by request

**WARNING. SPOILER. WHAT HAVE YOU.**
This is the story I performed live at CHIRP'S Uncommon Ground fundraiser, "The First Time." It's about my first endeavour as a sexual personage. You've seriously been warned. I apologize for my godawful abuse of ellipses. This was written as a performance peice, so punctuation was pretty low on my concern list.


Picture if you will...

A small dorm room, circa 1987, in a college town somewhere in the great state of Illinois. Four walls of concrete blocks painted over in industrial off-white.

I had finished high school with the satisfying notion that I could wait for college.

That I would wait for an intellectual man.
I would wait for a creative man.
I would wait for a sharply witty man.

I waited three days.


In the room a young man of 19 stands in profile at the end of a bed. He stands, if memory serves, fully naked in front of his stereo, sifting through a pile of CDs.

As I lie in his bed with the covers pulled up to my chin, I look at him.

And while this is likely the first time I've ever seen a man completely in, what my grandmother referred to as, "the buff ," what I recall immediately isn't that he was naked. Although, I'm sure I stared bug-eyed at the spectacle of anatomy on display before me.

The only image my brain can register is watching him carefully making his musical selection and then the precise way the CD drawer mechanically opens...and closes.

And then there is music.

What that music is exactly?
I can't say for sure.
Oh...I can narrow it down.
Because, Big Poppa only had two CD's on that specific playlist.

It was either Rumours, the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac...or the soundtrack to Amadeus.

Now, I would like to take a moment and encourage each and every one of you, at some point in your life (and I really hope you take this small piece of advice to heart)...to throw caution to the wind...and fuck your brains out to Mozart.

Nothing makes sex seem more like an otherworldly event than having oboes come in right as you're reaching climax.

I would mention the bassoons, but some things you need to discover on your own.

In fact, I dare you to have sex while listening to Symphony No. 25 in G Minor and not believe, with every fiber of your being...that Mozart wrote it specifically to underscore your ride on Willy Wonka's Glass Elevator.

Oh. I'll say it.

Mozart is the symphonic equivalent to Al Green's Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2.

But, I digress.

That very first night we were together, I'll admit, I really didn't notice the music. There was some other shit going down that pretty much had my full attention. It was in the background. A lovely undercurrent to the proceedings.


Years later, looking back...it occurs to me that we were doing it...to a Requiem.

1. Requiem (via the Roman Catholic Church)
a. A mass for a deceased person.
b. A musical composition for such a mass.
c. A hymn, composition or service for the dead.
d. In music, a mass for one or more dead persons, containing biblical passages and prayers for the admission of the dead into heaven.

Uhmm...okay...maybe we weren't listening to a death hymn the first time I did it....

Maybe...

Maybe, we were listening to the critically acclaimed, Grammy award winning Rumours, which has sold over 40 million copies since it's release in 1977! It is, after all, the 10th best selling album in US history!

I mean, there are a ton of kickass songs on that album.

Like...You Make Loving Fun!
Which, incidentally, Christy McVie wrote about her boyfriend...
Who was also Fleetwood Mac's lighting designer....
Who she just happened to start banging right after she split from her husband and band mate, John McVie.

Or...maybe, Go Your Own Way.
Penned by Lindsay Buckingham...
A song he wrote about his band mate Stevie Nicks...
With whom he had just ended an on again/off again romantic relationship?

Fuck.

Did I mention that, during the recording of the album, Mick Fleetwood discovered that his wife had an affair with his best friend?

Yeah.
These are my choices.

I can either recall that the soundtrack of my first sexual encounter was - a record about romantic dysfunction, personal turmoil, anger, recrimination and loss...

or a death hymn.



Funny thing is the boy never asked me what I wanted to listen to.
For two years the boy never asked.

And while I grew to enjoy the ever present one-two punch of the pop-rock feel of The Chain and the powerful orchestrations of Don Giovanni, not to mention the fact that either was a pretty good indication that at least two people in the room would be getting lucky that night...

I definitely would have enjoyed a third option.

And so, I choose to rewrite my history.

I want to pull the covers back up to my chin, look at the naked man at the end of the bed and dream of a different track.

A song, still as melancholy and infused with suffering and longing - because, obviously, that works for me - but, one that my 18 year old self, had she been sifting through her own CDs, would have fully embraced.

I choose Morrissey.

I choose The Smiths.

And I dedicate a new-wave sex dirge to that girl still hanging out under the sheets.