Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

Everybody needs somebody to take dancing. Everybody needs somebody to hail a cab to Soul Night on a first Saturday in San Francisco. Everybody needs somebody to feel the bass in the walls with their palm, to let it shimmy through their limbs and into yours. Everybody needs somebody to tell a creeping bro to back off when you need some space, when music threatens to wield its power over our bodies too recklessly—to help you feel the beauty of what music can do, while protecting you from its danger. Everybody needs somebody to take ecstasy with you, then allow you to pet their beautiful face in line for the bathroom while Wilson Pickett wails the simplest, truest truth: “everybody needs somebody to love.” Queen said it too: “find me somebody to love.” Who else? More have whined about being loved, but these dudes understood it’s the giving—the love you make—that matters more. Because where do you put the love you make, if you’re all alone? You don’t give it to yourself, in my experience. You take it out with the trash every day until it slowly stops regenerating inside you, and friends, let me tell you, that is no damn way to live.