I dunno. It came on the radio today.
Once upon a time, it would have made me cry. That’s been years. Today, though, I sang along loudly and ironically in my car, as if he could somehow see how not seriously I was taking “our” song.
“He” being the college non-boyfriend. In the spring of 1998, “Closing Time” played everywhere, all the time. He was a rock and roll musician, or so he fancied himself; he’d wear the flannel in–I guess?–tribute to Cobain. He’d string his guitar in the backseat of my car as I drove him here or there. He’d leave the string papers strewn about on the car floor.
It felt so authentic. Edgy, even.
Inauthentic, though? His intentions not to hurt me. He knew from day one that I was not an option. Still, for whatever reason, he wanted me around. He’d say just enough to give my silly 18-year-old self hope that we’d be slowly moving into the real thing, all the while making sure his words would be unimpeachable if taken at face value.
Somehow, even through his college radio, “I can’t listen to it if it’s ever been heard by anyone else, ever” sensibilities, he took a liking to this little alterna-pop gem. And well he should have–it’s a 1990s classic. He did have some good taste. I’ll never forget on a car ride to…who knows where…once, he burst into the chorus: ”I know WHO I WANT to take me home.” He then proceeded to have a conversation with himself, based upon this initial lyrical proclamation:
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I do.”
“I don’t know.”
He wasn’t as psychologically imbalanced as he sounds. Still, 30-year-old Holly would have pulled over and let him out of the car based upon this little interaction with himself. 18-year-old Holly was incapable of anything but hero worship, though. 18-year-old Holly actually latched onto the thought that he really DID want her to take him home. 18-year-old Holly was in the middle of creating the archetype for a pattern that would plague her for years to come–but would ultimately become something she tired of, and something she wouldn’t accept anymore.
But it really was a great song.
***
I got a little sad, thinking of how little this song means to me anymore. Don’t get me wrong–I remember. I even remember the feelings it would provoke; it just doesn’t provoke them anymore. Just the memories of them.
It’s good that I left him behind. Well, he left me behind just a few months later, so I guess technically I didn’t. He was the big one for the longest–the one I just knew had to come back. I had a whole set of reasoning as to why.
If you have to come up with a whole system of logic as to why you’re soul mates with someone, well, you’re probably not.
I think I’ve been true soul mates with someone once. I didn’t have to convince myself or him. It was what it was, as they say.
I just don’t like the thought of eventually not aching at a certain song, whether it’s a song I share with a soul mate or with a friend or whoever else. While I can kind of roll my eyes at the whole youthful folly-in-love thing, it’s kind of sad I was able to sing “Closing Time” with a smirk on my face today. That smirk undermined 3+ years of some pretty earnest misery. I even transferred schools at one point based partly upon it. I was very true to him and–I thought–to my heart during that time.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…
To try to claim I’m not naive anymore would be pretty absurd to anyone reading this who knows me. But I did learn. And there are things I cannot accept and things that I will accept no less than now because of the boy who wasn’t sure he wanted me to take him home. I’ve grown more savvy–or jaded, however you want to put it–with each experience.
My girl K, during a phone conversation the other day, made the statement that she’d been flat-out rejected for the first time in her life recently. My response, of course, was, “what’s THAT like?” I’m happy for her that it’s taken this long, but it’s still gotta burn a bit. I’ve at least been able to thicken my skin. And to know that this end was, as the song says, really just a new beginning.
The songs usually linger through any ends of beginnings or vice versa, though. I just wonder what the shelf life is. I wonder if he thinks of me when he hears the same tune. I just also kind of don’t care, and that makes me sadder than any memory of his hurting me does, as it has implications for the songs I hear now that take me back to someone’s car, someone’s arms, someone’s voice.
I don’t want the songs to expire, and I don’t want to believe that they’ve expired for the ones I’ve shared them with, either.
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