Me and Mr. Jones

Sweet Patty. She has been my crutch, my confidant, a reason to maintain. Through her I have been entertained. Absolved. I am not actually sure where it all began, but with her I have welcomed all experience.

Hyperbole? Yes. But it is Necessary in order to attempt to explain the importance of her to me. Music takes a moment and extends it through repeated plays. Moments or years later it still plays/sounds the same. But each experience of mine seems to cling to it. As I have found myself clinging to so many of her songs.

A quick flashback for context: My relationship with music as identity began a long time ago. It was fifth or sixth grade. I was living out in the wooded country. I heard the Green album by R.E.M.  My older cousin, whom I idolized, loved it and we played it on repeat during our adventures. I didn’t really pay much attention to the lyrics–it was the spirit of the music that attracted me. Upbeat and danceable songs followed slow and intimate ones. It was both so eclectic and so unified. The catchy choruses echoed in my head even after I ceased playing the record. And at the time it was something that set me apart from all of my NKOTB-loving peers at school.

From that point forward, music wasn’t something that I simply enjoyed–it was my defining characteristic. Identity and friendships became so entwined with my beloved “alternative” acts that there was a period that listening to and liking any given album was less important than living them. Sure there are plenty of songs that I still intensely love today, but I don’t have such strong emotional bonds with the music as I do with the defining “aura” around them. There were some cathartic moments with Tori Amos’ albums, but by and large this was all about outside things. It wasn’t until college that music really moved the inside of me.

Enter Patty. One night as a Freshman I am sitting in a group including a boy named Mitch. This boy played guitar and wore flared vintage jeans. He ate avocado sandwiches and paid attention to me in a tender way uncommon for most straight boys I knew. It was in that state of infatuation that I happened to care that the song he played for me was called “Sweet Lorraine” by a lady named Patty Griffin. It was on an album called Living with Ghosts that he would copy for me. (god bless cassette tapes and the 90s) I am sure he had no idea what he had actually introduced into my life–but it burrowed deep.

Like many Midwestern queer kids my life had been filled with a good amount of unrequited love and generalized pain. I was young enough to let the inertia of optimism guide me but not lucky enough to escape all the melancholy that filled lonely rooms. And it was in this space that I played my copy of Patty’s first album. With the first hammered chords of “Moses” and lyrics asking for help to “cross the sea of loneliness” and declarations of “a best friend who is a queer” I was hooked.

Patty embraced the beautiful music of melancholy. She wrote songs about recollections that struck like bullets and immortalized abused heroines. She declared beauty in a brassy voice. She ended this 10 song epic with a reminder that I wasn’t alone. I listened to this album on repeat for about two years. I gave copies to boys I loved. I allowed this music to help me begin to tell my story.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

–Wallace Stevens

A friend of mine recently asked me if it felt different to be engaged. (Thom proposed to me over Thanksgiving break–November 30, 2013–after 12+ years of us being in a relationship.) At the time I was still brimming with excitement and described feelings of romance and surprise and the new validation I felt our relationship had in the eyes of the rest of the world. That was true, but it wasn’t at the core of what I was feeling, that took a few more hours for me to discover. The above poem is what I came home and read, and it illuminated for me the true meaning of my engagement to Thom.

In our life together there has always been romantic commitment. But lately the weight of a ring on my finger has made moments feel more poignant. Not because anything between us at home has changed–but there is a sense of presence for me that I had never noticed before. It is the sensation of being “no longer wild.” Our small, methodical acts of devotion (sleepy kisses and well wishes to begin the day, a peck on the cheek before eating dinner, holding open doors and thanking one another for being considerate) now have the mystique of permanence and the weight of eternal return. This isn’t just happenstance–our chance meeting and continued intimacy through the years. This is a serious and conscious commitment we have placed “upon a hill.”

And it is true that people now openly ask me about my relationship and that also has effect. The ring Thom gave me is a symbol that many understand. And it is a symbol that I am now happy to employ. For love acknowledged in the world is a new thing for me. (My students are curious. My friends are excited.) This is new. This is good. This brings our private love out in the open–allows it to take “dominion every where.” Our relationship is now being presented with validation and support from the outside world. There are now more than just the two of us invested in its existence.

My mother just called and apologized.

Apparently I wrote her a letter as a young boy after she had threatened to hit me. She saved this letter. And now she found it and feels bad about it. I had forgotten all about this moment. But now I feel…

From what I understand… She had been napping and I had been watching my younger (by 11 years) brother and felt frustrated because this chore had been thrust upon me. She woke up after we made some noise. She was grumpy. I somehow found the moment to chide her for her grumpiness because I had been watching her son and she had no right to be angry with me. This made her increasingly angry. From what she told me from my letter (she claims to have lost track of it soon after she read it… Boxes…) she then threatened to hit me with a small souvenir baseball bat. I reacted with indignation and chose to leave the situation and write her a letter.

20 some odd years later I find myself comforting my mother… telling her that she wasn’t that abusive. I felt bad for her. Her father had abused her. Cycles. And now I wonder about how I feel.

Tonight asks questions. I offer only my own feelings of ambivalence.

Thom and I like to travel. Today we chose to take a trip heading south because Tony is always asking me to go “down there.”

It is odd coming to a place that you once knew and now you meet it again. On a perfect day. With an adult budget and the ability to indulge. Both odd, and wonderful. You can never predict the agency you might acquire as you get older and begin to hold on to things.

Returning to the past never quite works. But sometimes it doesn’t hurt. My nostalgia is gushing.

We are traveling with strangers and we are doing okay. I dictate plenty of the stops and they don’t seem to mind. I post lots of pictures to acknowledge the moment. And now at bedtime I look at “liked” posts on Facebook and obsessively scroll through my library of photos that remain on my phone.

This trip, and most I take with him, has taught me that if I can go to sleep and wake up next to the same man that I love it doesn’t matter where we are because I am already in the right place.

But trips are still going to be fun.