spring 1991 (i think)
they lived on clark drive just south of wilshire, these three boys, in a pretty little salmon-colored stucco bungalow they paid too much for just so they could say they lived in beverly hills.
high-school chums, they'd all come out together from florida the year before--that's what steve told me as we stumbled drunk into his house that first night after having found each other at rage or somewhere.
he flipped on lights, showed me around, pointed out pictures of himself and his roommates accompanied by running commentary as to their personalities and characters that was as unsparing and offhandedly hilarious as it would later prove to be spot-on.
robert I was an ethereally pretty boy whose pictures mostly featured him on polo ponies--it was his family's money that allowed him and his friends to live on clark drive
and it was only later i'd find out his fragile, luminous beauty was the result of the way AIDS first shows itself in the very young.
robert II was this ralph lauren-model type with a sociopath's smile whom i immediately wanted
and i'd get my shot--the line that made it easy was, "don't worry, steve said it's ok," which turned out to be the lie he always used when he took one of steve's toys away from him.
steve, as appealing as he would've been anywhere else, was the ugly duckling of a very pretty house; try as i might over the next several months, i could never convince him of his beauty, his singular wit or his value to the world.
whatever--we fags all seem to hate ourselves for something or other. point of this post is,
on the very first morning i awoke in the house on clark drive, it was to bright sunlight and clean, white curtains flapping in the warm breeze above the bed, the smells of bacon and coffee, and the haunting strains of this song wafting through the air.
i lay there and listened, transfixed.
as its final notes faded into the ether, i got up, dragged on my clothes, wandered out to the kitchen to join steve, robert I, robert II and their respective tricks du jour, and asked
who the fuck was that?
the incredulous looks on their faces i'll never forget.
what can i say--i was new.
6 comments:
Such a lovely post--it reminds me of when I was listening to Madonna and liking her before I knew what that meant. I was always terrible at knowing who did songs, so it wasn't until college (2000) that I realized she was the one singing Like a Prayer among other songs I loved.
When Like A Prayer came out in 1989, Oh Father did not get much of the air play that Like a Prayer and a couple of the other more danceable songs did.
But, it was Madonna at her prime.
And as for Steve Barnes and a whole host of people, that was a crazy time. There was a whole lot of dying in those years. Something so few people who were not there really understand and for so many of us who were there, would prefer to not remember.
Posts like these help to remind me of how melancholy things can be . Days , objects , and songs need to be infused with the meaning of a human experience , an incarnational one . As I read this , morning is shining here in my room in a not so dissimilar way . I feel you , Mike : and I miss you .
wow, three comments of truly stellar quality in a row--how many bloggers can say that?
[and i miss you too, j]
Supposedly smell is the sense thatis the most powerful in bring long dormant memories vividly to the surface. For me, it has always been sound, In terms of hearing sounds others can't, having what might be called a phonographic memory, and the emotional power sound holds for me when I remember an artist's voice or a man's voice, sound does it for me as that song did it for you when it conjured up that house and those boys.
will: smells will sometimes take me there, but whenever i've had a couple and one of my seminal songs comes up, it's always accompanied by a vivid memory of where i was when i first heard it.
and sometimes, if i'm lucky, surrounding details accompany the memory; such was the case with this post.
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