexy, I’m free and I feel…
VULGAR
When the world attacks and criticizes, when you begin to doubt and wonder at your worth or value, and when they call you names like Vulgar, it’s sometimes wise to quietly assess and consider what they’re really saying. It’s easy to retreat in order to regroup, to hide and hunker down out of sight and out of mind. It might also make sense to go away for a bit, slinking into the shadows when the heat gets to be too much. That’s certainly my initial instinct when faced with adversity or disagreement.
And then I remember who I really am, and all the things I’ve already been through to get here. The things I’ve done to myself will never be surpassed by what someone else might say about or do to me, and there is defiance and freedom and pride in that. This song embodies that fighting spirit, exemplified by two pop stars who have been through the public ringer.
“They didn’t always get the life they wanted, but they knew how to dream… And maybe that’s the true definition of an eccentric – someone who can’t be slain by what lesser people might say.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan
Let’s get into the groove, you know just what to do Boy, get down on your knees ’cause I am Madonna If you fuck with Sam tonight, you’re fucking with me So watch what you say or I’ll split your banana We do what we wanna, we say what we gotta We’re sexy and free and we feel…
VULGAR
My tea is strong, and though I may recklessly spill it from time to time, it’s always authentic. Far too often we try to be the person we think the world wants us to be, without indulging in who we genuinely are. The older I get, the less time I have for that sort of pretend, and there is something very liberating about that. People will believe what they want to believe about you, so maintaining a strong sense of self is one of the universal challenges we all face. Sam Smith and Madonna know that better than most, and I’m taking inspiration from this banger.
Vulgar is beautiful, filthy, and gorgeous Vulgar will make you dance, don’t need a chorus Say we’re ridiculous, we’ll just go harder Mad and meticulous, Sam and Madonna Speak, bitch, and say our fucking names
Speak, bitch, and say our fucking names
Speak, bitch, and say our fucking names
A waltz that works as a meditation and references a dying poet is my kind of music. It’s the sort of piece that embodies this meandering post of late spring, when the world about us burns, the sky has turned deadly, and the tenuous hold we each think we have on the universe has been knocked out of our desperate grasp. At such a dizzying moment, I find it best to regroup and find peace through mindfulness and beauty, which is also a good way to head into summer – that time of the year when we begin to unwind and relax… so let us waltz.
The Flower Clock ticks its pretty time away but a waltz takes its 3/4 time signature and molds it into whatever the mood demands. For now, that is a meditative pause while we wait, some of us literally, for the air to clear. What might this portend for a summer? Something hot? Something cruel? Something #hotgirl?
These almost-summer days remind me of practicing the oboe – the sound of scales and endless arpeggios marking rhythmic magic in hypnotizing fashion. As the school years neared their end, there was always some recital or concert to form the final anxiety-inducing hurdle, some last-stage test we had to overcome if we were to make it through to summer vacation. I practiced to ease the worry that being unprepared supposedly conjured, even when the worry was so much more than that.
These days, worries come in different forms, more serious and troubling forms, and rather than playing the oboe to calm down (a highly questionable practice in the quest for calm) I’ve continued my daily meditation, pausing for twenty minutes each day to focus on deep breathing and clearing the mind. Mindfulness is the one true solution to lessening worry and anxiety. If you are truly present and occupied by what is immediately around you – each glimpse of prettiness, each peek at simplicity – it pushes more silly concerns to the side.
At this time of the year, there is always something beautiful to be found. A stroll in the yard, no matter how small, can always yield a picture of joy if one slows down enough to notice everything. June is abundant in such beauty, so I’m going to end this post and enjoy the garden on a quiet Sunday morning.
Fever dream high in the quiet of the night You know that I caught it Bad, bad boy Shiny toy with a price You know that I bought it
Killing me slow, out the window I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes What doesn’t kill me makes me want you more
Summer seems to hit differently that way, our memories somehow more succinct and holding more powerful sway over our present than anything we might recall from a cold stale winter. Maybe they mean more and last longer because we want summer to do the same. All that drama is neatly encapsulated in this simple pop song by Taylor Swift rather tritely entitled ‘Cruel Summer’.
