Happily Ever After

Searching for the magic frequency

“We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.” Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

Pretty soon all we’re going to start hearing about is the yearly hallmark card ritual to love. This romantic madness consumes everyone at some point and many times I’ve questioned the reason I dislike it. It’s not ‘real love’ any more than any other kind of fiction, but fiction doesn’t ruin love. It magnifies it and puts it on stage. So maybe my disdain for romance is just the fault of my birthday?

Apparently “Ox Person” love is a confusing game we don’t know how to play, while Gemini babies are lovers, so this cancels out the fault of my stars. Perhaps it’s a fault of my birth place? Turns out a childhood in Anaheim constantly visiting Disneyland when you’re under ten is in fact, scarring. I had a Disney poster with this animated scene on my bedroom wall until I left home. Brainwashing included the sentiment, “...no matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing…” Ideal for pre-teen concepts of romance. Thanks mom and dad. 

Whatever the reason, let’s celebrate this god-awful holiday by retracing 50 years of romantic history through my personal “peat pool,” heartbreak by heartbreak, like a fine wine crushed by place and time. We can cringe together. Or not. I used to be ashamed at the questionable amount of experience I’ve acquired, but I now bravely wince no longer. May my memories be the inspiration to unearth the romantic soundtrack buried in your past. No machine algorithm can mimic your heart, yet. Take advantage of that.

Which reminds me, if you have a parent above ground please invite them to tell you all about their love songs. Even if you’re weary of their stories now, you’ll thank me later. Every couple shares at least one love song, and in retrospect I wish I had asked my folks for theirs. 

Love songs aren’t necessarily torch ballads. A friend of mine shared that after his painful breakup, the song he and his ex enjoyed singing together was Taylor Swift’s Never, Ever Getting Back Together. I thought this was a remarkably mature way to deal with a breakup. Usually the one that runs through my head is the lovely Ani DiFranco. 

Regardless, let’s start by digging out the youngest bog boy, shall we? Kevin, the sandy-haired king of the swim team. My first kiss. I built up the nerve to ask him to my high school Sadie Hawkins dance. When Elton John’s Your Song provided the excuse, we slow danced the way only two super-hormonal teenagers can. It was an out of body experience. Every time I’d see him my heart would jackhammer against my chest with such force I could hear it in my ears. He never asked me out again, but to this day that song gives me angina. 

I wasn’t popular with boys my own age (which feels like a weird blessing), instead I was determined to lose my virginity to someone older and more sophisticated. A 30 year old rock ‘n’ roll DJ was my target. Visualize the movie FM, or Howard Stern with limp hair. My parents were naturally horrified, but my rebellious, romance saturated brain could not comprehend why. To me, a pudgy teenage wallflower, I finally had the (notoriously) popular boyfriend I always wanted. Who cared what they thought. 

Every date I’d sit quietly in the back of the broadcasting booth or was wide-eyed arm candy at concerts so loud that meaningful conversation was impossible. Memories of that experience are a haze of pot smoke and bad 80s rock. Even the recent TV zombie fest The Last of Us uses 80s songs as code to signal something bad is about to happen. But this is a romantic examination, so this Roxy Music song signifies those years to me, when FM stations spun vinyl, and late night shock jocks actually picked up the request line at 1am to chat with giddy teenagers. Imagine hearing it through as you drive a dark Valley highway towards the Santa Cruz mountains, the eucalyptus night in your hair, sad tears making your cheeks itch. You live, you learn. 

My first adult job (and office romance) intersected with the publication department’s photographer. Whenever a Leonard Cohen song pops out of nowhere I think of Larry. The moody artist with a camera and darkroom who chain-smoked Marlboros like a character out of a Wes Anderson movie. He would scribble tiny poems on yellow lined paper and leave them under my car’s wipers. Poems like, “Would we had whirled enough, and thyme, this mayo, lady, would be sublime.” A tortured, flannel wearing ladies man, he gifted me his appreciation for comic books and classical music (it was a rebound after all). I’ll always remember him for the creative way I discovered real heartbreak. Sliding my feet under the covers of his bed, my toes snagged a red lace pair of panties that didn’t belong to me. Shortly after this I enlisted. Basic training was less work.

