Boxed Set (Music and Memories)
Friday, April 10th, 2009

This was one of the first songs I learned the words to. I remember sitting on the floor around an upright piano with the other kids with folded legs. Ms. Bachus, our kindergarten teacher, looked over her shoulder at us us and raised her eyebrows – an encouragement to sing along. Her hands were arched and they lifted and dropped on the chords sounding rich and wooden in the piano’s belly. Kindergarten teachers were magic then in how they taught and entertained us, too, with real vaudeville talent. I was a nervous little boy so scared to go to school some days that I’d worry myself sick. I missed a full week that winter with a pretend illness that came about with no fever and no recognizable side-effects. Rehearsing this song for the winter music concert made me feel happy. It filled me with so much joy that I wondered if anyone could see it inside me.

Every divorced mother in the 80s piloted a white Chevy Citation hatch-back. They were affordable and family-friendly, with plenty of space, and most importantly, they weren’t station wagons. I rode in one with my mother almost always in the back seat so I could carry out battles between my action figures or lie on my back and watch the clouds. My parents were divorced in 1984, and for a time, I was worried that the judge might make me choose between living with my mother and father. I was afraid of what my dad would do about my choice. I can remember a dozen songs from that time, but this one is the most vivid. The mix reminds me of the way my little boy smiles while he cries when something upsets him, but he doesn’t understand why.

The girl who lived across the street from my childhood home was a hermaphrodite. I remember he/she dancing in the driveway to this song in the summer of 1985. True story.

The houses where I grew up were so tired that in June, when the heat came up, they wanted to sigh under the weight of their eaves. In the early 90s, the recession brought the prices down on real estate in the area west of the city, and the lighter-skinned people began moving away when darker-skinned people moved in. Businesses followed and eventually there were no movie theaters, no restaurants, nothing to do. The summer before my senior year my friend Jeremy and I would drive the streets at night in his Ford Escort looking for girls or fun of any kind, and there wasn’t any except what we made for ourselves. I could feel the city dieing around us and this song made me feel hardened by it all. I felt the anger and the challenge in it on those streets.

An industrial fan was blowing across us. I’d been dancing with Kelly all night and our clothes and hair were matted and, though we were right up against it, nothing moved in the breeze. There were flimsy cups of beer at different levels standing on the speaker boxers around us. The floor was pushed full with people. We’d only been friends, to that point, living in different buildings in the same apartment complex. I met her when she came in the leasing office to sign a contract a few months earlier and saw on her paperwork that she was not living with anyone. The next week, I set a flower and short letter on her doorstep, and we made a connection, but not like I’d wanted. We pulled ourselves over by the fan and I remember she was wearing a short red dress that was stuck to her chest and her neck was beaded with sweat. And then the music turned slow and we put out our sweaty foreheads together. I thought she might know what I was thinking, that since our heads were so close she would think the same thoughts. I wanted to kiss her but there wasn’t enough time left in the song to feel her out. I moved my hands up her back a little. I hoped, I prayed that by some miracle the DJ would play one more slow song, two in a row, which was such a long shot at this place, but if it happened, there might be something larger than me at work. And then this song came on. The air came out from us. Our bodies moved slow – lazily – and I felt her body give me permission. I kissed her. I can still feel our heads together when I hear this song.

My ex-wife and I heard this song on our second date. We were riding in an SUV with another couple when it came on the radio. The girls were in the back seat. Betsy’s window was down. The wind was blowing her hair around. Her neck was long and Hollywood classic – you almost expected the world to age itself for her, maybe turn black and white – and a pretty smile so white in her dark complexion. She was always exotic in the summer time. I was able to make her laugh, once, by doing very little. We were at the point when it was a pleasure to look at each other. Madonna was light and poppy enough for a summer night. After putt-putt golf and dessert, we sat on a ledge by a fountain in a public park. She took off her shoes and an occasional spray misted us. We talked about the similarities in our family structure, the way we grew up – we talked for so long, it was the first time in my life that I felt a real inward pull to someone. We hadn’t discovered the sadness yet – that real love takes more than attraction or similarity, and that the very things you loved about one another can eventually become weaknesses.

My oldest daughter was named after this song. My youngest daughter was named for this one. My son wasn’t named for a song, but this played on the CD I made for his ride home from the hospital. And this song spun on the bedside CD player when I gave my youngest her bottle at night and rocked her to sleep in a bedroom in a brand new house.

Here is a song for myself … no words, but it sounds the way I felt writing this.

(Jenni, thank you for the suggestion for this exercise. Your words were better than mine).

Tags: Music