Pork Only Has One "K"

I have a few co-workers who are poor communicators, and I spend an inordinate amount of time putting out the little brush fires that they leave in their Godzilla wake of burning tanks and screaming school girls. Their misused words especially grate on my nerves.

Therefore, for the record:

Tenet vs. tenant
-Belief systems have tenets, apartment buildings have tenants. Telling the employee that "a fundamental tenant of our bonus plan...." makes no sense. Are there little people living inside a bonus plan? Do they pay rent and call payroll when their shower is leaking? Do we allow dogs in our bonus plan? If you were to order take-out, where would it be delivered?

Accept vs. except
If you want to accept an award, and you inadvertently except it....well, I think you would notice the difference. So would the person presenting it to you, who would think you were a foul douche for turning down their gesture. So would the job candidate whose application you were happy to except.

Alternately vs. alternatively
The first is to go back and forth between multiple items in turn, while the second is to consider another option. If you that "alternately, we could simply fire the employee....", I really don't think that you mean to fire him, bring him back, fire him, bring him back, fire him...do you? That's kind of cruel. I might laugh the first time but doing it until the poor kid chokes himself on post-it pads and paperclips? Not cool. When you say "I alternatively assign filing to Jane and Tom..." do you mean that you ask your employees to file while wearing a nose ring and a Nirvana t-shirt? Or do you ask them in a new, alternative language- perhaps dolphin?

Rescind vs. resend
Listen, if the union accuses you of bypassing them and asks you to rescind the message you sent directly out to their bargaining unit members, and you then send them out another message stating that you are "resending" the original message...you're keeping me employed. Thanks.

Irregardless.
Oh, my...I just can't. I'm sorry. It's too painful.

Conversate
Look, you can do many things in this grand free country of ours. You can have a conversation. You can converse. You can wear Converse, like I do, if you so choose. One thing you can absolutely NOT do is conversate. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T A WORD, YOU STAGGERING PIRATE FART!

Ensure vs. insure
You can ensure something happens by careful planning, due diligence and hard work. You can insure something from happening by purchasing a policy from an insurance company. If you really want your employees to "insure you get your mandatory training done on time...." well, I just don't think you can buy a policy protecting that. I really don't. Also, Ensure is the stuff that old people and sick kids drink. Maybe you COULD ensure a care by dumping a few gallons of the stuff all over it? Although, I don't know what your insurance company would say about the claim to follow.

Biweekly vs. bimonthly
Biweekly means every two weeks. Bimonthly means every two months (you want to use semimonthly if you mean twice a month). Believe it or not, it makes a difference and someone with a literary background reading your memo just might not actually show up until August if you ask them to "report bimonthly". Same goes for semiannual vs. biannual.

Nonflammable vs. inflammable
The first might be safe to hold a match to but the second wouldn't be. Therefore, asking the safety manager to be sure to order the inflammable coveralls for employees in the boiler plant....fuck. If I were one of those employees, I wouldn't appreciate that. Especially after I turned into Freddy Kruger and got knife gloves.

Although not technically bad grammar, typical office catch phrases like "think outside the box", "let's be pro-active" and so on just make me seethe.

Don't even get me started on "literally" and "basically". Because, basically, at the end of the day, when we wrap our arms around the situation while running it up a flagpole to see who salutes, if I hear either of those words used again simply for emphasis, I will literally throw up.

So here, dear manager, is a $5 bill for you to go buy a dictionary. Please, please, take the time to read it.

Present!

As I was just throwing up in the bathroom something occurred to me....what haven't I done in a while?

Write!!!

Right!

I haven't updated my blog in a gazillion years and it was totally unintentional. Work got really busy and then for the last two weeks I have had the germ. Then I had out of town guests and, oh, it's been a whirlwind!

Let me make this clear: I cannot remember the last time I was this sick.

It started off as a stomach thing that plagued me for a few days, went away and then came back as a viral throat/respiratory infection that a co-worker remarked was the same exact symptoms as swine flu!

OMG, right?

Well, I don't have swine flu, as two hours in the ER confirmed. I do have some nasty fucking virus that has been ruining my life lately. My first Pride weekend living in San Francisco and I will most likely be confined to bed with books and the Travel Channel. This also means I will most likely update with a real entry tomorrow (one that I have already written, no less!).

