So in the tradition of “a song with the name of the location we are leaving,” I tried to find a song about Orlando that had some sort of memory or meaning to me. But there is honestly nothing that includes it. And the new ones I came across were depressing as fuck. So, I settled on this song.
This is from one of my favorite musicals. If you are unfamiliar it was written by the creators of South Park and one of the writers of Avenue Q and Frozen. So. Have fun with that knowledge.
This is the only musical I have ever listened to the soundtrack first before ever having seen the show or read the script. Usually I need context or mental imagery to enjoy a musical soundtrack but this interested me more than any other. I was not disappointed.
If you haven’t had a chance to see it, please do. I’ve seen it twice with two different casts and absolutely loved it each time. I had to stop myself from not acting out the role of Kevin Price.
In regards to any memory attached to this song, all this makes me think of is a workday where I was tasked with taking photographs of houses in a neighboring rural town. Instead of doing it solo I asked an old friend if she wanted to come along with me and the two of us sat and giggled like idiots to the songs. With both of us having come from deeply religious backgrounds we audibly gasped at the blasphemous lyrics.
This is one of the only good memories with that friend. She was problematic and someone I genuinely wish I could just forget existed. Especially her insane, Christian family. There are times I’m overwhelmed with anxiety just obsessing over the thought of them. Which is insane because they are nowhere near my current reality. They just made me so angry and I want nothing more than to tell them to their stupid fucking faces.
I have previously written about her mother trying to tell me to find a nice girl and settle down after a (one of many) break up with my husband. Evidently I made a face that was rude and she was insulted. Not that what she said was fucking insulting or that I always have a horrible expression… but whatever.
We left Orlando and booked it to New Orleans. We are on the final leg of the trip. After this weekend it’s hopping from one stop to the next until we make our way to Las Vegas and Magic 30.
And here we are again, with a locational song to bookend our trip to the city of the same name. Boston has been a wonderful city. Absolutely gorgeous. Even the dump parts of it were enchanting. I would live here in a heartbeat. Well… almost. I can’t handle the lack of street lights on the highway or the the lack of lane markers or, worst yet, the fact that off-ramps just happen with no real warning. Other than those, gorgeous town.
The whole point of our road trip was to make it here, which is why I set aside a week. The hubby and I have never been and have always wanted to. He had thoroughly enjoyed it. He just wishes we had designated the whole month here instead of 5 days. And he’s not wrong.
During our time here we’ve also gone to P-town and Salem. I thought Provincetown was going to be a short day but it turned out to be fun filled. And I already can’t wait to go back.
Today we set off for Philadelphia where the Bf will be flying in to meet us for the weekend. Can’t wait to have all my boys together again.
Now to the song…
The first time I had ever heard this was on the pandora station I would play at my desk, while in the employ of my previous employer. It was the only perk of working there, getting to have my music. Other than that… it was the worst experience of my life.
It’s funny, because while I was there I didn’t see how much it was killing me. I had just come to accept it. Never once did I question my mental health and self worth. Both of which my coworkers attempted to destroy.
I applied for this job and got into it by accident. I just wanted an office job. I was burnt out on retail. I couldn’t handle working holidays anymore. So I answered an ad and it turned out to be for an office assistant for a real estate appraiser. When I told my husband he was so jealous. He had always wanted to get into that line of work.
They initially liked me and hired me right away.
The man who trained me became a really good friend. I enjoyed his company. He was training to be an appraiser and I was meant to be his replacement. He went out on odd jobs here and there and worked overtime for the boss. The way the main appraiser and his assistant spoke to him was atrocious. They genuinely talked to him as if he had three brain cells. And he was very intelligent. (He’s currently a history teacher, which definitely suits him moreso than appraisals.)
I remember one time asking him, after this one woman had said something utterly despicable to him, “why do you put up with the way they speak to you?” He just shrugged a shoulder and turned back to his computer screen.
Years later, I was him. They ended up treating me the same exact way. It wasn’t until I left to work with my current employer did I realize how much of my sense of self that job drained from me. Away from it I lost a ton of weight and have loads more confidence in my ability to do anything.
It’s incredible.
