[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 10: A Song That Makes Me Fall Asleep

For a few years after I graduated from high school, I was enamored with techno music, disco, and dancing til dawn. I didn’t realize how much I went dancing until I was getting a check-up and my doctor asked what sort of exercise I did. I said, “None.” He said he didn’t believe me. “Oh, I go dancing a lot.” And he said, “That would explain why you’re so healthy.” I was so proud of myself. Of course, now the only dancing I do is in my car, when Lady Gaga comes on after I’m stuck in traffic and I have my feet free.

But back then, I was never quite a raver. I couldn’t commit to the clothes, which I couldn’t afford as a college student, which meant I also couldn’t pay the entry prices for the big parties, and I really couldn’t commit to the drugs. I was pretty much Nancy Reagan when it came to ecstasy; I really believed the propaganda. (I have had several students write about how little evidence was used to demonize MDMA and place it on Schedule 1. And recently, an extremely good study was published that shows that the drug, if used in its pure form and used carefully, isn’t dangerous.) And I didn’t really have a fake ID (well, I did, but I never used it for anything but bottles of wine to make sangria with), so I didn’t even drink when I went dancing.

Where is this leading? Well, because I was not high or inebriated in any way, when I went dancing I would get tired. And if the beat was particularly heartbeat-like, I would fall asleep. I was famous for closing my eyes and dozing off at clubs, sitting down on an amplifier to rest, my sweaty head against a cement wall, my eyes closing, and then 20 minutes later, a friend shaking me awake and pointing that I was really weird. Then I soon realized that if some irritating noises were keeping me from falling asleep, like construction outside my window or loud passengers on a plane, some repetitive techno was like white noise. Moby’s “Go” is as good as Ambien for me. Added bonus: It samples the brilliant theme to Twin Peaks.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 9: A Song I Can Dance To

I can, and have, danced to a lot of songs. I mean, really: A lot of songs. There is a substantially smaller number of songs that will caused me to rush to the dance floors. At various times, they’ve included “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory, “So What’cha Want” by the Beastie Boys, “Supermodel” by RuPaul, “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” by Whitney Houston, and “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga. But the song that popped into my head when I saw the entry for Day 9 was Erasure’s “A Little Respect.” Damn, it’s an awesome song. I discovered Erasure and this track around the time I discovered the Communards and really discovered Madonna. Nothing helps a wee faglet like I was in 1992 like 80s disco.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 8: A Song I Know All the Words To

I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Jane Street Theater on the last night John Cameron Mitchell performed it live on stage (until he did it again later in the run) with my roommates Liz and Jason on the 4th of July weekend of 1998. I think it is the great rock musical, and I also believe that it’s one of the greatest commentaries on gender and sexuality of the last 20 years. It changed my life, and not just because I ended up dating the show’s original producer for three and half years, and not just because I used the song “The Origin of Love” in my toast at Liz and Jason’s wedding. It’s just… amazing. I know all of the words to a bunch of the songs in the show, but “Wig in the Box” is the most fun. Here’s the song from the most excellent film version, which was directed by Mitchell.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 7: A Song That Reminds Me of a Certain Event

I can’t remember which of the first two out gay men I ever met put the Communards version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” on a mix tape for me. I’ve lost both tapes, which is a shame, because they were both awesome mixes. I think it may have been one of the gay boys from Indiana who participated in the rousing renditions of “Express Yourself,” but it could have been the first man I went on a date with, a college student who was perfectly nice but whose entire existence scared the bejeezus out of me. Whoever it was, the song became my go-to singalong favorite of 1992, the year I came out. I think the Thelma Houston version is better in all ways and the Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes version is stellar, but none of those musicians is a fabulously, awesomely queer gay man like Jimmy Somerville is. His version is my coming out song. Every time I hear it, I’m thrilled by the possibilities of the universe. Also, the video is bitchin’.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 6: A Song That Reminds Me of Somewhere

In junior high and my early years of high school, I spent most of my afternoons in my bedroom doing homework (after a bowl of cereal and 30 minutes of DuckTales). My room was full of comic books and Legos and signs that I was gay, like the giant silk screen print of a unicorn hanging on the wall and the pornographic contraband under the mattress. I never listened to music when I was studying or reading, but my brother did. During his adolescence, he transitioned from an angry skate punk to an angry art class iconoclast, and his music transitioned from Minor Threat and JFA to Jane’s Addiction and Concrete Blonde. He played the latter’s album Free a few hundred times when he was a high school junior. And one song vibrated through three walls, into my brown and nerdy room, and it was burned into my brain: “God is a Bullet.” It also happens to be an awesome song. I ended up a huge fan and I saw Concrete Blonde more times live than any other act. But it always reminds of sitting in my bedroom and doing pre-calculus problems.

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