The Soundtrack of My Life

April 8, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 12 – Just Around the Riverbend

So, if you weren’t aware by now, I am a homosexual. If me mentioning my husband and my boyfriend wasn’t enough to let you in on the secret, I thought I would drop in my next track. It also pulls double duty and reveals my immature nature and love of anything Disney. (However, they’re kind of on my shit list at the moment for obvious reasons.)

When this movie came out it made just as much, if not more so, of an impact on my life like Beauty and the Beast had a few years prior. All summer I listened to this tape (yes, tape) over and over again, re-enacting scenes and singing it at the top of my lungs. How my parents did not know I was gay is truly beyond me. I guess hopeful, Christian longing for your son to have a wife and kids, I suppose. (But side note: kudos to my parents for being so supporting and accepting of who I was as a “straight” man and not forcing toxic masculinity upon me.)

This song was a particular favorite of mine. I imagine it spoke to my need for something new and exciting, and the longing for something more, even though it may be scary not knowing “what’s around the riverbend.”

This ballad has been on my mind a lot lately primarily because: 1) it’s a banger and 2) the summer that this movie was released into my open “obsession slot” I went up to stay for a week with my grandmother in the house her and my grandfather had built in the woods. I would wander all through the woods and up the dirt road, listening to this tape and singing. You would have thought that after she and I watched a mountain lion walk up the dirt road, in front of her house, I would have stopped doing that, but no. The show must go on. Even if you may be the meal for an apex feline predator.

It is truly in the middle of nowhere and it’s about 3-4 hours from any of my family, so getting up there to do maintenance is non-existent. As far as I am aware, it is sitting vacant, rotting away. Which is unfortunate. My grandmother loved, loved, loved this house. She truly did not want to concede that she could not live there anymore, because of her age, but she understood the risk of living so far from anything. She ended up coming to live with us, with the caveat that my mother and father would take her up there for a visit from time to time. We hardly did that unfortunately.

From time to time my thoughts become obsessed with “the cabin.” I’ll dream of it in some sort of danger, like an encroaching roadway or housing development. I don’t quite know what these dreams mean, but they genuinely cause me a lot of distress. I dreamt of it a few nights ago and it has been on my mind since. I think because I dread of the state of it. It wasn’t in the best of shape the last time I saw it, some ten years ago.

It’s amazing how something that played such a huge role in your life can just be left in the past. My grandmother would be devastated to know it hasn’t been used in some time. At least, as far as I know. It’s not someplace you can just pop in for a visit. If you go, the first day is mainly cleaning/maintenance. That’s if you can get to it. The winding, hilly dirt road isn’t very friendly if you don’t have a truck or SUV. This last fact has kept me away because I don’t really have any means to get back there, and I am sure as hell not going to put my Toyota hybrid at risk for some sentimental excursion.

Another memory just popped into my head, but this was also the summer that I definitively decided I wanted to be a writer. This was between my 3rd and 4th grade years, which means I had just read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and fell in love with the written word. I was enthralled with the ability a story had to say one thing but mean something entirely different. I have tried since then to imitate C.S. Lewis’s care-free writing style, but I lack the finesse and polish.

I remember making the grand pronouncement to my grandmother and she was so supportive. She listened to or read EVERYTHING I gave her. I will never forget her support. She was everything to me.

In between singing aloud astride a mountain, my pencil scribbled away in a Lisa Frank spiral notebook about a prince named Kool who comes across a young man, alone in the woods, suffering from amnesia. Kool decides to name him Speed and the two go on wild adventures together. Symbolism for me finding my true identity?! Find out on the next mindless drone of the continuing adventures of a middle-aged faguette!

March 25, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 11 – Danny’s Song

My mother was my primary parent. She was the one I identified and spent the most time with. And it’s not like this was because my dad was a bad dad. He was a good role model and really tried. I was just a different character than him. Which is odd because we are very, very similar. I have always been a Chatty Kathy and my dad, because of his anti-psychotics, wasn’t very talkative. On top of that, I think my dad got in his head that since he never had a father he didn’t know how to be one. Whatever the reasons, my mother was the go-to parent.