All this song makes me think about is that cubicle, those horrible people… and how a change of scenery put me on the path to be who I was meant to become. If I had stayed there… I wouldn’t be in Boston right now. I wouldn’t have had the funds or the time to invest in my husbands final days.
I also like how in the song she went from California to Boston. Like me. And the cities are truly different sides of the same coin. And while I am a Californian through and through the call to this historic place is very real.
My entrance into any kind of gay community was very limited, unfortunately. I look back and I have a lot of regret that I wasn’t able to spend a little more time in that kiddy pool while I could. On the other hand, I was also self-destructing at the time and very likely would have ended up travelling a very dark path. Like with most “missed opportunities,” I’ll never know what could have been.
Right when I started dating Travis a little establishment opened up in downtown Bakersfield that was a beacon of hope for young gay youth. The club was titled “Bam-bams” and it was an experimental 16 and up disco. There was no liquor served, just looks, attitude, and dance moves. There was a cover charge, which is why most weekend nights it was more entertaining outside of the club than in. If you happened to hand over the $5 cash, you would find an empty black-box room filled with multiple video screens and dance music. Mirrors adorned the walls, to entertain the one lone dancing queen, wearing a crop top and shorty-shorts. The first time I went in I was so disappointed. It turned out that I was one of a few f*gs in this little town. I’d make the rounds and then tote myself back out front to chit-chat with the poor kids and the young queen working the door.
“Heaven” was one of the songs I discovered at the club. I still remember the music video, and one time even asked the lone bartender/owner to play it in the mix. He gave me a thumbs up and a wink.
Every Friday or Saturday night I would tote myself and my friends to Bam-Bams (aka BSqaured). I was beginning to build a community and make new friends that quickly replaced my hetero ones. None of the connections I had made during that time are currently in my sphere. They’re not even Facebook friends. It’s almost as if they never really existed. They were just phantoms. They helped me come into myself as a gay man and through my break-up of with Travis. I also frequented this little establishment because it was just around the corner from the actual bar my tatted ex liked to haunt. If I went I had the off-chance to catching a glimpse of him.
Oh, youthful infatuation.
As I was want to do at that time, that guy was quickly replaced by my next relationship, which happened to be to my future husband. One of our first ever pictures was taken outside of Bam-Bams.
My friend Eddie had taken the photo. He did it as “side shade.” He HATED Charlie with a passion, but that was because he had wanted to date me. (Good Lord I sound conceited.) He was one of the ones who encouraged my “bad habits” at the time. Regardless of his intentions, this moment is forever with me.
The last time I went was when I had been caught making out with a dude who was not Charlie, by a couple friends of ours. They pulled into the parking spot me and this guy happened to be macking in front of. Once they got out, and I saw who it was, I tried to pull it off like nothing had happened. But we both know they had seen what I had been doing.
That night I got unbelievably wasted. Charlie picked me up on his way home from the bar down the street, and walked me back to his apartment. On the way there he found my pack of cigarettes, Camel Turkish Gold, in my pocket.
“What are these?” He said and proceeded to leave them on the lid of a trash can.
“Hey!” I had said, but he acted as though nothing had happened and ushered me further down the street. And being so drunk I quickly forgot about them.
He hated it when I smoked. And this discovery went against my previous statement that “I was quitting.”
That night I sat on the floor of his bathroom, at the edge of his toilet, puking my guts out. At one point I demanded he give me bread, as one of my friends had said it helps sober you up. He laughed and brought me a slice of sour dough.
“Not this,” I had said and threw it in the trash.
In the morning I came clean about what had happened that night. I was caught. And when I am found out I don’t lie my way out of it. I rather face the consequences than make it worse. Plus, I didn’t want him to hear it from someone else. The truth would be better delivered from me, than a casual acquaintance.
He was angry and barely spoke to me. For whatever reason he kept me around the rest of the day. We went and did his laundry at a laundromat across town, where he continued to ignore me. I didn’t know what I was doing there and all I wanted to do was leave. Little did I know he had been working out if I was worth the trouble of keeping around.
As the present can attest, he decided to not break it off. (Stupid man.)
It did however initiate my pattern of doing horrible shit and getting caught. And our subsequent knee-jerk reactions of implementing restrictions to my life to avoid any more of these cruel/stupid choices.
