It’s rare that a movie intrigues me so much that I contemplate seeing it on the first night it hits theaters. I tend to give a movie a week or so before I settle down with my ridiculously expensive bucket of popcorn. I prefer to let the hype die down. I’d rather let the fanatics see it before I plop down my hard-earned cash.
Where the Wild Things Are has me feeling differently. I may just have to break my own rule and see this one as soon as I possibly can.
Truth be told, I have only the vaguest memories of the book. I’m not one of those people who is waiting with bated breath to see whether or not the movie will crush all of my childhood memories. I haven’t spent the better part of my adulthood imagining this moment. I’m just not that invested.
And yet, I’m really excited to see this movie. There is something about this film that speaks to the little Dr. Sparky that still lives deep down inside of me.
As a child, I was an imaginative little bugger. I didn’t need a lot of toys. I never really enjoyed video games. All that was required for me to be happy was a book and my imagination.
I spent hours roaming our house and backyard pretending to be everything from a pirate to an archeologist to a soap diva on a deserted island to a Goonie. I was He-Man. I was a Smurf. I was Christopher Columbus. I was a wild thing.
As I’ve gotten older, my sense of imagination has certainly lessened. It has not been completely lost, however. I still hold on to that magic I was able to conjure as a child. Sometimes I’m still a Goonie.
It’s that piece of my that still pretends to be exploring a cave with the help of One-Eyed Willie’s map that can’t wait to see Where the Wild Things Are. I can’t wait to loose myself in a good old-fashioned story of imagination. I can’t wait to go on an adventure with Max. I can’t wait to be a little boy all over again.
I can’t wait to find myself where the wild things are.
The year is 1982. A ground-breaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, DC. Chariots of Fire wins Best Picture and three other Academy Awards. The World’s Fair is held in Knoxville, Tennessee. Prince William is born at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, West London. Sony launches the first consumer compact disc player (model CDP-101).
The year is 1982. Madonna releases her first single, Everybody.
Today, twenty-seven years after she first burst on to the music scene, Madonna releases Celebration. A career-spanning greatest hits package, Celebration brings listeners from Everybody through the Queen of Pop’s royal canon to her most recent chart toppers. The collection boasts thirty-four songs that, according to Warner Bros. Records, changed the world.
I won’t be so bold as to claim that Madonna “changed the world.” I will, however, be so bold as to say that Madonna most certainly changed my world. Celebration plays like the soundtrack to my life. Each song exposes a meaning only I can fully understand. Each song perfectly exemplifies a time in my life. Each song holds a memory.
I was five when I first recall being interested in Madonna. It was the spring of 1984. I was riding in my aunt’s car on the way to the San Francisco zoo. The radio DJ announced the latest Madonna single, and both my aunt and I perked up. She turned the volume up on her car stereo and Borderline took us over. From that moment on I was Madonna’s prisoner.
When her Like a Virgin album was released in 1984, I begged my mother to buy it for my dad for Christmas. We both knew that it was not my dad who wanted to own that album. My mother relented, however, and by December 26, I felt like I’d been touched for the very first time.
I was grounded in the summer of 1987 for reenacting Madonna’s Open Your Heart video in the living room. Nine-year-old boys are not supposed to dance around like strippers.
By the time Madonna was making out with a black Jesus in her Like a Prayer video in 1989, there was no denying my obsession with the Material Girl. Living in a Catholic household, however, I was banned from watching her blasphemous video. I was not allowed to own her album. My mother hated Madonna about as much as I marveled at her every move.
The ban on Madonna was lifted by 1990. For Christmas that year, I received a walkman and a cassette copy of Madonna’s first greatest hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. I literally listened to that cassette until it snapped, despite the fact that Justify My Love was never allowed to be played in the presence of my mother.
The release of Erotica in 1993 was nicely timed to coincide with my going through puberty. The dark beats and sexual messages of that album filled my mind and bedroom as I entered high school. It was evocative and different and scary. It was exactly why I loved Madonna.
I was away at college, living on my own for the first time, when Madonna gave the world Ray of Light in 1998. Madonna was on a new path, one that was more mature and spiritual. I was also on a new path. Everything in my life was new and unexpected and difficult and exciting. And, as is often the case, Madonna was there to ride the wave with me.
