I Wish Life Were A Musical...

Some days I really wish life were a musical. Like...something straight from Bollywood or Broadway. You bite into a sandwich that is so good that you just have to burst out into a song about your love for a Subway Club. You catch your boyfriend sitting on another man's face...and you break into a Vaudeville number as you commit a crime of passion. What could be more fun? Take Rent for example. Pedro Julio and I went and saw it on Thanksgiving Day. Just about everyone in the moving is dying from AIDS...yet...they still manage to find the songs that are just waiting behind the corner in every day life. If life were a musical I would never have any fear or facing anything because I'd know that there was a little ditty just over the horizon that would help me make sense out of the senseless.

For example, I've been reading some reviews of Rent in the local rags here in Albuquerque and on-line. One of the reviewers...if I knew his or her name I would publish it here along with directions to his or her home...had the nerve to say that Rent was starting to feel a little dated...because...well...AIDS is still an important issue...but it just doesn't have the impact that it used to have. Spoken like a person that is HIV- and has never known anyone living with HIV or that has died from AIDS or is...surprise folks...dying from AIDS right now (from sea to shining sea people are still dying folks...the meds don't work for everyone and not everyone wants to deal with what comes with meds). HIV is complicated. HIV policy has gotten more complicated. The meds are a fantastic lifeline but they aren't a panacea or a cure. So when I read some half-wit article by someone that obviously hasn't a clue or a care or who could care less about the careless impact of his or her flippant disregard for a pandemic that is still raging across the world (right here in the U.S. of A.....not to mention that whole continent of Africa...and much of the the developing world)...I want to break into a tap number, sing a soulful tune, as I grind to dust each finger of every movie reviewer that has had the nerve to minimalize the very real and continued crisis of HIV right here in their own back yard. As a person living with HIV...that is lucky enough to not have had to take meds...I am super duper aware that the general public would like nothing more than to pretend AIDS is gone, that people living with HIV are hunkey dorey, and that life is just a broadway show...but really...as much as I'd like to conduct all my staff meetings using a clever be-bop tune...that just ain't reality.

On another note...if life were a musical...it would help with life transitions...like...so...you are in love with someone...take PJ for instance...and you know that this is the real deal...and love should conquer all...but you find yourself facing a whole bunch of internal issues that you thought you'd worked through. Luckily I've got a wonderful man that didn't mind that instead of having sex on Saturday night that I just cried for a good long while. For me crying is about the hardest thing to do (that and pay all my bills on time)...so when PJ told me to just let it out...please note I did my damndest to keep it all in (sorry Andrea and Johnny...it's progress not perfection...right?) but my heart basically said...shut up old boy...get out of your head...and just break down. And I obliged. For a lot of reasons I find it easier to have sex with someone I don't know than to have sex with someone that I love. As a matter of fact, the more strongly I feel for you the harder it is for me to have sex with you. Thank God I've been to therapy and I know that this isn't unusual for people that have been sexually assaulted, physically abused, and/or living with HIV. Lucky me...I've got all three working against me. If life were a musical...I would have jumped out of bed on Saturday and walked the streets of Albuquerque singing a gospel-style song about hurt, pain, abuse, and the love that heals all. I would have ended the tune by running down Coal Avenue, into my driveway, where Pedro Julio would have been standing, crowned by the porch light, in jeans and bare chested, slightly shivering in the wind, tears in his eyes reflecting mine, and then we would have made passionate love in the front yard as cars whizzed by in the background. (I'm a voyeur...hehe). But...instead...PJ just held me...and let me fall asleep...whispering te quieros into my ear. For me...that was the best lovin' I've ever had.

Even though my life isn't accompanied by a Danny Elfman or Michael Kamen soundtrack...I find music now and again that helps me make it through. It was Rent last week...before that it was the soundtrack to the movie Camp...and heck...I'm a playwright...so maybe...just maybe...I'll write a soundtrack of my own.

Comments

[Yosenio]

i like your blog, brandon. i'm enjoying learning more about you from it. i had to respond because as "rent" has affected you, so it has affected me. the *first* time i saw it..i saw it three times in a row. it was the night before thanksgiving (and quickly turned into thanksgiving as i stayed and stayed and stayed in the movie theatre. still working off the catholic guilt over that one!). i lost a partner of 5 years 18 months ago...and so much of what was in the movie resonates with me and what i shared with her. the music especially has become my healing mantra to make today, her birthday, manageable. thanksgiving was the one holiday we shared (we lived on different coasts, she had her kids to tend to, etc). i felt closer to her being in the theatre in the early hours of thanksgiving listening to jesse l martin sing in his great, great bass voice "In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died" from "seasons of love" or "open your door, i'll be your tenant
don't got much baggage to lay at your feet
but sweet kisses i've got to spare..." from "i'll cover you."

i sing bass so it was spectacular to hear someone else sing in my range and have such great control. it was also bittersweet to have him singing in the church to his beloved...the pain in his voice, the love in his voice. that's all i've been doing since thanksgiving--singing to her, expressing my pain and my love.

and then today i hear about a friend dying from aids. yeah, people still die from aids--tell that to the reviewer.

and the first thing i ever wrote was a play (about king arthur and the knights of the roundtable!), so i feel you on that.

thanks for helping me to smile through the tears.

yosenio