So anyway, unlike my human husk, this blog will not end up a digital carcass. Im'a pump some life into it this weekend.

When I Grow Up...

My last post got me thinking about why I like what I like. If you take a moment and think about something you really, really love (summer, robots, curly hair) and then stop to think about what led you to like it, you might do what I did....waste about an hour and half. I think that its important to be true to yourself. Before I do something major in my life I catch myself thinking: "Would my thirteen year old self approve of this decision?"
I try to be honest about who I am, its not always easy, but I like to think that the young woman I was in my formative years would enjoy the (ahem) woman I am becoming. The things I loved and idolized then are my sources of inspiration now.

So anyway. I was analyzing my own closet (hoping that something amazing and bias-cut would suddenly appear) and I realized that it looks like a dressing room from some sleazy burlesque performer...and that is sort of what I always wanted. I am still in the processing of shedding the weight that will allow me to fit into most of the garments but I admire all of my stuff every once in a while to stay motivated. I ran my hands over the fringe, the gabardine, the satin and the rhinestones, inhaling the scent of estate sales and cedar. I have spent the last fifteen years amassing my collection of vintage dresses and nothing gives me the same sort of thrill that seeing a bit of crepe-backed satin poking out from the Goodwill rack of corduroy and denim. I pulled out one of my favorites- a violet taffeta a-line dress from the mid-fifties that has the sweetest bunch of milliner's blackberries on the bodice. I bought it because...oh well, here is where this entries theme comes in:

I bought the dress because it was very similar to something that a certain fashion icon of mine wore in one of her movies. I quickly Googled to see if I could find a picture of her in it but, sigh, no luck. Then I decided that it would be a good idea to chronicle my top seven style icons of all time. So here goes:

1. Dolly Parton in "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"
A little trivia. I started watching this movie when I was about seven years old. I didnt know what a whorehouse was, let alone what one would do in one, I just knew that Miss Dolly Parton with her Martha Washington white curls was the most epic thing my young eyes had ever laid eyes on. My Mom had a pair of six-inch red Candies and I used to shuffle around in those babies with a feather boa wrapped around my head. If my sister wanted to rile me up, all she had to do was whisper to me during the opening credits, "I get the red dress!"
I would get livid! The "red dress" can be see here on the cover and was an amazing piece of design. As I grew older, I lusted after her metallic saddle bag that she matched with two different ladylike western two-piece suits complete with gold embroidery and matching leather boots. I just recently watched this movie and it occured to me: I really kind of idolize the fashion sense of prostitues. Keep reading...

2. Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret"
My world came full circle when I saw this film. I was fourteen. My Mom introduced me to musicals as a child but didnt care much for Bob Fosse herself; hence I discovered Cabaret all on my own one day at Blockbuster. If my life was a movie, this would be the scene where jazzy angelic music swelled and light burst through the clouds to illuminate my path into womanhood.
When I saw the opening credits, heard the music and processed the eyebrows of Joel Grey I knew that I had finally found my patron saint. I watched the entire movie, transfixed on Liza channeling Miss Louise Brooks (who's haircut I already had). I immediately realized that I belonged in Weimar Republic era Berlin dancing at a cabaret and learning to say "screw" in German. I immediately absorbed everything about Liza- even down to her fierce eyeshadow. I began to notice that others of my older, gothy brethren had been influenced by this film indirectly for years. I bought a ton of 1930's slips from a flea market and wore them to school, much to the confused dismay of my Mom. She finally accepted it but drew the line at my drawn on beauty mark, which she stated had to be a weekend-only thing.

3. Jewel McGowan
I started swing dancing in 10th grade and fell hard for the aesthetic of the 40's. This was well before the internet was in every home so I had to depend on researching late-night movie channels for glimpses of a time when Hollywood Lindy Hopped. I learned quickly that Jewel McGowan (who often partnered Dean Collins) was the shit. Her hips swiveled like an office chair and she is considered to have been the best swing dancer of all time (Youtube her, she is magnetic!)
My friends and I would spend hours hanging on to our door knobs and leaning back to practice her svelte, effortless moves. Not only was her dancing stylish, her wardrobe was so unique! She brought a little taste of Germany (notice a theme here?) to the ballroom in her durndl and leiderhosen day dresses. She dressed to move and it was from her that I learned that one's clothing should compliment one's passion. There was something so clean about her, something that you couldn't buy or copy, that you just had to be.

