My Weekend Crush

In honor of Pride (theme, people, I’ve got a theme!), I thought I’d pick an out Crush for this weekend. I mentally clicked through the usual suspects: Ellen, Rosie, Melissa, k.d., Martina. But I kept coming back to the girls, the Indigo Girls. Yes, I know, listening to the Indigo Girls is as cliché as flannel and Birkenstocks. But, you know what, I used to wear a lot of flannel. And Birkenstocks. Clichés are clichés for a reason. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were some of the first artists I adored who I consciously knew were lesbians. Still it wasn’t their sexuality that spoke to my high school heart, but their harmonies. So pure, so simple, so true. I think I wore “Rites of Passage” down to a nub. Their songs about love, loss and longing articulated emotions I had yet to really feel. But thanks to them, I at least had a glimpse of what laid ahead.

While their albums don’t get the same play they used to in my regular rotation, every now and then I put one on let the music waft over me like honeysuckle-scented nostalgia. And then suddenly I’m alone again in my old bedroom on a humid Midwestern night with firelies putting on a light show outside my window, listening to Amy and Emily tell me about that place in Minnesota where you can walk across the Mississippi with only five steps down. Damn, where did I put all those flannel shirts anyway? They were comfy. Happy Pride and weekend, all.