I did a lot of dating in the military, as one does after a heartburn and it’s raining men. There is a unique combination of daily physical stress, rampant testosterone, self loathing, and fear of death that permeates most military hookups. Those years were not healthy. Look up the “tailhook scandle” and you’ll note they weren’t good for enlisted women in general. I do have a fond memory of an army corporal and puppeteer that marked the point where a man who could make me laugh was worth more than one with nice guns. This song by P.D.Q. Bach is thanks to him. Joe, I’m sorry I fell harder for your funnier friend. That truly sucks. 

The movie Say Anything is my generation’s coming of age grand romantic statement. The whole boombox thing (GenZ will never appreciate this move) plus Peter Gabriel meant no man could ever measure up. As a cultural time capsule it set a pretty high bar. Frank was no John Cuzack, but at 6’2’ he was a persuasive and handsome man. A perfect Chris Pine-ish prince charming for my mother, who was relieved given my dating record. Similar to enlisting, what you think you want isn’t always what you get and I was too young to appreciate what I had done, until it was done. Eloping was stupid, but his Harley driving, Bruce Springsteen east coast style was an intoxicating blend of the rugged pastiche I thought would save me. For a while anyway. Based on the restraining order, our particular love song wound up with more of a stalker vibe. Très American. 

At this point many women would say, “I’m out,” but not me. True romantics never give up on love. They let it beat them into the ground. Marriage was not for me, but the guy I co-habitated with the longest spanned the entire chasm of human emotion between love and betrayal, with a vengeful end. We lived an unreasonably romantic boho-intellectual lifestyle in a sunny bungalow within earshot of the ocean. My diamond from that time remains one of my oldest female friends, but it’s jazz like this from Nina Simon, floating out the windows on breezey summer afternoons, that brings me back. It was a spectacular supernova of romance. If I could somehow recover a point to all that dramatic mess I would turn it into a screenplay. Instead, when I hear jazz now it feels pretentious in the same way all happily ever afters do. 

That’s plenty right? Not so fast. I had to check to see if maybe kissing a girl would change my luck. Alas, no, but the resulting enlightenment did implode a very old friendship. Later, a psychology PhD from Stanford University demonstrated for me that people who appear intelligent in one area are secret nutbags in another. Hands-down the biggest narcissist I have ever met, Paul once snuck out of a restaurant and ditched me in the middle of an expensive meal to test how long it would take me to realize he’d actually left. Brilliant. 

Next, in painful succession, there was the unreasonable crush on an internet micro-star who ended up marrying my best friend (ref. Joe, and what goes around, etc.). A toxic obsession with a bartender that lasted longer than it should have because despite being coked six nights out of seven, he would make me smile so much my face would hurt. He was the most dangerous as well. Spending a couple grand bailing him out of the drunk tank was a highlight. An accordion player in an indie band who wrote a song for me I can no longer find online. (Yes, accordion). And on a solo holiday to Amsterdam on an actual Valentine day,  an Aussie backpacker saved my life. I’d caught pneumonia in the hostel, the worst flu I’ve ever experienced, frightening in its intensity. He put me in a hotel, picked up some medicine, and kept me company for two days until my fever broke, delaying his journey to listen to a strange woman cough non-stop, between bouts of sobbing. I’ve yet to experience anything more romantic. 

Finally, to ensure I would leave no small portion of my heart untrampled, I torpedoed the last of my salad days over a film animator I met in the mosh pit of a tiny music venue called The Bottom of the Hill. He was naive and I was jaded, he was sweet and talented, and more than a decade my junior. I was aimless and emotionally crippled. It was doomed from the get-go. I swear it was God laughing, or karmic vengence, because when it finally got and went, the loss affected me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Like a character in a Russell Banks love story.

The final forgettable encounters and lame attempts at online dating finally erased my tolerance for romance completely, convincing me that this tune by Greg Brown was was my true destiny. A love song to myself. I have lists of songs that make me dance around the livingroom, angry screaming songs for upsetting political events, and even songs for when it’s pouring rain. But we all should have at least one love song to ourselves. The one that proves your inward search for love is as much a part of your classic vintage as the people who, Once Upon a Time, loved you too.

Which brings me back to fiction. It’s reassuring that anime and modern fairy tales continue to evolve with us using more honesty about love than the Cinderella story I grew up with. I took a longer route than most to discover the deepest truths about heartache, yet a love song still has the power to make me cry like a kid. Whichever way your romance ends up this Valentines Day, happy or unexpectedly sad, this year, or next, keep that ongoing list of your own love songs. They’re the soul’s chronometer for our boggy little hearts. A better valentine does not exist. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to serenade the dog.