4. Susan Sarandon in "Pretty Baby"
1917 New Orleans in the Storyville (again with the idolotry of brothel-chic).
White, gauzy dresses and matte red lips.
Finger waves, mint juleps and chaise lounges.
I have always been really obsessed with New Orleans, I'm not sure when/why that started but it bleeds into the music I love (Tom Waits), the movies I watch (Angel Heart) and the eras in history that I most often read about.
Pretty Baby is an amazingly articulate, poetic imagining of what life in the Red Light district of New Orleans was like- I don't know how accurate it was but the clothing was delicious. When I first visited New Orleans (pre-Katrina) I wasn't at all dissappointed- it was exactly the way I had imagined it and the outfits of Susan Sarandon in this film would have been my ideal wardrobe, except it was like two million degrees outside with about six hundred percent humidity....so I stuck to shorts and tank tops that hid the sweat stains (ew)

Well, these first four took me longer than previously anticipated so now I am going to have to brush my fangs and tuck myself into bed so I can be fresh and pretty for work when my alarm goes off at it's ghastly (practically night-time) hour.

I will finish this tomorrow!!

Things That Cost More Than Hookers or Expensive Shit I Can't Afford

Not that I have anything against sex workers, obvz, but can you please tell me why I am having a major lady-boner over a pair of shoes that cost more than a blow job and maybe some cocaine?

The answer is because they are so epic that they would scare the rest of your clothes into quivering puddles of wrinkly cotton. If I wore these I would'nt need sex or drugs or anything else except maybe some Rodarte tights to stretch over my stems, you know, so the shoes would'nt get cold.
These are Prada. Say "Hello, Prada!"
Now say: "Walk your sweet leather studded selves on over to Oakland and jump into Casey's closet and magically shrivel all of her pant hems to a cooperative length."

Thank you. I will wear them the next time we see each other so you can fawn over how superior my shoes are. They will make you happy just by being in close proximity, like strappy Prosac. I promise not to tart them up with a pencil skirt or a blazer, but will vow to wear them with nasty ripped jeans and maybe an ill-fitting tank top (like the kind that shows your armpits a lot, only I will wear a silver leotard underneath it and do a spazzy dance.)

Now. On to some hilights from the recent fashion week fandango (I know, I know- Im SUPER late on this but I blame my job, which I must have in order to afford the sloppy rags I piece together hoping that someone might confuse them for late-90's Betsey Johnson when really its thrifted crap and Target clearance. Shhhh!)

I am not a "fashion blogger" nor do I neccisarily have a critique of recent runway goings on, I just know what is fresh and what is a recycled fart. In my humble, uneducated opinion of course....

So, the only thing that I was really taken with was Comme des Garcons. It was the only collection that I saw that inspired me to create rather than shop, which to me is really the point of fashion. If I could sew I would have the most obnoxious wardrobe complete with bird-cage hats, lime green velvet knee socks and an alligator purse. Rei Kawakubo has this way of taking fabric and turning into second skins that transform you into a kind of Kubrick-esque warrior debutante that doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks about her fierce veil:

Normally, I don't care for neutral colors but there is something so architectural and raunchy about them when Rei does it. I love the classic shapes draped in ghostly gauze, like you just let your wardrobe rot for fifty years and then needed a uniform for your assigned job in the year 2075.

My only regret is that I would have liked to have seen one drastic color- maybe a deep teal or a slick laquor black. But that's what accessories are for, right? Rei knows best and she made something startling and ethereal (I hate using that word because it makes me think of those shitty Sophia Coppola gossamer-summery-girls-in-a-field photography, but in this case maybe I should change it to 'other-worldly', only I've already made a moderately funny Sophia Coppola joke and you don't get to do that too often unless you wanna sound like an art-fag).

The line that Rei did for H&M seems so tame compared to this recent collection, it's almost shocking. Not that I didn't lust after the H&M collection, because I did, but it just lacked the effortless nostalgic beauty that these have.

The dress on the far left?

OMG.
OMG.

Can I wear this every single time I have to be in public? I would, too. I would buy three of them and never wear anything else (and it would even go with the above mentioned Pradas although there is something understated about slouchy socks and snake skin flats). I might even wear it to bed because I lurv it so deeply. Of course, I would probably talk in a fake French accent like some escaped creature from Alain Resnais movie. Then I would be friendless because I would be a self-indulgent mutant.

