I get more into the groove with the second album. I know some of these songs, and most of them aren’t bad. Even the ones that were massively overplayed back in 2008 have moments of awesomeness within them, more noticeable now that they’re not being massively overplayed.
I keep going. By the time I’m at 1989, I’m in something of a fugue state. When I hit “Out of the Woods,” something inside of me latches on. It doesn’t matter that it’s basically a Bleachers song sung by someone else. It doesn’t matter that there are only about three lines’ worth of lyrics. It doesn’t matter that my dating history is hardly the same as Taylor Swift’s romantic roller coaster. I’m drawn in and hooked. I listen to the song three times in a row. Then I listen to the rest of the album, and go straight back to “Out of the Woods.” Repeat it.
Dinnertime passes. Night falls. I am caught in the loop of my headphones.
I find myself wondering: What makes a great song great? It can’t be the message. There are thousands of other songs out there that say the exact same thing. What is it about the way this particular song is saying it that makes it last longer in my ears, so long that it makes a home in my mind?
I text Owen:
The funny thing about pop music is that it doesn’t actually pop. The bubble holds.
Normally, this would elicit a . Instead, after a minute, I get:
Correct.
I am not, it seems, either out of the woods or in the clear.
I turn off iTunes, but the tunes still play inside of I. I’m brushing my teeth to a blank space. I’ve got a James Dean look in my eye as I get out of the day’s clothes. And when I’m in bed, phone at my side, waiting for another word from him, I go back into the out-of-the-woods-out-of-the-woods-out-of-the-woods.
Tomorrow? I text him.
Right before I fall asleep, he texts back, Okay.
* * *
—
I don’t have to search out Gabriela when I get to the office. She’s waiting for me.
“Here are the things you need to deal with first,” she says, handing me a stack of invoices that need to be coded. “Then check your inbox.”
I put the paperwork aside and go straight for her email. There’s a link to StubHub showing me tickets to a Taylor Swift concert at the United Palace next Thursday.
The tickets cost roughly the price of an engagement ring. Or at least they cost more than I have ever spent at Target in my life. Or a lifetime’s supply of Diet Coke.
Of course, Owen might already have tickets, as part of his Secret Life. From what I can tell, they’re very hard to come by—but I figure I should check.
Can I see you tonight? I text. And are you free next Thursday or Friday?
The rolling ellipsis appears immediately on my screen.
Yes on all three counts, he replies.
I have to stop myself from calculating all the things we could do with the money I’m about to spend. Fly to London. Buy a nice couch, or three crappy couches. See Hedwig on Broadway a dozen times.
But this. This is what he wants, more than any of those other things.
I buy the tickets.
* * *
—
“You just cost me a lot of money,” I tell Gabriela, poking my head into her office.
“Good man,” she replies.
* * *
—
Back at my desk, I check in on Miss S. I’m not expecting anything new—Owen usually takes a few days between posts. This time, though, he’s kept going. There’s a new entry, time-stamped three a.m. EST.
We pick up exactly where we left off, with The Fearless Miss S paralyzed in the face of Johnny Guitar and his axiomatic wizardry. Outside, the crowd has begun to cheer for her, waiting for her to come onto the stage. But she can’t hear any of it. She is overwhelmed by Johnny Guitar’s precision, drenched in his virtuosity. Tears start to form in the corners of her eyes—
Until she blinks them away.
Even as her ex-boyfriend jimmies all the locks guarding her self-esteem, she reaches down for her own guitar. She knows she doesn’t play anywhere near as well as he does. She knows he’s mastered the blues while she’s stayed in shades of pink and red. She knows no one will ever take her seriously as a musician. But she plays anyway. As he slides and struts and wails with his strings, she strums a simple melody. He ratchets up his tempo, stops smiling, and starts to break a sweat. She hums along with her song, ignores all the other sounds in the room, all the voices in her head telling her she will never be good enough, never be strong enough, never be respected. She is the recorder who took on the orchestra. Johnny Guitar is grimacing, his fingertips so calloused that he no longer feels—not even when they crack and bleed. The Fearless Miss S stays inside her song, finds peace in her song, will continue to play her song even though she’s the only one hearing it. Because that’s the most important thing, that you hear it yourself.
Johnny Guitar roars and lurches into feedback, falling at her feet in a fireball, dying for his art, which isn’t worth dying for. The Fearless Miss S steps over him and walks out of the dressing room, strumming her guitar the whole time. She passes roadies and members of other bands; they all nod as she passes, not wanting to interrupt as she plays. She should be heading to makeup for one last pass before she meets the public, but she walks right by her Mistress of Disguise, then right past Abigail, who at least has the sense to follow and plug in her guitar just before she hits the stage. Without missing a beat, The Fearless Miss S begins to sing. The crowd jumps to its feet, an instrument itself, donating its own sounds.
Abigail smiles and picks up the case of Diet Coke she’d been carrying. When she gets back to the Fearless Miss S’s dressing room, she doesn’t find Johnny Guitar—only his leather jacket and his guitar, both smoking, embers at their edges.
