I had a very emotional moment at work this morning, but it's not what you might be expecting. Apart from a brief period of crying fits in the early nineties, I'm not much of a one for weeping. I wish I could cry more easily - like Bunkie in Big Brother, say. Well, maybe not quite as frequently as he does, perhaps. The two things, though, that still can make me cry are movies and songs. Out of nowhere, I can hear a song that instantly transports me to a meaningful time in my life and breaks me down.

When I was in London recently, out dancing with Brett one night, I heard an old Erasure song. It wasn't one of my favorites, but it reminded me that I hadn't listened to their music in a long time. When I got back here, I ordered a CD of Erasure's first 20 hits from Amazon.com. It came last night, but I didn't listen to it until this morning. I plugged it in, and fast-forwarded it to the song I was most looking forward to listening to: "A Little Respect". The instant the catchy opening rythms started, so, quite unexpctedly, did my tears.

This song was my first "gay" song. I first heard it in a club in Rehoboth Beach, where I'd gone for a weekend break from Philly with one of my new gay friends, Philipp. I'd only recently come out of the closet, and had made a raft of new friends just by hanging out at Kurtz, Philly's big gay nightclub (RIP). I guess I was much more approachable in those days! I can't imagine that I'd go out these days and make so many new friends so quickly.

Anyway, Philipp was a short, older, intense, beady-eyed Italian-American school-teacher, with a crafty smile, and a dry sense of humor which relied a little too much on puns and double entendres. I suppose, he kind of adopted me as he would a puppy dog. A VERY large puppy dog. Our trip to Rehoboth was my first exposure to gay culture outside of that club in Philly, and the dowdy (and tongue-twisting) "Gay and Lesbian Graduate and Professional Student Society" at Penn. We went cocktailing at a place called, I think, the Blue Lagoon, hung out during the day at the beach, which was populated with D.C. beauties, and spent the evenings at the biggest dance club, whose name I can't remember. One night, I was rudely awoken in our dingy motel room by the sound of Philipp taking someone into the bed just a few feet from me. I politely pretended I was still asleep.

When I first head "A Little Respect", I don't think I liked it. I found it repetitive and dull. It was probably only later that it began to take on such an iconic meaning for me. As the months passed, and I fell in love for the first time (with a guy named Shaun), I started to associate some of the words in Erasure's songs with my own notions of man-to-man love. I can't hear the phrase "I place a kiss in the small of your back" from their song "You Surround Me" without instantly thinking of Shaun. I'd even say that the songs helped to inform my approach to men; gave me the hope and expectation that relations with men would be a mix of affection and masculinity.

So the link was made. When I played "A Little Respect" this morning, I was flung back in time to a point in my life when I was young, and much less formed, more open to people, yet to be heart-broken or wise to the ways of relationships. You can never really go back in time, but your senses can take you there, if you let them.