In August 2007 I packed up and moved to Maine, a state whose license plate identifies it as Vacationland. I'm now surrounded by signs that say CAUTION: MOOSE IN ROADWAY and 20-foot lobster statues. Oddly enough, this is also the second state I've lived in that claims to be the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. Coincidence? I think not.
In Diana's book, she has an essay that talks about her love for Bruce Springsteen and the girls pivotal to Bruce Springsteen's songs. She really, really wants to be one of those girls, one of those sweet-tough girls who catches the interest of a boy in dusty jeans and a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a boy with messy-curly hair and a gravelly voice.
And I understand that. I'd like to be those girls, too, but if I am being honest with myself, I know I'm not a girl in a Bruce Springsteen song. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm not immortalized in song somewhere. Because I am. Oh, am I ever. Behold:
Oh, Rhonda. I feel you. I understand you. I know exactly what happened. There was this boy, right, and he was sad and broken and you saw that and you thought, Hey! I can do something about that! I can make him feel better! and you tried, didn't you? You became the coolest version of yourself: a laid-back girl who said, "I know. I understand. You poor thing. Come here." And then you kissed that boy and combed your fingers through his hair and told him everything was going to be all right. And then you spent time--weeks, months, maybe years--giving him whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, and he was thankful for you, wasn't he? Maybe he said, "You're the only thing in my life that's good." Or maybe he said, "You're my voice of reason." Or maybe it was, "You made me feel like I can breathe again."
Rhonda, baby, I've heard it all. I know.
And I also know that's not where the story ends. I know your song isn't the last word on the subject. Sure, those boys were happy and thankful you helped them get her--the last one, the bad one, the evil one, the psychotic one--out of their hearts, and maybe they were so thankful they wrote a song or a poem or a letter about it--but what they don't tell you is after they feel better, after you've restored their faith in love, they're going to escort you to the door, shake your hand, and ask you to step outside because your transaction is now complete. Those boys, they're fixed! They're saved! And you did that! You're such a swell girl, Rhonda!
I know, baby, I know. We're both idiots, you and I. We're both just such idiots that maybe now it's time someone wrote a song about that.
Jesus help me, I love Prince. I love Prince so much I want to curl up in the sock drawer on his tour bus and live there until he finds me. And upon finding me, he'll (of course) ask me to hand him his guitar, and I will, and he'll start grooving and singing about a raspberry beret, which is only one of my favorite songs inthe entire world.
I guess it reminds me of grad school, not because it was always blaring from someone's car and not because it was piped in through the halls of MSU or anything like that, but because I was listening to it a whole lot back then. And I was thinking about it today, mostly because tomorrow is the first day of the fall semester--the first day of my third year here (yeah, let THAT blow your mind a little bit)--and the beginning of a new semester calls for some very serious consideration of very serious matters.
Namely this: teacher theme songs.
Of course, this is something I've put a lot of thought into. It's not something I've just started thinking about now, after eight o'clock, as I watch the last hours of my summer vacation go skipping away into the dark. I've been thinking about it for years, and what I've thought is this: it seems only fair to me that teachers should have something--a device, if you will; something Pavlovian in nature--that will make their students sit up, snap to attention, and really listen. I think it's only fair that we get a song that announces our arrival in the classroom.
Lasers and smoke machines could be optional--maybe for tenured faculty only?--but everyone should get to select a song that signals to the class, "Listen, kids. It's time to shape up or ship out. The teacher is in the room."
Raspberry Beret could be my song. I'm convinced of it. Give it a listen.
Upbeat, peppy, sassy. It seems to be all the things I'd like to think my classes are. It would work.
Listen. It's not that I'm old, ancient, hunched and hobbling, but something about me is changing. Every day I am becoming more distracted by what the truly young people are doing. But it's more than distracted; it's confused.
Last night I couldn't sleep, so I was up watching That 70s Show on The N--the network for teens!--which shows commercials for all these fantastic shows I really wished I was young enough to watch--shows about high school skanks and tough surfer girls and teenagers who get knocked up and boys who kiss boys. It's enough to make me wish I was a teenager again. The network makes me think fondly back to the days when I loved Saved by the Bell and Blossom and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
But the problem with The N, even though it does play marathons of That 70s Show, which soothes me almost as much as M*A*S*H--I think it has something to do with my undying love for Hyde--is that it plays the same commercials over and over and over, and there's only so many times a girl can watch the same clips of the best Degrassi moments. So last night I had to surf the channels, and what's around The N on my cable lineup is MTV Hits and MTV Jams, and I kept going back and forth between them.
