God help me I realized last night that I can buy all my old favorite 45rpm singles from my teen years, the ones I can barely listen to anymore because they’re too worn out, on iTunes, and I downloaded a bunch of them and then realized as I was playing them today what a love lorn teen I must have been back then, because my favorites were almost all these soulful love songs. Yet I didn’t have the slightest interest in the dating and mating game back when I heard these songs for the first time. Something in them, in the music, in the soulful ache and wonder and joy of love, must have touched me even then, because I played these tunes over and over.

So here I am on Valentine’s Day playing a bunch of love songs from my past and wondering just what was going on my mind back in those days before I had even the slightest interest in the dating and mating game.

Here’s my Valentine’s Day iPod playlist. The stereotype for gay guys of a certain age is that they’re all Diana Ross and the Supremes fans. But you can pretty much see from this that my weakness back then was The Four Tops. Point of fact, “Bernadette” was the very first 45 I ever bought.

• Bernadette – The Four Tops
• Baby I Need Your Loving – The Four Tops
• Reach Out I’ll Be There – The Four Tops
• Walk Away RenÈe – The Four Tops
• Everlasting Love – Robert Knight (lots of good singers have covered this but…I’m sorry this is the one…)
• Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
• You Keep Me Hanging On – Diana Ross and the Supremes
• Jimmy Mack – Martha & The Vandellas
• Scarborough Fair – Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66
• Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell

Here’s hoping the music in your lives this Valentine’s Day was soulful and sweet. And if, like me, you haven’t found your other half yet, and it seems to you like it’s all you can do some days to keep the aloneness at bay, and you feel detached from a world you can only observe but not enter into, here’s wishing you all the luck you need, and hoping that your long walk alone is soon over, and a lover’s embrace wakes you gently from your lonely dream, and brings you back into the world.