I am listening to Carole King's "Tapestry" right now. I should say also, get it out of the way, that I am quite stoned. It is very hard for me to write here. There were intentions to right here and then I put on this music as a soundtrack, something to drown out any other noises, other thoughts, and allow a narrative to take shape, propelled by the ups and downs, so familiar, nearly background music, of this album. But the problem is that this music is too fucking fantastic to be background music, that it dominates and fucking blows my mind with the sincerity of the emotions, the time taken to sing them, the unhurried beautiful folksy melodies, so irony-free, that sound so foreign in today's pop landscape, that music like this now could only come accompanied with a wink.
"If I could only work this life out my way, I would rather spend it being close to you."
And okay maybe there are moments where these lyrics approach the saccharine but the hurt and the humanness with which they are sung break my heart.
I have some throat infection going on, potentially strep throat again for the second time this winter. Doctor's appointment scheduled for tomorrow when I get off of work. Drag Race is an amazing show. Yesterday was Valentine's Day and also some sort of anniversary in my relationship with Jacob. He says that it's the day we became officially "In a Relationship" on Facebook, and that's probably true, but the cheesiness of the symmetry weirds me out a bit, the sentimental aspect of it oddly - oddly given that I love the sentimental aspect of this album and yet reject any forms that appear in my own life, want to pour cold water on them. Cold water on perceptions of appropriate Valentine's day gifts, trying to reclaim them in a way I can be comfortable with: metal cock ring and leather jockstrap.
I watched Roseanne appear on Oprah while I constructed his card. He was sick and sleeping on our bed in the other room. I had slept til one that day, the both of us fallen to some bug. He made his for me after waking and while I sat on the couch, post-shower, blasting Al Green songs, listening to his feelings on love, also sang with such an intensity of feeling that it breaks me sometimes, brings me close to tears, or actually past their doorstep. Doing so now with this lady, Carole King.
At some point after I had gotten really into this album, some time in mid-college for me, I was playing "Tapestry" while home for the summer, perfect summer music for people under the thrall of outsized crushes, near-romances, what life might turn out to be, and being free during this time in a way I've never been since, going to college, hardly working, hardly having to support myself financially, free instead to indulge these dreams, this romantic life, night and day. I think it was while we were driving that I was playing it, it in my car's CD player, this in that chunk of time when people played compact discs and before MP3s made switching between albums after each song so painless, so easy, and when there would still be the tendency to listen to albums whole again and again. And my mom told me that she used to love this album when she was in college, that it was her favorite album and that she would play the LP over and over.
I got a glimpse of my mom much younger, the sun behind her, those yellowish photos of her I would see of her in old scrapbooks, college age, looking so young and beautiful, the world totally ahead of her. I imagined that girl, my mom, listening to this, knowing that to listen to this stuff you have to be feeling these things, heartaches and incredible love, and I had never realized somehow that my mom was so much like me, that she was my age once, that everyone does this stuff, that though I thought of her in the context of a suburban mom, driving a minivan, she was once in college in the seventies, that she went to a party school in Florida, near the beach, girl from Minnesota, and that she probably cried to this album, thinking about boys she had loved and did still.
So really listening to this album makes it quite hard for me to write, this hardly serving as background music, memories triggered left and right, names of boys, the walk from their dorm to mine and the fresh and new thoughts and sensations I had on those walks of shame, Florida sun, myself fleeing to the Sunshine State for school, and also apparently being moved by this album in much the same way. It was a beautiful parallel when she told me about it, things opening up to me that I had not seen before.
He liked the gift. I was worried. We got dressed and walked over to Fada to have dinner, something about the spectacle of it creeping me out a bit, couples on parade, seeing the awkwardness in the faces of some of the dates, it all a bit unnerving. I had some more to drink and felt more at ease, saw this man across from me, ivy growing on a wall behind him, and realized what it was, that it was sitting here with my man and looking at him and talking and drinking and living. He has fucked me a couple time in the last few days and this is the first time since the summer that I have been fucked, for reasons my own, my normal discomfort with it and the feeling always there that I am about to shit all over the place, but these times I wanted it, made it happen, was quite drunk yes and feeling particularly slutty. We did poppers and I wanted it in further, his dick and its in and out motions mirroring my breaths, in and out, lungs compressing, an intense cycle, feeling of union.
It felt amazing and I am going to make an effort for this to happen more often, be more open, less closed off. And it sounds a bit mumbo jumboish, but I think there is something to it, that getting fucked is a really special thing to do, that it is making yourself really vulnerable, physically receptive, and as a result somehow psychologically also. Sometimes you just need to open that asshole, unclench that sphincter, and let it all go, all that stuff you've been holding tight to. It feels amazing to quit holding on those balloons, to throws those stones in the water.
We took the subway back home, it much colder than when we had walked there. We watched Jersey Shore, took Nyquil, smoked some weed, and had sex. I washed my dick off in our kitchen sink after. We don't have a bathroom one. I wonder what the neighbors across the way think, if they see.
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