And it’s new, the shape of your body It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got And it’s ooh, whoa, oh It’s a cruel summer It’s cool, that’s what I tell ’em No rules in breakable heaven But ooh, whoa oh It’s a cruel summer With you
Many a Swiftie considers the bridge in ‘Cruel Summer’ to be one of her best, and my niece confirmed this as she all but shouted out the lyrics when it hit. (Not sure how much experience a 13-year-old has had being drunk in the backseat of a car, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) The notion of summer being cruel has long been a delicious juxtaposition of the sunny season and anything that happens to go wrong during that time. (And there is more than one song that takes the ‘Cruel Summer’ title.) I too adore that kind of tension – it lends a gravitas to summer that its more celebrated lightness and frivolity tends to obscure.
Hang your head low In the glow of the vending machine I’m not dying You say that we’ll just screw it up in these trying times We’re not trying
So cut the headlights, summer’s a knife I’m always waiting for you just to cut to the bone Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes And if I bleed, you’ll be the last to know
Swift adds her own brand of melodrama to a season that often comes rife with enough drama of its own, heightening the effect with images of summer nights and misguided obsessions, sneaking through garden gates and blissfully diving into mistakes with heated abandon. Summer provides the necessary backdrop, and occasional impetus, for all of it to happen, and looking back at summers past we’ve all indulged in such folly and foolishness, such as squeezing into a blue Speedo and baking our skin in the midday sun. Those foibles are silly and minor when you contrast them with the deliberate ransacking of one’s heart, all in an effort to make one summer mean more than it might genuinely merit. Summers can be as much like knives as they are like people – variable, sharp, cutting – and embodying a diabolical beauty and sinister elegance. They can burn or hiss or soothe or wimper, crackling with dry heat or smoldering with fetid humidity. The heat does something to the passion that gets unleashed in the coming months. It messes with the mind. It clouds the judgment. It hazes the sight. Midsummer madness is much more than mere alliteration.
I’m drunk in the back of the car And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (oh) Said, “I’m fine, ” but it wasn’t true I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you And I snuck in through the garden gate Every night that summer just to seal my fate (oh) And I screamed for whatever it’s worth “I love you, ” ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard? He looks up grinning like a devil…
A single line of sweat, started by a single bead of liquid, spills down the body, tickling and invoking an involuntary arching of the back. A bumblebee buzzes by in lumbering flight, its fuzzy body dusted by pretty pollen. A wailing cicada ticks away the midpoint of the day. Heat emanates from everywhere, even the shaded spaces, and eventually there is nowhere that provides respite. This is the summer we need. This is the summer we want. This is cruel in the best possible way.
Just when I thought we might not have an unofficial Pride Anthem this year, Kylie Minogue comes along to snatch the Queen of the Gays title back from whomever had it last with her new bop ‘Padam Padam’ from her upcoming album ‘Tension’. For that alone she would earn this Dazzler of the Day, but Minogue has a long history of gay anthems in her pocket to back it all up further. I’m old enough to remember her first storming of the US charts with a remake of ‘Locomotion’ back in the 1980’s and since then she’s been a favorite of my community. Check out the new song and video below.
Taking a picture of a picture and playing with reflections can reveal a portal into the past. The young man in the forefront is all of 18 years old, while the older, grayer man in shadow, looking like he is peering amusedly over his shoulder, is heading toward 48. Three decades of difference and wondering at the world around them is revealed in this single shot. It’s easy to say that with age comes wisdom, and largely that may prove to be true, but when I look back at myself at that time, there was a certain wisdom inherent in innocence and not knowing things that carried its own weight and import. Of course, that was often overshadowed by the misguided pride and exuberance of youth, and the unabashed revelry one finds upon returning home for the summer after a year at college.
On my headphones, and originating from a walkman we once had to carry in our hands, this Janet Jackson song, ‘Love Will Never Do (Without You)’ played its booming melody and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis magnificence. With a video gorgeously directed by Herb Ritts, complete with more than a few erotic undertones (and some homoerotic ones for those looking really hard) this song became a summer anthem for me, and still brings me back to those carefree days…
Our friends think we’re opposites Falling in and out of love They’ve all said we’d never last Still, we manage to stay together
May had arrived in all its heady glory. Faced with the luxurious prospect of three summer months of freedom, my Virgo nature also understood it needed some sort of structure and plan to feel completely comfortable, and so I started a daily jogging regime, followed by a swim in the pool. It kept track of the days, provided a basic blueprint around which to organize a day, and kept me in shape.
