I don’t sing in this one, though when I got to the part in the script about the Pet Shop Boys I realized I could have, a bit, and you can probably hear the tiny hitch in my voice as I made the split-second decision not to.

This one was a very long time coming, I know, and I promise the next one won’t be as late, or as long. This was over 10,000 words, and I could comfortably have written twice as much, but I wanted to publish it while it was still Pride Month. Consequently, it’s messy. I knew it was messy when I published it, and recording the podcast only highlighted that further.

But that’s okay - the film is messy, and the emotions it elicits in me are messy, especially given the events of the past year. There’s a lot of that in this piece for those with the eyes to see, and the ricocheting I do about whether I think this film is optimistic or deeply pessimistic absolutely mirrors my mental state from day to day, even minute to minute, as I was drafting it. Normally I edit, but this wanted to be a reverie.

I try not to be too invested in symbolism generally, though I will slip from time to time, as I likely will in the next piece, and which I am doing now.

I release this podcast today in part for my own closure - a closure that, like Adam’s, isn’t really closure at all, because such a thing doesn’t really exist. But it can feel real, maybe, even if it isn’t, and it’s long past time to extinguish this particular torch.

I promise the next one will be more fun.

Smooth Talk, directed by Joyce Chopra, 1985. Spine number 1068

All podcasts have that initial five-minute episode where they explain what the hell is going on here, right? Well, here you go, then.