What I learned at Taylor Swift's house
The night sky was indigo and smattered with a few drooping stars which I took note of as the security guard passed a wand over my crotch. He did not look up at the stars with me. Earlier, I thought—descending into Nashville at daybreak—that the sky was different here, in an unburdened and slow way. The day had passed without incident: blissfully ordinary, save for the man with a rifle and a half-smashed bottle of Jack Daniel’s lingering beside the Uber which took me to the motel.
“I never did see one of these before.” The motel receptionist with peroxide hair styled in spikes and hot-pink shellacked nails said as I handed over my passport. She thumbed through the pages and tapped one talon on a stamp that read VIETNAM. “Ain’t that place some trouble?” she clucked. Outside I searched for something distinctly Nashville to store in my memory box—a pair of cowboy boots or a bedazzled belt buckle—but there was only the highway and a gas station. It looked the same as the Cross County Parkway in Yonkers, NY behind my first year dorm.
“You here to see Dolly?”I laughed and shook my head, eyeing a guestbook covered in a thick layer of dust like snow. The lone signature was dated in the last decade. I drummed my fingers on the speckled desk and bit my lip, avoiding eye contact, trying hard not to give it away. “What’s a New Yorker doing in God’s Country?” she asked with great interest, lowering the volume on an old television set playing Jerry Springer. It was cold out, but the receptionist leaned in heavily to a rusted table fan. “You’re fixin’ to tell me.” I was, and so I did. “I’m going to Taylor Swift’s house.” The receptionist pursed her lips and turned Jerry Springer back up. “Sure you are, doll. Have fun, you hear?”
The motel room faced an empty parking lot. It was draughty. The room held two double beds and the curtains were moth-eaten and heavy. I showered quickly and styled my hair with a drier from the 90’s. The tepid air jerked out of the nozzle like rotten water from an old tap. I wanted to gobble up Nashville, to know it in less than one day. At the last minute, the only room available in town on a Dolly weekend was far out of the city. I went to a drug store to buy cigarettes. There were no sidewalks—I trekked through banks of grass that separated incoming from outgoing traffic.
I listened to the song Nashville as I navigated sinkholes in the banks where the cold had seeped into the soil. The sun was high in a crystal sky and the clouds made themselves scarce. Maybe I’m a fast train / going through a mountain / watching all my life go by. At the drugstore, I was not carded to buy two packs of menthol 100’s for $12. That suited me, I had one day to wait until I was legal. I wasn’t sure if there’d be an ashtray for the smokers at Taylor Swift’s home, but didn’t bank on it, so I got stuck in to the nicotine. I smoked and smoked and smoked on the way back to the motel. The excursion ate up a whole hour.
I took an Uber to The Bluebird Cafe—a local watering hole that birthed several country music legends at invite-only open mic nights. Naturally, it was closed. I stood outside and watched my reflection in the frosted windows. The end of my cigarette glowed as two little girls in Taylor Swift tee shirts posed excitedly at the entrance. Her career was born here too. I wandered to the parking lot to keep the curling smoke away from young nostrils, wise with my secret destination like a veteran that has known a war won. I listened to the song Nashville again. Maybe I’m a storm front / blowing through a valley / tearing up a good July.
It was hard to find a vegan meal in Nashville. I pottered around Hillsboro Village, which reminded me of Bronxville, NY—brick cobblestoned sidewalks, pedantically pruned garden boxes, spindly bare trees swaying in the winter breeze. I settled in a smoothie bar with a sad box of dry kale, watching the southern yummy mummies zip in and out behind strollers with wrists stacked with gold. I reeked of tobacco and wore sunglasses inside. It felt like these kind, bright, generous people were performing a show for me—resplendent in their good manners and delicate wrangling of green smoothies and squirming toddlers.
At the motel I cleaned up as best I could. I fussed with my hair until I had to fight the urge to lob it off and hurl the remnants at the pink clawed receptionist. I got to the venue early. It was a Hilton Garden Inn, which reminded me of…well, every Hilton Garden Inn. The Nashville branch is the same as the Kuala Lumpur branch. The Garden Inn is no man’s land, a universal gathering point, like McDonald’s. I observed the guests. They were mostly younger, some with reluctant parents in tow, all frenetic with zeal. NDA’s were signed, phones were taken away, and then I was on a bus.
Nashville whirled beyond the tinted windows like a ballerina in a music box. There were flashes of manicured lawns and lavish houses, then stretches of road with nothing at all, then high rises and stop signs. Off the bus: security guards, wands, the indigo sky smattered with stars. Then I was standing beside a space heater next to a pool and breaking my veganism to eat sushi at Taylor Swift’s house. I had stopped trying to gobble Nashville, I wanted only to gobble sushi forever and watch rabid teenagers discuss how to praise the messiah. I knew their fervour well.
The living room was cozy with low lighting and flickering vanilla candles. Less than a hundred fans had squeezed into one room—gawking at family photos on the walls that felt too intimate to scrutinise closely. Taylor Swift walked in, there was a lot of screaming, she took a seat and talked and talked and promoted her album and made eye contact and danced. “Zachary is wearing the new merch right now” she said in the middle of a plug and I felt a bit queasy. As if that wasn’t my name, as if I was pretending to be Zachary, as if I had snuck in surreptitiously and tricked Taylor Swift and the security guard would smack me with a wand and send me to jail.
I had a memory then: on the first day of tenth grade I was glued to my phone in the car on the way to school. I was watching a livestream, Taylor Swift was announcing her new album. Singapore whirled by in snatches of manicured lawns and lavish houses, then stretches of road with nothing at all, then high rises and stop signs. In tenth grade, I also felt as if I were pretending to be Zachary—a caricature that nursed a private and searing shame. But for a brief moment, I was transported elsewhere, to Taylor Swift’s living room in Nashville in the United States of America where everything was different and possible.
In my mind—after the memory, the song Nashville played: on a crowded highway / through a night alone / I was barely breathing / I was crawling home. Soon, I was resting my cheek on Taylor Swift’s shoulder and I could feel the metal adornments of her jacket jutting into my skin. I thought: I could stay here a while. We talked, I told her I had come out to my family, she asked how it went, I said it went well, she smiled and held my hand. A camera flashed and I was ushered out of her house and back onto the bus by the security guard who did not smack me with a wand.
The next day, before dawn, I trudged groggily through the airport. I hadn’t slept well and the overhead light was cruel. Before boarding a flight to New York, I noticed in the reflection of a storefront window that there was a burgundy lipstick stain on my cheek. When I got home to my shoebox apartment I passed out for a few hours. Then I repacked my suitcase and went back to the airport to board a flight to Las Vegas—the Nashville trip was a last minute addendum to the itinerary.
In Vegas, we cruised late at night beyond the strip and into the suburbs. Glittering skyscrapers gave way to rolling hills of auburn, lit only by the haze of an infrequent street lamp. I left the rental house and trekked to the liquor store to secure champagne before midnight to celebrate my legality. Again, there were no sidewalks. I balanced on concrete edges and searched for something distinctly Nevada to gobble up and store in my memory box. There was only the highway and the neon-red glow of a gas station. Just like Nashville, Yonkers, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Bronxville. I lit a cigarette and watched the end smoulder. I listened to the song again: going back to Nashville / laughing at a bad break / what's the use of wondering why?
Nothing was different but everything was possible.
Xoxo,
Z