Lyrics

I recall many years ago—not all that long after my graduation from high school—listening to a song while attending a proverbial weekend house party.  In fact, I recall the very house and the very song and the shimmering heat of that summer’s night.

The song was “Astronomy” by Blue Oyster Cult.  And as the song began to play I started to quietly sing along as best I could:

The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst
Out at you from their hiding place
Like acid and oil on a madman's face
His reason tends to fly away

Like lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in May
Now the sands become a crust
And most of you have gone away

Somewhere at about this point I turned to the person beside me and said: “Man, I really like the lyrics in this song.”

Okay.  A few points before we press on.  My friends and I referred to ourselves as “the group.”  Typically, if you found one of us, another thirteen or so were certain to be in the immediate vicinity.  We were a kind of mobile crowd that always stuck together.  Some of the people in the group liked the person next to me.  I did not.  He had hollow eyes.  If you looked into his eyes you might think you were looking down inside two dark brown beer bottles.

Nothing there.

He said little and laughed only when someone else got hurt.

So, after I told him I liked the lyrics, he sat quietly without any reaction for a bit, and then he responded without any given inflection: “I never listen to the words in songs,” he said.  He then stared at me.

How does that work, I wondered?  Not listening to the lyrics?

I was not all that surprised when I heard, just a few years after, that he wound up in prison for rape and attempted kidnapping.  

--Mitchell Hegman