So that pretty much sums it up. I liked Margiela, I liked Betsey, I liked Vivienne Westwood...but it was just sort of unimportant. It was gorgeous and detailed but it didn't rattle my feathers or ruffle my cage or anything like that.

Anyway, now I have to go do community service or hug orphans for being such a superficial twit for the past two (er, four) hours spent browsing on style.com.

Senseless Narcissism

Nothing can make me swoon like a well-crafted mix tape. Some things come close (the boiler room make-out from My So-Called Life, guys playing guitar, properly spelled text messages) but nothing will ever have the impact of a Sharpie-labeled CD. If I could work out a way not to slice my clitoris off, I might even masturbate with a really good one.

Which leads me to my next point:
I've never gotten a really good one.

Skylar Fisk in sixth grade gave me a mix tape that had Bon Jovi, Erasure, Kid N Play, Madonna and Rush (?) on it. I fast forwarded to the Madonna songs and recorded over the rest with a They Might Be Giants album. I was fickle and he had bad taste. He also had a crush on my friend Charmina Bagasan (side note: she was Filipino and her grandmother wouldn't let her borrow my banana/cherry/rhinestone earrings for a dance because they were "what nasty girls wear". She also gave me a grocery bag of corn every time I went over there) and he gave her a Coke every day for a week at lunch time. She didn't like him either because she was saving herself for Bryan Abrams from Color Me Badd. The night that they did a guest appearance on the original 90210, Charmina and I holed up in my bedroom and screamed at the television until my Mom threatened to put me on restriction. Then we screamed quietly and talked shit about Kelly Taylor.

Anyway, if I was a guy and I knew me I would have a raging hard-on for me based on my music taste alone. I would spend an entire month crafting a CD so fine, so flawless that it would put Nick O'Leary to shame. I would spend hours obsessing over each song, each lyric of each song, just to make sure that it was telling me every insomnia-induced fantasy that I had ever had (about myself, of course). In reality, if a guy did this I might be just a tad creeped out and certainly confused at what I had done to inspire it. I might write a pondering blog post and send some texts to poll opinions about creepy CD guy. I might even dub him that.

BUT...if he wasn't creepy and even just a little cute (awkward cute, preferably, not awkward hipster cute) this is the CD I would hope for. This, actually, could also be a list of songs that I wish had been written about me:

"Clark Gable" by The Postal Service

*I don't care for most of the maudlin whining of the Daddy-group, Deathcab for Cutie, but something about The Postal Service struck me as haunting and maybe on the borderline of too twee/just twee enough. Anyway, I would open the CD with this song because it would be the song I would play if I lost the girl I really loved.
"And I kissed you in a style that Clark Gable would have admired (I thought it classic)"

"Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus

*I have a confession. You know that movie Detroit Rock City? That movie makes me want to be a boy. Only boys can have that kind of dirty-jeans-road-beers-class-ditching ease that gets them into wonderful trouble. If I was a boy, I'd certainly be a stoner metal head with Pantera posters and a crush on a girl...well, maybe a little bit like me (except for the fact that I wouldn't share joints in the back of his van with him). I would put this song second on the CD because it reminds me that its the little things that make people fall in love.
"I've got two tickets to Iron Maiden baby, Come with me Friday, don't say maybe, I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby like you"

"I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen

*You can't be cute for too long before you make someone forget that you get hot in the pants for them. As a dragged out Wesley Snipes once said: "If you want them know there is steak for dinner, you've got to let them hear it sizzle!" Nothing sizzles like this song. I would put it third, unexpected, no lead up. Just a sudden burst of well-crafted passion. It would convey every hour that I hoped to spend making out in a car, windows fogging up, static of the all-night AM classic rock station hissing in time to our heavy breathing and unsnapping buttons.
"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the
middle of my head....Only you can cool my desire"

"Pearl" by Love and Rockets

*Maybe I am a little too obsessed with the kind of love we had as teenagers- that kind that rocked you in the pit of your stomach and made you sneak out of your bedroom window just to see someone for five minutes. There was this apathy that came along with being that young, a facade that you had seen and done everything, just so you could be too tough to be hurt. This song would expose the vulnerability felt when someone else breaks through that.
"This is no ordinary girl, I ain't got no jaded feeling"

