Nostalgia Remixed
A Messy Meditation for Midweek
I’ve noticed that I’ve become incredibly nostalgic lately for the early years of my coming out. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that happens to gay men in their 50s, when we realize that we’re solidly middle-aged and look back wistfully at the glory days of our youth. In my case, the glory days were my early 30s, since I spent my 20s discovering my sexuality. I worked in Paris for a year, then moved to Chicago for grad school, and ultimately married my college sweetheart. My wife and I were together for seven years until I came out and then all hell broke loose. Fortunately, I had a job by then and could support myself. I got my own apartment, started going to gay bars, and developed a tight group of gay friends in the suburbs of Chicago.
The other day at the gym, I stumbled upon Deborah Cox’s Remixed album (2003), which I had loved in the early 2000s when I was newly out and hitting the clubs several times a week. I remember going to a house party and winning this CD, which the hosts, Tim and Mike, had burned complete with a homemade label printed off the computer. I kept this CD in my car and played it on a loop, blasting it with the sunroof open. As I bench pressed, I smiled and was filled with “unspeakable joy,” to use the title of a Kim English anthem from that same era. For young gays, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but IYKYK. It was a vibe.