Over the speakers in the dressing room, Abigail can hear the Fearless Miss S triumph on the stage. When the song is done, Miss S has only one thing to say to the adoring crowd:
“The funny thing about pop music is that it doesn’t actually pop. The bubble holds….”
* * *
—
We meet for dinner at an Italian place near his apartment. It’s only been two days, but I feel like it’s been much longer since I’ve seen him. When you love someone, the emotional distance you travel can feel very much like time itself.
I know I should start by telling him I’m sorry, but instead I start by telling him how much I missed him.
He doesn’t point out it’s only been two days. So I know he’s feeling it, too.
I go on, and tell him I’ve been reading The Fearless Miss S. “You really had me worried there,” I say. “Johnny Guitar was pretty formidable.”
Owen sits back in his chair. “You don’t have to humor me.”
“I’m not humoring you! I thought it was—real. Even though Johnny Guitar is a pretty strange name for a character.”
He smirks. “You don’t have any idea why he’s named that, do you?”
“Should I?”
“No. It’s sort-of sweet that you don’t.”
I can live with sort-of sweet.
“I spent yesterday listening to Taylor Swift,” I say. “And I’ve been hearing it in my head all day, even though I was only playing it about half the time. I suspect there are subliminal enticements embedded in the music, so your brain won’t let it go. If so, they’re surprisingly effective.”
“Which album were you listening to?”
“All of them. Although today it’s mostly been 1989. I don’t need to be welcomed to New York…but damned if I didn’t let her welcome me anyway!”
“I actually can’t imagine you liking that song.”
“I do. I mean, I give in to it. The lyrics are trite and the music is eighties pastiche and her shout-out to gays is like, Oh thanks so much.
The whole time I’m listening to it, I’m thinking that when this girl moved to New York, she moved into a multi-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a designer building, which isn’t really the universal moving-to-New-York story. I don’t believe she really got to experience anything in the song herself, not in an unencumbered way. But in a sense, that makes the song even more poignant. Because she’s singing about this experience she’ll never have like we normal people have. It’s touching that she wants to be a broke grad student so badly.”
Owen nods. “I think about this a lot. I think if even a girl as rich and set as Taylor feels these emotions, doesn’t that make them even more legitimate? It’s like nobody gets to escape from heartbreak or doubt, and that makes heartbreak and doubt seem more…shared, I guess.”
All of a sudden, I’m choking up.
“What?” Owen asks, looking alarmed. “What is it?”
“I don’t want you to be thinking about heartbreak and doubt,” I tell him. “Those should be the furthest things from your mind.”
“Awwww,” Owen says, reaching over and holding my hands. “I’m not saying I’m feeling them along with her. I just know they’re out there. I’ve faced them before, and there will always be the feeling that I may face them again. That’s not because of you. That’s because I’m human.”
I pull my hands out of his and reach over for my bag. “I have something for you,” I say.
My hands are actually shaking. I know our relationship took a step backwards the last time we were together, and now I’m afraid I’m jumping it too far forward. We’ve shared hundreds of small gestures in the year we’ve been together, but this is the first big gesture, or at least the first expensive one, and I want him to know I did it because I love him and want to make him happy, not because I’m desperate to keep him interested in an asshole like me.
On the subway ride over, I practiced all the things I’d say. Silly Taylor Swift references about him belonging with me, or me belonging with him, or how we’re safe and sound. Or more earnest words about being a fool, about wanting him to know I support whatever he wants to create, in any form he wants to create it. All true. But instead of any of this, I take the printout from my bag and hand it over and say, “Here.” Then I sit there without breathing as he unfolds the paper and reads it.
“No,” he says. Then, “How? I mean—really? Really?!?”
“Really.”
This time he doesn’t reach for my hands. He jumps out of his chair and comes around and hugs me. Even though it’s awkward with me in a chair and him standing, I hold on for a little longer than usual, and so does he.
When he’s back in his chair, he asks, “But how did you get these? The concert sold out in, like, ten seconds. They’re recording it for HBO!”
“I have my connections,” I reply.
He will never, ever know how much I paid.
* * *
—
It’s not like nothing’s happened. It’s not like we go back to where we were, not exactly. Another element has been added, and that element is The Fearless Miss S.
That night, when we get back to his apartment, he heads straight for his laptop. I don’t ask him why, because now I know. He puts on headphones and starts typing. I turn on the small TV in his bedroom and watch it with the volume low.
After about forty-five minutes, he takes off the headphones and looks around, dazed.
“How’s it going?” I ask him.
“Good.”
I don’t know if it’s okay for me to ask what Miss S is up to. It’s his own private world—but it’s also one he makes public eventually.
I decide to try. “Can you tell me what happens next? Or should I just wait until you’re done?”
He leans back in his chair and looks at me. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I don’t want to leave you out, but I’ve never shared it with anyone while I’m writing it. I’m worried, in a way.”
