Shawn left a drunken voicemail the other night, saying he was in a nightclub in Harlem (the Lenox something-or-other) and he grabbed the microphone on the little stage and sang some songs. He says people applauded, and a beautiful Spanish woman invited him to come to Monte Carlo with her and her husband.
I joked that it was just like that song by Charlene: "I've Never Been to Me." I knew there was a reference to "Monte Carlo" but couldn't remember the lyric:
I've moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo
And showed 'em what I got ...
I'm pretty sure I had absorbed the original layer of the song into my musical memory, with no irony, of course, during the 70s (first released in 1976 but only went to 97 on the charts).
After experiencing the "bohemian" life in New York, Barcelona, etc., along with divers personal triumphs and catastrophes, the "jading" of the jaded, the song has become enriched with irony, and connotations both personal (idiosyncratic) and communal (as a gay/drag queen national anthem).
I can remember a time when sentimentality made me feel almost physically ill. Hence, the little blissful inner explosion of irony and recognition when the song that I remembered as being almost nauseatingly sentimental becomes suddenly like a coruscating gem. Whenever I listen to it, something about it literally gives me chills; I guess it's her voice and the lyrics; perhaps because the song vibrates so deliciously between truth and irony (camp). Like a drag queen, I can wear, I can be, simultaneously, the horror of the sentimental and the spiritual truth that the song expresses.
That is what I was talking about when I wrote:
Camp is like a private garden where one may enter, without any vestige of leaden seriousness, and breathe the rejuvenating air of hilarity. Others may see us as merely laughing, but what we are really doing is surviving.
"The truth that the song expresses" is that "Paradise" - conceived of as an ideal, unattainable place that exists elsewhere - is indeed a lie and an illusion. And it is part of the human folly - and the cause of much suffering - to live one's life in pursuit of this mirage. Romantically, we persist in the pursuit even when we know that it is a lie.
If one is lucky, one comes to understand on a deep level that paradise is always right before us and with us in the Here and the Now. It is indeed the little baby in the mother's arms (Sofia in Sonia's arms) and the love that one feels in the heart in the present moment.
The state of being "jaded" is to live smugly inside the erroneous belief that one has experienced everything worth experiencing and that no experience can possibly offer anything "new." This is a complete and utter defense and resistance to reality. You have willfully shut down your senses and are living in a sad ashcan like a Beckett character.
The truth is that we don't know anything, we haven't experienced anything, we haven't seen anything. What I mean by that is that anything we think we have experienced in the past - any heights or highs we may have reached - are as nothing (since they exist only as memory traces) compared to what we are experiencing Right Now. Reality is always being created right before our eyes in this moment like a miraculous theatrical performance rising up out of nothingness or like a marvelous fountain (eau d'artifice). Camera obscura. It's only a paper moon ...
But I, I took the sweet life ...
That line evokes, and perhaps alludes to, Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
I've spent my life exploring
The subtle whoring
That costs too much to be free ...
I would like to use those lines as the (tongue-in-cheek) epigraph (or epitaph) to my memoir (if I ever finish it)
But, I wish someone had talked to me
Like I wanna talk to you
Sometimes I feel that way with some of the guys I've been seeing: like I want to impart to them such wisdom and worldliness as I may have for their edification. Although this feeling is also somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as I don't really believe I'm so wise as all that, and I'm aware that I'm playing a role - of "daddy," "grand dame," etc.
Oh, I've been to Nice
And the Isle of Greece
While I've sipped champagne on a yacht
"Neece" sounds glamorous in a 70s sort of way. I haven't been there, but I was invited to St. Tropez, which has the same sort of time-warp feeling of faded glamour (Mick and Bianca Jagger, Elton John, etc.), so I'll substitute that.
Shouldn't that be "isles" of Greece? Unless she's referring to the isle, meaning the most glamorous one, but I'm not sure which one that would be, they all sound so lovely.
Another layer of irony: the song evokes the glamorous life in such a way that it makes a young boy or girl yearn for it, so for someone like me back in those days, I would have been infused with a desire to see those evil places like New York and Paris. The idea of finding love in a marriage and family would have been unthinkable to me. The moral "message" of the song is at odds with itself: it's at once corrupting and soul-saving.
I've been undressed by kings
That makes me think of various wealthy men who courted me and whom I spurned, believing as I did then that I couldn't be content to simply be loved and taken care of, but I had to be in love.
And there was that guy at the Suzanne Bartsch Copa party (the chicest place to be in New York at that time) who claimed to be a "Persian prince." I had no reason to doubt his veracity. We were both very drunk/high, and I remember making out with him voraciously as his back was pressed against a mirror, with all the disco lights from the dance floor flashing. Afterwards, I had to go the doctor because I had contracted a variety of bugs simply from kissing him. God knows where his royal mouth had been.
I've seen some things that a woman ain't s'posed to see
Where do I start with that line! Picture me and Patrick at Jay's afterhours backroom bar in New York at 4 in the morning on Halloween night, 1980-something: Patrick is in drag, shooting pool (in high heels), drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. He looks wonderful and sort of lipstick-lesbianish, and I sit by watching adoringly, as men throng and grope in the stalls and go round and round in the dark backroom doing all sorts of nasty things to each other. That was paradise.
Took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun ...
A few years ago, in Austin, I got picked up on a boat cruise by a Methodist pastor from a small town who was there with his lover. He was blonde and muscular with a great boyish smile. At Lake Travis we got drunk and floated together on blowup rafts among hordes of goodlooking gay men. I linked our rafts together by draping my leg across his beautiful smooth tanned thigh. It was paradise, indeed.
At one point, I had an evil idea and got the two of them to go back into the woodsy part with me to pee, and I convinced them that we should do it on each other! I had never really done that sort of thing before, and it was surprisingly exciting. Not to mention the danger of being caught and arrested by a park ranger and perhaps ending up as a sex offender in Texas.
But the icing on the cake was when it dawned on me that I had sodomized a pastor ... on Sunday morning!
Here's the entire lyric (taken from charlenesmusic.com, but with some corrections)
Hey lady, you, lady, cursing at your life
You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife
I've no doubt you dream about the things you'll never do
But, I wish someone had talked to me
Like I wanna talk to you
Ooh, I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run
Took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free
I've been to paradise but I've never been to me
Please lady, please lady, don't just walk away
'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today
I can see so much of me still living in your eyes
Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived million lies
Oh, I've been to Nice and the Isle of Greece
While I've sipped champagne on a yacht
I've moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo
And showed 'em what I've got
I've been undressed by kings
And I've seen some things
That a woman ain't s'posed to see
I've been to paradise,
But I've never been to me
[spoken] Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be
But you know what truth is? It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning
The same one you're going to make love with tonight That's truth, that's love......
Sometimes I've been to crying
For unborn children
That might have made me complete
But I, I took the sweet life,
I never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet
I've spent my life exploring
The subtle whoring
That costs too much to be free
Hey lady, I've been to paradise,
But I've never been to me
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