Kai Likes...

I am a music slut.
I go from song to song, sometimes hardly finishing them because I can't help but want to listen to EVERYTHING. I want the beats and the tunes and the la-la-la's to tunnel their way into me and leave their sticky-gooey-emotion-instigating-wonderfulness deep inside of me.

And so, it's no wonder that I have come back with even MORE music--but this time, with at least 15 minutes of foreplay, which is to say, these next few songs all have a back story.

Years ago when I was just a wee-gay-lad, I lived in a small suburban town called Richmond Hill (I still live there, but now I'm a big-gay-lad). In a desperate search for something gay and fun that wasn't porn, I turned myself towards the wonderful world of literature. At Chapters. Ha! I know, Chapters--since when do they carry gay-lit? But gay-lit-carry they did and I found "Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan. As teen writers go, David Levithan is one of the better ones (impo). The story is set in an unnamed idyllic little town in the USA, where bashers are bashed and the homecoming queen is also the high school quarterback. Levithan introduces to his readers a large cast of characters, but the one who I related to most was Tony. He's a closeted, lonely little boy from the next town over (which is not so idyllic at all) who lives with his extremely religious and disapproving parents. A year after the reading the novel I took it off of my shelf one day and decided to give it another go. This time around, I read some of the authors notes and discovered that the novel is dedicated "to Tony, even if he only exists in a song."

Cue, Patty Griffin:



It's a sad song, but combined with this sort of empowering melody it creates a weird musical experience...

And onto the next one.

I assume that I am not the only one who reads fan fiction...er...well, maybe I am. However, amidst the crap that exists our there in the world wide web, when a really talented writer takes some of your favorite characters and slashes them up into a relationship that's all sorts of heart-break and emotional regret, you can't help but be carried along with it...

Now, I am NEVER going to reveal what two popular characters this particular writer slashed about, BUT I will reveal the context of the scene where this particular song is referenced.

"When the boy turned his head, and then removed his hands, ***** could smell him in the water, could taste him, could feel that undulating wave from his retreating shoulder against his lips as though it were sun-warm skin. The boy turned and rose up through the water, his eyes blinking, sending more ripples of water down to *****, to touch him, fingers of water dragging slowly over him. He broke the surface and disappeared. At that same moment, ***** realized that he was under water, and that he couldn't breathe. He gasped, and woke.

It was raining that morning. ***** could hear the water sluicing down the stone walls outside the window. The gray light was inching its way into their dorm, the heat wave broken. ***** remembered suddenly that he had left his shirt by the lake."



Wasn't that lovely?

I now command you all to find a crush, a lover, a friend, or friends... and go skinny dipping.