#4

The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry (1979)

I felt so sorry for my brother-in-law. He’s an ex-bikie with the requisite tatts and has spent his life working in railway workshops and abattoirs. For him to attempt to have a D and M with his then teenage brother-in-law about how it was ok for men to show their feelings must have been one of the most embarrassing moments in his life and shows how scared he was of my mother.

It was early 1987 and her name was Noreen. My first ever girlfriend. We had met at McDonalds and our love had burnt bright, at least I had thought so, for a month or so but then she dumped me. I was inconsolable. My only refuge was 2 minutes and 34 seconds of Robert Smith genius. I remember that the tape had been stolen from a party. Not by me but by an associate, a metal head, not unusual for an Ipswich teenage boy at the time, who had discarded it in disgust as being for poofs. Being reasonably secure in my sexuality I had taken it home and fallen in love with the melancholy of it all. So when my heart was broken I had my soundtrack already prepared.

I lay on my bed with my ghetto blaster on my chest and played Boys Don’t Cry over and over again. Being in the pre-CD days I had to rewind it each time. I became so proficient that I could judge it to perfection so that when I pressed play that first chord would ring out true every time. I even transcribed the words into a letter that I sent her presenting my case about why we should get back together. It is heartening to think that I was a true teenager.

This melancholic state must have worried my mother who obviously missed a couple of the finer points in the lyrics. She, and most likely my sister, must have badgered my brother-in-law to say something to me about it. I remember him gingerly offering up something along the lines of “You know it’s ok for blokes to cry don’t ya?”

“Um yeah.”

“Right then. Ok. Um…”

Cue me retreating to my bedroom and pressing play. And 20 years later we have never spoken of it again.