I was horrified. HORRIFIED. When I turned on MTV Jams, this song was playing:
DO THE RICKY BOBBY? THE RICKY BOBBY?! Would someone please, please, please tell me why a rap artist got it in his head that it was a great idea to try to spark the next dance step by invoking a Will Ferrell character?
The whole thing is a train wreck. I kept blinking, thinking I was imagining the whole thing. But no.
Is this how people were feeling back when I was younger, back when we were learning how to do Da Dip, the Tootsee Roll, maybe even the Macarena? Maybe so, but even those songs--while gloriously ridiculous in their own special 1990s way--have some sort of merit. There's actual instruction going on there. I am learning how to do the dance. And it's a dance that consists of more than just "doing the Ricky Bobby" and "posing for the frame."
And if I wasn't horrified enough, the next time I turned back to MTV Jams, this video was playing:
That's right. The STANKY LEGG. This video is showing me how to do the STANKY LEGG.
First of all, I don't even know what a legg is. I know what a leg is, but the closest thing to a legg in my world is Leggs, which is a brand of stockings. And for some reason, I'm betting they don't want to be associated this video. And beyond that, why should I want to learn a dance that requires me to have a body part that is stanky?
Can we all just stop? Seriously. Can we just stop and let these men do their business?
(2.)
Of course, it's not just my sudden revulsion at the videos that make it into rotation on MTV. It's also my body.
My hip has started clicking. If I bend too quick, if I twist wrong, if I hop into a jog, there's a little toc! that emanates from my hip--and the first time I heard it, I refused to believe it. I remembered that sound. My ninth grade English teacher's hip made that same noise, and every time she walked by that's all you could hear: toc! toc! toc!
I used to think, Jesus. That woman is falling apart.
Now I toc! too. And everytime I do, I roll my eyes up to the ceiling and wonder when the hell I turned into Miss Keefe.
Now I'm just hoping I don't inherit her love for sitting on top of the front row desks, her knees not quite pressed together enough to keep her lady business in check under her skirt.
You can also tell it's spring--and that I'm this close to a three and a half month break from teaching--based on the number of days I get out of the shower and just put gel in my hair and let it dry to its messy-curly-beach look. I'm getting ready for the long, warm days ahead.
When I was home for spring break, I had a little slice of time to spare before I jetted off to Miami. In that little slice of time, the Boy From Work decided to steal me away for a day and take me on an adventure. He drove me around tiny no-name towns and we stopped at sweet, small antique stores, places he passes every day on his way to work. He was--is--trying to woo me, and he knows that opening the door to a store stocked with musty old doilies and crooked furniture is the surest way to my heart. I love antiquing. I love rooting around in piles of other people's things, wondering what kinds of lives the items had before they came here, to some store in the middle of nowhere. The potential to find really bizarre or wonderful things is remarkable.
And during those stops I did find some wonderful things, but none as wonderful as the record I found tucked into the back of a milk crate in some forgotten corner of a store in Franklinville, the town we used to ride to in the back of my best friend's sister's car, on the way to the teen dance club where we would raise our arms when the smoke machine hissed out its maple syrup-smelling mist, where we would cram into the corner booths and curl into the boys we loved, who were boys we had absolutely no business loving.
So I was nostalgic as we drove past that little teen dance club, which still sat next to the town skating rink, but nostalgia would soon be replaced by an overwhelming sense of awesome! as I pulled that record out of the milk crate. On its front there was a sassy lady sporting big hair and a thin robe. She was on the phone. She was looking over her shoulder. Her gaze said, Hiya, Big Boy. The record was titled Music for Bachelors.
I squealed and clutched it to my chest. It was mine, mine, mine. I wanted to hang it up in my office. I thought if ever I was having a bad time of things, if ever I couldn't turn a pretty phrase to save my life, all I would have to do is look up at that framed record and think of bachelors from the 1960s picking through racks at the record store before settling on this particular selection, which they would take home and play while patting cologne on their cheeks, while mixing martinis, while walking a date out to the terrace to see the stars. It was all very Down with Love. And that would make me feel better.
So I bought the record for a dollar, and then I proceeded to leave it in the back of the BFW's car.
Today, though, the BFW called me up and said, "Check your e-mail, okay?" and I did. And in that e-mail I found that he, too, had been transfixed by the album's cover, that he hadn't been able to squelch the urge to whip out the Music for Bachelors and get cozy with its rhythms and patron saint, the thin nightgowned woman. He produced a lovely little photo essay to prove to me that my record was in good hands, that Music for Bachelors wasn't going to waste. It was safe, and it will stay safe until I frame it and put it on my office wall.
