“Raining in Baltimore” - Counting Crows56
I think we both know you’re going to mock me for this one.
But seriously, take off your snob hat for five minutes and just listen to this one again. It’s surprisingly earnest and so sweetly quiet and…restless. It’s just terrific.
Once I had a high school boyfriend named Rob, who wore a long black skirt and Cure t-shirts and combat boots. He had crazy, kinky black hair that fell around his face in this effortless wave of cool and I was nuts for him. Well, for the idea of him…and the way he quoted Thoreau and Morrissey in letters. I met him at summer camp and he lived three hours away. The last time we spoke, in the fall, I think, we were arguing over the phone…and I remember lying on my back, twisting that old rubber yellow cord of the phone and he said, after a enormous sigh, “Look, Molly….”
As my name is not in fact Molly, I hung up in fit of indignation. I think he wrote a letter after that, but by then my friend Amanda had already told me he HAD in fact been flirting with a girl named Molly who worked at the roller rink and knew all the best indie bands. That’s hard to top, people.
My mom bought me a used bass guitar and a crackly old amp and encouraged me to turn my anger into art. I think I learned to play “Little Brown Jug”. Which is not very rock and roll.
But dumb old Rob did put this song on a mix tape for me once and so he is good for that. Also, it was kind of fun kissing a guy in a skirt.
681Old Crow Medicine Show, “Wagon Wheel”
This is one of my favorite songs.
In high school, when I was NOT a huge dork despite what my sister claims quite publicly on her Tumblr, my friends and I would ride in the back of trucks, always with systems, always with lifts, always with 30” tires, always listening to stuff like this. We would squeal and hold on for dear life after we all decided to take a break from video games— the girls watching, the boys playing (we were far, far too patient for these boys who never kissed us anyway, who always ended up asking younger girls to prom and sitting next to us on porch swings with our love letters in their hands and staring out at the clouds with nothing constructive or generous to offer us back)— and we would sing, yell, really, this song, which was maybe one of the best songs we had ever heard, and something we could all agree on as we slid through the mud of abandoned properties and empty fields, spinning and screaming and squeezing each others palms excitedly when we yelled, JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE! because that was where we would go camping every summer, with me the least likely of tagalongs, each of the girls’ best friend but sometimes the boys’ worst enemy, always squeaking to “Wait up!” while we hiked and crawled around in caves, my feet dragging like the cliche that I was, arguing with them, with my liberal politics (there is maybe no pretension so thrilling as that of a 17-year-old) and unabashed talk of tampons and boobs and how far away to college I’d go and how I was still in love with someone in Louisiana and isn’t James Joyce the best writer EVER and I am totally going to set aside the center spread of the next issue of our school paper about this one funny thing that happened to me (what has changed? nothing!) and IF I DIE IN RALEIGH AT LEAST I WILL DIE FREE.
One of those friends got married recently— in fact all of those friends are married now, who am I kidding?— and she played this at her reception and we held hands in a circle just the way we would have at a school dance back then and we screamed the words and we were older this time but “caught a trucker out of Philly / had a nice long toke,” still gave us all a thrill and we laughed and I cried and oh, this song!
186“Fake Empire” – The National
Stay out super late tonight
picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us* * * * *
In practice, the idea of coupling again remains unfathomable. I can be happy and a realist, right?; I can be tired of the hopeful search.
Simply, from here, I see no proof of variables that solve the equation. And I am exhausted by the pursuit of it all – by small talk and dates and early confessions and thirty years of catch up and the months of experimental gymnastics that will determine whether I Can Love You and You Can Love Me. Whether this could last; Could harden into stone.
But in theory…I’ll admit that the theory of it all working beautifully is a delightful place to stroll. And so I start to dream.
Will you be very scruffy? Will you be most yourself in flannels that smell like sawdust and cloves? Will you wear serious boots and a stocking cap and no concern over whether it musses your hair?
Maybe you will drive an old Wagoneer and we will park it on the beach or in a field and lean back on the tailgate collecting stars far from this Gatsby of a city. Or maybe you will have an old barn car – a dusty ’68 Nova, unrestored and ballsy and we will sit in the backseat – big as a bathtub – and watch movies at the drive in. Maybe you’ll have a car you don’t think about. A car that isn’t a statement; That sounds really good. Or a bike. That you’ll ride behind me in the dark, in the morning to the farmers market.
I think about your favorite authors – who you’ll be aghast that I have not read. Who you’ll drag me to Magers & Quinn to buy immediately. I think about your go-to songs – the mix you’d make for long drives and shitty days and to dance to in the house. Because I think you’ll have character and depth but you would not take yourself too seriously. I think you’d have a dog and maybe a garden. I think you’d let me cut your hair; Sometimes, I can already feel the heat of your scalp under my fingertips and the weight of your head leaning back, heavy against my chest.
You’ll have been through your own wars and you’ll have sat wounded in the mire and learned from them for a long enough spell. You’ll have made mistakes, and you’ll have bad habits; Still, you’ll be a better man than you know. Maybe you’ll have a roundtable of men you make time for every week – the guys who knew you before you talked to girls. You’ll have work or art you care about, something you want to leave in the world. You’ll challenge me and when I ask, you’ll give advice that I have to think about for a long time and which eventually will shape me. You’ll have a faith –quiet and more important to you than I ever will be.
You’ll teach me something great – how to make ceviche or tie flies. Your laugh will be easy, hard, real. Maybe you’ll love to walk as far as I do. Maybe we’ll wander through this city like a lifetime, across its arches and spans until we collapse into an unsigned pub. Until our coffee grows cold. Until we reach Timbuktu and Shangri-La.
Maybe we’ll come home and lie on top of the quilt, in our jeans and sweaters in the dark, and talk in low voices until we sleep. Maybe you and I will never run out of things we want the other to know.
