me’s blog

Yes folks, it’s true.  I haven’t finished composing a new song in over a year now, and finally, after tinkering with this one for the past few weeks, I am ready to post the finalized lyrics for all of you to read and comment on.  Now, if any of you knows anyone with a studio, hook a brotha up so I can get this one recorded!  Here we go.

MY GINGERBREAD MAN

the moment he learned that i don’t own an oven
the great escape began
slipped through my fingers backflipped off the sink
left a hole in the shape of a man as he ran

through the door through the world crossing seventeen oceans
deftly he dodged any human emotions
objects once moving tend to stay in motion
i should get off my ass

running and running as fast as he can
i’ll never catch him - he’s my gingerbread man
i love him - but baby was born to run

saccharine sweet - once he sang me backstreet
when he should’ve sung "bye bye bye"
if my skeptic mind could conceive a scene so unserene
i’d dive from my rooftop and fly through the sky
track his scent chase the high and catch up to my guy

once my sleepy insides had begun to awake
i should’ve just faked the desire to bake
caloric intake makes my aortas ache
still i’m sitting still

and still he’s running running running running running running why? - ‘cuz he can
ever elusive my gingerbread man
and me?  i’m the sorest loser he’s ever won

trying to squeeze into old cookie-cutters again
getting in shape for my gingerbread man
logic and reason left me long ago
so i go

still he runs from me fast as he can
the recipe underestimated my gingerbread man
not me - my sugar-high’s never been so low

yet i’m stumbling and tripping and trying again
why am i chasing my gingerbread man?
inevitability never seems so till the end
but it never ends

I’m starting this blog not knowing what I want to write about, but feeling like I have to top what I wrote last time.  Which is really stupid if I think about it because, well, if I could top myself, I’d never leave the house.  (If that makes no sense to you, send me a message and I’ll diagram it out.)

I just asked my recovery sponsor what he thinks I should write about, and of course he chimes in that sex is always a good topic.  True dat, but since my sister is reading this, I think I’ll keep from getting any more graphic than I did in that first paragraph.  For now.

Then he says I should talk about my first kiss.  Ahhh.  Now we’re talkin’.

It was the spring of my 11th grade year, and I had just transferred to Thomas Stone High School in Waldorf, MD, where my rockin’ cool mom was a vice principal.  Wait, let’s back up.  See, I had previously been enrolled at Oxon Hill High School, nestled in a charming area whose name some of you may recognize as a ghettolicious pioneer in getting P.G. County’s crime rate mentioned in the first five minutes of nearly every local news program.  And while Oxon HIll High School did have a handful of really incredible teachers, it was plagued by an increasingly violent population, absolutely no worthwhile after-school activities unless you were in the gospel choir or the step squad, and dark dingy narrow hallways that were intially designed to hold half of the school’s currently swollen enrollment.  The reason I was going there was because they had a Science & Tech magnet program that was supposed to provide the best opportunity for a decent education in our part of the county.  Those of you who know me, try picturing me rotting away in Chemistry and Engineering courses.  It was not a match.

So during the fall semester of that year, I was miserable.  My mom would come home from work everyday and tell me all these stories about band concerts and choir concerts and a theater arts CLASS (!) and all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with Physics or the ghetto, and I was more than just a tad jealous.  I remember on Halloween she came home and told me all about what the kids had dressed up as, and apparently there was one sassy-ass girl that she actually had to send home because she’d shown up to school clad in a cone-bra as Madonna.  Nice!  The closest thing to a Halloween costume that anyone at my high school had donned was pimp-meets-drug-dealer chic.  And I don’t think that was a costume.

I just realized I’m utterly incapable of telling a short story.  Sorry folks.  I’m no Poe.

Anyway, at some point in December, Mom took me to a production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" that was being performed by the students at her school, and I was FLOORED.  An actual PLAY?  And, um, SHAKESPEARE?  With a dream ballet set to a gorgeous PETER GABRIEL song?  Inconceivable!  I went to visit the school for a full day of classes the following week, and a couple days later I was enrolled there.

I immediately gravitated toward the drama crowd, and one day was introduced to a brassy, voluptuous young woman named Michele Windsor.  She was like, "Oh yeah, your mom sent me home on Halloween ‘cuz I was dressed as Madonna and she didn’t want my tits hangin’ out."  Hee!  I don’t know if it was my inner gay or what, but Madonna and I immediately became fast friends, and her friends sort of adopted me as the new kid, with the added allure of my status as the son of the coolest vice principal in the building.  I was in like Flynn.  [Side note:  Who the fuck is Flynn?]

