Death Cab For Cutie, "Brothers On A Hotel Bed" (2005)

"You may tire of me, as our December sun is setting. 'Cause I'm not who I used to be: no longer easy on the eyes. But these wrinkles masterfully disguise the youthful boy below, who turned your way and saw something he was not looking for. Both a beginning and an end. But now he lives inside someone he does not recognize when he catches his reflection on accident.

On the back of a motor bike, with your arms outstretched trying to take flight, leaving everything behind. But even at our swiftest speed we couldn't break from the concrete in the city where we still reside. And I have learned that even landlocked lovers yearn for the sea, like navy men, cause now we say goodnight from our own separate sides, like brothers on a hotel bed.

You may tire of me, as our December sun is setting. 'Cause I'm not who I used to be"

Who would have thought that Death Cab For Cutie would produce the best gay song* (*possibly) of 2005? A song that is great not just because it seems, matter-of-factly, to be about two gay men* (*possibly) -- although that fact doesn't become clear till the title line is finally sung at the end of the lyric, and even then will probably still strike some people as not really involving two gay* (*possibly) protagonists -- but because it takes on the unromantic task of detailing the "December" moment in a relationship when sexual interest has faded? A moment that turns out to be doubly sad and rueful, because of the way the lyric flashes back to a time when this waning wasn't the case, but in hindsight already on the way to being so ("even at our swiftest speed we couldn't break from the concrete"), maybe because it's in our nature and thus inevitable (since all monogamous "landlocked lovers," in an incisive metaphor, must naturally have a thirst for "the sea" and perhaps its sailors)? Death Cab For Cutie, which as an "emo" band you would think makes its name on -- and insofar as they are liked by me, may even be liked because of -- its willingness to be overwrought, but here strips away the bombast to present two simple verses (and a final refrain) that are almost haikuesque, or might be Philip Larkin stanzas?

Not many people, that's who.

Perhaps it hasn't come to pass: you only may tire of me. But somehow it seems like I shouldn't not count on it.