Ode to Blonde
My freshman year dorm room was on the fourth floor, the highest point in the whole building, and in the evening it was impossible to see. Sunset bounced off the white brick, dripped from the walls like juice. It’s what I remember most from those days: the broken elevator, the summer heat. Sighing up the stairwell all the way to my desk, where I would spend the rest of the day in the dying light of the sun, writing essay after essay after essay. The room, the year, the trees. The sound of early leaves scraping the skylight; my orange fingerprints like blossoms on the black screen of my laptop.
I was in that room on the night Frank Ocean’s long-awaited sophomore album, Blonde, was finally released on Apple Music. I remember sitting at my new desk in my new city and scraping through the Internet looking for a bootleg download. My hands flew over the keyboard like pockets of hot ink. It was August, 2016, and I was eager like a child. My roommate sat on the opposite side of the room while I listened to a tinny rendition of “Nikes” and tried not to cry. I would listen all night long as the sunset juice on the wall turned to nothing and my roommate closed the blinds. Lying in bed, I listened to Frank sing about acid and weed, rain and glitter on repeat.
/
One night, a few days after the release of Blonde, I lay in bed and listened to rain patter on the skylight above my bed. It was a hot and static night. My roommate snored across the room and, in my headphones, Frank Ocean crooned a song I hadn’t heard before. “Seigfried” was perfect for a night like this—stiff and sweltering, sweaty in bed sheets, praying I’d be lulled to sleep in time for my 8:00 am the next morning.
Except “Seigfried” didn’t bring sleep. Instead, it awoke something very mean and guilty inside of me. In the song, Frank murmurs, I couldn’t gauge your fears / I can't relate to my peers / I'd rather live outside / I'd rather chip my pride than lose my mind out here. He ends the verse with I'm not brave. I'm not brave. In that moment, I realized that I, too, wasn’t brave. Three weeks into my new college life and I had told no one that I was gay, but had simply smiled and uh huh-ed my way through a straight girl performance. The silence had been the easiest, dumbest thing in the world until that night.
I came out to my roommate the next morning, but I never told her nor anyone what had finally pushed me to do it. I never told anyone about my “Seigfried” night. The silence, the panic, crying on the brick mattress of my dorm—it all felt so endlessly shameful. I didn’t know how to wade out of it until I began writing about Blonde. Ever since, the entire album has felt like a secret joy.
So much has been written about the mythic lead-up to Frank’s second album and the waves it made upon its eventual release, but it’s hard for me to step outside of myself and my small stories whenever I think about Blonde. The album will always be Atlanta in late summer and fourth floor sunsets, crying in bed and petty drinking in parking lots. Listening to tracks like “Seigfried”, “Self Control”, and “Solo” feels like I’m ripping off an old band-aid. The sting is always there, but over time, the fear has faded. I can just press play and wait for it all to wash over me.
/
It storms a lot in the south, especially in the last few days of summer—God throwing out heat and thunder like the finale of a firework show. On this night, one of the first of senior year, I’m moving fast to beat a storm. I don’t live in a dorm anymore; I’m in my 20s and the walk from campus to my apartment is a long one. I know that if I don’t hurry, the rain will seep through the skin of my backpack and ruin all my books. I don’t have my glasses on, so when cars speed past me their lights look like a fire in a dream: red and blooming and dangerous. And I’m red, too, and I don’t feel guilty anymore.
In my headphones, the song transitions into “White Ferrari” by Frank Ocean and I realize it’s one I haven’t listened to in years—probably not since I was eighteen. The trees sway, the music plays, and I’m reminded of my freshman year, how the storm sounded that night in my bedroom, water clacking onto the skylight. The summer rain had shut up the room and I was clammy in my bed sheets, unable to sleep or breathe.
It’s nothing like that now; I’m walking along the highway and the heat in the air waves through me like a heart attack, ready to burst. I’m on my way home to my best friend, who I’ve lived with since we were eighteen, the same one I came out to that post-rain morning. As I walk, in front of me the orange light of a lamp post flickers on and off, pulsing like a star, and behind it a bolt of lightning strikes silent in the night. All of a sudden I wish I could take a photo, but the moment is over before it began. I think, I can’t wait to tell Allie about this. Over the sound of the wind, Frank sings, if you think about it, it'll be over in no time. And that's life.