Later that spring, I think a bunch of us had been hanging out on a playground or something (?), and afterwards we were riding around in Scott Lowry’s car.  Ah Scott Lowry.  Except for the notorious case of chronic bacne that almost kept him out of the Armed Forces, the incessantly rampant rumors of his wee wee-wee, and his latent tendencies towards showtunes and Disney characters, he was quite a catch.  And the first best friend I ever had.  I think at this point he had already had sex with Michele, but apparently she didn’t feel a thing, so I’m not sure if it "counted".  So yeah, we were riding around in Scott’s car, and Michele and I were in the backseat, and we were all talking about how everyone had been saying for weeks that she and I should be dating or whatever.  And at some point, she basically dared me to kiss her.  Now, despite having been severely attracted to guys for as long as I can remember, I was still not aware that "gay" was something that a person could be.  I held out for as long as I could.  I REALLY didn’t want to kiss her.  But then she started calling me "chicken shit".  So I did it.  I got it over with.  I kissed Madonna.  Like a virgin.  And it was awkward.  But sweet.  And, most importantly, it was over with.  We both knew it was nothing more than a kiss, and the next day the inevitable rumor mill started up and I was a stud for a day or two.  Granted, I was a band/choir/drama stud who’d acquired the nickname "chicken shit", but still, I was a stud nonetheless.

My kissing skillz have come a looooooong way since then - nowadays the rumor mill has me pegged as one of the best in town - and Michele has been married for something like 10 years.  My ill-fated second kiss is another story, which perhaps I’ll get to when I’m at a loss for a blog topic in the future.  But, to bring it full circle for you few but faithful readers, the following year Michele and I were the leads in our high school’s production of Cole Porter’s musical "Anything Goes", a show which opened with the two of us trying to top ourselves and each other by expressing our mutual admiration through adorably rhymed superlatives in the song "You’re The Top."  Yeah, this jazzy little number featured lyrics whose oh-so-subtle double-meanings may have been lost on me at the time.  Lyrics like "but if baby I’m the bottom, you’re the top."

Ha.  If only sex were still that simple.

So it seems Jackie’s a catalyst (Jackalyst?) for me, since once again she has quietly whirled me into a cyclone of memories.  This time I’m all in a tizzy about love ‘n stuff.  It all started with her innocent, out-of-the-blue text message last week:  "So, what do you know about Rufus Wainwright?"

My response:  "Oh, there’s a story there."

I fell in love with Rufus back in 1999, when it seemed every 5 minutes I was either being mistaken for him or being asked if I knew how closely I resembled him.  My hair was longer and I was more thrift-store-clad then, and I could see the resemblance.  Plus I was prolifically churning out similarly confessional songs at that point too, so the comparison was both flattering and rather appropriate.

My first exposure to his music was on a listening station at Tower Records, where I heard a song of his called "Heartburn" on a compilation of recordings from all the various members of his musical family.  It was love at first listen.  I then bought his full-length solo debut, and listened to it non-stop for weeks.

The first time I saw him in concert was on a Sunday at the 9:30 Club here in Washington, DC.  Opening for him was none other than Imogen Heap. (How’s THAT for a pair?)  I went with a couple friends, and we hung out to get something or other signed after the show.  Rufus asked us where people go in DC on a Sunday night, and I, trying to mask my wanton star-struck lust, stuttered out something or other about Lizard Lounge.

Later that evening at Lizard Lounge, I looked over to the bar and there was Rufus, talking to some guy.  I went over and basically carried a couple watermelons (props if you get that reference), which basically means I laid a few awkward conversational eggs, and pouted from afar the rest of the night while some other guy romanced my Rufus.

Flash forward to a couple weeks later, when I performed one of my own songs in the first half of the ill-fated Monday Night "Diva Las Vegas" (groan) drag show at Omega.  It was the sleazy spoken-word jazzy cabaret number "Like That", and I performed it dressed in a man’s suit with stubble and a cigarette.  I was pleased with my performance, but of course it went right over the heads of the handful of not-yet-drunk-enough people that were in the bar at the time.