It's like she's got tractor beam eyes. The BFW can't get away. And how could he? That girl's got tractor beam eyes. It's enough to make anyone want to listen to The Girl from Ipanema, which is--of course, of course!--the first song on the record.
The first time I ever thought about what it might be like to be a lesbian was in the year 2000. Amy and I and a bunch of our college friends were sitting in front of the television on a Thursday night. The VMAs were on. We were watching them because that's what most college students were doing on the first Thursday of the first week of fall semester.
It was an okay show. We were talking more about our new professors and the crappy selection of food at the Williams Center--were they ever going to get take-out chicken fingers?!--than we were the actual show itself, but that all stopped when Britney Spears came on.
Now, it's important to know that I have had a storied love affair with Britney Spears since she broke onto the scene at the beginning of 1999. The first time I heard the opening beats of Baby One More Time, I was hooked. After all, I loved to dance, and that song made me want to shake it eighteen different kinds of ways. I bought the CD immediately, and I've bought each of her CDs since then. And I don't even want to talk about the slightly embarrassing moment last spring when, after I'd agreed to drive a few of my colleagues to the local mini-golf place for a thank-God-it's-the-end-of-the-semester round of putt-putt, I turned my key and Britney's latest came blasting out of my speakers. "Oh my God," I said, "I'm so sorry you had to hear that." But I wasn't sorry I was hearing it. I blared that CD everywhere I went, and the only time I turned it down was when I came into the college parking lot. I didn't need any of my students knowing about my Britney obsession.
But back in 2000, my Britney obsession was just starting to intensify to manic status. Her VMA performance was a mix of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Oops!.... I Did It Again," and she came out on stage in a spangled suit which was, after the opening Rolling Stones riff, ripped off, leaving her bouncing around in nothing but a nude body suit covered strategically with rhinestones.
At the beginning of the performance, there was a slight wardrobe malfunction, and part of the spangled suit--black, business-like--edged down, and the audience caught a glimpse of something nude underneath it. I, like many people in America, assumed Britney's costume was about to fall off and there was a good chance she was going to be nude on the VMAs. But she went and ripped it off anyway, as had been the original plan, and then she went on with her business.
And in that moment--the moment where she ripped off her spangles and revealed the nude bodysuit underneath--I screamed. I don't know why I did it, but I screamed and screamed and screamed. There was something terrifyingly exciting about that moment. There was something very nasty about it all. And that was the precise moment I fell in love with Britney Spears.
Of course, it's been well documented that my grandmother thinks I'm a giant lesbian, and I've spent too much time trying to point out how boy crazy I am, but I'm not even going to pretend that I wouldn't run away with Britney if she asked me to. Maybe--somehow, some way--my grandmother knew about my reaction to the 2000 VMAs. Maybe she saw how my eyes widened, how my mouth fell open, how I shrieked until my vocal chords went numb. Maybe that's what planted the seed.
It sure planted the seed for me. The one woman I would ever go lesbian for is Britney Spears.
I cannot tell you how much this displeased some of my boy friends in grad school. They found this fact about me to be disgusting, trashy, ill-advised. "Britnnnney?" they would moan. "A silly pop star?!"
Yes, a silly pop star. A silly pop star who, whenever she wanted, could create an international sensation with a flick of her hip. The power she had was immeasurable. I wanted to be close to it. I wanted to touch it. I was sure that that power would feel like the hum of a million bee hives roiling under my palm. And just once--just for one second--I thought it would be interesting to be so close to something so beautiful and powerful.
Of course, all the power and beauty didn't last forever. Britney went and turned herself into the world's biggest punch line, and that lasted for a few years. There was the whole Federline business, the whole reality show business, the whole being immortalized in a sculpture that depicted her giving birth on a wolf-skin rug business. There was that whole shaved head thing and the tabloid reports of her traipsing into gas station bathrooms without shoes on. There was an incessant love of Cheetos and anything fried. There was chubbiness, zits, cut-off shorts, messy hair. And the world ate it up. One of the most beautiful girls in the world had lost her mind and gone to pot.
But then the tabloids kept saying, She's coming back! This will be her moment of triumph! She's going to have the world's biggest comeback! And then Britney would go out, get drunk, and show off her delicate areas to the paparazzi as she was exiting a car with Paris Hilton. It was all very ugly.
