Category Archives: Music

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds —justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” ~ Anne Rice

Once upon a time I lived life like a vampire. Inhabiting the blackness of a castle – yes, a true castle, which is never nearly as romantic as one thinks it is – I roamed cold and clammy hallways, floating down dim stone stairwells, and avoiding the piercing bits of light that peeked into tiny windows of turrets. Castles are only good for their gorgeous darkness – they offer little comfort otherwise, unless you are in need of defense. And even then they can only keep things out of themselves; not once did they protect my heart. 

I learned a lot in that castle, and during that part of my life, which should have been far lonelier than I ever allowed myself to feel. Some self-preserving instinct deep inside of me signaled a dire warning that if I had faced the loneliness then it would have won, taking me down entirely, and likely forever. The castle outwardly illustrated how to construct a fortress of the heart, though I may have known that before I ever stepped into such a cruel edifice. And perhaps my heart didn’t deserve such protection. God, if such a thing exists, may not have had much empathy for my existence, and being a vampire was probably a step up from what certain others actually thought of me.

Hate to give the satisfaction, asking how you’re doing now
How’s the castle built off people you pretend to care about?
Just what you wanted
Look at you, cool guy, you got it
I see the parties and the diamonds sometimes when I close my eyes
Six months of torture you sold as some forbidden paradise
I loved you truly
Gotta laugh at the stupidity

Monster.

Dick.

Evil.

[Sigh.]

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before…

Vampires have long held a bad reputation. I’m not saying they don’t deserve it, or even that they’re real – I’m just saying it’s bad, and as someone who’s been vilified in ways both just and unfair, I know what that’s like. There’s a loneliness there, and occasionally a stance of sympathy from those who enjoy a dance with the devil, beneath the pale moonlight or not. (You know the moonlight of which I speak.)

Like the vampire, I’ve committed acts of atrocity, mostly in my youth, the way most of us do – being careless with the hearts of others, caring too much for this heart of mine, and behaving in cruel, reckless, feckless, fuck-them-if-they-can’t-take-a-joke form. The unevolved part of me that relishes in such villainy takes a degree of pride in that, the same way that I pretend not to boast about my penchant for making people cry. 

‘Cause I’ve made some real big mistakes
But you make the worst one look fine
I should’ve known it was strange
You only come out at night
I used to think I was smart
But you made me look so naive
The way you sold me for parts
As you sunk your teeth into me, oh
Bloodsucker, famefucker
Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire

Did I mean to hurt the people that I hurt? For the most part no, and that may be the tragic irony of it all. Because the people I intended to hurt didn’t always feel it – or if they did they never showed it, and where’s the fun in that? It only served to make me try harder, to raise the level of diabolical emotional pain I might inflict, ensuring that the next time I struck the wound would prove viciously debilitating. Innocent people got injured then – the flying shrapnel of my torment an unintentional but mandatory aspect when you’re out to cause pain of any kind. Destruction begets destruction, especially where emotions are concerned. Rarely does one heart get broken without others being affected. Back then I didn’t care. I couldn’t. Caring that much would have been a hindrance and a luxury, and my heart preferred to live in stark, unencumbered fashion; being selfish is always easier than being selfless – and who, in their heart of hearts, really wants to be without a self? “I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit” – and you will always blame me for your own weakness. 

And every girl I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news
You called them crazy, God, I hate the way I called them crazy too
You’re so convincing
How do you lie without flinching? (How do you lie, how do you lie, how do you lie?)
Ooh, what a mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked-up little thrill
Can’t figure out just how you do it, and God knows I never will
Went for me, and not her
‘Cause girls your age know better

I’ve made some real big mistakes
But you make the worst one look fine
I should’ve known it was strange
You only come out at night
I used to think I was smart
But you’ve made me look so naive
The way you sold me for parts
As you sunk your teeth into me, oh
Bloodsucker, famefucker
Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire

It is in the vampire’s nature to kill. Murder, for them, is a means of survival. You can’t blame a polar bear or a hippopotamus for trying to end you if you’ve encroached upon their turf, and the shark that nibbles at your calf and the snake that bites you after a warning rattle are only being their authentic selves. If it was the vampire’s nature to be murderous, it was in my nature to be cruel. Maybe my nature was cultivated from nurture – I’m in no mood to argue that one way or another – I only acknowledge that by the time I moved into a castle my nature was set in stone, like some blue-ringed octopus that only wanted to be left alone. 

