If you're anything like me, you're just not a very good boyfriend. Never have been.
I bring this up because it's mid-January and that means I'm working on putting to together Sonja's Valentine's Day Mixtape. Last year's tape, 12" Of Red Carpet, was my favorite in theory. It turned out to be my least favorite in practice. It took me a long while to figure out why. Ultimately, I came to realize it was because I didn't make it specifically for her. I intended to, but I made the cardinal mistake of asking for input from my friends. This usually ends badly for other reasons, but in this case I was literally overwhelmed by the number of great recommendations they had for what songs need to be on any good romantic mixtape. I wanted the finally mixdown to be under 80 minutes. If I recall correctly, they offered over 100 songs. As it turns out, there's an awful lot of ways to tell somebody you love them. But not all of those ways work in a way that makes sweet music together. The end result was underwhelming despite being not complete awful.
12" Of Red Carpet irked me so much that I'm actually doing it over again, this time the way I wanted to do it in the first place. While I normally would wait until February 14th to let her hear it, I broke a fledgling tradition and played the first five minutes of it for her the other day. Her smile told me all I needed to hear. It's going to be much better this time around.
The process of putting this mix together has had unintended consequences. I've found myself playing songs that are forever going to be associated with someone other than her, which has made me more reflective than I normally am. In August we'll be celebrating our 10th anniversary. Thinking back on the last 10 years and the woman I love lead me to think about the last 20 years and all the girls I loved before her. They may not still be in my black book or call log or in my heart anymore, but they are on my iPod. You can unfriend your Exes but you can't unfriend your memories.
Music is a funny thing. Once you associate a song with someone, you can never disassociate it. It's the Sharpie to Life's Great Yearbook. Sometimes the memories are happy, and they usually stay that way. Sometimes the memories are painful and they always stay that way. But if there's one thing I know for sure it's that memories without a soundtrack fade much faster than the ones that do.
Originally this was going to be the last paragraph. I was going to try to tie all this together in a succinct statement, something pithy and with a touch of wit. But that's not what's about to happen. What is about to happen is perhaps the worst idea I've ever had. It's dumb but honest and in a lot of ways I think that's really why I keep coming back to write new post from time to time: I enjoy the honesty behind everything I write. And this pretty honest stuff.
Shitty relationships are the fertilizer of future relationships. You have to have some in order to learn from but not too many so that you stop learning altogether. Not enough fertilizer means your next relationship will stop growing, too much fertilizer and your next relationship will just wither and die. And as with most things in life, timing is everything. Fertilize in the wrong season and what could have been a viable relationship will fail without fail. We've all had shitty relationships. This post is about why I'm grateful to the girls I've had them with, the songs I hear in my head when they cross my mind and the lyrics that will always belong to someone other than my favorite girl.
The list is simple: Names and certain details will be redacted to protect the innocent (no kissing and telling for the most part), one song per girl (even though some have many), not every girl makes the list (you had to have made a lasting impact of some kind which I'll acknowledge) and the songs are to listed in random order which may or may not follow chronological order. So without further adieu, let's meet the girls who made the soundtrack that made me who I am today.
Nirvana // Heart-Shaped Box
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped Box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
Ah, yes. Without a doubt my favorite Blonde of all-time. That is saying something substantial. While I've told Sonja from time to time I've always had a thing for Blondes, that's probably not true. It most likely started with you. Funny thing is it had nothing to do with the hair; it was your laugh. I could listen to you laugh all day long. In fact, I spent considerable time trying to make you do so. And succeeding might I add. We had fun when we hung out, which wasn't nearly as often as I would have liked. And despite the fact that I had a thing for you, I'm not sure you ever noticed because you had a thing for complete and total douchebags. Or at least I thought they were douchebags, anyway. I might have just been hating. But even if they were all really great guys I'll always believe that none of them could make you laugh as easily or as infectiously as I did. From you I learned the importance of being able to make a girl laugh, how to maintain eye contact in the presence of epic cleavage, and that in order to get the girl you had to be a complete and total douchebag. I also picked up an appreciation of Grunge in general and of Nirvana in particular. And a thing for Blondes too I suppose.
Def Leppard // Pour Some Sugar On Me
Take the bottle, shake it up...
Okay, no need to over-complicate this one. You sat next to me in Chem Something-Or-Another. You're a looker, no doubt. But the best thing about you is strictly from the waist down: you have legs to die for. I mean, serious fucking stems. Christ. And the day you walked in late to class wearing the mini-est skirt ever made as we were discussing alcohols and sugars set off a 80's high school "Here Comes The Love Interest" slo-mo walk in my mind that will live in infamy. Lesson learned: the girl for me will have to have great legs.