While I would never quite be devastatingly cute enough to be a proper twink, I teetered on the brink of twinkdom on my best days, and in the warped, overcompensating method of finding self-confidence through faking it, I flagrantly began to revel in my youth in the way everyone should during its brief years of dominance. The robust confidence that came after a single year away at school left me feeling undeservedly superior and slightly smug, and I’m just thankful I didn’t turn into a total monster.
Pounding the pavement as delicately as I could muster while jogging (and doing my best to avoid shin splints) I embraced the warm days and looked forward to traveling around my small hometown, which felt even smaller after a year’s glimpse at more expansive places. Halfway through these runs I’d doff my shirt, as much for pleasure as it was for comfort – the sun felt wonderful, especially when I recalled practically crying when the 20th snowstorm of the year barreled across the campus of Brandeis just a few short, and cold, months earlier. It was also a relief to be freed from sweaty clothing – nipple-chafing is a very real and painful thing – I don’t care how deeply one might enjoy some nipple-play. There was also something vain in it – the body and mind wanting to reveal themselves for reasons that went back centuries, and it felt as primal as it did imposed by a society that celebrated sex for all its selling points.
There’s no easy explanation for it But whenever there’s a problem We always work it out somehow Work it out somehow
They said it wouldn’t last We had to prove them wrong ‘Cause I’ve learned in the past That love would never do without you
Sprinting into the final days of my teenage years, I yearned for adulthood before realizing I had already entered it – the body advancing so much sooner than the mind. In-between girlfriends, and not quite having arrived at boyfriends yet, my love for this song was questionable given my relative inexperience in all things having to do with romance. Yet it spoke to me, and in a powerful way, and every summer that followed I would return to its spell, happily entranced by the notion of love, even if I had no love affair of my own to set to its music.
Other guys have tried before To replace you as my lover Never did I have a doubt Boy, it’s you I can’t do without
I feel better when I have you near me ‘Cause no other love around Has quite the same, ooh, ooh Like you do, do, do, do babe
Winding my way back home, I slowed as I neared our block, beginning the cool down that would culminate with a dip in the pool, dousing the fire that burned all about the body – a delicious denouement to the only work I had to do that summer. It was an indulgence – a harmless decadence that took place mostly in my mind because all of this happened in solitude. After years of doubting myself, and having others doubt me, it felt like a beginning of something else – a more genuine sort of self-love, of learning that I could be ok on my own. I didn’t see it then, but this song would not end up being the soundtrack to some great romance with anyone else – it would be the giddy and surprisingly reliable accompaniment to the love affair we should all be having with ourselves.
They said it wouldn’t last We had to prove them wrong ‘Cause I’ve learned in the past That love would never do without you
And so that May passed all too quickly – and that brief time in which I thought I was hot shit, and maybe I was, would prove to wither like so many spring blossoms that weren’t designed to last in the heat. Did I make the most of it? For the most part, yes. Do I wish I had realized more fully what a lovely thing it was to be young? Yes. That too. Do I miss the underlying wonder, panic and worry at not knowing what I should be doing and not knowing what I wanted to be doing? Not a bit, because it still fuels me to this day.
As for this song, it’s still a bop, still a summer dream, still a portal to the lusty month of May, when a young man once ran away from his youth, on the hunt for love.
(They said it wouldn’t last) (They said) hey (They said it wouldn’t) what do you want? (They said it wouldn’t last)
If you believe in love, sing (Love will never do) (Love will never do without you)
With a new album and tour, the Jonas Brothers are all sorts of busy for the next few months, bringing their fans to a frothing tizzy thanks to a successful maturations that most ‘boy bands’ don’t usually achieve. That may be due to their genuine musical talent and knack at writing a decent song, and the ‘boy band’ label might be an unjust one if we take it to mean the usual manufactured pretty boys thrown together to please a wide demographic. No such contrived machinations hinder these brothers, so feel free to indulge in their music with gusto.