Well, I’m giving myself too much credit in trying to take away the notion that my choices were somehow an inevitable and uncontrollable aspect of my being when they were, after all, choices; the purpose of this post is to own up to the evil that once entranced me, and may yet again, because once you’ve tasted such a thing it’s hard to not want it when the opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities arise when the heart is weak and the soul is weary; evil often flourishes in the aftermath of pain. A sadistic streak, having once calmed the hurt of a broken heart, might feel good again following similar circumstances of being wronged. The grooves are still there, the path remains apparent. 

You said it was true love, but wouldn’t that be hard?
You can’t love anyone, ’cause that would mean you had a heart
I tried you help you out, now I know that I can’t
‘Cause how you think’s the kind of thing I’ll never understand

I’ve made some real big mistakes
But you make the worst one look fine
I should’ve known it was strange
You only come out at night
I used to think I was smart
But you made me look so naive
The way you sold me for parts
As you sunk your teeth into me, oh
Bloodsucker, famefucker
Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire

“It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.” ~ Anne Rice

The demons in my sleep, they come to haunt me…

There’s a certain shameful relief in the realization that one of my most traumatic childhood events wasn’t one of molestation or sexual abuse or losing a loved one. It didn’t cause any sort of pain on the level of all those other atrocious things, or turn into so many other possible events that could have befallen a child. If you can make it out of your childhood years relatively unscathed, you might stand a chance at surviving in the world with some sort of moral clarity. Or maybe it’s all just a crap shoot and we will turn out to be whatever monsters we will be. I don’t know anymore. 

It happened around this time of the year. As if the return to school wasn’t bad enough for my social anxiety-riddled system, my parents had been asked by our priest if I would start serving as an altar boy for St. Marys church. At least, that’s what they said. Hard to know how much of childhood is really true. They also made it clear that saying no was not an option, despite how clearly my entire existence was rebelling against it. The suddenly-stressful idea of walking in front of the entire St. Mary’s congregation on a Sunday morning and having all eyes on me with no idea what I was really doing filled me with immediate dread. My insides coiled up into a sore knot of worry – one that would last until well after the actual event. It was a slightly strange lesson, now that I think of it – that saying no to a priest was not an option (stranger still now that we know that particular priest would end up having credible charges of abuse against him). But back then no one spoke of such things, and the overriding sentiment was that if a priest picked you out to be an altar boy, your family should be honored and touched and blessed fucking be. My parents certainly weren’t going to refuse a priest just because their son was having a nervous breakdown. 

When the priest gave my parents the altar server’s schedule, I frantically searched to see when and where my name appeared. It wasn’t far down – a few weeks from the date we received it. Above my name was the name of my fellow server – Brady. Everything about the whole experience was already tainted black; the whole idea of it made me sick, and being powerless to say no or voice my dread made it all the worse. I didn’t want to let my parents down, I didn’t want to let the priest down, but above all I didn’t want to have the eyes of the entire church watching me on that altar. I’d always been shy, and this was the most nightmarish of horrors for a socially-anxious introverted child.

I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old. 

A week or two before I was scheduled to serve, the priest had me come by the church and learn what to do as a server. My heart sank as I realized there was no way out, that I would be standing there in front of everyone shaking and on the verge of crying and no one was going to help me or stop it from happening. My mother sat in one of the front pews as Father showed me when to kneel, when to bow, when to genuflect – one sad submission upon another, and at the end of it all he thought I had it down when I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to take the first step into the church. 

In those weeks leading up to that first Sunday of serving, the idea of what was to come haunted my every step. What should have been a carefree stretch of September weeks, when school was still new and we hadn’t even had to take a test yet, were weighted with this burden – something none of my other classmates had to carry, and of course something that my brother didn’t have to worry about yet. When I got lost in laughter over something, it quickly ended as soon as I remembered I would have to serve in a week. It ruined weekends because one half of the weekend was Sunday. 

To this day, I remember the night before that Sunday. My brother and I were allowed to stay up late and watch television in the family room, where we would set up sleeping bags and fall asleep there. My sleep, what little there was of it, was fitful and tormented. My stomach, always troubled as a young child, had retained the knot of worry that had tied itself tightly over the previous weeks. When I peeked out of my sleeping bag and saw that it was light, I pulled it back over my head for one more minute of pretending I was at peace. 

