CASSETTE FROM MY EX

I grew up in New Jersey in the 80s, in a town that was heavily preppy. My few high school boyfriends were Lacoste-clad, clean cut types, until one summer in college when I met Russ. He bartended with my friend Melissa, and was decidedly not a prep. Unlike the guys in my town, Russ was good-looking but enticingly dipped in a light coating of scunge. Russ’s tastes were simple: he liked beer, classic rock, and hanging out. I promptly joined him, and during that halcyon summer I ditched my prep-wear, got myself some gold chains, and re-permed my perm for added volume. Soon I found myself spending my weekends driving my folks’ secondhand light blue Buick LeSabre “down the Shore,” to Point Pleasant.

Russ and I would drink beers with his ever-present crew of dirtball buddies and then take a wobbly stroll on Jenkinson’s Boardwalk (’Jenks,’ for those in the know.) Then we’d cruise around town, blaring The Doors out the open window. My hometown friends and I had more esoteric musical taste as well as carefully curated record collections, but I was a closet fan of the entire play list of WHDA, the Rock of North Jersey. With Russ, I could love it unabashedly.

Sometimes he would take me to parties at his sister Michelle’s house. Michelle had the best collection of cheesy R&B songs - another one of my weaknesses. Give me a synth-heavy 80s R&B band with a subtle name like Klymaxx or L’Trimm and I am in heaven. I had asked Michelle a couple of times to make me a tape, but to my surprise, the normally recalcitrant Russ gave it a try. Our first – perhaps only - movie that we together was The Lost Boys, so he included a few songs from the soundtrack (hence Tim Capello and Gerard McMann, below.) That was about as romantic as Russ got, but at the time I was deeply moved and read all kinds of symbolism into the songs that did not actually exist.

I’ve since lost the tape’s cover but his faint writing on the tape says Hey Babe. I remember at the time wishing that I had a cooler mix tape like some of my friends had, with songs from Wire or Big Dipper or something. I mean, you know, “Sweet Melissa?” I constantly tried to open his musical mind. Once I gave him a cassette of a New York City band I liked called Cruel Story of Youth. He put one of their songs on his mix tape to me but I guarantee he never gave it a listen beyond that. After a while I came to appreciate that he didn’t try to be self-consciously hip. He just wasn’t interested in alternative bands (nor, mercifully, the requisite William Shatner track that’s funny the first time and thereafter fast-forwarded.) And of course I played that tape to death.

This is a shorter than usual list of songs, because Russ could only be bothered with a 60-minute tape. He had some hanging out to do.

Jancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. She was a writer at Rolling Stone from 1989-2003, where she wrote twenty cover stories for the magazine. She has written for many different publications, among them the New York Times, Vogue, GQ and O: The Oprah Magazine, where she writes a monthly ethics column entitled “Now What Do I Do?”  From 2001-2002 she was an entertainment correspondent for Good Morning America. Prior to that she was a veejay for MTV2. Her novel “Don’t You Forget About Me” is out now on Villard Books. She and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.