Today is Donna day. Let the gods of disco shine their glittery countenance down upon us! Not much else can be said that hasn’t been said about the Queen of Disco. Perfect pitch? We covered that. Played to death until the record skipped? Yup. I will forever be enthralled by and enamored of Donna Summer and almost all of her songs, but today we celebrate Heaven Knows and I Love You, respectively. Let’s start with the latter. I didn’t know of this one until I lived with my BFF Vincent in Elmont in 1989. Talk about playing a song to death! If you think I’m bad, you never met Vincent. He would rewind his cassette tape (and we would hear the backwards rewind sound… remember that??) continuously to listen to this song over and over and over. At the time I may have been annoyed but, in retrospect, it was everything. My love for this song, admittedly, isn’t as much about the song as it is about the memory. Obviously, he was obsessed with Donna, as most gay guys our age were, and that meant I was now obsessed with it. Fine, call me a follower and not a leader, as if I give a shit. This song is one among many of my songs on a personal playlist of songs that remind me of my Vincent. I don’t have a lot, so indulge me if you will. And then we move to the former. I can close my eyes and picture my #ToxicMasculinity making me sing the male verse in this song. Ha fucking ha. There I was, this tiny little closet homo living in the Pocono Mountains, in a house built for our family in A Pocono Country Place in Tobyhanna. I would play this song repeatedly, duhr, on my turntable. It seemed like a duet (which I love!) but it was billed as a Donna solo. After seeing the Donna Summer musical, I realized the male voice was that of her husband who sat in, as a fill-in, to record this song. Didn’t matter; I already heralded this as one of my favorites of her Greatest Hits. Rest Peacefully, sweet LaDonna Adrian Gaines. This may be the last time I speak of you. And rest peacefully, my sweet and amazing friend Vincent. I’ll never stop speaking of you.
From the historical writing archive. Original date: October 28, 2020. Recovered from local source material; editorial review is still in progress.