I think she and I bonded moreso because my mother worked in Costa Mesa and she had found a private Christian pre-school around the corner from her office that I attended until first grade. This was about an hours drive from where we lived, so she and I spent a lot of time in the car. We would chit chat and listen to music. She would sing in her monotone soprano. My mother loved Mama Cass and Anne Murray. These were the ones I remember the most from growing up. (Especially Anne Murray’s Christmas album.) It’s strange to me that now whenever my mom gets upset, caused by her dementia, she is soothed with Patsy Cline. I have tried the other two talented ladies and she shows zero response, which truly saddens me. They are such a huge part of her memory for me.

Memory… I say it as if she’s gone. She’s not dead. She’s still alive, but the person she was doesn’t exist. That’s one of the worst parts of Alzheimer’s. It’s taken the woman I once knew and morphed her into this “bizarro mom.” One where she’s cruel, a liar, and exceedingly stubborn. The lying upsets me the most. She was never like that. Not once in my youth. She notoriously told me that there was no Santa Claus, at six years old, when I asked her point blank if he existed. For the longest time I resented her for that. I had wished she had kept up the charade a little bit longer to prolong my sense of “magic” and “wonder.” As an adult and thinking of the idea of having my own kids, I have immense respect for her. The truth is always the best. And because of her unrelenting ability to be honest, I could always rely on her.

It is such a weird experience grieving for someone who is still alive. Its even harder when you have to handle her affairs and possessions the same way. Even now as I write this I find myself deviating from my thoughts. All of this causes me so much trauma and I fucking hate it. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to see her change and I don’t want to lose her. Everything that’s happened thus far has stripped her of any dignity. It is because of this that I cannot for the life of me believe in a god.

My mother has always been deeply religious. She grew up in a devout home and spent most of her days at the church. She has lived her life as a good Christian woman, and how does this higher power reward her? Alzheimer’s. It’s a cruel fucking joke. One in which no one but this sadistic deity could find humorous.

It is because of this deeply ingrained brainwashing that, even though she had transcended her prior beliefs, has devolved to where she obsesses over the sin of me being gay. That is the one that truly hurts the most.

I know what everyone will say, “she’s not the same person” or “it’s the disease.” Yeah… I have heard it. But knowing and understanding are two very separate things. Especially when it comes to past trauma.

My mother’s and my closeness ceased to be when I told her I was gay. Well, when I told her I was “bisexual” as if that could/would soften the blow that she wasn’t going to get grandchildren. She had made her beliefs about homosexuality very clear growing up. I even distinctly remember her saying she was a “proud homophobe.” After I had outed myself she didn’t speak to me for a solid month. Then any communication after her hiatus was short and cold.

As time went on and after my husband and I lived with my parents for a year, while we got ready to buy a house, I think she saw how normal we were. We weren’t these sinful sexual deviants. We were just us. That’s it.

My mother was the one to sign our marriage license (I think I put her on the spot and she couldn’t decline or else look like a dick) and she even introduced my husband as her son-in-law. All this progress, all this change, and every ounce of it lost because of her disease.

The last couple weeks have been the worst. She is now seeing people who are not there, talking to them, and living in a constant state of fear because these delusions are calling her ugly and/or saying they’re going to harm me. She breaks down into tears because she doesn’t want to see me hurt. I hate all of this for her. This isn’t fair.

She is now on hospice care and while most always believe that the death knell is growing, this probably isn’t the case. There was a moment this last weekend where I thought she had died in my car, so I pulled over and dialed for help. When the ambulance came out and checked her vitals this bitch was in top notch health.

The only way she’s going to leave this earth is because her mind forgot how to breathe.

Now I sit and wait for the call that she’s passed.

March 22, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 10 – Cosmic Love

Today is going to be a gauntlet. I am now two weeks behind and I don’t want to give up on my goal. So, I shall attempt at writing the last two weeks and get a jump on the third. Let’s see if I can actually do it without losing my ambition. (Spoiler alert: I probably will.)

It finally happened, I came across a soundtrack that does not exist in Spotify. I was going to choose the musical score from “The Horse Whisperer” by Thomas Newman, but all they had available were these cheap covers (of a single song) that sounded as though someone had composed them from a computer program. They lacked the enchantment that comes with the live recording. So… that plan has been scrapped. Instead I chose “Cosmic Love” by Florence + the Machine.

