Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Most of my earliest friendships were with boys who would turn out to be gay which makes a lot of sense given that I was an introspective little girl with a mordant sense of humor. We got along because of our essential otherness combined with the fact that there was not a shot in hell that the more mainstream cliques would accept me -- the boy with the arms truncated by his mother's taking thalidomide during her pregnancy was considered more attractive as a buddy given my awkward social bearing. I understood the truth of these relationships often before the boys did -- that my friends would end up with other men as would I. But we played a lot of let's pretend about the future, about marriages. It was possible to be all things to all people in these conversations, but for anyone listening closely, it would be impossible not to discern that my friends didn't care as much about having sex with a woman as they did the design of her dress.

All relationships contain secrets, pockets of mystery that imbue them with a glow, the breathless allure of romance and rumpled sheets in the afternoon. We have loads we cannot say. But sometimes the weight of what cannot be said falls hard upon your world and that world becomes claustrophobic. A few of my friendships have suffered this fate -- the sense of the dying of the light because of the distance between what is know and what is discussed is so vast. I suppose romances suffer these perils as well -- while the common myth is something about love means never having to say you're sorry. And perhaps perfect love doesn't. The kind that exists in heaven and whatnot. That kind. Here on earth, I suppose we're all sorry sometimes, for the things that have been said and for that which cannot be uttered.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't." Etta James

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Here, My Dear Marvin Gaye

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!