It was the end of the summer of 1995 and all was far from well. Things were dying with my first serious boyfriend. Actually, that’s probably the nicest way to put it; it’s more accurate to talk about him stringing me along for a summer while screwing half of another city, later coming around to screw one of my best friends, but I’m not about to bitterly rant about it.
The previous Christmas season was most excellent, as I had taken a trip to Chicago with school for an all-out shopping binge. Never mind that most of what I bought was for myself — I needed to restock the CD player for the way back and grabbed the first two discs by Liz Phair. Why? I had seen the video for “Supernova” once and thought it was pretty cool. That’s all it would take in those days for me to branch out and find something new. Unfortunately, when on the bus ride back into town, I discovered that Liz was just a little too sleepytime and monotone to hold my attention; I didn’t play the discs again for quite some time.
But here I was, with my life sort of out-of-whack. My first year of college was to begin soon and my love life was worse than I actually knew it to be at the time. For whatever reason, I decided that I just didn’t give the ol’ Liz enough of a chance; I dubbed the albums onto a 90-minute cassette for the fantastically ghetto stereo system in my 1985 Chevy Cavalier (the one so classy, I was able to kick a hole in the door through the rust). I played it and things started catching my ear.
I remember enthusiastically running with the cassette to go hang out with my then-pals Wendi and Charity, ecstatic to play them the song that got my attention. First, we sat and talked about life in general, which led me to vent to my trusted friends about how my relationship seemed to be dying. You see, he had gone to Iowa City for the summer to do some work for the university there, and he didn’t make a huge effort to keep in touch with me. Even the visit I made was uneventful to say the least. It all felt like it was spiraling out of my control and I couldn’t save it. Thus, “Fuck and Run” summed up my angst perfectly. I played the song for these friends of mine and we chatted some more.
What ever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who tries to win you over, and
What ever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who makes love cause he’s in it
It was a couple of weeks later that I broke up with him after I expressed concern that he was showing a little too much interest in Charity, then him later admitting to having a crush on her. It killed me, but I ended it; I wasn’t going to fight for his love or anything silly like that. He made his choice and so I let him go free. Of course, had I known that his confession was akin to saying that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee kissed once in a while in its scope of ridiculous lies, I probably wouldn’t have been so blissfully Buddhist with respect to the situation. Nevertheless, I sought some way to cope with the loss of my first love. As always, I turned to the stereo.
It wasn’t just “Fuck and Run” that got my attention after a few short listens. Soon, my credo became “Divorce Song,” which not only gave me peace regarding my decision to cut this guy loose but also made me feel better about not ever wanting to talk to him again. Or her, the evil friend of mine on whom he had a “crush” turned into full-scale engagement in approximately three weeks.
And when I asked for a separate room
It was late at night
And we’d been driving since noon
But if I’d known
How that would sound to you
I would have stayed in your bed
For the rest of my life
Just to prove I was right
That it’s harder to be friends than lovers
And you shouldn’t try to mix the two
Cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy
Then you know that the problem is you
It’s advice that I have followed wisely and ignored foolishly.
Although my cassette had Whip-smart on side B, it seems most of everything there was that I needed to know was on side A, Exile in Guyville. It’s ridiculous how much critical acclaim the album received, but if my sanity has anything to say about it, it was well-deserved. For being quite naive and inexperienced in the ways of life, I needed a voice that explained all of the craziness going on in my head and heart at the moment.
And I kept standing 6’1″
Instead of 5’2″
And I loved my life
And I hated you
That’s what happens in these situations. You get pissed off. It was great to feel pissed off. It was great to feel anything. I focused a lot of energy on how angry I was with my ex-friend and ex-boyfriend. Everything else in my life, no matter how annoying or irritating, always paled in comparison to this evil ghost looming over my head. I would filter all of my rage onto these two. And it was fantastic because I never saw them and never had to deal with them. It was a coping mechanism, and I felt empowered by the entire universe when I could stand on a hill and say that I was a decent person with full knowledge that those two particular people were not.
I’m asking, will you, Mary, please
Temper my hatred with peace
Weave my disgust into fame
And watch how fast they run to the flame
And as the girl who always wanted to grow up to be a rock star, I wanted to show them. I wanted to show them all. Not only was I better as a person than they were, but I was going to make them regret ever wronging me. I wanted to have such a fantastic life that they would want to beg to be back in my good graces. I wanted to be the girl who won the lottery, as I knew something like that would attract everyone I have ever spoken with in my entire life. And I wanted to laugh in their faces, denying them of what I most certainly would have shared if they had only been decent people.
So Johnny my love
We got us a witness
Now all we gotta do is get a preacher
He can probably skip the “until death” part
‘Cause Johnny my love you’re already dead
Did I mention his name was John? It really helped when Ms. Phair peppered her wisdom with unintentional perfection.
Now, the side effect of this tumultuous period is that it completely segregated me from my circle of friends. I was the one with the problem; John and Charity were blissfully happy and never mentioned my name. Ergo, our mutual friends enjoyed their company much moreso than that of a bitter girl who sat around analyzing song lyrics. I felt like nobody had any honor, that they would support this relationship built on destroying the life of a good friend. I came to see my old friends as being no more than plastic, doing what was easy instead of what was right, and following around the pied piper.
I learn my name
I write with a number two pencil
I work up to my potential
I earn my meat
I come when called
I jump when you circle the cherry
I sing like a good canary
I come when called
I come, that’s all
But the duality of this situation is that in a heartbeat, I likely would have dropped who I was as a person if it meant I could have everything back the way it was. I would forgive everyone if all of the hurt could magically disappear.
Until I thought about it for five minutes, anyway. Then I just wanted to be the psycho bitch who f*cked up everyone else’s lives.
You been around enough to know
That if I want to leave you better let me go
Because I take full advantage
Of every man I meet
I get away almost every day
With what the girls call
What the girls call
What the girls call
The girls call murder
And it would go back and forth, back and forth.
Hideously.
Every time I see your face
I think of things unpure unchaste
I want to f*ck you like a dog
I’ll take you home and make you like it
Yes.
You left me nothing
Johnny Sunshine
BUT.
In the end, I found my identity. Strangely, I found it in the last song of the Exile album. I stopped trying to label myself with my feelings of hurt and mistrust and instead forced myself to remember who I was. Buried underneath a terrible few months of emotional heartache, I was still alive. I had been beaten, but certainly not murdered. Maybe I was left with a few scars, but they weren’t keeping me in a wheelchair. It was time to remember what landed me that relationship and all of my friends in the first place.
The fire you like so much in me
Is the mark of someone adamantly free
And to this day I wear that tattooed on the inside of my heart.
It’s a mark I’ve taken hard and I know I will carry with me for a long long time…
–gloomchen