That was, of course, the worst of it – the waiting and anticipating – that was where the real trauma was. I remember trying to find a cassock and surplus that didn’t drown me – there was only one that didn’t pool at my feet, it was the one that the shorter of the altar boys would fight over every Sunday. I remember ringing the bells right when I was supposed to ring them – the priest had a little hand motion for alerting us if we didn’t start the ringing at the right time. I remember handing him a white cloth after Brady had poured the water over his hands before communion. And then I remember walking out, and sense of relief wash over me when it was done – short-lived because I was on the schedule in another few weeks, and the dread began to build up again. 

I would serve many masses – many more than my brother who would start in another year or so but somehow never got held to the same strict standard I was – maybe when you’ve traumatized one child you step back on traumatizing the ones that follow. Of course, whenever there was a no-show and the priest would come into the congregation searching for someone, he’d point to our family and I would somehow always be the one to go up. 

That’s just one of life’s little fuck-overs I guess. And who knows – maybe I saved my little brother from getting molested before one of those Sunday morning masses. 

All’s well that ends well, even in hell.

A sex scene, then – and one of my earliest – recalled from the time a 34-year-old-man picked up a 19-year-old me, and I still held the foolish notion that people – even men – were intrinsically good, and that when given the choice they would do good things. This fun little excerpt comes courtesy of the journal I kept at the time, and I uncovered it when realizing this was the thirtieth anniversary of that fall. The photos are from that time as well – and all of it was one big mess. A song to go along on the joyride, for our fade-to-black fall: the original ‘Paint It Black’ and all its somber fury.

I look inside myself
And see my heart is black
I see my red door
I must have it painted black

Maybe then, I’ll fade away
And not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up
When your whole world is black

I see a red door
And I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by
Dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
Until my darkness goes

September 1994: A set of shades opened and someone peered out from a window high above the street. They shut them after surveying the place for a few minutes. People passed by me, and with each set of footsteps my heart leapt in anticipation of Tom. Yet it never seemed to be him. I resumed reading until at last he came toward me from across the street. I wasn’t sure at first if it was really him. I didn’t remember the orange sweatshirt he now wore, inside out. Perhaps I simply hadn’t noticed.

He was saddened by the day’s events, yet I had no knowledge of what I might do to help. I understood he didn’t want to talk about it, so I attempted no further communication on that topic of Bill (his ex). We entered the apartment. There was the same initial awkward feeling that accompanied the start of each meeting, a feeling that I was still not able to shake until well into the evening. I sat down at the table. He was slightly upset, almost annoyed. 

“So, come here and sit down, relax. Take your jacket off so it doesn’t look like you’re about to leave,” he said. 

I gave him a quick look of disgust and then started to untie the jacket from around my waist. He sat on the bed, fiddling with the television set. I walked over and sat beside him. After finding nothing on, he left it somewhere and pushed me back too the bed. He kissed me. It still hurt. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the stubble. It was clear how upset he was. On the way in, he had said that he now truly felt a sense of loss. I asked him if he didn’t really want to be alone, because it was not a bid thing for me to leave. He said he didn’t want that. 

I looked into his eyes. I wanted to make it all better. I wanted to make everything good for him; I wanted to eradicate the sadness that shone through those eyes that night. 

“Don’t be upset,” I began timidly. 

“I can’t do that… I’ll just be what I am… there’s nothing that can be done. I have to go through it.”

“Well, I can change it, ” I added perkily. 

“Really.”

I didn’t think so. All the tactics, all the ways and tricks and means of manipulating a person into feeling something they weren’t quite ready or sure that. they wanted to feel, they al fell away now. My powers seemed to dwindle to hokey cliches, crumbling beneath the weight of their over-the-top lack of power. I wouldn’t be able to charm him out of it, I wouldn’t be able to mastermind the next moments and turn him around. I was completely powerless and helpless, and I turned into a kid. I could only smile at him naively, only offer a hug or a hold or a kiss. And in that moment I sensed I would never be able to control this, any of it. And it almost scared me out of it, out of being there. I felt a new instinct to run away. I wondered if he would find me. I wondered what he would do if I went away one day and never came back to him. But mostly I wondered what would happen if he did that to me. At this point I was almost sure it would happen that way. For now, however, he was mine. Or maybe I was his. I couldn’t be sure. The roles flip-flopped over and over, yet in the end the essence of such a thing was the same, without change.

