There's this song --- I thought it was from a Disney cartoon, but in fact it was "An American Tail," produced by Steven Spielberg --- that haunts me.
Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight
Yeah, you recognize it now. "Somewhere out there" by James Horner, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Best known recording by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram. In the movie, it's sung by a little mouse --- I don't remember much about the plot, but this little ballad is what lingers after the lights come back up.
It's a sentimental piece --- the kind of thing that Charlene from the trailer park used to walk down the aisle on the day she married Junior. Little Amber Dawn would be trotted out to sing it to Grandma Sadie on her 90th birthday. A song as sweet as Mrs. Butterworth's syrup poured over a Twinkie. If you don't mist up when you hear it, well, you're Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve or maybe just a bitchy jaded old queen.
The Disney people patented this type of wistful moment, starting when Snow White sang "I'm Wishing" and Jiminy Cricket sang "When You Wish Upon a Star." The most recent Disney example of this kind of guaranteed sentimental heartstrings moment is the goofy little lightning bug in "The Princess and the Frog" singing "Ma Belle Evangeline" to a huge star in the sky.
I love stories of wish fulfillment. One of my favorites is "Practical Magick," in which a little witch girl, who grows up to become Sandra Bullock, decides that she does not want to fall in love, because of a family curse that kills the men who love the women in her family. So she casts a spell, vowing that her lover will be someone who could not possibly exist: He will have one blue eye and one green eye; he will be able to flip pancakes in the air and catch them; and a star will be the totem that protects him.
Of course, in the movies, nothing is impossible, especially if magic is involved. The man she believes can't exist actually does show up, in the form of a sheriff --- who wears a star as a badge --- played by Aidan Quinn.
Recently, I had a conversation with a local friend who also happens to be a LifeOut member. He and his partner have lived quietly in a rural home near me in East Tennessee. They are two very circumspect professional men, who don't hide their sexual orientations, but don't advertise them either. They seem to function well within a small circle of friends without many windows in their lives open to the outside world.
"Do you ever feel like you're in a witness protection program?" I asked this friend in an Internet chat recently. I didn't have to explain where this out-of-the-blue question came from. He knew exactly what I meant.
"Sometimes," he said.
I do sometimes, as well. My living situation is different, of course. I'm single. I moved into an apartment in East Tennessee after breaking up with my partner of a few years and leaving the comfortable home we shared across the state line in Kentucky. The ex and I were very open about our lives, and had lots of friends, straight and gay, who interacted with us and seemed proud to know us as a couple. Certainly, the breakup has been as hard on these friends as it has been on each other. People got used to seeing Jdaddy and Rdaddy and now they only see one or the other.
I live alone and pretty much isolated now. My apartment is in the country. I have a next-door neighbor, in the adjoining apartment of the duplex I live in. He's a UOQ --- an unpleasant old queen --- with whom I have an easily negotiated agreement that we will live as if we are dead to each other.
There are a few other neighbors whom I see coming and going, but don't interact with. One of them has a lot of midnight visitors stopping in for five minutes at a time and then zooming off in their pickup trucks. I'm pretty sure there's some illegal trafficking of merchandise going on, but I don't need to know the details.
Somewhere out there someone's saying a prayer
That we'll find one another in that dream somewhere out there
I live as if I'M in a witness protection program. The people who need to know where I am --- my kids, some friends from church --- know where I am. But I am on my own and live quietly.
I don't like being single. My bed is too big. I miss the sound of another man snoring next to me and his smell after we've made love. I miss making coffee for two in the morning. I miss small talk. I miss ... I hate being single. Absolutely hate it.
And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishin' on the same bright star
I have a cat, Marsha. She's some companionship, but her ability to maintain a longterm discussion is limited.
"Marsha, are you hungry?"
"Meow."
"Do you want to go outside?"
"Meow."
If it weren't for Marsha, there would be days where I'd never hear the sound of my own voice. Some days, I talk to her in different accents, just to pretend there's another human in the room.
It's obvious, even if I didn't say so, that I spend too much time on the Internet. Obvious to me and probably a few others on LifeOut, that I'm doing it just to interact with other people.
I like to discuss politics, partly because it gives me a reason to keep up with current events, but I don't always like the voices online that I interact with. Too many people dealing with anger that seems unreasonably shrill. I can sympathize, because I know the feeling --- too often it comes from just being alone. But it doesn't mean that I tolerate it well. Thank goodness for the block key.
I could watch television, but I've lost interest in nearly every show that's on, except the "Law & Order" reruns and an occasional old movie. I've started turning on "The View" at 11 a.m., mainly because the four women remind me of a group of bitchy but pleasant old queens at a gay bar I used to go to.
I can see why gay men like "The Golden Girls" and "Steel Magnolias" and "Designing Women." They remind us of ourselves, sometimes.
I listen to a lot of National Public Radio, when the signals are not too filled with static --- there are two affiliates I can pick up at home, one in Knoxville and one in Johnson City. The hosts of the syndicated and local programs have become friends to me, people I look forward to hearing from every day. I feel OK about it even though it does remind me of some of the old ladies who watched soap operas daily at the nursing home in which my mother spent her last months.
Today, I'm listening to a Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Bizet's "Carmen." The music is wonderfully performed by singers whose European-sounding names I don't recognize. I can hear and envision the passion of two people who ignite the fires of love, burn out and then destroy each other.
Some days I feel like Carmen, who dies at the end. Some days, I feel like Don Jose, who kills her. Of course, I envision the person playing opposite me to be Rdaddy --- we found each other, we loved, and we ended it before we destroyed each other.
And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky ...
I swear I'm not consciously looking for someone to fall in love with. But I'd be a liar if I said I didn't scan the profiles on LifeOut lookijng for --- what? Something. Someone. Somewhere.
This week, online, I met a nice man, who lives in another time zone. He's younger than me, but not as young as my children. He likes literature, music, and laughter --- things I value. His work experience is in a field I know nothing about, but which interests me. His life experience is ... similar to mine. We're both regretting the recent past, both feeling wounded by love, both hating our present and hopeful about the future.
I'm a three-time loser in the relationship wars, if you just count the ex-wives and the ex-husband alone. The number of losses goes up if you count the non-conference relationships, the short term flings and failed engagements. I'm afraid of falling in love again, and I'm afraid I won't. When you've burned and been burnt, you become very shy. Still wanting, but afraid.
With that kind of experience, you know the signs of when it could be starting up again. E-mails that this new guy and I have exchanged tell me we're both wanting the same thing out of life --- one more chance --- and we've connected in a way that is making us let down our guards.
I hate the process of recovery. You have to clean the wounds, put on the makeup of fresh bandages and go out and smile as if you're not hurting. Why can't we just wake up one morning and it's good again. Why does it have to take some time, each time?
Somewhere out there if love can see us through ...
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true ...
The nights are often clear here in the East Tennessee mountains. Lots of stars to stare at during the cold winter nights. And the temptation to wish upon them is there --- to hope that one of those stars in the distance will turn into someone who will warm one's lonely night.
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