And I knew that everyone was wrong--she wasn't coming back just yet. I knew in my heart--because of the storied love affair, of course--that she wasn't ready yet. I knew everyone's predictions were premature. I wasn't going to get excited about a comeback until I saw her in public, appropriately panty-ed and with hair that had recently seen a comb. I wasn't going to get excited until I heard her give an interview without popping bubblegum before she spoke. I wasn't going to get excited until she stopped going places wearing wigs and speaking in British accents. I knew she needed to go crazy before she reeled herself back in. (Or before someone reeled her back in.)
And today I feel like finally that day has come. The comeback is bubbling. Am I 100% positive our girl is not going to go back off the deep end? No. But I am fairly sure she's going to be around in her current state--groomed, trim, long-haired, and beautiful--for a while. At least until she sells a substantial number of records.
And you can bet I'm buying the new one. Or at least that I'm requesting it for Christmas. After watching this video--finally released today, in celebration of the new album--how could I resist? How can you?
Here are a few songs that have been playing all day to keep my I-really-hate-packing-my-God-I'm-such-a-whiner spirits up:
"Goodnight Rose" by Ryan Adams
One of my favorite songs of all time: "Santa Monica" by Everclear
And, finally, "Love Man" by Otis Redding. This song will play at my wedding--mainly because I want my reception to look precisely like this (MAKE IT HAPPEN, SCHWAB):
Today, another packing breakdown. I just want to give up. All I want to do is go to bed. All I want to do is sleep until... well, until other people have swept through my apartment and moved all of my belongings--including my bed, with me on it--to the new place.
This is how I've spent the last three days: packing, correcting a really awful batch of argument essays (example sentence: Red Sox don't pay him to be a grumpy old piece of crap that does nothing but argues with umpires and coaches all the time!), and nursing a sick kitten back to health.
Abbey did not respond well to her first round of shots. She wouldn't eat, wouldn't stand, wouldn't even lift her head to look at me if I called her name. I had to carry her to her food dish and coax her to eat. She cried when I put her down and cried when I picked her up. It made me feel awful.
And that awful feeling carried neatly over into everything else I did today, and I slogged through my work thinking there was going to be nothing redeeming about the day, unless I wanted to count that really good grilled cheese I made on bread from the new bakery in town. But as good as that grilled cheese was--oh, buttery deliciousness!--the day seemed like a loss.
And it was. When I ran out of boxes during my marathon packing session, I went down to my car for the last few I'd pilfered from the campus bookstore. That's when I ran into one of my students, who just so happens to live in the same giant Victorian house I do. It was an unfortunate meeting because I was dressed like some kind of drunk hobo. I was wearing pink flip-flops; grey sweatpants that have a hole in the leg; a shirt decorated with a broken heart, which, when I bought it in 1997, I thought was profound; and a scruffy zip-up hoodie. I had no makeup on. My hair was lopsided and fluffy, pulled back under a headband.
"Hi!" my student sang out. She looked normal. She looked like she was wearing makeup.
I looked like I usually look when I plan on not leaving the apartment for a whole day: disgusting. "Hi," I said. "Please ignore this whole mess." I gestured to my ensemble.
She grinned and looked at the boxes I was clutching. "Are you moving?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Us too," she said.
"Oh?" I said. I didn't really know what the other tenants knew about our landlord's situation, but I was curious to see what he'd cooked up with the first floor residents.
"Yeah," she said. She blew out an irritated breath and then started telling me a story I knew very well. Our landlord was giving her family the runaround. He said he was going to come in and fix things, but he never got around to it. He wouldn't return phone calls. When things went bad, he wasn't around.
"My apartment leaks," I said. "Like, pours. In the kitchen, in the spare bedroom, in the bathroom."
She made a face. "And you saw that notice on the door, right?" she asked.
"What notice?" I said.
"From the water department," she said. "They came by to give notice that they're shutting the water off because he hasn't paid his water bill in forever."
Shutting the water off. Shutting the water off.
"When?" I asked.
"Wednesday," she said.
Wednesday is three days before I pack up the giant rental truck and haul my belongings to my new apartment. That's three days without a toilet and a shower. Thinking of that put me in a mild panic. I am, after all, a girl who likes water, loves water, appreciates water, needs water to look good in the morning. If he really doesn't settle up with the water people before Wednesday, I am screwed.
