Joseph Jarrett

If there’s one universal thing you’ll find in any gay man anywhere, it’s an intense love for music. I’ve never once met another gay man who wasn’t completely infatuated with a playlist of songs that accurately reflect their life at that given moment. To form an analogy, watching a multi-hour-long series of music videos is the gay equivalent of watching the Sunday football games on ESPN for straight people.

            Music really is a universal topic, though. It is the one thing that most easily unites people on a large scale. It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, or something in between; we all connect to lyrics and melodies in a spiritual kind of way.

            Today, I want to take you down a path of my musical language. Consider it Memory Lane, but it is a list of the songs that most accurately reflect different phases of my life since coming out. There are four particular eras I want to cover, and those are My Coming Out era, My Hoe Phase era, My Heartbroken era, and My Healing era.

“Give Your Heart a Break” by Demi Lovato

            I know that this seems to be a random choice to represent how I felt coming out, but it’s honestly super accurate. Take it in this context: I was about to be 18 years old, I hid who I was my entire life, and I was finally getting an opportunity to live fully. What non-queer people don’t typically understand is that queer people have to mourn parts of their lives in order to step fully into themselves. My heart was naïve and scared as hell for what was to come. All I wanted was to feel safe and protected, much like how Demi wants nothing more than to make her partner feel that relief. Do you see where I’m going with this?

“Scared To Be Lonely” by Dua Lipa & Martin Garrix

            The song is literally about two people who can’t face being alone despite the fact that they are both miserable. If that does not reflect what a hoe phase is like, I don’t know what else could. At the ripe age of 21, I endured one of the most traumatic things in my life ever. Instead of taking any actions to heal properly, I spiraled. I let myself fall down a path of self-destruction. Call me traditional, but I always wanted to wait to have sex until I was with a person I knew loved me just as much as I loved them. But that’s not how things work in the gay world. I was sleeping with guys left and right to hide the pain I was forcing down inside. I hated being alone, and I used that as fuel to spend a night with a man whenever I could. To this day, it was the version of me I disdain the most.

“Me Pt. 2” by Priscilla Block

            Nothing sucks more than seeing someone you really liked, or even loved, starting over with someone else. In my experience, I am what some would call a stepping stone. I am the thing that propels them towards their one true love. This has happened with nearly every man I have had some kind of romantic encounter with. There are exceptions, of course, as some of those boys are just lost causes. But what sucks most is when you see your former person doing the things you wanted to do with this other person. It gets even worse when your friends tell you that you and the new one look alike. In comes this song. I cannot even tell you how many times I have cried to this song in my car because someone I wanted moved on. It never gets easier; you just get more numb to it. Sometimes, you find yourself getting colder. That’s my worst fear. If someone I love so strongly breaks my heart, I don’t know that I could come back from it.

“Twilight Zone” by Ariana Grande

            Oh, golly gee, if you ever needed an anthem to celebrate finding closure and acceptance, well, here you go! This one, girls and gays, is the one. Everyone had wounds ripped open when Ariana released “We Can’t Be Friends,” but when she debuted this masterpiece on the deluxe version of Eternal Sunshine, she healed us again. There is something so beautiful about being able to look back on a relationship, understand the purpose of it, and begin moving forward towards better things. It is so freeing when you finally get to that point. It’s like your heart is feeling the warmth of the sun after a prolonged period of cold darkness. Any time I hear this song, I automatically just know I will be okay, despite whatever my mind or my anxiety is telling me. Cheers to the healing era, everyone.

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            So, there you have it. A musical timeline of what the last seven years have been like for me. What songs would you pick for your personal eras? Let me know, friend!