Dave Hollister // Baby Mama Drama
Yeah... Look, some relationships are doomed from the beginning. This was one of them. Everybody knew it. Everybody but us. Our realtionship gave new meaning to the phrase "black comedy". Except it wasn't really that funny at the time. It's not really that funny now. But if there is one thing I loved about our hellish time together, it was the caustic banter that came from the fact that we were polar opposites in just about every way. THAT was funny. Like, I wrote an entire screenplay about it funny. Then I deleted it because I didn't want to think about you anymore. Which I suppose is perfectly natural. I won't act like there wasn't a reason we made it as long as we did because there was. But the constant cycle of falling out just to make up never did anything for me. I know you thought that me yelling at you meant I cared, but that's only because you weren't listening to what I was saying. If you had been, you would have known that what I actually wanted was for you to shut the fuck up because I didn't care in the least about what we were fighting about. Bad times. From you I learned that sometimes when everyone you know is telling you the same thing it may be time to reconsider what you're doing, that make up sex is pretty much the same as regular sex, that your girlfriend can't hate your friends and you manage to keep both, why guys act a fool on Maury when they find out they're not the father... I learned a lot of shit, okay? The hardest way possible. But they were good lessons to learn and they stuck.
Boyz II Men // I'll Make Love To You
...Or at least I tried to. You were my first. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and you and I started in the worst way possible. Given how badly our first real try at sex went I'm surprised I ever tried it again. It wasn't quite a disaster, but it was worthy of a scene in a teen comedy. Who knew they even made unlubricated condoms? And how are you supposed to get those things off after you realize it's not going on any further? They're like the fucking skinny balloons clowns use to make animals out of. How people fucked before they made Magnums I'll never know. I can still remember the look of total sympathy on your face as we tried to pry that thing off of me. That meant a lot to me, just not at the time. At the time I thought I was going to have to call the fire department to free my junk. Bad times. And boy, we had our share of bad times. But we also had our share of great times, and for that you'll always have my gratitude. We learned a lifetime of lessons together, the what to dos and the what never to do agains that make being young and in love the best thing you can possibly be at the time. You taught me I had a long way to go to be the man I really thought I could be, that I really don't like fighting or arguments and that you never, EVER skimp on the condoms.
Tony Bennett // The Way You Look Tonight
Oh, but you're lovely
With you cheeks so warm
And your lips so soft
There is nothing for me but to love you
And the way you look tonight.
Oh you wild and crazy girls of Menchville High School. You had a boyfriend. I was kicking it with your homegirl. Things were pretty clear cut. And then came the day you told me you had to tell me a secret while we were sitting in class. I leaned over, you cupped my ear with your hands and then proceeded to lick my brain stem, my frontal lobe and everything else you could reach in there with your tongue. When I asked you to repeat what you just said cause I wasn't quite sure I understood you, you leaned in and licked until I... got the message. Then there was the time we were standing in front of the entire school for something or another and you started... Dammit you know what you started doing to me. All while standing right next to your boyfriend. We never talked about any of that afterwards but I never forgot about it either. You taught me how to get over my dislike of public displays of affection pretty quickly. That, and broads are scandalous. Both lessons stuck.
The Notorious B.I.G. // Gimme The Loot
Mixed chicks are fucking nuts. Strippers are tons of fun. We all make mistakes. Moving on.
2Pac // I Get Around
Despite what you may have heard occasionally the Underground does stop for hoes. Especially ones with British accents. And as it turns out only having one night in town is still plenty on time to study a broad. I learned that not wanting to get fucked in the loo and not wanting to get fucked in the bum are not the same thing. I learned that bruises hurt a LOT more in the morning. But most of alI learned the lesson that changed my life for good: I can tell that cute girl from Ann Arbor anything. Before I left on the trip I told Sonja I'd call once I got back. Once I got back, she was the first person I called. I told her all about the trip, didn't leave out any of the details and for the first time ever didn't lie to a girl that I really liked. It felt great. It felt natural. I instantly knew I could trust her with my actual unfiltered thoughts. And I knew I'd just found what I was looking for. Best one night stand ever.
Most relationships fail. That's not a surprise. The fact that we don't know how they're going to end is part of the allure of starting them in the first place. Once they're over we never know how they're going to affect the ones that we will have in the future. That's part of the reason we hate ending them. I don't have any great wisdom about why I stopped being the boyfriend no one wanted. For all the lessons I learned before we met, in the end the past 10 years didn't come down to any of them. It came down to luck. I was one phone call away from never meeting her at all. I was one keystroke away from never hearing from Sonja again after she went home to Michigan. I lucked out, then I won out.
And when it comes to being a boyfriend, I'd rather be lucky than good. It makes for a much better soundtrack.