“I promise I won’t be mean,” I tell him.
“No, no—it’s not that. I don’t think you’ll be mean. But I think that I’ll care too much about what you think. And I’m worried that if I share it with you first, if I let you in as I’m writing it, then I’ll start writing it for you. I know that’s not what you’re asking for, but it’s the way it would be. It’s easier to think of thousands of strangers reading it.”
This makes sense, and I’m still a little hurt. But being in love means living with a little hurt, so I can take it.
* * *
—
“New territory,” The Fearless Miss S tells Abigail as they head out in a limo after the Grammys. “We’re heading into new territory.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Abigail asks.
The Fearless Miss S smiles, leans back in her seat, and looks out the window in a glance that sees far beyond the California they’re in.
“Absolutely,” she says.
* * *
—
This is what makes me happy.
The lobby of the United Palace, every inch covered with gold and ornament. It’s like the inside of a genie’s lamp, on a Liberace scale.
The excitement of everyone around me. The feeling that every single person around me feels lucky to be here, lucky to be alive.
The young teen girl wearing a homemade Fearless Miss S T-shirt, and the look on Owen’s face when he sees it. The way he doesn’t say a word to her. The way she still thinks of The Fearless Miss S as her own.
The way Owen can’t sit still when we get to our seats in the balcony.
The moment of recognition, the moment of awe, when the lights go out.
The cheer that follows that moment, so all-consuming that we can only experience it synesthetically, as a sight and a taste and a lift and a sound.
The way my boyfriend goes “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod” when the girl he both doesn’t know and knows so well takes the stage.
The way he turns to me—not to be worried about what I think, but to share his amazement.
Every song makes me happy. Even the sad songs. That’s the trick, isn’t it? To get to the place where even the sad songs can make you happy, because they make you feel so much more a part of life. They make you realize there is music in even the most difficult things.
But most of all, there is the transcendent happiness when she starts to play “Out of the Woods”—the happiness that is both joy and relief, that is clarity, that is everything we’ve wanted, for the three minutes and fifty-six seconds that it will last.
The happiness of singing along.
The happiness of singing along with the boy I love.
The happiness of seeing in his eyes that he is so happy, too.
TRACK TWELVE
TRACK THIRTEEN
As the Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir Sings Katy Perry’s “Firework”…
Alright, choir. Let’s do this.
I’m sorry—I know how much some of the others like this song, but we should be singing “Born This Way” instead.
Why did Tim have to put me next to Joe? I know conductors can be cruel, but this…this is too much.
Is Tyrone really ghosting me?
I mean, Tyrone understands we’re in this choir together, right?
Just because there are two boys kissing in the video, it doesn’t make it a gay anthem. “Born This Way” is clearly a gay anthem.
Project, Dan. Stop looking at your feet.
Joe has to stop smiling at me. I cannot even hold a thought, not to mention a song, when Joe is smiling at me.
I can see him in the audience. Right there. And if you had told me two years ago that my father would be sitting in the fourth row at a queer choir concert with me onstage—I would have laughed, and it would have been the most pained, excruciating laugh you’d ever heard,
because it would have been the laughter of someone who’d completely, utterly given up. I’d thought he was going to see it coming. But when I told him, there was genuine shock, the kind that’s so strong you can’t even begin to hide it. Loss for words, then the wrong words rise up immediately after. He reacted like I’d told him I was dying, when really I was telling him I wanted to live. He didn’t understand. And then he made that foolish demand, telling me to fight it. Telling me he’d get me all the help I needed. As long as I fought it. As long as I was still his daughter. Not his—whatever the other word was. He wouldn’t say it. He wouldn’t come close to giving me that.
I never, ever would have made out with Tyrone in that supply closet if I’d known he wasn’t going to acknowledge my existence the next day.
I’m singing extra loud for you, Tyrone. Hear that?
Rakesh, this isn’t a dance show. They came to hear you hit the notes, not audition for Drag Race.
I waited outside overnight before Gaga played because I wanted to be in the front when they opened the doors to general admission. I sacrificed a night of my life and honestly I would have gladly given up a year of it, because that night was the most amazing night of my life. When she sang “Born This Way,” she was singing it right to me, and I was singing along so loud, I swear she could hear it. I was elevating her and she was elevating me and there was no doubt in my mind that this way was the right way, that I was born to wear what I want to wear and say what I want to say and kiss who I want to kiss. She unlocked all that for me.
And all I’m saying is—Katy Perry’s never done that for me.
What do you do when your father wants you to change back into his idea of you? You hold your ground. Even if you have to move out of your house. Even if you’re not welcome at Christmas. Even if it puts everyone in the middle in an awkward position. After a certain point, it was not my job to make him understand. I had to hope that in the fucked-up equation of parenthood, the coefficients of disappointment and fear would eventually be overtaken by how much he missed me and how much, essentially, he loved me, or at least saw how the other people he loved could find a way to love me without any qualifiers.
19 Love Songs Page 17