"Pure" by The Lightning Seeds

*Midway through the CD is a good time to confess that it goes beyond flirting/Iron Maiden/making out. This song slays me, absolutely wrecks me, with frilly love. It eluded me for years before I found out what it was/who it was by. The first time I heard it I thought- holy shit, I want to be the muse of this.
"dreams of sights, of sleigh rides in seasons
where feelings not reasons, can make you decide
as leaves pour down, splash autumn on gardens
as colder nights harden, their moonlit delights
and I love you"

"Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash

*If you put this song first it would be cliche and wrong, wrong, wrong. You can't always open with something familiar. Sometimes you have to sneak it in, like a brand-new outfit- 'this old thing? ive liked this for years! see how relaxed i was with putting it mid-playlist?'
Sadly, commercialism has taken away some of the simple, ballsy appeal of this song. The thing about it is, its a really emo song sung by a really tough motherfucker. Any man that can switch gears from gospel to liquor to this has really come to terms with expressing himself:
"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes wide open all the time, I keep the ends out for the tie that binds"
I could translate this into: "Im warning you, bitch, don't fuck with me. I will cut you because I am showing you my soul and you'd better take good care of it. And also, get me some cocaine." But it would lose its appeal. You can't really rhyme cocaine to much, anyway (if Jerry Garcia has taught us nothing else...)

"You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Loves You" by Dean Martin

*Everyone has heard this a million times, right? Everyone has also eaten peanut butter a million times- and then one day someone put it with chocolate and POW! Magic. You never looked at peanut butter the same way again.
Putting this song, this particular song, in a playlist intended for a crush gives it a whole new meaning. This song was THE most performed song in Las Vegas from 1946 (when it was originally recorded) through 1951. In the city where money, gambling, murder and sin are the national past-times, all folks really wanted to be reminded of was that:
"The world's always the same, you'll never change it, As sure as the stars shine above, You're nobody till somebody loves you...So find yourself somebody to love"
Ideally that someone should be the creator of the mix, of course.

"The Light" by Common

*In closing, I would like to finish with something that has a bit of an edge. You don't want to end the CD looking like a pussy. I dare you to call Common a pussy- he would slice you like bread, son. That being said, he wrote a ghetto fab love song that doesn't mention baby mamas and/or backing an ass up (not that I have a problem with those things in moderation). Bonus that it has musical references, like being super meta about recognizing that you put together a CD and understand that it will always be this symbol of how you introduced your heart formally.
"It's important, we communicate and tune the fate of this union, to the right pitch. I never call you my bitch or even my boo. There's so much in a name and so much more in you"

Connecting With Strangers

I found this image on Post Secret today.

I don't often relate to the secrets on there, occasionally one about body image or infidelity or failure will strike a chord but nothing has resonated with me as clearly as this. I would like to know the person that wrote it. I would like to hug them and ask about their dream, find out where they moved. I would like to tell them that I can relate because I, too, have the exact same experience.

I have never talked about this before to anyone except my Mom. After my Dad died in 1998 I started having nightmares. Not regularly, maybe three or four times a year, with no trend in their timing. They were always the same, though.

In my dream my Dad would have faked his own death. He would have spent the last eleven years in a new state living a new life. I would have seen him by accident in a store or a park and then confronted him. We fight, I leave, he follows me. He shows up at the house I grew up in (where I still live in the dream) and explains to my family why he left. I watch the faces of my Mom, my brother, my sister, my aunt all collapse in various stages of grief and anger. He counts on me to smooth things over and I want to, I really want to, but I just burst into tears and beg him not to leave me again. I am the only one speaking. He hugs me and, in the dream, I am aware of his smell. His size. His voice. I remember the last conversation we had before he died (which I cant remember in real life) and I am overwhelmed with the knowing that he is going to leave again.