He took off his clothes and again pried beneath mine. I was reluctant and told him no. He asked why not, like he always did, in that voice, half a whine, half a plea. It was a very persuasive voice, but I heard in it the seed of annoyance as well, and while I removed my shirt I made up my mind that that was all that was to be removed that evening. I also made that clear to him.

We kissed. Mostly we kissed. And then he pulled my hand to him and I did what I thought I was supposed to do. He was kissing me and rubbing himself as I did the same to him. He pushed my head down, down to his erection, and I took the tip in my mouth. I tasted something somewhat salty, and resisted the urge to gag. I tasted it again and I removed my mouth – I’d read somewhere that one can transmit AIDS by oral sex and I had already taken too many chances. I went up to his face and kissed him, letting the mixture of saliva and possibly semen run into his mouth. I had my hand on him now and he told me to show him myself. I was hard and I let him suck me. It was better this time; in fact, this was actually enjoyable. I had never been that close to coming with him before, though I didn’t this time either. Still, it hadn’t been completely awful. 

Now I wasn’t forcing myself into liking it or disliking it. It was not the idea of the thing that I liked, or the lifestyle, or the danger of it; it was Tom. It was all Tom. If it had been with another, I would certainly have not allowed myself to be taken so completely. Yet Tom made it good, he made it pure, he made everything dirty and disgusting into something beautiful, and I felt powerless against him. Well, almost. I still adamantly refused anal intercourse and he didn’t push me at all. He joked and told me how much he wanted to fuck me, in a number of different ways, but I refused. He ws not getting me to take my pants off, no matter what. At least not at that moment, and not for that night. 

I laid next to him with my head on his chest. It had been his choice; I had complied willingly. The TV was fuzzy and sometimes without color. 

“How do you know you’re in love?” I queried; a general question.

“It’s something that you just know; you’ll know when it hits you, believe me, you will.”

I was skeptical. “Well what do you consider love?”

“One of the only guys I was every truly in love with told me that being in love was being able to see yourself living in a tent for the rest of your life with that one person. I knew I was in love with him because I could picture that tent, and how what went on in it would be the most beautiful thing in the world to me.”

I didn’t know if I could do that with Tom. At that moment, I felt I might, but looking back he was right, I would know. 

I wanna see it painted
Painted black
Black as night
Black as coal
I wanna see the sun
Blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black, yeah

When last we shared, I was in the bitter process of discarding a few ferns that had failed to perform this summer – a fitting end to all that may have seemed superficially pretty in this summer’s blog posts and pictures. Rather than end on such a dour note, let’s have a brighter bit of music and whimsy, and nothing lifts the soul in as ridiculous and glorious a way as this camp ditty from ‘Candide’ as performed by the brilliant Kristin Chenoweth. This is ‘Glitter and Be Gay‘ ~ a mantra and way of life for those of us who haven’t quite given up yet. 

Harsh necessity brought me to this gilded cage.
Born to higher things, here I droop my wings,
Singing of a sorrow nothing can assuage…

And yet of course I rather like to revel,
I have no strong objection to champagne,
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil,
Perhaps it is ignoble to complain…
Enough, enough of being basely tearful!
I’ll show my noble stuff by being bright and cheerful!

Pink reigned for the summer – in the face of all sorrow and tumult, we always had pink. Pink dresses, pink shirts, pink pants, pink curtains, pink towels, pink tablecloths, pink straws, pink pastries, pink jewelry, pink shoes, pink hats, pink fascinators, pink ruffles, pink frills, pink glitter… 

Pearls and ruby rings…
Ah, how can worldly things take the place of honor lost?
Can they compensate for my fallen state,
Purchased as they were at such an awful cost?

Bracelets…lavalieres
Can they dry my tears?
Can they blind my eyes to shame?
Can the brightest brooch shield me from reproach?
Can the purest diamond purify my name?

Returning to the innocent beginning of our coquette summer makes me realize how much has actually happened over the past three months of the season. A banana tree has unfurled a dozen or so leaves. The cup plant has shot up, out, flowered, and gone to seed. It provides the finches with a current feast. The hydrangeas have had a rightly-renowned banner year after a mild winter. All the flower buds survived, so the show was bodacious and beautiful. And somehow, throughout its entirety, I never quite felt like part of it. 

