Musings

5 of My Favorite Sex Scenes in Movies

Kate Sloan

I’ve been a movie fanatic since I was a kid. My mom was an entertainment reporter for most of my childhood, so when other kids were playing pretend at daycare, I was seeing movies like Cast Away and Artificial Intelligence in theatres. (And quite possibly playing pretend on my own later, inspired by the stories I’d seen on screen.)

But while my mother’s focus in her media career was on entertainment, mine is on sex – and so, of course, I’m often captivated by sex scenes in movies and television. This has become even more true in the years since “intimacy coordinators” became common fixtures on film sets; sex scenes are all the more interesting now that I know someone has (in many cases) carefully choreographed them and helped the actors discover as much authenticity, intimacy and vulnerability as they are willing to bring to their roles.

There are websites like https://www.mrskin.com which compile screenshots galore of cinematic sex scenes, but many of these scenes are so seared into my brain that I don’t even have to look at pictures to remember exactly what happens. Let’s talk about some of my favorites.

Kissing Jessica Stein is one of my favorite queer flicks. It’s about a neurotic, ostensibly straight woman – the titular Jessica – who, after a string of romantic rejections and mishaps with men, impulsively responds to a newspaper personal ad… written by a woman. That woman is Helen, a feisty and brilliant art gallery manager who is also dabbling in bisexuality for the first time.

Beyond being a deeply funny and relatable story of sexual and romantic exploration, this movie has so much heart, and captures so well the thrill of pushing your own limits sexually. The sex scenes are some of the best scenes in the whole movie. One of them begins with Jessica showing up to their date with a bunch of educational pamphlets about lesbian sex – she’s been doing research! Helen has to talk her down, suggesting that they try it “the old-fashioned way” rather than jumping straight to strap-on gadgets and gizmos.

Both women are nervous about having sex with one another, especially Jessica – and so there’s a great montage where the two women gradually, over the course of several dates, work up to kissing with tongue, and then touching above the waist, and then touching below the waist, and so on. There’s a ton of good communication in these scenes, and they’re so funny and adorable. If only all queer newbies could have a first partner as patient and encouraging as Helen.

Moonstruck is a favorite of my mama’s, so I’ve seen it many, many times. If you’ve never seen it, mainly what you need to know is that it’s a rom-com starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. Intrigued yet? Yeah, you should be.

Nic’s character, Ronnie, is a burly caricature of toxic machismo with a sensitive underbelly. He also happens to be the brother of the man Cher’s character, Loretta, is engaged to, so there’s an added layer of forbiddenness, making it all the more hot when they get together.

In one of the hottest scenes, Loretta and Ronnie are arguing outside his apartment after a fancy date night at the opera, and he yells, “Now, I want you to come upstairs with me, and get in my bed!” In another scene, they’re in her kitchen and they’re arguing again (it’s a recurring theme) and Ronnie literally tips the whole kitchen table over in a flight of passion/rage, kisses Loretta passionately, and physically picks her up in his arms. “Where are you taking me?!” she shouts. “To the bed,” he replies. And he does. 🔥

Pretty Woman is a super problematic movie as far as its representation of sex work, but its two stars, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, are so gorgeous that I can’t help but find it hot and charming.

My favorite sex scene in this movie is one where Julia’s character, a sex worker named Vivian, walks in on Richard’s character, a rich businessdude named Edward, playing the piano late at night in the hotel they’re staying at. She’s wearing nothing but a bathrobe, which he takes off of her in a slow, sensual way. And then, presumably, they fuck on top of the piano.

It’s because of this scene that having sex on a piano is on my bucket list, though I’m not sure that anyone who owns a grand piano would be willing to let me “borrow” it for this purpose!

Unfaithful is another Richard Gere movie… However, the sex scenes I’m most drawn to in this movie don’t involve him. It’s an erotic thriller about a middle-aged wife and mother, Connie (played by Diane Lane), who randomly meets a hot young Frenchman, Paul, when he tends to an injury she sustains on a dangerously windy day.