By 2000, I had ridden the wave to adulthood. I was out of the closet and hitting the gay bars in Portland every weekend. Lucky for me, Madonna had also returned to the dance floor with Music. I spent many a sweaty night dancing to Music and Don’t Tell Me while I tried to make sense of my new sexuality and my new world.
In many ways, Madonna is one of my closest friends. Her music taught me to express myself. She was the first person to tell me I can dance. When my heart was shattered, she sang to me about the power of good bye. She reminded me that sorry is not always enough and that I will live on to die another day.
There’s no denying that Madonna is a cultural hurricane. But more than that, Madonna and her music have stood by me every step of the way. When I look back on my life, I hear Madonna. I hear Dress You Up and La Isla Bonita and Secret and Vogue and Hung Up. For me, that’s more valuable than any accolades anyone can bestow on the Queen of Pop. For at the end of the day, all that’s left is the music and the memories.
Over the summer, I took a trip back in time. I loaded myself into a car in California, hit the open road one hot Thursday morning, and found myself back in Portland, Oregon for the first time since I’d left there over three years ago.
I went back home and discovered that going back home is not exactly as simple as clicking your heels three times and wishing to see your aged aunt again.
Portland was the place in which I truly became the man I am today. I left home when I was eighteen and moved north to go to college. It was there that I had my first gay kiss. It was there that I held my first job. It was there that I lived alone for the first time and had my heart broken for the first time and paid my own taxes for the first time. I grocery shopped for myself. I made friends and I lost friends and I fell in love. I made mistakes. I learned lessons. I grew.
For almost a decade of my life, a decade in which I molded myself into an adult, Portland was my universe. Then I hit the open road one hot Tuesday morning in 2006 and found myself living in Chicago. And I never really looked back.
I never really looked back, that is, until this summer when I rounded the Terwilliger curves and came face-to-face with the city that shaped me. By then it was too late. There was no turning back. I’d come this far and I had no choice but to face my past. As I slipped from I-5 onto the 405, I slipped back three years in time. Chicago melted away. The years slowly retreated. It was 2005 and I was back. Portland and I were reunited.
Being back in Portland was almost more than my mind could handle. As I walked the streets of my old neighborhood, it was all too tempting to slip back into a reality that no longer exists. Sitting around with old friends, it was possible to believe that I had never left. Familiarity washed over me like the misty rain that so often washes over the city of my past.
That familiarity, however, was tainted by the undeniable fact that things had changed. I had been gone for three years and Portland had moved on without me. New condo developments had sprung up like wild mushrooms. Stores and restaurants I used to frequent had been replaced by stores and restaurants of which I’d never heard. Even my alma mater had changed in ways I can not explain.
Portland was just as I remembered it, and yet it was completely different. The same, I suspect, can be said about me.
Just as going back to Portland was both difficult and rewarding, so too am I struggling with returning to Welcome to My Truth after having been away for so long. I feel as though I’ve gone through many changes since I last posted on May 22. I also feel, strangely enough, that nothing has changed at all.
I spent five days in Oregon this summer. By the time I left, I’d somehow made peace between the man I was then and the man I am now. I found a way to see Portland for the huge piece of me that it is without losing sight of the person I still need to become. I went back home and found that, while not an easy thing to do, it is an essential thing to do.
I hope I will have the same revelation upon returning home to this blog. Writing this first post has been a struggle. It is a struggle, however, that I finally overcame, signifying that on some level Dr. Sparky is back in action.
(That, as it turns out, is a very real concern. I honestly have a hard time recalling what I have and have not written about. As the lifespan of this blog increases, so does the likelihood that someday I’ll repeat a post. It’s bound to happen. I apologize in advance.)
I was sitting at a dingy bar in Portland having a beer with a guy I didn’t know all that well. He was new to town. He didn’t know anyone. Out of the kindness of my heart, I offered to take him out and show him around.
It didn’t hurt that he was kind of cute. It also didn’t hurt that I thought he might be gay.
As we sat downing drinks at our third bar of the night, the guy leaned over and told me that he had to tell me a secret. My heart skipped a beat. Was he going to tell me that he’s gay? I leaned closer in anticipation.
