Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury

Author:Griffin Hansbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

2019

Dakota and I are going through my closet. She’s supposed to be helping sort and trash, but she’s fascinated by my photo albums. She can’t believe that’s really me, with the baby face and all that hair, a kid around Dakota’s age, trying to figure it out. I struggle to recognize myself. I thought I was overweight, but the photos show an average-­sized kid. How did I get it so wrong? I’m probably getting it wrong now. Do we ever get to enjoy our bodies while we live in them? At breakfast today, Dakota was talking about bathing suits. She wants a new one, she told Donna, a one-­piece, because last summer she had a two-­piece and, “Everyone was staring at me. It was like boom-­bada-­boom-­boom.” When I asked her to clarify, she said, “I have boobs, Uncle Max.” Donna made an unkind comment and I felt bad for the kid, having to endure the pains of adolescence under the cloud of my sister’s disgruntlement. I wish she had another option, but she’ll survive, I tell myself. Like I survived. We all have to fight our own battles.

Dakota plops to the closet floor and tugs at a dresser drawer so crammed with stuff, she has to prop her foot against the frame and wrench it open. When she pulls out my Michael Jackson “Beat It” jacket, red vinyl slashed with silver zippers, she slips it on and dances around, mimicking the moves that have survived three decades, embedded in the DNA of pop, despite the revelations of child abuse. What does Michael’s downfall mean to those of us who invested our first experience of erotic love with him? Were we collectively groomed as children? I still listen to his music.

“It’s so retro,” Dakota says, hugging the jacket to her. “Can I keep it?”

“Put it in the trash.”

“But why? It’s super cool.”

I hold open the garbage bag and give it a shake. “He’s been canceled,” I say.

She huffs and drops the jacket to the floor. I put it in the bag, followed by more devalued memorabilia, buttons and bubblegum cards, the doll I thought would be a collector’s item, the one I undressed to see what Michael had underneath, finding only smooth plastic. Love, I think, is inscrutable.

“Who are you into?” I ask Dakota. “Who’s cool these days? Justin Bieber?”

“Eeew,” she says, “Gross! He’s super disgusting.”

“You’re twelve. There must be someone.”

“My favorite YouTuber is Jeffree Star,” Dakota says. “Yas, honey!” She raises a hand in the air and snaps her fingers like a drag queen. Jeffree Star, she explains, is a gay YouTube celebrity, famous for applying elaborate contouring makeup to his face. She shows me a video on her cracked phone. I don’t care for the contouring trend. It makes everyone look like an avatar, too cartoonish to be human.

“He looks like one of those Kardashian people,” I say.

“Oh my god,” Dakota gasps. “I hate the Kardashians! You can tell how Kylie’s lips are fake and Kim’s butt is fake. I don’t know which one is worser.

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