By Association

It dawned on me tonight...

I feel as though I've referenced Meryn Cadell's song, Secret, eleventy billion times on this blog and never explained its significance.

There's actually only one post on this blog that makes the connection...the connection between the song and the person to whom it will, forever more, be associated...and make me sad. And y'all know how I feel about forever. T'isn't in my vocabulary...

Except with a couple (few) songs.

The most significant is Meryn's first track on Angel Food for Thought. Her (his...he is transgendered and now lives as a man) 1st album (at least, of which I'm aware) released in 1991.

The fall of 1992. I was in my first year in college. I'd gone "home" to Cheyenne and, while there, I ran into Gooch for the first time in months. I love Gooch. I loved him then. I love him now. And so, when I ran into him that Saturday night, I was thrilled to say the least. He invited me over the next day to hang out.

It would be quite possibly the single most life-changing moment of my life.

I went to his apartment that Sunday, stood in front of the door to the interior of the building that also housed the Book & Record Exchange, rang the bell...once...twice...and then watched as a young man I did not know come running down the stairs in tie dye shirt and rasta hat.

And that, Dear Readers? Was the moment I first saw the boy who was perhaps the love of this life.

I don't recall anything about him beyond that moment on that day. That day belonged to Gooch. No. It was the next weekend Andy and I would...I don't even know what. Talk late into the night and remember only later that other people were in the room with us...but only as a memory...an intellectual exercise. It was that next weekend we'd have crazy, spontaneous sex with each other while Shana and Jeff were in the front room because we couldn't deny our attraction to one another.

He had a girlfriend. I didn't know.

And that's how it started.

Every weekend then I was there in that apartment above the Book & Record Exchange from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon - staying up all night and then, THEN!

Saturday morning. Sunday morning. The sun would start to come up as we would start to wind down and he would put on Meryn Cadell's album - Angel Food for Thought. He'd sit on the floor in front of one of the glorious floor-to-ceiling southeast facing windows and I would sit between his legs and he would sing the song to me in his gorgeous, baritone voice. I'd occasionally harmonize. But mostly I'd just listen, sinking into him, ready for sleep.

It was my lullaby. And, somehow, I knew he inexplicably loved me. Because of that song.

I'd find him again after he had to leave.

I'd love him...chasing him down the main street in old Redlands.

He'd love me...and finally tell me so.

I don't know why or what's real about what we shared over nearly 2 decades...except that song.

He's dead now. And I'll never forget that song.

Without it...we might not have ever been.

Once more...with feeling.