Jul 13 2004
a song for a boy
I was just reading this thing on McSweeney’s (which I don’t want to link because I have a deep-seated hatred for McSweeney’s, yet I still read it on occasion because I’m weird), about a guy who got Radiohead’s Kid A in the mail right before his birthday and this song on it became the soundtrack to his angst over a recent breakup. Or something like that. This essay made me think of two things:
- Getting a Radiohead CD for a birthday.
- A song I equate with a boy.
So, as far as item 1 on that list goes, my friend Wes sent me Radiohead’s Amnesiac for my 22nd birthday (which was September 11, 2001), and I clearly remember sitting in my room, listening to it, and not knowing if I was crying for other people or if I was crying for myself. A jolly memory, to be sure.
Item 2 is a little more convoluted, but then, most things having to do with boys in my life happen to be that way. Anyway, last November, Tori Amos released something like a greatest hits album called Tales of a Librarian, and it included the song “Snow Cherries from France” which I had only heard as a fuzzy bootleg prior to owning this particular CD. The release of this album came on the heels of a weird reunion with someone from my past that left me confused, but not in a totally unpleasant way.
Meh. I’m being cryptic and weird.
So, I remember listening to this CD for the first time and liking it (except for the “Professional Widow” remix, which I thought was unnecessarily painful). And then when “Snow Cherries from France” came on, she got to the lines “and then one day he said/ ‘girl it’s been nice/ oh, but I have to go sailing,’” my heart choked a little bit and I thought, “exactly.”
Since that moment, that song has been his.
The thing is, I’ve repeatedly wanted to be wrong about that one little, mostly insignificant moment, but there’s never been anything concrete enough to lead me to believe that I am. This may be my fault, since I know I’m impossibly poker-faced about most things that matter even slightly, yet I don’t think assurance can be entirely up to me. I don’t know what I’m saying, because honestly, all that exists between us now (since November) are a few phone calls, e-mails, and at least a thousand miles. And, for my part at least, an unsettling feeling, like I forgot something important, whenever I think of him.
I say all of this now because after a few months of silence, he resurfaced. Kind of. As much as he ever does, I suppose. And now I’m stuck thinking about him. Again. After I was pretty comfortably not thinking about him. Maybe the fact that I have to assign meaning to everything is a character flaw of mine, I don’t know. What I do know is that here I am, ridiculously uncertain and wondering why I spend so much mental energy on this.
At some point, there has to be a hello that lingers enough for me to get my bearings, or a goodbye that is final enough for me to stop with my incessant wondering.
But I really know that there doesn’t have to be anything. And the truth is that I am not sure what answer I’d ask for if I could bring myself to a question. So I find myself, yet again, turning over the only certainty I have, which is rather simply, that dammit, I like him.
