"I'll get those hooks out of me..."

God, I'm laughing to myself and at myself right now. Bush's "Glycerine" just began to play on Launchcast. My friend Kate and I used to listen to this song all the time our freshman year in College. We were heartbroken and found that Gavin Rosedale expressed our heartbreak with complete accuracy with his noncoherent lyric of "Glycerine." For me it makes perfect sense why a song that makes no sense spoke so profoundly to my heartache. I hadn't actually broken up with anyone yet, and I wasn't pining after anyone. In fact at that point as far as I knew I was still dating the biggest Jonathan Richman fan to ever walk the earth, and I don't just mean his gerth. Come to think of it we never actually broke up- he should be calling any day now.

Kate and I spent many an evening singing at the top of our lungs, "Couldn't love you more you have a beautiful taste." as we guzzled vodka while sitting in the near dark on the floor of our suite**. (I mixed my vodka with orange juice as to avoid scurvy while I caught my buzz. Kate would drink vodka and Mt. Dew--she was light years ahead of the Red Bull folks.) But that's the thing, he didn't have a beautiful taste, he smoked. Perhaps Kate's ex-boyfriend type, also known as Pissy Face, tasted beautiful. You'll have to ask her.

Sometimes we'd mix it up and throw on Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" in between Glycerine and yet another play of Glycerine. And we would sing that lyric with as much passion as we would Gavin's words. And why wouldn't we? Of course we related to the dissappointment and heartache of Tracy's impoverished protaganist working at a grocery store. We were white, middle-class college kids enrolled at private college. But the chick in Tracy's song was hurt and angry and so were we god damn it! Except, I had nothing to be heartbroken about yet. Sure the day would come when I'd walk him out of the dorm kind of awkardly hug him good-bye (I really hated PDA back then) and say, "See ya later." and then not see him later. In fact never see him again. But that hadn't happened yet! I prematurely heartbroke.


**Definition of Suite. At Emerson we not only had rooms and roommates but we had suites. Some of the dorm rooms were clustered - 3 to 6 rooms- in suites where 4, 5, 0r 6 would share a bathroom, living room and something resembling a kitchen--though of course there were no actual cooking or fire instruments in the kitchen section of the suite. There were people on the planet who didn't even have G.E.Ds renting houses and cooking meals on gas stoves over actual fire, but not us. The college felt we were adult enough to begin accruing thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt but not yet old enough to cook.

Comments

jen said…
I remember being part of one Bush pow-wow, which was three parts "Glycerine", five parts vodka and three parts in complete darkness.

It's weird.

I was just thinking about how silly my old heartbreaks make me feel these days.
Anonymous said…
Your post just brought me back ten years in a split second. Who said time travel wasn't possible??
Anonymous said…
Ah the memories . . .

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