An affair begins, and before too long, Connie is routinely sneaking away from her husband Ed (played by Richard Gere) to see her loverboy. He’s a bookseller, and they have many tawdry encounters in his bed, surrounded by towering stacks of books. It’s all very, uh, literary.

In one particularly hot scene, Connie finds herself stuck having lunch with some other married women she knows from whatever suburban middle-class organizations she’s a part of, and Paul walks into the restaurant, surprising her. They both sneak away to the bathroom and fuck in one of the stalls. When Connie comes back out, her friend points out that her blouse is partially unbuttoned. Whoops.

Blue Valentine has a famous scene in which Ryan Gosling’s character, Dean, goes down on Michelle Williams’s character, Cindy, seemingly to the point of climax. While you can’t even see any genitals, this one scene caused the movie to be given an NC-17 rating, though it was later changed to an R rating after pushback from the distributors.

Many critics have noted that it’s likely the scene’s focus on female pleasure that earned it the more mature rating, and that this points out the inherent sexism still prevalent in many industries, including movie-making. But regardless of Hollywood politics, the scene itself is hot as fuck and I will admit I have jerked off to it many times!

 

What sex scenes in movies have you found the hottest and most memorable?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Safety: A Secret Ingredient of Arousal

Kate Sloan

I’ve been in this situation many times, and maybe you have too:

I’m ostensibly about to hook up with a person I find very attractive, both physically and emotionally. We’re kissing, groping, grinding, etc., and while I feel like I should be aroused, I’m just… not. It feels like staring at an equation that says “1 + 1 = 0” and trying to figure out how that can possibly be true.

More often than not, there’s a secret ingredient that’s missing. And that ingredient is a sense of safety.

 

As the sexologist Emily Nagoski has pointed out in much of her work, stress has a real, measurable impact on our libidos. It actually alters your ability to get aroused, both psychologically and physiologically.

This makes sense if you think about how evolution works. If pre-civilization humans could just keep on fuckin’, even while the threat of an imminent tiger attack loomed in their peripheral vision, they never would have survived long enough to make babies and carry on their genetic line. So, naturally, we evolved to treat cues of danger as more important inputs than just about anything else, including sexual desire.

 

However, in modern times, even in places where tiger attacks are rare-bordering-on-unheard-of, our stress responses can still get in the way of arousal. These responses can occur due to a vast number of stressful inputs, including stuff like:

  • Worrying about whether it’s safe to be naked in the bed of a person you just recently met
  • Worrying about whether you might accidentally get pregnant or contract an STI
  • Worrying that your sex noises or sex faces are unattractive
  • Having been sexually assaulted or harassed in the past and worrying it’ll happen again
  • Wondering whether your date thinks you’re a slut for hopping into bed with them
  • Not yet knowing whether your date cares about your pleasure and comfort

A lot of these types of worries fall disproportionately on the shoulders of women, especially women who date men, due to the rates of sexual assault and other forms of abuse being heavily skewed along gender lines. In my view, this is a huge part of why so many guys struggle with knowing how to make a girl wet; they may be modeling their understanding of her arousal on the way they view their own arousal, and so they may not realize how important these mental and emotional components of sex are to the people they sleep with, if those aspects are not as much of a make-or-break factor for their own arousal.

I find it interesting, though disheartening, that this circumstantial difference is often written off as “Women are just more emotional in general, and their libidos are fundamentally different from men’s!” I don’t think this is inherently true, but I think a lot of systemic factors have made it seem that way, and people have simplified it in order to understand it better.

 

In any case, regardless of the gender(s) of the people you have sex with, it’s worth keeping in mind that a sense of safety is probably a component of what helps them get aroused. You can cultivate a safer-feeling environment by doing things like:

  • Asking them about their day and making them feel listened to
  • Always respecting their sexual boundaries, no matter what
  • Being proactive about determining what their boundaries are, so you can respect them
  • Setting the scene with calming music, dim lighting, etc.
  • Holding space for them to discuss their sexual anxieties openly so you can assuage their fears and avoid their triggers
  • Helping with housework and other tasks that may be weighing on their mind before sex
  • Asking them what helps them relax and feel able to get aroused – it may be different than what you’d have guessed!

