A castle with no key: chosen solitude in «Antisocial»

Saturday, eleven at night. Your phone buzzes on the table: «Coming? We’re in Plaza de Chueca, then there’s a party on a rooftop». You look at it. You look at the sofa. You look at the blanket, the Tupperware of lentils left over from Thursday and the series you’re halfway through. And you send the usual reply: «Can’t tonight, got stuff on». The stuff is the blanket, the Tupperware and the series.

There’s an age when that reply is embarrassing. And another when it’s peace.

«Antisocial» is a song for that reply. It sits on «El día de la liberación», the third album of the GAYFOLK trilogy, and that’s no accident: liberation can also mean staying in. The song’s page on the blog already goes through the chorus and that «ni amable» («nor nice») that still makes me laugh. Here I want to talk about something else: the difference between the solitude that falls on you and the solitude you choose calmly, the way you choose a sofa at IKEA after sitting on all twenty in the showroom.

They call me trash

The song doesn’t open with a sigh. It opens with a big, fat insult:

«Me llaman puta basura, / pero yo solo vivo en mi realidad.» («They call me fucking trash, / but I just live in my own reality.»)

I like that it starts there, because that’s exactly what happens when someone decides to step back. The group doesn’t take it well. The one who leaves the WhatsApp group without warning is rude. The one who skips the office Christmas dinner is weird. The one who says no to the third party in a row is bitter, boring, a «you used to be fun». And if you’re queer on top of that and don’t go out on Saturdays, forget it: it’s as if you’ve betrayed the rainbow fatherland, had your Chueca membership revoked (Chueca being Madrid’s gay quarter), and are destined to end up like a spinster aunt in a Romero de Torres painting.

There’s a very specific pressure on the gay scene to be available at all times. Available for the party, the brunch, the sauna, the improvised plan at two in the morning, Pride, the Pride after-party, the after-party’s after-party. Grindr shows you who’s two hundred metres away as if that were an invitation. Instagram shows you everyone you know on a terrace in Lavapiés while you sit there in your pyjamas. And the message underneath is always the same: if you’re not there, you don’t exist.

The first line of the song names the punishment that arrives when you say no. The second defuses it without raising its voice: I just live in my own reality.

It doesn’t ask permission.

It’s not that I’m missing anything

The third line is the one that interests me most, because it gets ahead of the usual suspicion. The character tells you he isn’t hiding and isn’t short of anything: he is simply choosing his solitude, as calmly as he’d choose an ice-cream flavour.

When someone steps back, everyone else goes straight looking for the lack. Something’s wrong with him. He must be depressed. Someone must have hurt him. He won’t have any money. He’s gone bald and doesn’t want to be seen. He’s ashamed of his body. People need an explanation, because the idea that someone could be fine on their own strikes them as almost an insult. As if your sofa were a review of their rooftop.

And mind you, sometimes something really is missing, and it has to be looked at head-on. Not all isolation is a radiant choice. Some loneliness weighs like a block of concrete, and I’ve written about that kind too: in «La música me está salvando» the tone is different, more like clinging to something so as not to go under. If someone shuts themselves away because they can’t cope with anything any more, that deserves a phone call, a visit, a Tupperware left at the door. It doesn’t deserve a «you’ve got so antisocial».

But the song is about the other kind. The kind that’s chosen. And it exists, however hard that is to believe in a world that sells you plans around the clock. Some people have tried the noise, the parties, the big group and the Thursday-night pulling, and one day they decide their life is better with less. Fewer faces. Fewer lift conversations. Fewer «we must meet up» that never happen. They aren’t missing anything: they’ve got too much of everything else.

The hard part is getting anyone to believe you.

Only the ones I already know

In the first chorus comes the house rule: the only people who count are the ones he already knows, the ones who’ll still be there whatever happens.

That’s the key to the character, and it’s what separates him from a hermit in a late-night nature documentary. He doesn’t hate people. He’s closed the guest list. The door is shut to newcomers, but inside there’s a table laid for four or five people who’ve been there forever.