“When I first moved here, my furniture had not arrived yet.” He took a sip of his beer. “I had to sleep on the floor.”
None of this seemed like a particularly juicy secret, but I encouraged him to continue.
“I wasn’t comfortable sleeping on the floor in the bedroom. It’s just too spacious and it feels odd. So I started sleeping in the closet.”
I put my beer down. This was getting better by the second.
“My furniture arrived last week, but I still don’t sleep in my bed. I still sleep in the closet.”
I tried not to lick my lips or furrow my brow.
“I guess I’m just more comfortable in the closet.” He took a swig from his glass. That was the end of his secret.
I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t exactly sure what he had just told me. Had he just confessed that he’s gay and living in the closet? Or had he simply told me that he likes to sleep on the floor of his closet?
After an awkward moment or two, I proceeded with the conversation. I decided to act as if I was clueless to the possibility that my drinking buddy may be gay. I gave him advice on how to get back into his bed. I told him that women would not want to come over if they had to do it in his closet.
To this day I don’t know for sure what that conversation was about. I do know that this guy ended up dating a woman. I also know that we spent a lot of time together and it often felt like we were dating.
I don’t talk to him any longer. I don’t actually think of him often. But every once in a while I look back on that night and wonder if I missed a rare opportunity. I don’t think I could have loved this guy, but I could have maybe helped him out of his closet.
And I may have also gotten to test out his bed with him.
I owe my parents one huge debt of thanks. In fact, I owe a huge debt of thanks to a lot of people in my life. You see, I did theater as a child. And until this weekend, I had no idea how painful that fact had to have been for the people in my life. And now I have no idea how I can ever make it up to all of those friends and family members who sat through those productions.
I may need to call the Pope. Sainthood is not out of the question.
Over the weekend, I made my way to one of Chicago’s many elusive suburbs to catch a production of Les Misérables. A friend of mine was the musical director and so a group of us ventured out of the city to show our support. I knew it was going to be a somewhat amateurish production, but I had high hopes that it would be decent. If I had known what we were in for, however, I would have faked the stomach flu.
The show, as it turns out, was cast with children. If I had to guess, I would say their ages ranged from ten to eighteen. I would also say that their talent level ranged from excruciating to mediocre. And whoever thought it was a good idea to do a production of Les Misérables with children is insane. That is a dark and difficult show. It’s certainly no High School Musical.
And it was just bad. It was like watching a train wreck cast with all of those delusional rejected kids from American Idol. Only instead of seeing it on television, it was live. And they were in costumes and bad wigs. And they were staging a very adult play about the French Revolution. And most of them died on stage. And quite a few of them danced around as prostitutes singing about servicing sailors for money.
Which is not to say it was all bad. As with most awful entertainment, this show was so bad it was almost too good to be true. The unintentionally comic moments will live forever in infamy amongst my friends and me. You have not lived until you’ve seen a girl in a wig twice her size struggle through Castle on a Cloud. It was beyond priceless.
As I sat there holding back tears and laughter, I flashed back to my own childhood. I suddenly remembered the summer theater program I did three years running. The first show I was in was The Pirates of Penzance. Then came Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Lastly, there was Bye Bye Birdie. We never did anything so dramatic and daring as Les Misérables, but I’m sure the outcome was much the same.
For three years I joined a cast of children with little to no talent and we staged musicals. And my family came to see me in these shows. And when those shows were over they showered me with praise. And now, after sitting through a miserable production of Les Misérables, I realize that all of that praise was completely fake. Which means that my family and friends were far better actors than anyone on stage could ever even hope to be.
And it also means I owe them more than I will ever be able to repay.
My name is Dr. Sparky Louise Veronica Horton Brady.
This is where I tell it almost like it really is. This is where I dispense the tales of a wacky, chivalrous, cunning, wily, witty, maudlin, perspicacious gay man.
Truth be told, I have only the vaguest memories of the book. I’m not one of those people who is waiting with bated breath to see whether or not the movie will crush all of my childhood memories. I haven’t spent the better part of my adulthood imagining this moment. I’m just not that invested.