Originally intended to convey a certain freshness or wonder at the world, Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ has endured over the decades thanks to its multiple levels of meaning and widely-varied incarnations. My favorite rendition remains her entrancing and then-scandalous performance of the song during her Blonde Ambition Tour, in which she introduced the world to cone-bras on male dancers, and simulated self-pleasure on a velvet-topped scarlet bed. With Middle Eastern musical accents and a slow-burn take on her classic #1 hit, the ‘Like A Virgin‘ of 1990 was a wild reimagining that went far beyond a ‘freshness’ and into decidedly sultry territory – Madonna finally giving in and culminating in the sexual gratification that everyone (wrongfully) assumed the song was about from the beginning.
For me, this version embodies the glamorous and glorious spring of 1991, when ‘Truth or Dare’ was about to take the world by summer storm, kicked off by Madonna’s scene-stealing underwear show at the top of the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival. It was a legendary Madonna moment, and sowed the seeds of an era of sexy self-reflection that would later find full flowering in her ‘Erotica’/’Sex/ project. Back then, it seemed slightly salacious, but today it feels like a quaint little ripple compared to the tsunamis to come. And so ‘Like A Virgin’ was about a certain innocence after all, a fresh look at a fresh season starting all over again.
Our purple celebration continues from this violet post with these tulips – one of the emblematic flowers of May. This one come with a song, a song that should run over the end credits of our latest episode, which involves changes and shifts in houses and homes and our steady traipse toward older age. Life advances, no matter how much we may want to slow its irrevocable cadence forward.
It’s a good song for the last full month of spring, and the color of these tulips may be a harbinger for the coming summer (there’s also a golden orange hue that Gloria Swanson wore in a photo shoot that I will be using as another inspiration color for the season of the sun). These trifling concerns distract from the heaviness that has engulfed us for the last few years.
So let us find joy in the little things – the tulips, the purple, the song – and the Saturday at hand.
With Mercury in retrograde and a full moon coming up later in the week, things seem to be a little topsy-turvy, and I’m doing my best to lie low and stay out of the wrecking ball’s path. Putting on ‘Evening Song’ first thing in the morning, on a Tuesday that already feels burdened by clouds and rain, is how I will endeavor to begin. Philip Glass has a way of lulling one into a state of hopeful resignation through his undulating patterns, and that’s the sort of vibe we need today.
A sense of transformation informs some of his work, the way the world changes from shades of gray to full color when certain people enter and exit during the course of a day. Some speak more in their absence than with their presence, and I’ve always wanted to be one of those people. The ones who leave an impression so astounding that they are talked about more when they are not in a room than when they might be in it. The ones who elicit a sigh or a click of consternation when you catch their fragrance. The ones who matter when so many of us simply don’t.
The May sweeps period of television used to be when the shows put out their best rating-grabbers, often ending with a dramatic cliffhanger to keep people talking and guessing for the rest of the summer, hopefully enough to insist that they return in the fall. I loved the drama of it all, and I have no shame in aging myself to say that I was just coming into childhood cognizance when the big cliffhanger of the 80’s left everyone wondering ‘Who killed J.R.?’ on ‘Dallas’. In fact, that whole scenario informed a substantial part of what I would later do in life in that I would do my damndest to be the person who was on everyone’s lips, the guy who, if knocked off, would inspire a frenzy of suspects too numerous to narrow down because he’d created such a stir his entire life. It’s not easy to cull that kind of broad and sustained hatred, not the kind that makes people actively want to kill you – but that didn’t stop me from trying, whether intentionally or subconsciously. All these years later, I remember J.R., but not the would-be killer, because sometimes that’s how life works. The villains get all the glory, even when they become the victims; I learned that dangerous lesson and ran with it the wrong way.
The cliffhanger from this previous post found my much-younger self having just procured the phone number of a gentleman who was the first person to show any interest one following the fallout from the first man who kissed me. That fallout was more damaging than originally understood, and if there is any excuse to offer for my bratty behavior, it’s that. And it still won’t exonerate my guilt at how I treated another human being. Back then, I simply didn’t care. Not about him, and certainly not about myself.
Once upon there was light in my life
Now there’s only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart…
Back to that train platform on a glorious spring afternoon, where I stared down at the name and phone number written by a man I’d not even exchanged a word with on the train. In neat block figures, it was such a simple and seemingly-insignificant thing, but at that pre-internet time it was the only way I would have of finding out who he might be, the only way of making a tenuous connection. Fate and destiny and luck and coincidence informed so much of our lives before it was all so readily available online. It made things more difficult in many ways, but oh so much richer and more meaningful. It was as if the stars guided us rather than manipulated keystrokes to research and become who we thought someone might want us to be. All I had to go on was his smile, already fading in my mind’s memory, a name and a phone number. And somehow it was enough.