In reality he should have ended it with me. I was mess at the time and didn’t, even remotely, have my shit together. It didn’t occur to me until doing this project, just how fucked up I was. In the span of a year I was dumped 3 times, by 3 different guys. That’s bonkers. I was newly out and discovering who I was as a gay man, and that wasn’t the most simple of tasks as I was coming from a very, very religious background/upbrining.
If he hadn’t stuck with me, I am genuinely curious how I would have ended up. More than likely I would have contracted HIV, because my sex education focused more on the “don’t do it” than the “USE A GODDAMN CONDOM!”
I don’t think I would have abused recreational drugs. That was the one thing about Christian school that had stuck. I would however, have been a raging alcoholic. And most likely would have jumped from one job to the next without ever having any ambition to go back to school or start an “adult” career.
But this is all speculation. None of this could have happened. I could have moved away and started an entirely different life. Who fucking knows. All I can say with certainty is that I wouldn’t be where I am now.
After a 3 day stay in Chicago we are back on the road heading to Akron. This little road trip of mine was concocted to celebrate the one we took for the hubs’s second opinion at the Mayo Clinic. It was also a defiant choice because he told me previously that he wanted our Alaskan cruise to be his last trip. I can’t have that. Not yet. He has since recanted his statement. Instead he has corrected it to be “no more road trips. Only cruises.”
That’s fine, punkin. Whatever you want.
Other than the title of the song, this doesn’t make me think of Chicago in the slightest. I thought it was a good choice seeing as how we had just been there. Expect the forthcoming songs to be similar in nature. What’s fun with my future choices is that they do in fact remind me of moments in my life.
The first time I ever heard this song, and immediately became obsessed with it, was from the opening credits of the Netflix show “The Politician.” It may have aired in 2019 but I didn’t get around to watching it until the first Covid lockdown. It had been a special request watch from the bf since it had his crush, Ben Platt. My interest in a Ryan Murphy program was minimal at best. So, I had kept pushing it off until we were faced with copious amounts of time and nothing to fill it with.
Covid truly changed my life. As I’m sure it did for everyone. But it feels like for me it changed everything significantly moreso. For the better.
Up until lockdown, the interaction between my husband (Charlie) and my bf (Josh) ranged from non-existent to limited. For the first 2 years of Josh’s and my relationship it had been very, very separate. Per the bf’s request and just the newness of polyamory for all of us. When everything closed and we couldn’t go anywhere, we were forced together.
We all started watching tv together in silence. It was awkward at first. Josh didn’t know how to act around Charlie and vice versa. It took some time to reroute old habits to where they began to have their own rapport.
My two relationships are very different in how they function. My husband is not very affectionate, we are more mentally intimate (conversations/debates/discussion.) Physical intimacy is just not who Charlie is. A peck on the lips every once in awhile satisfies his needs.
The boyfriend on the other hand… he’s attached to the hip. He has to be touching me. And I don’t say that as a complaint, it’s just how it is. I appreciate both forms because they suit me. I am someone who is happy when my partner is. So trying to find a balance with the two was a challenge.
This song brings back those first few months of mixing the two lives. If you compared how they are now to then, night and day. We’ve done many trips together. We’ve shared a bed (in a non-sexual way for you nosey betches) and we’ve all gotten comfortable around each other hanging in our hot tub in the buff. Again, nothing sexual.
I have to recognize how much the bf gave in the beginning. This was not initially the situation he wanted. There were other boundaries in place that kept everything separate. I imagine to keep himself from being hurt by seeing me with the husband. He was making himself fit for me. Either he has grown accustomed to it and appreciates the relationship for what it is or he’s tricking himself. I hope it’s the latter. I constantly worry that I have somehow manipulated him into this relationship. I do not want that at all. My number one goal is ALWAYS consent. And when I have brought up these same concerns to him he has always affirmed that I have not. He is here of his own choice.
Unfortunately the bf is not with us on this trip. A month off is entirely too long for him. He will however be meeting us midway through, for the weekend, and at the end. And I’ll be happy to have my whole family together again.
The Journal of a Jaded Josh 