[MUSIC] Eartha Kitt, "Where Is My Man"
Sep. 3rd, 2009 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI first learned of Eartha Kitt in December 1997 through several pages of Lucy O'Brien's 1995 She Bop. I first heard Eartha Kitt's 1983 single "Where Is My Man" in March 2002, at a GLBT/queer dance hosted by AIDSPEI in a ballroom of the Delta Prince Edward Hotel in Prince Edward Island's capital of Charlottetown.
First, some backstory. After I realized that I had a sexual orientation and no, that it wasn't straight (4 February 2002, 11:55 pm), I was desperate to find someone locally to talk to but wasn't sure how since the Island's capital doesn't host a particularly visible gay community. Somehow I did--I think it was through Altavista--and he was very helpful and understanding. One day in March, he suggested that I might want to go to this dance, so I made my excuses to my parents and went.
It wasn't a fun experience. Up until that point, the only things that I knew about GLBT culture were things that I learned through my Island friend, through various long-range eelectronic correspondences, through what I absorbed in the ambient environment, and through the sexuality section in Robertson Library's stacks. It didn't help that I was still depressed, still unable to do anything outside of the narrow range of academia without freezing. As the people danced, I froze and sat on a chair by the wall and watched and successfully kept myself from crying.
"How did I not pick any of this up?" I thought. "How couldn't I have picked it up?" I continued as the disco ball turned. "How could I have been so stupid as to not pick it up," I continued. Finally, "How could I have done this to myself? How could I have destroyed myself?" as a remix of "Where Is My Man" began to play and the dance continued.
I really wasn't happy when I got home not too late after midnight. I'd a test, I'd failed, and that, I knew, was that, forever, not that I didn't deserve it, of course, for being so negligent. If I was so smart, how could I have not picked any of that up? I still logged on to Audiogalaxy and downloaded another dozen Eartha Kitt songs. I don't know why I did that: Maybe I hoped that I'd have a chance to be tested again.
I haven't listened to any of those songs for years.
First, some backstory. After I realized that I had a sexual orientation and no, that it wasn't straight (4 February 2002, 11:55 pm), I was desperate to find someone locally to talk to but wasn't sure how since the Island's capital doesn't host a particularly visible gay community. Somehow I did--I think it was through Altavista--and he was very helpful and understanding. One day in March, he suggested that I might want to go to this dance, so I made my excuses to my parents and went.
It wasn't a fun experience. Up until that point, the only things that I knew about GLBT culture were things that I learned through my Island friend, through various long-range eelectronic correspondences, through what I absorbed in the ambient environment, and through the sexuality section in Robertson Library's stacks. It didn't help that I was still depressed, still unable to do anything outside of the narrow range of academia without freezing. As the people danced, I froze and sat on a chair by the wall and watched and successfully kept myself from crying.
"How did I not pick any of this up?" I thought. "How couldn't I have picked it up?" I continued as the disco ball turned. "How could I have been so stupid as to not pick it up," I continued. Finally, "How could I have done this to myself? How could I have destroyed myself?" as a remix of "Where Is My Man" began to play and the dance continued.
I really wasn't happy when I got home not too late after midnight. I'd a test, I'd failed, and that, I knew, was that, forever, not that I didn't deserve it, of course, for being so negligent. If I was so smart, how could I have not picked any of that up? I still logged on to Audiogalaxy and downloaded another dozen Eartha Kitt songs. I don't know why I did that: Maybe I hoped that I'd have a chance to be tested again.
I haven't listened to any of those songs for years.
