CASSETTE FROM MY EX

Why is it so hard for me to write about this mixed tape? I don’t have left over bad feelings about the guy that made it for me. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone else at any other moment in time being a more perfect first real boyfriend for me than Chris.

I moved to Chicago after living with my parents for about eight months following college. I’d been in New York studying art for the previous four years. I needed a new city and a new start in life. Some friends from high school rented a cargo van and were driving back to the Midwest to continue their education at the Art Institute of Chicago, so I figured I’d better get in that van, too, or I’d get stuck in suburban Maryland for the rest of my miserable life. Had never been to Chicago, but it sounded a helluva lot better than my parents attic in Kensington, Maryland.

Chicago was like a big, fun, music and art party back then. I moved into an apartment with other artists. I painted, learned how to play bass, fell in love. A classic early twenties scenario, to be sure. Chris was in a band with three good friends of mine. We enjoyed similar cultural influences, especially music, film and books. His writing moved me. He obsessed over and played guitar like it was a girlfriend (we were a threesome in more ways than one). He played me music I hadn’t heard before, he made me mixed tapes that I read way too much into. When a man makes you a mixed tape after you’re already dating, puts Dog Faced Hermans “Madame La Mer” on it sandwiched betwixt Bjork and The Stranglers , you know it’s some kinda love.

The Pressure of Life is a great tape. It is more playful than romantic — playfully intelligent. Fun Boy Three’s “The Pressure of Life” followed by Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Not just any schmuck would have a run like: X/Adult Books, Aerosmith/Last Child, Stevie Wonder/Maybe Your Baby, and Prince/The Beautiful Ones. This person had real musical knowledge and taste that crossed genres. I take back the romantic statement I made… he did include Bow Wow Wow’s version of “Fools Rush In”, which is gratingly and agonizingly romantic, as well as being very cool because it is sung by the fifteen-year-old sexpot Annabella and laced with one of the most intricate and accomplished bass lines I’ve ever heard.

Really, what more could I have asked from this young man than his eternal devotion and mixed tapes? He thought enough of me that he managed to set aside time during his busy days of bike messenger-ing and barista-ing (and don’t forget being a rock god), to contemplate the more esoteric side of life, and then he shared it with me! His history and mine, as well as this tape includes appreciative nods to 80’s New Wave and electronica: Siouxie and the Banshees/Israel, The Cure/At Night and Kraftwerk/The Model.

Even at a time when Nirvana was overplayed and tedious, he still had the huevos to put it on the playlist. The songs are powerful and immediate, “Very Ape” and “Milk It”. I hadn’t listened to this tape until recently, since we broke up in 1995. The Nirvana songs sound good super loud in a car.

The saddest, sweetest song is from Bjork’s ‘Debut’ album–“Come to Me”. It is a song about caring for and protecting someone she loves deeply. It could be one of the many reasons I was unable to listen to this tape, or any of the other tapes he made for me, for many years. Too many memories of a time when things were easier and far more difficult. When we were still young enough to be boyfriend and girlfriend. The end of a youthful relationship sometimes coincides with the end of youth itself, and objects associated with that time must rest for a spell before they can be appreciated again in a new time and place.

Juliette Goodwin is a writer , photographer and artist living with her husband Brantley Davis in Baltimore, MD. She is currently staying home with her 22-month-old twin daughters, trying to keep them from hurting themselves and one another. Her artwork has shown in New York, Chicago and Baltimore. She still loves music and is sharing as many musical possibilities with her toddlers as they can stand. Juliette is the “Food Examiner ” for an online newspaper and is trying to complete a book of photography based on her ailing/possessed digital camera before the end of 2008.