There’s a Bass Guitar in This

I was sitting in my dorm room at Ohio University pretending to study but probably secretly brooding about some broad or another or about my asshole roommates or my shitty living situation or whatever. It was late afternoon.

This kid on my floor, he was tall and pretty and denied to the ends of the Earth that he was gay. I hope he’s since been able to live it real. He walked in to my room and held the CD in front of my eyes.

It was Prince. As a sprite of some kind. Naked. On a flower.

I bought the tape days later and walked back down to the dorms. I remember clearly the first time I heard “Dance On.”

I don’t know why by now I wasn’t used to Prince blowing my mind up.

Ya know, you would think with the overtly religious themes on the album, you would think Mr. Nonbeliever here would hate the living gravity out of it. But I lived on it. Thrived on it all through a shitty freshman year which ended with me tossed back home missing my friends immensely and a lonesome summer in Lawrence Kansas.

Nonsense. This is a revival I would gladly attend.

What a world this man spun for us. Rain is wet. Sugar is sweet. Clap your hands and stomp your feet.

Everybody. Everybody knows.

When love calls, you gotta go.

If you own the Lovesexy album on CD, you know the annoying thing about it: It’s all one single track. So you don’t get to just skip ahead to “Alphabet Street.”

This used to annoy me a bit.

Not so much anymore.

That is how Lovesexy should be experienced.

As is so often true, it turns out the man was right.

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