Put like that, there’s nothing strange about it. It’s what almost everyone does once they’re past their mid-thirties: the circle narrows, uni friends move to Valencia or Berlin, flatmates get married, flings turn into anecdotes. What changes is that some people experience it as a loss and others as a clear-out. The song takes the side of the clear-out, like someone emptying the wardrobe and keeping five good T-shirts instead of forty from SHEIN.

Further on, the lyric says it even more plainly, and puts an expiry date on that loyalty: none. To the chosen few he gives everything until the end of the world, literally. I love that promise because it has something of the bolero about it, something of the copla, the old Spanish torch song, the kind of over-the-top vow people used to make in black-and-white films. The antisocial man in the song is cold with the world and utterly melodramatic with his own. He doesn’t hand out affection in bulk at the bar like someone pushing flyers on the Gran Vía. He saves it, whole, for a few.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. I see a form of saving.

Not bald, not nice

The chorus has a list of things the character is not: ugly, bald, nice. The song’s page already explains why that «ni amable» makes me laugh so much, so I won’t repeat myself. I just want to add one thing: the whole list is a defence against accusations nobody has made, and that says a lot about how the mind works in someone who has stood trial before the group.

When you’ve been criticised a lot, you start answering before anyone asks. You arrive at a dinner already explaining why you’re not drinking, why you’re leaving early, why you don’t have Instagram open, why you haven’t seen the reality show everyone’s talking about. You defend yourself against everything. And the song takes that tic and turns it into a chorus: I’m not ugly, I’m not bald, I’m not nice, and in exchange I’ve got a noble heart nobody asked me to prove.

Then, on the second pass, the chorus shifts a little and the character insists that his soul is pure and that he can prove it. That proof strikes me as the campest thing in the whole lyric. As if someone were about to submit evidence before a notary. As if there were a certificate of pure soul you could request at the district council office, by appointment only, with a photocopy of your ID card and two passport photos.

It’s an exaggeration, of course. And it’s right that it should be, because behind the mockery there’s something very serious: the need for someone to acknowledge that stepping back doesn’t make you a bad person.

My silence is a castle

The central image of the song, for me, is this one:

«Evito las miradas, los saludos en la calle, / mi silencio es un castillo, yo una armadura sin llave.» («I avoid people’s eyes, the hellos in the street, / my silence is a castle, I’m a suit of armour with no key.»)

A castle and a suit of armour with no key. There’s a lot of the Middle Ages in that line, a lot of knights-and-swords cinema, and I love it because everyday solitude has nothing epic about it. Dodging the neighbour in the hallway. Putting your headphones on with nothing playing so nobody talks to you on the metro. Crossing the street when you spot a former colleague who’s going to tell you about his divorce in glorious detail. Pretending to look at your phone in the queue at Mercadona because you’ve recognised the man from the third floor.

All of that is tiny, it’s local, it’s slippers-and-dressing-gown stuff. And the song dresses it in armour.

That «with no key» can be read two ways, and I don’t want to settle for just one. It can be armour nobody can open from the outside, which sounds like protection. Or it can be armour that even the person wearing it can’t take off, which sounds like prison. The lyric doesn’t decide. And I think that ambiguity is the most honest thing about the song, because anyone who has chosen to be alone knows that sometimes the choice gets away from you.

Some days the castle is a refuge. Some days it’s a cell with a view.

And whoever lives inside knows it.

A thousand times rather my animals

The line repeated at the end, over and over like a scratched record, is the one everybody remembers:

«prefiero mil veces a mis animales que aguantar a un narci y a su puta madre» («I’d a thousand times rather have my animals than put up with a narc and his bloody mother»)

Six times in a row in the published lyric. The blog page already talks about that repetition as a mantra. I want to look at who appears in the line, because that’s where the whole character is explained.