You can keep these strategies in mind when you’re struggling with arousal while you’re alone, too. What stressors are present, and how can you address them, at least enough to feel comfortable setting them aside for a while?

It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where so many people feel unsafe so much of the time, largely for structural reasons that would be lessened or nonexistent in a more just society. But we’ve gotta work within the system we’re stuck inside, for the most part – and sometimes that means giving your partner a backrub while telling them you’re there for them, so that they can feel safe enough to open up to you, sexually and otherwise.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Why “Amateur Porn” is My Fave Kind of Porn

Kate Sloan
An Instax photo taken of me in my twenties. BTW, if you want more like this, click here, here, and here. 😇

It took me a long time to start enjoying porn. I had already been masturbating and reading erotica (especially erotic fanfiction) for several years before porn became a regular part of my solo sex routine.

Up until then, it just… hadn’t really interested me. What little I’d seen of it, online or while flipping through TV channels late at night, had seemed ridiculous to me: over-the-top, unrealistic, melodramatically acted. I’d never had sex, so I didn’t know what sex was “really like,” but I knew that the images in those videos didn’t resonate with me (or my vagina) anywhere near as much as the flirty banter in a great fanfic story, or the frisson I felt when talking to a crush at school. If devising fantasies and replaying memories felt more exciting than watching porn, why bother watching it?

There were a few exceptions; I liked the punk-rock pinup pics on the website SuicideGirls, and I had watched that one notorious Nina Hartley cunnilingus tutorial so many times that it had eventually earned a place of honor on my iPod Video. (Now there’s a throwback!) But most porn, especially most straight porn, was off-putting to me. I just didn’t get it.

 

Eventually, though, I discovered amateur porn. In comparison to the slick overproduction of mainstream studio porn, these amateurs making sexy videos from their bedrooms or basements felt like a revelation. Their work turned me on, not just because their bodies and lives looked closer to my own, but because – what with so many amateur porn makers being real-life couples – they showed me a vision of what a future sex life could look like for me: intimate, fun, sometimes a little silly, and hot. Very hot.

I was always the type of anxious kid who would Google things like “how to know if someone wants to kiss you” and “what do dicks taste like?” so there was something calming about watching real couples have the kinds of sex they apparently regularly had, even when the cameras were off. They showed me that you didn’t have to be an industry professional to be “good at sex” and to be thought of as sexy. That comforted me.

I’ve also always been turned on by the idea of someone knowing your body so well that they can get you off easily and consistently; I eroticized the thought of being known that deeply. And there’s no better place to watch that fantasy unfold than in amateur porn, where performers are often intimately familiar with one another’s bodies and know all the right buttons to press. This seemed romantic to me, and helped me dream about the sexual futures I wanted for myself.

 

While “amateur porn” is still an extremely popular porn category, the term itself has evolved over time. Its popularity prompted many mainstream porn studios to adopt an “amateur” aesthetic in some of their work, hoping to draw in some viewers who (like me) had previously been unimpressed with big-studio porn.

Meanwhile, the internet continued evolving, eventually empowering some performers to attract bigger and bigger audiences and to use more powerful platforms to reach new people. Both then and now, it almost feels disingenuous to call some of these people “amateurs” when they may have as much industry knowledge as, if not more than, many performers for mainstream companies because they’ve always been responsible for doing their own lighting, filming, editing, etc.

Some purists might argue that the well-lit and well-marketed independent performers on OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. aren’t amateurs in the true sense of the word, because their production values are too high or their videos are too pre-planned and performative. While it’s fine if you prefer the low-res, low-lit amateur videos of yore, I actually think it’s wonderful that video technology has become accessible enough that you don’t have to have big studio bucks to make porn that looks great. And I also know – particularly from talking to friends of mine in the industry – that just because something is “performed” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inauthentic. Some people find exhibitionism exciting, and so, in their videos, you may see performativity and authenticity blended together seamlessly into something gorgeous and hot.