And yet of course these trinkets are endearing,
I’m oh, so glad my sapphire is a star,
I rather like a twenty-karat earring,
If I’m not pure, at least my jewels are!

Now, with summer’s closing act coming next weekend, and fall’s dramatic descent already in motion, I find myself trying to hang onto it a little longer, taking an extra stroll around the yard, sitting in the sunshine. Reconciling and returning to the frivolous finery in which it all began, the coquette theme offers a balmy escape, a way out of the ever-darkening world, even if it was all make-believe, even if it could never last.

Enough! Enough!
I’ll take their diamond necklace
And show my noble stuff
By being gay and reckless!

Our coquette summer is quickly drawing near its end, but there are a few more days of sun and warmth (even as the forecast for this morning and day may veer to the more melancholic side of things). With that in mind, it’s the perfect backdrop for a coquette moment – a wistful sigh of longing, a restless reconciliation of losing – and a little coquette song that tries to make up for a rainy gray day. 

You were a sunflower
Grown in the wild like a weed
Could be a blessing in a way
That’s what I’ll see (what I’ll see)

I’m just a wallflower
All of the words just won’t come
Oh, what’s the use of calling it quits?
Before I’m done (before I’m)

It’s been a summer that has run the gamut from hopeful innocence and freshness to weary, wary, jaded defilement – a strangely awful trajectory that sets this blog up for a fall unlike anything that’s ever been written here. You are definitely not going to be ready for this jelly. So let’s make the most of these summer days – wretched and rainy though they may be – because this fall is going to get very dark. 

Fading like the end of August fades, a candle is barely discernible as pink in its solitary light. The final faint whispers of a coquette summer rustle along a night breeze – how it slipped away so quickly is the saddest recurring mystery. On this last day of August, here is another song to keep the summer going – this time from our early summer pal Mitski. It wasn’t on any of our previous summer coquette playlists, and while I don’t have a fourth one in the offing, there is still time for a song or two before the summer finally departs. 

I’m beautiful, I know cause it’s the season But what am I to do with all this beauty? Biology, I am an organism, I’m chemical That’s all, that is all I’m liquid smooth, come touch me, too And feel my skin is plump and full of life I’m in my prime I’m liquid smooth, come touch me, too I’m at my highest peak, I’m ripe About to fall, capture me Or at least take my picture

On the cusp between Leo and Virgo…

On the cusp of the half-century mark…

On the cusp of the cusp of something more…

Today I turn 49 years old. I don’t quite know what to do with that, other than to play this song, and to pray. Yes – I pray. Every night. At every moment of doubt, at every moment of worry. Little prayers, little offerings, little exercises in superstition or faith and what’s the goddamn difference?

You wake to greet the brand new day
Wake up, realize you’re late
Rush out to make your plane
Can’t find your keys again…

You need to reawake, now
Listen to the words
I’m saying in this line, and
That your life will be just fine, and
Your troubles do not stay
They get replaced with good times
Now you’ve got a great life
Smile as you walk by
Thinkin’ ’bout the day

Born of fear, born of trauma, born of need and desire and survival – we all come into this world in such similar ways – messy and wet and crying out of lonely desperation, clinging to whatever is immediately around us, grasping at something or someone to take care of us – for protection, for security, for comfort, for love. Some of us never learn how to stop crying. Some of us never learn how to start again. 

This body, the only body I have ever known, the only body I will ever know, this shell of my physical existence, breaks down a little more with each passing year. The lithe and limber days of carefree, flexible, quick-to-bounce-back forgiveness calcify and become brittle at the turn of an almost-half-century. This body – it cracks and crinkles now, it whispers and laughs and collapses – it betrays this mind, disconnecting from what I think I can do, what I once could do, what I lost the ability to do… and today of all days I can barely formulate a coherent sentence. 

It’s late, your legs won’t rest today
Your body seems to ache
Your mind will win the race
Burnin’ by your sleep again

The light blooms from the sun
The long dark night undone
Another day of fun
Waiting for some luck to come

Should I fear this year then? This final year of my forties, death knell to any far-fetched and barely-feasible semblance or pretending of youth? Maybe… maybe. Strangely it’s not fear I feel, nor the rush to get on with it. It’s really just another day, just another year, and the way we mark the days and years is just some silly system of numeric designation, as if 49 means something more than 48 or less than 50. There is nothing at all different today from yesterday – even if nothing is at all the same. 