I first heard this beauty in a TV spot for the film “Like Water for Elephants.” I was immediately captivated by it. And, good song choice by the one who edited the trailer, because it drew me to watch the movie. However that was the only good thing about the film.

I don’t know what it is about a song with a heavy percussion, but it just fills me with this intense joy. In this particular ballad it’s amazing because the lyrics tell of a star-crossed love, and the drums are reminiscent of a heart racing from the very thought. It also gives this mythic/fairy-tale/other-worldly vibe that I felt ironically captured the essence of my novel.

I don’t know if other writers do this, but I have a “soundtrack” of songs that fit into the frame/theme of my novel. The story told in “Cosmic Love” accompanies my narrative in this coincidental symmetry.

I wrote my first novel length work of fiction in 2009 during my first ever NaNoWriMo. Since then I have attempted to edit the fuck out of it. Every now and then I get a second wind and start the process all over. I get about halfway through and start to believe the inner voice that “I am shit at writing” and then I stop. And the number of times this has happened with this particular work in progress is uncountable.

The thought of giving up has crossed my mind many times, but I just love the story. I have it plotted out for a series of four books. The second has already been written, but I haven’t even touched that one since I began editing the first. I wanted to polish this bad boy up to a glimmering shine before I dove into it’s sequel. Which is good, because since I completed the second book the tone and overall narrative of the story has changed. For the better, I hope.

During one of my bouts of renewed vigor for editing, I got this wild itch to drive from the Central Valley of California to Salt Lake City. No idea why. The urge struck and I answered the call. My little polycule piled into the car and we drove straight through.

With this captive audience I had the boys listen to my story.

What I learned is that I am very proud of my tale. I also discovered that because of my constant restarting my front half is very well completed but the back half is lacking the glimmer of the first. Overall the story is tight and I need to stop being such a bitch about it. At this point I have to write out two full chapters and continue threads I started in the first half.

The other event that occurred during our Literary Adventure was my husband bestowing a compliment upon me. One I will never forget. He told me I was a good writer. Now… he either said this because he’s dying and he has nothing left to lose, or he said it because it is how he genuinely feels. Knowing my husband… he doesn’t dole out positive feedback unless he genuinely believes it. Hearing that made me sublimely happy.

However… What fuel I received from that trip was wasted. Life once again became overwhelming and I lost my passion. It’s much of what happened with this year long endeavor. Everything just becomes a little too much at times. Even if it is a small inconvenience. Trying to accomplish a task that isn’t absolutely necessary falls to the wayside.

March 4, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 9 – Dueles

The poetry that happens in life is chilling sometimes. This song is one of those moments for me. It is absolutely beautiful, and the lyrics are… I will post the English translation below.

After my husband had his weight-loss surgery, he was invigorated to better himself physically. He started putting effort into the way he dressed, skin care routine, and even started to go to the gym daily. In that vein my husband had gotten it in his head that he wanted a facelift. He longed for a more prominent jawline and chin. He has a little one but mostly his face goes right to neck. This is a physical trait that runs in his family. His grandmother and aunt have this facial feature. As with most things he becomes obsessed with, he did his thorough research to find a place that could and would do the surgery at a low cost but with optimum results. That search brought him to a surgeon in Tijuana who was highly awarded and recommended.

After a photographic consultation, he scheduled his appointment and paid a deposit to hold his spot.

Then Covid happened.

He was forced to stop going to the gym and his surgery date was pushed out 6 months to allow the global pandemic to get under control. Oh, how optimistic we all were.

During that time I worked from home and he met and brought Tony into the fold. Overall pretty good times.

The day of his surgery we drove down to Mexico. The entire time, both of us had this overwhelming sense of dread. It draped over me like a cold, wet blanket. My stomach was a tight, softball ball sized knot. I couldn’t shake the feeling, and it only got worse as the day went on. At the time, I chocked it up to me being nervous about dropping him off at the hospital and crossing back over the border on my own. I’m sure I would have messed it up or been kidnapped. I mean, I’m so abductable.

