In 1983, I was 22 years old, and living in San Diego, CA. I often think about times in the last century when I would have liked to have been 22 other than the time when I actually was 22, and it usually narrows down to the following years: 1922, 1950, 1960, and 1979. I have selected years where, at the age of 22, I would have avoided the drafts for wars that were occurring around those times, while still enjoying major cultural shifts. The exception to this of course is 1979 and the War with AIDS. There is no way to have reveled in the glorious glow of the Sexual Revolution/Gay Rights Movement/Disco Era without intersecting with that crisis, but I think, I think, that it would have been worth it. With COVID-19, most people who die have little to show for their suffering, whereas if you succumbed to AIDS in the early 80's, you could at least say that you had danced like a motherfucker.
1983 would have definitely been on the list even if I had not been 22 at the time. It was simply a banner year in many ways. For one thing, it was a bit easier to avoid AIDS in 1983 as a 22 year-old because I came of age late enough to adjust my sexual behavior in response to the horrors around me. Had I been born just a few years sooner, I doubt this would have been the case.
For this essay though, the main reason it was a banner year is because of the music that was released. In 1983 we enjoyed first albums by Madonna, REM, and Cyndi Lauper. I could stop right there, but in addition there were superb new albums by David Bowie, U2, R.E.M., The Police, The Talking Heads, Eurythmics, and so many more. The previous year, 1982, was when pop music embraced New Wave so much that many feel that the 80's, at least how we think of them musically, did not actually begin until 1982. Though both disco and New Wave were danceable, the latter emerged from the punk scene of the 70's, while disco came from the black, gay, and European underground dance club scene.
While I was enamored by Madonna at the time (like everyone else), one could not ignore the impact and raw talent of Cyndi Lauper, who released her debut album She's So Unusual. Unlike Madonna, who was sexy and confident, Lauper played the other side of the hipness coin: the freaky outsider. She played it to perfection because she was not playing. Madonna was a freaky outsider as well, but her beauty and fashion sense won her entrance into the accepted crowd, so much so that she took over the room, changed it, and ruled it, whereas Lauper was forever the one screaming her head off in the parking lot. Her saving grace is that she screamed really, really well, so well that she drew a crowd, and along the way she showed them that she could also whisper. That whisper is well utilized on the ending of her iconic song "Time After Time", which became Lauper's very first number-one single.
Since 1983, "Time After Time" has never truly left pop culture, or the culture in general. A song added as an afterthought to the album has since become unforgettable, recognized all over the world as a soulful expression of patience, the yearning cry of one who has no choice but to watch their lover struggle, recognizing that the struggle is not theirs. What greater love is there than to attend to another's pain despite the pain one feels themselves?
I remember that when the song was first released, I did not think that much of it. I was much more into the quirky danceability of She Bop or the melodic romance of All Through The Night. To me these were masterpieces because they spoke of masturbation and in-the-moment romance, two of my favorite pastimes in 1983. But nobody is really singing either of these songs in 2021. What did I know?
***
Currently, my partner and I manage a small residential apartment building of 16 units. In the middle of March, one of our tenants, a kind elderly woman who has been a resident for over 30 years, committed suicide in her apartment. She turned on the gas from the stove, tied some plastic around her neck to constrict her airway, and then got into her filled bathtub, fully clothed, knowing that once she passed out from the gas she would slip under the water and quietly drown, ensuring her death. I was working offsite that day, and when alerted by another tenant that there was a smell of gas in the stairwell, I sent my partner over to investigate. He ended up breaking open the door to get past the chain lock, and that is when he and the other tenant found the body.
She was already dead by several hours. but that did not stop my partner, who is training to be a nurse, from checking her for a pulse and trying to lift her water-logged body out of the water. He could not do so, her body was already too saturated to lift easily. Eventually, the police and paramedics arrived, and they took over, and my partner frantically messaged me about what happened--messages I received in between client sessions.
I consoled him as best I could in the moment, put my own shock in a "container", and showed up for my clients for the rest of the day.
***
Death is never the end, at least not for those who are still living. It will be months before I, as the building manager, can even begin to deal with the apartment my tenant left behind, because I am required by law to wait until contacted by either family or an executor of her estate. In the event that neither happen, then we are required to store her belongings in the rare case that one of her family show up in the future to claim belongings. In the meantime, for the next three years I will have to inform any prospective tenants, if they ask, that someone died by suicide in the apartment. That should be a draw!
