Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Sooner or Later

Archival photo of early greyhound racing from the Emeryville Historical Society

EDIT: IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION that the events described below were at horse racing, not greyhound racing as I had been remembering for the last twenty-or-so years. As the great movie star HAL-9000 once said: “my mind is going… I can feel it… I can feel it…”

My favorite song by The English Beat is “Mirror in the Bathroom,” but that may be partly just because I can never remember the actual title of “Save it for Later.” Every time I try to search for it, it runs away and lets me down.

The band has more significance for me as an adult than it did in the 1980s, because I remember they were playing at a dog-racing track in Emeryville, California on the night that I came out to my best friends. My friends were cool, and the band was pretty cool, too.¹To be clear: I didn’t come out to the band, but I did enjoy their music.

I had actually forgotten that all three of those things (dog racing, coming out of the closet, The English Beat) happened on the same night until I started writing this post. That wasn’t a venue that I’d specifically planned for the occasion; I guess it was just long overdue and it was just a question of time. As the Grass Roots said: sooner or later, love is going to win.

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  To be clear: I didn’t come out to the band, but I did enjoy their music.