While any smart person would hesitate to proclaim one particular summer their all-time favorite, the summer of 1990 stands out as a definite contender in my life. (2000 and 2010 do as well, for different reasons.) Way back in 1990, I was all of fourteen going on fifteen, but I can still remember more of that summer than I can of anything that happened yesterday.
It began with a first date with a guy, when all I could do was ‘Hold On’ because I didn’t even know what was happening. It continued with the striking of a pose: ‘Vogue.’ It got everyone a little Breathless, because ‘It Must Have Been Love’ before I even knew what love was. Does anyone really know what love is? It saw my friends and I making a trip to the then-Soviet Union ~ around the world and as far away from home as we could possibly be, so we made our own home and somehow I knew that I would be all right. A guy named Rat helped a little too.
It was a summer of wishful thinking and someone would be crowned a king…
I DON’T NEED TO FALL AT YOUR FEET
JUST CAUSE YOU CUT ME TO THE BONE
AND I WON’T MISS THE WAY THAT YOU KISS ME
WE WERE NEVER CARVED IN STONE
IF I DON’T LISTEN TO THE TALK OF THE TOWN
THEN MAYBE I CAN FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
I needed someone under me before I could get over them. Yet I was not quite ready to embark or even hope for a romantic quest. When I thought about girls, I wanted to be their friend more than anything else, to be part of their whispered secrets, to exchange silly notes, to be a member of their cloistered spheres and realms of influence. I wanted to BE with them, not to be WITH them. And at such a young age (because once upon a time fourteen was a very young age) I had no interest in anything else.
My feelings for men were more along the lines of desire and ache and want and frustration.
There was so much I didn’t know.
To make up for that, or to impel something ~ anything ~ into happening (such were my soap-operatic leanings) I wished to access the push and pull of this Go West pop song. I wanted the heartache because that would mean I’d had a love to lose. I wanted the break-up pangs of sadness because it would mean I would have had the happiness of romance. I wanted the blues because something in my soul accessed sadness easier than happiness. It might have been fucked up, but I’ve never claimed not to be fucked up.
I REFUSE TO GIVE IN TO MY BLUES
THAT’S HOW IT’S GONNA BE
AND I DENY THE TEARS IN MY EYES
CAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LET YOU SEE
THAT YOU HAVE MADE A HOLE IN MY HEART
AND NOW I’VE GOT TO FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
Despite the warning of so many fairy tales, I wasn’t careful with what I wished for. Happily, I didn’t know that then, and I would welcome any bit of emotional flotsam that floated my way, eager for a feeling, for an emotion, for a reckoning… Summer did that to a person.
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