My partner, in the meantime, continues to experience the aftershocks of finding a bloated dead body in the middle of a Saturday morning right before his final exams week. I cannot even imagine what he is going through, or what it was like for him to find her cold, heavy corpse. He told me that he was glad that she was floating face down in the water so that he did not have to see her face. I would take the experience from him in a fucking second, because I have 30 years of resilience and life on him, and I would rather be the one holding the memory and the pain. But I can't do that, no matter how much I want to. He has to hold it himself, while I watch and get ready to catch him should he fall.
"If you're lost you can look and you will find me,
Time after time.
If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting,
Time after time."
"Time After Time" is a song about wanting to ease the suffering of a loved one. Who has not felt such a desire? It could be called "love" to take on the suffering of others, but it isn't really. It's selfish in a way--while also being a certain form of caring. Real love is about trust, and belief in the tenacity of the beloved. Real love knows that suffering is bearable because it is washed through the body by sadness: the emotion that kneads a heart into beating again. Real love holds, it does not take. Real love does not bear another's sadness, instead it bears witness. Real love has faith in the beloved's ability to move through pain; real love cushions, but does not stop, the fall.
Death comes to us all--this is not news to anyone (except those who live in Los Angeles), and yet when it comes it often feels like a poorly planned surprise to everyone involved. Surprise: life ends! (At least for the one who has died.) While many would rather not think about such things, it is the thinking about such things that makes life worth living in my book (and in the book of Existentialists, among others).
The concept of there being time after time seems to reference the present (time) and the past (after time). It says nothing about a future that is uncertain--merely the implication that time will continue on and on, repeating itself. But if the '80's taught me anything, it is that time rarely repeats itself; rather than time after time", more often it is "time, and new time, and more time, but different". This certainly would not make a good pop song title, and takes nothing away from Lauper's timeless tune, it simply differentiates between those who take their lives and those who choose to stay and live (and bear suffering).
Suicide is an example of the misguided interpretation of time after time--the belief that death will somehow "catch you if you fall". Newsflash: it doesn't! Life, on the other hand, is an example of time and time: the moments that ebb and flow from suffering to joy, dark to light, despair to love. Romantic notions may lead to great pop songs where relationship breakups are seen as the Hero's Journey, but they do not, in themselves, lead to a great life.
Suicide is a fake Hero's Journey, the false conclusion that death will somehow redeem all, when in fact it just creates a bigger fucking mess. What my partner did that day was not courage but love--he acted, I suspect, from the knowledge that once you are dead there is no getting back up. You can only do that when you are still alive. He acted hoping that he could help the old woman get back up. He was, by no fault of his own, too late, and so he suffers now. And yet if anything was to be born from this death, it is my greater love for him as a result of his actions, and the knowledge and conviction that I will live to catch him if he falls.
Lest you think I have no compassion for the old woman, let me assure you that I do. She was always kind to me, and generous in her appreciation for what I did as building manager. I had no clue that she was suffering, if in fact she was. But I can be upset at those I care for when they do things that create a mess for me to clean up. And in case you need further proof that I am not a monster, cleaning up her mess is my continued caring for her despite my upset.
***
Cyndi Lauper does a surprising thing in her hit song--she cuts the title phrase short--twice, uttering "Time after..." rather than all three words. On first listen it is easy to dismiss this as artistic license, until you realize that she also ends the song this way.
As I write this essay, our world is on the verge of figuring out what the "time after" will look like, even though we are still in the suffering of a pandemic. As I said earlier, when one says "time after time", they are implying that something will repeat itself, over and over again. But in our current case, we cannot rely on this implication. The "time after" may look like nothing that has come before, so can we still call it "time after time"?
As I get older, I have fewer time after times than when I was a young man. I realize that death, when it comes, will introduce a whole new category of "time after", altering the meaning of time after time from "over and over" to "life after life". The time after my death may indeed be more time, but it will be time without me. That never really mattered that much to me until I got into a relationship I cherish. Now I think about what my partner's time after me will look like.
My dead tenant did not seem to give much thought to "time after", so now I have to give thought to it, unfortunately. I shouldn't have to do this, because her time (life) was not mine. And yet here we are. In my life today, I am focused on making choices for the time after so that my partner benefits from his time with me in the time after me. His time after me will still have plenty of me in it, if I have any say in the matter.
But...I am not there yet. I still have time after time, or so I suppose. I still have time. Time after...
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