Oh Curse You, Dan Hill

Back in sixth or seventh grade, I attended one of those horrifying rites-of-passage, the Middle School Dance. 

I’ve always been very much in tune with music (grin), meaning that I was aware of current songs on the radio, knew the words, etc.  So it was with a certain lyrical awareness that I slow-danced with a tall, lovely girl named Shira.  The song was Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch.”

All I knew of love at that point was A) that boys met girls and got married and stayed together, and B) Good LORD, did Shira smell good and feel soft and wonderful in my arms.  Maybe, being a nutball, I was hearing Dan Hill’s melodramatic lyrics and imagining my life together with Shira.  “And then the passion flares again!”

Shira and I never hooked up as boyfriend and girlfriend.  Nor did I hook up with any other dance partner from that night. 

But I remember that feeling, like I could just sense “IT” from the cusp of puberty:

“And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides.”

I had no idea what any of that meant or felt like, but I felt like I was on the verge of something .

Well, along the way, things changed in tomworld.  I had a variety of different relationships, most of them fairly short.  I was involved in my own little world, “The Tom Zone,” as my former boss used to call it.  It wasn’t that I was intentionally self-absorbed or ass-hattish; I simply didn’t pay much attention.  I think I have always been too happy living alone.   Maybe that’s it.

One of the truest lines ever in a film was spoken by Hugh Grant in “Love Actually.” He’s moving into 10 Downing St, and he sees Natalie, his new assistant.  He feels something move inside. When he’s left alone in his office, he head:desks, and says “That is SO inconvenient.”

That happened to me a year and a half ago.  I think I even said, “That is SO inconvenient.” And it was.  It was horrible and wonderful and gooey-feeling-invoking, all at the same time.  We went out for ten months or so. We broke up.  When we were broken up, I, er…

It was one night.  The girl was drunk, and I was heartbroken.  My guts were knotted, my soul desiccated.  I needed to feel wanted, and this friend-girl and I had “a night.”

So pass several months, and that special “inconvenient” girl and I are on our way back together.  We’re chatting more, having dinner, feeling comfortable.  In the course of a text chat, she asks me if I ever–well, you know–with the friend-girl from “that night.” I ignored the question, answering another she’d asked.  She asked again.

I don’t lie.  Maybe I should have.  I don’t know.  As Dan Hill sang, “I’d rather hurt you honestly than mislead you with a lie.”

I don’t know how I should have answered that question.  In my previous, decrepit life, I lied a lot.  Now, I don’t, if I can help it.  Sure, if I’m asked “does this make me look fat,” I know damned well not to say, “Yup! Like Violet Beauregard between the dessert course and the juicing room.”  But if it’s a serious question, no: I tell the truth, even if the truth is, to paraphrase Al Gore, “inconvenient.”

Perhaps it’s ironic that “An Inconvenient Truth” is about global warming, because it’s cold as Dante’s hell in my world tonight. 

And Dan Hill can kiss my cracker ass.

(It might also seem disingenuous to say I don’t lie, when my previous post contained what seemed to be exaggerations, but I assure you that every word was true.  Just ask Dmitri and Tabitha, if you won’t take my word for it.)