 

Still to this day, it’s incredibly rare that I watch porn made by mainstream studios. Most of it just doesn’t interest me and doesn’t turn me on. I can’t relax and enjoy myself if I don’t feel that the performers on-screen are also relaxed and enjoying themselves, ideally with someone they like to fuck off-camera as well. And sure, that kind of thing can be found in some mainstream porn, but it’s much more readily available (and more believable to me) in the “amateur” category.

I want to feel like what I’m watching could plausibly happen in my bedroom, or my friends’ bedrooms. I want to feel the performers’ real flirtation and attraction and deep knowledge of one another’s bodies. I want real orgasms, real squirting, real giggles and real romance. And I want to pay creators directly (or as directly as possible) for what they’ve made, with no bigwig middle-man standing between us. I want to feel connected to the porn I watch, and to the people in it, almost as much as I feel connected to my actual sexual partners and my friends.

And so, I still love amateur porn, and probably always will – although I hope it’s eventually given a name more befitting of the immense work and expertise that can go into making real-life sex look real damn beautiful.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Q&A: What It Was Like to Write & Record 52 Songs in 52 Weeks

Kate Sloan

I’ve been having some convos with friends and family lately about the songwriting challenge I did this year, and have enjoyed explaining what made me want to do the challenge, what went into it, and what I took away from it. I found that lots of folks, especially other creatives, were interested in hearing about this – so I thought I’d write a blog post to wrap it all up!

 

Q. Wait. Did you really write and record 52 songs in 52 weeks?

A. Weirdly enough, I did.

 

Q. Why, though?

A. A fair question. A couple things happened within close proximity of each other last December: I wrapped up an educational program called “Meaningful Activity” that I’d been doing at my local chronic pain clinic, which had been leading me through a process of identifying my core values and the things that bring me the most joy, and figuring out how to do more of those things, more often, despite living with chronic pain and chronic fatigue. It came up over and over again in my worksheets and journal entries for that program that I missed music, cared about music, loved making music, and hadn’t been making nearly enough music. At the time that I did this program, I hadn’t written a song in nearly 4 years. In high school I used to crank out multiple songs a month sometimes. I realized I missed that and wanted to be doing significantly more of it.

The other thing that happened was that I spent a solid couple weeks living alone that month because my roommate had gone to stay with her family for the holidays, and I realized that a lot of my reticence to play music lately had been self-consciousness about being heard, but that I didn’t really need to worry about that because my sweet roommate had always expressed supportiveness about my music-making. So I started playing more songs, and even wrote a couple, and then thought, hey, wouldn’t I be happier if I was doing this every single week? So I assigned myself the challenge.

 

Q. Did you really think you’d be able to complete the challenge when you started it?

A. Honestly, no. I thought fatigue, pain, and/or apathy would get the better of me at some point and I’d call it quits. It felt equally possible that I would quit 7 months in or that I would quit after the first week. I think I just don’t believe in myself as much as I should, especially when it comes to professional goals.

 

Q. Where did you get ideas for your songs? Did it ever feel like you were running (or had run) out of ideas?

A. Coming up with conceptual/lyrical ideas is one of the hardest parts of the process for me, which is partly why I sometimes don’t even start with a conceptual/lyrical concept – I’ll start by improvising some lyrics and melodies over a chord progression and kind of just free-associate about what the music reminds me of. This approach can feel more like the song is revealing its theme to me, rather than me coming in with a predetermined theme of my own.

Aside from that – often I would see something in media that would inspire a song: “The Museum” was based on some lines lifted from an Oliver Sacks essay, “Love is Blind” is about the Netflix dating reality show of the same name, “Does He Know?” was inspired by a love triangle on the TV comedy Superstore, “Credit Card” was written soon after I watched The Tinder Swindler, “The Stage” was based on a scene from a documentary about the musical Spring Awakening, “Celia” was an ode to a character from the book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, “Grandmaster” was a love song for a cult leader inspired by NXIVM’s Keith Raniere, and “Sisyphus” was about Nick Drake and some biographies I’d read of him.

