Talking Heads

Of those separate ways, David Byrne’s was the most successful. Not surprising, really, as he was the singer and most visible member of the band. His solo albums after the break-up almost all suck, but he founded a highly-regarded label called Luaka Bop, which, honorably enough, is dedicated to giving more attention to the obscure artists that inspire Byrne. Although Byrne as a Latin dance artist is laughably bad (“now and then I get horny”), his label has some good, solid, important releases, including the sublime Beleze Tropical, the first album on the label and a stunning collection of Brazilian music that introduced many, myself included, to the wonders of Brazilian pop.

But all of this is beside the point and doesn’t answer the question of why I chose an obscure track from their little-regarded swan song to showcase Talking Heads. The real reason is that Naked in general and Totally Nude in particular, is what I finally lost my virginity to. Not literally, I suppose, but figuratively.

The woman that was to become G – my wife and mother of my children – started those events during the early part of our last year at Hampshire, when she gave me a neck rub during a video workshop. That led to a conversation in the Airport Lounge (a sparsely-populated student center at Hampshire) which led, inexorably and over a period of many months, to our union as soul mates.

I had come to college, like millions before me and like millions after me, to get laid. There were other reasons, of course, but that was certainly one of them. I was having no luck meeting anybody in NYC (at least, anybody that wasn’t gay) and was getting tired of the daily work grind, so I decided that maybe the problem at University of Chicago hadn’t been college in general, but that college in particular, so I looked around until I found the school that was the least like U of C in every important way. And that school was the relatively young, fairly radical, Hampshire College. Instead of a pointless and frustrating core of classes that you had to take, Hampshire offered complete academic freedom and the opportunity to design your own program of study. Nothing seemed more appealing, so, after a quick and frantic application period started about a month before classes began, I found myself with bag in hand at a school I had never visited, prepared to live there for the next few years.

It was a bit rough at the beginning, but after a difficult semester adjusting to the surroundings, I found my niches and happily got to work. My Divisions – the projects you collaborated on with faculty members that allowed you to progress through the system on your way to graduation – were starting to fall into place and I was making connections with faculty members and other students and was (fairly) happily humming along through my academic program.

My sexual program, however, was not working out so well. By this time, it was becoming undeniably clear that the problem wasn’t from circumstances, but was coming from within. In high school, everybody was too young and inexperienced and eager but nervous, at U of C everybody was too cerebral (and ugly) and in NYC, everybody was far too guarded and suspicious. But Hampshire was a little rabbit hutch of activity – something that Health Services would sometimes note with bemusement as certain creepy crawlies made their way through the student body (and I do mean student body, hubba hubba). Despite this, I was still most painfully a virgin. It wasn’t for lack of trying – well, okay, it was. It was because I was trapped in a vicious circle from which I could see no way out. I was shy around women because I had no experience, and the few opportunities that I did have ended in shame and humiliation for me, which just made me all the more shy. If another opportunity presented itself, I’d start stressing which would just exacerbate the problem, which made my physical failure a foregone conclusion, which would just add more pressure and so on. And now, well into my 20s, it was no longer okay to be sexually awkward and inexperienced. There are a few years in your (hopefully) late teens and early twenties when everybody’s trying to figure out their equipment and how it connects to other people’s equipment, but that time was rapidly coming to an end and I was still very much on the outside looking in. I had just about given up hope when I felt the warm hands of salvation on my neck.

But, of course, it wasn’t quite so easy. Chris had a boyfriend or two, and, although I was powerfully attracted to her, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it. Plus, I didn’t want to be an excuse for her to break up with her boyfriends. I wanted her to break up with them on her own before our relationship turned physical. But mostly I was just paralyzed by fear. So I took comfort in her friendship, and that blossomed into a flower of rare beauty.

We were pretty inseparable that year, to the point where everybody just assumed we were together. But I was used to that. What I used to take as a rejection (“Oh, Chris, you’re such a good friend – just like a brother”) was becoming my refuge, and I reveled in my friendships with women, even when they got twisted into something confusing and upsetting. I knew I could be a friend, and I knew I couldn’t be a lover, so I poured all of my frustrated loving into being a friend. But it was a cover, and I knew it.

As the year went on, Chris and I got closer. We’d often stay up deep into the night talking, and end up spending the night together, sleeping in the same bed, but we never crossed the romantic/sexual line, as difficult as it sometimes was. One night, while we were sleeping together in my impossibly small dorm bed, I had a dream that we were in my impossibly small dorm bed one night making out, and then I woke up in the still darkness and couldn’t remember if it had really happened or if it was just a dream. Alas, it was a dream, but it was a beautiful one, and was as close as I ever thought I’d get to real physical intimacy with somebody else.

In the spring, with the running of the sap and the melting of the ice, things became almost unbearable. We were spending practically every waking moment and most of our sleeping ones together, but I was still fervently, hopelessly, denying my feelings, because I knew that if we crossed that golden line in the sand, that my body would fail me again and it would screw up our friendship. She’d realize that I really was just a good friend and would wander off somewhere else to get her sensual needs met and I’d be left alone again. So, as much as I wanted to try to consummate our relationship and push it into a new area, I didn’t want it just as strongly. I was doomed.