Never one to indulge in playing the hard-to-get games (as later suitors would unfortunately discover) I only waited a few hours to call him, because there was never any question on whether I would call. (Cliffhanger my ass.) The question was what I would say or do when I did call.
Without deliberately intending to do so, I kept my aloofness and distance, mainly from habit but also from the recent wounds that part of me realized hadn’t even started to heal. When I dialed the number from my dorm room, it was more of a dare to myself, a challenge to get back into the dating pool, and a gauntlet to see how bad I might be.
That spring and summer I was completely channeling Linda Fiorentino’s ferocious character in ‘The Last Seduction’ (not at all a worthy romantic aspiration by any stretch of the imagination) – my heart was on guard and safely barricaded from the previous fall’s romantic fiasco, and this gentleman, sweet as he might be, would pay the price of stumbling into such wayward behavior.
I don’t remember much about that first phone call. He had a deep voice and sounded slightly nervous. He still lived at home with his parents and was in Boston for an interview I think. He was also apparently not out yet, and in the debilitating way I had back then of comparing anything and everything, I realized that I had the upper hand there. I would give him his first book of gay literature, bring him to his first Broadway play, and introduce him to a world of pants entirely bereft of pleats. More than that, I would rain down emotional hell-fire, mental manipulation, and just plain meanness and cruelty. It would amaze me how much a young man could get away with when someone was taken with his beauty, especially when he never felt beautiful.
With just a few scant weeks before the end of that spring semester, it seemed futile to me to start a new relationship, especially when I’d be away for the entire summer, but somehow we managed to meet at least once or twice, taking a couple of steamy car-rides and pausing for parking-lot make-out sessions where I felt keenly that he was way more into me than I would ever be into him. That was good though, in the warped way my mind was processing romance at the time. Better to be the object of desire and have some say in the way things went. At the end of it all, I gave him my home phone number, and throughout the ensuing spring and summer we’d share sporadic phone calls. I remember visiting friends in Rochester and sneaking out to the car on a rainy May night to call him. It was raining and ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ came on the radio and I wondered at what I was doing. Every call was a dangled promise, a dare to keep thinking of me – of us, if we could fathom such a term at sun an early point – and he held on, seemingly as lonely as I would never admit myself to be.
I’d told him about a gay novel I’d just read and he sought it out and read it, and the idea that I might have such influence on another person made him suddenly repellant to me. His pronouncement that he might be falling in love, pulled forcefully from his lips with the blunt lack of precision by my immature guile, only emboldened me to be cold and dismissive. Not seeing myself as worthy of being loved, I derided anyone else who saw the opposite. Yes, I was that far lost, that fucked-up. And the more I pushed him away, the crueler I could be, the more we both inadvertently played into ‘The Rules’. By the time I returned in the fall, torturing him by phone felt like a cozy habit, and when he presented me with a poster of the cover of the book I’d suggested to him, his earnest hope of pleasing me carried the whiff of everything repulsive to me. I hated myself instantly for feeling that, but knew no other way around it, or any way to hide it.
When met with such disdain, he didn’t fight or flee, but rather tried to wrap his head around it. I could see him sometimes trying to work it out in his head, and feel even more contemptuous annoyance toward him for that. Far from my finest moment, this wasn’t helping me heal, or helping me move on, and rather than be honest and cut it all off, I kept it going, trying to be sweet and kind when I saw his hurt, trying to temper and reconcile the lack of respect I had for him with the genuine kindness he tried to show me. To my detriment and shame, I strung him along as a plaything rather than anyone serious, discarding his feelings in a way strikingly similar to how I’d been treated a year or so before. It was so obvious I made myself sick seeing it all play out, and so I treated him even worse, seeing what horrendous things I could say and get away with, defiling and degrading him in and out of the bedroom. There was nothing precious about such a power play, and something in me knew it would harden my heart in ways that might not be undoable, but I didn’t care.