Sometimes songs were inspired by conversations I’d had with people in my life: “Bi Enough” came out of a conversation with my therapist about bisexual impostor syndrome, “Doll” was based on a story a friend told me about his sex doll, and “Amicably” was about a friend’s relatively civil breakup.

Sometimes I would ask my Instagram or Twitter followers to submit a theme, quote, or idea to inspire a song; “Brave Little Girl” was one of those. Sometimes I would pull two tarot cards and ponder their meanings, separately or together, until a song idea appeared; “Mr. Mean” and “What If?” were some of these. Sometimes I would go to RandomWordGenerator.com and have it give me 3 random words to inspire a song; “Notice Me” and “Nobody Likes Me” were some of those. One time, a dream inspired a song; I wrote “Stay” after waking up from a terrible nightmare.

 

Q. What did you learn about songwriting from doing this challenge?

A. A WHOLE LOT. As with any artistic discipline, you definitely get to know your own creative process much more intimately when forced to spend time on it every week. I kept notes on what I learned/observed over the course of the year; here’s a few highlights:

  • I used to have a bad habit of recording and posting new songs immediately after writing them, rather than going through subsequent stages of editing and practicing the song to polish it up. You would think that having to crank out a song every week would’ve made this worse, but it actually made me better at letting songs breathe for a day or more after writing them, and practicing them enough that I could perform them well on camera, because I would always feel like, “Well, I have until Sunday to get this done. Might as well make it as good as I can within that timeframe.” By the end of the challenge, I would pretty much always listen to my initial demo a few times for 1-3 days after writing the song and make changes to anything that started to seem awkward or unpolished. I would also practice the song a lot more before recording it.
  • I quickly realized that it was CRUCIAL for me to have a reliable and searchable repository of ideas that I could pull from when I had writer’s block. I use the Notes app for conceptual ideas and lyrical fragments, and another app called Voice Record Pro to record and organize musical ideas, as well as demos to help me remember a song I’m writing/have already written. Realistically, I won’t always be able to immediately develop an idea that comes to me, because I have a job and stuff. So I had to get very disciplined about documenting even the tiniest snippets of ideas so that they’d be available when I needed them.
  • You’ll make some of your best art when it feels safe to make bad art. And because it was a weekly challenge, I knew that it was fine for some of the songs to be less good than I might otherwise prefer (though I think almost all of them are at least pretty good). Jonathan Mann, who has written a song every day for 14 years running, estimates that “70% are mediocre, 20% suck and 10% are awesome.” Sitting down with my list of 52 songs and ranking them, I did the math and found that I think 33% are great, 37% are good, 19% are mediocre and 11% are bad. I’m pretty happy with those numbers!
  • Whenever I felt stuck, I almost always found that switching things up helped inspire me. I’d play around on different instruments, try writing to loops in GarageBand, go to a different location to write, etc. It really helps.
  • Songwriting boosts my self-esteem! I admire great songwriters and their craft a lot, and it makes me feel so good about myself to write songs that I think are good. All the more reason to do it more often! I think this was also largely the reason I never really “half-assed” a song during this challenge – any time I considered taking the “easy way out” (like writing a song that was really simple, bad, or based on a song I’d written before), I knew I’d be disappointed with myself if I did that, so I didn’t.
  • Creativity requires rest. The resting phase is part of the creative process, not separate from it. After I write a song, I typically need to take at least a few days off from trying to write another one, or it just won’t work. I can use that time to “refill the well” by consuming media on a broad range of topics that might later inspire a song.

 

Q. What are your favorite songs from the challenge?

A. Sorry, they’re my babies; I refuse to pick just one. Instead, I will pick eight.

 

Q. But your whole thing is that you write about sex. What are the sexiest/kinkiest songs from the challenge?

A. If you want sexy and sex-adjacent, you want these:

 

Q. Are you going to keep writing and recording a song a week?

A. I actually have been. I don’t know how long I’ll continue it, but I felt a little sad that the challenge was ending and decided there was no reason I had to stop if I didn’t want to. You can always see the latest ones on my YouTube!

