Song for a lonely soul

It was 1989? 1990? and I was a wild teenager in acid washed jeans that were strategically ripped across my right buttock cheek, just where my ass could hang out a little bit. My father hated those jeans, threatened to beat me if I wore them another time… but I ignored him and Carnival Tuesday found me in town with that right asscheek hanging out as I chipped behind Minshall following Rudder like a pied piper.

Soca music

Take me, won’t you take me

Take me back to my island

Trinity mountain

Calling me home

Taking me high

Soca was never better for me than it was that day, my legs intertwined with the posts of a steel pedestrian barrier as I stood a head and a half higher than the crowd, higher in every sense even though I wasn’t drinking, exhilarated by that song, the mas, the crowd’s euphoria and my own sense of danger and sexiness in those jeans. That song raises my pores up to today.

There’s no soca like the soca of your youth. And that is the reason soca gets “worse” every year. It’s not the music, darling. It’s you.