Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT
LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT
LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT
REJECTION, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT

Late fall 1994. We had passed the point where there might be a warm day here or there. The leaves had mostly fallen. Nothing could hold any heat. The first man I had ever kissed had dumped me and I didn’t even realize we were going out. Ignorance saves some hurt, but you only get a pass that first time, and sometimes not even then. My awakening to the fact that I was gay had begun and it was hardly reason for celebration.

I DON’T, DON’T CARE IF IT’S NOT RIGHT
TO HAVE YOUR ARMS AROUND ME
I WANT TO FEEL WHAT IT’S LIKE
TAKE ALL OF YOU INSIDE OF ME

(DON’T GO NEAR THE FIRE, DON’T GO IN THE DARK)
(DON’T GIVE IN TO YOUR DESIRE, ‘CAUSE HE’S GONNA BREAK YOUR HEART)
(LET GO, LET GO)

I’d been leaving campus and riding the commuter rail in to Boston to see him. Now I did it to see the places we’d gone and wallow in the misery of it. What else was November for, really? The gray days and dismal weather added to the melancholy. I relished it. All that was at Brandeis was a cold dorm high in a castle turret, shaped like a piece of pie, bound by painted cinder blocks, and a small row of high windows that made Boston look like a speck in the distance. At night that space glowed, offering hope and warning and bitterness. Madonna’s somewhat doleful ‘Bedtime Stories’ album offered a gauzy aural cocoon of sonic warmth – whether it was the loss of ‘Inside of Me’ or the brutal solitude of ‘Love Tried to Welcome Me’ or the saccharine-sweetness of ‘Take A Bow’. Along with ‘Sanctuary’, these were re-structured love songs dealing with loss and regret and the tricky aftermath of romance. It might have been all about ‘Survival’ but I wanted so much more. At the tender age of nineteen, I’d had my heart broken and had broken a couple of hearts as well. I used to pretend there was something worse about the latter, but that’s not true. Guilt is awful, but loss is worse. There’s no bonus for trying to gain sympathy if you’re the one who ended it.

IN YOUR EYES (IN YOUR EYES), FORBIDDEN LOVE
IN YOUR SMILE (IN YOUR SMILE), FORBIDDEN LOVE
IN YOUR KISS (IN YOUR KISS), FORBIDDEN LOVE
IF I HAD ONE WISH LOVE WOULD FEEL LIKE THIS (LOVE WOULD FEEL LIKE THIS)

“The love that dared not speak its name,” as Oscar Wilde so delicately described the proclivity of those of us who enjoyed sucking cock, was instilled with all the forbidden enticement and defiant decadence that had always left me fearful yet intrigued. There was no doubt I was gay – there never had been – but I’d done my best to stomp it out, to go for the girl and the white picket fence and the blasted nuclear family because it was all I knew to do. We lived in a different world then.

From the very first time I saw one of the older kids in our neighborhood strip off his shirt and jump into the pool, I knew. It was summer then – so much of our youth seems to take place in the summer – and the world was warm and happy and gay. He dove underwater, his muscles rippling in the dappled light of the pool-filtered sun, and I knew. Enthralled and intoxicated, I drank his image in like the sweetest nectar, and somehow it wasn’t even sexual yet, not that yearning. It was a want and desire that was innate and primal, it was from the very core of my being, the soul that had been born when I was born. I knew.

I KNOW THAT YOU’RE NO GOOD FOR ME
THAT’S WHY I FEEL I MUST CONFESS
WHAT’S WRONG IS WHY IT FEELS SO RIGHT
I WANT TO FEEL YOUR SWEET CARESS

He swam away, into the deep end, his pale skin so tantalizingly different from my own tan body, like some rare, elusive sea creature, some white whale forever unattainable and unassailable, and my eyes followed. Lost in a chlorine haze, blinded by sun and beauty, choking on the feeling and wanting to both laugh and cry, I stayed in the shallow end and waited for his return.

When he did, my brother and I cajoled him into playing with us – roughhousing, as the adults called it. He’d pick us up – each so light and easy in his hands – and fling us into the deep end, our little bodies flying into the air and crashing into the body of sky-blue water. It thrilled us. Not just the motion, but the giddy focus of an older person intent on thrilling us. For me, it was much more.

I’d swim back, dizzy and delirious from the sun, the water, the flight, and the fight to make it back to the surface. Circling his legs, I felt both like the shark sizing up prey, and the scattering prey itself, darting to avoid death. I didn’t know what I wanted, I only knew he entranced me. I’d wrap my arms around his thigh, brushing against his swimsuit, and he’d lift me up again and off I’d fly. I didn’t know what was better – the lift or the let-go. Or the time in the shallow water when I was close enough to smell his sunscreen and see the blue of his sparkling eyes and the way his blond hair went dark when wet.

IF I ONLY HAD ONE WISH
LOVE WOULD ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THIS
WISHING ON THE STARS ABOVE
FORBIDDEN LOVE
IF I ONLY HAD ONE DREAM
THIS WOULD BE MORE THAN IT SEEMS
FORBIDDEN LOVE (FORBIDDEN LOVE)

Summer fades quickly. So does youth. The pool filled with oak leaves, then acorns, then it was closed and dark. Buried in the muck and mess of the ensuing winters, my childhood disappeared. Now, in the impending winter that came at the end of 1994, I was alone again. Summer felt very far away. The neighborhood boy I had watched, worshipped, and held onto had long ago moved somewhere else.

Back then it seemed like figuring out I was gay was the answer to everything, and in some ways it was very much the solution to much of my angst and confusion. So many things suddenly made sense and fell into place, so many fears and worries and anxieties dissipated and dissolved. Once it was done, though, what was next? The notion of forbidden love had already been bound inextricably to who I was, that sense of shame would forever be part of me. In that cold, late fall, it felt like loneliness and heartbreak were all that followed. Still, better to have loved and lost…

(LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT)
(LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT)
REJECTION IS THE GREATEST APHRODISIAC

Was the forbidden nature of the societal constructs of same-sex attraction part of my inability to find love? Had the ingrained stereotypical confines of how the world viewed homosexuals bled so deeply into my being that they would be impossible to eradicate? Or was I simply unlovable? That last question was one which most people had at some point in their lives; the questions before are the added and much more complicated journey through which only some of us must travail. At such a young age, I couldn’t get my head around all of that – to be completely honest I’m not sure I can today – all I knew was the dull ache of unfulfilled desire, and the infuriating sense of loss when there had been nothing to really lose.

(LOVE WITHOUT GUILT, LOVE WITHOUT DOUBT)
LOVE SHOULD ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THIS
HEAVEN FORGIVE ME, NEVER FORBID ME

SONG #150: ‘Forbidden Love’ – Late fall 1994