A Small Promotion

Attended a karaoke separation party hosted by the man who’d just dumped me after a month of dating and his soon-to-be ex-wife. Arriving put my name in to sing Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” then thought better of it and asked the DJ to change my request to “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M., which is just as gay and tortured, but more opaque. Opacity can be so useful. When Michael Stipe sings, “Consider this/consider this/the hint of the century” we wonder what hint, what century. In a dim closet we hallucinate eons of signs and we can’t say what we feel. What if Stipe had sung instead, “You hurt me, but I like you, and I sympathize with what you’re going through, separating from your high school sweetheart with whom you have two young children, under circumstances (your wife embracing her girlfriend in a corner) which must feel like a vindication of all the fears and insecurities that your polyamorous marriage brought up for you, which I know about because you told me, we were quite intimate with each other, but now you’re yelling introductions at me in a crowded bar and then elbowing off like you’re trying to avoid me, and also I don’t think you’re even watching me sing right now which is a real fucking bummer because in spite of everything I was thrilled to be perceived by you in this moment.”?

Ugh! Like someone flipped a light switch; the cold bulb blasts our bulky harborcoats, our baggage (as if it needed to be more obvious); we know exactly what’s happening, how to feel; there is no hope of feeling anything else. Suffocating clarity, clarity as closure; I didn’t come here for closure. I came to fling the hint of the century down the narrow room, hit him square between the teeth, fill him with feelings he can’t name. A tall order, I know, for his separation party. It’s not about me, etc. But I can’t help it. It’s not about him. I am actually always wanting this, from everybody; it’s why I love parties, drugs, confusing poetry, karaoke. When the bar is so dark and I’m doing my best Michael Stipe impression and everybody’s shouting and shoving and the second edible and fourth drink are really hitting I really feel like they’re really seeing me! I’m not dreaming alone, in a borrowed closet thirty years old; the world’s in here with me, friends, lovers, strangers trying on old clothes, laughing with me, our mouths warm, open.