BRINGING THE WORLD TO ITS FEET…

My younger sister gave me a really cool Christmas present this past holiday. OK, so it was an item taken right off of my Amazon Wish-List, but it was the thought that counted. This may sound like a cliché, and it may very bell be one, but there seems to be such a lack of thought, courtesy and consideration in the world today, that this gesture truly blew me away.

Now, in the interest of disclosure, there were a number of items from my Amazon list that ended up underneath the tree this past Christmas. As the holiday season started to reach a feverish pitch, my younger sister made several comments that proved she had looked at my list—I mean, looked and actually saw how it represented the different sides of my personality. She commented on a joke that only our family would understand, commented on a couple of changes I made, but she’s the type of person who takes care of their gift-buying way before the holidays. Based on the timing of her comments, I wasn’t under the impression she was getting anything off my list.

Then, on Christmas day, when I opened my gifts, there it was: The DVD of the Erasure concert I’d attended over a decade ago. I was back in high school, and some friends from my summer job had an extra ticket, and… well, the comment from my Amazon list says it all:

“This concert changed my life… no, seriously.”

And it did change my life, do doubt about it. It was the first time I’d been around that many gay men… and it felt like home—also the title of the last song of the concert. (The title of this post is taken from the lyrics.) The image accompanying this post is a (bad) Photoshop collage of images from the concert. I'm not all that great at this sort of art/work, but I had to tackle this challenge—no single image from the concert really gives you an idea of what the show was like. Heck, even this hodge-podge of pictures only gives a small clue… but you can find that out for yourself.

You see, the concert had been filmed, but it was available only in Europe, and only in the PAL format. I know because I tracked down a bootleg copy on VHS a couple years later. It was a really poor-quality transfer—the video and audio really sucked, which totally defeats the point of having a concert on tape. But it was a special concert to me, so I held on to the tape (hidden in a box somewhere) for years. So when they finally released it on DVD last year… it went on my list the next day.

We’ve never discussed it, but somehow my sister saw through all the other items (and equally important comments) and gave me this.

So, uh… thanks.