There are two sides. On one, the animals: the dog who greets you with a wagging tail even when you come home in a foul mood, the cat who climbs onto your lap while you cry at «Pasión de gavilanes». On the other, the narcissist with his mother as escort. And the mother isn’t there by chance. Anyone who has gone out with a narcissist knows they hardly ever come alone. They come with an entourage: the mother who excuses everything, the friend who gives you funny looks at dinners, the brother who «stays out of it», the gang of mates who tell you how wonderful he is while you slowly switch off.

That’s why the antisocial man’s solitude has an origin. He wasn’t born like this. He became like this after putting up with too much. And that links this song to all the ones I’ve written about narcissism, of which there are quite a few: «El narcisista», with its ice that won’t melt even under a flamethrower; «No Contact», which is the golden rule for getting out; «El descarte del narcisista», which tells the moment you get flicked away like a cigarette end.

«Antisocial» is what comes after all that. The day you realise that if meeting new people means risking it happening again, you’d rather meet nobody. And you stay with the animals, who don’t gaslight. No cat has ever told you «that never happened, you’re making it up». No dog has ever punished you with three days of silence for coming home late.

Animals don’t pretend.

By choice, and more than one bastard

There’s a line that slips past me on every listen and that I think is the most sincere in the whole lyric:

«Antisocial, por elección y más de un cabrón, no por miedo» («Antisocial, by choice and more than one bastard, not out of fear»)

By choice. And because of more than one bastard. Both at once. The line never quite clears itself up, and that’s its charm: it says solitude has been chosen, but admits that the choice was pushed along by the people who crossed its path. It’s freedom with a criminal record. Like someone who says they moved to the countryside because they fancied it, and then tells you about the rent in Malasaña.

I think it matters not to airbrush that. Many people who enjoy their solitude today got there the hard way. Through the ex who emptied their bank account, the friend who betrayed them, the family who wouldn’t accept them, the group that turned its back when they were needed most. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting it. Choosing something after you’ve been hurt doesn’t make it any less yours.

What the line does reject is fear. «No por miedo.» Not out of fear. The antisocial man isn’t hiding because the world scares him. He steps back because he’s seen it and decided it isn’t worth it. There’s a world of difference between hiding under the bed and double-locking your front door.

Saturday on the sofa

I want to go back to the opening scene, the sofa and the lentils, because I think that’s where the song has something political about it, even if it doesn’t look it.

For a long time, visible gay life has been told from the night. The clubs, the saunas, the bars in Chueca, the darkrooms, the Pride floats. And that makes sense, because for decades the night was the only place you could exist without hiding. But it has left a strange inheritance: it’s as if the real queer is the one who goes out, who’s at everything, who wears the wristband from whichever festival it is. And the one who stays home looks like half a queer, someone who hasn’t quite finished coming out.

«La noche no es para mí» tells it another way. For some people the party is freedom, and for others freedom is being able to say no to the party without getting funny looks. Both fit on planet GAYFOLK.

«Antisocial» takes the side of the second lot. The one who orders a takeaway on a Saturday and doesn’t feel like a failure. The one who has a birthday and would rather have dinner with two friends than throw a bash for forty acquaintances. The one who has deleted Grindr and doesn’t miss it. The one who has found out that the silence in their flat isn’t an emptiness but a place.

That place can be very small. The lyric admits it without any hang-ups: his world is tiny, but nobody can break it. Small things don’t break that easily.

What the song doesn’t say

I think it’s only fair to say what «Antisocial» isn’t, because a song like this can be misread.

It isn’t a manifesto against people. The character has his chosen few and gives them everything. Nor is it praise for total isolation, the kind that leaves you three months without speaking to anyone and eating Rich Tea biscuits in front of a screen. And it is certainly not an invitation for anyone to shut themselves away if they’re having a hard time.

