the secret no one knows

When I was in high school, I came to a realization rather quickly: boys will say almost anything to get you to touch their penis.  Now, I know that many girls have realized this without experiencing any kind of "a-ha!" moment, just years of learning the hard way, but thankfully I was spared most of the humiliation and heartbreak that seems to go along quite comfortably with being an adolescent girl.  Instead, I loved three boys who never once tried to get in my pants, only wanted to reach out for my hand and come to me when the night was dark and stormy.  Yeah, you know Hanson.  Remember?  The three brothers with the long, blond hair?  They sang that song "MMMBop" that was on the radio every three minutes in the summer of 1997 and set off a frenzy of girls (including me) to scream and cry whenever they came on television, on stage, or any local mall that was stupid enough to think they could control a horde of hormonal, young ladies not to throw themselves on top of a few cute boys who were famous AND their own age.  I continued to love them as I got older, and instead of moving on to some other teenage obsession like popping pills or getting pregnant, I fantasized about these guys out there who said things like "All the minutes in the world could never take your place," and "You were my ten thousand roses."  I mean, who says that in real life!?  Nobody I knew!  But, Hanson did, and so I loved them and pretended that they were my boyfriends who said pretty things to me and didn't try to grab my boobs while they were doing it.

I didn't want to know anything about their actual personal lives.  Taylor Hanson got married, and I remember my best friend calling me to tell me; she told me to sit down, she had some bad news.  I saw the wedding picture that appeared in People magazine and I was irrationally jealous, but also really happy that she was a brunette because, you know,  at least I was on the right track.  Then, Taylor Hanson had a baby and all I could think was, "WHOA. WAIT.  They're having sex!?"  Babies and genital herpes are good signs that somebody is having sexual intercourse, and I was not prepared for this kind of hard evidence.  It wasn't this delusional (okay, all of this is pretty delusional, admittedly) idea that, "Well, gosh-darn-it, Taylor Hanson isn't having sex with me!" it was the fact that he was having sexual relations at all.  Let me be clear, I was always picturing them as Ken dolls, just a smooth mound where the normal parts would be. This was pretty good proof that Taylor Hanson had testicles; and if Taylor Hanson had testicles, did that mean that Isaac and Zac did, too!?  Were they going to use theirs one day!?

And, yeah, they totally did.  They got married and had babies and they probably said things like, "Oh, come on, baby, just give me five minutes," or did things like whipping out their manhood, looking at their wives, and saying "Wanna do it?"  They were probably the gross, inappropriate men that all men were.  They probably told fart jokes and left their wet towels on the floor to get all smelly and mildewy.  I heard them on Howard Stern talking about Zac's honeymoon, and as Howard Stern is want to do, the conversation focused on the "doin' it" part of the vacation, and although they only played along without really saying anything explicit, it was enough to make me wildly uncomfortable and I was forced to stop listening.  I just wanted them to make records, go on tours, and do interviews that only focused on the first two things.  There should be no time for sex, boys -- those are the rules.

I get it, I get it.  Just because they're Hanson doesn't mean they're not people.  They do what all people do, and they do those things sometimes imperfectly.  I just like the fantasy.  I like that when I put on a Hanson song, I can pretend that they are perfect male specimens who sing you songs and rub your feet and make you coffee and never argue with you and always put the toilet seat down.  I don't need to obsess about their wives and children like a lot of other ladies I meet at Hanson shows seem to do.  We all came to know these guys when they were children and so were we; they are imprinted on our hearts not just because they are talented musicians and we like their tunes, but because they represent that moment in our childhood when things were easy and carefree and fun.  I grew up -- I have a child of my own and a soon-to-be-husband who comes pretty darn close to  being the ultimate "nice guy" that I was dreaming about Isaac Hanson being but had no actual clue if he was really like that, at all.  Hanson did their job -- they kept me out of trouble, kept me hopeful, and kept me dancing and singing all along the way.  I know that I don't know  them, really, but in a way, I feel like I do; whether they know it or not, they grew up with me, they were there for all the good times and the bad,  and their love for making music that made me happy translated into their love to just simply make me happy.  I know I'm never going to marry a Hanson brother and I'm never going to have Hanson babies; instead, they're three good buddies who don't know I exist, which I'm absolutely okay with because I don't really want to know what they're actually like in real life.

Well, no, one thing.  If I was locked in a room with any one Hanson, all alone with nobody to see, nobody to hear, nobody to walk in and disturb us, I would sit him down, get right up in his face, and very softly whisper, "Tell me everything you know about how to get your kid to sleep in his own bed through the whole night."

In an MMMBop, a lot can change.

may 18th

I have this tragic love story that ends in the way most tragedies do -- with death.  But, instead of a crazy suicide pact or homicidal rage, we mutually murdered our own love and friendship, chopped them up into itty bitty pieces and then scattered them all over the town  That was three years ago, but I can still hear the beating heart under the floorboards, in the walls, up in the attic; how much longer until that incessant pounding turns me into a crazed lunatic?  Its not so much that I can hear it still, I can learn to deal with the monotonous rhythm, its that nobody else seems to notice the sound at all.  There is one person in this whole world --in the whole universe -- who should be able to hear it, too because he was my partner in the crime, my right hand man in my murderous plot, the strong arm that squeezed the life out of all that we once held as sacred and then helped me bury the body.  He should hear it, too!  He should be banging on my door, begging me to turn it off, pleading with me to come up with another way to get rid of it all, to plan some better disposal method that will keep it buried and silent!  For all I know, he doesn't hear a peep, while it keeps bearing down on me, louder and louder and louder and louder until I'll tear my eardrums out of my ears to make it go away.  That beating heart only has me to torment, so it gives me everything its got, it spares nothing in its tortuous pumping because it believes that this is what I deserve most.  The one that plunged the knife deep into the chamber, over and over again, memories splashing all around like droplets of blood dotting the floor to be wiped away later to make it look as if nothing sinister had happened here, nothing some soap and water couldn't take care of -- that person deserves to hear it beating all day and all night all day and all night all day and all night.  You see, he only held the love down and kept it still; I did the actual killing.

Love treats me differently now.  It never lets me get too comfortable because it remembers what happened the last time and it will never be the weakling again. It reminds me that the people I have shared love with -- not familial love that is natural and easy to nurture, but the love that people work at to keep alive -- that love has never lasted for me.  Those people have found it easy to pack their love up and take it somewhere else, and with it went friendship and trust, like baby ducklings following their mother.  Love holds its intensity away from me now.  It doesn't allow me to feel it all, only a portion of it, and never enough to eliminate doubt and hurt and the sound of that past love, still beating, maybe even still gasping for breath, blood gurgling in the back of it's throat, knowing it will never, ever be saved, but it cannot seem to die peacefully, either.  Love lets the memories haunt me, lets me live them again and again in dreams that seem too real, that touch me too close to the wounds inflicted by the struggle, picking off the scab, showing me the infection I have no idea how to cure.

And all I want is for somebody else to hear it.  I want somebody else to see it.  I want somebody else to say, "Yes, I feel it with you, you are not the only one who faces the doubts, who dreams the dreams, who remembers the days when love and friendship were alive and well."  I want the beating to be less the pounding of a heart that broke and more the beating of a drum that marks each step toward forgiveness. To closure.