So this guy comes up to me afterwards and tells me how great my performance was, how he "got it", and how he really liked the music I was performing to.  Once I told him I’d written and recorded the song myself, we started talking and didn’t stop talking until 6am the following morning.  His name was Brandon, and he ended up being to-date the most significant intimate relationship I’ve had in my life.  We spent nearly every second together for two months (yes, just two months), and we were both high as kites - both emotionally and pharmaceutically.  In early June we drove to Florida for a week to visit his family, to look for a place to live together, and to go to Gay Days at Disneyworld, when out of nowhere he decided to dump me without explanation.  We’ll get back to that in a minute, but…

That very first night together we talked until 6am, and at one point Brandon asked me if anyone ever told me how closely I resembled Rufus Wainwright.  I laughed and told him I got that all the time, and as a matter of fact I’d seen Rufus and met him after his show at the 9:30 Club.  Brandon told me that he, too, was at the show, and actually had met Rufus later that night at Lizard Lounge.  It was then that we realized we’d met before.  Brandon was the guy who’d been sitting at the bar with Rufus, and we had been briefly introduced during that awkward couple of minutes I spent unsuccessfully trying to clumsily steal Rufus away for myself.  Turns out Brandon ended up going back to the hotel that night with my doppleganger and yadda yadda yadda.  Small, funny, weird, incestuous world.  Brandon certainly had a type.

But back to the love, the pain, the fear that Jackalyst (hee!) has unearthed by reminding me of this story.  I think I’m terrified of real, intimate love.  I want it more than anything, and I definitely think I’m ready for it - much more now than, say, when I was snorting drain-cleaner-and-battery-acid-based products into my nostrils.  But oh my God the pain I felt after that unceremonious dismissal way back in 1999 is something I never want to feel again, nor is it something I’m certain I could survive again.  It’s now 7 years later, and I still remember crying, howling, heaving for 24 hours non-stop on the porch at Brandon’s parents’ house, terrified that there was literally nothing left inside of me.  Now, nearing 30, I find myself beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to learn how to do it right.  I haven’t had the practice relationships or the dress rehearsals that everyone else seems to have with seemingly painless regularity.  If/when the real thing does come along, will I fuck it up because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing?  Or will I dismiss it without even acknowledging the potential because I’m too scared to even let myself take the chance?

A friend I occasionally chat with on AIM recently offered the theory that I want everyone to like me, but the minute anyone wants to get any closer, I shut down.  This was a really nice, really cute guy that I barely knew who was interested in me, which kind of proves his point.  There was really nothing to be afraid of, yet I still managed to keep myself just out of his reach.  I like being liked, but am I loathe to being loved?

Damn you Rufus.

HEARTBURN

Is this heartbreak or is this heartburn?
Have I been played or do I need a Rolaid?
Gotta learn the difference ‘tween "I love you"
The difference ‘tween "I love you" and the symptoms of ebola

Is this heartbreak or is this heartburn?
Can I be spared from being so dramatic?
Gotta learn the difference ‘tween "I love you"
The difference ‘tween "I love you" and a derailed rollercoaster

Gonna rain down on my sunny Sunday shoes
Guess I’d best get some galoshes

Let me tell you that this song’s useful
Yes this song’s useful when you’re really drunk
And you gotta learn the difference ‘tween "I love you"
The difference ‘tween "I love you" and "whatever"

Last night while listening to Fiona Apple viciously bark out several of the greatest songs ever created, my best girl friend (and wrong prom date) Jackie turned to me at one point and informed me that I should blog, dammit!  She seems to think I have an interesting life with interesting anecdotes and an interesting way of expressing my interesting self.  Not being one to disagree with such an astutely accurate observation, I conceded and began thinking about why I’d gotten so damn unwritten when I used to scribble down EVERYTHING. 

This, in turn, got me thinking about how much of my life these days just gets forgotten, washed away with the millions of brain cells I finally stopped systematically killing off a few years ago (3.5 years ago today, to be exact!).  I have no short-term memory anymore.  Things happen to me, funny things, wild things, annoying things, sweet-little-nothing things, beautiful things, ugly things… but the next day they’ve passed through my consciousness and are gone, and it’s time for that to change.  Maybe I’ll even end up writing a few more songs.  I’m tired of not writing.  Hence, the world premiere of me’s blog.

As a tribute to Jackie for lighting this fire under my ass, I will now recount the anecdote that she cites as an example of my thoroughly writeable existence.

This had to be early in my college years - 1995 perhaps? - while I was on one of my then-frequent trips up to NYC (yes, back when I used to write A LOT).  I bought this very New Yorky pair of dark brown suede manboots, with white stitching all around the edges.  I still have them and wear them only on special occasions.

Anyway, I bought them and wore them out of the store, and as I was walking down the clamorous New York City streets, I was passed by a very sassy young black man who turned back to shout out "Your shoes are so cute I hate chu!"

Here’s to more good times and bad times and everything-in-between times!  I’m outta practice, so bear with me while I re-find my writing voice.  But hey, gotta start somewhere….

-me