If you recognise yourself in this song’s solitude and it suits you, enjoy it. If you recognise yourself in it and it hurts, that’s something else, and it deserves telling someone. One of those chosen few, a doctor, whoever. You don’t have to go to the rooftop party. It’s enough for someone to know how you are.

The line between the castle and the cell is a fine one. And the song, which is no manual, lets you cross it yourself.

Armour in pink

The single’s cover is, of all the ones I’ve put out, one of those that amuse me most. A man in dark sunglasses, screaming with his mouth wide open, strapped into a pink straitjacket with metal buckles, against a bubblegum-pink background. And above him, in ragged letters as if slapped on with a brush, the word ANTISOCIAL.

The straitjacket is the opening insult turned into a picture: what they call you when you step back. Weird, mad, sick, «he’s not right». But it’s pink. And the scream doesn’t look like fear; it looks like someone who has kept quiet for a long time and is finally letting everything out. The keyless armour of the lyric has become the outfit of a B-movie asylum queen, and instead of inspiring pity, it picks a fight.

That is very GAYFOLK. Taking what they were going to throw in your face and wearing it like it came off the catwalk. It happens with the insult in «Antisocial» and it happens in plenty of others, as in «Outsider Radical», which is practically its first cousin: another song about being outside the group and not wanting back in.

Home as a stage

There’s something that really interests me about songs set inside the home, which is that they tend to be the hardest to tell. The party has lights, people, an ex who turns up at the bar, one shot too many. The home has a blanket. And yet so many of the most important things in a life happen there: in the kitchen at three in the morning, on the sofa with the cat, in the shower when you finally cry what you didn’t cry in the street.

I talked about that in «Canciones para fregar los platos», about the pop that keeps small lives company. «Antisocial» belongs to that family, even if it sounds angrier. It’s a song for headphones on the way to work, dodging hellos, as its page says. But it’s also a song to put on at home, loud, while you tidy up, with nobody demanding to know why you didn’t go out.

And there’s more. The neighbour on the fourth floor, the one who knows everything about everyone, the star of «La vecina cotilla», is bound to have an opinion about the antisocial man on the second. Never goes out. Never says hello. God knows what he gets up to in there. What he gets up to in there is living. But on the landing, that doesn’t make for much gossip.

Four people and a cat

If I had to sum the song up in one image, it wouldn’t be the castle or the armour. It would be a small table with four chairs and a cat sitting on one of them.

That’s the life «Antisocial» defends. Not an empty life, but a life with limited capacity. With the right of admission reserved. With a very strict bouncer on the door who won’t let in narcissists or their mothers, or the people who call you trash, or the ones who only message when they need something.

Some will say that’s selfish. Maybe. But it’s also the only way I know of making what little you have last. Because affection, like everything, wears out. And if you share it among forty people who never give it back, in the end there’s none left for the four who do.

There’s one clean line, no joke, that I’d like to stay with you from all this: choosing few is also loving a lot.

The rest is noise.

The whole trilogy, with this single and all the others, is on the singles page. If you fancy it, listen on a Saturday night. At home. Under the blanket.

Frequently asked questions

Which album is «Antisocial» on?

It’s part of «El día de la liberación», the third album of Mike Sain't Louis’s GAYFOLK trilogy.

Who wrote the lyrics to «Antisocial»?

The lyrics are by Mike Sain't Louis, lyricist, composer and music producer from Madrid. The music and vocals were made with artificial intelligence tools.

What is «Antisocial» about?

Someone who chooses their own solitude after putting up with too much, who shuts the door on new people and saves all their loyalty for a chosen few and for their animals.

What does the line repeated at the end mean?

«Prefiero mil veces a mis animales que aguantar a un narci y a su puta madre» («I’d a thousand times rather have my animals than put up with a narc and his bloody mother») sums up where that solitude comes from: it’s the answer of someone who has got out of a relationship with a narcissist and his circle.

Where can I read the full lyrics?

The full lyrics are on the song’s page at mikesaintlouis.com and in the lyrics section of gayfolkplanet.com.