TYRANT

Dr. Becky would be calling the cops on me. Never make your kids feel responsible for your emotions. OK, fair enough, generational shame yadda yadda. So I do a reframe of the original “STOP GIVING ME NOTHING BUT BAD NEWS ALL THE TIME” and I pivot, pulling hard on my unsweetened green tea first: “It’s totally fine to be mad or sad,” I begin, again, and this time they’re listening. I wipe my mouth, buying myself a few seconds while I try to muster the discipline not to yell again, “and I’m so glad you can tell me about it…”

They’re still listening, but they have now anticipated the upcoming but, and are looking deeply skeptical about the worthiness of this utterance in full. Anything they’re even mildly uncomfortable with is an absolute NO GO lately; we’ve had WEEKS of NOTHING but scathing, bitterly withering criticism, set to Volume 11, and it seems that someone has flushed the plucked-off volume knob down the toilet with that matchbox car and the last bit of dried mango that’s more expensive than drugs.

“But I am hearing a lot a lot a lot of bad news, almost all bad news,” I say. They are nonplussed but quiet. “It’s nice to mix in a ‘good job’ or ‘thanks’ or ‘I love you’ once in a while,” — a few excoriating grunts from the back seat— “you know,” I correct, adjusting the frame to fit their agenda, “if you want mommy to do a better job.”

They pause and consider, briefly, and finally one of them issues a reply: “This is a BAD CHOICE not to stop and get treats, and we are NEVER DOING IT AGAIN MAMA. You are BAD and WRONG and NOT TRUE. I HATE THIS and I will NEVER PLAY WITH YOU AGAIN.”

Such is the job, I guess. But such is human nature, also, I’ve observed: when you live with two five-year-olds who are going through some kind of severe developmental allergy to absolutely everything they don’t 100% LOVE, it becomes a lot clearer, as it so often does with children, that so many of us “adults” perhaps never really outgrew this particular phase.

Anyhow, it has me pretty interested in the world of second choices, of not-quites, of almosts.

*

“I mean, what she’s doing with the vocal harmonies had me bored on first listen too, but after a few times through I… just started to get really interested,” I say to my husband, of Beyonce’s new album, Cowboy Carter.

“Why the hell wouldn’t you use a real drum kit?” he wants to know, as he listens to the few tracks I’ve pulled, and chosen incorrectly, to get him to just maybe give it a chance. (We are each of a sensibility that resists new things fairly staunchly— until it doesn’t, and then it gets on board with the momentum of several caffeinated warhorses, and puts that shit on repeat for the foreseeable future. The catch is just how hard it is to get over that first hump and accept something new in the first place.)

“I know. None of it’s my style, basically, either,” I say to my verging-on-irritated chauffeur as he drives and I poke at the AppleMusic interface on our rather challengingly smart car’s screen.

“But I just kept listening, for some reason, and I heard more and more things on almost every track. She’s really up to something.” (How to convey to the slightly exasperated driver / my spouse that I think Bey is taking on identity, systemic abuse, racism, sexism, sexuality, elitism, corruption, power, devotion, spirituality, love, and a lot more, all as they intersect with, complicate, and are informed by a greater and disintegrating American identity, in almost every choice she makes, both lyrically and musically—and to convey all this before we get to the grocery store?)

We go back and forth for maybe ten minutes, me prodding and him parrying as I cycle through the more radio-play type tracks, foolishly trying to woo him with what most people would probably select to begin grooving on. I have apparently forgotten what a weirdo he is.

When the track “TYRANT” (one of the things I love about this album is that she titles all tracks in all caps- HA!) comes on,