Natasha Bedingfield, "Soulmate" (2007)

I have weak moments. Sometimes it's only a moment, like that night in the late 90s. Surrounded but alone in a gay bar, I suddenly felt the haze clear, and really heard what the DJ was spinning. And I thought, "Yes. YES. The way I feel IS sexual. It can't just be intellectual. My God." Later the haze redescended, and Amber's cheap song went back to being stupid, or at least no longer philosophically profound.

And sometimes, like now, it's a long moment. Three, four, six days. A week, two. Work is trying; everyone is dispirited. I refuse to be productive. On Sunday I listen to "Soulmate" to review it; I enjoy it and rate it well, but somehow draft a blurb that's mostly jokey. Meanwhile, friends talk to me, but talk through me. They carry on like nothing's wrong, and in many ways they are right. I write a long essay for the blog, but although the piece is clear in my head I can't seem to finish it, and what I write turns out meandering. On Monday I find myself unable to stop singing "Soulmate," and I revise the review, bumping up its score, adding phrases and lines to emphasize its merits. I still cough. My right eye, only the right, is irritated, bloodshot. I am restless, and find myself looking -- with my one good eye -- everywhere for him, a fact about which I am both defiant and ashamed. It's Wednesday, and by now I am fully obsessed with Natasha's song, and I consider taking up karaoke so that I can perform it. Nobody else agrees. My friend reads the review, and snarks thusly: "I'm just sort of surprised that it never struck her that one possible reason why she's alone is that she's an intolerable and smarmy Christian-family-values bitch." Good point. But who doesn't long for someone to hold, who knows how to love you without being told? I wait and wait for the moment to pass.