And that's what I got to stew about all day long as I wrapped my picture frames in newspaper, as I stacked my books into boxes, as I took down my curtains. I got to think about my asshole landlord, about how he won't return my phone calls, about how he's let this beautiful old house get so run-down water just pours from my ceilings when it rains, about how he frittered away all our security deposits and we'll never see that money again, about how I have to spend a surprising amount of money moving from one place to the next because he bit off more than he could chew. And now--as if I needed to feel any grumpier about this whole move, this whole week leading up to the move--I'll probably have to find creative ways to shower in the morning.
And the only thing that's getting me through it--the only thing that made me even a little bit happier today--was playing this. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Yes, Frank. Yes, let's go to that bar in Bombay. I wouldn't mind having about fifty of whatever they're serving up.
Last summer when I was working at the diner, I was on a steady diet of music from the 50s and 60s. The jukebox played oldies, the CD player played oldies, even the radio behind the line played "oldies"--the Grease soundtrack was one of the cooks' favorites.
So when I set out to write my long love letter to the diner and all its bizarre inhabitants--including even these perverts--I knew I needed music to get me into the right mind frame. I tried to set up an appropriate station through Pandora, but it was never quite right. I had to start from scratch. I had to make my own mix-tape. It had to be loaded with all the right songs. It had to be heavy on Frankie Valli, Otis Redding, The Everly Brothers, Elvis, The Crystals. It had to be the kind of music the other waitresses and I swung our hips to in the hot summer months.
I'm sure when my neighbors walk by my door on their way upstairs to their own apartments, they are wondering just why I blare the oldies so, so often. I'm sure they think I'm actually much older than I am.
No one has ever written a song about me. The word Jess doesn't easily fit into song lyrics, and Jessica isn't much better. Jessie is more promising, but the only people who call me Jessie are my grandmother (who insists on spelling it Jesse), my ex-best friend from eighth grade, and my mother when she's feeling cutesy. I'm just not a Jessie, so songs about Jessie--while close--aren't the real deal.
But when I was younger, that's all I really had. In 1993, this song--"Jessie" by Joshua Kadison--came out and was played to death on adult contemporary stations across the country.
I tried to throw my support behind it. I tried to like it. I wanted to think that somewhere a boy was listening to that song and thinking about me, even if that was a long shot. Still, there was something about the song I just couldn't love. I'd like to think that back then, even at the tender age of twelve, I knew not to fall in love with a song that discussed the feelings of a cat. I also knew there was something wrong with the fact that the Jessie in question was dreaming of a trailer by a sea. What kind of girl dreams of a trailer instead of a house by the sea? Who shortchanges themselves in their fantasies?
I've been patiently waiting all these years for a new and better song that includes my name to come out, and the closest I've come is Lou Bega's "Mambo Number Five," which features my name in the chorus (a little bit of Jessica...)--and, yes, I'll admit that I milked that quite a lot in college, when that song first became popular, but I hesitate to say that the song does my name justice, especially when you consider Lou Bega lists about twenty-five names before the song is finished. I'm pretty sure a Jess-Jessica-Jessie deserve a song of its very own.
So you could say I'm sensitive to songs that have girl names in them. Some girls have really, really great songs, and that makes me jealous. Angie. Rosalita. Brandy. Jolene. Sally. Carrie. Sara. Veronica. Rhonda. Cecilia. Wendy. Emily. Rhiannon. Jane. Ruby. Caroline. Lola. Jenny. Everyone but me.
In college, my best friend's roommate--Amanda--used to blare Boston's "Amanda," and because I went through an impressive Boston-loving phase in college (oh, shut up), I was incredibly jealous of that one. My best friend has Pure Prairie League's "Amie," which might not be the best song in the history of songs, but it is one of those sweet-sounding songs you can't help but sing along to whenever it comes on the radio. And if that wasn't enough, she also has a Ray Lamontagne song, which is pretty much what I want most in the world.
And then there's this song, which is my favorite song ever.
That is Josh Ritter singing "Kathleen." I love that song. I could write an entire twenty page paper about just how good that song is (including a long discussion about how the first line--All the girls here are stars; you are the Northern Lights--guaranteed Josh Ritter a lifetime of ass-getting, and an equally long discussion about the verse that begins I know you are waiting, and I know that it is not for me... and how that verse is everything I've ever felt in my entire life).
I don't even like the name Kathleen, but there is something inside me that wants very much to give that name to a daughter, if ever I have one. I want her to have those pretty words, all those lovely verses. I want her to feel like someone was predicting her future and putting it down to music so that she would know she had been loved always, even before she'd been born.
