“You’re forgiven… Everything you don’t know I forgive you for. Now let mama get her makeup done.” ~ Madonna, ‘Truth or Dare’
Almost every dilemma in my life can be solved by some reference in Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare’ documentary, and having memorized every line of dialogue in it, I bring these little snippets of questionable wisdom with me even when the rest of the world has no idea what I’m talking about. Often it’s better that way. And for all those issues that somehow escape the wisdom of ‘Truth or Dare’, there’s always a pop song to give guidance and solace.
The more I know, the less I understand,All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning againI’ve been tryin’ to get downTo the heart of the matterBut my will gets weakAnd my thoughts seem to scatterBut I think it’s about forgivenessForgiveness
In my youth, I’d look to the simplicity of a Madonna lyric to solve the riddles of life, thinking that if it was good enough for Madonna – who seemed to be making such a fabulous life for herself – it could be good enough for me. Oddly enough, much of the time those words sustained me, or at the very least kept me alive when the typical teenage angst threatened to extinguish my mere existence. That was a time of relative innocence, and such innocence has long been destroyed.
These times are so uncertainThere’s a yearning undefinedPeople filled with rageWe all need a little tendernessHow can love survive in such a graceless age?And the trust and self-assurance that lead to happinessThey’re the very things we kill, I guessPride and competition cannot fill these empty armsAnd the wall they put between us, you know it doesn’t keep me warm
Back then, it felt like a song could save a life, even if I now see that that’s not entirely true, even if a song can only help you to save yourself, because no one else is going to do it. A harsh truth bomb, more cutting or diabolical than any dare, it helped me to understand, even at such a young age, that there was no true safety for some of us, that when we really needed help or found ourselves in dire emotional straits, it would be better not to have to rely on anyone else. That was survival, especially for a gay kid. It used to bother me that it had to be so; lately I’ve come to appreciate it, even if I’ve only gone so far as to unsheath the sword. Soft walk, big stick, you know the rest.
There are people in your life who’ve come and goneThey let you downYou know they’ve hurt your prideYou better put it all behind you baby ’cause life goes onYou keep carryin’ that angerIt’ll eat you up inside baby
I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matterBut my will gets weakAnd my thoughts seem to scatterBut I think it’s about forgivenessForgivenessEven if, even if you don’t love me
This isn’t to blame anyone for not being there. It’s just a little stream of consciousness, and streams can be messy and meandering, winding their way in convoluted form, eating away at banks we thought would stand like bulwarks for our lifetime. No, there is no blame here, aside from the heaps I am placing on myself, and maybe that’s why there is the need for forgiveness. This fall has been filled with a strange sense of nostalgia, of looking back at my past and making better sense of it now that my thoughts feel clearer. It’s mostly been a good thing, and I’ve mostly done it alone, because I was the only one who was there. Besides, when it comes to the real shit, not the silly histrionic squawking in which I usually engage, but the real hardcore trouble that fucks people up, I’ve found the following passage from Alexandre Dumas to be most helpful: “I’ll bury my grief deep inside me and I’ll make it so secret and obscure that you won’t even have to take the trouble to sympathize with me.”
Revenge and redemption was at the heart of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, where that quote originated, but that’s not what I’m after either. The most hollow words a person can utter are “I told you so.” More often than not, being right is simply being lonely.
For all my self-imposed alone time, I rarely felt like I was lonely, but I’ve been rethinking that too. Looking back at that scared little boy, and the man he grew to become, I’m thinking about forgiveness… forgiveness…
I’ve been tryin’ to get downTo the heart of the matterBecause the flesh will get weakAnd the ashes will scatterSo, I’m thinkin’ about forgivenessForgivenessEven if, even if you don’t love me anymore