You keep hoping for a day
When things will go your way
When all decisions have been made
And karma’s finally found its way

The drinks, they pass the time
They help me to unwind
The guilt is killing me
Inside your eyes

It’s gray, the rain pours down my face
The tears become erased
A cleansing of my face
Splashing down into my grin

My eyes become alive
A feeling left behind
A hidden world untied
Creating all you see today

The clouds, they went away
Forever, did I wait
And karma finally found my plate
And now I’m smiling by the sun

And so I step gingerly back into the river of life, the banks on which I have probably paused more than most – shy and skittish, scared and scarred from that moment of birth, and never quite having been able to get completely over it. I watched more of it go by than I ever took part in, and though it’s not regret I am experiencing, there is a sense of loss, even if I can’t be mad about it. It’s never helpful to be angry at who you used to be. Instead, I offer thanks, even for those days when I didn’t want to be part of it, when I swam to the shore, coughing and spitting out the anxiety, crying out the salty worry, spent and exhausted from trying to swim against the current. All these silly mixed metaphors have me feeling a little muddled, and what I originally wanted to be a contemplative birthday post has turned into something slightly different. The unexpected accident, the messy inconvenience of being human. What I most wanted life to be – something pretty, something perfect – is precisely what a human’s life can never be. 

We’ll meet again someday
We’ll smile and then I’ll say:
“When it rains, it pours all day
Until love can find its way”

Now, listen to the words I’m saying
In this line that your life will be just fine,
And troubles, they do not stay,
They get replaced with good times
Now you’ve got a great life,
Smile as you walk by
Need to reawake now
LIsten to these words that
I’m saying in this line
And your life will be just fine
Troubles, they do not stay
They get replaced with good times
Now you’ve got a great life
Smilin’ ’bout the day…

Our coquette summer rides giddily and mightily into its final month on a pink pony, with all the pink flowers and frills and trimmings that this glorious season has promised, and largely delivered. To buoy the impending hints of fall, here’s a fun and frivolous distraction, perhaps less moody than the typical coquette offering, and certainly no less joyful for that. Cue our Midwest Princess Chappell…

And I heard that there’s a special place
Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day…

In my daydreams and night-dreams, I can dance without the annoying tinge of a bothersome and aging back. I can sing without the heaviness of loss or lamentation. I can ride a pink pony into the summer dawn, bounding along shores of ocean and gliding over edges of sky. Summer is so largely imagined, so grandly envisioned. Summer… so much in my head.

I’m up and jaws are on the floor
Lovers in the bathroom and a line outside the door
Blacklights and a mirrored disco ball
Every night’s another reason why I left it all…

God, what have you done?
You’re a pink pony girl
And you dance at the club
Oh mama, I’m just having fun
On the stage in my heels
It’s where I belong down at the Pink Pony Club

All sparkle of sun and sea, all shine of dew and drops, all summer sweetness and soft sighs. A melancholic meter keeps steady time – the hollow cadence of minutes and hours droning on beneath the welcome heat of the sun, already different than it was in June, already less. And so we dance, and we keep on dancing, and the pink pony prances…

I’m gonna keep on dancing at the
Pink Pony Club
I’m gonna keep on dancing down in
West Hollywood
I’m gonna keep on dancing at the
Pink Pony Club, Pink Pony Club

When a COVID cough has me up all night, and I’m isolating in the attic, where I’ve been in solitude for the past five days, this cradle song – ‘Yurikago No Uta’ – is the only spot of solace or semi-comfort there is to be found. It’s a traditional Japanese lullaby, often sung to babies to help them sleep. Physically, I am feeling better – a slight side-effect has me in the bathroom a bit more than I’d like, but if it means I don’t die from lack of breath, it seems a fair trade-off. Still, I wasn’t expecting the plunge back into social isolation to take such an emotional toll, and I understand it’s the culmination of the weeks and months of this summer, which had me helplessly hoping that the anniversary of Dad’s death might bring about some sense of closure, some somewhat-happier-ending of that dreadful year of firsts, all the while knowing such an arbitrary deadline of grief was a fever-dream. Born out of desperation and survival and coping, it was a wish that I knew in my heart was foolish, but that same heart couldn’t do anything but hope it might prove true. When at least it came and went, and there was no real relief, no erasure of emptiness or loss, it proved a different sort of chill than when it first happened. A lonelier chill. And then I placed my finger on the root cause of the periodic crying spells that have unexpectedly cropped up at the strangest times this past week: loneliness. 

