We love who we love | The Old Guy (2025)

It was while I was doing sound for the recent Seaview Playwright’s Theatre production of Diana Son’s “STOP KISS” that I chanced upon an amazing revelation.

For those unfamiliar with the play, it tells the story of two women (Callie, a New Yorker and Sarah from St. Louis) who meet and realize the other is the person they’ve been looking for. It is a play about hope and courage and hatred and, most importantly, love. It is told in a non-linear way, which leaves the audience with a hopeful ending, as there is a terrifying scene (recounted, not seen) involving a hate crime that is central to the story.

The director, Craig Stoebling, had chosen love songs, a majority of them by gay women artists like Tracy Chapman, Jane Oliver and kd lang, that, when attached to very emotional scenes, stayed with me long after the production closed.

I had the sudden realization that all love songs could be applied to all same sex relationships, as long as the pronouns didn’t get in the way.

I asked my friend McKenna about this and she replied that, for a long time, same sex couples only had straight couples music to relate to, before some artists like Joan Armatrading became popular and well known. It reminded me of how early hip hop artists used rock riffs as a backing for their rhymes.

But if you listen to the words of “Something” by the Beatles, the narrator only mentions “she” or “her.” We assume, because it’s a man singing it, that he is speaking from a man’s perspective. Maybe not.

Maybe none of the music we listen to is sex specific. Maybe it’s only our assumptions that brand it as such.

I became very fond on a piece used by my friend Danielle Bacibianco for a promo reel. The piece was entitled “Honest” and it’s performed by Kyndal Inskeep and Sound House. It says, in part:

“But if I’m being honest/I’m not being honest/I’m at my darkest.”

The song easily relates to all the characters in the play. G-d knows, we all have experienced imposter syndrome…

“Thought I was a fighter/But I’m still in the fire.”

It’s funny how some music finds you at exactly the right moment in your life and grabs hold in a way that other tunes don’t. It’s all about our feelings and how songs can express them in the most beautiful ways.

But, the bigger question, for me, is how exactly do we define love. Some folks would look at the two lead characters’ relationship and automatically label them as lesbians (which is how the hate crime begins). My take was that they had chosen each other over everybody else that they loved, and that is substantially different.

As heterosexual people, we don’t think twice about people we know coupling. If Keith and Anna hit it off or Margaret and Frank have a relationship, we don’t feel the need to label it. Usually, we’re happy that our friends are happy. Some of us may not remember that, until a short time ago (2015 to be exact), same sex marriage was outlawed. People who loved each other couldn’t marry, didn’t have the right to visit each other in hospital, had to provide proof of a relationship in certain legal situations. Have you or I ever had to prove that we loved who we loved? Has that even been a question? And yet, it was for so many of our brothers and sisters until 10 years ago, and may be again if Clarence Thomas gets his way.

Music, however, doesn’t recognize such distinctions. Music meets you where you are and asks no questions but only requests that you let it into your heart. And some folks can’t. Some folks won’t allow themselves to be that open. Perhaps they’re afraid of the secrets that music will reveal about themselves, their lives, their beliefs.

One of the tag lines of the show was “It’s not a crime to kiss.” It’s also not a crime to love who you love. And for those that see same sex couplings as abhorrent or an affront to their version of G-d or their beliefs, I once again ask you to turn your gaze inward. What if somebody questioned your relationship to your partner? What if they said they couldn’t understand how that happened or they found it morally repugnant? How would you respond? Would you meekly dissolve your relationship or would you fight for it?

LGBTQ+/Two Spirits people have had to fight their entire lives for the simple human/civil right to love who they love. Do you blame them for being angry? Or exhausted? Or protective?

That community is currently under the most brutal and vicious attacks from our government that I’ve ever seen. I understand how folks want to feel “safe” from folks they don’t understand or don’t feel they have anything in common with. But, can you justify complete elimination? Isn’t that the definition of genocide? How in the world is that “pro-life”? How is that humane?

I want to extend my thanks to the cast and crew of STOP KISS, who were dear friends before this production and became even more important to me afterwards. I cannot physically make every protest march or event. Theater is my protest.

Hold those magnificent grey heads high. Stay proud!

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