bitful

Smalltown Boy is a song that always gets me, and I don't even particularly like it.

I don't even consider it as incredibly fitting to describe my past. Alright, I might have been 'always a lonely boy', and I had more than my fair share of being 'pushed around and kicked around', but who isn't?

And I always took great care hiding the fact that I was gay, so I can't really say I was 'the one that they'd talk about around town'.

Besides, 'mother [did] understand why [I] had to leave'.

Lately, however, I have not been able to listen to the song without my eyes welling up with tears. Hell, even now that I'm writing about it, I feel some sort of ocular wetness.

And there's one occasion that is guaranteed to make me howl, so much so that people have been known to come up to me and comment on the fact that I must relate to the song a lot. That's the when the D.E. Experience performs it at the RVT, and I look around me at so many faces completely entranced in the story that the song tells, and I realise that many of us are small town boys, drawn to the big city in search of like-minded souls, some respect and personal development without having to pretend to be different.

That is what moves me immensely and on occasions some tears have been shed and probably shared, which makes us less alone at the end of the day.

• Watch the video for Smalltown Boy on YouTube
• Smalltown Boy lyrics
• Bronski Beat on Wikipedia

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 7:21 am and last modified on January 14th, 2007 at 8:08 am, and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.