I wake up and try to hang on to it, to the memory and the feelings of him being alive. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I just smile and move on. Death touches me in a familiar way, even in the most unassuming parts of my existence. I think about him for at least a minute each day, sometimes a lot more. If I was going to send in a Post Secret it would say:

"My top five reasons for wishing my father hadn't died are:
1. He would have loved the internet
2. He would have loved My Chemical Romance
3. He would have loved my boyfriend
4. He would have loved seeing me move to San Francisco
5. My Mom would have a chance of being sane"

Playlist for My Exes

I recently read a book that made me start thinking that if I divided my life into playlists, chronologically, what would be on them? I could leave these cd's for my kids to look back on and see what I was listening to at various times in my life, like a cooler scrapbook or less annoying home movie. I tried to write one for high school but every song just seemed to remind me of an ex-boyfriend. So I figure that I will start there and then work through other events, sampling the music from years of my life to compile into neat little playlists that I can turn on when I'm feeling like a nice drift down memory lane.
I don't remember dates or times very well, but one song can take me back (with 88 miles per hour Doc Brown force) to an exact moment in my life. I can remember the smell, the taste, what I was wearing and what was going through my head when I listen to these songs:

For Christopher Gagosian, ages 6-10:
"Two of Hearts" by Stacey Q

True, you were never my boyfriend but this song always came on when I was doodling your name on my Trapper Keeper. We caught lizards together and went to each other's birthday parties from kindergarten through fourth grade. I worshiped you with the same kind of fascination that I had for my parents marriage, wondering if two people had ever existed on their own without the other one. I thought that you and I would grow up and get married someday, have kids of our own, although sex hadn't occurred to me yet. You were my science fair partner and we made a potion (which was mostly hydrogen peroxide and pineapple Nehi) that you poured on some ants. Their death-writing made you name the concoction "the ant dancing potion" and I cried for an hour at the pile of bodies. We did kiss once, well, actually we bumped teeth once when we were getting up from a serious game of duck-duck-goose. I thought it was a kiss and you told me that you would never kiss me because I had big teeth. Whatever.

"I never thought that I could ever be this happy, yeah baby! My prayers were answered, boy you came in the nick of time"

I listened to this song every morning while I curled my bangs and scrunched my socks, hoping that you would give me an off-season Valentine that said something better than "lets be friends!" It never happened and you moved to Texas in fifth grade. I saw you on Myspace recently and, even though you kicked my ass at dodgeball, you also peaked in third grade. I was better off without you.

For Josh Wallace, age 12:

"And Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals

Although this song reminds me of you (mostly because Goodfellas was on the tv the first time we met) the ending of our story is much different. If I was to re-write the song it would go something like this:

Well, I met him at my best friend's house in grade eight
I was weird and awkward and had not yet started to date
He suggested Truth or Dare
And in the driveway while I stood there
He got his friend to double-dare me to kiss him

We made out for three more days right after school
I thought he was going to be my boyfriend, which was cool
And in the bathroom on that fourth day
Up my shirt his hands started to stray
I told him that wasn't okay
And then he ditched me.

Bryan Douglas, ages 14-15:
"Into Your Arms" by The Lemonheads

You were my first boyfriend, the first real guy that really liked me back in the same real way that I liked you. My parents adored you because you were a long-haired, guitar playing, vegetarian hippie like they were. I loved you because you played Dungeons and Dragons and taught me bass chords for "Come As You Are". It didn't hurt that your best friend (a psychopath named David who, at 15, had a subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine) was going out with MY best friend. Our relationship lasted six months- June of 1995 through December of 1995. In that time we spent about nine thousand hours making out on your bed listening to a mix tape that had Hole, Nine Inch Nails and The Lemonheads on it. When Evan Dando sang "I know a place, that's safe and warm, from the crowds..." you would stop, mid-kiss, and squeeze me. I can taste the late summer flavor on the back of my tongue, the sharp chill of stolen menthol cigarettes circulating through the air conditioning in your bedroom.

That relationship was just so simple. You thought I was pretty, I liked your sense of humor and we just let it be. Until Julie Aames reared her over-processed bleached head like some bargain basement Kelly Taylor. You dumped me a week- JUST ONE WEEK- after my fifteenth birthday. I cried for a month over you. I am now sad to find that you're a raging alcoholic and are planning your wedding to your pregnant fiance. You deserved better than that, you know.

