And so it turns out that my parents were right. Being gay really was just a phase. At least "being gay" in that weirdly purist way that many gay fiftysomethings insist is the only way to gay - that stereotypical "lifestyle" sense of the word where if you aren't going out to clubs several nights a week (and never getting to a club before 11:00), if you aren't marching in a parade wearing leather chaps and little else, if you aren't spending several hours of every day at a high-priced gym, then you must be full of self-loathing. Or worse: a hetero-wannabe.

It's Thursday night, and we're just leaving Camp Shalom, a Jewish day camp where both our (Christian) boys have been spending their days for the last three weeks. With James out of town, I attended the evening program to mark the end of the camp's first session with his ex-wife - we call her the boys' Fairy Godmother. We picnicked in the grass with coldcuts and salads we'd just picked up from the grocery store. We sat in fold-out captain's chairs while watching the boys flit through the crowd of campers and their parents - disappearing and reappearing as brightly and randomly as the fireflies at the edge of the woods under a sky that wasn't quite dark yet. At the end of the evening, everyone held hands and sang "Shalom" in that deep, amelodic hush unique to campfire gatherings - and then the crowd broke into busy clusters, packing up picnic blankets, throwing away Little Caesar's boxes, recycling soda bottles, and heading to cars all at their own special paces - all the stop-starts and hugs good-bye, and noises of kids to tired to really play, but to excited to admit to how tired they are.

It had been a beautiful evening, but I was happy to be getting back into the car, ready to start the long trip home. I glanced back to make sure Leon was strapped into his car seat. Stew was aglow, but clearly exhausted, in the passenger seat. I turned the key, and - oops, the music's too loud - quickly turned the knob down to a level more reasonable. But Stew's ears had perked up to the colorful opening notes of "Casanova in Hell". "Hmmm, what's that?" he asked. But I had different plans. I skipped back to track one. "We'll get back there eventually," I assured him, "but, right now, I want to hear to the whole thing from the beginning."

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Since their artistic breakthrough album, Behaviour, in 1990, much of the Pet Shop Boys' music has dealt specifically, intelligently, and often heartbreakingly with the trials, errors, triumphs, absurdities, and unique tensions associated with both "living gay" and responsible personhood. I've grown up with the Pet Shop Boys, not just in the sense that they were popular when I was a teenager and I still listen to them - but rather, that their albums have run sort of parallel to my own life.

In 1986, they played glitzy synth-pop with a literate smart-aleck streak that appealed both to my outsider-ness musically (ie. I danced to disco and I didn't like rock) and socially, and, on the other hand, to my feeling that despite my outsider-ness, the world wasn't quite as dark a place as Depeche Mode had been making it out to be. Though, by the early 90s, hints of homosexuality were creeping into Neil Tennant's lyrics (notably "Being Boring"), the band's official coming out party came in 1993 with the release of Very, a record that was equal parts post-AIDS elegy and sweet disco affirmation. Their cover of the Village People's "Go West" was blasting through the halls of my dormitory the morning after my first hot night with my first real boyfriend. It made me want to come out - and soon afterward, I did.

And all along, through my heavy drinking disco bunny days, through underemployment and depression, social isolation, career stagnation, a couple of suicidal near-misses, grand gestures masquerading as big life decisions, every sexual, financial, and personal debacle (and there were many) as I eased uncomfortably from young adulthood into the "real world", the Pet Shop Boys arrived ahead of me and left notes of caution, or admonitions to stop and revel in any given moment. Or as they put it, "It is not easy... [but] happiness is an option." Their albums, which arrived at regular 3 year intervals, culminating in the emphatically un-disco, adult-contemporary-pop style album Release in 2002, were like dispatches from the older (gay) brother I didn't have - the one who might bail me out (and have a good giggle at my expense) after I'd made the same mistakes he had. They were a little farther along, but in essence, we were on the same road.

