A few months ago I was getting ready to leave the house to run some errands and as I was hugging my boyfriend goodbye he made some offhand joke about how I was really going to be with “my other boyfriend”, which is ridiculous of course, and without thinking I blurted out, “I don’t have a boyfriend!” Pause. He knew what I meant (of course), but it’s remained a faux point of contention since.
But looking back on it now, I think that maybe I was going to be with my other boyfriend, if you think of my car music as a lover, which I sometimes do. Sure, it sounds strange. But being alone in my car with music is a religious experience for me. It’s easier to feel the melodies when landscapes are rushing past you. I like finding song sisters. Songs that just sound so good when paired together. Recently my favorite song-sister-pair is Katie Dill’s ‘This body’s only rental’ and Radiohead’s ‘Jigsaw falling into place’.
College is a distant memory now. I haven’t laid eyes upon some of the people I call my closest friends in almost two years. It was an extremely hard transition. My songs are my friends. I eat lunch at my desk so I can have the privacy to listen to whatever I want as loud as I want it. I’ve had friends go to rehab. Get married. Have babies. I would be a horrible mother. I just want headphones.