Then there was the moment when he tripped on the cobblestone sidewalk and slammed, chest first, into the path. I could barely pick him up. At the time, whenever he fell it just freaked me out and filled me with so much anxiety. (It still does.) Luckily he fell right outside a farmacia, so we purchased some stuff to clean up the few scrapes he acquired in the fall.

After that, we went to his appointment and then immediately checked into our hotel. Covid restrictions were in effect, and I just remember walking through a mat SOAKED in sanitizer. I also remember, as we were dining in the hotel café, I made one cough, neglected to cover my mouth, and one of the servers looked at me with wide eyes and terror. What little Spanish I know does not include: “Don’t worry, I don’t have Covid. I’m not going to infect you.”

After dinner we returned to our room and were relaxing on the bed while watching whatever English television program I could find. For the life of me I don’t remember what it was. All I know was I was settling.

Charlie sat back perusing his phone and it is then that he perks up and says, “They updated my patient portal.”

“It says I have motoneuron disease.”

“What’s that?” I said, and grabbed my phone.

As I read the description provided by my google search results, every ounce of warmth drained from my body.

In a panic Charlie attempted to call the doctor, but got only his voicemail. It was 9 P.M. so it makes sense why he wouldn’t. So he shot him an email.

The two of us poured over more websites. I texted Josh and gave him the news. He read all he could.

“I hope this isn’t true,” he texted at some point.

The two of us started to cry. I snuggled up next to Charlie and held him as tight as I could. At one point, in a weird knee-jerk reaction, I ripped off my and his shirts and held him against my chest. In my death and dying class I had learned that skin-to-skin contact is the best way to heal emotional pain.

“I just want to go home,” he croaked out.

“Me too,” I had said.

We packed back up what little we had pulled from our bags and checked out. The front desk was confused but obliged. They ordered us a taxi and we waited out in the parking lot.

When we got into the car this song started. Through the entire length of our journey back to the border it played, setting the most somber note in the backseat. Neither one of us spoke. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything or even think. I knew if I put too much focus into it I would breakdown and I wasn’t about to be another statistic of some bitch sobbing in the backseat of a cab.

We crossed back over the border and hoofed it to the car in record time.

On the drive home, my husband made unnecessarily cruel calls to his sister and mother telling them his diagnosis. He delivered the news without any delicacy or social finesse. Neither of them broke down on the line, but we were later informed that both were devastated.

I drove the entire 4 hour drive home in about 3. When we got to our house we fixed ourselves some cocktails and hopped into the hot tub. We spent the rest of the night listening to music and getting unbelievably hammered.

The next night as Charlie and I sat alone in the hot tub, he looked me dead in the eye. Tears were running down his cheeks, his eyes red, as he implored me, “When the time comes, promise me you will help me go. When I’m ready.”

My throat tightened, along with my face muscles, as I hesitantly nodded my head.

When you were together with me,
That light was celestial.
What more could I ask for?
I found the happiness.

Without notice, we left our paradise,
and now your memory makes a shadow to my heart.

Today marks the month that you still don’t see me.
You went, nothing more,
You gave up on loving me,
Oh, and how you hurt!

While I think on you,
And in that I lost it,
I would like to avoid
To see me allowed me to love you,
For to lose you,
And you hurt me,
Oh, how you hurt!

The bumps on the skin,
They leave marks and after they leave.
They go, they go, they go,
But you broke me in two,
And I can’t find repair.

Without notice, we left our paradise,
And now your memory makes a shadow to my heart.

Today marks the month that you still don’t see me.
You went, nothing more,
You gave up on loving me,
Oh, and how you hurt!

While I think on you,
And in that I lost it,
I would like to avoid
To see me allowed me to love you,
For to lose you,
And you hurt me,
Oh, how you hurt!

Go to be free and to be happy.
Already give the same here.
With me is someone I knew,
It is a stranger and the pain let go.

Today marks the month that you still don’t see me.
You went, nothing more,
You gave up on loving me,
And you hurt me, you hurt, you hurt.

While I think on you and in that I lost it,
I would like to avoid
To see me allowed me to love you,
And you don’t know how you hurt,
You hurt,
You hurt,
You hurt me,
How you hurt!
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/dueles-hurt.html