“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 12 of 12

Kate Sloan

Song 49/52: “Give Up the Ghost”

Lyrics:

I’m not saying I’ll never cry over you again
Not promising all of the love will be gone
I’m not saying we can go back to just being friends
I’m just saying I’ve gotta try to move on

‘Cause I’m over this
All this wistfully missing your kisses
I wish that I knew what’s coming next

Chorus:
But I gotta give up the ghost
Gotta set off on a brand new adventure without
The one who I love the most
No, I’m not crying; don’t know what you’re talking about
We were young, we were close
Don’t know much, but I know
It’s time that I give up the ghost

The lessons I learned from you will serve me well, I can tell
I’m sorry that I had to practice on you
It won’t be too long til I miss being under your spell
I’ll set you aside and I’ll power on through

‘Cause it’s been too long
Don’t want less than the best; I’m a mess and
I guess that I know what’s coming next

(repeat chorus)

This isn’t what I wanted
It’s like my heart is haunted
Whenever I feel cold, I know
That you’re the one who chills me so

You weren’t what I needed
By leaving, I’ve succeeded
Though it hurts in the moment, I’m glad that I’m goin’
And you should be too, now that we’re through

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

This one is silly: I was playing the latest Pokémon game, and the ghost-type gym leader has a line of dialogue after you win the battle where she says, “Givin’ up the ghost’s not really my style. I’ll let you have this one, though, baby.” It immediately made me think about a time when I was 23 or 24 and hopelessly in love with a friend who didn’t love me back in the same way, and one day I just got so sick and tired of the pining and crying and wishing and mourning that I wrote “GIVE UP THE GHOST” in big letters in my journal and decided it was time to make a concerted effort to move on.

Funnily enough, the expression “give up the ghost” actually does not mean what I thought it meant at the time, to give up on a hopeless pipe dream you’d been chasing. It actually means to die, expire, or stop functioning. But in a way, that’s apt too; it was my crush itself that had to eventually give up the ghost in order for me to move on with my life.

Anyway, when I saw that line in the Pokémon game, I thought the phrase seemed like a great potential song title, so I made a note of it and later returned to it, writing an entire set of lyrics in one go. Putting it to music the following day was fairly intuitive, as I’d been hearing a melody in my head while I wrote the words. I just basically improvised myself singing the lyrics over a simple chord progression and much of it remained as is.

Song 50/52: “Dirty Martini”

Lyrics:

Here’s to the dirty martini
It’s briny and boozy and cold
I really do think that whenever I drink
I forget that I’m gonna get old

Here’s to the dirty martini
Isn’t it gorgeous and grand?
Oh, I could never be gloomy
With a martini in my hand

Chorus:
An ounce of vermouth
Two ounces of gin
Half an ounce of olive brine
And throw some ice cubes in

Then stir up your dirty martini
And strain it and sip it and smile
Forget your most troubling troubles for a while

Here’s to the dirty martini
Available at every bar
They make me feel cool and I act like a fool
And I sometimes go slightly too far

Don’t offer me peachy bellinis
Too sweet and too tart and too cute
I’m dirty just like my martinis
And salty and cold and aloof

(repeat chorus)

Then stir up your dirty martini
To ward off your worries and fears
Isn’t it nice to be drinking
A cocktail as salty as tears?

No one will know you’ve been crying
Your cocktail’s as salty as tears

 

Songwriting diary:

One day I sat down to record a podcast, and – as I often do – I had made myself a martini to sip while recording. As I was setting up my mic and headphones, I pondered the idea of writing an ode to the dirty martini, since it’s a drink I love. I noted some potential lines quickly before starting the podcast, and later returned to them and fleshed out the rest of the words.

However, it took a couple of rewrites to get it how I wanted it, because originally it was a fairly straightforward ode to the drink itself, but I wanted it to have more of an emotional backbone, i.e. why is the narrator of this song feeling so enthusiastic about martinis? What is she trying to cope with or avoid by drinking? So I wrote some little hints of depression, avoidant behavior and other issues (all of which I indeed have) into the song.

