Like fried clams and grape taffy, the majesty of ‘The Mighty Quinn’ soundtrack was introduced to me by Suzie, who at one point in our lives taught me whatever bit of cool I once had, and the collection of songs from a movie I have yet to see became the soundtrack to our trip to the then-Soviet Union in the summer of 1990, even more than Madonna’s ‘I’m Breathless’. How a Russian adventure came to be backed by reggae was a typical Suzie Ko mash-up of unlikely cultural combinations. Having neglected to bring a Walkman along for the endless hours in flight, I begged and pleaded for Suzie to share her music with me. I didn’t care what it was, I just couldn’t listen to the two mid-westerners between whom I was sandwiched, away from my friends for the longest flight of the trip, for one more minute, and Suzie – gracious and generous and selfless as ever – was good enough to oblige. And so it was that I found myself hurtling sky-high toward a continent I had never visited, listening to Sheryl Lee Ralph revisit Bob Marley’s ‘I’m Hurting Inside’, and my fourteen-year-old self wanted to cry from loneliness while being surrounded by a sea of people on all sides.
When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
What pain could I have possibly felt at the tender age of fourteen, and on a trip around the world with some friends, and Suzie’s own father watching over us? I couldn’t place it, couldn’t define or understand what my burgeoning and tamped-down awakening as a gay kid even meant, or even if it was a possibility, and so it manifested itself in various wicked ways, such as winning everyone over to share their most intimate secrets and stories. When a person simply listens, and prompts the next part of someone else’s story, people feel special and impelled to share more than they would under usual circumstances. And so I became the keeper of secrets – secrets which I would later dole out when it suited me. No one swore me to secrecy so I wasn’t violating anything, and it was easier to deflect by letting everyone else’s story take center stage while mine hadn’t even begun.
I didn’t see any of that then, I just felt trusted and liked enough to be the repository for those sacred tales. I also sensed the power of listening and gaining access to a person’s confidence. Curating and keeping such secrets could, when we were adults and those skills could result in information that might actually be valuable, be incredibly useful. For our teenaged group of friends, it was merely practice.
While knowing everyone’s private thoughts and feelings carried its own particular power, it also came with a certain weight, and the concern of knowing things that others didn’t, and maybe shouldn’t. Rather than make me feel more included, it more often left me feeling alone and oddly isolated. Without sharing secrets of my own, I was the dead-end of what was also, impossibly, a one-way street.
I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong
Reveal yourself to me
I say, I say
I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside
What I’ve only just begun to see of that time in my life is that by accepting the confidences of others, and offering none of my own, I couldn’t share any genuine sense of intimacy or even friendship – it all rang hollow, and it left me empty and unfulfilled, and always longing for more. The hole in my heart would never be filled that way, no matter how close I thought I was getting to people, no matter how much they seemed to like me. Hiding my own vulnerability was a protection device, but as would so often be the case it worked against me. I did not see that then, and I didn’t see it for many years afterward.
We’ve been together like school children
But then the hurt, the hurt was in vain
Oh, Lord, I’m your weary child
Oh, happiness come back again
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
Keeping secrets became a way of life – not only the secrets of others, but my own – and only when I was alone did I ever really feel safe and comfortable being myself. Decades of that wear away at the soul like almost nothing else does. Even direct pain and loss and heartache were easier to handle somehow. During my first brush with those secrets, part of me understood that loneliness, and a sense of separation and removal from every situation, would inform the person I was becoming. It was creating a chasm between me and everyone else, a divide that would only grow over the ensuing years. My heart sensed that, and it leaned into that exquisite sadness and tantalizing hurt.
I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong
Reveal yourself to me
I say, I say
I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside
When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say…