Matt Russell, ages 15-17
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and "Number One Crush" by Garbage

We met because I lied to your friend, who was in my driver's ed class, and told him that I slept in a coffin. The pale skin, black eyeliner and ripped fishnet (gag) dress threw him off. He was convinced that I was evil and unholy, so he thought we would be perfect for each other. I am still not quite sure how you two were friends, since he was black and you were a skinhead but that logic evaded me until I was much older (read: just now as I write this). Oh, you were glorious! Our first date- you were so tall and tattooed and scrumptiously older than me, a little Siouxsie carbon copy dolled up and smoking a clove. You told me to tell my parents that you were seventeen when, really, you had just celebrated your eighteenth birthday. You were such a bad kid, kick starting my fetish for delinquents and ruffians. You had been arrested a few times and when we kissed, I could taste whisky on your breath. I think that you loved my entire family and might have gone out with me just to be in a stable environment where you were embraced, fed, loved and, eventually, welcomed to live. My Mom and her strays- everyone else's kids always littering up the living room. I grew up with hundreds of friends who had troubled lives that wound up becoming my brothers and sisters, at least for a few months. You stayed the longest, though.

Love did tear us apart- in the form of my Dad's death. I loved him so much that I didn't think I was allowed to be happy after he was gone and, honestly, I was so tired of your over-protective, kill-for-me proclamations. I just wanted a normal boyfriend that would like me okay enough for hours of video games and the occasional concert. You were talking marriage, which is the kiss of death for every girl from a small town. I knew that if I stayed with you I would end up pregnant, divorced and alone in five years, tops. So I dumped you in the elevator at the hospital. You punched the wall and left a dent. I didn't even blink. At the funeral I could tell that you wanted to touch me but I regarded you with empty eyes. You were the last guy I dated that got to meet my Dad. In a way, you have a part of me that no one will ever get (including the virginity I forced upon you once night in my backyard because I was sick of being pure)- you got to know me as the daughter of a complete family. You got to see me before I grew up. I guess I will always remember you for that (and your tongue ring).

Brian Bauer, ages 19-20
"Believe" by Cher

You dumped me by not calling me on my birthday, which left me no choice but to sneak into a gay bar with my aunt. You were a prick. My aunt and I spent the entire night dancing, mostly to Cher, and had out picture taken...only to wind up in the Gay and Lesbian section of the local newspaper. We were captioned as being the "cute couple, red head in tiger print halter top and buxom blond with nose ring."

I wouldn't include you on here, since you were such a bastard, but every well-balanced mix has to have a queeny ballad that you can belt out in the shower. So you slide in, barely.

Chris
"Hallelujah" by Leonard Coen

This wasn't exactly a break up but it was an epoch in my life that I would chronicle on a mix because of its significant and quiet intimacy. I would like to point out that WE liked this song well before it got sullied by the humping scene in Watchmen. WE also liked it before it was covered by Rufus Wainwright for Shrek. Anyway, it would be a disservice to a fine friend to not include this chapter of my love life. It will get no further details except one (and its gonna be cryptic):
Los Angeles Road Trip

Keith, ages 24-27
"You've Really Got A Hold On Me"

You did, you know, in a painful and sick way. I would have done just about anything to be the kind of girlfriend that you wanted. I did do just about anything, come to think of it, to earn your love. I hadn't heard this song since I was a kid and my parent's band played it. Then one day, about three months before I left you, I heard it on an oldies radio station. It was a Sunday morning in the late summer and even though it was early, it was already hot. I was driving through the neighborhood heading to the flea market. I hummed the first few lines of the song before I felt the tears welling in my eyes. I knew I wanted to leave you but I wasn't sure if I could, your hold was so strong. The past year rushed back like in movies before the main character dies- I saw our fights, your temper, the break down, all of it. I pulled over and stumbled out of my car, throwing up orange juice in the gutter and then curling up face down on the cool, dewy grass of a strangers lawn. I fell asleep for a few minutes and then stood up, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. I felt tired in my heart and tired in my body. I drove to your place and your car wasn't there, meaning you'd been out all night doing who knows what. I gave up. I spent the day curled up in the sun with a book. I didn't recognize it then but the first delicate tendrils of detachment were beginning to unfurl. I ignored your call for the first time that day.

Will Turner, 27-Present
"Take Me Home Please" by Reggie and the Full Effect

Because every good mix should end with a high note, I am putting this song. This song is every amazing, inspiring feeling that my boyfriend gives me. He gets to be last because this is what I want to finish with, this is the song that plays in my head when I look at him. It takes me back to the first weeks we were falling in love and how finally, after tons of boys that didn't want me as much as I wanted them, tons of boys that cheated on me and broke my heart, tons of boys that I left before they could leave me, I had found someone that I could just come home to.
"Please pick up the phone now, I've got to let you know now, how much you mean to me...."