No. 112 - Cocteau Twins’ “Pitch the Baby” changed my life

Cosmo Halterman de Ochoa, their cool mom, and making up the words

Oct 17, 2025

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Heaven or Las Vegas, Cocteau Twins: An Ethereal Opera - The Hidden Track

• 4 min read •

I love my mom.

And yet, I always struggle to write about her.

What path do I take?

The biggest fan’s idolization? The reverent child’s ode?

I guess what I can say without hesitation or second guessing is that she’s really cool. She’s just a cool person. When I was born, she’d already lived a whole life. She’d bartended and modeled in her punk days, traveled through Central America (where she met the man who I call “dad”), built her own house, made friends on friends on friends. She’s open, understanding – she’s a mom who “gets it.” When I was too depressed to wash my hair, she’d lean my head back in the kitchen sink and lather shampoo onto my scalp. When I was too anxious to sleep in my own bed, she’d stay on the couch with me until we fell asleep together. She is unwavering in her support of me.

My parents have always had a rocky relationship, what you’d call “off and on.” After a few years in Texas, the last of which I spent being homeschooled due to bullying, my mom and I moved back to my home state of Michigan and I started at a high school that was quite literally in the middle of a cornfield. I’ll keep it brief: there was a “Drive Your Tractor to School Day.” I filled notebook after notebook with all my thoughts on teenage suffering, how no one knew anything about beauty, how I was so alone, how I hated my body, how I knew one day I’d leave.

School was just an eight hour long distraction. After school was hanging out with mom time. She was my only friend and the best one I’ve ever had. We would watch The X-Files on the couch together, or work on a project in the house, or just chat. I so badly wanted to be like her. My mom is tall, thin, dangerously smart, and immensely likable. And I was just a shy, fat, culturally confused dyke with an internet addiction. One of those evenings I asked her for a music recommendation. She delivered: the Smiths, the Cure, New Order, Camper Van Beethoven, the Cocteau Twins.

I loved them all. But the Cocteau Twins… It was sort of a quieter love. Of all the bands she recommended, this was the one that I didn’t immediately understand. She told me that she listened to her cassette of Heaven or Las Vegas so much she wore the tape out and had to buy a second copy. And she told me that she’d sing along in the car to “Pitch the Baby” and make up the lyrics. I imagined her long, glamorous blonde hair, her black cat-eye sunglasses, a chic old hat that she’d found at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. There was so much motion, so much ease. I was locked away in my body, I spent eight hours a day mostly silent. Making up the lyrics? She was so free!

And then I got older. I left that town, moved far away, went to college. I met someone and found a joy that I thought was reserved solely for thin people. I realized how beautiful it was to be in a body, how exciting it was to kiss on my roof, to be topless at the beach, to hold hands on the train, to lie on my back with my lover and listen to “Pitch the Baby” over and over as the light changed outside my window. And I did all of those things in the same body that I wished away for so many years. The same body I thought would never be understood or appreciated.

It’s sort of Pavlovian, now. Hearing “Pitch the Baby” washes me in the humidity, sweat, and the otherworldly light of the red sun that shone over the city during a whole summer of dangerous air quality. Even now, I don’t want to look up the lyrics to see if anyone knows what she’s actually saying. It was just melody. It was guitar, synth, croon. It didn’t need to explain itself. I guess my mom had understood that.

For Christmas last year she sent my partner and me a vinyl copy of Heaven or Las Vegas. I’d never even discussed it with her – she had no idea how much time we’d spent falling in love to it. She just gets it. We were laughing as we opened it. Of course she’d know. We cued the needle to play “Pitch the Baby.” We danced, and I didn’t think about how my body looked at all. I was just moving, and feeling, and making up the words. ◆

About Cosmo

Cosmo Halterman de Ochoa is a writer and custom cake baker living in Brooklyn. They like to garden, play cards, and mosey about.

Instagram @cossycake

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