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Prior to coming out, my experiences with other men were all furtive and full of shame, usually taking place anywhere where I could sneak in and slink out without anyone I knew knowing what was going on in THAT part of my life. It was all very compartmentalized and unhealthy (even if parts of it were fun, from a seedy male perspective). But it always lacked something because deep down I thought what i was doing was wrong.

Then I worked up the courage to go into one of the gay bars in my hometown in Lincoln, Nebraska, called The Office — a dingy little hole in the wall with, I kid you not, a small plexiglass dance floor the size of a small living room with each 12-inch by 12-inch square capable of lighting up in a different color. It was very Saturday Night Fever, but in the middle of nowhere.

So, in the dead of summer I pulled on a parka with the fur trimmed hood all the way over my head, in my car in the parking lot, and walked into my first gay bar at 18 years old (the drinking age then). A really hot blonde guy named Blaine — he’s still hot, BTW — started buying me drinks, which helped me a bit with my nervousness. But I was still a wreck inside. So when Blaine invited me to his place at closing it felt like stepping into the void. I had never given anyone in a gay setting my real name.

We went to his house. We talked. I made out nervously. And we went to his room, where he lit candles and put on Side Three of Donna Summer’s two-record Bad Girls collection — the one with what I consider to this day to be some of the most beautiful slow songs she ever sang: 9) On My Honor 10) There Will Always Be a You 11) All Through the Night.

You have to understand that prior to this, I didn’t get slow songs. Slow songs, love songs, were about other people. My sex life up to that point was more like the track Hot Stuff:

Lookin’ for some hot stuff baby this evenin’
I need some hot stuff baby tonight
I want some hot stuff baby this evenin’
Gotta have some hot stuff

Then my new and gentle and patient friend Blaine played On My Honor in a luxuriously appointed bedroom lit only by candles, for the first time I ever kissed another man:

On my honor I will try
Always do the best I can
Though the tears
May fall like drops
From my eyes honey
On my honor I will try
If you want me to be strong
I’ll give it everything I have
You’ll never have to worry
Cause we’re not in a hurry
On my honor I will try

On to There Will Always Be You:

I will never go away
If you wanted me to stay
Well in a million years
I wouldn’t go
Cause I love you so
Yes I do
I love you so
I could never leave you
I love you
I love you
Don’t go away
Can’t go away
There will always be a you

And, All Through The Night:

Quit searchin’, anticipatin’
Stop reachin’
For that distant star
I’ve been waitin’
Boy don’t pass the moment
The lights right before your very eyes

All through the night
Lay your head on my shoulder
You can make love to my mind
And if you feel the magic
Don’t be afraid

I can remember all of it like it was yesterday, and it engendered an epiphany that changed me forever: This is why people write love songs. This is why they listen to them. It all makes sense now.

And that was it. I came out to my family. Informed the Christian right wingers in it that they were the sick ones with the problem, not me, and that they were the ones who needed therapy. I’ve never looked back.

Of course, it could have been other songs, another singer, and it might have had the same effect. But her performance on those songs — indeed, many of her slow songs — were masterpieces and I always felt she never got the respect she deserved because she was defined as a disco queen and nothing else.

If you like slow pop songs at all and get a chance to spend time with someone you love with those songs playing, I highly recommend it.

RIP, Donna.

I still loves me some hot stuff. But you helped make me realize there there could be more, and that nothing that felt that beautiful could possibly be wrong.

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