‘Boys Do Fall in Love’ is Mine: What’s YOUR Queer Love Song or Story?
A Prism & Pen writers prompt
Boys do fall in love
They make time
They get love on a Saturday night
And she said,
Hearts beat as they dance in the street to a radio
See those lyrics? Rock star Robin Gibb wrote them for his 1984 smash hit “Boys Do Fall in Love.” I can’t remember exactly when I first heard it, but today the notes instantly beam me back to a tacky-cool 1980s Iowa gay bar, a dive with soaped-over windows and no sign to let passersby know the joint existed.
I’d been slipping inside for a few years, ever since I turned 18. Gibb’s anthem became HUGE in that space. As soon at the jukebox played the first notes, we’d all jump up and run to the cramped dance floor, grabbing partners or just crushing ourselves into a tight mass to feel the love.
We’d smile and yell, “Boys DO fall in LOVE” at the top of our lungs right along with the chorus — in something like a cross between joyful defiance and just plain joy.
We MADE it our song, even though it wasn’t. Gibb wasn’t singing about boys loving boys, but we didn’t care. NOBODY sang about boys loving boys, so that song meant what we needed it to mean.
Years earlier, in middle school, I had repurposed one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia…