I’ll write about the rest some other night, later in spring, when the dander is up again – when I don’t need to sleep for the start of another week…
It was only a partial eclipse, but it was enough to cast a spell of shadow across my afternoon walk back to the dorm. Near the end of my first year at Brandeis, we were in the midst of a celebrated annual eclipse – I looked it up, and it happened on May 10, 1994. I remember it distinctly; I was under the newly-leafed-out maple trees near Hassenfeld – my dorm building – when the event was happening, and while I noticed a slight dimming of the day, what I saw more vividly were the shadows of crescents on the path before me. It struck me how frightening such a phenomenon might have appeared to centuries of people before me. Knowing what was happening rendered it more intriguing than frightening, and I took a few photos of the shadows. Somewhere those photos are in an old shoe box, waiting to be excavated on a day when there’s time for such boredom.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit lonely And you’re never coming ’round
It would be a year later when a thumping dance cover of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ by Nicki French would take the gay scene by spring storm, and it formed the soundtrack to the adventures with the second man I ever kissed. That’s the memory at work here, and it’s fitting that an actual eclipse kicked it off.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit tired Of listening to the sound of my tears
At the tail end of my sophomore year at Brandeis, I’d mostly given up on men before I even really started. The first guy who ever kissed me had proven to be more damaging than I realized at the time; his harrowing and haunting hold on me, no matter how much I disputed and denied it, was dangerously informing all the kisses that followed. And maybe I was a little more reckless than I should have been. Whatever the case, it was a warm spring afternoon as I waited for the commuter rail at Porter Square, which would take me back to my dorm room at Brandeis.
I don’t recall what I’d done in Boston that day, but I do remember the tall, blonde-haired gentleman who stood across from me in pleated olive pants (two hapless strikes in one bad pair of trousers). He’d noticed me too – I was keenly aware of such things – and I saw he held his gaze a little longer than necessary. In an age before Grinder and social media, this was how gay men met. It was a veiled world of codes and subtle cadences – entire histories and desires could be read in a few furtive glances, interest gleaned from the slightest nod or hesitation.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit nervous That the best of all the years have gone by
After Tom, I wasn’t really looking for men, in spite of how I talked and carried myself. It was easier to be saucy and sordid than genuine and vulnerable. Safer too. When he watched me my gaze was anywhere other than back at him. Nobody played aloof better than me and already it felt less like playing and more like the life I was actively and desperately carving out for myself. With practiced sighs of boredom, I wanted to appear as though I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was – mostly people left you alone that way.
(Whenever I indulge in looking back, the closest I come to regret is in thinking of how disdainful I could be to the world, and how much I pushed myself to being alone when it was the last thing I really wanted.)
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit terrified And then I see the look in your eyes
We were both early for the train, and there were only a few other people around, so this went on for some time. Feeling his eyes on me was a different sensation than the usual notice I would garner from my sartorial arsenal. It wasn’t interest in a coat or a bag or a pair of shoes – it was interest in my person, in the physical shell of my body. I felt him size up my hair and face, my chest, the spread of my thighs as I sat on a rigid bench across from him. I felt him notice every motion of my hands, every shuffle of my feet. A few times I would pause and deliberately catch him staring to which he averted his eyes, pretending it wasn’t happening. Such games we once played, such silly wastes of time.
The advance of commuters was upon us, and more people filled the little waiting area. I shifted my backpack onto my lap as people squeezed onto the bench beside me. He continued to stare and study, drinking me up as I drank up his interest, until it was finally apparent what was happening. At last I looked into his eyes for a moment, holding on a little longer than almost any other man would have done for another man. He broke first, and smiled broadly before a quick chuckle that shook his shoulders slightly. I smiled back, but briefly, not quite willing, or, quite frankly, knowing, what to do next, other than keep my distance.
(Turn around, bright eyes) Every now and then I fall apart (Turn around, bright eyes) Every now and then I fall apart
Pushing the memory of that first kiss from my mind, I let the smile leave my face and took out a book. It struck me that the man had nothing with him – not a bag or briefcase, not a coat or jacket – only the billowy pockets of his pleated pants, and perhaps one on the front of his white baggy button-down shirt. What brought him to Boston on such a day, what had he done to land him at Porter Square, and where might he be going? Despite the fear, despite the past, I was suddenly interested, piqued by his surreptitious engagement with the college-age young man I was then.