Loneliness in the very real sense of being isolated and alone – when I spent my days and nights secluded in the cozy little attic room I made for our home a few years ago – a room that now functioned as bedroom, office, dining room, living room, reading room, lounging room, dressing room, every room – where largely-sleepless nights were only partly drowned out by the hum and occasional rattle of the window air conditioner, where rain would sound almost melodically on the roof right above my head and rather than sour the mood it would give me comfort because it meant maybe the rest of the world would slow and stop while I was gone instead of carrying on in cherry, sun-drenched summer fashion. A selfish notion, but sickness brings out our selfishness, as much for survival as for pettiness. 

Here, in this little room, I fitfully try to sleep without any comfort of Andy beside me. Here, I sip on tea and lots of water and take the occasional meal – eating alone without a husband or companion. Here, I study the bouquet of flowers my Mom left on the front porch along with some breakfast rolls and a dessert, touched by her love and care, realizing how much a son still needs his mother, and shocked at how sad this bout of sickness has suddenly made me feel. 

What a ludicrous scene I have painted: a man who will turn 49 years old in four days, weeping like a baby and listening to a cradle song, looking at the animals on the cover of the video and remembering his childhood bedroom. Is it sacrilege to wish it away if it meant a lesser sting of missing it? Is it wrong to wish any of our days away? 

Well.

The folly of youth.

Or the folly of middle age… assuming this is somewhere near the middle. We never really know, do we? 

My therapist told me at our last session that just about everything had aligned for me to have a mid-life crisis at this moment. I looked at her incredulously, my jaw literally dropping, then said perhaps a little testily, “Umm, when I started seeing you four years ago it was because I was having my mid-life crisis, so I thought I already did that.” She laughed a little, and I fear it’s because I thought there would only be one. 

“You know,” I continued, “I survived the one and I’d rather not do it again.”

She acknowledged all the work that went into those early months of therapy, and was rather flippant and nonchalant about another one coming, when my quizzical look of concern must have registered, because she then said I shouldn’t worry about it because I was at a place where I could handle it in a healthy manner. 

Huh.

That was when I gave myself a rare internal pat on the back. 

It’s one thing to pretend I’m strong and great and amazing – quite another to even partly believe it on the inside. 

That was a few weeks ago. It already feels very far away. Like those fun first days of summer… like those carefree days of childhood… 

The moment is demure.

The moment is mindful.

The moment is considerate.

And the moment dovetails perfectly with this season of the coquette.

Light, lovely, and just the tiniest bit forlorn, the aesthetic is lace and delicacy. It’s the ideal way to see us out for this final month of summer. The coquette vibe has proved especially popular in these parts, and along with some bulging Olympic support, this twenty-one-year-old website is experiencing a boon in hits – clocking a million for July and on track for two million in August. I’m not a numbers coquette, but if I was I’d be a happy one. 

As for moving through the rest of the summer on a demure and mindful note, I can’t think of a better way, especially since I’ve been feeling anything but those things of late. As I write this, I am holed up in the attic with a bout of COVID, trying desperately not to give it to my husband in the likely-vain hope that my upcoming birthday might be a happy one. So let’s focus on some music with a coquette slant, like this ditty from current Femininomenon, Chappell Roan and this gorgeously-ambivalent take on coffee. (Because it’s never just coffee, and coquette is never just demure.)

Sitting in solitude in the attic, I’m having a moment of loneliness – a rare phenomenon for those of us who adore our time alone. Sometimes that makes the loneliness more searing – the sheer unfamiliarity of the feeling like a stunning shock to the system, like something doesn’t quite compute, and it’s the pain and hurt of it. 

What is the lesson here? What am I supposed to glean from this suddenly-annual turn of events? I don’t know. 

The beverage of choice is tea. Hot tea.

The sipping is demure.

The sipping is mindful.

The sipping is considerate.

The vibe is coquette. The moment is almost over. The last month of summer is at hand. 

Maybe I shouldn’t be quite so ready to turn the page on this season.

All apologies – I can’t help it. It’s never what we thought it was going to be. Those summers are done.