Music: Sex & Nostalgia (5)

My mother used to tell me stories about myself when I was a baby. They revolve around a specific time and location that believe it or not I can actually remember. She would always say I began walking at 8 months and how it was funny to watch me because at 8 months, I wasn’t very tall and I could walk underneath the dining room table without bumping my head. Two other stories she often told me were about how she thought I walked so early just so I could dance and how at bedtime I would stand on the side of my crib and cry until she would put a John Denver record on the stereo. The John Denver thing used to crack me up but she would say in order to get me to go to sleep, she had to play John Denver. John Denver though? Who knew.

At age five I guess my dancing really impressed my mom because she enrolled me in a ballet class. I say it must have impressed her because we were living in Snyder, TX. A town so small that you could easily pass it on I-20 and never know you had. I think the population was somewhere around 3500. Now there are certain things in a Texas town that boys just don’t do. Dancing was definitely one of them, but nevertheless she took me every week and I quickly became the teacher’s pet. Ms. Elaine, the ballet teacher from hell, was this old decrepit woman that walked around the classroom with a cane and smoked cigarettes while she taught class. She was well known for digging her long hard old lady fingernails into your arm if you misbehaved or did not perform properly.
I never felt the wrath of Miss Elaine but was witness to it several times. I remember I loved the classical pieces we would train to. The sounds would flood the room and would consume me and I just moved to it. I don’t think I was in charge of making my body do the things it did. It was kind of like the music spoke to some inner part of me, and the response manifested itself through movement.

I have always had that type of relationship with music. It sounds a little wacky I suppose but it was my friend when there was no one to play with, or my escape while my mom and my stepfather would fight. I think I have said in the past my stepfather was manic-depressive and that not only was he severely mentally abusive but he was physically violent as well. He used to get so angry that I could actually feel his anger as a physical sensation in my chest. I could just sense it and because of its intensity it would scare the hell out of me. Occasionally they would catch me off guard with their fighting and I think at that age I simply couldn’t deal with it so I would run to my room and grab my jambox, turn it up as loud as I could stand it and press it hard against my ear. I would concentrate on the melodies of the music almost in a visual sense. I would imagine the various sounds as traces of light on a black background, and would watch them dance and intertwine. Their fights always ended with him leaving the house and my mom opening my bedroom door and yelling at me to turn it down. That’s when I knew it was okay to leave my room.

I used to think that was where my love of music came from. My mom and stepfather would often fight at night, so I came to fear the night desperately. They would get pretty physical with each other and at 10, I was in constant fear for my mom. I would lie in bed at night hoping I would fall asleep quickly so I would not hear them. I would shallow my breathing, lay very still and strain to hear for any hint of their aggressive behavior. As I am writing all of this, I realize how traumatic all of this was for me. Even now, those memories restrict my chest, and I can still feel the horror in my muscles. The constant fear was exhausting, and I would have to get my little jambox out and listen to music to fill that horrible silence that I was listening to.

I remember in my middle teens the pastor of the church I attended convinced my mother my love of music was evil. It sounds amusing but you have to understand my severe dependency on music at this point. I would get a high from music kind of like a drug, and I think because it affected me so deeply he probably thought I was indeed using drugs or something. I mean I would completely check out when I was listening to music. In my head I would put myself inside the music and instead of dealing with whatever was bothering me the music somehow made it all go away. The music that filled me in ballet class and brought me so much peace and happiness had now change into this dark realm of escape. Music was no longer a joy to me. It was a coping mechanism.
I remember it happening too. It was a Sunday. My family was getting ready for church. My mom had run to the grocery store to buy pantyhose, and my stepfather was shaving with his electric razor in the living room where I was playing with my little brother. He was a toddler at this time and as he sat on the floor I would stand behind him and lean over in front of him and blow on his tummy, which made him giggle wildly. My sister was still in bed. In some of his random fits of rage, and as I was rising up after blowing on my brothers tummy, my stepfather made his way over standing directly in front of me. When I rose and saw him there, I instantly knew he was about to hit me but I could not move. I just stood there and watched in slow motion as his fist came toward me. My brain was not processing what was happening. I mean I knew what was coming but like a deer in headlights I just stood there. I don’t remember the blow hurting, I just remember feeling nothing. He hit me hard enough I fell back and hit my head on a chair behind me. I remember I got up and walked out into the front yard. I just stood there: I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything – just stood there. Something was about to happen inside me. BAM! It all hit at once: the pain, the tears, the disillusionment. I ran back into the house to my room. I got inside my closet with my trusty jambox and listen to Sheena Easton’s song “Sugar Walls.” It was a cassette tape I stole from my cousin who was in high school that lived with us at the time.

I was so overwhelmed by emotion I didn’t know how to handle it – so I didn’t. I just listened to the music. I didn’t have to think about anything as long as the music was playing and I was safe in my closet. I stayed there until my mom came home. I heard her come in the front door and then apparently my stepfather was freaking out or something because I heard them yelling, then I heard my mom calling for me. We lived in a really big house with lots of rooms, and I could hear here making her way through the house calling for me. I kept thinking “I’m in here,” meaning the closet, but I just sat there. Finally she slid open the closet door and I came out. Things were different now.

Now that I am all grown up and after countless hours of therapy I still tend to use music to work things out in my head. Dance played a big part of the healing process for me as well. Instead of acting out all of the repressed garbage of my childhood in some devious way, I danced. I took all of those emotions and feeling of fears, anger, disappointment, betrayal, and mistrust and, as I did before, I understood certain ugly truths about life and I translated all of that ugliness into something I could understand. While I was dancing, I could reach inside, let those demons out, and interpret them by moving my body and creating a physical sensation my brain could process, instead of having them in my head.

In high school, I wrote a paper based on a quote from Dick Clark. While hosting American Bandstand, he once said, “Music is the soundtrack of our lives.” That made so much sense to me. Music dates itself in our minds, and puts a timestamp on our memories. At any given point in my life I can tell you what was happening and what music I was listening to.

These days music still plays a vital role in my life. There is an inner connection to it, and it can define me entirely. Although not in quite the same way it did as when I was a child, it transports me to a different place, where I can think, or feel, or understand something. I use music in many different ways as well. I use it to make the sometimes-mundane task of having sex into a performance. I was talking to a friend last night and we joked about how I will actually use verses from song as dialogue when I am having sex. I also use it to tell time. I know that 2 Britney’s, a Justin, a Baz Luhrman, and a Paula Cole equal the exact amount of time I need to be on the Stairmaster for my cardio work in the gym. Mostly now, I use it for entertainment value, such as planning out specific songs I’d like to perform to on stage. I think the greatest compliment in my life was when a girl I used to dance with told me she was watching me dance from the wings and it made her cry. The best compliments I have received from my clients are when I am acting out a song through sex.

I’m not sure I really have a point here, and if I do I cannot put it into words. I guess I am simply saying I have a strong love for music. I wish more people could see me dance though. I think that would be the only true way for you to understand everything I’ve just said. Whatever my point may have been, I’m done. Thanks for making it all the way to the end. Sorry if you thought I was leading up to a major revelation. Just think about me the next time your favorite song comes on the radio.