Damien Galeone

My morning run is a crowded experience today. There are people walking, running, cycling, and rollerblading in order to enjoy the nice weather. I pass dozens of people. If I had to guess the two main facial expressions I am greeted with, they would be terror and confusion.

For today, I am singing. In Mary Magdalene’s Mezzo-Soprano. Loudly. Very loudly.

Folks, if you have eyeballs and exist, you look at Facebook a couple of times a week. And if you look at Facebook, you have surely noticed the Facebook enlightenment. The Facebook enlightenment is this trend of posting enormously inspirational quotes, memes, and status updates. There are too many to list. These often focus on one’s empowerment, worth, drive, dedication, and self-awareness. If you were to judge people’s lives from their Facebook accounts alone, you would think that we live in a society of highly philosophical, successful, and aware people.

But we don’t.

I typically disregard these inspirational bits. I have always viewed them as talking the talk without walking the walk. It’s easy to quote a pithy platitude, it’s another thing altogether to follow the meaning of it in your life. For these mean nothing without application.

But then last week, one did catch my eye.

Don’t have guilty pleasures. If you love something, fucking love it.

As a man filled to the brim with guilty pleasures, this made a lot of sense to me. One of those guilty pleasures is musicals.

I listen to musicals at home. Les Miserables, Jesus Christ Superstar, West Side Story. My neighbors view me with squinty judgmental faces when I see them on the street. Look and judge though they may, I know I am safe from confrontation. I know all about their guilty pleasures, so we have all entered into an unspoken agreement not to mention anything we hear in the building.

Still, it’s hard to listen to musicals in public. Musicals have a feisty way of demanding that one sing along. Moreover, they have the mesmerizing ability to force you to sing in the voice you are hearing. Therefore, until now, I have avoided listening to musicals in public.

But today I am coming out of the musical closet. And now as I run along the river, I bark out I Don’t Know How to Love Him as Mary Magdalene. I screech along to I Dreamed a Dream as Fontaine and I even let everyone on the river know that I, indeed, feel pretty.

As I run it occurs to me: I don’t care what people think. Oh yeah. I have forgotten that. A great gust of relief and peace comes over me as I jog. I make a note to download Hair later on. Looks as though I will be letting the sunshine in during my next run.

Come on people! Come out of the closet on one of your guilty pleasures!