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Until now. Now, I'm out on Hwy PD heading into Madison. In the back seat, there's a six-year-old trying hard not to fall asleep ("Paul? What does 'psychological' mean?"), and an 11-year-old next to me staring blankly out the window, tapping his finger against the glass to a beat that feels instantly familiar and totally anachronistic - like a tiny scrap of that wonderful spring of 1993 blown out through my Pontiac G6's air conditioning, carrying with it both the euphoria of that first "morning after" and a weird feeling of embarrassment akin to reading my own really bad high school poetry - Neil Tennant pleading "Are you gonna go to the Sodom and Gomorrah Show?" like a synth pop county fair carnie offering "Sun! Sex! Sin! Divine Intervention! Death! And Destruction!" I keep wondering if Stew is actually listening to the song - his ear is finely attuned to Biblical imagery, especially of the Old Testament (or Revelations) variety - and what he's thinking of it. But, as the southern suburbs start to creep up to the shoulders of this country road, I feel a sense of conflicted joy - queasy nostalgia for an easier (but stupider), simpler (but far less consequential), time of my life.

There was a time when a real life "Sodom and Gomorrah Show" would have held a certain allure for me. The song itself is so infectious that I actually fight not to like it - if only they sold Trojans for your ears - and finally feel dirty for singing along with (and, yes, totally enjoying) it. It's certainly hard to tell if the song is meant as an irony, or just as an elaborate production number for the Boys' next musical theatre venture (it opens with a fantastically cheesy ringleader announcement). But I'm relieved when we've gotten through all five minutes of it, and Stewart hasn't asked me why anybody in their right minds would want to go to Sodom and Gomorrah. It's "Go West" all over again, only without the social consciousness, that vibe of solidarity in the face of Plague. And the Pet Shop Boys have to be aware that the Village People also sang a song about the "two cities filled with hate, sin, and lust." But where Victor Willis once warned against the coming of God's wrath, "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" invites it - begs for it - like younger gay men, for whom AIDS is a relic of a distant past.

At any rate, I feel removed from it. And the Pet Shop Boys' latest album Fundamental feels less like a letter from a beloved older brother than a very colorful bit of immersive, investigative reportage. It's full of loud 24-hour News Channel gesture: great, but somehow unnecessary, orchestral fanfares. Insistent, repetitive rhythms and a business-like sense of urgency. It alternately recalls the angst-ridden sincerity of an Anderson Cooper on the (appropriately) Diane Warren-penned "Numb" and the garish red-carpet reports of the E! Network on songs like the lead single "I'm With Stupid" and "Minimal". There's a brief instrumental called "God Willing" that sounds like the title music for the hottest new reality television competition (or maybe a Jeff Probst talk show); and the closing "Integral" is centered around a shrill, bullying, multi-voiced chant that speaks to the news-watchers' paranoia: If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. If you've something to hide, you shouldn't be here. Brit Hume smiles.

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It's all so exciting, so phony and so wonderful that the moments of genuine introspection feel almost ponderous by comparison. And that, of course, may be the whole point of Fundamental.

"Oh my God, look at the sun behind you, you guys." A fierce orange ball shining in my rear view. A chorus of "cools" all around as the boys strain against their seatbelts. On the stereo is the song "Luna Park", a meditative stroll through a gauntlet of sideshow distractions - when we're getting high, we're happy - obscuring an unspecified danger ahead. It may be the album's most lovely melody - moody, wistful, and romantic.

"You know what I think is cool?" Stewart asks. "It's how there are, like, different layers of color on the sun. First it's orange, and then it gets redder, and redder, and then it's really dark at the bottom." Hmm. Maybe we are still on the same road after all.

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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

"Fundamental" by Pet Shop Boys
Rhino Records
Released 6/27/06

Produced by Trevor Horn
49 min.

SONGS: Psychological - The Sodom and Gomorrah Show - I Made My Excuses and Left - Minimal - Numb - God Willing - Luna Park - I'm With Stupid - Casanova in Hell - Twentieth Century - Indefinite Leave to Remain - Integral

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BONUS DISC

For about seven bucks more, Rhino Records has released a double-disc edition of Fundamental. The album is packaged in a solid black jewel case with a glossy slip case and booklet. The second disc features a half dozen remixes of album tracks (two of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show"), along with versions of a their non-album single "Flamboyant", and a nifty duet with Elton John (we had to know this was coming) called "In Private".



Recommended: Yes