Crazy January Thaw
It always happens at this time of the year – a January thaw to mess with the mind and cause all sorts of heaving, both literal and emotional. As the fog rolls over the snow, it’s a brief respite before we plunge into frigid depths again – and perhaps that’s the reason for it (though that certainly isn’t the case this year, as we haven’t managed to rise above the freezing point until now). For whatever reason, this is traditionally the time when I’ll have a bout with insomnia. I think it’s finally passed so I feel safe to write about it.
Insomnia and inclement weather go hand-in-hand, and a January thaw brings out the emotional bear in me. It’s the slightest tinge of Spring in the air that sets my seasonal-light-deprived brain aching for more, stirring all sorts of things and awakening long-lost memories of adolescent ache and angst.
It was 1985 and Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ was battling Samantha Fox’s ‘Touch Me’ for the number one spot on the Fly 92 Top Ten at Ten countdown. Dedications of love accompanied the former; lust dominated the latter. I was erring on the side of love, not quite old enough to recognize lust.
Swaying room as the music starts,
Strangers making the most of the dark,
Two by two their bodies become one.
I had a love-hate friendship with a classmate (meaning I must have had a crush on him, even if I didn’t yet know what a crush was). Fortunately, this was my only straight-boy crush, though at the time I didn’t even know I was gay, much less that I was going through a crush – so I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.
I alternately wanted to destroy him and get closer to him. I don’t know how that became part of my pathology, I don’t know what broke along the way, but like the ice on the sidewalk en route to his house, it cracked and shattered then and there and I’ve never been the same since.
I see you through the smoky air
Can’t you feel the weight of my stare?
You’re so close but still so far away,
What I’m dying to say is that I’m crazy for you
Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true
I never wanted anyone like this
You’ll feel it in my kiss
I’m crazy for you.
As I said, my feelings weren’t quite romantic – I was still too young to know that. I only knew that certain boys moved me more than anyone else, and it was only the boys who held me so enraptured. They seemed more vulnerable than the girls, more willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves, even if they got trounced on. I was more guarded, so there was something very appealing about that openness, even if it was something I would never display myself.
Trying hard to control my heart
I walk over to where you are
Eye to eye we meet no words at all
Slowly now we begin to move
Every breath I’m deeper into you
Soon we too are standing still in time
If you read my mind you’ll see I’m crazy for you.
The earliest thaw would bring the boys to our yard, well, our driveway really, as my brother had set up a basketball hoop that was low enough so that the tall kids could dunk it. I watched from afar, perched high above it all in the attic, peering down at the boys running and shooting and shouting, and longing to be able to access that easy camaraderie. It would never happen, not that way. I wasn’t tall, I had no interest in basketball, and the topics they discussed (mostly sports) were things in which I wasn’t the least bit versed. And so I watched, and wondered at what made me so different, all the while yearning and aching to connect to them in some way.
To this day, listening to Crazy For You brings me instantly back to those unreturned emotions, to the longing in my heart – even when I didn’t know what it was that I wanted. It’s a tricky thing, this heart – and I’ve never been able to completely figure it out. Just when I expect it to be frigid and unyielding, it opens up and offers a glimpse of what might be, of what might come – not unlike the briefest January thaw – and then, as suddenly as it came, it is gone again until the Spring.