The rumbling of the commuter rail left us scrambling up to the platform, and I followed him at a distance – keeping him just far enough away to not appear overly-zealous. He sat near the front of the car, and lots of seats were available for the taking. I took one a few rows back, where I could see him still but he couldn’t see me. I would be in control this time – if this ended up being a time.
(Turn around) Every now and then I get a little bit restless And I dream of something wild
He turned around to look at me, then beyond me, just once. And then I saw him take out a scrap of paper from his pocket, and a pen, and scribble something down.
The conductor called out Belmont, as the train tilted to its side – the memorable mark of Belmont in my mind – then we righted and resumed our journey. Next stop was Waverley, then Waltham, and as we neared the Brandeis/Roberts stop I wondered if this was all in my mind. I would have to walk by the man on my way out, and my brain was scrambling how to play it – and whether to bother playing it at all. Equally enchanted and exhausted by how humans seemed to have to work to connect, I felt a flash of utter defeat and hopelessness, and a relief at a life of solitude. And then something came over me as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and marched down the aisle.
And I need you now tonight And I need you more than ever And if you only hold me tight We’ll be holding on forever And we’ll only be making it right ‘Cause we’ll never be wrong
I can’t describe what was happening as I walked toward the exit before the train had even come to its Brandeis/Roberts stop – whether it was a surge of adrenaline as I felt my heart thumping in my chest, or a last grasp at what might be something romantic. He was directly to my right, sitting by himself in a double-seat, and he looked up at me – the first time he would ever look up at me given his height – and I was about to let it all go when my body abruptly stopped. I turned to face him, and in one smooth, deft motion I unfurled the palm of my hand, into which he placed the piece of paper with his phone number on it. Closing my hand around it, I continued to the exit without saying a word. All these years later, it’s still probably the smoothest, scariest, and best-executed move of any of my romantic endeavors.
Clutching it madly, I walked away from the train platform without looking up at any of the passing windows, and only when it was gone entirely from view did I hurriedly open it up and gaze down upon his name and number.
Together we can take it to the end of the line Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time (all of the time)
I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight Forever’s gonna start tonight (Forever’s gonna start tonight)
Once upon a time I was falling in love But now I’m only falling apart There’s nothing I can do A total eclipse of the heart
Did I call him? That’s a story for another post, as this has gone entirely more moody than a Saturday blog post should ever be. I promise to tell the rest when the dander isn’t up…
Covering the songs of other artists with his new album ‘High Drama’, Adam Lambert showcases his vocal prowess while expanding familiar territory into moodier and more dramatic landscapes. As his fans fondly recall, Lambert began his remarkable ascent singing the songs of others on ‘American Idol’ before taking things into his own more-than-capable hands. This album is a return to those early days, highlighting his talents for reinventing what we thought we already knew. He earns the Dazzler of the Day because no one dazzles quite like Adam. Check out his website here for everything he’s got planned.
Barrier-breaking gay country singer Hayden Joseph is a bit of an anomaly in a genre of music stereotypically not exactly welcoming or open to LGBTQ+ participants, but he hopes that is changing (and here’s an example of how it may be). Being brave is sometimes just the result of being yourself, and Joseph earns this Dazzler of the Day for being living proof of that. Check out his website here for more:
A South Carolina native, Hayden Joseph is no stranger to the Country Music scene. His love for the genre started as soon as he could talk and has continued to blossom throughout his adult life. Hayden blends the sounds of Modern Country and Mainstream Pop music, drawing inspiration from the genre-bending melodies of Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks, and Shania Twain. His unique sound, heartfelt lyrics, and Southern Charm have captivated audiences across the country.
Hayden prides himself in the inclusive nature of his lyrics, as an openly gay male pursuing a country music career. “The songs I write are rooted in personal experiences, but I challenge myself to write lyrics that are applicable to many walks of life.” He hopes to continue breaking barriers and being a driving force in the changing country music tide.
His debut album, “Different” was released in Spring of 2021, logging more than 500k streams to date. Its follow-up singles this summer have seen even more rapid trajectories, while Hayden’s message of expanding country music’s perspectives has garnered him nearly 200K TikTok followers, led to features in “People” magazine, and landed notable Spotify editorial placements.
