The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!

It's been a while since anyone touched this, but we've been arguing about it since 2005, so let me throw in my two cents.

For anyone who isn't precisely heterosexual, one of the most poignant experiences of your young life is when you have that one friend you feel... differently about, and I feel that here Sufjan is telling us a story of an experience he had with someone who was "different" to him, and confusing. Sufjan has already told us on multiple occasions that there was an actual occurrence with a friend of his at a summer camp where they invented a predatory wasp-bird creature to scare each other. To me, based on my experiences, there are simply too many lines to ignore, that suggest a homo-questioning undertone. I don't know Sufjan's orientation and he may well be straight as an arrow. But this is obviously something that happened when he was young and that can be a really confusing time of figuring things out and having conflicting feelings for those close to you.

The beginning of the song, he is writing "in cursive" in a cold room. When he sees a wasp on the wall, his memory drifts back to this specific experience at summer camp. He was swimming in a park in Michigan (yes, a real place) and his best friend at the camp was stung by a wasp, multiple times. He reaches to tease him about the creature they created, and perhaps to pretend to bite him, and it turns into a kiss. By the way, just because he's wearing his brother's hat, that doesn't mean that it's his brother he kisses. AND for those who would attempt to rationalize this into something else, he does say very clearly that he kissed his friend. Then he "sees the wasp on the length of his arm" and the wasp becomes this recurring metaphor for the repressed, forbidden and extremely confusing thing that is happening between the two of them.

The rest of the repetitive verses after the chorus of "we were in love, I can wait" (how does that not seem like someone lovestruck and heartsick?) seem to convey their continued struggle with their feelings. They like each other, love each other, but they're not sure if they are gay or even questioning. "I can't explain the state that I'm in. The state of my heart, he was my best friend." In some ways he's still shocked at what has happened. He was his best friend, but this thing has come between them.

"Into the car, from the backseat. Oh, admiration in falling asleep" This is either directly afterward, and they end up back in the car, or they see each other again for a while afterward. It's just that end of the day exhaustion after swimming and being in the sun, and as he's falling asleep he feels this love and admiration for his friend, despite what has happened.

"All of my powers, day after day I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed Deep in the tower, the prairies below I can tell you, the telling gets old" They both swaggered and swayed, they both wrestled with their feelings. What he says here is so powerful. He fights against his feelings, they both do, and from the top of the mountain to the prairies (this all happened in a park, remember) they keep coming back to the same conclusion. They do have feelings for each other. When he says the telling gets old, he just means he has gone over the story so many times in his memory it's drudgery.

"Terrible sting and terrible storm I can tell you the day we were born" I might have believed any theory other than two men kissing each other and having conflicting feelings for each other, if not for these two lines. Continuing the wasp metaphor, in that moment of the kiss they are both stung with something new and unknown and perplexing, and it creates a storm of emotion within them. They are born again in that moment as they begin to question their respective identities.

"My friend is gone, he ran away I can tell you, I love him each day Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged I can tell you, I love him each day Terrible sting and terrible storm" Keep in mind that he's writing and reflecting on all this years later, possibly decades. He's remembering this event, and the strong feelings of love and devotion that he had towards his friend, and how this crush changed his life, but they eventually went their separate ways. As so many of these things do, the love dissolved as they grew up. It was a terrible sting and terrible storm at the time, but he has grown and changed away from who he was then. He still loves him each day, but not actively.

Sorry for the length, but it just seemed like so many people were missing the mark on this one, or trying to come up with outlandish things to avoid the possibility that he was discussing a male-male crush.