On long drives to france we'd listen to Bobby Womack in the car
My father didn't get every parenting trick right but he gave me an ear.
I'd watch him prepare for the summer by standing over the stereo
slowly lowering the recording dial with the precision of a professional safe cracker.
He put care into it, because caring and sharing was hard for him
so he'd let Womack and Womack and the Neville brothers speak for him.
Maybe that's why when tere are girls i like i have to make them.
I mean,
If i had given a mixed tape to every girl i liked,
I'd have given four mixed tapes.
I have given four mixed tapes.
The first was made on the last night of two thousand and seven
and given to my first love on the first day of two thousand and eight.
We met a month before at a party of a mutual friend of ours
While they were talking to her as if water was in their mouths
She decided to help me find my missing comics.
from that moment in every time they saw her it was followed by
"why's she with him?" hard to blame them
they were too self-involved to see the attraction-
A good hearted nineteen year old virgin
going with a flow he's too scared to question
I can't tell you what all the songs were, but i knew the first.
It was Jack White and Loretta Lynn- "Portland Oregon and slow gin fizz
If that ain't love then tell me what is"
I thought that's the type of love that fits, but other than that,
there was nothing overtly love-like or proposing for anything
It was more what i was feeling and for her than feelings for her.
Thin Lizzy, led zeppelin, black sabbath, dexy's midnight runners, Bob dylan
and of course and for always and for all reasons forever, Neil Young.
I had the ten minute cowgirl in the sand song at the beginning
and then ended it with the acoustic version. I felt so fucking cool.
She took it at the end of the night with delight and little surprise.
it gave me what felt like a lifelong lifeline.
Laughing for forevers while we drank for hours.
Then at another party she took me to she, met a guy.
a guy that she'd date. And like. More. Than. Me.
and he didn't want her to be friends with me.
I guess I learnt a lesson to go with a blessing I didn't question
because she stopped and cut me off and left me lost
while we were supposed to be in a play together
I was getting blanked stage left, right and centre.
and before long this forced rehearsal time would be over
and after that i'd never see her again. So I made a decision
to make my second mixed tape. recreate the magic.
evidently my first tape wasn't enough, not enough love
I worked so hard to tell her, about her, how i felt
looking back it was a desperate mess of messages
like, heard it through the grape vine by Gaye.
My girl, the temptations. Acapella
and on the last day I saw her with him and I couldn't do it.
I stared at her with all my lover for her in my back pocket
but to of give- it'd make it awkward,
and that's not what i wanted my love to be.
I wanted the type of love that fits.
that portland oregon slow gin fizz.
It that ain't love then tell me what is.
A year later I'm telling myself I'm grown up and wiser
I had since had sex and fucked around and fucked up
enough to know i had forgotten her. Mixed tapes no more.
Though in terms of mixed tapes I had made one more.
To get with a friend and nearly lost her because
my romantic gesture was little more than an attempt to be with her.
and then i got off with her. and her friends (it wasn't okay)
point made i had grown and made mistakes of my own
and was over the girl that nineteen year old had fallen for
until one night I get an email. An apology.
Saying i was a good friend to her and she was sorry.
I remember looking at that facebook message
like it was yesterday. I didn't know what to say.
So i answered through nothing more than links
to how i feel through youtube music videos
She was grateful. I was scared. I had fallen again.
She cam back and became more than a friend
spent a lot of time in my bed
we put lots of kisses on the end of texts
and gave each other a couple kisses i'll never forget
then, one night she left.
She left with my words and hers unsaid and hate i put it on the page
and never said to her face, she never even got to hear that second mixed tape
but it still got played, with women that weren't her,
role playing a happy ending with one-night stands,
a night of romance as if she had finally come back.
I couldn't make love if i didn't hear those tracks.
and when the music stopped to play, come the next day, I changed
I would see them for who they were, nothing more than not her.
For half a year of more i was a complete whore that would build a safe rapport
with girls that i'd convince myself are my loretta
and they'd be convinced that I love them, then i'd never answer their calls
fucking play i got called, i wonder if that's how players are born.
One night I brought one of the prettiest women i had seen back to mine.
She was approaching thirty and actually approached me before, I would've.
On the bus ride back we made out and when we got in i didn't get to hit play
I didn't get to play the mixed tape and i saw someone else in my bed
Someone i wanted to sleep with without that music.
Someone new who knew what they wanted. Me. I was wanted
That night i gave her the tape and she left with it.
She took my words unsaid without me having to say them.
Another year later I'm telling myself I'm grown up and wiser.
When in fact for some reason my freedom has left me numb
In lacking in any wants I find solace in rhythmic thoughts
dulling emotion through mediocre pop and shit hip hop
now i don't pretend anymore, I don't trick women
or trick myself out, now my love is in the craft or a poem.
I don't see women, or see myself being with them
and I'm happier now, because I am now, myself now.
Without a need to feel or a feel to need and i've met someone new
who in a lot of was is just like me, she, walks aimlessly
due to lost loves and losing loved ones we bonded and,
I've lost my old tape recording equipment, so I i've made her a CD
Of all my favourite songs for sad situations.
It's not about her, but for her. Because no ones fought and
No one's ever made her a mixed tape before
sometimes I'm scared of her, because this mixed tape legacy
seems to always end in a curse for me, and i freak out
at little things like hand holding like hand holding like
she'll take the songs and take me away from my ptah
and leave me lost and cut off because we've snogged a lot
and told each other to stop because we mean a lot to each other
and i don't know who could help me the way we help each other
and feelings take over because we get close when near each other
and i'd give more if i could, and i give more than i want
and i've just given so much in my past i can't make love
like it's too much, to the point where I resist what fits
i feel sick whenever I think of portland oregan and slow gin fizz
two and a half years and my initial thoughts of what romance is
has completely fallen to shit. Yet here i am.
Outside another bar with a mixed tape in my hand
to another woman who may take me for all i am
After all this, knowing all the risks i still do it.
I can't resist.
It that ain't love...