The production aspect of this song was one of the most fun ones of any of the songs I’ve produced this year, because I incorporated some unusual-for-me percussion. I made an audio recording of the process of making the martini you see me sipping in the video, and edited the sounds of pouring, stirring, adding ice, etc. into the appropriate spots in the song. I also asked my very talented brother Max for advice on what kind of electronic drum part I should record, and he responded by sending me a complete drum track he’d recorded himself for the song – on a very short turnaround, I might add! Max is the best.

Song 51/52: “Agony”

Lyrics:

Am I in pain? Yes, he’s hurting me
Am I in love? Almost certainly
I’m not guilty; I fell slowly
And it’s agony now

Am I upset? I suppose I am
But damn, it feels good in the throes; I am
Slightly hooked on cryptic looks
And it’s agony now

I think we can both concede
That you want and I just need
I think we can both remember
How I sound when I plead

Does it feel good? Yes, of course it does
Do you love back? Not by choice; I was
Not allowed to haunt and hound you
And it’s agony now

Are you out late and betraying me?
Will you deny that you’re playing me?
Wanting answers is a hazard
And it’s agony now

I think we can both admit
That you make me feel like shit
I think we can both remember
When I couldn’t handle it

Bags are all packed – now I’m heading out
This is the drive I’ve been dreading, but
Now I’m free and much more me and
Moving on; I’m out, I’m gone
It’s all behind me now

 

Songwriting diary:

The first two lines of this song (“Am I in pain? Yes, he’s hurting me/ Am I in love? Almost certainly”) popped into my head months ago and I wrote them down. I went on to chip away at writing this song over the next several weeks, eventually completing it – but I didn’t really feel happy with it, so I didn’t record it until I went on vacation to Chicago. I’d been struggling to write a song while out of my usual environment, not least because traveling is exhausting for my fibro-ridden body, so I decided to take a bit of a “vacation” from the songwriting challenge as well by recording a song I’d already written but had never recorded. (I don’t think that’s cheating, and I make the rules!)

I reused Max’s drum part from the previous week’s song, since I needed another waltzy drum part and he had kindly sent me an editable version of the track. I sped it up to suit this song and I think it worked out well.

Song 52/52: “If You’re Alone for Christmas…”

Lyrics:

If you’re alone for Christmas, I hope you make a meal
That’s every bit as warm and cozy as I hope you feel
I hope you open presents, even if they’re from yourself
They still are worth receiving, even not from someone else

I hope you light a fire to warm your little toes
I hope you’ve got hot chocolate to warm your little nose
If you’re alone for Christmas, I really hope you know:
I’ll see you in the spring; I love you so

If you’re alone for Christmas, I hope you see your luck
You get to spend your day with you; I’m jealous, what the fuck!
I hope you watch the movies you like to watch with me
Like Home Alone and Elf and your old Die Hard DVD

I hope you eat some turkey, and that it tastes like home
And that the memories tide you over when you have to be alone
If you’re alone for Christmas, I really hope you know:
I’ll see you in the spring; I love you so
I’ll see you in the spring; I love you so

 

Songwriting diary:

As with so many song ideas, this one came to me in the shower. I think I was pondering all the friends and family members of mine who were facing the possibility of spending their holiday season alone, due to COVID risk and other factors.

I took a first pass at the lyrics but ultimately found I just wasn’t sure what one could say to comfort someone in that situation, so I asked my social media followers what they would want to say to a loved one who had to spend the holidays alone. Two ideas that I liked and ended up incorporating came from two different friends of mine: that they’re lucky they get to spend their day with such a cool person, and that there will be other opportunities to see each other in the future if we just wait awhile.

A few days after writing and recording this song, I was on my way to a family party at which I knew I’d be performing some songs for a group of family members including some small children, so I wrote a more kid-friendly (i.e. non-profane) version of the first two lines of the second verse, which I might even like better than my original words:

If you’re alone for Christmas, I hope you know you’re blessed
You get to spend your day with you, and you’re a perfect guest

 

Thank you so much for joining me on this Song A Week journey this year, friends! You can read all the posts from this series in the “songwriting” tag, and check out all the songs in my A Song A Week playlist on YouTube. Happy new year!