No. 242 – Deep Water

Performer: Seal

Songwriter: Seal

Original Release: Seal

Year: 1991

Definitive Version: None.

This is turning into the Jin blog, so let’s complete the trilogy somewhat: I mentioned that Jin introduced me to Seal. This was her favorite song. In fact, when I saw Seal in 1995, he ended this song with a ping-ponging sonar sound effect and wavy lights on the back screen, which was really cool. I turned to Debbie and said, “Jin’s gonna love it when she hears this one in a few weeks.”

Actually, Jin used lyrics from this particular song to nail the family fallout that was produced by my relationship with Debbie beginning in 1994: “The hammer strikes, when just a touch of love is all our problem needed.” Jin was on the money and totally supportive. It gave me a lot of solace over the next five years.

There was a brief window when my relationship with Debbie caused no consternation to anyone. That window closed, as I mentioned, after Labor Day 1994, when I took public the relationship’s new dynamic.

The window opened in August 1994. Well, really, it opened in July when we started doing things together, but no one cared if Debbie and I, say, went to a Reds game as long as we then didn’t end up in the same bed together. August was when that changed.

The next morning, there was no buyer’s remorse. I’m sure it crossed my mind after I awoke that glorious morning that this might have not been the best idea. But I ran a freight train over that thought. It would change, I convinced myself, when everyone comes to the same conclusion as we just did: It just felt right, so why deny it? We celebrated with an additional morning consummation.

Feeling giddy, Debbie and I decided to do something random that Sunday: We drove to Yellow Springs, which is about an hour’s journey away, to find an old mill Debbie had read about that she wanted to see. It wasn’t our first trip together, but it was our first trip after shifting from being friends to lovers.

It ended up being a case of history repeats itself for me in that we never found the mill. (Neither of us remembered to write down the directions.) It was like after the night Jessica and I hooked up in 1987: We drove from Chicago to Michigan with the idea of going to Frankenmuth for my magazine publishing class only to fail in our goal—all the while still having a great time together.

It was the same with me and Debbie: Finding the mill wasn’t really the point. Debbie and I just wanted to bask in the afterglow of our transition.

Of course, it also sunk in that we had stepped into Deep Water mixaphorically speaking, as Ulysses Everett McGill says. We knew we couldn’t keep what had happened ultimately a secret.

I mean, neither of us felt as though we had to announce to the world, hey, guess what happened last night. But we knew if we planned to continue to see each other—and we did—we couldn’t sneak around. We wanted to be open and honest.

Debbie said she would tell Laura, and I had to tell Dad. I said fine, but I would do it face to face, not over the phone, so I wasn’t going to do anything till they came home from Torch Lake. That gave us roughly two weeks of bliss before the hammer struck … hard.